Bodies in Winter by Robert Knightly Page A

have thought I’d be OK with that.’
    Adele’s consequences were mine, just as I’d predicted, but I might have tried to shed them by disowning her. Hey, Bill, I’m not her father. What she does on her own time is her own business. I can’t be with her twenty-four hours a day. Instead, I made a promise I couldn’t keep. I told Sarney that it wouldn’t happen again.
    â€˜I need some idea of where this is going, Bill. Otherwise, me and Adele, we have no choice. We have to follow wherever the trail leads. You can see that, right?’
    Sarney grinned. ‘A couple of hours from now, just in time for the eleven o’clock news, an Inspector named Rita Meyers will make two announcements at a press conference. First, she’ll tell the reporters that the Ballistics Unit has matched the TEC-9 found in the Toyota with fourteen shell casings discovered at the Lodge crime scene. Then she’ll announce that a man named DuWayne Spott, whereabouts unknown, has been named as a person of interest. You understand, Harry, this is the first time a boss has appeared in connection with the case.’
    I’d asked Sarney for a heads-up and he’d complied. I had no beef here. ‘So where does that leave me and my partner, Bill? Do we continue to investigate?’
    â€˜Harry, you can color to your heart’s content, as long as you stay between the lines. Now, there’s one more thing. I’m not stupid. I know you can’t control your partner’s urge to self-destruct. But what I’d like you to do is keep an eye on her. If she jumps the tracks again, I wanna be the first to know.’
    â€˜It’s not that easy, Bill. You’re asking me to spy on my partner.’
    There was an edge to my voice, and I’m sure Sarney heard it. But he wasn’t intimidated. He leaned forward in his chair and lowered his chin until he was looking at me through his eyebrows. ‘Sometimes in life,’ he explained, not unkindly, ‘you gotta watch out for your own ass. If your partner understood that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

ELEVEN
    I t was almost nine before we finally sat down to a meal, this one in a diner several blocks from the precinct. By then, Adele and I were observing a somewhat uneasy truce. Nothing had been resolved, of course, but there was no way, between Dr Nagy and Tony Szarek, we could sit across from each other and not discuss the case. We were cops, after all.
    So we began with something easy: trashing Detective Winnman’s reputation. According to Adele, not only hadn’t he read the lab reports, he’d failed to speak to Szarek’s family and friends, or to conduct a routine canvas of the building. From Winnman, we moved to the Broom, eventually conceding that suicide could not be ruled out, not absolutely, by the ME’s findings. Not that it mattered all that much. For the time being, our hands were tied. Sarney had already told Adele that if the Szarek case was reopened, she and I would not be the investigators.
    Gregorio, our waiter, showed up at that moment with a pair of Heinekens, which he set on the table. Though Gregorio also brought two glasses, Adele and I quickly pushed them to the side. They were still warm from the dishwasher, one of the hazards of ordering beer in a diner.
    â€˜According to Sarney,’ I began, ‘there’s gonna be a press conference tonight, at which a boss named Meyers will tell the world that DuWayne is a person of interest, and that some of the shell casings recovered at the Lodge scene were fired by the TEC-9 found in the Toyota.’
    I watched Adele’s cheeks flame. ‘Ellen Lodge and Jarazelsky are both lying,’ she declared, her tone bitter and contemptuous, ‘and the job is buying into their lies. I went to OCCB this morning and spoke to Sgt Merkovich. DuWayne Spott isn’t a ghetto don, not even close. He’s a pimp and a low-level