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Falco shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
He’d told Kerri as much as he knew about Sadie Cross’s story. Deep cover cop. Things had gone to hell, and she’d ended up damaged goods. Apparently, she and her father were not on good terms. He didn’t approve of her lifestyle, Kerri imagined. She didn’t have to know the man to recognize he likely approved of very little. Since Cross was an only child, he had no doubt attempted to mold her into something that resembled his image.
Clearly, he had failed miserably.
Then again, Kerri wasn’t exactly the perfect parent. She had no right to judge anyone else. Except that she already disliked Mason Cross. Immensely.
While they waited, Kerri wandered around the space. There were windows facing the street. None that overlooked the alley, thus the cameras. Cross kept the blinds closed tightly. Her furnishings were sparse and had seen better days. The kitchen area was more a kitchenette with a small peninsula skirted by a couple of stools. A television. Music system. All looked to be from the previous decade. A movable whiteboard—the type on legs with wheels—she likely used for cases stood in the corner near the door. Lots of filing cabinets lined the wall, fronted by a massive wooden desk that might actually be an antique. The top was cluttered with papers and file folders. An empty whiskey bottle lay on one end. No glass or cup.
This would certainly explain the megahangover.
The bathroom door opened, and Sadie Cross emerged, dark hair wet, clothes as wrinkled as the ones she’d been wearing before her shower.
“Pour me a cup, Falco.”
Judging by the urgency in her voice, Kerri figured she felt on the threshold of death’s door. Since Kerri was closer to the counter, she grabbed a mug and the carafe and poured the hot liquid.
Cross came straight to her and took the mug. It wasn’t until after she’d finished off the first cup that she spoke. “I haven’t heard anything new from my sources. I told you why Walsh was talking to me. I said I’d call you if I had anything new, but I don’t. What is it you want from me?”
Falco kicked off the questioning. “You and Walsh were working on an off-the-record case.”
“I told you that already,” Cross growled.
“Like I told youalready,” Falco said, “we saw the case board he’d made in the back of his closet. Whatever the two of you were doing was a lot bigger than you led us to believe.”
Kerri added, “It was dangerous, and it’s likely the reason he’s dead.”
That part was a no-brainer.
Cross poured another cup of coffee, took a breath before meeting Kerri’s gaze. “I’m not stupid, Devlin. I know he’s dead because of me. I told him what he was doing was dangerous, but he didn’t listen.” She walked over to the whiteboard near the door, pulled it aside, and gestured to the wall. “Look familiar?”
Kerri moved to her side and stared at the wall, which looked very much like the one in Walsh’s room at his aunt’s. Sticky notes, photos, newspaper articles were stuck to the wall. The name that jumped out at Kerri wasOsorio.
“This is the operation you were working on when you disappeared,” Falco said, his gaze roving over the notes and photos. “I remember it was all over the news when the son, Eduardo, disappeared.” He turned to Cross. “That was months—close to a year—before you resurfaced.”
Cross cradled her mug. “And these”—she gestured to the wall—“are the pieces I can remember from those lost months. Everything else is a fog.”
“How did you and Walsh meet?” Kerri decided Falco was right. Walsh and Cross obviously had a thing. He’d been digging around for information about the cartel, and he’d discovered the operation from four and a half years ago. What better way to learn details than by getting close to a member of that op?
“He came to me.Like I said.” Cross’s attention remained on the many fragments of her past she’d lost. “He claimed he’d come to Birmingham for a purpose: to stamp out the Osorio cartel’s connections here.”
So the hotshot had an agenda after all,Kerri mused.
Falco scoffed. “Did you remind him how many have tried?”
Cross grunted. “He was well aware.”
“Why?”
Cross looked to Kerri. “Why what?”
“Why the Osorio cartel? Why Birmingham? Why do this off the record? We’ve found nothing in Walsh’s background that gives us any sort of motive.”
The last part was the big question in Kerri’s opinion. As a part of the district attorney’s office, Walsh would certainly want to see that crime was stamped out—that justice prevailed and the law of the land was upheld. It was the whole purpose of the DA’s office. Why now? Why here?Whythis particular criminal element? Where was the fire that fueled his passion? The match that lit the fire? Something or someone had to have triggered his decisions.
Cross shrugged. “No clue. All I know is I never met anyone who wanted to stamp out the big drug sources—particularly the Osorio cartel—more than Walsh. Whatever his motives, he was over-the-top antidrug.”
She turned and walked away from the wall of fragmented memories. Poured herself a third cup of coffee and focused on downing it.
