“Turn it off,” Louis said sharply.
Gibralter turned it off and the room went silent. He held out a pen. “Sign it.”
Louis didn’t move.
“Sign it or I’ll add insubordination.”
Louis stared at the letter in his hand.
Gibralter started to reach for the paper.
Ollie’s face came back to Louis in that moment. Ollie’s face splattered with blood and his pleading eyes. He grabbed the pen from Gibralter, scribbled his name and thrust the paper back at Gibralter, throwing the pen on the desk.
“Can I go now?” he asked.
“No. I think you need a few days in the office.”
“I have a release for full duty.”
“I don’t care what you have. I decide when a man is fit for duty.” Gibralter reached down below his desk for an empty box. He tossed it across the desk and Louis caught it against his thighs.
“Take down the Christmas decorations.”
Louis could see the network of tiny red veins around the cold blue irises. The man was cracking, just like the rest of them.
Suddenly, something snapped inside Louis. The room shifted, everything shifted. The impotent rage burning inside him was mutating into a cold anger. He realized in that instant he had made a decision. He wouldn’t quit and leave Jesse, Dale, or any other cop, at Lacey’s hands.
But what could he do? Gibralter wasn’t going to let him work the case. And now Steele was in control of the search, the arrest, of everything.
Then he knew. He would help Steele. He would do whatever he could to help Steele catch Lacey. He didn’t want to be caught in a damn ego war but Lacey had to be stopped. If it meant taking sides against Gibralter, he would do it. He would do what he could and then get the hell out.
“Am I dismissed?” Louis asked tightly.
“Get out of here.”
Louis left the office and went to his desk, tossing the box in a corner and sinking into the chair. Taking a stand against Gibralter was a dangerous move. He had to play it carefully. Very carefully.
He glanced at the phone. He grabbed the phone book and dialed the
“Delp here.”
“Delp, this is Kincaid. Can I buy you lunch?”
“Sure. Dot’s?”
“No.” Louis paused. “Jo-Jo’s”
“That shithole out on 29?”
“Yeah. Ten minutes, okay?”
He spotted Delp in the gloom of Jo-Jo’s, sitting at the end of the bar. There was no one else in the place except for a drunk slumped over the table in a corner booth. The bartender eyed Louis’s uniform as Louis slid onto a stool next to Delp.
“Nice place,” Delp said, stirring his coffee.
Louis ignored him, motioning to the bartender to bring another cup.
“Where you been?” Delp asked. “I called the station.”
“Therapy.”
“Oh, yeah. How’s it going?”
“Fine.” The bartender set a mug of coffee in front of Louis. Louis stirred in three sugars and took a sip. He grimaced and pushed it away.
“Okay, what’s with the secrecy?” Delp asked. “Don’t tell me you’re ashamed to be seen with me.”
“I need a favor,” Louis said.
Delp studied him for a moment. “What?”
“Do you know anyone at a newspaper in Chicago?”
“Got a buddy at the
“Somebody who’s been around a while, maybe on the police beat?”
Delp leaned forward. “This is about Gibralter, isn’t it?”
Louis tightened. He sure hoped he could trust this asshole. “I want to know why he left Chicago.”
“Why?”
“Can you do it or not?”
“Where you going with this?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Not yet, you mean.”
Louis hesitated. “All right. Not yet.”
Delp shook his head. “Promises, promises.”
“Look, Delp, can you help me or not?”
Delp shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Louis started to get off the stool. “I have to get back.”
“Hey, wait,” Delp said. “I got something for you.”
“What?”
Delp hoisted a beat-up leather briefcase onto the bar and pulled out a manila envelope. “The photos you asked for, the leftovers from the raid. I found some extras in the morgue.”
Louis slid back onto the stool. He opened the envelope and sorted through the black-and-white photographs. It was just standard newspaper stuff — shots of the cabin, the backyard, a sliding glass door, a broken window. There was a photo that showed an indentation in the snow that looked like a snow angel splashed with black that he recognized finally as the spot where Johnny Lacey fell after being shot.
“Nothing here,” Louis said, setting them down.
“Try these,” Delp said, holding out a second envelope.
“What’s this?”
“Postmortems.”
“I already saw them,”
Delp slipped out a stack of photos. “Not all of them. I found some stuff that didn’t get printed the first time.”
“How do you know?”
“Photographers use a hole punch to notch the edge of the negatives they want to print,” Delp said. “These weren’t notched.”
Louis sifted slowly through the photos. Many were just different angles of those he had already seen but he paused at one. It was a close-up of a hand, life-size but still small and delicate, obviously Angela’s hand. It was palm down, fingers splayed, and across the back between the first set of knuckles and the wrist, was a half-circle bruise. He knew he had not seen this picture in the case file. Why had it been left out?
“That one’s weird, isn’t it?” Delp said, sipping his coffee. “What you think that bruise is?”
Louis said nothing.
“Looks like maybe someone stepped on her hand with a boot heel,” Delp said. “Or maybe it’s a horseshoe?”
Louis started to stack the photographs but Delp laid a hand on them. “Something else,” Delp said. “Did you notice the initials on the raid photographs?”
Louis picked up a print and turned it over. He hadn’t bothered to look at the initials the first time. “A.R. Who’s A.R.?” he asked.
