criminal, looks like a thug, Russian background. If it’s racism, he played it up. Used to talk big when he was in his cups, yammer on about his glory days with the mob.”
“Are the Feds checking this out?”
“Maybe. But even if it’s true, it’s ancient history, and it doesn’t explain how he wound up dead a couple of decades later. I thought about taking a peek but…” He shrugged. “No time to satisfy idle curiosity. This case I’m working on now takes up all my time. As it should.” He wrapped his hands around his mug. “Kiddie porn. Fucking sick shit.”
“There’s nothing worse,” I said.
“Big-city cops, maybe they get used to it. But me? I’ve seen some stuff before, but not like this. Nothing like this. My wife-” He stopped. Shrugged.
“You can’t talk to her about it.”
“Gotta play by the rules. I’m supposed to leave it at the station, not let it affect me, but, Christ, of course it affects me. Then I go home and I’m moody, snapping, she gets mad, and I…I can’t explain, right? So I left.”
“Ouch.”
“There’s more than that, but…” Another shrug. A gulp of beer.
Doyle nodded and we talked some more, about the case, about his wife. Any hope of circling back to Kozlov was gone, but I didn’t rush to leave. By the end of his third beer, he pushed the mug aside and smiled ruefully.
“Guess this isn’t going anywhere, is it?” he said. “My first shot, and I spend it talking about my marriage.”
I pointed at his ring. “If you’re still wearing that, you’re not ready.” I checked my watch. “I should be getting back soon. My cousins will wonder what happened to me.”
“I should go, too.”
I cast a sidelong glance at his two friends, still at the bar. “You want me to walk out with you?”
A small smile. “If you don’t mind.”
TEN
Doyle walked me to my car in the parking lot, where we talked for another ten minutes before he left.
I unlocked the rental-car door.
“’Bout time,” said a voice to my left. “You shaking down a witness? Or making a new friend?”
“With cops, I’m better at making friends,” I said, turning as Jack slid from a pickup truck’s shadow. “What happened to picking you up at the coffee shop when I was done?”
“Drank enough coffee.”
He started heading toward the passenger door, but I pulled him to a stop and handed him the keys.
“And I drank enough beer.”
I told him what I’d learned.
“I’m betting the rumors aren’t just rumors,” I said. “Maybe not the Russian mob, but Kozlov’s record does scream organized crime. Sporadic arrests, never convicted, then after one conviction, a downhill slide.”
“Washed their hands of him,” Jack said.
“But he may have earned enough clout for them to hire a lawyer for that murder charge. Either way, I shouldn’t be seen poking around Norfolk asking more questions, so maybe you-”
“Put Evelyn on it. We have an appointment.”
“Who-?”
“Called Quinn, too. He’s not talking.”
Jack’s voice and expression were passive, but his hands tightened on the steering wheel as he turned the corner.
“Not talking…? Oh, you mean about the Manson connection.”
“Yeah. Confirmed it. Won’t explain it. Protecting his sources.”
I stared out at the passing streetlights. “This Quinn. He was a cop, too, wasn’t he? Had to be, if he’s your go- to guy for police intel.”
“Not was. Is.”
Cold blasted down my spine as I swiveled to face Jack. “Jack, don’t tell me I’m working with-”
“You aren’t. That’s why.” He paused. “One reason.”
“For not meeting the others, you mean.”
“Yeah. Quinn’s legit. Not working undercover. But you two meeting?” He shrugged. “That cop at the bar? Fine. More police contact? Not if we can help it.”
“In case he recognizes me?”
Jack nodded. It took me a moment to unclog my throat and answer.
“It made national news at home.” My voice sounded odd. Like a newscaster reciting a story that had long since lost emotional impact. “And, yes, it was picked up in the States. But what makes headlines in Canada isn’t a big deal down here. No American cop would have recognized me a month later, and it’s been over six years.”
“That’s what I figured.”
I turned back to staring out the window, into the night. The distant wail of a police siren rose above the rumble of the car. I tracked the sound, wondering if it was coming or going. Unlike everyone else on the highway, I wasn’t glancing in the side mirror or checking the speedometer. For me, the wail of a siren evoked memories of home and childhood, the best and most comforting of both.
I sounded my first siren when I was three. Riding in our town’s Santa Claus parade, tucked into the front seat between my grandfather and my father. Granddad was chief of police. Dad had just made detective. An uncle and an older cousin walked behind the cruiser, stiff in their dress uniforms, struggling not to smile.
I don’t remember ever deciding I wanted to become a cop, no more than my friends consciously decided they would grow up to marry and have children. We simply assumed that was what we would do, what we needed to complete our lives.
I enrolled in police college right out of high school. My brother had already headed off to New York to pursue acting, having never shown any interest in the “family business.” When I graduated, Dad was so proud, he didn’t stop grinning for a month. My mother says it’s a good thing he died three years later, or “what happened next” would have killed him. Maybe she’s right, but I’ll never forgive her for saying it.
“What happened next” began when my partner and I were first to a crime scene. Dawn Collins, fifteen years old, brutally raped and murdered. I’d seen murder victims before. I’d seen far worse cases than this. And yet, when I walked into that room and saw Dawn, naked and curled up in the corner, her dark hair falling over her face, the cord around her neck the only sign she hadn’t just fallen asleep, something in me snapped. Not a loud snap. Not even a hard one. Just a tiny little snip, like someone had flipped off my power switch and I just…shut down. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process. Couldn’t react.
My partner, a seasoned constable nearing retirement, had taken it in stride, presuming I was in shock and just letting me follow him as he processed the scene, calmly explaining each step, and letting me play student bystander. By the time the others arrived, I’d snapped out of it enough to do my job.
That night, the nightmares came. I’d lived with them for over a decade by then and, usually, they were the same images played and replayed-running through the forest, running for help, help for Amy, help that would never come in time. But that night after seeing Dawn Collins, I wasn’t running. I was back in the cabin, a man’s face over mine, features contorted in laughter as I screamed. Screamed in terror, in pain-screamed for Amy, screamed for my father, for anyone.
I woke up screaming. Bathed in sweat. Shaking so badly I had to gasp for breath. Twenty minutes later, two officers from my own precinct showed up at my door, responding to a call from my neighbor. By then, I was calm enough to convince them it hadn’t been me-maybe someone down the hall or a too-loud television. They bought it-even joked about it later, at the station, teasing me about who I’d been having sex with to make me scream so loud. And I laughed with them, because that’s what they expected, and because I knew no one would ever guess the truth. Nadia Stafford was not the kind of girl to wake up screaming from anything.
