God knows how long I looked at it. Backward. Forward. Play. Stop. Rewind. Play. Rewind more. Play. Stop. I took breaks for coffee and breakfast. I went to the bathroom a few times. But I was certain there was something there. Something I’d missed. I got a few hours’ sleep and went to the office. The mail came around 11:30, including a fat official communication from the department. The date of my review had been set for the following week. The letter made it clear the outcome wasn’t necessarily permanent, that the point of the preliminary proceeding was only to determine if the immediate facts warranted “a temporary suspension of active duty pending a final determination by the promotions and disciplinary committee.” And since it was just an internal department action and not a formal legal proceeding, they advised me I didn’t need an attorney—but I could bring one, or my union rep if I wanted. Most of the session would be private, but I was to appear at the appointed time to state my case and answer questions.
I shoved the letter into my pencil drawer and turned back to the screen. By then I’d gone over it enough to know that if I really had missed something, versus simply deluding myself, then it wasn’t something obvious.
“So what’s unobvious?” I asked myself out loud.
The answer came almost immediately.
“Harriet, you idiot.”
Twenty-five minutes later, I was in the computer room, getting the guys to clean up the reflections in the windows of the condo building. The trick is that you gotta show up in person. Most of my colleagues just send an email and mark it urgent.
I was back at my desk, bent over a series of grainy, blown-up video stills I’d had printed, one from each window, when Craig came storming through the doors at the other end of the office. He wore a coat and matching brown tie. He wasn’t happy, but he was doing his best to hide it. I watched him walk right toward me and sit down in the chair next to my desk.
It had taken him a full thirty-six hours to figure out I’d already talked to Bea Goswick. He was slipping.
I set the photo printouts down and sat back. There was no point in antagonizing him.
“What’s going on, Har?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“My partner was reaching out to all the people who might have been in contact with Palmer Bell or her family. Guess what Bea Goswick told him on the phone this morning?” He looked at me and waited for an answer. “I thought we were on the same page.”
“We are.”
He looked away. “You know, Rigdon’s all right. He can get on cruise control sometimes, but he’s got good instincts. And he understands the shit that flies around this place. So he was cool when I asked him to let me handle it and to please forget what he’d heard.”
I nodded like that was the most reasonable thing I’d heard all day.
“You have a disciplinary review coming up,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“How do you know about—ah.” He’d gotten a letter, too. As the only detective who’d worked with me for any length of time, they’d probably asked for his testimony. “You wouldn’t have asked the right questions,” I said.
His face flushed in anger. But he kept his voice down. “And what questions are those? Something about voodoo dolls?”
“It’s not voodoo.”
“What?”
“They’re not voodoo dolls,” I repeated. “The practice didn’t originate with Vodun animism. It’s actually Roman, if you can believe. It got mixed up later when the Catholics brought the slaves from Africa. The Louvre has a figurine dating from the—”
“For fuck’s sake, Har.”
I was quiet for a minute. “You wouldn’t have asked the right questions. She wouldn’t have said any of—”
“That’s enough!” he yelled. Then he collected himself. He stood and leaned closer, face red. “I stuck my neck out for you. And I was happy to do it. And you fuckin’ turn around and stab me in the back. I-am-trying-to-help. Do you understand that?”
“I do.”
“If you were gonna talk to her, at least you could’ve—”
“What? Told you first? For Chrissakes, Craig, then you’re party to it. If I go on my own, then when someone asks—which it looks like they’re going to next fucking week—you can look them in the eye and honestly say you had no idea what I was up to. Come on, man. You know how it works.”
“So that’s how it is?”
He meant that I was rogue, that we weren’t actually working the case together.
“I’m not off on my own,” I said. “I haven’t done anything else.”
“Bullshit!” He slapped the desk.
Miller stepped into her office. We waited until things were quiet and she went back to whoever she was talking to.
“That’s bullshit,” he said. “You’re working my case. Just fucking admit it instead of going behind me back. I didn’t want to believe—” He grabbed the still photo from my desk, the printout from the security footage of the man in the reflection, and waved it. “What the fuck is this?”
I was indignant. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on! Cut the bullshit, Har. I have eyes.”
“That’s my case.” I snatched the picture from his hand. “My Jane Doe. A doctor at a free clinic was found butchered in a ditch. As far as I know, that’s footage from the last time anyone saw her alive.”
Hammond was fuming. He studied my face, unsure what to believe.
“It’s on the network. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.” I motioned to my computer screen. I was going to do it for him, just to make the point, when it hit me. “Wait. Why did you think this was yours?”
We stared at each other for a long, cool moment. He turned the paper around and looked at it again.
“Hammond?” I urged.
He took it and sat.
“This guy,” he said looking at the picture. “Rigdon and I have a triple from last summer.”
“A triple?”
“Well. Maybe. There were three confirmed vics. They seem to have been involved in some kind of scam. Over some kind of religious artifact or something. One girl killed herself.”
He kept looking at the still image.
“Yeah?”
“She was kept in the basement of her apartment building. Raped repeatedly. And . . .” He pointed. “This guy’s on the security tape. At the rear door. Moments before with one of the vics.”
“Are you sure?”
“I mean, from the angle, we can’t see his face there either, but it’s gotta be the same guy, right? Same bald head. Same heavy coat.”
I made a face, grabbed the mouse, and accessed the central evidence system. With a few clicks, I brought up the digital security footage from an apartment block in Sunnyside.
Hammond walked around the desk and leaned close to the screen. “There.” He pointed.
I saw a sidewalk and a young woman—Asian, it looked like—standing next to a man in an unusual coat. His face was obscured by the angle of the camera.
“Is it just me,” he said, practically in my ear, “or does that guy match the eyewitness description we found out at the house?”
I zoomed in and printed a still capture. Hammond walked to the printer several steps away and waited. He was on edge. The house had gotten to him. Now this. His instincts were good and they were telling him something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t make sense of it. And he wouldn’t be able to—not from where he was coming. He needed the same hard reset I’d had. But I didn’t have the time.
He brought the image and tossed it on my desk. We sat and looked at them side by side. It sure looked like the same guy. Same bald head. Same awkward posture. Same kinda coat.
“I know I just got the riot act,” I said, “but how about giving me a coupla days?”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked, far calmer than he had reason to be.
“You could turn me in.”
We both glanced up to Miller’s office. Her door was closed.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I suggested. “You talk to the employees at my vic’s place of work, see if any of them recognize this guy.” That was straight-up detective work, good for him.
“What are you gonna do?”
“Just give me a couple days. Thirty-six hours at least. If I let you down, we go to Miller and lay everything on the table and I’m outta your hair. What’s left of it, anyway.” I looked at his block head.
He snorted.
“Deal?”
He thought for a moment. He looked at the pictures. He looked at me.
“Only cuz it’s you.”