downtown, if that’s okay with you. This way, if we screw up, and Harrisburg decides to drop a bomb on us, we’ll all be conveniently located in the same place. You fucking shit,” he added.
Polk sat down, face a livid red. Eleanor Lowrey, her own brow creased with anxiety, touched his arm.
Sinclair sighed. “Look, we better wrap this up. The chief and I have to confer with the mayor in an hour. He wants to figure out a game plan for tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?” I was getting tired of playing catch-up. Or maybe I was just getting tired.
“Wingfield happens tomorrow,” Sinclair replied. “He’s flying in at six a.m. Breakfast with me and the Mayor. And His Honor is not, shall we say, a morning person.”
He nodded in my direction. “So. With all due respect to Dr. Rinaldi, and whatever skeletons he may have in his closet, I think we should keep the mistaken-identity theory on the back-burner. Let’s work on the assumption the killer knew who Kevin really was—or, more to the point, who his father was. The motive must lie there.”
“Besides,” Casey added, her gaze seeming to challenge him, “Wingfield will be more supportive of a line of investigation going in that direction. Don’t you think?”
Sinclair didn’t answer. Just gave her a look. Not so much in anger as betrayal. But something else, too.
“One more thing,” Biegler said suddenly. He flipped open a file folder on his lap. “What about James Stickey?”
“Who?” Sinclair asked.
“Our vic was robbed and assaulted by Stickey six months ago. He’s doing hard time now up in Cloverbrook.”
Sinclair’s face darkened. “Jesus Christ.”
“Can’t be a connection,” Polk said. “Stickey’s just some hype. Broke into Kevin’s place for some quick cash. Two nights later, we nailed his sorry ass.”
“But there’s no indication he knew who Kevin was? That the break-in was a cover for something else?”
Polk shook his head. “Pure coincidence, I’m tellin’ ya. Besides, Stickey was in the can when Kevin got killed.”
“Maybe,” Sinclair said. “But I don’t like this. Kevin Wingfield gets assaulted six months ago, and now murdered? And these events are not related?”
“On the face of things, sir,” Casey said evenly, “it doesn’t look like it.”
Biegler was sulking. “I still think it’s worth putting Stickey on the grill. Just to cover our asses with Wingfield. I’d hate for him to find out about it, and—”
“Okay, okay,” Sinclair said briskly. “Send your people up there. Just so we can cross it off the list.”
He glanced at his watch, then started straightening his jacket. Seemed like we were about to be dismissed.
Eleanor Lowrey was looking in my direction. “Want Harry and me to accompany Dr. Rinaldi back to his office for those patient files?”
Biegler rose to his feet. “We can send some uniforms to do that,” he said irritably. “You two got enough work ahead of you tonight.”
“ I don’t mind doing it,” Casey Walters said.
This caught me—and everybody else—by surprise. I turned to her. She was leaning back in her chair, stretching. Her breasts were taut against the thin silk of her blouse. You could just make out the beige outline of her wispy bra beneath.
It was strange. I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time, hadn’t even thought about them much lately. And yet suddenly I felt a long-buried, distant shiver of anticipation. The dryness in my mouth, the tightness in my gut. Forget the past twenty-four hours, the death and the guilt, the shock and the pain.
Now, I thought. Now I’m in trouble.
Chapter Fourteen
“You’re pretty comfortable around cops,” Casey said, spearing a cherry tomato with her fork. “That’s rare.”
“Let’s say I’m used to them.”
“Your father was a beat cop on the North Side, right?” Her eyes crinkled at the edges. “I read your file.”
“Oh boy.”
We were sitting at a corner booth in Tambellini’s,
Janet Muncy
Sandra Waugh
Trish Morey
Delaney Diamond
Simon R. Green
Carlene Rae Dater
James Oswald
Jennifer Chiaverini
Laconnie Taylor Jones
Sophie Newsome