Chapter eleven

CATHERINE RAWLINGS STEPPED away from the group of residents and looked at the readout on her pager, then walked to a wall phone and dialed the number.

"This is Doctor Rawlings."

"Any chance you're free for lunch?"

Smiling, she turned her back to the hallway and lowered her voice. "Where are you?"

"In the lobby."

She was aware of her heart beating faster and a faint stirring within, and the fact that the mere sound of Rebecca's voice could do that to her was astounding. And a little frightening, too. The newness of anyone affecting her quite so much would take some getting used to. "Damn. I can't. I scheduled an extra patient session right before I have to go to the outpatient clinic. I'm sorry."

"That's okay. I was just in the neighborhood," Rebecca replied quickly. She glanced around the lobby and rolled her shoulders, trying to shake out some of the tension. The frustration she'd felt upon awakening that morning on Catherine's couch just as dawn had begun to cast the room in a gray pall lingered still. She'd opened her eyes, struggled to remember where she was and how she'd gotten there, and finally realized that yet again she had fallen asleep, leaving Catherine hanging. By the time she'd stumbled, still stiff and groggy to the bedroom, Catherine's alarm was going off and they'd barely had time to say good morning before rushing to shower, dress and head off to work. She missed her, and worse, she had the uneasy feeling she was letting down her end of...things. Again. Fuck.

"Dinner?" Catherine asked into the silence. She wanted to ask her if she was working, and what she was doing, and how she was feeling, but she resisted, not wanting to burden this spontaneous moment with her own uncertainty and unease.

"Sure. Page me when you're finished tonight."

"I have patients, and then an appointment. Is nine too late?"

"It's fine." The detective hesitated, then added, "About last night—I won't make a habit of crashing before the appetizers—"

"No, really," Catherine interjected, glancing at her watch. "It's all right. Hell, I have to go—"

"Right. I'll see you later then."

"Yes."

Five floors apart, they each stood still for a moment, holding a phone with only a dial tone, considering the things they had left unsaid.

CSI Chief Dee Flanagan didn't look up at the sound of footsteps approaching across the tile floor of her lab. Carefully, she pipetted an aliquot of fluid containing an emulsion of the material scraped off the bottom of a murder suspect's shoe into a centrifuge tube. If she were right, there'd be trace amounts of a very specific high-grade motor oil in the supernatant that would match the composition of the brand in the victim's Ferrari. Because the murderer stepped in the oil puddle when he'd crossed the garage on his way to crushing in the back of the victim's skull with a tire iron. Not a very inventive means of dispatching his neighbor--a fellow who was apparently spending the afternoons in bed with his wife--but then murder was so rarely clever. The gas chromatography analysis would confirm the match, placing the suspect at the scene. Not enough for an arrest in and of itself, but another link in the chain. Another piece in the puzzle fit neatly into place. Dropping the tube into the centrifuge cradle, still without turning toward the intruder, she said into the quiet room, "I don't have anything for you yet, and I won't for another two hours. If you keep bugging me, it's going to be tomorrow. And don't touch anything."

"I haven't been gone that long," Rebecca remarked dryly, standing as she always did when in Flanagan's lab—with her hands safely in her pockets. "I know the drill."

Flanagan, the forty-year old forensic chief, small and wiry and a head shorter than Rebecca, known to be notoriously short-tempered, turned toward her visitor with undisguised delight. "I'll be damned. Frye." She held out her hand. "Maggie said she saw you at the gym. You back in the saddle?"

Rebecca took her hand, grinning. "Looks like."

"Good. Maybe those monkeys in your division will get some cases solved for a change."

"Thanks—I think."

Flanagan gestured toward a small cubicle adjoing the sparkling, equipment-filled room. "Come on into the office—I know you didn't drop by just to be sociable."

Rebecca followed her. "I need to catch up on a few things. I figured you'd be the one to ask."

Flanagan gave her a wary glance as she settled behind her surprisingly messy desk. In sharp contrast to the rest of her domain, which was obsessively organized, her private office was apparent chaos. However, she knew precisely where every piece of paper, dental model and crime scene mock-up resided, and woe to the unwary cleaning person who dared move anything a micrometer. "You're going to start poking around in things again, aren't you?"

"Just getting up to speed," Rebecca replied neutrally, eying the one chair piled with copies of the Journal of Forensic Pathology and concluding it would be safest to remain standing.

"In the two months you've been gone, Frye, I haven't gotten senile. And the only open case I can think of that you might be interested in is a double homicide that someone would like to see forgotten."

"Two dead cops," Rebecca said softly, her expression darkening. "Jimmy Hogan and Jeff Cruz. I have to ask myself, why hasn't the department been turning the city upside down to find out who killed them? Every day while I lay up there in that hospital bed I waited for someone to come and talk to me about it. One of the Homicide dicks to question me, to fill me in, or to ask me about Jeff's cases. Nothing."

Flanagan nodded as she leaned back in her chair and regarded the tall cop steadily. "I know that Cruz was your partner, but maybe you didn't know him as well as you think."

"Don't play games with me, Flanagan. If you've got something to say, spit it out," Rebecca said, her tone lethally cold. She respected the CSI chief, and over the years had grown to like her, but Jeff Cruz had been her partner. No one came before him in her allegiance; no one except Catherine.

"I'm not the enemy here, Frye," Flanagan pointed out in what was for her a reasonable tone. "You may not realize it, but those homicides are open cases on my books, too. Even if they weren't cops, I'd want to find the perp." When Rebecca didn't reply, but merely regarded her with a flat opaque gaze, she exhaled slowly and continued. "There's been some not so quiet speculation that Jimmy Hogan was dirty. He'd been working underground in the Zamora organization a long time. He had no family, no real friends, and even his bosses didn't always know what he was doing. His files are so thin you can see through them."

"Yeah. He was a perfect undercover agent. For that he gets this from us in return?" Rebecca commented bitterly, expecting no reply. Where is the famous solidarity of the Thin Blue Line now? Bastards.

"But he did call Jeff Cruz. More than once."

"They were training partners when they got out of the academy. Then Jimmy went to Narco and Jeff to Vice. But they had history."

"That may be it, Frye. I'm just telling you what I've heard."

"So what's the theory?" Rebecca asked tiredly. "That Jimmy went bad, enticed Jeff with—what? Money? Jeff and Shelly lived in a starter home, for Christ's sake. He drove a ten year old Mustang."

"Did you get anything solid from Hogan's Intel?" Flanagan asked, ignoring the questions no one could answer.

"Not much," Rebecca admitted. "Supposedly, he had gotten on to something involving the chicken trade. He was going to feed us some names. He never got the chance."

"Or there wasn't anything there to report, and Jeff's meetings with him were a front."

"If that were the case, why would Jeff have even bothered to tell me he was meeting Hogan?" Rebecca countered. "He could have done it all under the table."

"Maybe Jeff was hedging his bets and covering all the bases. Maybe he figured if things went south with Hogan, he could always claim he was working Hogan for information, and just pretended to be rolling over."

"That's bullshit."

"Yeah. I agree with you." Flanagan had the uneasy feeling that Frye was about to fold. Her face was unusually pale, even considering her normally light Nordic coloring, there were faint beads of sweat on her forehead, and her breathing was a bit jerky. In fact, she looked like hell. The criminalist got up and moved around to the front of her desk where she might have a prayer of catching the detective if she dropped. Suggesting that the cop sit down wasn't an option. You didn't tell Frye to take it easy. "Look, Frye. All I'm saying is that's there's a lot going on around their deaths that none of us understand. As far as I can tell, Homicide has backed way off it, and the brass aren't going to be real happy about anyone stirring it up. So—be careful who you talk to, and don't trust anyone."

Rebecca leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, wondering if it had suddenly gotten warmer in the small space. A river of sweat ran between her shoulder blades and she had to blink several times to clear her vision. "I want to see the autopsy reports and your crime scene files."

"I can't give them to you."

"Damn it, Dee." She pushed away from the wall so quickly, Flanagan actually held out a hand to ward off a blow.

"Jesus," Flanagan breathed when Rebecca halted a few inches from her. "I don't have them. The whole file was pulled."

"Who has it?"

Flanagan shrugged. "It says Homicide. I suspect it's IAD. You know they'd be looking into any officer related death. That's SOP."

"You gave them your file?" Her tone was incredulous. No one got a hand on Flanagan's files. Impatiently, she swiped moisture from her forehead and considered taking off her jacket. She moved back a step, putting distance between them, searching for some air.

"Fuck, no," Flanagan said, her composure cracking at last. "The bastards raided my files. I don't know how, but the data are gone."

"Don't you—keep copies, or something?"

"My reports are all computerized, Frye. Supposedly the system backs up automatically. Except it didn't, or someone is lying to me. All I know is that I can't find them, and the idiots who are supposed to know something about this can't tell me jack shit."

Rebecca looked around the office. Motioning with her head toward a computer nearly buried by stacks of folders and reports, she asked, "Is that where you input all your final data?"

"There and substations in the various lab divisions. Serology, Toxicology, Prints—they all enter their findings under the case file number and it gets stored that way."

"But one way or another, it's all generated down here in your section?"

"Yes." Flanagan could see the wheels turning. "Why? You any good with this kind of thing? I tried but nothing worked."

"Not me." Rebecca said with a short mirthless laugh. "But I might know someone. I'll let you know."

"There wasn't much in the file anyhow. There was precious little evidence from the scene. I've got a few of my hand written notes from the first walk through. You're welcome to see them, and I'll tell you anything I can."

"Why get involved?" Rebecca asked, her tone not critical, merely curious.

"Because it's my job."

Their eyes met in a moment of perfect understanding, and for the first time Rebecca smiled. "Thanks, Flanagan."

"Don't mention it. Oh, and Frye?"

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Watch your back."

"Yeah. I'll do that."

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