Sunday, 13 December 2015
6:13 P.M.
The snowstorm had hit earlier than predicted, drowning New York State under inches of fresh powder from above as the freezing wind raged unchecked below. Before the car’s heater had even warmed up, they had been diverted off the New England Thruway and, judging by the wreckage half a mile ahead, away from the blizzard’s first victims of the night. Curtis had followed the flashing orange instructions bestowed by a hastily erected information sign and joined the procession of slow-moving vehicles before eventually picking up Route 1.
Baxter could feel herself dozing off in the back of the car. Outside the window, the world was nothing but static on a screen. Inside, the heater was billowing leather-scented hot air from the sleepily lit dashboard. The sound of the tires cutting a path through the snow was as relaxing as listening to a gentle stream, while the police scanner chatted away idly, the assorted voices discussing car accidents, barroom brawls, and burglaries.
The day had taken its toll on her; it had on everybody involved. At the scene, she had allowed professional bravado to take over, the same world-weary attitude that had seen her through some of the toughest jobs of her career. But now, sat in the back of the dark car, all she could see was that basement, the bodies slumped forward: bound and blind, surrendered, an entire family massacred.
Although she knew it was completely unreasonable, she felt bitter toward Thomas, toward Tia, toward the handful of friends with whom she still occasionally kept in contact. What depths of surreal horror had their days plunged to? Did they get rained on heading into work? Perhaps the wrong kind of milk in their Starbucks coffee? Had a colleague made a snide remark?
None of them understood what it was like to be a homicide detective. Not one of them could even comprehend the things that she was expected to see, to remember.
None of them was strong enough.
It was not uncommon to feel resentment toward people with simpler, more mundane lives. Without doubt it was the reason that so many of her colleagues were in relationships with other people on the force. There were excuses, of course—the shifts, working in such close proximity, the preordained common interests—but Baxter suspected that it went deeper than that. As unpleasant as it was to admit, in the end everyone and everything outside of the job just started to feel a little . . . trivial.
“OK with you, Baxter?” Rouche turned around to look at her.
She hadn’t even realized anyone had spoken: “Huh?”
“Weather’s getting worse,” Rouche repeated. “We were saying we might stop off somewhere and get a bite to eat.”
Baxter shrugged.
“Whatevs,” he vocalized for Curtis’s sake.
Baxter glanced back out the window. An ice-glossed sign declared that they were now entering Mamaroneck, wherever that was, while snow fell more heavily than she had ever seen. Barely able to make out the buildings lining the main street, Rouche and Curtis squinted through the storm as they searched for somewhere to stop.
“Could you chuck me my jacket, please?” asked Rouche, apparently optimistic that they were going to find somewhere.
Baxter grabbed the coat from the seat next to her. As Rouche thanked her and pulled it through the gap between the two front seats, she saw something drop out of one of the pockets and land by her feet. She reached around in the footwell until she found the scrunched-up sheet of paper. She was about to hand it back to him when she noticed Glenn Arnolds’s name printed at the top of it.
With her dark eyes watching the back of Rouche’s head, she carefully unfolded it.
“What’s that on the left?” asked Curtis, pointing to where several vehicles had pulled off the main road.
“‘Diner and Pizza’!” said Rouche excitedly. “That all right with everyone?”
“Sounds good,” answered Baxter distractedly as she attempted to read the crumpled sheet by the intermittent light of passing buildings, shards of orange fleetingly highlighting sections of the page.
She was able to ascertain that it was a forensic blood report. Although the list of medications and chemicals meant nothing, the pathologist had clearly circled certain items that must be significant in some way.
Why would Rouche have kept this from her? She was considering whether to call him out on it there and then when he turned around to smile at her:
“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a beer.”
She smiled back, screwing the paper into a ball on her lap as Curtis followed the vehicle in front into the overflowing car park. After some convincing by Rouche, she reluctantly abandoned the car on a verge. Baxter donned her woolly hat and gloves. Rouche left his ID badge in the windscreen, which he considered more than ample explanation for mowing over whatever flower bed or lawn lay concealed beneath the snow.
They stepped out onto the churned-up surface of the car park, bracing themselves against the cold as they approached the diner. A queue of at least two dozen people snaked out from the main doors, sheltering beside the glass windows that teased them with warmth, conversation, and hot food, only hardening their resolve to eventually get inside. While Rouche and Curtis went to claim their spot at the back of the queue, Baxter excused herself to make a phone call.
She walked out of earshot, to the main street, where a tiny church posed like a picture from a Christmas card, only ruined by the Dunkin’ Donuts opposite. She called Edmunds’s number. After a few rings it went to voicemail.
“Need to talk. Call me,” was her abrupt message.
Rather than join her colleagues, who had not moved an inch since she’d left them, she took a seat on a wall and waited, hoping that he might call back at any moment.
She really needed to speak to him.
A family at the front of the line were invited inside, allowing Curtis and Rouche to take two satisfying paces closer to the entrance. They watched Baxter’s silhouette across the street, the glow from the screen of her phone lighting up her face.
“I really thought we were getting somewhere,” said Curtis sadly. “And now this: another dead end.”
Rouche could tell that she was thinking about Glenn Arnolds, about the innocent man she had been forced to kill. In truth, he was amazed that she was still operational considering how devastated she had been just twenty-four hours earlier. Their late-night conversation following the prison riot had given him an insight into her powerful political family. Ever since, Lennox’s favoritism, protectiveness, and willingness to make exceptions for Curtis had seemed downright blatant.
It struck him as odd that Curtis could not see that her determination to succeed in her chosen career, her track record for high-profile cases, and her swift promotion up the ranks that she flaunted to spite her family was actually because of them and who she was. Anyone else would have been taken off the case and subjected to weeks of evaluations and assessments, but because Curtis wanted to redeem herself, here she was.
“We are getting somewhere,” said Rouche with a reassuring smile. “We weren’t supposed to find the Banthams, not yet. All the other bodies have been paraded in front of us, but these . . . no theater, no audience. These were hidden away. And that means we’re on the right track. A dead Puppet; maybe Bantham was being coerced into murder . . . maybe he resisted.”
Curtis nodded before they shuffled a few feet farther along in the queue:
“I just wish we could have saved them,” she said.
As Rouche had said at the time, Arnolds had been their first and possibly only living suspect. He alone could have given them the information that they so desperately needed, and Curtis had lost them that advantage. He could tell from the look on her face that she was wondering whether they might have been able to reach the Bantham family in time had she chosen differently.
“We need to work as a team,” said Rouche.
Curtis followed his gaze back to Baxter, who looked to have thrown her phone over a locked fence in a temper and was struggling to retrieve it.
They both smiled.
“I’ve got orders,” she told him.
“Stupid orders.”
Curtis shrugged.
“It’s not practical to cut Baxter out of the investigation. Look what happened today,” said Rouche.
“Why don’t we look at today?” Curtis snapped back. “She knew to focus on the psychiatrist—how? It didn’t come from us. Perhaps she’s keeping things to herself as well. Did you ever think about that?”
Rouche sighed and regarded her for a moment:
“And what happens the day Lennox tells you to cut me out?”
Curtis looked a little uneasy. She hesitated: “I cut you out.”
She held his gaze and nodded as if unsure of herself yet refusing to apologize or back down.
“Simple as that?” asked Rouche.
“Simple as that.”
“I’m going to make this easy for you,” Rouche told her. “I’ll tell her about the meds. No one’s ordered me not to, and I’d ignore them if they had.”
“If you do, I will report it back to Lennox. I will document that you disregarded my express wishes. And she will have you removed from the case.”
Curtis couldn’t even meet his eye now. She turned around to find that another group had been allowed in and moved forward. They were almost at the entrance. After a few moments, she looked back at him.
“And now I feel bad,” she told him. “The chili cheese fries are on me.”
Rouche still looked a little hurt.
Curtis sighed: “And a milkshake.”
The good news was that Baxter had been reunited with her phone, courtesy of every swear word in her arsenal and a big stick. The bad news was that Edmunds still had not called back. She now couldn’t stop shivering, and the snow caking her boots had soaked through to her socks. She phoned his number again and waited for it to go to voicemail:
“It’s me. Bad day. Looks like you were right about the psychiatrist, but . . . it’s complicated. I’ll tell you about it later. There’s something else too: the CIA agent, Damien Rouche, I need you to look into him for me. And before you start, no. I’m not just being paranoid, and I know not everybody in the world’s out to get me, but I found something, and I need you to trust me on this. Just . . . just see what you can find out, OK? OK. Bye.”
“Chili cheese fries . . .” started Rouche, standing just a couple of meters away.
Baxter shrieked and slipped, landing heavily on the ground.
Rouche went to help her up.
“I’m fine,” she snapped as she got back to her feet, holding her painful rear end.
“I just wanted to let you know that our table’s ready and the chili cheese fries are on Curtis.”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
She composed herself as she watched him cross the street back toward the diner. How much had he heard? She supposed it didn’t matter.
He was hiding things from her.
And one way or another, she was going to find out why.