A Full Cold Moon

by Lissa Marie Redmond

  ‘What is all that?’ Sheehan asked as Lauren snapped another picture of the page with her cellphone.

  ‘It’s one of those DNA reports. You know? Like the ones they advertise on TV where they trace your ancestors for you.’

  ‘Why does our victim have all that with him in here?’

  Lauren flipped through to the next page. It showed a list, just like she had gotten, of possible relatives who had also used the site and how close a relative they thought you were. Right at the top of the list was a man’s username and location and, under it, a word in that same foreign language. Lauren scrolled through her cell phone to the translator app and typed in ‘Bróðir.’

  The result popped up immediately.

  She switched back to the camera app and snapped a picture of the information.

  ‘Because he has a half-brother here in Buffalo.’

  THREE

  They called Evidence and Photography back and had them come up to Gunnar’s room and collect the paperwork they’d found. But not before Lauren had snapped a picture of every piece of paper in that DNA report. She and Sheehan then headed back to the Homicide office to start filling in all the paperwork.

  It was late, almost four thirty a.m., and headquarters was dark and practically deserted. A few cleaners wandered the floors trying to stay ahead of the slobby cops who worked in the building, Lauren included. The other crew who’d caught the beating earlier had long gone home.

  ‘Listen,’ Sheehan said as Lauren was about to settle into her desk, ‘I’ll stick around and finish the paperwork and then head to the post. It’s all overtime, right? Just cover me in the morning so I can get a couple hours sleep before I come in, OK?’

  A typical cop barter. And Lauren was exhausted. As it was, she had to be back in the office at eight a.m. for her regular shift. He’d get to go to the post at six, be done with that at eight and be able to put in a twelve-hour overtime slip. Mentally, Lauren forgave him for stopping to eat and leaving her sitting in the hallway. ‘You got it, Doug,’ she told him, grabbing her duffel bag from under her desk. ‘I’ll see you later this morning.’

  ‘Good deal.’ He sat down and immediately started their activity report. Lauren took that as her cue and headed out the door.

  The entire ride back to her house near Delaware Park, she thought of the victim. She needed to examine the pictures of the documents more closely, but it was a good guess that Gunnar was in Buffalo on family business. Lauren knew she’d have a lot to do when she got back to the Homicide office in the morning. She had no idea who you called when a foreign citizen was murdered. The state department? The FBI? In all the years she’d worked in Cold Case, and now Homicide, she’d never handled a non-citizen’s death. Not even a Canadian’s. Seemed like Americans were good at only killing each other in the city of Buffalo.

  Lauren’s mind kept replaying the scene in the alley, going over the details in her head like it was stuck on a loop. She parked her car then trudged to her front door with keys in gloved hand. As cold as it was downtown, it felt even colder at that early hour. It took her a moment to fumble her key in the lock and get the door open. Slipping inside, the heat hitting Lauren’s face felt like slice of heaven.

  Reese and his dog, Watson, were asleep on top of each other on the sofa, where Watson was not allowed. They must have tired each other out because neither even lifted their head when Lauren came in. She paused in the doorway of the living room and stood looking at them for a moment, overcome by that strange feeling she’d been having lately when she caught a glance of Reese and he was unaware.

  She was too tired to move them to the spare guest room where Reese was staying, so she just shuffled past and up the stairs, shedding layers of clothes as she went. She dropped her coat on the top landing. Wet tracks followed her. She should have kicked her boots off by the front door but she was too exhausted to wrestle them off. It wouldn’t be the first time Lauren fell into bed with her shoes still on.

  The house was so quiet, all she heard was the faint howl of the wind outside coming across the lake and Watson’s occasional sleepy grunts. She lived in the city because she couldn’t stand silence. Even though her upscale neighborhood was considered serene by city standards, its sounds were all around her. She needed noise: sirens, horns, people walking by, the rustle of the leaves in the trees, icicles breaking from the gutter and smashing to the ground. The racket calmed her brain.

  But her mind was still on auto-play as she walked into her bedroom that night.

  Someone chased down and brutally murdered a man who, as far as she could tell, had never even been to Buffalo before. It definitely could have been a street robbery gone bad. Buffalo certainly had more than their share of those in the downtown area. Tourists made easy targets, so hanging out by a hotel would give a predator plenty of victims. The perpetrator could have gotten spooked by something and overreacted. Unless they had a psychopath on their hands and Gunnar was just the beginning. That was a scenario Lauren didn’t even want to consider.

  Peeling back the comforter, she smoothed out the cool white case covering her pillow. Lauren always made her bed before she left for work so it was nice and inviting after a night like tonight. Reese used to say it was one of the best things about Lauren – her neatness compulsion – until he started living with her and she tried to put an end to his slobbery.

  When Reese had been grazed by a bullet back in March and fell forward, fracturing his skull, he took a turn for the worse and no one was certain he was going to pull through. It was during this time that she’d had a conversation with his mother, who had intimated that maybe, possibly, Reese had feelings for her. She’d spent the last nine months nursing him back to health and trying to decipher how she felt about that, if it were true. Reese had never confirmed it. As far as she knew, he wasn’t even aware the conversation had taken place. The longer Lauren mulled it over the more she had convinced herself that maybe Reese’s mom just wanted there to be something between the two of them. All those TV shows made it seem like police partners fell into bed with each other all the time. It was ridiculous to think that there was anything other than a mutual respect and deep friendship, grounded in insults and put downs, between them.

  And yet, and yet …

  She’d gone back and forth about asking Reese what his mother meant. Each time she ended up asking herself, what would it change? She didn’t know the truth about her own feelings. Every single relationship she’d had with a man ended badly. Putting him on the spot could end what they already had: a steady, stable friendship that she cherished. Wasn’t that more important than a love affair that could poison everything?

  Fairy tale romances only happened in books and movies. What she had right now with Reese was real, and it was good. She’d messed up a lot of things in her life, she wasn’t about to screw that up.

  But she couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way their lives had become so intertwined since they’d known each other.

  As difficult as living with him while he was recovering with all these questions was, Lauren couldn’t dispute the fact that she was the reason he had multiple scars on his head. She’d made a terrible mistake and Reese had almost paid for it with his life. She had to push her wants and needs aside for once and put him first. She’d do whatever it took to get him back on his feet.

  No matter what.

  FOUR

  ‘So who do you call when a foreign citizen gets killed in the United States?’ Lauren asked her sergeant bright and early the next morning as she leaned against the doorframe of his office.

  Sergeant Brad Connolly was always at the Homicide office at least a half hour before their shift started. They worked days, from eight to six, but the afternoon shift had been short on manpower the day before, so Doug Sheehan and Lauren had both stayed on overtime and that was how she caught Gunnar’s murder. Lauren was surprising herself by referring to the victim in her own head as Gunnar. Stuff like that
made cases seem personal, which was a bad thing. Homicide detectives have enough going on in their own lives without taking their murder cases personally. But sometimes they do because they’re still mostly human. Those parts of them that the job hadn’t managed to poison, anyway.

  Lauren got to the Homicide squad at ten to eight that morning, and the sarge was waiting for her. She and the sarge had gone to the police academy together a lifetime ago. He was almost ten years older than her, having spent eight years as a corrections officer before changing lanes and becoming a Buffalo cop. He had decided to take the supervisory route once he got on the job, whereas Lauren was happy to be a mere detective.

  Connolly had thinning blond hair so light it you could see his scalp, pockmarked cheeks and a gravelly ex-smoker’s voice. ‘Doug Sheehan called my cell,’ he said. ‘He’s finishing up the post – won’t be in for a while.’ He motioned for Lauren to sit in the extra chair across from his desk. A steaming cup of black coffee was already waiting. He knew if he wanted her to produce, she had to have loads of fresh coffee.

  She wrapped her fingers around the white ceramic to warm them up. She was always cold. Even in the middle of summer, her hands and feet were like ice. Being perpetually cold made living through a Buffalo winter that much harder. But maybe not, if hot flashes were coming her way. At forty, she was a little young for menopause, but it was definitely on the horizon.

  ‘I almost came in last night when dispatch notified me about the body. Then I called the on-call assistant district attorney and asked him. He didn’t know. So I called the chief of detectives and he didn’t know. Then I called Reggie Major, who’s been in Homicide longer than anyone and he didn’t know. He said they had a murder suspect from Borneo once and they had to get the US Marshals involved, but that was after they got a warrant for his arrest. He couldn’t even remember a case with a Canadian citizen getting murdered in Buffalo, not in the twenty-something years he’s been a detective up here in Homicide.’ He slurped his coffee, made a face, and put the mug down. ‘Careful. It’s hot, like molten lava hot.’

  Lauren blew the steam across the top of the cup but didn’t take a sip. ‘So what do we do?’

  He slouched back in his seat. He wasn’t a tall guy, but he was wide, like a linebacker and had enormous lumberjack hands. Lauren imagined getting slapped by him would be akin to getting hit by a Mack truck. ‘I was just about to call my brother-in-law who works for the State Attorney General’s office when Ansel Carey called me back.’ Ansel was their new chief of detectives and his modus operandi was to delegate every bit of authority he could to someone else, whenever he had the chance. ‘He had a three-way call with the commissioner and the district attorney. They agreed he should call Samuel Papineau, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo branch, so he did and they’re sending us an agent to help assist with the case.’

  ‘Wait. What?’ The last thing they needed was to bring the Feds in on a simple homicide investigation. Historically, the two agencies didn’t play well together.

  ‘They have the resources to reach out to the family in Iceland – to be able to translate the information in his phone,’ he spread his big paddle-like hands out, ‘to be able to actually get into his damn phone. For once, I have to agree with Antsy. We need their help.’ Antsy was what the squad called Ansel behind his back. Antsy-and-Agitated, to be exact, which is exactly what he was 90 percent of the time.

  ‘Who are they sending over?’ She braved taking a sip and promptly burned her tongue.

  ‘A new guy. He’s on their computer task force, so he should be somewhat useful.’

  ‘Computer power is what we need.’ Pulling her phone out of her back pocket, she thumbed it open and slid it across the table to Connolly. ‘I want you to take a look at these. See that chart? That family tree?’

  ‘It’s written in Klingon,’ he said, pinching the screen to try to zoom in on the picture of the paperwork.

  ‘It’s written in Icelandic,’ Lauren corrected. ‘That family tree says he has a father, a brother, a sister and fifteen cousins here in Buffalo. I bet that was who he was here to see.’

  ‘What the hell is all this?’ He turned her phone upside down, squinted at it, and flipped it around again.

  ‘It’s one of those genealogy reports; you know, the ones that are always advertised on TV? That’s how they break down your lineage: in a pie chart and family trees.’

  ‘How do you take a test for fun in Iceland and come up with a match in America? I don’t understand that crap.’

  ‘The site he used is international. I took a DNA test from the same company and had a couple of cousins pop up in Poland.’

  ‘Did you contact your new-found kin?’

  ‘No,’ Lauren admitted. ‘They were listed as third and fourth cousins and I thought it would be weird. I just wanted to find out where I was from, not find long-lost family members. To be fair, none of them tried to contact me either.’

  The sarge took a second to digest that information before he asked, ‘But Gunnar Jonsson’s family is here in Buffalo? What about his relatives in Iceland?’

  ‘Ah, now, that’s the tricky part,’ Lauren reached over and took her phone back from his huge paw. ‘Gunnar Jonsson’s profile is set on private, so no one can see his Icelandic relatives, but his half-brother’s profile was set on public, so his family tree is out there for the world to view. Says here his father is John Hudson and his siblings are Brooklyn and Ryan, both much younger than him.’

  ‘All locals?’

  ‘I’m about to find out. I’m going to run all three. Get as much information as I can. I want to do the death notification before the noon news. As of right now, he’s still a John Doe as far as the press is concerned. They’re going to have a field day when they find out he’s an Icelandic citizen.’

  ‘If his father is American, he could have dual citizenship. Maybe it’s not as big a deal as we’re thinking it is.’ He reached up with his enormous free hand and scratched absently behind his ear.

  ‘The plane ticket we recovered says he flew into Toronto seven days ago – sorry, eight days ago now,’ Lauren corrected herself. ‘He had a customs form from the Peace Bridge dated the same day. He must have flown in and drove down across the border. His rental car was in the hotel’s valet lot. It didn’t look like anything was inside, but we had it towed to our impound lot anyway. The manager at the hotel said he had extended his stay for five more days. He must have had some pressing business here in Buffalo. That hotel is not cheap.’

  ‘Airline tickets?’ The sarge asked. ‘Do we know when he was due to return home?’

  ‘I found them in his hotel dresser. He came into Toronto on a redeye flight. Looks like he had a flight back for today but changed his airline ticket as well.’

  ‘Find out what was keeping him here.’

  ‘I was going to call my buddy over at customs on the bridge—’

  The sarge cut her off. ‘We’ll leave all that to our new federal friend when he gets here.’ A loud click echoed through the hallway signaling someone was coming into the Homicide wing. Lauren leaned back in her chair to see who was coming in. Craig Garcia’s annoying laugh was followed by the noise of Vatasha Anthony’s footsteps tracking down the hallway past Marilyn’s desk. Lauren looked away without saying hello. Garcia and Anthony weren’t her favorite people on the job.

  ‘Sounds like the troops are filing in.’ The sarge knew there was bad blood between Lauren and those two. ‘Get to work on grabbing the father’s address so you can do the notification. I’ll brief the FBI guy when he shows up and handle Antsy.’

  Pushing away from his desk, Lauren stood up. ‘OK, Sarge. I’m on it.’

  ‘Take that coffee with you. It doesn’t grow on trees you know.’

  ‘Actually, Sarge, the Arabica plant is a pretty large bush—’

  ‘Zip it, smart ass.’ Connolly pointed to the door as she grabbed her coffee mug, sloshing a little over the rim and searing the back of her hand. H
is voice was a bark, but he was wearing a lopsided smile. ‘Get to work. Don’t embarrass me. The Feds are watching.’

  ‘Aye, aye, boss.’ Giving him a mock salute, Lauren retreated out into the main hall and down to her crew’s office. When they’d been at 74 Franklin Street the Homicide squad had been housed in two huge open rooms, pieced into workspaces by desks, filing cabinets, and tables. Now that they’d moved to the old federal courthouse, each homicide crew had its own separate office off a long corridor, with the sergeant’s office at the top, next to the homicide report technician’s desk. It was so fancy their offices even had leaded glass doors. This made it easy for Lauren to shut out Craig Garcia and Vatasha Anthony.

  Lauren, Garcia and Anthony had notoriously bad blood between them. Garcia had cheerfully watched as Carl Church, the district attorney, had put Lauren in front of a grand jury three months earlier for a manslaughter charge. Anthony had actually taken the stand to testify against her.

  Lauren had been involved for over a year in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a sociopath named David Spencer. After he’d shot Reese in the head she’d managed to corner Spencer in an abandoned warehouse. Or he had cornered her, which turned out to be the more likely case, and she had ended up killing him. When the grand jury returned a ‘no bill’ and refused to indict her, the police commissioner declared that David Spencer’s death at Lauren’s hands had been an act of self-defense. Lauren had come off of administrative leave and gone back to work in the regular Homicide squad. That surprising turn of events made Garcia and Anthony lose their swagger, and the bad mouthing they had been doing about Lauren and Reese had ceased. Garcia had always been a petty bully, but he was deathly afraid of Reese. Even though Garcia and Anthony were on a separate crew, they still had to see her around the office every day, and Lauren never missed a chance to rub both of their noses in it.