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He said, “I wonder if you’d have a drink with me sometime? It’s okay if you say no. I understand. I know this out of left field…”
“Will,” she interrupted, “I’d love to.”
Chapter Ten
“God damn you.”
Will glared at Dodds as the entire homicide unit erupted in applause and laughter.
“I didn’t even know who you were dialing at first.”
“You may call me J.C. the matchmaker,” Dodds said, a smug grin on his face. “You were too much of a chickenshit, so I had to do it for you.”
“Asshole. And stop that ‘Mister President’ shit. Now where do I take her?”
“Palm Court,” came one suggestion behind his back.
“Too formal,” Will said. “What will that make her think?”
“I dunno,” Dodds said. “Like you have class? How about the Precinct? Historic old police station, cop motif, all that.”
“Across the river,” Lieutenant Fassbinder said. “Nice view of the city.”
It felt good to be back in homicide again, in the fifth-floor offices leased from the county in the art deco tower at 800 Broadway that once housed the Cincinnati Times-Star newspaper. The old energy, the familiar faces, now everyone fueled with the adrenaline to catch whoever killed Kristen Gruber. Her name was written in red capital letters on the big white board that tracked the progress of the year’s homicide cases: unsolved. Immediately above it, also in red, was Jeremy Snowden, the cellist. That call early that morning seemed like a
lifetime ago. In fact, the board had half a dozen names in red. All unsolved cases. The unit was already stretched.
Still, everyone was eager for a piece of this case. It was a murdered cop and, thanks to the television show, also a dead celebrity. Will went through the same briefing he had given the commanders before their press conference. Much was being held back, including that Gruber’s purse or wallet, cell phone, badge, and gun were not on the boat. Her keys were missing. The divers brought out sonar to search the river bottom for the firearm. Her clothes were aboard, neatly folded, but her panties were missing.
“Maybe a trophy taker,” Slamowitz theorized, picking his teeth as usual.
“Maybe she didn’t wear panties.” This from Kovach, who was one year from retirement and smiling for the first time Will could remember.
Fassbinder told LeAnn Skeen, the only woman in the unit, to be on the first morning flight to Myrtle Beach to interview the parents. Will knew he was reasoning, from experience, that a female detective would be better at coaxing information out of a grieving mother and father.
“Take your bikini,” Dodds said.
“I’d use one of yours, J.C., but your man-boobs are too big,” she said.
“Meet me at the Hustler store, baby.” He smiled lasciviously.
“Stop it, children,” Fassbinder said, “or I’m going to have a sexual harassment claim on my hands, probably filed by Dodds.”
“Always keeping the black man down,” Dodds said in mock severity.
For these minutes the unit had the snug feel of the old days. Amazingly, his old desk across from Dodds was empty, too, as if waiting for him. Dodds still had the homey needlepoint sign on the cluttered desktop that said, “Our Day Begins When Your Days End.” But everything had changed. Will had spent ten years in this office and now he felt like a stranger. He was off homicide and his real desk was over at headquarters. And even though he had received a round of applause when he walked in tonight, his first appearance there since getting out of the hospital, he knew they no longer really considered him one of them. He was the PIO, the guy on television, the one who walked with a cane. He sensed that at least some of his former colleagues wondered why the hell he was the lead on this case. He wondered the same thing. But he had cleared too many murders for this to be anything but an awareness leavened deep in the collective consciousness of a group used to working together.
With Covington detectives checking Gruber’s phone records, Fassbinder sent Kovach and Slamowitz to interview the other two officers featured on LadyCops. “Find out if they know whether she had a boyfriend,” Will said and regretted it. They knew that.
Schmidt was dispatched to the Seven Hills Marina, where Gruber moored the boat. Would her car be in the parking lot? Someone would need to look into cases she had worked. Will volunteered. But first, he set off for the home of a dead cop.
***
Kristen Gruber lived in a high-rise condo at the end of a long cul-de-sac that ran off McMillan Street. It was on a palisade overlooking the Ohio River at the edge of Walnut Hills, a short drive east from downtown. Walk a few blocks and you’d be in the heart of a ghetto. But this street was quiet, empty and framed by trees, the remnants of the thunderstorm still dripping off the leaves. The storms had moved east, leaving the air smelling of rain. Will sat in his unmarked car, driver’s window open to the damp night air, waiting for the Covington detective. Cheryl Beth Wilson was way too much on his mind. He had been so nervous he hadn’t even asked what she was doing now that the hospital had closed. Did she think he was rude? And what if something did develop between them? His body was different now. Could he perform as a man? He gently pushed her face out of his mind, flipped on a flashlight, and began reading Kristen’s personnel jacket.
She was thirty-four years old, five-feet-seven, one-hundred-thirty pounds, single. She had joined the force ten years ago after graduating from the University of Cincinnati. After four years on patrol, she had joined Central Vice, then became PIO. The jacket held a slick folder used to promote LadyCops. Inside that was a color eight-and-half-by-eleven photo of Kristen, wearing a black T-shirt, black flack vest emblazoned with “POLICE,” and a smile with perfect teeth and seamless confidence. The other two officers on the show were uniforms, one white with brown hair, the other black and average-looking. Neither had the fine looks of Kristen.
Gruber’s record looked almost too clean: No excessive force complaints, no shootings, not even an accidental firearm discharge. She had plenty of commendations. Will flipped through the supervisor reviews: “proactive,” “highly effective,” “diffused dangerous situation,” “dedicated,” “tough,” “unrelenting.” Will knew some of these sergeants and lieutenants, and a few were still back in the Stone Age about female officers. They would be much more likely to grade her hard. Yet she uniformly won them over. That and the all-American-girl face: an Ivory Soap complexion for Ivory’s hometown. He remembered her from the academy: even then she seemed like a comer.
