“No,” Rebecca said, deciding that there was no point in bringing up her suspicions and speculations about something going on behind the scenes in the department. She didn’t really have any facts, and there was no point in worrying her for nothing. Still, she didn’t like the idea of Catherine being anywhere near the investigation. “I wonder why he isn’t bringing in his own people. If there’s one thing the feds have plenty of, it’s profilers.”

“I asked him the same thing,” Catherine said. “Clark pointed out that we’re not profiling an individual, but just a general pathologic type, and that I probably have as much experience with it as anyone. He also suggested that it would be helpful to have someone local so that… he mentioned two people, Sloan and… McBride… so they would have someone immediately available if they got a hit.”

“That makes sense,” Rebecca agreed reluctantly.

“Rebecca,” Catherine said, taking her hand. “This is what I do, and it’s something I love to do. If it’s going to be a problem working this closely with me —”

“No,” Rebecca interrupted swiftly, finally getting her emotions under control. “It’s not. When you first mentioned it, I thought about Blake. That’s all.”

Catherine moved closer, gently threading her arms around Rebecca’s waist. “It’s not the same thing. I will never do anything like that again. I would never put you in danger.”

Rebecca stared at her. “What are you talking about? That wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.” There were tears in her voice, although her face was calm.

“Jesus, Catherine. Is that what you think? You blame yourself?” She pulled her tightly into her arms, resting her cheek against Catherine’s hair. “Is that what the dreams are about?” When Catherine didn’t answer, she leaned back, cupping Catherine’s chin in her palm. Looking into her deep green eyes, she could see the pain swimming close to the surface. “No. It wasn’t your fault. It was my decision. I thought of Blake just now because I don’t want you anywhere near an investigation that might be dangerous. I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you. I can still see him, with that fucking gun against your head.”

Suddenly, they were both trembling, both of them remembering the moment, each fearing for the other. Finally, Catherine said quietly, “I love you.”

Rebecca pressed her lips to the Catherine’s temple, her fingers curved possessively on the back of her neck. “I love you.” Sighing, she asked, “When are you briefing with us?”

“Tomorrow at 7.” Her cheek still nestled against Rebecca’s shoulder, she added, “Will you come to me tonight?”

“It might be late,” Rebecca answered reluctantly.

“I don’t care.”

“I want to. I miss you so much.”

Eyes closed, listening to Rebecca’s heartbeat, Catherine said softly, “Then don’t stay away.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

REBECCA KNEW THAT what she should do was go home and catch some sleep, but she was too restless for that. Watts was following up on the scant help they’d gotten from Alonso Richards, the inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, in exchange for a promise to get him moved to another cell block far away from a particular prisoner who wanted to kill him for reasons Richards couldn’t imagine. He’d reluctantly given them a couple of names of some of his old running buddies who’d might know somebody who possibly knew somebody who maybe had once helped make some sex movies. But he swore he didn’t know who or where or for whom—all he knew was that it was someplace in the city and the chicks were young. Maybe Watts would pull another rabbit out of his hat, but she’d pretty much resigned herself to the fact that unless Sloan came up with something, or an informant gave her a lead, for the moment she had nothing to chase. But Jeff’s murder was still open and she wanted to be able to tell Shelly Cruz that justice had been done when she went to see her. She’d been putting off visiting Jeff’s widow because she was embarrassed that the department—that she —had nothing substantial to offer the young widow in terms of consolation.

Taking a shot in the dark, she drove back to the station house and took the elevator to the fourth floor where the Homicide division was housed. She usually walked up, but she was beat. A couple of detectives she knew nodded hello, one of them remarking as she passed, “Good to see you back, Frye.”

She muttered her thanks, but didn’t stop to talk. She found the person she was looking for in the coffee room, jacket off, feet propped on a wastepaper basket, multi-tasking with an open murder book propped next to her brown bag lunch.

“Sorry to bother you,” Rebecca said to the woman in the dark blue suit as she closed the door to the small stuffy space behind her. There was a window with a view of the river, but it was grimy and looked to be nailed shut. “Got a minute?”

Trish Marks glanced up from the case file she was reviewing, startled but too experienced to show it. “Frye. How are you doing?”

“I’m not bad. You?”

“Different day, same old shit. Crime might be down, but murder still has a way of happening.”

Rebecca nodded. “I know what you mean. Sex still sells, too.”

Trish closed the thick file and pushed it aside, draining her coke can and tossing it into a nearby wastebasket. Leaning back in her chair, she fixed Frye with a steady look. “What’s on your mind?”

“Jeff Cruz and Jimmy Hogan.”

“Why aren’t I surprised,” Marks said to herself, and it wasn’t meant to be a question. She got up and stretched, then walked to the coffee machine and poured a cup. She glanced inquiringly at Rebecca, who shook her head no. When she had added two sugars and enough fake cream to give herself brain cancer, she walked back to the table and sat down again. “What have you heard?”

Rebecca wondered how much to reveal. Trish Marks had a rep as a solid cop, and every time Rebecca had interacted with her in the past, everything she’d seen had seemed to confirm that. On the other hand, Marks was one of the detectives who was responsible for solving Jeff’s murder, and she hadn’t done that. Rebecca had to wonder why she’d dropped the ball. For a moment, the two women simply assessed one another in the silence. At first glance they didn’t seem all that similar, even though Marks was about Rebecca’s age. She was dark where Rebecca was light, short where Rebecca was tall, mildly curvaceous where Rebecca was lean—but the look in their eyes was a matched set—tough, competent, and wary.

Rebecca could almost see it when Marks reached a decision, and she just waited, giving the Homicide detective a chance to gather her thoughts. There were allegiances to be considered, and cops were loath to give out information on their cases, even to other cops. Finally, Marks began to speak.

“We didn’t get anything from the crime scene, which is about what you’d expect. Flanagan worked it hard but there just wasn’t anything to find.”

“Contract hit, right?”

Trish nodded. “Despite how fucked up this case got, I still think that’s the truth. There was absolutely nothing at the scene to go on. And no rumors on the street to say differently—no talk of personal beefs, nothing to suggest it was a drug buy gone bad. Everything about it spelled hit.” She stopped, wondering without much hope if Frye would let it go at that.

“What about Jimmy Hogan’s files? What about his supervisors? Somebody somewhere knew what he was into. The last time I spoke with you and your partner, you hadn’t had a chance to go through Jimmy’s cases. What did you turn up there?”

Marks’ eyes narrowed. “Nothing.”

“Now, see, that’s where I start to get confused,” Rebecca said tonelessly, her eyes boring into the woman across from her. “What did his Captain say? What about his contact man in Narco? He must have been reporting to someone.”

“Yeah, maybe he was.” Marks shrugged. “But I’ve got a feeling it wasn’t anybody in narcotics.” She watched Frye stiffen in surprise, the first sign of any unguarded emotion the blond detective had shown since she’d walked into the room, and Marks hastened to add, “and that stays in this room.”

“Are you telling me you don’t think Hogan was undercover for narcotics?” Unconsciously, Rebecca reached under the left side of her jacket and rubbed her chest, trying to work the tightness out of the scar. When she realized what she was doing, she placed her palms flat on her thighs. Never let on you’re tired; never let on you’re hurt; never let on you’re scared. Where’d she learn that—the academy, or home? She concentrated on Trish Marks, and forgot about the pain.

“What I’m saying is, no one in narcotics is willing to cop to being Jimmy’s contact. No one admits to having received any significant Intel from him in months. And the more I asked about it, the bigger the wall got. Finally, I couldn’t get anybody over there to talk to me at all.”

“You think they were shut down by someone higher up?”

“Probably, but I can’t get a line on who that somebody might be.”

Rebecca’s mind was racing furiously. There was a strange sort of logic to what Marks had told her. If Jimmy Hogan was undercover, he could be gathering information on anything—for anyone—not necessarily simply on drug traffic for the Narco division. The problem was, if he wasn’t narcotics, then who was he? Or more importantly, what was he? She was beginning to see how people thought Hogan might have turned bad, and that kind of suspicion naturally tainted anyone who was associated with him, including her partner.

“Has anyone specific told you to back off the case?” she asked Marks.

For the first time, Marks looked like she was contemplating an evasion. “Look, Frye, I don’t think that this homicide is solvable. You know as well as I do that finding a contract killer is almost impossible. Someone hires an out-of-towner who is only here for an afternoon and there’s absolutely no way to trace him. He flies in; he rents a car, along with a thousand other businessmen at the airport; he drives to a location that someone else has already set up; he identifies Hogan—probably from a faxed photo and, unfortunately, Cruz is with him. He needs to take Hogan out and anybody with him that could identify him. Bang Bang, two dead cops. He turns around, he drives back to the airport, and he goes back to where ever he lives. End of story.”

“You know, Marks, when you’re talking to another cop, it’s pretty obvious when there’s something you don’t want to say. I can tell when you’re trying to blow me off.” Rebecca waited.

“Fuck.” Marks strafed her short thick dark hair in frustration. “All I know is one morning a few days after you got taken down during that Blake thing, the Chief of Detectives was in a closed door meeting with your captain and my captain. An hour later, Horton and I got the word to back off the case. They gave us some bullshit about IAD following up on it.” She snorted derisively. “Like that was supposed to make us happy.”

It was Rebecca’s turned to look startled. “Captain Henry was in on this?”

““Yeah, he was there,” Marks admitted, nodding uncomfortably. “Look, I didn’t hear the conversation, Frye. Give me a break. But I got the distinct feeling that if I ever wanted to make detective one, I’d better toe the line. And that’s what I did. Sorry, Frye, but he wasn’t my partner.”

Rebecca stood and extended her hand. “Thanks, Marks. I know you didn’t have to give me anything. And as far as I’m concerned, if anybody asks, you didn’t.”

Her first impulse had been to the storm into Captain John Henry’s office and demand to know what the fuck was going on. Fortunately, it was one floor down and an entire city block away and by the time she was halfway there, she realized that if she were going to confront anyone about the situation, she needed to have a little bit more than just a hunch under her belt. What she needed to do was dig a little bit more into Jimmy Hogan’s background, and for that she was going to need to talk to some people at the Academy as well as the narcotics detectives he’d worked with. There were things she could get from a computer search, too, but she didn’t want to do that in the middle of the squad room in the middle of the afternoon. She believed Marks’ story that someone high up in the chain of command had shut down the homicide investigation, and that could mean any number of things. It could mean there were things that the bureaucrats who really ran the Police Department did not want made public, like the fact that Jimmy Hogan was dirty. That was certainly one explanation. It could also mean that the people in charge who were supposed to know what was happening didn’t have a clue as to what was really happening, and the best way to protect your own ass was to limit the flow of information. She could almost believe that IAD had taken over the investigation, which as far as she was concerned was about equivalent to flushing it down the toilet. IAD had never solved anything that she was aware of, but they did answer directly to the Chief and the Commissioner, so they would be the logical choices to take over the investigation if the brass wanted the findings kept quiet. That would fit with what Flanagan said about IAD raiding her files. And then there was the possibility that Jimmy Hogan was exactly what he appeared to be—an undercover narcotics detective who had done his job so well that someone in the Zamora organization had seen him as competition, and simply had him eliminated. Jeff was there by mistake, and just got caught in the crossfire. She probably would have believed that, if so many roadblocks hadn’t been thrown up around the case.

By the time she pulled up in front of Sloan’s building, her headache was raging and her temper was ready to snap. Maybe concentrating on the investigation was the best thing she could do for the moment. As she stepped from her car, she thought fleetingly to the few moments she had spent with Catherine earlier that afternoon. It occurred to her that the best thing she could really do would be to meet Catherine after work, take her somewhere for dinner, forget about prostitution and pornography and dead partners, and simply enjoy the company of a beautiful, intelligent woman who loved her. Why was it, she wondered, that she wasn’t going to do just that?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MITCHELL JUMPED TO her feet when Rebecca walked unexpectedly into the room. A muscle twitched at the corner of Rebecca’s mouth, but she managed not to smile.

“Status report, Mitchell?” She could see that Mitchell had been working at a computer terminal next to those occupied by Sloan and McBride. It looked like she was updating some kind of data sheet. Clearly, the young officer was a good choice for the post, even though Rebecca doubted that that had been the intention of the Duty Sergeant when he had assigned Mitchell to the task force. Women didn’t get accepted to West Point unless they were tough, sharp and dedicated. Mitchell must have once been among the brightest of the bright, and now some idiot at the 18th was trying to bury her. Nothing of Rebecca’s disgust at that thought showed in her face. “Bring me up to speed.”

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