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“I’m leaving the school now,” she said rather than hello.
“Is our girl okay?”
Falco and Tori were close. That was something else Kerri appreciated about her partner. Tori’s father, Nick Jackman, had moved to New York and started a new family with his second wife—the woman with whom he’d cheated on Kerri. Tori had desperately needed someone to fill the void he’d left. Falco had stepped up to the plate. Kerri couldn’t ask for a better surrogate father for her daughter. Especially since she didn’t have the time or the inclination for any sort of relationship other than family and work.
Not that she would anyway. Allowing herself to trust someone that deeply ever again wasn’t very likely in the foreseeable future.
“She’s okay. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Got it.” He cleared his throat. “I know you have your hands full, but we have a development here.”
Kerri took a moment to reorient her thoughts. She rarely permitted her mind to shift so fully from a case. “You found a witness?”
“Nope, but I found Walsh’s cell phone. It was tucked into his sock like a backup piece.”
Smart guy.That said, sometimes intelligence wasn’t enough to keep you alive. “And?”
“The last call Walsh made was to a number I recognized.”
Kerri braked at an intersection and waited for her partner to say the rest.
“Cross,” Falco announced. “Our dead DDA spoke to Cross at ten o’clock last night.”
Sadie Cross.Now there was a surprising turn of events. Cross was a former BPD detective. She’d worked for the department for more than a dozen years, and then she’d walked away. Everyone said she hadn’t been the same since that last undercover operation. She’d gone missing for nearly a year and come back with no memory of what had happened to her during that time and very little recall of the events that had occurred while she was under deep cover for the four months prior to vanishing. Cross was an odd sort. She rubbed Kerri the wrong way.
But Kerri owed her.
Whatever Cross had to do with this double homicide, Kerri had no choice but to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. She damned sure had no right to cast the first stone.
“You talked to her already?”
“We should do this in person. I can go without you, if that would be better under the circumstances.”
“No. You’re right. We should talk to her together. I’ll pick you up.” Diana, Kerri’s sister, was always more than happy to spend time with Tori. Kerri glanced at her daughter. “I’ll drop Tori by Diana’s for a little while.”
Tori looked at her. She didn’t say a word, but the unspoken demand was written all over her face.
You’re going to leave your traumatized daughter to work on a case?
What kind of mother did that?
4
12:30 p.m.
Sadie’s Loft
Sixth Avenue, Twenty-Seventh Street
Birmingham
Sadie stared at the news flashing on the screen. There had been a double homicide at Leo’s. The victims’ names hadn’t been released yet. Sadie didn’t need anyone to tell her what had happened.
Walsh was dead.
He’d said they would talk this morning about what he’d learned in his meeting with Kurtz, but he hadn’t called. There was no need for her to try calling him. He was dead. She knew it. The only way he wouldn’t have called or shown up this morning was if he was dead.
“Son of a bitch!” She clicked the remote, turning the television screen to black.
