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“Of course you do. He was your first partner in the homicide department, after all.”
“We worked together for four years, and I’ve known him four times that long.” Baz Constantine had been the detective who’d investigated the murder of Kit’s sister, sixteen years before. As an angry fifteen-year-old, Kit had assumed the man hadn’t cared about finding Wren’s killer, but she’d soon learned that he cared far too much. He’d encouraged her as she’d grown from that angry teen into a responsible adult, helping her realize her goal of becoming a homicide detective.
She understood why Baz had retired after having a heart attack, though that didn’t make her miss him any less. But wishing he were here wasn’t getting justice for Mr. Franklin Delano Flynn.
“Why did you say the victim ‘supposedly’ pulled the cord at ten a.m. yesterday?” Kit asked.
“Because rigor has fully passed. I would have thought he’d still be in the final stages of resolution, given his musculature. But he is elderly, so we’ll see what we see when I get him on the table.”
“Can you lift his left hand?”
Alicia did so, and Kit frowned. The fingernails on his left hand had also been clipped to the nail bed, but there was also a strip of pale skin on his ring finger where a ring had been. “He was married. I’ll need to find out where his wife is.”
“Husband,” a man said behind her. Kit looked around to see CSU’s Sergeant Ryland holding a photo encased in an evidence bag. “All the photos were out of their frames, the glass shattered. This one was lying on top of the pile, so I grabbed it for you to check out.”
“Thank you.” Kit, hands already gloved, reached for the photo, snapping a picture of it with her phone in case she needed it later. In the photo, the victim and another man stood side by side, the victim’s right arm around the other man’s waist. They wore black suits and brilliant smiles, and each man had his left hand extended, showing off their shiny gold wedding bands. The iconic door of San Francisco City Hall was in the background.
“He’s considerably younger in this photo than he is now,” she said, frowning at the feeling of déjà vu that she got from the picture. “At least ten or twenty years. Any idea of when it was taken?”
“Not yet,” Ryland said. “But there’ll be a record of the marriage.”
So they had a gay man stabbed to death in his own apartment, the place ransacked. They’d have to at least consider the possibility that this had been a hate crime.
She started to hand the photo back, but a memory was struggling to the surface of her mind, so she refocused on the taller of the two men—Mr. Franklin Delano Flynn.
“What’s wrong?” Ryland asked.
Her frown deepened. “I have the feeling that I’ve seen this man before.” She darted a quick glance at the victim’s ashen face as he lay dead on his living room floor, then looked back at the wedding photo. Yes, she’d definitely seen him before.
“Where did you see him?” Ryland asked.
Kit stared hard at the picture, mentally sifting through all the faces and places in her mind, but nothing was clicking. “Can I see the rest of the photos?”
Ryland handed over a stack. “These are the ones we’ve bagged so far.”
Kit examined each one. They were mostly photos of the deceased with his husband, taken in faraway places—Cairo, Rome, Paris. A few featured another couple, a woman and a man, and there were a few with two other women, both elderly.
Nothing here helped. Until she got to the bottom of the stack. Here was a much younger Franklin Delano Flynn, holding up a mug of beer, a somewhat reluctant smile on his face.
“This,” she said softly. “This place. Look at the walls, the pictures.”
Ryland looked over her shoulder, sucking in a surprised breath. “That’s Julio’s.”
Yes, it was. Kit knew this place well. Knew the faces in every photo that hung on its walls. She’d been studying them since the first time she’d entered its battered wooden doors.
The first time…And then the memory snapped into place. “Oh. I was twenty-one and Baz took me to Julio’s for a birthday drink, because I was finally legal.”
“The cop bar,” Alicia murmured. “I’ve never been there.”
“It’s a dive,” Kit said with a fond smile, “but we love it. I remember the day because Baz told me to change out of my uniform—I was still in the Coast Guard then—before he picked me up, because we were going to the bar. I was so excited, because I’d heard so much about it.” She studied the victim’s face in the photo thoughtfully. “This man was there. Baz introduced us.”
“He was a cop?” Ryland asked, his eyes going wide.
“He must’ve been.” Kit drew in a sharp breath, because now she remembered it all. “Oh my God. Not just a cop, Ryland. He’d been a homicide lieutenant, retired for twenty years by that point. I remember being tongue-tied.”
“You were tongue-tied?” Alicia asked, surprised. “No way.”
“In the presence of greatness like this man? Oh yeah. Baz was, too. This guy had been the homicide lieutenant when Baz was still a rookie. Baz talked to him at the bar sometimes. Said he was open and helpful, really encouraging to young cops. Baz considered him something between a mentor and a hero. Baz was so excited when he saw him that day. The man hadn’t been at Julio’s since his retirement. When Baz introduced us, I got chills. I’d read articles about him and he was a kick-ass detective before he was made lieutenant. But his name wasn’t Flynn. It was Wilson. Frank Wilson.”
