14th Deadly Sin (Women's Murder Club 14)

“Nothing yet,” I said.

Jacobi used strings of expletives in combinations I’d never heard before. The gist of the F-bombs was that all the freaking over-the-top TV crime shows had taught the freaking criminals what not to freaking do.

“They knew a few things from experience,” I said. “It was a very buttoned-up operation.”

I let Jacobi rant for a while, then told him good night, and when I finally hit the sheets, I couldn’t sleep.

I was organizing the case in my mind, getting ready for the squad meeting in the morning, doing all that thinking while lying with my head on my husband’s chest, listening to him sleep. My thoughts circled in and around the Calhoun house, where people had been sleeping in their beds.

I had a bad fantasy of the same guys breaking into our nest on Lake Street. I heard locks being shot off doors. In this bad fantasy, I got my hands on my gun, but it wouldn’t fire. My fantasy didn’t go any further, thank God.

But sleep became an impossible dream.

When Julie woke up at three, I walked her around the living room and looked out at the street below to see if anyone was lurking in an idling car. At six I took Martha for a quick run, and by seven fifteen I was at my desk in the Homicide bullpen.

Conklin arrived a few minutes later. He hung his jacket behind his chair and said, “I had a dream.”

I looked up at him. He wasn’t kidding.

“I woke up thinking there’s a connection between what happened to Calhoun and the Wicker House shootings.”

“What was the connection?” I asked.

“I’m still thinking about it.”

“OK,” I said. “Your subconscious is making a link. Probably from all the dead bodies. All the blood.”

“Probably,” my partner said. “But there is something sticky about those two things together.”

Just then, Richie got a call from Cindy, and then a ragged-looking Brady dropped by our desks. He said to me, “At eight o’clock. You can brief everyone, right?”

“No problem.”

The squad room filled with cops. Some sat behind their desks, others parked themselves in spare chairs, and more cops stood three deep at the back. The room was packed with the day shifts from Homicide, Narco, and Robbery.

Swanson and Vasquez stood at the front of the room with me and I introduced them. Then I told about sixty of my fellow officers what we knew about what had gone down in the green Victorian house on Texas Street.

Brady gave out assignments. And then we went to work.

CHAPTER 54

CONKLIN AND I brought Swanson and Vasquez into Interview 2. When we all had coffee in front of us and were settled in, I started by saying, “I can only guess at how rotten you feel. We need everything and anything that could help us with the Calhoun murders. Any

thing you may have heard or surmised about enemies, disagreements, contacts with informants, shady business dealings, a fight over a parking spot—it doesn’t matter how unlikely it might seem to you.”

Swanson stopped me from going on. He said, “We get it, Boxer. You ask, we answer. You need a handle on this, and we’re counting on you.”

Conklin checked that the camera was on, then sat down next to me, saying, “We’re recording this, just because.”

Vasquez clenched his fists and said, “Calhoun wasn’t dirty. He was a good person. He was a good cop.”

I nodded. And Conklin said, “Tell us whatever you know about him. We’ll ask questions as they come up.”

Swanson sighed and said, “Calhoun transferred in from LA Vice about two years ago with a good reputation. He was partnered with Kyle Robertson, who joined Robbery, don’t remember when offhand, but before that he was in uniform since the Flood. You should talk to Robertson. They were close.”

I nodded. We were seeing Robertson in a little while.

Vasquez said, “Calhoun was a good kid. He wanted to do good in the job. If I had to fault him, I would say he was a little bit overenthusiastic.”