Sergeant Chase Adams slid into her BMW and waited for FBI Agent Jeremy Stitts to get into the passenger seat before she started it up.
“Nice ride,” Agent Stitts commented as he lowered himself into the creme-colored seat.
“Thank you,” Chase said as she reversed out of the precinct parking lot, wondering if she was going to have to explain, as she had to Drake long ago, that she had bought the car from Internet poker earnings.
And how will that go over with the feds, Chase? Hmm?
But Agent Stitts’s next question made it clear that he wasn’t pre-occupied with the vehicle.
“Melissa Green or Tanya Farthing first?”
Problem was, Chase didn’t know how to answer that either. With the suicide killer, she hadn’t had to speak to the victims’ families; either they couldn’t be located or simply didn’t care, or in the case of Eddie Larringer, Drake had done the honors. But she vividly recalled speaking to Clarissa Smith, and was keenly aware of how awkward and terrible an experience that had been.
I should speak to her, reach out, she thought suddenly.
A sense of déjà vu overcame her then, as she realized that she had had this thought before. Only it had been in reference to Drake and not Clarissa Smith.
It’s happening again. I’m getting obsessed with the job, forgetting the human element.
“Sergeant Adams?”
Chase shook her head and looked over at Agent Stitts who was staring back at her, a concerned look on his face. He was handsome, she realized, if a little clean cut for her tastes.
“Sorry, it’s just that the last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind.”
Stitts nodded.
“I’ve read your file. A transplant from Seattle Narc to NYPD Detective, then to first grade in record time. And now Sergeant. You’ve made quite the impression, it seems.”
Chase tilted her head to one side.
He’s read the file; that’s good.
Part of the reason why she had been so quick to get the FBI involved in this case, despite her previous unproductive interactions with them in Seattle, was to get noticed, to get on their radar.
And, to her surprise, Agent Stitts seemed not only to know what he was doing, but also seemed respectful. He didn’t strike her as the type to flash his badge like his pecker and scream FBI, I’m taking over this case!
Her thoughts turned to Sergeant Rhodes and how cocky the bald bastard had been before he had gotten in her way.
“Either that or it’s just good timing; rotten eggs above me, if you catch my drift.”
Agent Stitts grunted and he turned his attention to the snow that the windshield wipers worked fruitlessly to wick away.
“Maybe,” he said absently.
They drove in silence for the next few minutes.
“Green,” Chase said at last. “Let’s go see Melissa Green first. See if we can figure out how and why the killer targeted her, if she had any enemies, and if she knew Tanya Farthing.”
Agent Stitts nodded.
“Sounds good. You want me to lead the discussion or do you want to?”
Chase pressed her lips together. Although she didn’t share Drake’s extreme revulsion at the idea of breaking terrible news to loved ones, she wasn’t a fan of doing it either. But it was her case, she was the Sergeant, and it was her city, dammit.
“I’ll do it,” she said without hesitation. “I’ll speak to the family.”
The address listed in Melissa’s file—which they had procured from a shoplifting arrest a few years back—was a trailer park at the eastern border of the city. They gained entry to the compound by calling ahead, and the manager, a portly man named Hector, directed them to a trailer toward the back of the compound.
The trailer itself was old, the corners that rested on cinderblocks starting to rot. Chase noticed that the blinds of the other trailers surrounding Melissa’s were open just a little, and the suspicious eyes that peered out were trained on her. For once, she wished that she hadn’t insisted on driving. She had no idea what Agent Stitts drove, but guessed that it had to be less… expensive… than her BMW.
“Ready?” she asked.
Agent Stitts nodded and Chase opened the door and stepped into the cold.
The screen door to the trailer was torn, and Chase put her fist through the hole to knock on the wood behind it.
“Comin’,” a husky voice called from within.
Chase glanced furtively at Stitts and was about to say something when then the door suddenly opened. A woman in her mid-forties sporting a long t-shirt that came to her knees, stood in the doorway. She stared at them with deeply sunken eyes.
“Yeah? Who are you? What do you want?” she snapped. Her eyes flicked to the BMW behind Chase. “You cops or something? Cuz he ain’t here, if that’s who yer looking for.”
He? Who’s he?
“No, ma’am. I’m here with some very upsetting news. May we come in?”
The woman observed Chase for a good minute, taking several hauls off a hand rolled cigarette during this time. Eventually her eyes narrowed and she repeated her initial query, “You cops or something?”
Chase nodded.
“My name is Sergeant Adams and this here is FBI Agent Stitts. Are you related to Melissa Green?”
The woman put the cigarette between her thin lips and crossed her arms across her chest.
“I don’t got nothing to say to cops. If Melissa got herself in trouble again, then that’s her problem. I ain’t paying for no bail. I told her that I wasn’t gonna bail her out no more. Didn’t do her no good last time, and it won’t do her no good this time.”
“Ma’am, it’s not—”
A toddler wearing only a sagging diaper suddenly appeared beside the woman, and she ushered him away.
“What’s this about, then?”
Chase sighed, a cloud of fog forming in front of her face.
“Please, can we come in?”
“Nuh-uh, not ‘til you tell me what this’s about.”
A quick glance at Stitts, who raised an eyebrow, and Chase just came out with it.
“I’m very sorry to tell you this, but Melissa’s dead,” she said flatly.