Chavez put his head in his hands and muttered, “Jesus Christ, Finn…” just as I said, “She’s nineteen, you dick. Chief, this is exactly the sort of thing-”
Before I could finish my sentence, Finn stood up and began shouting that he wouldn’t be called a dick by anyone, and then the chief was shouting at both of us.
I closed my eyes and leaned back and asked forgiveness for what I was about to do.
“Ohhhh,” I moaned, and clutched my belly. Then I gripped the back of an empty chair in front of me and gritted my teeth and held my breath until I could feel my face turning red.
“Gemma, what is it?” Chavez was at my side in a flash. He helped me into the chair and yelled for someone to get a glass of water. I waited a few seconds before replying. Peeking through my eyelashes, I saw that Finn had left the room in disgust.
I grinned into my grimace and relaxed my shoulders. “I’m, I’m not sure, Chief. I just… the room started spinning and I thought I was going to faint.”
Chavez exhaled. “Things got a little heated. I know you and Finn have had your issues in the past, but you two are the best I got. Please, can you put your differences aside? We’ve got a murdered kid who deserves our best. And right now, that’s you two.”
I’ve never walked away from a challenge in my life and implicit in Chavez’s plea was definitely a challenge. “Of course. I’m sorry. I’ll try to refrain from calling him a dick, if he can manage not to act like one for ten seconds.”
“Good girl. And keep up the good work with Sam. I want him involved, but he needs to understand Finn is lead now,” Chavez said.
“You mean I’m lead, and Finn is my partner.”
This close up, I could see the shadows under his eyes, and the fine lines that hadn’t been there a week ago. He closed his eyes now and nodded. “Yes, of course, that’s what I meant.”
“Are you okay, Chief?” I asked. I pushed the glass of water that Moriarty had fetched for me toward him. He looked like he could have used a glass of bourbon instead.
Chavez considered my question seriously. “No, I’m not. To be honest, last night was rough. Terry and Ellen think we should know more than we do by now. They want to know what Nicky was up to the last few years. They don’t understand this Reed kid he became, and this circus life he embraced. It’s a big contrast to the life he gave up and it begs some serious questions. This has made them reexamine how they raised the kids, where they might have gone wrong. You know how important family is to them.”
I nodded. “Those are the same questions we’re asking, Chief. But it takes time. They’ve got to understand that.”
“I think Terry does, but Ellen… she said the family had enough to get through without ‘all of this,’” the chief continued quietly, his fingers making air quotes.
I shook my head in disgust. “Well, that’s too damn bad if finding her son’s murderer is interfering with her husband’s political career.”
“Oh, she doesn’t mean it like that. Honestly, she’s more preoccupied with Terry’s cancer than with the Senate run. I think in her mind, they grieved for Nicky three years ago. Losing a child… well, Gemma, that kind of grief is not the sort of thing you want to go through twice. Ellen is a good woman. You didn’t know her before. She’s given everything she has to Terry’s career. She even invited Terry’s sister, Hannah, to move in and watch the kids. She couldn’t stand the thought of a stranger, someone outside the family, raising her children. But she can’t let herself fall apart again,” Chavez said. He stared off into the distance. “Ellen’s the glue that holds them all together, you see.”
There was something in his voice and eyes that made my blood run cold.
He continued. “She sees herself as a rock for Terry, and more importantly, for Annika.”
Chavez rubbed at his face and then looked at his watch and stood. He went to the door. “I’ve got to let these monkey reporters in and throw them a few bones to gnaw on.”
“Chief?”
He looked back at me as he opened the squad door. Sometime between my faking a heat spell and Chavez’s impassioned defense of Ellen, the room had emptied. We were alone and I took a deep breath and asked him something that I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t let him leave without knowing for sure.
“How long have you been in love with Ellen Bellington?”
I thought he was going to walk out without answering but then his shoulders sagged and, turning his back to me, he answered in a low voice and I wished with all my heart I could take the question back.
“Twenty-seven years, five days, and about fourteen hours,” he said, and he left, closing the door gently behind him.
Chapter Twenty
It was chaos outside the squad room. Our two receptionists desperately tried to herd the pack of cameramen and reporters-about thirty people in all-into our large conference room, where chairs and a podium were waiting.
I wondered why the chief hadn’t held the thing at the more spacious City Hall pressroom, and then I realized the cramped quarters would hasten the proceedings. Especially if Chavez closed the door-that particular conference room, facing east, grew hotter than hell in the morning.
Indeed, already the extra bodies had caused the temperature in the station to rise uncomfortably. I decided the day couldn’t get any worse and then I saw Tessa O’Leary pushing her way through the crowd, her face red as a tomato.
Sam was behind me and I elbowed him. Together we watched her approach.
“You big fat liar. You liar!” Tessa shouted.
She barreled up to me and spoke in a low voice that was somehow worse than the yell, “You liar. You lied to me.”
I backed up a few inches and lifted my hands up, palms out. “Whoa, Tessa. Take it easy. Do you want to talk?”
She took a few deep breaths and then nodded. She noticed the reporters watching her and the color in her face faded from the angry red to a lighter shade of embarrassed pink.
“Let’s go somewhere a little quieter. This is Sam, by the way. Sam Birdshead, he’s one of my colleagues here in the department.”
I led her to one of the interview rooms off the main hallway. Sam followed us. The room was small and windowless, with a low wooden table and two metal chairs. It smelled of sweat and floor polish, like a gym after a high school basketball game.
I took one of the chairs and motioned for Tessa to take the other. Behind her, Sam leaned against the wall and tried to look inconspicuous. I watched her calm down. Her face was free of makeup and her hair was matted in the back in that bedhead style that is somehow both fashionable and sort of gross at the same time. Dried tears left two faint streaks on her cheeks, and her eyes were bright. She looked much younger than her twenty-two years.
I said, “Now, that’s better. I couldn’t hear myself think out there. What was that you called me? A liar? When did I lie to you, Tessa?”
“I’m sorry I called you that, but I thought I could trust you. I thought you were my friend,” she whispered. She started crying again.
Behind her, across from me, I watched Sam grow uncomfortable. He leaned further into the wall as though he wanted to disappear into it, and I got the impression that he, like most men, wasn’t good with attractive, crying women his own age.
“Tessa, you can trust me. I’m not your friend, I’m a police officer, and that’s better, because it is my duty to watch out for you. My sworn duty,” I said. “What did you mean, I lied to you?”
Tessa fidgeted in her seat and picked at one of the designs carved into the wooden table. Over the years, interview subjects and suspects had etched hundreds of sketches and words and doodles using whatever tools they had: pens, pencils, keys, soda can tabs. “Fuck” and “punk” seemed to be the most popular, but swastikas, happy faces, and gang signs were almost as common.