15

“Hi, honey, I’m home. How was your day?” Reese called, waking her. Lounging on the sofa with her clothes sweaty and wrinkled, Lauren watched Watson launch himself at Reese the moment he walked through the door.

The little dog was so excited, he knocked Reese’s baseball cap off. Knowing Watson wouldn’t be content unless he received maximum attention, Reese scooped him up and carried him into the living room. “I see you had another productive day.”

“Sorry there’s no dinner on the table tonight. I got a little busy with this whole letting myself heal thing.”

“No worries. I brought you a present, though. To get the little gray cells working again.” He plopped a manila folder in danger of bursting onto her coffee table. “Here’s all the copies of reports that matter in your case right now. I figure you don’t need to see every random piece of paper in the file.”

“But I will.” She bent forward, fanning the paperwork in front of her.

“I know, but this is a start. Nobody knows what happened to you better than you.” He put Watson down and sat next to Lauren, pointing out various documents. “They did a camera canvass. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where all the city cameras are located because the administration sends an updated list to the districts and squads every month.”

He pulled an aerial photo from the stack, probably taken from the sheriff department’s helicopter, which showed headquarters bounded on the east by Franklin Street, on the north by Church Street, and on the west by a tiny building belonging to the Diocese of Buffalo. It also showed the commercial parking lot behind headquarters and the entrance to the Skyway bridge. Reese tapped a spot behind St. Joseph Cathedral, the seat of the Diocese in Buffalo and Police Headquarters’ majestic neighbor immediately to the south on Franklin Street.

“We think whoever did this probably slipped out the Church Street side, cut through the empty parking lot, and had his car parked here under the entrance to the Skyway.” The spot he showed her was considered a plum parking spot for headquarters. Seven or eight vehicles could squeeze under that no-man’s land beneath the elevated portion of Route 5 that ran from the Pennsylvania state line right into downtown. Neither a personal vehicle nor a cop car would stand out; either could be found wedged under the concrete overpass at any given time. “From there he could have cut down any of these little side streets, hopped on South Park Avenue here, or jumped on the thruway here.”

“No cameras in the parking lot?” she asked hopefully.

“Nope. I guess having a commercial lot directly next to police headquarters would cut down on people breaking into cars. Besides, it’s entirely sold out to monthly parking permit holders and locked on Fridays by six. Which means you can’t get in, but you can still get out if you parked earlier in the day. It’s only open on the weekends if there’s an event at the arena, like a Sabres game or a concert, which there wasn’t. We checked all the permit holders, and none of them were cheap-ass cops.”

“Which doesn’t mean a cop’s girlfriend or brother-in-law doesn’t have a permit there.”

“It’s a possibility, for sure. We’re not ruling it out. Whether he parked in the lot or under the Skyway, he made sure to avoid every camera.”

She let that sink in for a moment. “Whoever it was did his homework.”

“Looks like it. Maybe he even saw me turn the office light out.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She hadn’t been sitting in the dark very long before she heard the door open.

“He could have seen it from the street outside, or from the inside.”

“Which would mean he would have been watching our window from the other side of the building across the courtyard,” she pointed out. “That would explain how he showed up so quickly after you left.”

The courtyard was actually the roof of the basement, surrounded on four sides by the walls that made up headquarters. If someone wanted to, they could crawl out a first-floor window and walk around the debris and weed-filled area; Lauren had seen maintenance do that on occasion. For a while, when she first got to Cold Case and found herself staring out into that depressing void, she had the urge to throw sunflower seeds out her window, to see if they’d grow. She never did it, but she kept tabs on a small tree in the west corner that was now a good three feet high.

“He could have been waiting on any of the floors if he was already in the building. In one of the empty offices.” With the impending move, the powers that be had already packed away a lot of the administrative offices and left them vacant. Up to half the building was probably unused at this point.

“He sees the light go off, swipes in to try to get into the file room, can’t, and heads into Cold Case,” Reese summarized.

“Where he sees me typing in the dark and tries to kill me,” Lauren finished up. “And you have no leads.”

“Ah, ah, ah, my doubting friend.” Reese waved a yellow piece of paper with his telltale scribble on it in front of her face. “I got a phone call an hour ago from Carl Church. If you’re feeling up to it, he’d like to meet with you, me, Joy, and Ben tomorrow. He thinks he may have something.”

“Carl Church, the Erie County District Attorney who hates my guts, may have a lead in my stabbing?”

“I haven’t heard anyone say ‘hates my guts’ since third grade,” Reese said. “And he only dislikes you because you beat him in the Katherine Vine murder trial and got an acquittal.”

“Which I shouldn’t have done.”

“Take off your hair shirt for a second and focus.”

“Tomorrow is the day before Thanksgiving. Erin and my parents are coming in. Lindsey will be here first thing Thursday morning—”

Annoyed, Reese cut her off. “He says he may have information regarding your case. Do you think you’ll be able to put the bon bons down, turn off The View, and come and hear what the man has to say tomorrow at eleven?”

It would mean she’d have to miss physical therapy. “Yes, sir. I’d love to hear what Mr. Church has to say.”

“Good. And seriously: what’s for dinner?”