Fatal Reckoning (Fatal #14)(87)

Malone sat back in his chair, balancing a pen between two fingers as he pondered that. “He was at the house. Why would he need to call her to make that happen?”

“Maybe what we’re looking for wasn’t at the house but somewhere else.”

“I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but if Conklin had that bag or other evidence pertaining to Skip’s shooting, don’t you think he would’ve gotten rid of it a long time ago?”

“That’s what you and I would’ve done, but who knows about him? Did either of us think he’d be capable of withholding information about my dad’s case for four years?”

“No.”

“So we can concede that anything is possible where he’s concerned?”

“I suppose we have to.” He picked up the phone and made a call to request a warrant to search Conklin’s wife’s car and office.

“Thank you,” Sam said when he’d completed the call.

“I know you’re sick of people asking if you’re okay, but are you?”

“I’m frustrated because I can’t be in the thick of this one.”

“I know, but it’s for the best. Keep doing what you’re doing and working the edges.”

“I’m heading to the library to do some research.”

“Let me know if you find anything.”

“You’ll be the first to know.” Sam left the captain’s office and made her way to the department’s library. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d made use of the resources contained in the library, but with the Coyne files missing, she needed context she could only get from news stories about the case. The library kept microfilm copies of old editions of the Post and the Star dating back to before the papers were digitized, and that was where she’d start to look for much-needed context on the Coyne shooting. Perhaps she was chasing her tail by bothering to take another look at that case, but she’d learned to trust the hunches that rarely disappointed her.

The librarian, a woman named June Mercer, perked up when Sam stepped into the third-floor library. Short and stout with gray hair cut into a bob and bright blue eyes, she’d been the department’s librarian for more than thirty years.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.”

“Good morning.”

“How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for newspapers from decades ago.”

“You’ve come to the right place. Do you have a date?”

Sam recited the date.

“That’s the day Officer Coyne was killed.”

“Yes.”

June gave her a long look before seeming to realize she was staring. “Let me get that for you.”

She set Sam up on a microfilm machine and showed her how to scroll through the coverage of the Coyne shooting.

“I took the liberty of getting you everything from the day after the shooting through the funeral. There were a number of stories in the months that followed until the case went cold and the coverage dried up.”

“I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

“I’ll get you the rest.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I wanted you to know how sorry I was to hear about your father’s passing. He was a lovely man and a great cop.”

“I appreciate that, and I agree. He was the best.”

“I’ll leave you to your work.”

Sam called up the first articles that detailed the brazen shooting of a Metro police officer in broad daylight on a city street. The Post story mentioned how Coyne’s partner, Officer Skip Holland, had been standing feet away from Coyne when he was struck down. Her father had never gotten over that happening when he was right there, just as Gonzo struggled with the similar circumstances of Arnold’s shooting.

She took a good long look at the familiar face of Steven Coyne—he’d been handsome and intense with dark eyes. His dark hair had been buzzed per the department regulations at the time. Her father had always said Steven was one of the finest cops he’d ever worked with—a cop’s cop, the kind who always had your back and never failed to do the right thing no matter the consequences. Skip had never forgotten his first partner or how he’d died.

There’d been few details about the make or model of the car from which the gunfire originated, with witnesses stating that it had happened so fast the car was gone before they realized the officer had been fatally shot.

For years after the shooting, Skip had agonized over the dearth of information in an investigation that had gone nowhere fast and quickly gone cold. Just like his case, Sam thought, the similarities are remarkable in many ways. The only difference being that Skip had survived—albeit just barely. He’d come out of the haze of the shooting with no memories of the weeks leading up to it, which had further hampered their efforts to find the shooter. Had he stumbled upon something that had led to the Coyne case or was his shooting entirely random? The not-knowing was maddening. She couldn’t imagine how difficult that had to have been for Alice over the years. The Holland family had lived in a state of purgatory for four years. Her hell had spanned decades.

Sam continued to read the articles about the Coyne case, taking her time to read each word while hoping her dyslexia wouldn’t kick in to scramble the text. By taking it slowly, she had a greater chance of getting through it without a problem. Tackling the reading earlier in the day also tended to help.