“Detective O’Brian. We’re splitting duties here, to try to keep ahead of the curve. We can talk while my partner makes some contacts.”
“Fine.” He sat. “Let me save you some time. Detective Coltraine was a good, steady cop. Dependable. She liked to dig into the pieces for the little details. When she first joined the squad, I had my doubts she’d make the cut. That was my own prejudice, because she looked like someone who should be making beauty vids. After a couple of shifts, I saw what was under her. She knew how to be part of a team, how to handle herself in the field, and with the rest of the squad.
“If she got taken down in the stairwell of her own place, it wasn’t a stranger.”
“How do you know how she was taken down?”
His eyes never shifted from Eve’s. “I’ve got connections. I used them. I haven’t shared what I dug up with the rest of the squad. What gets shared there’s up to the boss. But I’m telling you here, if she left her place last night carrying both her weapons, she was on the job. She went down in the line. And I’m going to be pushing for her to have that honor.”
“Who could have gotten into her building?”
“Fuck if I know. We don’t work that much heat here. She didn’t have anything going for somebody to swing out and kill a cop. We got a break-in, electronics. Inside job, no question. We’d’ve had the guy sewed before noon today. I’ll still have him sewed before end-of-shift. He’s an idiot, a screwup. He’s not a cop killer. I know Delong gave you the case file. You’ll see for yourself.”
“Could she have, when picking at the pieces for the little details, on this, on something else, have scraped up something hot? Something that came back at her?”
“If she did, she didn’t tell me. We had a—I guess I want to say a kind of relationship where she’d talk a case through with me.” The grief showed now. He stared down at the table, but Eve saw it working over his face. “She had dinner at my place a few times. My wife liked her, a lot. We all did. Maybe it was Morris.”
“Excuse me?”
“Something he was working on, or had. Somebody who wanted to pay him back. Where do you hit? She was in love with the guy. It showed. The few times he came in, to hook up with her at end-of-shift? It was all over both of them. I don’t know. I’m reaching. I can’t see anything she was on, anything she was connected to that she’d die for.”
“Would you mind telling me why you transferred out of Major Case?”
He shrugged. “The job’s a good part of the reason my first marriage went south. I got another chance. Got married, and had this kid. A little girl. I figure, I’m not going to risk it again, so I transferred. It’s a good squad. We do good work here, and plenty of it. But I don’t get many calls in the middle of the night, and most nights, I’m home for dinner with my family. So you don’t have to ask, that’s where I was last night. My kid—the oldest—she’s fourteen now. She had a friend over for a study date. Mostly bullshit,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Around midnight, I was giving them both a raft of grief for giggling like a couple of mental patients when they should’ve been asleep.”
“Detective Grady mentioned a weasel, Stu Bollimer.”
“Yeah, Ammy cultivated him. He’s from Macon so she used the old home connect. The guy was born a weasel. I can’t see him setting her up, not for this. He’s small change.”
“All right. I appreciate it, Detective.”
“Are you going to keep the boss in the loop?”
“That’s my intention.”
“He’s a good boss.” He pushed back from the table. “If she’d felt anything coming, anything to worry about, she’d have gone to him, or to me.”
“How were her instincts?”
For the first time, he hesitated. “Maybe not as tuned as they could’ve been. She was still feeling her way here, a little bit. Like I said, she was hell on details, and she was good with people. Put wits and vics at ease. But I guess I wouldn’t say she had the gut. The head, yeah, but maybe not the gut. Doesn’t make her less of a cop.”
“No, it doesn’t. She’s going to get our best, Detective O’Brian.”
“Can’t ask for more.”
“Who should we talk to next?”
“Newman maybe. He’s not going to get dick done today anyway.”
“Would you send him up?”
Peabody waited until the door shut. “Touchstone,” she said again. “He’ll take this the hardest. The boss is the boss, but he’s the team leader.”
“She didn’t have a cop’s gut. He didn’t want to say it because it seems disrespectful. But he knew it might help the investigation. She didn’t have the gut. Got the call, went out. Probably never felt any twinge. She’d been set up—and it doesn’t feel like impulse, but something planned out. But she didn’t feel it. It’s good to know.”
She reviewed her data on Detective Josh Newman.
4