Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(38)

“You win, Foster,” Lonergan said. “Guess your kid’s off the hook.”

Her kid. It was an odd thing to say, even odder for Lonergan to boil it all down to a game of wins and losses. She walked heavily, as though her body were buried beneath a wall of bricks, her mind racing. Thai food consumed hours before Peggy’s death, no foreign prints, no DNA. Two blood types, lipstick. She turned to Lonergan.

“If it isn’t Peggy’s blood, whose is it?”





CHAPTER 22


She flew through the doors back at Area 1. Alone. Lonergan had dropped her at the lot and taken off. Downtime, he’d said. Back in an hour. They had a body attached to no physical evidence and physical evidence that didn’t match any victim they knew of. Downtime? Where was Lonergan going that was more important than getting to the bottom of any of this?

She threw her bag on the desk, eyed Griffin’s closed door. The boss had done this to her, but she wasn’t about to go running back to cry about it. She was stuck with Lonergan. The office was busy, cops doing what cops did; Peggy Birch wasn’t the only murder that needed solving. Next moves. What could they be? Did Lonergan expect her to wait here like a doll on a shelf until he got back and made the moves for them?

Shimmying out of her jacket, she sat at the grimy desk and pulled out her notebook. Timeline. Peggy’s. She’d track her back from Teddy’s, the last spot anyone could place her. Street-camera access was in the works. The Riverwalk was covered. That was where she’d start. And if she was being hopeful, the blood on Keith’s jacket didn’t have to mean anyone else was dead. There could be a thousand explanations for it, and the fact that no one had stumbled on another dead girl kind of proved it.

She needed to see the case spread out in front of her. If she saw it mapped, she might be able to figure out the why that would lead to the who. Looking around the office, she spotted a small whiteboard leaning against the wall. She commandeered it and propped it up at her desk, then went hunting for markers. When she had the board set up and had acquired the markers from the shelf of office supplies near the printer, she started to quietly transfer her notes from her book to the board: witness statements, times, a list of Peggy’s closest associates, lines drawn under their names—Rimmer, Dean, Stroman. She even added Giles Valentine, the bartender at Teddy’s. Next, she taped up photos of Birch and Ainsley along with a crudely drawn map she’d made of the crime scene, noting the position of the body in relation to the bridge, to the marina, to the stairs. Blood. It wasn’t Birch’s. God forbid someone stumbled on another pile of leaves. The blood wasn’t Keith Ainsley’s either. He hadn’t had a nick or cut on him when he’d been found, for one thing, and the blood was old, for another, but just to be sure, on her way back, she had checked with Dr. Santos by phone from the car. Keith was AB-positive. That revelation had done little to alter Lonergan’s spiteful mood.

Stepping back, Foster studied what she’d done, satisfied that it was a good start. She would add to it as she discovered more, but for now the order helped her breathe a little easier.

“Foster.” She turned to see Griffin standing at the door to her office, arms crossed, glancing at the board but making no comment. “Lonergan?”

All heads turned her way, everyone quieting. “Following a lead. Should be back any second.”

She could tell Griffin knew she was lying. The boss knew Lonergan better than Foster knew him, but she didn’t challenge the statement. And from the looks she got from the cops in the room, she’d passed a test. She’d covered for her partner, even if it was Lonergan, and their nods and winks of approval signaled to her that she had earned their respect and fraternity. She’d take it, but a little white lie was as far as she would ever bend. They didn’t know that about her yet.

The board set, Foster checked her watch, then switched to the security footage from the bar. Two sets of eyes would have been better, but it looked like Lonergan was going to leave it all to her.

She went through the main footage again, finding just a bar filled with happy, drinking people. Peggy Birch, the life of the party, as Giles Valentine had told them. Foster then moved to the other angles, the ones that covered the back end of the bar and along the wall. She checked her watch. It was just after eleven.

“What’s all this?”

Foster looked up to find Detective Vera Li holding a white grease-stained bag that smelled like Wrigley Field on a hot summer day. “Excuse me?”

Li flicked the bag toward the screen. “That a lead?”

“It’s footage from the bar Birch was in the night she was killed. We’re looking for . . . anything, I guess. So far nothing. I’m just about to look at the rest of it.”

Li scanned the room. “We? Where’s Lonergan?”

Foster gave Li a slight smile. “Somewhere readjusting.”

“Want another set of eyes?” She held the bag up. “And a hot dog?”

Foster’s stomach growled as if on cue, despite her reluctance to accept the assist on principle.

Li chuckled, then pulled over Lonergan’s empty chair and sat next to her. “Sure you do.” She drew the dogs out of the bag and set one in front of Foster, taking the other for herself.

“What about whatever you’re working on?” Foster asked.

“Kelley’s at a dentist appointment. I’m taking lunch while he’s at it. No sense wasting all this detectiveness. I figure we eat a little, cop a little.” She nodded toward the computer. “Cue it up. Let’s see what we got.”