“I’ve got tissues.” George chuckled in dark amusement.
“You’re the best!” Andi beamed and attacked the last intact piece of the pen.
Because they hadn’t heard back from Shireen, they updated their preliminary reports. Before he met George, Andi had always procrastinated doing this until the very end of a case, keeping track of everything with countless Post-its and random notes. George liked things to be neat, and after their third case, Andi had grumpily admitted to himself that writing the report during the inevitable lulls in an investigation was much better than doing it at the end, where it always seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.
On their way home, George stopped at a deli and insisted they buy the ingredients for a quick pasta dish, because according to him, the contents of Andi’s fridge and pantry were “a sad affair.” Andi didn’t protest, simply made sure he was the one to pay for everything. It gave him the feeling of making a contribution worth mentioning besides just wolfing down whatever George whipped up in the kitchen.
George cooked for them both while Andi went into the garden to get rid of the two piles of dog poo the flies were going crazy about. If he ever caught the dogs—and their owners—who invaded his garden on a regular basis, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.
Dinner was tranquil, the two of them stuffing their faces with gusto after a long day. Afterward George stayed for a cup of chamomile tea and some college basketball game between two teams Andi had never heard of. George on the other hand seemed to be fully invested, groaning and shouting at the TV as if he were the coach. It gave Andi something to focus on, and by the time George left, the constant humming ofeverythingin his mind was down to a soft background noise he could easily ignore. He managed to get into bed and to fall asleep before George’s soothing impact lessened, which was more than he could say about most of his nights.
THE NEXTmorning Chief Norris called them into her office again, her expression thunderous. They didn’t even have time to properly close the door when she started barking at them. “Why wasn’t I informed immediately that the case is solved?”
Andi glanced at George, who shrugged before he answered the chief. “Because it isn’t solved.”
“Your own preliminary reports suggest otherwise, and Miss DuPont’s report says she found proof for an assassination contract for the three victims. This looks all very clear-cut to me, Detectives, and I’m wondering why you didn’t tell me the moment you knew.” Her voice was full of suspicion and anger, and Andi realized the chief honestly thought they were out to get her. He didn’t know what annoyed him more, the fact that she judged him and George by her own shortcomings or that she actually went to the trouble to read the reports on an ongoing case. It only confirmed how much she didn’t trust them, because she had certainly not done it to be able to help them out. Andi geared up to finally tell her what exactly he thought of her, her methods, and her abilities as chief. He didn’t care that this would most probably cost him his badge because he was angry enough to spit nails. Only George’s hand on his lower arm stopped him from tearing the chief a new one.
“Our preliminary reports are just that—preliminary. As for Shireen’s report, yes, she did find a contract for the three victims on the darknet, and the man we apprehended yesterday was the assassin who took the contract, but he didn’t do it. Somebody else beat him to it.”
“He confirmed the kill and took the money.” The chief’s eyes narrowed. “Sounds very obvious to me.”
“It did to us as well.” George nodded with a serious expression, as if he perfectly understood and agreed with her. “That’s why we chased him.” What was meant to be a conciliatory gesture to soothe the chief had the opposite effect. Andi could practically see the cogs in her head turning.
“What made you doubt the obvious, then?” The sarcasm in her voice made Andi’s hands itch for his gun. Not that he would ever use it on her…. Perhaps he would. Making her disappear would be easy as well, he knew just the right place….
George glanced at him. His left eyelid was twitching a little, a sure sign he didn’t like what he was about to do—lie. Because he could hardly tell Chief Norris that the moths at the lake had told Andi it had been two females. For reasons Andi had trouble understanding, George didn’t like to lie about hisgeschenk. He had no problems bending the truth out of shape until it was barely recognizable anymore, but he hesitated when it came to telling an outright untruth. In the course of his life, Andi had had to lie so often, it came to him as naturally as being honest.
“When we interrogated him in the hospital yesterday, we realized he didn’t know any details about how the victims were killed.” The first lie. Holway had said something about his hacker getting him the report. “After we put some pressure on him, he agreed to tell us the truth if we put in a good word with the DA. He even made us write down what we would be trying to negotiate and sign it. Made us send a picture of it to his lawyer as well. Also it’s in his best interest to find the real killers, which strengthened our suspicion that he’s not our guy.”
For a few blissful moments there was absolute silence. A silence during which Andi prayed the chief would never find out that Holway had hacked the coroner’s report. Lying was an art, and George still had to learn its finer points. Like keeping information to an absolute minimum and staying as vague as possible with everything he said.
Unfortunately, the short reprieve didn’t last. After some quiet fuming, Chief Norris came back louder and more annoying than before. “Let me get this straight. You had a perfect suspect with undeniable proof, in written form, from a site so disreputable every jury would have convicted him for that alone, in a high-profile case youknowthe mayor is pressuring me about, and you promised the man afucking deal? You offered him an out?” Her voice was reaching a higher register with each word.
“He didn’t do it. We want the real killer to be brought to justice.” George’s tone, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more collected.
“Do I look like I care? I want this case closed. And you will close it with Daniel Holway as the killer of the three victims. I don’t care what kind of deal you made with him, or what information he gave you. I’m going to call his lawyer and inform him it’s irrelevant, that the DA won’t go for it. You two will write a report stating Daniel Holway was hired to kill the three men, and once the client who ordered the hit is available you will arrest him. End of story.”
George opened his mouth to protest, and Chief Norris silenced him with an impatient gesture of her hand. “End. Of. Story. This is an official order. And don’t you dare go behind my back again.” She pointed at the door. “I believe you have some writing to do.”
Again Andi considered risking his career just to have the satisfaction of telling Norris what a waste of a uniform she was. George dragged him out of her office before he had his opening sentences lined up. He did slam the door on his way out, a small comfort he enjoyed.
They went back to their desks, where George got his keys. “Let’s get some coffee and tea before you explode.”
THEY FOUNDa free table at their favorite café, where they ordered tea and blueberry muffins. When the muffins were nothing but a nice memory, not even some wayward crumbs indicating they had once been in existence, George woke his smartphone. He swiped his thumb over the screen a few times, his brows furrowed in concentration.
“The cliff notes. How did the meeting with the chief go?”
Andi groaned. “She ordered us in, started yelling immediately because she somehow thinks we’re as rotten as she is and would keep vital information from her. Then she gave us a direct command to ignore the facts regarding the case and declare an innocent man—no, let me rephrase that, declare a seasoned contract killer who isn’t guilty of the particular crime we’re investigating—to be the killer. She refused to listen to reason or look at the evidence with an open mind, either because she doesn’t want to or because she’s so ill-fitted for her post she can’t even be trusted to work with evidence and insisted we close the case with Daniel Holway as the killer, which leaves us in very much the same fucked-up situation as it was with Castain, forcing us to either ignore evidence or her orders.”
George’s thumbs were flying over the screen for a few moments longer. When he was done, he put the phone down. “We will have to go behind her back again.” He didn’t sound too happy about it.
Andi shrugged. “Or we could just leave it be. I’m sure Holway will be gone sometime soon, and finding him again will be very hard. He was the one who claimed the kills, so it’s not like we’re pinning them on him against his will, and it would solve our other problems as well. The chief would be off our backs, the case would be officially solved, which is good for our statistics, and we could leave this mess behind us.”
“I hate myself for even contemplating it.” George took a long sip from his tea.
“Why?” Andi cocked his head. He knew George’s moral compass was a lot straighter than his own, but he wanted to understand what exactly it was that motivated his partner.
George hesitated, his expression suggesting he was thinking hard about Andi’s question. It was one of the things Andi truly liked about George. The man tended to think before he spoke, never taking anything, not even his own beliefs, for cast in stone.
