3:47 p.m.
Without missing any words coming through the phone held to his ear, Belichek eyed the woman across from him.
After he hung up, Nancy Quinn immediately said, “I don’t like it.”
“I thought you were off this afternoon.”
“I came back to talk to you. Did you hear me?”
“Uh-huh. You don’t like what?” As if he didn’t know.
She grimaced. “Don’t play the idiot, Belichek. Landis can pull it off — barely — you don’t have the looks for it. And I don’t have the time. Her. Up there. Alone.”
For all Maggie thought she could handle anything and everything, he didn’t like this setup, either. But reveal that to Nancy Quinn, and she’d be on him non-stop.
“Bedhurst County’s still part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, not some wilderness.” Though you had to wonder when they let a guy go from murder defendant to an associate of the CA.
“You didn’t see her there. Hell, I didn’t get it, not until I knew what her normal was. Then I realized how not normal she’d been.”
“First murder trial as first chair—”
“Yeah. And her being special prosecutor with everybody acting like she had two heads because she came from here. With a second chair who could barely tie his shoes. But it was more. It was—”
Nancy shifted her eyes, making him aware of the ears around them. All seemingly occupied with their own concerns, but rarely too occupied to miss gossip.
Especially about Maggie Frye.
The bare facts had been a source of speculation at the CA’s office and police department from her first day. No way to hide a juicy piece of gossip like that.
Everything beyond the bare facts was in a lockbox inside Maggie.
He was talking to the one other person in Maggie’s professional life who might have glimpsed inside that lockbox. Landis might’ve, too … if he took enough time off from following his dick to think things through.
It wasn’t her words. It was a look, a hesitation, an attitude, a question, then putting them together with who she was.
“The earlier case,” he filled in. Using a phrase that wouldn’t catch anybody’s attention.
Nancy nodded. “The earlier case. And similarities.”
“Similarities? The MO—”
Her slicing gesture stopped him. “Not MO. Similarities in the victim. Relationship between victim and defendant. They were … on the same frequency.”
He’d been a detective too long to scoff. Some crimes did vibrate at the same frequency, even if you didn’t see similarities at first.
“That prick won’t let me go up there.” Nancy didn’t need to say the prick was Commonwealth’s Attorney Vic Upton. “Says I’m needed here. If I didn’t need every dime to get my kid started at VCU this fall, I’d go unpaid. And that other prick hasn’t helped.”
Belichek figured Prick Two was Roy Isaacson.
“Asshole sweet-talked an idiot clerk into letting him take a box being expressed to her. Went up there, acting like God’s gift to women, law enforcement, and the legal system, no doubt. Add in her cousin calling all the time. It’s the annual fund-raiser. All falling down on her at once. With the biggest chunk of rock this damned case.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“God forbid you help a friend. Somebody who’s damn near made your career.”
“Christ, Nancy—”
She held up a hand. “You’re right. Out of line. There’s nothing you or I can do about the two pricks.” He supposed Maggie’s cousin should feel honored not to be lumped in with Upton and Isaacson. “But the sooner this case is resolved, the sooner things get back to normal.”
He shifted his gaze to the corner of his desk. Its pattern of scuff marks more than once had reformed in his mind’s eye to put together pieces of a case into a recognizable pattern.
No such luck this time.
“I’ll make some calls.” They’d be Round Two, because he’d put out initial feelers after talking with Maggie.
“That’s a start. So’s reading.”
She dropped a file on his desk.