When they got back to Police Plaza, Houser had to sign Travis in. Even such a small act felt weird, a little dispiriting: he’d been coming to the building for eleven years, ever since rejoining the NYPD as part of the Missing Persons Squad, and he’d never had to stop at the front desk. Now he was just another member of the public. Some freelance work and a couple of database logins couldn’t disguise that.
They took the elevator up to where the Cold Case Squad was based. It was a small team and Travis knew only one of its members. Houser introduced him to the rest. When she was done, she said, ‘Time to go and meet the captain.’
They headed back to the elevators.
‘Why’s the captain on a different floor?’ Travis asked.
‘She’s been in meetings all morning. She only joined a month ago, so she’s playing catch-up. She’s from Queens but she was a lieutenant over in Newark.’
Houser hit the button for the tenth floor.
‘A female captain and now a female lieutenant,’ Travis said, after the doors had slid closed. ‘This is progress. No wonder they got rid of a dinosaur like me.’
‘They shouldn’t have gotten rid of you and you’re no dinosaur,’ Houser said, shoving his shoulder gently with hers. ‘You’re more like a Neanderthal.’
Travis was laughing as the doors pinged open. They headed down to an office on the right, all glass with metal blinds. Inside were two women of about the same age: one he recognized, the other he didn’t.
‘You know the CoD?’
‘I met her once in an elevator,’ Travis said, looking through the glass at Chief of Detectives McKenzie. She was at her desk, writing something. On a chair to the side of her was Houser’s captain, talking to McKenzie but with her gaze already fixed on Travis. Even from where he was, Travis could see the fiery colour of her red hair and how blue her eyes were: they were beautiful, like a summer sky, but they were at odds with the rest of her face.
She looked fierce.
‘You said you met the chief once in an elevator?’ Houser knocked on the office door, then wriggled her eyebrows comically. ‘Travis, you sly dog.’
‘Come in, Amy,’ McKenzie said, before Travis could respond to the joke.
Houser and Travis entered, Houser closing the door behind her. She introduced Travis to McKenzie, then to Captain Walker.
Walker didn’t offer Travis her first name.
‘Please,’ McKenzie said, ‘sit down.’
Travis grabbed a chair next to Houser.
‘I think we’ve met before, Frank,’ McKenzie said. He remembered again the stories about her, the nickname she had among some of the male cops – The Dyke – and particularly the observation that she never smiled, or perhaps was physically incapable of it. ‘A few days before you retired.’
Travis nodded. ‘I remember, Chief.’
‘It was early in the morning.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Did you manage to close the case you were working?’
Travis looked between McKenzie and Walker, and then, very briefly, at Houser. They all knew the answer, because they would already have been through his file, his history, the cases he’d worked and the ones he’d failed to see through. That meant they were just looking for the right response.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the day I left the force, I had to go to the parents of the woman I was trying to find and admit that I hadn’t been able to locate her.’
This wasn’t the time for reputation-saving bullshit. It was a test.
McKenzie just nodded. ‘Captain Walker.’
Walker came forward in her seat. ‘I know you were here a long time, Frank, but I appreciate you coming in like this. I’ve only been here four weeks so I’m still finding my feet, still getting to know everybody. I don’t know you, other than what I’ve read on paper, and I’ll be totally honest, at Newark PD, I wasn’t a particular fan of outsourcing investigations, even to former cops with experience like you.’ Her face barely moved as she spoke, like her skin had been starched, and Travis thought he could hear the faint trace of an accent. Not New York, even though Houser had said she was from here; not Jersey either, where she’d worked before this. It was an accent from somewhere further afield – but it was so soft he couldn’t be certain where. She went on: ‘All that said, I hear you were an excellent cop, I like your honesty, and Lieutenant Houser says she trusts you, so for now that’s enough. We’ve been given a federal grant to pursue cold cases that stand a good chance of being cleared, which is obviously positive news, but we’ve also got over twelve thousand unsolved murders in the cabinets downstairs, going all the way back to the mid-eighties, which is not so great. We need you to start closing some.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Walker, like McKenzie, just nodded, and then McKenzie went over the terms of the work he was about to agree to, including how much Travis would be paid. It didn’t amount to much, but that was okay with Travis. The money wasn’t the real reason he was here.
‘Okay, thanks for coming in, Frank,’ McKenzie said, putting an end to the meeting. She got up and shook his hand, Walker opened the door for him and Houser, and before he knew it the two of them were back in the elevator.
‘Well, she seems fun,’ Travis said, once the doors had closed.
Houser smiled. ‘Which one?’
‘Walker.’
‘They’re both serious women.’
‘No shit.’
‘You’ve still got it, though, Trav.’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know that thing they say about McKenzie? Well, one of the things they say about McKenzie, that she’s physically incapable of smiling?’ Houser shrugged. ‘Well, she smiled at you. I think she likes you.’
He laughed. ‘Bullshit.’
‘I’m serious. Would you ever date a cop?’
The doors of the elevator sprang open.
‘She’s ten years younger than me.’
‘So?’
‘And she’s the chief of detectives.’
‘So?’
He thought of McKenzie and remembered the way she’d smiled at him in the elevator that morning, the week before he’d retired, how it had suited her, and how she’d made clear that she didn’t agree with him being forced out. She was attractive, smart and, despite his protestations, he had to admit there was something about her that he liked.
‘I thought she was gay, anyway.’
‘That’s the assumption.’
‘So she’s not?’
‘I don’t know,’ Houser said. ‘No one’s ever been brave enough to ask.’
They arrived back at the Cold Case Squad cubicles. Houser took Travis to the filing cabinets and started digging through them.
‘What about Walker?’ Travis asked.
‘What – you prefer her?’
‘No, I mean, where’s she from?’
‘She told you. She came from Newark PD.’
‘No, where’s she from? She’s got an accent.’
‘Oh.’ Houser pulled some files out of the drawers. ‘I don’t know. I think someone said she moved out from England back in the eighties.’