The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(27)

“Nope.”

And yet both of them hesitated to leave. Which was the sign of a good detective, wasn’t it. Until you got your answers, you couldn’t let anything go.

Maybe that was why he was so tired after all this time. Too many questions with blank spaces after them, the catalogue of what he considered failures weighing him down. He was praying that retirement would get him not only a gold-plated watch from the department, but a cord-cutting from all that shit, a freedom, from everything that haunted him.

Dead children. Brutalized women. Innocent men who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Missing partners, who disappeared without a trace.

“Maybe the bullet will turn up something,” Trey said.

“Maybe.” But José didn’t think so. This was all very professional—and not as in the shooter’s gun skills, but the drug trade context of the murder. “Well, I’m gonna head back and type up the report.”

Trey frowned. “You sure? I can do it.”

“It’s my night to cover the desk. Besides, Quiana will appreciate the extra set of hands with that new baby of yours. How late were you out on scene last night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“And here comes the next generation,” José muttered. Then, a little more loudly, he felt compelled to add, “Be careful. This job can not only eat you alive, but your whole family.”

“You’re still happily married.”

“I’m lucky. I hope the same for you.”

“My wife understands me.”

“Just make sure you take time to understand her. That’s the tricky part.”

“Yes, sir.” Trey looked over at the worktable. “Listen, if you hear anything about that missing undercover officer, will you let me know?”

José frowned. “We have someone missing?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Who?”

There was a pause and the younger man put his hands in his pants pockets, a physical parallel for whatever he was keeping to himself. “It’s a female. I don’t know. I just heard something. Maybe it’s a rumor.”

No, José thought. There were no rumors about that kind of stuff—and there was a protocol for all undercover assets. They had to check in every twelve hours to their administrative contact with a code when they were actively working a case.

“That fucking Mozart,” he muttered, thinking of the dealer who had taken over the city. “What else do you know? Did she miss her check-in—”

“I got nothing else.”

So that was why the detective didn’t want to go home. Trey was waiting for the other shoe to drop about the absent officer, and José wasn’t about to badger the guy into revealing his sources. He could guess how the intel drop had happened. The identities of undercover personnel were need-to-know only, but clearly the administrative contact was reaching out to homicide—and undoubtedly had some kind of personal relationship with Trey that made that easier.

José had had his own share of those phone calls over the years, and the fact that he didn’t get this one was yet another sign things were moving on without him already.

“If anything comes in,” he said, “I’ll let you know immediately.”

“Thanks.”

As their eyes met, they both knew what the “anything” was: A body. They also both knew that sometimes you didn’t even get that. There were plenty of missing people who stayed gone, and plenty of cases that were still cold. Take this scene. Yeah, they had a corpse, but you could bet your Dunkin’ that the ballistics on the bullet inside the guy wasn’t going to link to anything. And there was so much contamination here at the scene, they weren’t going to find many prints that were useful or fibers that meant anything.

Just one more murder in the brutal drug world.

“Go home,” José told the guy. “Tell that nice wife of yours I want more of her gumbo.”

“I will.”

Trey went to the exit and glanced back, a tall, strong man with smart eyes and a serious expression. “I’m gonna call you after you’re off the force. And not just for coffee.”

“Anytime you need me to look something over, I’m there for you.”

“Thanks, Detective.”

As the last partner he would have in his professional life walked out and hit the creaky stairs, José turned back to the sofa. The bloodstain was still red now, but by the time this ruined piece of furniture ended up in the dump, the mark would be brown. He pictured the couch when it had first been bought from some kind of showroom or depot, the pattern fresh, the cushions perky and pointed at the corners, the feet square on the floor. If inanimate objects could die, then this one had suffered greatly on the way to its final occupant’s occupancy, battered, stained even before the pool of blood, worn out.

José tried to imagine not doing this anymore, not standing in the middle of a murder mess, trying to put the puzzle pieces together—and he succeeded beautifully at the task. He was going to spend more time with his girls, help his wife out around the house, cheer at graduations, cut birthday cakes, light off fireworks, take care of the dogs. No more Christmases being missed or Thanksgivings lost.

Hell, if he wanted to celebrate Groundhog’s Day, he was going to do it.