Lisa Unger - Die For You

“But I can. So how about you keep your voice down?”

It wasn’t uncommon for a crime scene to be a place where people laughed and made jokes, disrespecting the victim with nasty remarks. It was the general understanding that this was how cops coped with the horror of it all. But Grady didn’t like it, especially in a nice girl’s apartment. It was one thing in the Bronx, where a bunch of perps had shot one another up. But a girl like Camilla, living alone in the city, working, like any of his sisters. She deserved more respect. He’d make sure she got it.

“I can’t think,” he said to Jez.

“Let’s go out in the hall for a second.”

He followed her out and she leaned against the gray wall. She fished a pack of Chiclets out of her purse, shook some into his hand, and popped a few in her mouth. She used to smoke a bit, not all the time. Just when she was really stressed. Now she chewed gum.

“She was kind of our only lead,” said Jez after a minute of chewing.

“There’s still Charlie Shane.”

“Shane, who is missing, whose apartment yielded nothing.”

Grady leaned against the wall, so they were shoulder to shoulder. Well-shoulder to arm; he was a full head taller than his partner. He wondered if he should acknowledge that she had been right, that because they did what he’d suggested, they were screwed. He just couldn’t. It lodged in his throat.

“Okay, so according to Book,” he said instead. “He came here looking for Isabel to convince her to turn herself in. He found her here with the body. She told him that Marcus Raine had killed Camilla, that she’d just seen him.”

“How’d Book get in?”

“He said the street door was ajar. He walked right in, came up the stairs.”

Jez took a few thoughtful chews, pulled a pen from her pocket and started that tapping thing she did. “But Book didn’t pass Raine on the way out,” she said, tap, tap, tapping the pen on her thigh. “And the only other exits-on the roof and in the back-are fire doors that would have set off alarms.”

Grady started picking at the scab on his knuckles. It wasn’t quite ready to be removed, stung a bit; a little drop of blood sprang from the wound. “So he heard Book on the stairs and hid until he’d passed.”

“Or Raine was never here.” Jez hadn’t looked at him, but she fished a small packet of tissues from her other pocket and held it out to him.

He took one and dabbed gingerly at his hand. The pattern of blood on the tissue brought to his mind blooming poppies in driven snow. “I don’t see Isabel Raine as a killer.”

Jez lifted and dropped her shoulders quickly, started tapping again. “Anyone can become a killer if the motivations are there.”

Grady knew her theory on this, but he disagreed. He thought it required a special kind of ego-sickness to take a life, a core belief that your needs, your survival took precedence over all others. Unless it was a question of self-defense or to protect another, he believed you had to be at least a borderline sociopath to kill another person. Even if someone is overcome with rage, it takes amazing arrogance to kill. He didn’t see that in Isabel. He saw arrogance, but not that particular brand.

“Camilla Novak was the last link to the original crime,” Jez said. “Without her we don’t have any live leads. Only the cold-case file. Someone knew that.”

“There might be something in her apartment,” said Grady. “We don’t know.”

“We won’t find anything there,” she said quickly. He knew she was thinking of the Raines’ apartment and the office where every scrap of important paper and data had been removed. “If there was anything, one of the Raines took it.”

“One of the Raines? You really think she could be a part of this.”

Jez snapped the gum in her mouth, looked up and down the hallway. “Where would Marcus Raine hide? If he heard Book coming?”

Grady glanced around. A typical downtown building with old tile floors and high ceilings, gray walls, hard stone stairs. “He could have gone up a flight,” he said. “Come back down when Book entered the apartment.”

Jez tilted her head to the side, walked over to the banister and gazed up the stairwell. She gave a reluctant nod.

“After Book came inside, Isabel Raine left,” Grady said, “claiming she’d find her husband and make things right for her sister’s family.”

“And he just let her go?”

“What was he going to do? Physically restrain her?”

“It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. She’d look less guilty if she stuck around. Did she take anything with her?”

“Erik Book says no.” Grady was skeptical. He felt that Book was holding back, wanting to protect his sister-in-law-or maybe his own interests. At the moment, people who looked like victims yesterday weren’t looking as innocent today.

“But where’s Novak’s purse? Coat’s on the couch, like she was getting ready to leave,” Jez asked.

Grady shook his head slowly. “No purse, no cell phone, no keys, no wallet in the residence.”

“Someone took her bag.”

“Seems so,” he said. “Did you see the stamp on her hand?”

“She’s a hot, single woman living in New York City. Of course she has a club stamp on her hand.”

“Yeah, but the club’s in Queens.”

Jez wrinkled her nose. “Queens? That’s weird. No self-respecting Manhattanite goes to Queens to party.”

More laughter wafted out the apartment door, and Grady felt a fresh wave of annoyance and frustration. He tried to tamp it down, didn’t want to lose his temper. He was already getting a reputation.

“I really don’t like that woman,” Grady said.

“You don’t like anyone,” Jez replied with a patient smile.

“I like you.”

“I guess that makes me one of the lucky few who meets with your approval. Do you ever think you might be a little too judgmental?”

“I’m a cop.”

“My point exactly. You’re supposed to have an investigative mind, not a mind like a steel trap.”

“More insults from my partner.”

She pulled a face of mock sympathy. “Think of it as tough love.”

He gave a little chuckle, thought about making a comment about his ex, but Jez’s earlier admonitions still rang in his head.

“Women don’t usually cut each other’s throats,” he said after a beat. “That’s an intimate act. And one that takes tremendous strength. You need to immobilize the person with one arm, draw the knife across her throat with the other.” He mimed the action.

“Or it’s an act of trust,” Jez said. She leaned in quickly, close to him, brought the tip of her index finger to his throat and drew it quickly across. She moved back to the wall. “You wouldn’t let a stranger near enough to cut your throat, unless you were overpowered. Camilla Novak let her killer in, let him get very close to her.”

He remembered something Isabel Raine had told him at the hospital. “Isabel Raine said that her husband had had an affair. She said it was a couple of years ago, that she never knew with whom.”

“Maybe it was Camilla Novak.”

“Which gives both husband and wife possible motive here.”

“And provides another connection to the missing Marcus Raine.”

“So, what now? Our best leads missing and dead.”

“We need to find out where all that money went. We follow it. It’s easy enough for people to disappear, but money always leaves a trail.”

“Already on it,” Jez said. “Warrant issued, records subpoenaed. We should have everything first thing tomorrow.”

“And what about cell phone records, for both of them?”

Jez rolled her eyes at him. “What am I, a rookie? And by the way, you could do some of this stuff every once in while, instead of walking around looking tortured and complaining that you can’t think, trying to feel the scene.” She waggled her fingers at him. “You’re like a character cop, an idea of yourself.”