Kat sat low in the corner, out of sight. Monte Leburne was awake now, his head lolling back on the pillow. He started calling Nurse Steiner Cassie—the name of his sister who died when she was eighteen. He started talking about how he wanted to see her when he died. Kat marveled at how Nurse Steiner seemed to lead him further and further down the path she wanted him to travel.
“Oh, you will see me, Monte,” Nurse Steiner said. “I will be waiting on the other side. Except, well, there could be issues with the people you killed.”
“Men,” he said.
“What?”
“I only killed men. I wouldn’t kill no woman. Not ever. No women, no children, Cassie. I killed men. Bad men.”
Nurse Steiner shot a glance toward Kat. “But you killed a police officer.”
“Worst of them all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cops. They ain’t no better. Don’t matter, though.”
“I don’t understand, Monte. Explain it to me.”
“I never killed no cop, Cassie. You know that.”
Kat froze. That can’t be right.
Nurse Steiner cleared her throat. “But, Monte—”
“Cassie? I’m sorry I never defended you.” Monte Leburne started to cry. “I let him hurt you, and I didn’t do nothing to help.”
“That’s okay, Monte.”
“No, it’s not. I protected everyone else, right? But not you.”
“It’s over. I’m in a better place now. I want you to be here with me.”
“I protect my family now. I learned. Dad was no good.”
“I know that. But, Monte, you said you never killed a cop.”
“You know that.”
“But what about Detective Henry Donovan?”
“Shh.”
“What?”
“Shh,” he said. “They’ll hear. It was easy. I was toast anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“They already had me for killing Lazlow and Greene. Dead to rights. I was going to get life anyway. What’s one more, if it provides, you know what I mean?”
A cold hand wrapped itself around Kat’s heart and squeezed.
Even Nurse Steiner was having trouble keeping her tone even. “Explain it to me, Monte. Why did you shoot Detective Donovan?”
“Is that what you think? I just took the fall. I was already toast. Don’t you see?”
“You didn’t shoot him?”
No answer.
“Monte?”
She was starting to lose him.
“Monte, if it wasn’t you, who killed him?”
His voice was far away. “Who?”
“Who killed Henry Donovan?”
“How should I know? They visited me. Day after I got arrested. They told me to take the money and the fall.”
“Who?”
Monte’s eyes closed. “I’m so sleepy.”
“Monte, who told you to take the fall?”
“I should have never let Dad get away with it, Cassie. What he did to you. I knew. Mom knew. And we didn’t do nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Monte?”
“So tired . . .”
“Who told you to take the fall?”
But Monte Leburne was asleep.
Chapter 7
On the drive back, Kat kept both hands on the wheel. She focused hard on the road, too hard, but it was the only way to keep her head from spinning. Her world had keeled off its axis. Nurse Steiner had again warned her that Monte Leburne had been disoriented under the medication and that his claims should be viewed with a strong dose of skepticism. Kat nodded as the nurse spoke. She understood all that—about disorientation and unreliability and even imagination—but she’d learned one thing as a cop: Truth has its own funky smell.
Right now, Monte Leburne reeked of truth.
She flipped on the radio and tried to listen to angry talk radio. The hosts always had such easy answers to the world’s problems. Kat found their simplicity irritating and thus their shows, in an odd way, wonderfully distracting. Those who had easy answers, be they on the right or the left, were always wrong. The world is complex. It is never one-size-fits-all.
When she arrived back at the 19th Precinct, she headed straight to Captain Stagger’s office. He wasn’t there. She could ask when he’d be back, but she didn’t feel like drawing attention to herself quite yet. She settled on sending him a quick text:
Need to talk.
No immediate reply, but then again, Kat hadn’t expected one. She took the stairs up a level. Her current partner, Charles “Chaz” Faircloth, stood in the corner with three other cops. When she approached, Chaz said, “Well, hey there, Kat,” stretching it out so that even these benign words carried a sarcastic edge. Then, because Chaz was funny like this, he added: “Look what the Kat dragged in.”
Sadly, the men with him actually chuckled.
“Good one,” she said.
“Thanks. Been working on my timing.”
“It’s paying off.”
Oh man, she was so not in the mood for him right now.
Chaz wore an expensive, chintzy, perfectly tailored suit, the kind that glistens as though wet, a tie Windsored by someone who had too much time on their hands, and Ferragamo shoes that brought to mind that old adage about judging a man by the shine of his shoes. The adage was crap. Guys who always shined their shoes were usually self-involved asswipes who figure superficiality trumps substance.
Chaz had the waxy, pretty-boy good looks and almost supernatural charisma of, well, a sociopath, which Kat suspected he was. He was a Faircloth, yes, one of the Faircloths, a loaded and well-connected family whose members often played at being cops because it looked good when they ran for public office. Still keeping his eye on her, Chaz whispered a little joke to the guys, probably at her expense, and the group dispersed with a laugh.
“You’re late,” Chaz said to her.
“I was working a case for the captain.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Is that what they call it?”
What an ass.
With Chaz, everything was a double entendre that bordered on, if not crossed into, harassment. It wasn’t that he hit on women. It was that his entire personality was hitting on women. Some men are like this—they communicate with all females as though they’d just met in a singles bar. He couldn’t talk about what he had for breakfast without making it somehow smarmy, as though you’d just had a one-night stand and cooked it up for him.
“So what are we working on?” Kat asked.
“Don’t worry. I covered for you.”
“Yeah, well, thanks, but do you mind filling me in?”
Chaz gestured toward her desk, flashing emerald-stone cuff links. “The files are all there. Have at it.” He checked his oversize and too-shiny Rolex. “Gotta bounce.”
He strutted out with his shoulders back, whistling some lame tune about shorties in a club. Kat had already spoken to Stephen Singer, her immediate superior, about getting a new partner. Once Chaz heard about her request, he’d been shocked, not so much because he really liked Kat but because he could not fathom how this woman—or any woman—hadn’t fallen under his spell. He reacted by turning up the charm, sure that there was no woman anywhere in the free world he couldn’t bend to his whim.
With his back still facing her, Chaz waved a hand up and said, “Later, babe.”
Not worth it, she told herself.
There were more important issues at hand. For example: Could Monte Leburne have been telling the truth?
What if they had had it wrong all these years? What if her father’s killer was still out there?
It was almost too overwhelming to consider. She needed to unload, to talk to someone who had known all the players and the situations, and the first name to come to mind, the first person who popped in her head, God help her, was Jeff Raynes.
She glanced at the computer on her desk.
First things first. She brought up every file on Monte Leburne and the murder of Detective Henry Donovan. There was a ton of material. Okay, fine. She could read it tonight at home. Of course, she had already read it a hundred times, but had she ever gone into it with the supposition that Monte Leburne was a fall guy? No. Fresh eyes. She would read it with fresh eyes.