With that, she grabbed her coffee cup and headed out of the room. An odd silence filled the bullpen behind her. She shouldn’t antagonize everybody, but, since she’d joined the detective division, replacing Chet, incurring the obvious animosity of the rest of the team, she had instinctively come out swinging, before anybody could get under her skin.
She sipped her coffee and stared out the window, trying to relax. This Jason case was getting to her. She needed to find something, anything to give to the parents, to give to her sergeant, to give to the rest of the team. If she could find a crack, they all would be there to pry it wide open. However without that crack… Damn it. Her sergeant had been beyond upset at her eight cases, and he’d asked her to go deeper, to make sure that there was absolutely no mistake.
The connection was slim, but it was there. The thought that a child pedophile, a serial killer, had been operating for that long here in the city was bad news. The fact that she had been the one to find the connection would also not go down well with her team. Or that she’d kept her finding from them. She knew of and had worked with the Missing Persons Division irregularly, depending on whether their cases overlapped. But, when it came to children, everybody was affected, no matter what department.
When someone behind her called out, she turned and looked at Lilliana. “What’s up?”
“I would ask you that,” she said. Lilliana, ever-perfect, sauntered closer, holding her delicate china mug full of coffee. “You’re even more abrasive than usual.”
“It’s the case. Is that an issue?”
“No,” she said. “We were pretty rough on you, when you first got here, but we thought, by now, things would have calmed down.”
“And they probably will,” she said, “but they haven’t yet.”
“I’m sorry,” Lilliana said. “I was one of the forerunners, who chewed into you pretty good when you first arrived.”
“It’s never easy replacing somebody,” Kate said. “And, in this case, there’s no replacing Chet, but his seat needed to be filled, and I got the job.”
“And we know that,” she said, “and, of course, he was a good friend of ours. Seeing that chair and not seeing the big guy there every day is still really hard for everyone.”
Kate thought it was an apology, but she wasn’t too sure. She listened as Lilliana explained a little more.
“It’s not that you personally weren’t wanted,” Lilliana said gently. “Nobodywas wanted. We even went to the department head and asked if we could operate as is, save the budget, you know, not hiring someone else,” she said, “but they wouldn’t allow us to do that.”
“Ah,” Kate said. “Knowing you’d all rather have no one than me doesn’t help.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Whatever,” Kate said. “You wanted a four-man team. Duly noted.” Inside though, it was nice to get a little bit of give in the relationship between the two of them. She sipped her coffee, and Lilliana continued.
“Technically,” Lilliana added, “we were a seven-man team.”
Kate snorted. “Where have you been hiding the other two? We could use the help.”
Lilliana nodded. “I guess we’re really at six. The five of us and Colby makes six. I can’t count Nix. He’s switched to Darren’s team. Trudy replaced him, who almost instantly got pregnant and keeps extending her maternity leave. We may never see her again either. Von replaced her and got injured on the job. With each surgery, he’s got two months to recover. Once back, he’ll be on desk duty for a while.” She sighed loudly. “So maybe you ought to cut Andy some slack.”
“Why is that?” Kate asked.
“We need him, and he’s still in the hump-and-dump-them stage.”
She stared at her in surprise. “I’m sorry?”
Lilliana shrugged impatiently. “You must have heard about it. You know? After you have a breakup, you have a lot of affairs, just so you feel like you still have it.”
“Glad I missed that stage,” she said in a neutral tone.
“Well, I didn’t,” she said, “and Andy is in it.”
“Okay,” Kate said. “So what then? When he makes digs at me, I’m not allowed to bite back?”
“Actually it’s a good thing you do,” Lilliana said. “We’ll respect you a little more.”
At that, Kate stared at her. “If you say so.” She shrugged and turned to walk away.
“And you’re right about Andy.”
Kate halted, then turned to look back at Lilliana. “What part?”