“What’s up, Ray?”
“I can’t keep working with her, Dennis.”
“Why not? She’s good at her job.”
“It ain’t that.”
“What, then?”
Velez looked embarrassed.
“Cookie?” McQueen asked.
Velez nodded.
“She came to pick me up one day last week and saw Bailey,” Velez said. “She hit the ceiling, Dennis. I been tryin’ to talk to her, but . . . well, you know Cookie.”
“Yeah,” McQueen said, “I know Cookie.”
As long as McQueen had known Velez, his wife had never liked any of his partners. McQueen was probably the one she tolerated the most.
“I never had a female partner before, Dennis,”
Velez said. “And to top it off, well . . . Bailey’s kinda hot, you know? Cookie can’t handle it.”
“It’s not like she’s dressed with her tits hangin’ out, Ray.”
“I know it,” Velez said, “but just ‘cause they ain’t hangin’ out don’t mean she ain’t got ‘em, Dennis.”
McQueen rubbed his face with one hand.
“What do you want me to do, Ray?”
“Partner with me again,” Velez said. “Give Bailey to someone else.”
“Like who? Frankie?”
“Why not?” Velez asked.
“Come on, Ray. She’d have him up on sexual harassment charges by the end of the first day.”
“Well, better that than I get divorced,” Velez said. “Come on, you know how fragile my marriage is.”
“Okay, okay,” McQueen said, “I’ll talk to the boss.”
“Thanks, partner. I knew I could count on you.”
“It might take a few days, Ray.”
“As long as I can tell Cookie it’s in the works, she should be fine,” Velez said.
“Okay,” McQueen said. “Get out of here. Your partner’s waiting.”
“Thanks, Dennis.”
As Velez left the room, McQueen sat back in his chair and rubbed his face with both hands. Before he finished his phone rang, so he didn’t even have a moment to think over Velez’s request, and how it would realign the squad.
“Homicide,” he said.
“This is the front desk, Sergeant O’Connor.”
“Yeah, Ben, it’s McQueen. Whataya got?”
“Dennis, I got a woman down here says she needs to talk to you,” the desk sergeant said. Then he lowered his voice and added, “She’s a looker.”
“What does she want?”
“Won’t say,” O’Connor replied. “All she says is she’s gotta talk to you.”
“What’s her name?”
“Um . . . Lydia Dean. You know her?”
McQueen closed his eyes and said, “Yeah, I know her. Send her up, Ben.”
Chapter 27
While McQueen was waiting for Lydia Dean to appear, the Double Ds walked in. They were talking about the only two things they liked. For Diver it was golf and for Dolan, tits.
“Hey, guys, do me a favor?” McQueen asked, interrupting what he hoped wasn’t a comparison between the two. As far as he could see, the only thing they might have had in common was being dimpled—and in the case of the latter, that was just sometimes.
“Sure, boss,” Diver said. “What’s up?”
“Go get some coffee?”
“How do you want it?” Dolan asked.
“Not for me,” McQueen said, “for you guys.”
“Whataya me—” Diver started, but he stopped as a woman appeared in the doorway. She drew the attention of all three men. She was wearing a long, expensive-looking leather coat that was hanging open, revealing a bulky red sweater and a pair of pants that did nothing to hide her curves.
“Sergeant McQueen?” she said, before she spotted him at his desk.
“Oh,” Diver said, then he nudged Dolan and said, “He’s right there, ma’am.”
Lydia Dean came into the room, and when she cleared the doorway Dolan and Diver went out, but not before Dolan looked back at McQueen, bit his knuckle, and then shook his hand.
“Have a seat, Mrs. Dean.”
She looked around the office and said, “This is rather . . . cramped, isn’t it?”
“It was all they had for us when they formed this squad,” he explained.
“You don’t have your own office?”
“The lieutenant gets the office,” he said, indicating the other door, “but it’s even more cramped in there.”
“I see.” She removed her coat, looked around for a place to hang it, then simply folded it in half and set it down on a nearby chair before seating herself across from him. She crossed her legs and he saw that she was wearing a pair of boots that matched the coat.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Dean?”
“I’m actually here on behalf of my mother,” Lydia said. “She was very disappointed when you withdrew from the case.”
“I didn’t withdraw, Mrs. Dean,” he said. “I was forced—I had to give the case up.”
“However it came about, she’s very unhappy with the way it’s been handled since.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, nothing’s been done,” Lydia said.
“No one’s been out to talk to your mother?”
“Oh yes, she’s been spoken to several times, but it seems to her that the policeman handling the case is more concerned with the fire than with Thomas’s . . . death.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know who the case was assigned to.”
“That doesn’t seem very efficient to me.”
“Well . . . it’s being handled by a different squad,” McQueen said. “In fact, your brother’s case is with one detective, while the fire is being investigated by another. As a matter of fact, the fire department also has someone investigating.”
“So two people are looking into the fire, and only one into the murder?”
When she put it that way it did sound inefficient. “Basically, that’s it.”
She sat back in her chair and stared at him.
“There’s nothing you can do to help?” she asked.
“I can make some calls, Mrs. Dean.”
“Lydia.”
“Lydia,” he repeated. “I can call the other investigators and see where they stand, but I can’t do much more than that.” Then he added: “It’s not my case.”
“Are you working on a case right now?”
“Well, no . . .”
“Then you have some time on your hands.”
“Uh, no,” he said, “that’s not the way this works. Look, just let me see what I can do, and I’ll get back to you.”
“All right,” she said, getting to her feet. She tugged her sweater down and he found himself staring. He didn’t know if they were dimpled, but they were full and firm. “Thank you.”
He stood up and came around the desk to help her on with her coat, and then walk her to the door. He wanted the extra time to think about whether or not to tell her about the body that was found that morning in Sheepshead Bay. It wouldn’t have done much good, though, without a photo to show her.
“There’s something else I have to ask you,” she said, at the door.
“What’s that?”
“Please don’t tell my mother about this. I don’t want to get her hopes up.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a call if I find out anything.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “When the time comes why don’t we have a drink, somewhere?”
“That sounds . . . good.”
“Until then,” she said, putting out her hand. He shook it, and thought she held onto his a little longer than necessary. As she walked down the hall to the elevator he wondered what was on her mind besides her brother’s murder? That she could have been attracted to him never entered his mind as feasible.
Chapter 28
The next morning, to her surprise, McQueen called Bailey Sommers at home.
“Hello, Dennis,” s
he said. “I was just on my way out. What can I do for you?”
“Bailey, I’d like you to stop and see Dr. G today,” he said.
“About what?”
“I want a report on that floater from yesterday,” he replied. “And a photo.”
“Are you taking the case over?”
“No,” he said, “I just want to take a good look at the similarities between the two cases.”
“What about having someone from the Wingate family look at this body?” she asked. “Or, at least, a photo. If they know him that might tie the cases together.”
“That’s a good idea,” McQueen told her, not mentioning that he’d decided to show Lydia Dean to see if she could ID it.
“Okay, I’ll stop by and see if his report is ready.”
“Thanks, Bailey.”
She hung up, feeling absurdly pleased that McQueen had called her and not Ray Velez. She thought that her days with Velez were numbered. Just from the conversations they’d had while riding in the car she knew he was a henpecked husband, firmly underneath the thumb of his wife, Cookie. She would have preferred remaining partners with McQueen. She hadn’t been with the squad that long, but she knew the Double Ds were joined at the hip. If they broke her and Velez up she’d end up with Frankie Cataldo, or one of the off-shift detectives she never seemed to run into. Left in a car with Cataldo for an afternoon she knew she’d either have to shoot him, or herself.
She got into the used Volvo she’d owned for only three days and drove away from the Brooklyn apartment she’d also been in for three days. She had found a relatively inexpensive one-bedroom on Sackett Street near downtown, and she was pretty happy with it, and with her car. Now all she needed was to find a partner she could be satisfied with.
She pulled away from the curb and headed for the morgue to talk with the handsome medical examiner.
McQueen hung up the phone as the lieutenant walked in. The man had not seemed the worse for wear since forcing McQueen to refer the Coney Island case to Brooklyn North.
“ ‘Mornin’, Loo.”
“Dennis.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“In my office,” Jessup said, without breaking stride.
By the time McQueen had followed him in, Jessup had seated himself behind his desk. He looked extremely comfortable when he was sitting there. The only time McQueen was comfortable at his desk was when he knew he’d be leaving it to respond to a call. He wasn’t in his element while inside.
“What is it, Dennis?”
“I think we need to redesign the squad again, Loo.” McQueen sat, holding a file folder on his lap.
“To get you out from behind the desk?” Jessup asked. “Do we have to talk about this again? I thought we had this settled—”
“It’s Ray, Loo.”
“Velez? What’s his problem?”
“Apparently, Cookie is on the warpath.”
“Again? What about, this time?”
“She doesn’t like Ray being partnered with Bailey.”
“Ah, Jesus—”
“Ray thinks his marriage is in trouble if we leave him with Sommers,” McQueen added.
The New York City Police Department was a funny place. While many cops felt it was all right for them to have girlfriends on the side because of the dangers of the job, the department itself was a stickler for family.
“What can we do, then?” Jessup demanded. “Put her with Cataldo? She’ll end up killin’ him—or, at the very least, filing a sexual harassment charge against him.”
“I know.”
“What about Sherman or Silver?”
“They’ve got the best clearance rate in the squad,” McQueen said. “I don’t think we want to mess with that.”
“Give me an answer, Dennis.”
“There are two possible ways to solve the problem, sir,” McQueen said. “Let me partner with her again—”
“How did I know?”
“—while you put in a request for another detective. When the new guy—or gal—gets here, we’ll put them together.”
“And the other idea?”
“Put me back with Ray and let Bailey do some clerical work for a while.”
“And what do we do with Frankie?” Jessup asked. “However we work it, he’s workin’ alone, doing whatever shit job we give him.”
“Okay, then,” McQueen said, “put in the request for another gold shield, and ship Frankie out. Nobody wants to work with him, Loo.”
“I’ve been tryin’ for months to get us a civilian clerk,” Jessup said. “Now you want me shipping gold shields back and forth.”
“I’m tryin’ to save Ray’s marriage, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” Jessup said. “It’d be a coincidence that this is working out just the way you want it.”
“Well, there is something else.”
“What’s that?”
McQueen dropped the folder on the man’s desk. “This is the preliminary report on a case Sommers caught yesterday.”
“Give me the pocket version.”
“Another dead young man in the water, this time in Sheepshead Bay.”
Jessup closed his eyes.
“Are you gonna tell me there are similarities to the Coney Island case?”
“I am,” McQueen said. “This one still had ice on his hands and feet. Looks like fresh water, Loo.”
“What’s the M.E. say?”
“I’ve got Bailey stopping there first on her way to work,” McQueen said, “and I’m gonna put in a call to the Crime Scene Unit.”
“Close the door on your way out, Dennis,” Jessup said. “Looks like I have a lot to think about.”
Chapter 29
Bailey knocked on the door of Dr. Bannerjee’s office and the man looked up from his desk.
“Ah, Detective Sommers.”
“Nice of you to remember,” she said.
“How could I forget?”
She was impressed. He managed to flirt with her without leering or using a cheesy line. That put him head and shoulders above all the men she’d worked with since joining the department. She’d been hit on by everyone from street cops to bosses, and none of them had the class of the man they all called Dr. G.
“How can I help you?”
“The Sheepshead Bay floater from yesterday?” she said. “I’m afraid it’s mine.”
“And you want your report.”
“Sergeant McQueen wanted me to stop by—”
“Say no more,” he said, holding his hand up. “I already know how impatient and demanding Sergeant McQueen can be.”
“If you haven’t had a chance—”
“Ah, but I have,” he said. “I did it first thing this morning. Moved it up ahead of some others who were here first.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because I, too, was curious to see how similar this body was to the one found in Coney Island last month.”
“And?”
He picked a folder up off his desk and held it out to her. She took several steps into the room to accept it.
“Blunt trauma to the back of the head,” he said, “and ice in the lungs.”
“Jesus . . .” she said.
“It’s not similar,” he said, “in many ways it’s identical, right down to the freshwater ice.”
When Detective Sommers walked into the Homicide office, McQueen was hanging up his phone.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
“Ethan wanted me to have a cup of coffee with him.”
“Ethan?” he asked. “You mean Dr. G?”
“He doesn’t like to be called that.”
“Well, excuse me,” he said. “What did Ethan tell you?”
“He told me lots of things, and none of them came out sounding smarmy or cheap,” she said. “He’s a gentleman.”
“Okay,” McQueen replied, “What did the gentleman tell you about our case?”
She put the M.E.’s report on his desk.
“In a nutsh
ell,” she said, “it’s almost identical to the Wingate case.”
“Almost?”
“Well, the head trauma and ice in the lungs are there. No smoke inhalation, though.”
“What killed him?”
“An ice pick in the ear.”
“Ice pick? Where did that come from?”
“Maybe it’s not the same killer.”
“There are a few ways to find out. Is there a photo in here?” he asked, picking up the file.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to take it over to Mrs. Dean and show it to her.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say you were going to show it to Thomas Wingate’s mother,” she said. “I don’t think that nice lady needs to see another dead body.”
“I agree. Actually, Mrs. Dean came here last night, before I left, to ask me for help.”
“With what?”
“The investigation into her brother’s case,” he said.
“Apparently her mother is not satisfied with the way it’s going. She says they’re concentrating more on the fire.”
“She says her mother’s not satisfied?”
“That’s right.”
Sommers shook her head.
“What’s wrong?”
“This broad doesn’t sound like the type who cares about Mom,” Sommers said.
“Broad?”
She smiled.
“I’ve been here over two weeks,” she said. “I can stop tryin’ to impress you now.”
“You mean I’m gonna start seein’ the real you from now on?” he asked.
“From head to toe.”
McQueen made no comment, which impressed her. All along since they’d met, he never took the opportunity for a cheap shot. Dennis McQueen was as much a gentleman as Ethan Bannerjee, just not as smooth or good-looking.
At that moment his phone rang. Sommers went back to her own desk as he answered it.
“McQueen.”
“I heard you got another body,” Fire Marshal Mason Willis said.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Word gets around. Listen, I want to have a chat with Lydia Dean. You want to go with me?”
She wasn’t fooling him. Lydia Dean would feel more compelled to talk to a cop than a fire marshal. Still, he was going over there, anyway.
“Why not?” he asked. “I have a few questions myself. Meet you there?”
Cold Blooded (Dennis McQueen 02) Page 11