“I didn’t even notice, sir.”
“Good,” he said, sitting down. “Now, how about you start with telling me what the hell you were doing there and I’ll consider keeping you on as one of my best detectives.”
There it was.
He had reached the end of his rope with me.
“I’ve been in contact with Stanley Dale, who had a hunch that the wife of the murdered businessman Oliver Benoit-Clayton was in fact a black widow. I looked through his research and found links that would make her one. She’s had multiple husbands all mysteriously die a few years after marrying her and so I decided to watch her to see how she reacted only to have her looking for her next husband just the next day. Her interview with me was loaded with innuendo that she did do it, but she hides behind vague responses. You gave me the heave ho to leave her be for now, so I was going to, but Stanley called me to tell me he was at a property of hers. I was worried he would break and enter, so I traveled to where he was only to find the place empty, or so I thought.”
“I’m going to stop you there, Garrick,” he said, holding his hand up. “The amount of rules you broke just in what you’d said already has my blood pressure rising.”
“She is a black widow, Cap. I wouldn’t be staking my career on anything less and you know it.”
“I know you’ve had a lot on these past few years, Garrick, I am sorry for your losses, but to target a woman who isn’t grieving the way you think isn’t the way to go.”
“Why does she hide her property holdings under another name? Why is she already dating someone? Let me pursue it under the radar. I won’t confront her unless I have solid proof and you know that.”
“You lost your wife over this job, Kane. Do you really want to lose your job too?”
It was never good when he used my first name.
“Doesn’t that tell you how much I believe in what I’m telling you?”
O’Leary rubbed his face in frustration. “You make sure you keep under the radar on this and you update me with everything. You can’t work on it full time, you still have cases to solve. Understand?”
“Yes, Cap.”
“I don’t want to hear complaints about you following society members around, okay? I can’t deal with the fuckers over in the DA’s office being antsy. You stay under the radar, yes?”
I nodded. “You know it.”
“Take it easy, Garrick, you don’t need to solve cases on day one.”
“No, but it’s preferable.”
He rolled his eyes as I headed out of the office and toward my desk. Tommy sat at his desk, reading a paper and drinking his coffee.
“That went better than I expected,” I told him.
“He likes you,” Tommy said without looking up. “I’ve never seen him give anyone as many chances as he does you.”
“Maybe if you had a close rate like I do, you’ll get the same treatment.”
Tommy sighed without looking up, but even he knew what I said was true. Ah, to be young and painful again, I thought.
“What do you have open at the moment?”
“Nothing, closed one two days ago. It’s been quiet ever since.”
“You been down to the cold case team?”
Tommy finally looked up at me. “No.”
“If you’re not busy, that’s what you do rather than sit around and look pretty.”
“You’ve been off for a few weeks, why don’t you do it?”
I rolled my eyes and got up, heading down the stairs to the cold case team’s office. It was in a small room full of files. There had been advances in forensics in the last few decades and even just the last few years, but there were so many cold cases where no one wanted to talk so the cases remained cold. If no one was willing to talk, the case wouldn't get reopened and would sit, cold, until it would be deemed unsolvable. They were the ones that drove me crazy the most. I hated not giving answers to grieving parents or spouses, there was just no closure. I knew a little bit about that and if that meant I worked a little harder to get the answer for them, then that’s what I’d do.
