The Thomas Blume Series

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

We exited Kinsey’s office and headed back down the hall, hanging a left that led to a series of other offices and three interrogation rooms with an atmosphere I knew all too well. The layout was familiar even if the building was new. I couldn’t even start to guess how many hours I’d spent in similar places, trying to break suspects down.

These were the rooms that saw blood, sweat, and tears—literally. As we passed them, I was hit by a stab of macabre nostalgia.

Rey led me into the review room where two flat screen TVs were bolted to the wall. They were modern replacements for the much older ones that had been there the last time I’d been in an observation suite. Rey grabbed a remote from the desk in the room and punched a series of buttons. A grainy, color image popped up, revealing what was going on in Interrogation Room #2.

As the image appeared, I took a calming breath. A man sat behind a small table—the same small table that featured in countless police dramas on TV and movies. The man was lean with a shaved head and strong features, but he gave away nothing of what he was thinking. Alone in the drab room, he sat hunched over the table in boredom, defeat, or both. He didn’t cry or shuffle, he simply sat.

Just seeing him there, my body trembled with anger. I was so close to ending the crushing agony that plagued me since my wife and son had been ripped away from me. I wanted to tear through the wall with my bare hands and force the bastard to tell me everything! But I couldn’t.

Not yet.

“Roland Teach,” Rey said. “Alive and well, and very much in our possession. We’re letting him sweat it out right now. One of our guys will go try his hand one more time in half an hour or so. If he still offers up nothing, he’ll be moved back to his holding cell, 6B.”

“He’s here for at least a couple of days, right?” I asked, eyes fixed on the screen.

“Yeah. And that’s saying a lot since he has some pretty powerful people pushing for his release.”

“Powerful people like who?”

“I can’t say. Not now, anyway,” Rey said, hesitating over his choice of words. “Don’t worry. Teach is going nowhere at the moment. But if you want to speak with him, we’ll need to get into this Holland thing. This wasn’t my case originally, but I traded with the lead detective. I had a feeling you’d be interested.”

With Teach secure, if out of reach, my only play was to wrap up the Darcey Holland case as fast as possible. I tore my eyes from the monster on the screen and focused on Rey.

“Okay, where’s the file?” I asked.

“In my office, if you want to take a look.”

“The sooner the better,” I said, pushing my anger at Kinsey to the side and replacing it with a need to get into this case. Despite the years and the booze, I still had a sense of professionalism buried deep inside…somewhere.

Sure, I wanted to rush into the room with Teach and vent eighteen months of fury on him, but Darcey’s death nagged at my conscience. She had been a good person. And like all good people mixed up in my life, she had wound up dead. The least I owed her was some kind of resolution and if it gave me access to Teach, so much the better.

Rey led me to his office where I found my bags waiting for me as promised. He moved behind his desk and pulled a single folder out of a stack of about a dozen or so. He dropped it in front of me and took a seat behind the desk.

“How much do you know about Darcey since you broke up?” he asked.

“Not much. We dated for about a year and a half. When we were dating, though, she was about to finish med school. She didn’t really have much time for a boyfriend with a stressful career path ahead of him.”

That was the understatement of the century. Near the end, we were lucky to snatch a few hours a week together. Not to mention the combined pressure of two of the most demanding professions known to man – cop and doctor. Hell, we were lucky to last as long as we did.

“Well, from what we’ve gathered on her, she did well for herself after med school.” Rey continued. “She worked abroad for a while, specializing in pharmaceutical medicine. A stint with Médecines Sans Frontières even. She came back to New York a couple of years ago. She bounced around a few hospitals before eventually starting up her own private clinic.”

“Huh,” I said, picking up the file and leafing through it. “She finally found her thing.”

Rudderless, she had called herself. Of all the things, I remembered this about Darcey Holland. Sweet, smart and compassionate but always uncertain. No confidence in her choices.

“Well, for a while, I guess,” Rey said. “Two nights ago, though, a jogger discovered her face down in the bay out near Red Hook. We don’t think she’d been there too long before the body was discovered. No witnesses yet, but we have notified her sister. We also questioned the last few men she was involved with—another doctor, a marine biologist, and a writer.”

No wonder she didn’t find a long-term relationship with a beat cop viable. I tried to dismiss the morbid though, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. Damn it...

“Are any of them suspects?” I asked.

“Not at this point. They have solid alibis for the twenty-four hours prior. None of them fit the profile either. CSU have processed the scene, but it’s pretty clear she entered the river upstream somewhere and the body washed down here.”

Flipping through the folder, I absently listened to Rey’s words. The crime scene photographs drew my attention. The first showed a woman face down in the water, partially hung-up on the shore. Fully clothed, her blonde hair floated out into the water.

A haunting image. Her pale body stretched out like a dancer, eternally performing in death. The neck too was turned in a way that revealed only a small part of her face, but what I saw, combined with the bright hair, was unmistakably Darcey.

“Damn,” I said. The familiar pangs of sadness touched my nerves.

“Sorry,” Rey said. “Did you guys stay close after the breakup?”

“No … I mean, not really. I heard a few things through the grapevine, but I met Sarah and after that—”

I almost flipped to the next picture, but then I noticed the necklace around her neck. Barely visible in the picture, but it was there, unmistakable. I narrowed my eyes as I drew the picture close to my face. It looked like a silver chain. If it were attached to a jewel or pendant of some kind, that part was in the water and unseen.

“What is it?” Rey asked.

“The necklace,” I said, still not sure if it was worth chasing after. “She never wore jewelry, except a ring her grandmother had passed down. She especially hated necklaces.”

Rey let the thought hang in the air for a moment. Finally, he shrugged. “Well, you know, things change, people change. I’m pretty sure I remember there being a few rings on her fingers, too.”

“Really?” I said, surprised. Apparently, Darcey really had changed over the course of the past few years, but still, something felt off. Darcey always hated necklaces. She said they made her feel like someone was constantly squeezing at her neck. “I need to get to the morgue.”

“This soon?” Rey asked. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

“Not when I only have seventy-two hours.”

“Need some help?”

“Not right now,” I said as the cogs of my mind turned. “All I need from you is the quickest way to get access to a weapon. I’d really rather not wait hours to fill out consultant paperwork. You think you can speed that process along for me?”

“Think you’ll need one?”

“What I think and what happens are usually very different. Besides, better safe than sorry,” I said, not comfortable with the idea of chasing down a killer unarmed.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Rey said, reaching for the phone. “You still have your license, right?”

I nodded and waited while he made a few calls. I kept thinking about a gun, and how I’d done everything I could to work overseas without using one. Sometimes, it wasn’t too hard. Maybe the Darcey case would prove simple and wouldn’t require any force, much less the need for a gun.

But this was New York, a town I knew intimately. And here, things were rarely simple. I hoped I wouldn’t need the gun, but the picture of Darcey floating motionless in the river, gave me little room for doubt. I was about to put myself right back in the crosshairs.