Missing You(18)

What can it do with all this want?

Last night, she had been scanning quickly though a website in search of a lifetime partner. Weren’t the odds better that she would conjure up the one man who had been closest to that in her life than actually seeing him again?

The doorman intercom buzzed.

She pressed the button. “Yes, Frank?”

“Your captain is here.”

“Send him up.”

Kat left her door ajar so Stagger could walk right in without knocking—the last thing she wanted were more memory flashes to that day eighteen years ago. She exited YouAreJustMyType.com and, just to be on the safe side, cleared her browser history.

Stagger’s whole being emanated exhaustion. His eyes were red and sunken. His normal five o’clock shadow had darkened into something closer to midnight. His shoulders stooped like a buzzard too tired to go after its prey.

“You okay?” she asked him.

“Long day.”

“Can I get you something to drink?”

He shook his head. “What’s up?”

Kat decided to dive right into the deep end. “How sure are you that Monte Leburne killed Henry?”

Whatever he had been expecting her to say—whatever guess he had made as to why she so desperately wanted to speak with him—it wasn’t that. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“So I guess you got to see him today?”

“Yes.”

“And what, he suddenly denied that he shot your father?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Kat had to be careful here. Stagger wasn’t just by the book—he was the book, binding, pages, printing press, the whole deal. If he heard about Nurse Steiner and the twilight sleep, he would throw a fit and then some.

“Okay, I want you to listen to me for a second,” she began. “Just go in with an open mind, okay?”

“Kat, do I look in the mood for games?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“So tell me what’s going on.”

“I get that, but just bear with me. Let’s go back to the start.”

“Kat . . .”

She pushed through it. “Here is Monte Leburne, right? The feds nail him as a triggerman for two hits. They try to get him to flip on Cozone. He doesn’t. He isn’t that type. Too dumb maybe. Or he thinks they’ll hurt his family. Whatever, Leburne shuts up.”

She waited for him to tell her to get to the point. He didn’t.

“Meanwhile, you guys are searching for whoever killed my father. You don’t have a lot, just rumors and a few loose threads, and suddenly, voilà, Leburne confesses.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Stagger said.

“Yeah, it was.”

“We had leads.”

“But nothing solid. So you tell me—why did he suddenly confess?”

Stagger made a face. “You know why. He killed a cop. The heat was ridiculous on Cozone’s operation. He had to throw us something.”

“Exactly. So Monte Leburne takes the fall. And Cozone gets away with it. How convenient. A guy who is already spending his life in prison gets another life sentence.”

“We tried for years to nail Cozone for it. You know that.”

“But we never could. Don’t you see? We could never tie Cozone and Leburne together on that case. You know why?”

He sighed. “You’re not turning into a conspiracy nut on me, are you, Kat?”

“No.”

“The reason we couldn’t tie them to it is simple: That’s the way the world works. It isn’t a perfect system.”

“Or maybe,” Kat said, trying to keep her tone calm, “maybe we couldn’t tie it together because Monte Leburne didn’t shoot my dad. We were able to independently connect Leburne to the other two murders. But we could never do that with Dad. Why? And what about those fingerprints we were never able to identify? Don’t you wonder who else was at the scene?”

Stagger just looked at her. “What happened up at Fishkill?”

Kat knew she had to play this delicately. “He’s bad.”

“Leburne?”

She nodded. “I don’t think he has more than a week or two.”

“So you drove up,” Stagger said. “And he agreed to see you.”

“Sort of.”

He gave her the eye. “What does that mean?”

“He was in the infirmary. I talked my way in. No big deal, nothing shady. I flashed my badge, kept it vague.”

“Okay, so?”

“So when I got to Leburne’s bed, he was in pretty bad shape. They had him drugged up with a hefty dose of painkillers. Morphine, I guess.”

Stagger’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, so?”

“So he started muttering. I didn’t question him or anything. He was too out of it. But he began to sort of hallucinate. He thought the nurse was his dead sister, Cassie. He apologized for letting their father abuse her or something. Started crying and telling her he’d be with her soon. Stuff like that.”

Stagger pinned her with his eyes. She wasn’t sure if he was buying it, but then again, she wasn’t sure how hard she was selling it. “Go on.”