Missing You(19)

“And he said he never killed the cop.”

The sunken eyes bulged a bit now. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but for the sake of this conversation, Kat figured that it was close enough.

“He said he was innocent,” she continued.

Stagger looked incredulous. “Of everything?”

“No, just the opposite. He said that they already had him dead to rights for two murders, so what harm was there to confessing to one more if it provides?”

“If it provides?”

“His words.”

Stagger just shook his head. “This is crazy. You know that, right?”

“It’s not. It actually makes perfect sense. You’re already going to serve a life sentence. What’s one more murder conviction?” Kat took a step closer to him. “Let’s say you were closing in on the killer. Maybe you were days or even hours from putting it all together. Suddenly, a guy who is already caught and going to serve life confesses. Don’t you see?”

“And who would set that up exactly?”

“I don’t know. Cozone probably.”

“He’d use his own man?”

“A man he knew—and we knew—would never talk? Sure, why not?”

“We have the murder weapon, remember?”

“I do.”

“The gun that shot your father. We found it exactly where Monte Leburne said it would be.”

“Of course Leburne knew. The real killer told him. Think about it. Since when does a hit man like Leburne save the gun? He gets rid of it. We never got the weapons for the other two murders, right? Suddenly, after he kills a cop, he decides to save it, as what? A souvenir? And again, what about those fingerprints? Did he have an accomplice? Did he go it alone? What?”

Stagger put his hands on her shoulders. “Kat, listen to me.”

She knew what was coming. This was part of it. She’d have to ride it out.

“You said Leburne was drugged up, right? On morphine?”

“Yes.”

“So he hallucinated. Your word. He muttered some imaginary nonsense. That’s all.”

“Don’t patronize me, Stagger.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. You know I don’t buy into nonsense like”—she made quote marks with her fingers—“‘closure.’ I think it’s crap. Even if we nail everyone involved in his murder, my father is still dead. That will never change. So closure, I don’t know, it’s almost an insult to his memory, you know what I mean?”

He nodded slowly.

“But this arrest . . . it never worked for me. I always suspected there was something more.”

“And now you’ve made it into that.”

“What?”

“Come on, Kat. This is Monte Leburne. You don’t think he knew you were there? He’s playing with you. He knows that you’ve had your doubts all along. You wanted to see something that wasn’t there. And now he’s given that to you.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but suddenly, she thought about the Maybe-Jeff on her computer. Want can twist your perception. Was that part of it? Had she so wanted to find a solution—to find “closure”—that she was creating scenarios?

“That’s not it,” Kat said, but her voice held a little less conviction now.

“Are you sure?”

“You’ve got to understand. I can’t let this go.”

He nodded slowly. “I do understand.”

“You’re patronizing me again.”

He forced up a tired smile. “Monte Leburne killed your father. It isn’t neat or a perfect fit. It never is. You know that. The questions about the case—all normal and routine and easily explainable—eat you up. But at some point, you have to let it go. It will drive you mad. If you let it get to you like this, you end up depressed and . . .”

His words trailed off.

“Like my grandfather?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t have to.”

Stagger found her gaze and held it for a long second. “Your father would want you to move on.”

She said nothing.

“You know that I’m telling the truth.”

“I do,” she said.

“But?”

“But I can’t do it. My father would know that too.”

? ? ?

Kat filled yet another shot glass with Jack Daniel’s and started printing out her father’s old murder file.

This wasn’t the official police one. She had, of course, read that one many times before. This one was of her creation, loaded up with everything in the official file—the detectives who’d closed her dad’s case had both been family friends—plus everything, even rumors, she had managed to nail down on her own. The case had been pretty solid, the two keys being that they had a confession from Leburne himself, plus the murder weapon, found hidden in Leburne’s home. Most of the loose ends had been tied up nicely, with one notable exception that had always haunted Kat: There were unidentified fingerprints found at the murder scene. The lab guys had found a full, clear print on her father’s belt and had run it through the system but got no hits.

Kat had never been fully satisfied with the official explanation, but everyone, including Kat herself, had written that off to her personal connection. Aqua had said it best one day when she ran into him in the park on one of his more lucid days: “You are seeking something in this case that you can never find.”