Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(45)

“How’d she show you?” Foster asked.

Li grinned. “Over FaceTime. Fastest way.”

“That’s two possibles we’ve had to cut loose, by the by,” Kelley groused. “Guess Lonergan beating the campus bushes was a waste of shoe leather.”

Lonergan glanced over at Griffin’s door and snarled, “Wild-goose chase was what it was.”

“Twenty-nine?” Kelley said. “What the hell’s she doing with a twenty-one-year-old?”

“Stella’s legal,” Li said, “but if she were my kid, Carr and me would have a serious talk.”

Kelley chuckled. “Oh, is that what they’re calling beatdowns these days?”

“I have a call into Rimmer’s bar pickup, Samuels-Key,” Foster said. “I left a detailed message. No callback yet.”

“If she’s married and stepping out,” Symansky said, “she’s not going to be all het up about getting in touch.”

Foster nodded. “Then we pay her a visit.”

“So nobody’s thinkin’ the blood on Ainsley’s jacket’s important here?” Lonergan said.

Kelley rolled his eyes. “What’s with you and this Ainsley kid?”

Lonergan bristled. “Blood that wasn’t his? C’mon.”

Bigelow glanced around the cop huddle. “I thought we moved on from the kid?”

“We did,” Li shot back, watching Lonergan out of the corner of her eye. “At least some of us.”

“The blood wasn’t Peggy Birch’s either,” Foster said. The look she gave her partner was dark, hard, like coal. “He could have picked it up anywhere. Someone could have brushed against him at that march. Someone with a bloody finger could have handled his jacket when he wasn’t in it. At school. At a coffee shop. It was a spot of blood. He wasn’t bathed in it.”

The team quieted, and Foster turned to see Griffin step out of her office and watch them from across the room. Suddenly, their little bull session felt like an exam. Foster looked over at Lonergan, who, despite seething with anger, kept his mouth shut. Nobody deliberately torpedoed their career by showing out in front of the boss.

“So we stick a pin in the blood for now,” Li said. “If we find something to match it to, then we circle back.”

“Until then,” Foster said, “we keep moving.”

“Now that Stella Dean is out,” Bigelow said, “my money’s on Rimmer. We got him stalking Birch. It would have been easy for him to waltz out of that bar with the blonde, dump her, and then wait for Birch. Things go bad; he loses it. He’s got motive; he’s got opportunity. It’s not too hard hiding a knife.”

Foster nodded. “All that’s true, but we’re forgetting about the lipstick around her ankles and wrists. That means something.” She turned back to the group. “We have to get in touch with Samuels-Key.”

“I know we’re looking at everybody who knew Birch. Standard op,” Symansky said, “but there’s nothing that says this can’t be some random guy. He sees Birch coming out of the bar, spots her, takes the opportunity.”

“And he’s carrying lipstick?” Bigelow asked. “My wife doesn’t even carry lipstick. My mother does, though.”

“Where was your mother Sunday, Bigelow?” Symansky said, trying to lighten the mood. The relief was much needed.

“So we’re lookin’ for an unknown sicko,” Lonergan said. “Wonderful.”

Griffin stepped forward. “Good ideas. Gives us places to go. So go.”

Foster watched as everybody packed up to clear out, but she took time to make one more call, leaving another message for Samuels-Key.

“She’s avoiding me,” she said when she hung up the phone.

Lonergan slid into his blazer and grabbed his keys. “News flash, Foster. Hookers usually avoid cops. Now let’s go and spin some more wheels.”

Foster picked up her coat and bag. “We don’t know she was working Teddy’s.”

“You heard Valentine? She’s a regular. She works the spot like it was a nine-to-five.”

Foster slung her bag over her shoulder. “I heard regular. That doesn’t mean hooker.”

“She’s married, she oughta be home, not pickin’ up guys in some high-and-mighty bar. That’s what I think.”

She didn’t care what he thought. Foster felt for the aspirin bottle in her bag and found it. Now she was ready to go.

“Nothin’ to say to that?” Lonergan asked. “No namby-pamby explanations for her trollin’ the bars?”

“I’ll meet you at the car,” Foster said, moving past him.

She stopped, though, when the phone on her desk rang. She walked back and picked it up. It was the desk sergeant downstairs. Samuels-Key was there. “Send her up. Thanks.” Foster put her bag down and slipped her jacket off. “Trip canceled. She came to us.”

Lonergan had apparently heard the brief conversation and was already moving. “Ten bucks she’s a pro,” he said.





CHAPTER 27


When they walked into the interview, Foster saw a middle-aged white woman pacing around the room, her hands busy working the gold bracelets on her wrists. Samuels-Key. The woman stopped and stared at them, real fear and a slight panic in her gray eyes. Foster didn’t have to be a cop to see she was in a tight spot, that she was worried about being here and what that could mean for her marriage, maybe her livelihood, likely her everything.