“Did Darlene agree to do it?” Harry asked.
Nick nodded slowly. “Yeah, she did, but not with a lot of enthusiasm. She said she didn’t want to get the dancer into any trouble. You all know what it’s like. Snitches’ll tell you stuff they hear, but they can think up all kinds of reasons not to go in and ask questions. They know doing something like that is risky. Usually you can only get junkies to do it, and only when they need some fast cash to score.” He shrugged. “Anyway, Darlene probably got iced before she ever had a chance to talk to this dancer.”
“But you’re not sure of that,” Harry suggested.
“Well, no. I can’t be sure of it, but I don’t think she did.”
“What are you thinking, Harry?” Rourke asked.
“Another possibility we have to pursue. Right now it’s just a what if.”
Rourke finished the thought for him: “What if she did ask the dancer some questions and the dancer went back and told somebody else.”
“Like the person who iced Bruder,” Benevuto said, grasping the offered straw.
“Oh, come on,” Vicky said. “That’s just a touch sketchy.”
“Yeah, it is,” Harry said. “But I don’t want to ignore it and then find out later we walked right by Darlene’s killer.”
“John and I can check it out,” Nick offered.
“No, you can’t,” Rourke said. “As of right now you’re off the case and on administrative duty. That means you’ll be riding a desk until this is cleared up. I need your reports and your notebook on the Bruder murder and I need Weathers in here to tell us about your computer skills. In the meantime I want your gun. You get everything back after Harry and IAD clear you.”
“IAD? This is bullshit.” Nick tossed his head toward Morgan. “Just because computer boy comes up with some bullshit theory that I altered department records, I get put on the rubber gun squad and my ass gets thrown to the fucking wolves.”
“It’s the way it has to be, Nick,” Harry said. “You know that. I promise you we’ll clear up our end as fast as we can. But as far as IAD goes, it would be the same story for any one of us. Cap’s hands are tied.”
“Bullshit,” Benevuto barked. He placed his gun on Rourke’s desk and glared at each of them in turn. “You’ll have the reports and notebooks before I leave today.” He spun around and headed out of the office.
“Tell John I need him in here immediately,” Rourke said to his back.
After John Weathers had confirmed that his partner’s computer skills began and ended with the power button and the keyboard, they left Rourke’s office and returned to the conference room.
“So where does that leave us?” Harry asked when they were seated around the table.
“I think it leaves us with Nick as a prime suspect,” Vicky said.
Harry looked at Morgan. “And what do you think, Jim?”
Morgan paused, taking time to study the top of the conference table. “All I know is that altering those records wasn’t a big deal,” he said, looking up. “Even if Nick didn’t know any more about computers than he said, if he had come to me I could have walked him through it in five minutes. Look, I hate this crap. I hate dropping a dime on a brother cop. I just didn’t think I could sit on the information when I came across it.”
He had spoken the words with passion, but Harry didn’t believe a word of it. Morgan was an ambitious young cop and Harry had little doubt he’d take whatever came his way if it gave him a leg up on a detective’s shield. “So you’re saying that Nick could have gone to any computer whiz and gotten it written down step by step,” Harry said.
Morgan looked pained by the question. “That’s about it,” he said.
“Well, it’s bullshit.” It was Weathers, his eyes ice now. He turned them on Vicky. “I don’t know what your problem is with Nick. Yeah, sure, sometimes he’s an asshole and he comes on a little strong. And maybe he even did that with you. But I’ve worked with him for three years and he’s a good cop, and there’s no fucking way he’d ice some broad because she turned him down. Hell, if that was the case half the women in the county would be dead by now.”
Vicky held his eyes. “What if he really fell for her, John, and then found out she was picking up guys in bars? And what if he followed her one night and found her getting it off on a beach?”
“That’s a load of crap,” Weathers snapped. “Nick never falls for any woman. All he ever wants is what they have between their legs. I don’t think he even likes women. He told me once that if they didn’t have pussies we’d hunt them like deer.”
“Alright, let’s leave it there,” Harry said, holding up a hand. “Right now we don’t have any choice. Nick’s a suspect until we clear him. I personally think we will, but even then we’ll have IAD to deal with before he’s back working the case. In the meantime, John, you team up with one of the uniforms-you pick who you want-and keep working the case just like you were with Nick. You’re probably going to lose a lot of time talking to IAD, but that can’t be helped. I’ll keep on with the church angle.”
“You still think that’s the strongest lead?” Vicky asked.
“Yeah, I do. At least for now.”
“You want Jim and me to keep investigating Nick?”
Harry noted the skepticism in her voice. “That’s right. And come to me whenever you develop anything new. No matter which way it goes, pro or con. IAD is going to want to look over your shoulders. How much you work with them is up to you, but do not let them impede this investigation.”
“Are you going to work with them?” Weathers asked. His eyes were hard on Harry now.
“I’m going to avoid them like the plague,” Harry said. “If they want me they’re going to have to find me.”
CHAPTER TEN
It was five-thirty when Bobby Joe Waldo left his father’s private office. The outer office was already empty, the secretaries gone; the lights were turned off, but even in the faint light that filtered in through the windows Bobby Joe’s face looked drained of color and a nervous tic was visible at the corner of his mouth. His father’s office staff always left at five sharp so he doubted anyone had heard the old man’s angry shouts. But what difference did it make; they had heard them often enough in the past. He exited his father’s suite and headed to his own office farther down the covered walkway. Bobby Joe’s accommodations as associate minister were little more than a twelve-by-twelve-foot box and lacked any of the amenities his father enjoyed. The view outside his one small window was meager; there was no gracefully landscaped pond to look out upon. Instead there was a remaining patch of the dusty scrub pine woodlot that had dominated the land long before the church complex was built. The office furnishings, while comfortable and adequate, were also run-of-the-mill, a mass-produced desk and chair from a nationwide office supply chain, visitors’ chairs and lamps that could be found in any Wal-Mart, and durable low-end carpeting from Home Depot. It was something that normally rankled Bobby Joe when he left his father’s office and entered his own. Today he ignored it as he slumped into his chair, his hands trembling slightly with a mixture of anger and fear.
His father was way over the top about this cop poking his nose around. And the old man didn’t know the half of it yet. Billy Joe shook his head as that thought settled in. That was the operative word: yet. Because he was pretty sure the old bastard would find out every bit of it. And then all hell would really break loose. Especially when he learned that one of the church’s cars had been in an accident in the parking lot of a Tampa titty bar, and that his own son had paid off the dancer whose car had been hit. Paid her off and never told the old man what happened. And when he put together the fact that the bar had been a regular hangout for Darlene Beckett, well, then the shit would really start to fly.