Audrey looked at her funny and said, “Didn’t you already get several cups? The guys said you did.” Immediately Audrey broke up, the others laughing too.
Kate shook her head and returned her attention to Colby.
“First order of the day,” he said. “We need to wrap up the file from last night. It’s nice to see an open-and-shut case. It helps our numbers. Send it through, and let’s get that one done with. As for the second one, I understand we still have canvassing to do, so you can pull in two more plainclothes men—or a couple off the beat, if you need to,” he said, “but I want all the information by the end of the day.”
He looked over at Kate. “What about the guy who came in a few days ago? Did you check out all his descriptions?”
She shook her head. “I was only halfway through the list when we caught two live ones, so everything else went to the back burner.”
He looked at the stack of files on her desk and frowned, but she just let him look. She didn’t say anything after a moment, and neither did he. Her sergeant looked around at the other desks, and she knew they were all mostly empty. That’s the way they all rolled. Most of them stuck to the cases that were on their desk because usually enough of them were here to keep them all busy. The often worked the same case but, if not necessary, they worked independently.
She was the eager beaver, poking into things in the past, but then that’s what she did.
“Kate’s looking for a promotion already,” Lilliana said from the background, eliciting a rumble of muted laughter from the rest.
“She might get it too,” Colby said simply. “At least she looks like she’s been busy.”
The others just glared at him, and he smiled. “If anybody’s got any problems, I’m in my office until ten,” he said. “Then I’ve got press meetings after that.”
And, from his tone, everybody knew that was his least favorite way to spend the afternoon. It made her feel better to think that he wouldn’t be enjoying his day any more than she was. She immediately brought up her keyboard and started hacking away at the emails that had come in overnight. A lot of the officers had gone out last night, taking statements and interviewing witnesses.
Well, she had too, but there were just too many to canvass on her own. The interviews were coming in via email. She absolutely loved that system. It gave her a copy of the statement, a name, and a time and date stamp. And, of course, she compounded the issue by printing off all the statements because she was a very visual person. She pulled everything together from the printer.
As she walked back, Audrey poked her head around and asked, “Did you get coffee?”
She stared at her for a moment and pulled out the cases that matched her printed interviews, then shook her head. “Don’t tell me that it’s gone.”
“Not if you get there fast,” Audrey said in her chirpy voice.
Kate snagged her cup, walked around the corner, just to see Owen replacing the empty pot.
He looked at her and laughed. “Jesus, you’re really off your mark today, aren’t you?” he said, as he walked away to give her room.
She made a pot herself. She stood here, guarding it, until it was done dripping. While she was doing that, she went through the pages she’d printed off. Nothing here was different. Nobody had seen anyone else. It was just the two people in the house on a long-term basis, as far as anybody knew.
No visitors, no guests staying over, no boarders, no deliveries, or anybody else in the vicinity. They fought a lot, did drugs a lot, and drank a lot. Nobody was surprised at this end. Knowing that, Kate had no reason to stop this from moving forward. She shut down her mind on this issue but noted a question for herself on the page.
“You ready to let that one go?” Rodney asked. “You know it’s open-and-shut.”
“It’s open-and-shutexceptfor whoever called 9-1-1,” she said.
He stared at her and frowned.
She nodded. “I’ve listened to the 9-1-1 call. He doesn’t identify himself, but he does give the correct murder address and says that our suspect stabbed the victim and that somebody needed to get there before he had a chance to cover up what he’d done.”
“So,” he said, “the caller was probably the husband.”
“It’s not his voice, and he was nowhere near that collected when we were there. If it were him, he used a different phone, as that call wasn’t made from his cell.”
“Remember? The world is a stage, and everybody is in the drama club,” he said. “They let us see what they want us to see and try to tell us whatever story they can tell us.”
“Maybe so,” she said, “but it sucks.”
“Life hasn’t changed at all in the last three months,” he said. “You were a hell of a good cop for years. Now you’re a hell of a good detective. But just because you moved up doesn’t mean the quality of the humans we deal with did.”
She winced.
“What about Jason? Anything on him?”