29

“That went over like a fart in church,” Bates said as Lauren came out of the viewing room. She’d dug her fingernails into her palms watching the interview, leaving bloody little crescents. That last remark had made her want to punch through the glass to smash David’s smirking face in, wipe it clean for good.

Now that Violanti and David were gone, everyone had converged in the main Homicide office, and Lauren had to tamp down her fury.

“I tried to slow him down, but Linda from the front desk let him in the building, and he must have slipped into the Homicide wing when someone opened the door to leave. One minute, Linda called and said he was in the lobby, the next he’s here in the office and we all heard that crash in the room—” Marilyn apologized from her desk.

“I knocked a chair over,” Reese said. “I didn’t assault the little prick.”

“Once the attorney makes contact, it’s over. Not your fault,” Kencil assured Marilyn.

“The question is: How did Violanti get here so fast? How did he even know to come?” Reese was pacing back and forth, trying to burn off some of his anger.

“Because David Spencer was expecting us,” Lauren said.

“That’s bullshit,” Bates said he as flopped down at Vatasha Anthony’s desk. “More of your paranoid delusions.”

“Did he make a call after you knocked on his door?” she asked Reese. “Did he ask to call anyone before he got into your car? Did he talk to anyone on the way down?”

Reese swept past her. “No. But he did take a while to open up.”

Lauren controlled her urge to kick the trash can next to Marilyn’s desk. “He knew when you knocked on his door what was about to happen and called Violanti before he even left the house.”

“It’s pretty convenient how you fit your theory around the evidence,” Perez said, backing Bates up. “But it’s not supposed to work that way.”

“David didn’t ask for an attorney because he knew Violanti was on the way. He wanted to be on video. He wanted to piss one of us off,” Lauren countered.

“Bullshit,” Bates repeated, eyes locked on Lauren.

“Enough,” Kencil said, trying to take back control of the room. “We still have a missing girl out there. We need surveillance on Spencer; I want someone watching the place down in the old First Ward, and I want every camera checked between the two locations. Now.” Kencil pointed. “Perez, you take the Ward, and Bates, you follow Spencer. I don’t want Nolan or Riley near him.”

“And me?” Lauren asked.

“You and Nolan hit every conceivable place between his house, the office in the First Ward, and the Hot Spot for cameras. But concentrate around the bar. We might get lucky.”

“I’ll follow up with her family and friends,” Reese threw in, circling Garcia’s desk for the third time. “Maybe they know something we don’t. Crazy ex-boyfriend. Drug problems. Maybe a history of taking off for a few days.”

“Good. Good,” Kencil told him. “The Peace Bridge has already been notified if anyone suspicious tries to cross the border. It’s less than twenty-four hours since she disappeared. She could still be alive.”

“She could be doing the walk of shame right now from some guy’s apartment and all this was for nothing.” Bates pinched a wad of chew from its container and wedged it between his lower lip and gum.

“If it was your daughter, would you want us to take that chance?” Kencil asked. Bates replied by spitting a brown lump into a plastic cup he’d found on Vatasha’s desk. Kencil ignored Bates’s disgusting habit and stayed on track. “No. We’re going to run this into the ground until she’s located. If she comes home safe on her own, we still did our job. Now let’s go.” He clapped his hands together, putting any further argument to rest.

Manny Perez and Cam Bates left immediately, with Kencil on their heels. Reese was still amped up from the interview, walking around the Homicide office, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“You need to calm down,” Lauren told him. “You can’t let him get to you.”

“Like he’s gotten to you?” Reese shot back. “When were you going to tell me about going to his office by yourself?”

“That was stupid of me. I should have told you about it.”

Reese stopped next to Marilyn’s desk. “Yeah. You should have. You put me with a suspect in the interview room who had one up on me. That’s a setup for failure right there. What the hell is going on with you, Riley?”

“Listen, kids,” Marilyn interrupted. “I hate to break up your little domestic, but don’t you both have things to do? Like, now?”

Reese spun around, grabbed his jacket from the coat rack, and left.

Awkward silence filled the room. If Nolan hadn’t been there, Marilyn probably would have lit into Lauren, but she held her tongue in mixed company. Instead of berating Lauren, she put her head down and started doing the weekly payroll. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she finally asked, not looking up.

“We have a lot of ground to cover,” Nolan said, moving towards the door Reese just exited from. Lauren grabbed her jacket from the back of Vatasha’s chair. The rest of the squad was out on a shooting from Oxford Street. Grateful they weren’t around to witness her latest fiasco, she followed Nolan to the elevator.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked, once the doors closed shut.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I did some surveillance on my own. David caught me. I figured what Reese didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.”

She expected a snarky remark back, or a put down, at the very least a lecture, but Nolan said nothing as the elevator car deposited them on the first floor. Which made her feel even worse.

There was no hoping for a next-day forgiveness for this one. I think I finally crossed the line I’ve been drawing since we became partners. She followed Nolan out to his truck, leaving hers in the street out in front of headquarters. I might just have lost Reese forever.