Alafair Burke - Angel's Tip

“Sorry, but if we’re going to be partners, you need to know now I like dealing with things head-on. If I’m out of line, bringing up something I shouldn’t, just tell me. I’ll back off. But drowning me out with the radio?”

“Don’t read into it. It’s just, this is my joint, y’know?” Rogan moved his head back and forth with the beat.

“Yeah, I know. And I also know there’s some story behind how you and I became partners. And if everyone else in the house knows about it, I thought maybe I should, too.”

“See? This right here? That’s what the issue was.” Rogan turned the radio off.

“What do you mean, ‘This right here’?”

“This whole dialogue.” Rogan moved his right hand back and forth between them. “It’s like fighting with your girl or something. Like, ‘C’mon baby, we just need to talk.’”

“Uh, except I’m not your girl, and I didn’t call you ‘baby.’”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just, partners need to get each other, you know? And, well, some of the guys weren’t so sure you’d ever be able to get them, and vice versa.”

“Because of the whole not-having-boy-parts thing? Because that’s not really something I can get past.”

“Honestly? Yeah, that’s probably part of it. But it’s got a lot more to do with how you got into the unit. It doesn’t help that McIlroy brought you over-my moms taught me not to talk smack about the dead, but no one liked that guy. He was a show-off. He had a picture of him and Rudy and Bill Bratton on his desk. Who does that? And then that First Date case exploded all over the place, and suddenly it’s your face in all the papers instead of his. Then your cute little self makes second grade in record time, and you’re in the squad? You have to see that’s a hard pill to swallow. The guys in the squad are all asking who’s your rabbi.”

The old Tammany Hall phrase was now standard code for questioning a fellow officer’s connections. She had wondered how long it would take for another detective to call her out on the genesis of her new assignment. After four years on patrol, she had spent only one year as a detective before the First Date case had come along. In the aftermath, she found herself holding newfound leverage with the department brass. A gig in the homicide squad was unusual for her level of experience, but not prohibited, and Ellie had cashed in all her chips to get it. She supposed she was her own rabbi.

“Look, I know I got here faster than most, and I know I have to put in my dues, but I made sure to stay out of the papers on the First Date case.”

“That trip to Kansas wasn’t exactly secret.”

“That was on my own time. For my family. Anyone who would even begin to suggest that I get off talking to the press about my father has no idea what we’ve been through.”

For more than twenty-five years, the Wichita police had insisted that Jerry Hatcher killed himself. For more than a quarter of a century, Ellie’s mother had to live with the consequences of that decision: no insurance money, no pension, no answers. The trip to Wichita had offered a chance to prove that her father had not voluntarily widowed his wife and left his children fatherless. Of course she had to go. And when Dateline called her for an interview, she had to give it.

“I’m not saying any of this is fair,” Rogan said. “I’m just saying how it is. You worked with McIlroy. You’re in the news just like McIlroy. That means you’ve essentially inherited his shit. Plus you’re a woman, plus you’re all blond and pretty and wholesome looking, and people think you got a leg up from that.”

“And so how did that translate into me almost getting partnered with Winslow?”

Rogan paused before answering. “Because Lieutenant Eckels told everyone that’s what he was planning to do unless someone else volunteered. It was Eckels’s way of leading from the top down, making sure we all knew it was all right with him if we gave you the cold shoulder. You should’ve seen Winslow’s face. Ironically, I don’t think it had anything to do with you personally. That man just doesn’t want to be out in the street anymore.”

“So why aren’t I with Winslow? Why am I with you?”

Given the strings she’d pulled, she knew why Eckels never said good morning when he passed her on the way to the locker room. She got why he’d given her nothing but grunt work last week. She would even have understood if Eckels had partnered her up with a loser like Winslow. What she didn’t understand is why Rogan would have gone out on a limb for her. Cops who were skeptical of her, she could handle. Old news. She’d eventually win them over. A man who gave her a pass for no obvious reason was another problem altogether.

Rogan kept his eyes on the road.

“Because, you know, I’m not looking to get personal with anyone I work with.”

Rogan’s stoic expression changed to a stifled smile, then he broke out into a full laugh. “In your dreams, woman. I’m very much spoken for. Oh, my lord, look who thinks she’s all irresistible and shit.”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just-I didn’t know why-really, that is not what I meant.”

“That’s exactly what you meant. Stupid-ass Eckels goes and tells you I stepped up to the plate, and you assume the only reason a man would help you out is if he’s looking to hit that. Well, don’t think I didn’t get the same flack around the house. That, or they figured I was somehow sympatico with you because of the number of times I’ve heard bullshit behind my back. Affirmative-action hire. Diversity detective.”

“And that’s not it either?”

“Nope.”

“So this is just going to remain a lifelong mystery? D. B. Cooper, Jimmy Hoffa, and why J. J. Rogan rescued Ellie Hatcher?”

His smile faded as he turned onto First Avenue. “I trust my instincts about people. I thought Eckels sticking you with Winslow sucked, and I thought it was going to cost the squad a good cop. And let’s just say I haven’t always had the easiest time with partners myself.”

It was the closest she was going to get to an answer, at least for now. “So you saved me,” she said in a fairy-tale voice.

“If you want to think of it that way.”

“I do.”

“All right, then. Can I listen to my radio now?”

“You may.”

He turned up the volume and began moving with the beat again. “And I’m sorry to break this to you, Hatcher, but I really am spoken for. I was just telling my girl last night you and I were getting on good.”

Ellie looked out the window and bopped her head a little, too.

THE MANHATTAN OFFICE of the chief medical examiner was located on First Avenue and Thirtieth Street, just north of the Bellevue Hospital Center. As they rolled past the canopied glass entrance of the hospital’s new addition, they caught a glimpse of the original building’s historic facade, still standing behind the modern entrance.

Bellevue Hospital is the site of the nation’s first ambulance service and maternity ward and the oldest public hospital in the state. But outside of New York, it’s known for one thing and one thing only: its crazies. Ellie had lived in the city for ten years now, but it was still hard for her to hear the word Bellevue without envisioning a stringy-haired man in a straitjacket screaming like a hyena.

Rogan found a spot on the street in front of the ME’s office. When they stepped out of the car, the sun was peeking out through a break in the clouds above them, and the air was still.

They made their way through the building’s glass doors and up to the fourth floor. A clerk at the front window checked their shields, buzzed them through to the back, and pointed them in the direction of a stocky man standing at a nearby desk, dictating into a digital voice recorder. He had brown curly hair and a graying beard, and wore a white lab coat over khakis and blue sweater. He held up one finger while he completed his thought, then flipped a button to turn off the recorder.