Castillo Linda - Outsider

I address Winslow. “Stay put.” Then I look at Gina. “Keep an eye on him, will you?”

She gives me a mock salute.

I cross to Glock, who’s looking around the truck a short distance away. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I tell him.

“I get that a lot.” He punctuates the statement with a grin.

I tell him as much as I can about Gina. “She’s a cop. Columbus Division of Police. Tomasetti is involved. I can’t get into the details.”

“Okay.” His eyes narrow, but he nods. “Everything going to be okay, Chief?”

I think about the question a moment before answering. “I have no idea.”

CHAPTER 13

It wasn’t yet eight A.M. and for the first time in months Damon Bertrand sat down for breakfast with his wife and their two adult children. By all rights, the “kids” should have started their careers and been living on their own by now. His son graduated from Ohio State a year ago, but had yet to land a job with which he could support himself. His daughter would graduate in the fall and spent more time partying on High Street than studying. When he was his son’s age, Damon had been working patrol on the graveyard shift, was married, and had a kid on the way. Not for the first time he wondered where he and Doreen had gone wrong.

Usually by this time of day, he’d already swung by the diner for coffee and landed at his desk at the Division of Police building downtown. This morning, due to the inclement weather, he’d decided to wait until the plows cleared the streets.

In spite of his children’s lack of ambition, he generally enjoyed spending time with his family. This morning, he was distracted. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t relax. The situation with Colorosa had eaten at him through the night and he’d spent most of the last eight hours either tossing and turning or in the guestroom channel surfing and trying to come up with a plan.

He was two years away from retirement. He’d reached a point in his life where he had a lot to lose. The last thing he needed was some turncoat cop destroying everything he’d ever worked for. Things like the pension that would see him and Doreen through their golden years. The love and respect of his family. That nice little condo they’d just bought down in Florida. His future. Maybe even his freedom. He would not let Colorosa or anyone else screw things up for him.

Damon had done what he could. He’d planted the seeds, gotten his hands as dirty as he dared. Still, he didn’t know how this was going to play out. If he’d been smarter, he would have cut ties with Colorosa a long time ago. He would have cut her off. Gotten her fired. Now, all he wanted was for her to be gone.

The one thing life had taught him was that while you couldn’t undo mistakes that had already been made, if you had the right tools, you could change history—and that was exactly what he’d done. Would it be enough?

At nine A.M. he left his wife in the kitchen and went to his small office off the foyer. He logged in to the Division of Police computer system and checked email. He brooded. He stewed. Most of all, he worried. He was in the process of finishing up a report for an upcoming court appearance when the call he’d been waiting for came in on his cell.

“You find her?” he asked without preamble.

“No, but I got a lead,” Ken Mercer said.

Rising from his desk chair, Bertrand crossed to the French doors that separated his office from the foyer and closed them. “For God’s sake, it had better be good,” he said, settling back behind his desk.

“There was a cop she used to be tight with, back when she was a rookie. They lived together for a while. You remember a young cop by the name of Kate Burkholder?”

“Vaguely. She was religious or something.”

“Yeah, the original odd couple, right? Burkholder left the department ten years ago. I started digging around and found out she took a job as chief in a small town about an hour and a half east of here.”

Bertrand thought of the last ping from Colorosa’s phone. At the time they hadn’t been able to figure out where she’d been headed. He sat up straighter. “A fucking chief of police?”

“I pulled up what I could find on Burkholder. She’s had a couple of high-profile cases in the last few years. That’s how I found her. She’s in Painters Mill, Damon. Holmes County.”

“I’ve been through there. A lot of Amish out that way.” He sighed unhappily. “That would explain that last ping on Colorosa’s cell.”

“Burkholder’s from that area.”

“What else do you know about her?”

Papers crinkled on the other end of the line. “It’s a small department. Podunk town. From what I can tell she’s kept her nose clean.”

“If she hung out with Colorosa for any length of time, she’s probably not that clean.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin, thinking. “Did Burkholder leave the department on good terms? Is there anything on her record we can use against her if we need some leverage?”

“I checked. Her record’s good.”

“Do you think Colorosa’s in Painters Mill?”

“I think it’s the best lead we’ve got.”

Bertrand let the news settle. A dozen scenarios played in his head. None of them ended well.

“This isn’t exactly good news,” he said.

“We’re going to have to deal with it. It’s all we’ve got.”

“We need to find out if she’s there.”

The two men went silent, the phone line whispering dark possibilities. “What kind of police chief takes in a fugitive and doesn’t notify the appropriate law enforcement agency?” Bertrand said.

“Good question.”

“That fucking Colorosa is spilling her guts.”

“The big question is whether Burkholder is listening.”

The loose ends that had tormented Bertrand most of the night unraveled a little more, sharp strands settling around his neck like a garrote. He looked around, felt the walls of his office closing in. “I never trusted that bitch. She wasn’t one of us. We never should have brought her in.”

“Hindsight,” Mercer mutters.

“A fucking chief of police.” Leaning forward, feeling as if he needed air and light, Bertrand opened the blinds, looked out at the snow beyond. “This is a worst-case scenario.”

“Look, if there’s a silver lining to any of this, it’s that Painters Mill isn’t exactly on the map. Small town usually means small-town mentality. I say we get a warrant and go pick her up. We’ve got enough dirt on her to put her away for a long time.”

Bertrand didn’t think it was going to be that simple. What had Colorosa told Burkholder? Who else had she talked to? What had she said? Had she named names?

Mercer wasn’t finished. “Look, Colorosa might be talking to some small-town police chief, but she has zero credibility, especially now that she’s been implicated in the murder of Eddie Cysco.”

Bertrand closed his eyes, wishing he’d handled the situation differently. Wishing he’d tied off that loose end the moment it frayed. “I’ll take care of the warrant.”

The beat of silence that followed told a dark and eloquent story. One he’d heard a hundred times in the last twenty years. One he didn’t want to partake in again. This time, he didn’t have a choice.

“Roads are open,” Mercer said. “For now. But we got weather on the way, buddy.”

“In that case, we’d better move,” Bertrand said. “I’ll pick you up downtown as soon as we can get out. Pack an overnight bag.”

CHAPTER 14

I graduated from the police academy and became a police officer when I was twenty-one years old. I’d been living in Columbus for three years, earned my GED, a criminal justice degree from the community college—and a whole new sense of my non-Amish self. For the first time in my life, I had accomplished something. I was going to actually be the person I wanted to be, and I charged into my new life with the gusto of a kid plunging off the high dive and wanting to do it again. I was free and I had been transformed. No longer was I the awkward and self-conscious Katie Burkholder. I had become Kate Burkholder, a woman with an important job and an exciting future.