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“You hear anything?” Nick asked. “Anything on the DL?”
“Just gossip and a few details about the scene — shattered driver’s side window, smashed phone, bag still in the car, gun registered to the alleged victim.”Kyle closed the lid to the grill and looked at him. “What’s going on, man? I wanted to call after the hotel thing, but there was too much heat.”
“It’s okay.” Nick was an outsider now. Worse than an outsider, someone who’d once been on the BPD team and who had potentially turned enemy. The irony wasn’t lost on him that while he was labeled the enemy, Richard Delaney, who’d thrown Alexa’s case to enrich himself and move up the ladder with Frederick Walker as his patron, was considered a BPD hero. “I know how it is.”
“So?” Kyle prompted.
Nick looked around out of habit. They were on Kyle’s deck, the fence that surrounded the backyard shielding them from the neighboring houses. “You were right about Delaney. He was dirty.”
Kyle didn’t look surprised. “Don’t say that to anybody else. He’s a hero now.”
Nick understood the hint of sarcasm in his voice. This was how it happened — a cop could be courageous or a coward, he could be smart as a whip or dumb as a brick, a paragon of loyalty or someone who’d sell out his partner for a cup of coffee, but if he was killed, on the job or off, he was a hero forever after.
“I know.” Nick couldn’t keep the bitterness fromhis voice. “Anyway, he was in tight with Frederick Walker. I talked to Linda, Gary Maynard’s wife. She said she always had a feeling something was off about Alexa Nash’s case, said Gary seemed guilty about it right up until the day he died.”
Gary Maynard had been Richard Delaney’s partner when they’d worked Alexa’s car accident, but where Delaney went on to reap the benefits of his fealty to Frederick Walker, Maynard had retired and died of cancer six months later.
Kyle looked at him. “No shit?”
Nick nodded. “But they’re both dead now, so…”
“Fuck,” Kyle said.
Nick took a swig of his beer. “Thing is, it turns out Alexa’s case isn’t the only one that stinks.”
“What do you mean?” Kyle asked.
Nick filled him in on Karen LaGarde’s case, on the drunk driving incident with the baby and its mother. He told Kyle about going to Cuba to meet Allen Clatcher, Frederick’s former driver who’d retired with a payoff similar to Karen LaGarde’s. When he told him about going to Gibraltar to question Erno Kovaks, Kyle stopped him.
“Wait a minute, are you telling me you went to fucking Gibraltar alone after everything you’ve learned about the Walkers?” Kyle asked.
Nick shrugged. “Had to be done. Leland’s election and the AG’s investigation put us in a box — too much attention, too much heat.” Kyle had never asked him if the allegations about MIS were true, if the operation really was hit-for-hire, but in this case, it didn’t matter. The AG’s investigation put the spotlight on them, and that placed a limit on what they could do. “Juska was an unknown quantity. I have to do something, find a way in somehow.”
Kyle shook his head. “Why didn’t you take Ronan? Or even Declan?”
“Didn’t know what I was going to find.”
Kyle tipped his beer at Nick. “Exactly.” He set down the beer and lifted the lid to the grill.
Nick’s stomach turned over at the smell of the cooking meat. He couldn’t think about eating, couldn’t think about sleeping, couldn’t think about anything except the fact that Alexa was somewhere he couldn’t reach her, somewhere he couldn’t help her.
Kyle started pulling the meat off the grill, setting the hot dogs on a plate. “What can I do?”
“I need to know if anyone at the department’s showing unusual interest in Alexa’s disappearance,” Nick said.
Kyle glanced at him and started pulling the burgers. “Unusual interest?”
“Alexa’s parents filed a police report about her disappearance, but you know how that goes,” Nick said. “They’re not going to touch it until at least twenty-four hours pass, especially with Alexa’s history of therapy and the mess at the AG’s office.”
“So why would anyone be interested?” Kyle asked.
“That’s my point,” Nick said. “If this is a garden-variety adult disappearance, no one in the department will be giving it a second thought. Not yet.”
Kyle nodded in understanding. “If someone is, it might be a line on someone working with Frederick Walker.”
“That’s the idea.”
Kyle covered the hot dogs and hamburgers with foil, turned off the grill, and faced Nick. “Leland Walker is a United States Senator now.”
