Stalked by Brian Freeman Page B

tank and slept for thirty minutes, which was enough to refresh him. He then spent an hour running on the treadmill. The rumble of the motor and the pounding of his feet served to clear his mind. Stride accused him of not seeing the big picture on a case, but that was crap. Abel took time early in every investigation just to think. The difference was that Stride tried to rise above the facts and get inside the heads of the victim and the killer. For Abel, the big picture was about nothing except putting the pieces of the puzzle together from what was left behind. Evidence and witnesses. Things you could touch, see, and smell.
    The big picture in this case led him in only one direction—to Maggie.
    He knew that having no evidence of a third party in the house didn’t mean that no one had been there, but he also knew that the logical, obvious answer at most crime scenes was usually the right one. Forget the conspiracy theories, and leave them to the defense attorneys. The fact was that Oswald killed Kennedy. Alone. Deal with it.
    Abel was prepared to turn over every rock. He had nothing against Maggie and no desire to pin the crime on her, but common sense told him that she was almost certainly the one who had pulled the trigger. That was how it always worked in these cases.
    Like Nicole. Abel had learned with Nicole that anyone is capable of anything. Even a good cop. He hadn’t wanted to believe that his partner was capable of murder, so he ignored the evidence even as it piled up. Nicole was psychologically fragile; she had just come back from paid leave after killing a mentally deranged man on the Blatnik Bridge. Nicole’s husband was having an affair, and she had threatened him with violence if he didn’t break it off. Two of Nicole’s hairs were discovered in the apartment where her husband and his girlfriend were found naked, shot to death with her husband’s gun. It was more than enough evidence to convict her.
    When the jury found her guilty, Abel finally accepted the fact that Nicole had done what every other suspect did—lie to him in order to save her neck. Stride would have to learn the same lesson.
    Stride probably thought that Abel was still angry about getting booted out of the lieutenant’s chair. Abel was upset about that, but the truth was that he didn’t miss it. K-2 was right. Abel hated supervising people and handing out assignments. He wasn’t prepared to waste his time motivating cops, who were a tough breed to motivate. They hated administration on principle. They were hemmed in by paperwork and procedure and second-guessed every time they had to make a split-second judgment. He knew all that. He was that way, too, but he had a short fuse and his own way of doing things, and if he was going to be the boss, they were going to do things his way. Except no one did.
    He was happier without the headaches. The only thing that bothered him was that the other cops loved Stride, and they barely tolerated Abel. He knew he was a loner and a hard case. He was crusty and closed-off, but no one made an effort with him the way they did with Stride.
    Stride was human. He made mistakes. He was making a mistake this time, because Stride simply didn’t understand betrayal. He had never walked in on his wife doing a reverse cowgirl on a man half her age. Hell, Abel didn’t even know what the position was called until his lawyer explained it in the divorce papers. His wife had certainly never used it on him during their years of married life.
    When he found his wife in bed with another man, Abel finally understood how an ordinary person could go over the edge. Like Nicole. Like Maggie. He had pulled his gun on the two of them and was ready to fire. The only thing that saved them was that, in the shocked silence as they all stared at one another, he could hear the gurgle of his fish tank coming from the living room. Something about the sound soothed him. Losing his fish would be worse than losing his wife, so he