“Changing the subject?” Kinsley flashed him a smile.
“Don’t tell me Thompson kicked you out of homicide,” Wally jested as he reached forward to press the fourth-floor button. He was too late, regardless, because the elevator had already reached the fifth floor. The doors slid open with a chime. “What did you do this time?”
“Not a thing, thank you very much,” Kinsley replied, stepping off the elevator. “Toby and I commandeered the large conference room up here. We need the space to sort through everything we’re pulling from the Bell case.”
She turned and held the door with her hand before it could close, struck by a thought that wouldn’t let her step away.
“Why are you stopping in on the fourth floor?”
“Thompson asked me to drop by.” Wally shrugged, his expression suggesting genuine uncertainty about the purpose. “Didn’t say what for, though.”
A ripple of unease moved through Kinsley’s stomach. Captain Thompson rarely requested face-to-face meetings with the medical examiner unless there was a development in an active case that required coordination between departments. She mentally reviewed what was currently on the docket, running through the open investigations she was aware of, andcame up short. There weren’t many cases that would warrant pulling Wally in for an unscheduled conversation.
“One of Shane’s cases? The domestic homicide from last weekend?”
“I have no idea, but if this is about the city budget, I’m not walking back my request for upgraded autopsy tables, better forensic tools, and new imaging equipment.” Wally crossed his arms with the stubborn conviction of a man who had been fighting this battle for years. “The old stuff is barely functional. I told the finance committee last quarter that I’m one equipment failure away from having to perform autopsies with a kitchen knife and a flashlight.”
Kinsley hesitated, searching his expression for any indication that the impromptu request from Thompson might be connected to her. To Gantz. To anything she couldn’t afford to have examined by the county medical examiner. Finding nothing in Wally’s open, unconcerned face that suggested he was being summoned about her, she slowly withdrew her hand, gave him a small smile, and allowed the doors to close.
She stood staring at the scuffed metal of the elevator doors for longer than she intended, the weight of Shane’s continued absence pressing against her more acutely than it had yesterday. It had been a full week since their confrontation about Gantz, a week of silence and avoidance that had settled into a pattern she couldn’t see a way to break.
His desk had shown signs of occasional use, a moved file here, a fresh coffee ring there, but she hadn’t seen him face-to-face since he’d stood on her porch. She’d hoped enough time would have softened his position or at least prompted him to acknowledge her existence beyond the barest professional courtesy.
So far, the silence held.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing in front of the elevator, lost in thoughts she couldn’t afford, when the soft chime startled her back to the present. The doors slid open, and one of Stretch’s junior technicians stood inside the car, clearly surprised to find her standing inches from the threshold.
She stepped back instinctively, but not before noticing that he was holding a clear evidence bag containing two cassette tapes.
“Detective Aspen, I was just coming to find you.”
“Perfect timing.” Kinsley forced a smile and extended her hand to receive what she hoped was processed evidence. “All done with those?”
“Yes, but you should know that we discovered an additional set of fingerprints on these two,” the technician replied before relinquishing the evidence bag. “They don’t match the foreclosure crew or anyone we’ve already cataloged. We’re running the prints through the system now.”
“Thanks, Les.” Kinsley glanced down at the cassette tapes through the clear plastic, turning the bag over in her hands. “Anything back yet on the prints found on the duffel bag?”
“Yes, actually. They match a male subject by the name of Todd Kusman. I went ahead and?—”
“Todd Kusman?”
“Yes,” Les responded, pulling back slightly when she slapped his upper arm in victory.
“There are donuts in your future, Les.”
“You—”
Kinsley didn’t give the technician time to finish. She was already moving down the hallway, her pace quickening with renewed purpose. Todd Kusman’s fingerprints on the duffel bag. The same Todd Kusman who had claimed to be in a hurry to join the block party the night Iris died, too much of a hurry to notice a front door standing wide open directly across the streetfrom his own house. The same Todd Kusman who had arrived home suspiciously early during his wife’s interview, and whose entrance had carried the urgency of a man who knew exactly what was being discussed in his living room. His prints on the bag didn’t prove he’d killed Iris, but they proved he’d touched the container that held ten thousand dollars in blackmail money.
When Kinsley pushed open the heavy conference room door, the scale of the operation inside gave her pause.
Toby had outdone himself.
Four uniformed officers sat around the massive oak table, each wearing headphones connected to vintage tape recorders that had probably been unearthed from the station’s basement storage. Some standard size, and others miniature.
The officers typed on department laptops that had seen far better days, occasionally rewinding the recorders to catch details they’d missed, their faces set in the concentrated expressions of people doing tedious but important work. The air had the stale quality of a room that had been occupied for hours, and two empty pizza boxes sat on a side table next to a cluster of coffee cups.
On the far side of the room, Toby stood before three large whiteboards that had probably been wheeled in from various departments. Each was covered with names, dates, connections, and potential motives, written in different colors of marker that Kinsley assumed corresponded to a system he’d devised.
