I parked across from the precinct’s entrance. Cassie might be able to get in through the back door, but I would not be afforded that luxury. And I’m sure if Cervantes saw me try, he’d have me locked up for trespassing. Once inside, I headed straight for the reception desk and asked for either detective. The cop there barely acknowledged me. Didn’t even ask what this was about. He picked up a phone, punched in a code, and told whoever answered that they were needed out front.
“You can take a seat,” the guy said.
Hell with that. I paced from his desk to the first bank of chairs, and back again. A minute passed. Then another. What was this bullshit?
“Can you call back there again?” I said.
“He’ll be up when he’s up,” the officer said.
“Sonofabitch,” I muttered under my breath.
“What’d you say?” He rose from his chair. “You think I can’t hear you?”
“Nah, man, I—”
“Tanner.” Cervantes rapped on the counter, startling both of us. “What’re you doing here?”
“Where’s Cassie?” I said.
He shrugged. “How should I know? Last I saw her was yesterday back in interrogation. You left with her.”
“So neither of you called her to come down here this morning?”
“Nah.” He turned and started toward the hallway, stopping about halfway and glancing back at me. “That all?”
I hoisted the paper up for him to see. “You taken a look at this yet?”
Cervantes did a one-eighty and rounded the counter. I felt each of his steps under my feet. He grabbed the paper from my hands and studied the photo.
“Shit,” he said.
“Yeah, shit is right,” I said.
“No, Tanner, you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“This is bad.”
“I’m not thick, man. I know it’s bad.”
“Come with me.” He turned and waved two fingers over his shoulder and started off without me. I didn’t wait for any further invitation. The desk officer called out something about a visitor’s pass, but if Cervantes wasn’t concerned with it, neither was I.
Cervantes glanced into each room we passed. Finally, he halted, turned, extended his arm. “In here.”
It was an empty office with a desk littered with paperwork and three worn-down chairs. Family photos revealed a middle-aged black woman with three kids and a husband twenty years her elder. Framed accolades said she had reached the rank of lieutenant.
Cervantes stepped in after me, letting the door fall shut.
“All right, you got me alone,” I said. “What’s up?”
He rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. He kept his eyes clenched and worked his nostrils in and out with deep, raspy breaths. When he glanced up at me, I got the distinct impression that he wished the situation would just go away.
After a few seconds, he spoke up. “The name Novak mean anything to you?”
I felt the blood draining from my head. The world went a bit fuzzy, hazy, like shining a flashlight into fog. It came in from the front and sides. Cassie had told me the chilling story on a couple of occasions, with each retelling going into more detail. The pain and then numbness with each subsequent thrust of the knife into her flesh. How she bled out in the graveyard and could sense the slow soaking of her blood into the soil. She spoke of the feeling when her soul departed her physical being. She compared the sensation of it returning to that of slamming your body into a concrete wall.
“By the look on your face, I’m gonna say it does,” Cervantes said.
“He’s doing life plus some for killing those women and leaving Cassie for dead, right? Pled out of his death sentence.”
“Yeah.” Cervantes’ face paled. His forehead shone with sweat. “He was.”
“What do you mean ‘was’?”
“Escaped.”
“When?”
“Before the storm.”
I fell back into a seat and stared up at the recessed lighting. The bright LED looked out of place in a precinct building. They must be going green.
“You mean to tell me that this guy’s been on the loose for some three-plus weeks now and you haven’t told Cassie?”
He raised a defensive hand. “Novak doesn’t know her real identity. It was blocked at trial. He doesn’t know where she lives. They told him she’d been relocated by the FBI. Last thing on his mind is her.”
I somehow doubted that. She was probably on his mind dawn till dusk. She put him away. I snatched the paper off the desk and shoved the photo in his face. “You still think that? Huh? Holy shit, man. We gotta find her and get her under protection before this psycho reaches her!”
The color returned to his cheeks. They burned red. Was he angry at me? The situation? The system? Or himself?
“Let’s take my car,” he said. “We’ll go by her house.”
“I was already there. She wasn’t home. Car wasn’t in the garage.”
“House was unlocked?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never known Cassie to be like that. She’s the most uber-cautious person I know.”
“I didn’t see any signs of foul play. Nothing broken. No tracks left behind.”
Cervantes fumbled with his keys. Said nothing.
“Let’s go to the crime scene.” I stopped at the door and looked back. “Maybe something happened overnight after I left her house.”
“What if she went out for coffee?” Cervantes moved past me into the hallway. “I think we need to go to her house first. If Novak is able to get the address, that’s the first place he’s gonna check.”
“You’re wrong, man.” I fumbled my keys out of my pocket. “Tell you what, you go there. I’ll carry my ass to the crime scene.”
I bolted past him, shrugging off his attempt at stopping me, and made my way to the front of the building. Cervantes followed close behind, calling for me to stop. I did at the front door.
“What?” I said.
“You step one foot inside that house, and I’ll have you arrested.”
“Do what you gotta do, then. Hell, follow me over there. I don’t care. My gut tells me she’s there, and this guy knows it.”