Sixty-One

Three days had passed since the shoot-out at Walnut Beach, and Detective Marta Harper was still mired in paperwork and loose ends and plenty of departmental oversight and second-guessing. That was what you could expect when you shot and killed two people and got your cruiser totaled in the process.

She'd been taken off regular duty and put on the desk while all the circumstances surrounding that night of mayhem were scrutinized. A bunch of armchair quarterbacks, the lot of them, she thought, but she'd been around long enough to know this was the way things always played out.

Even more upset than Marta was her wife, Ginny, who was outraged at how much bullshit Marta had to endure for doing her job. She was also a total wreck about how close she'd come to losing Marta, and not for the first time in the last week, either. It was all Ginny could do not to talk Marta into taking up a less dangerous line of work. Lion-taming, for example.

Even though she was off the street this week, Marta had learned a great deal about what had led to Walnut Beach.

What was known: Gerhard Waldheim and Andrea Falluci, who worked for a fentanyl-producing operation in Mexico, distributed product to various dealers in the Connecticut area, and even sold some of it to line their own pockets, were dead.

Gerhard died behind the wheel when Marta fired at the Audi as he tried to run her down. Moments later, Marta had brought down Andrea during the pier shoot-out. Andrea, Marta already knew but had since confirmed, had sold that deadly dose of fentanyl to Cherise Fowler, and was the one who'd assaulted Marta outside of Jim's. And the bitch was still wearing her Converse sneakers when she'd shot her.

Stuart Betz, a somewhat dim-witted, but dangerous nonetheless, friend of Billy Finster's, was fatally shot by Andrea while attempting to sell back a carry-on bag full of drugs he'd swiped from Finster's garage. He'd been blackmailing Richard over something that had allegedly actually happened to Finster, although there was no evidence to suggest Richard had done anything to anyone. (This was from Richard's account, of course. Marta could not question Finster or Betz for further clarification.)

Betz shot and killed Herb Willow when he'd interfered with Betz's plan to force Richard to do the exchange with Gerhard and Andrea.

Oh, and Marta found her gun. It had landed in the grass near the base of a tree.

Finster's wife, Lucy, whom the police had been searching for, walked into the station voluntarily the day after the Walnut Beach event and asked for the detective in charge of the investigation into her husband's death. She had quite a story to tell, and was able to fill in some of the blanks.

After she'd found Billy's body, she'd gone on the run, fearing she might be next. She hadn't seen Billy murdered, but assumed Gerhard and Andrea had done it.

Lucy sought out Stuart, thinking she could hide out with him until things cooled down. She told Marta that Stuart had always planned to double-cross Gerhard and Andrea—to keep the money and sell the drugs himself and shoot the two with the gun Billy had recently acquired—and that she believed the drugs were still someplace in his apartment.

That checked out. Marta found the drugs in pillowcases stashed in the closet at Stuart's place.

Lucy admitted knowing Billy was helping smuggle drugs into the country through his airport job, and added that an orderly at the Bridgeport hospital where she worked, a man named Digby, also knew. He'd been threatening her—he'd already sexually accosted her—with violence if she did not steal from the cache and give it to him. She did.

That part checked out, too. The candy-like fentanyl was found in the top of his locker. Digby was arrested. The hospital fired him.

The local district attorney didn't think there was a solid enough case to charge Lucy, and there was a host of mitigating factors, like Digby's threats of violence and fears of retaliation from her husband had she gone to the police about his role in the drug operation. Lucy said she was going to move back to Utah to live with her mother and look for work in some other cafeteria. A school, a hospital, didn't matter. Cubed Jell-O was pretty much the same everywhere.

Despite the DA's decision, there were parts of Lucy's story that never sat well with Marta. Digby, for example, had said she was lying, that he'd been framed, that she had a key to his locker and had planted the stuff. And when Marta got back to Lucy about that, she'd said, "Yeah, well, what would you expect him to say?"

She was a crafty one, this Lucy, Marta thought. But she didn't think she'd killed Billy, which was the big, outstanding riddle. Not that she'd written off Lucy as a suspect completely, but her gut said it was someone else.

It made the most sense that Gerhard and Andrea had killed him, but a ballistics test of the bullet that killed Billy did not match the weapon Andrea used to kill Stuart, or shoot at Marta. Nor, after a test was conducted, did it match the weapon Richard took from the crashed Audi.

Marta theorized that it could have been Stuart. He was, according to Lucy, mightily pissed off his friend hadn't cut him in on his profits from helping the drug smugglers. He'd been at the garage that night, and the gun he'd used to kill Herb Willow was one Billy had bought. He could have shot Billy with his own gun, except there was a problem there. That damn ballistics report again. Billy was not shot with his own gun.

Which brought Marta back to Richard and Bonnie.

They both had a motive. They had both been to the Finster property that night.

Marta didn't want to think it could be either one of them. And where the hell would her sister or brother-in-law get a gun? Okay, admittedly, getting your hands on one was not exactly like trying to find the Holy Grail. It was easy enough, but seemed so out of Richard and Bonnie's wheelhouse.

But Billy's death sure helped Richard. There was no getting around that. Could he have killed Billy before realizing he had the wrong guy? And once Bonnie'd been brought up to speed by her husband, she had a motive, too. She'd never been face-to-face with Billy. She wouldn't know she had the wrong person.

Shit.

Marta wondered how much trouble she was facing for not immediately disclosing that her sister and brother-in-law were, at the very least, persons of interest in this case. She should have withdrawn from it. She knew that. The best excuse she could come up with was that things were happening so quickly, she hadn't had time.

Maybe Ginny would get her wish. Maybe Marta wouldn't be a cop all that much longer.

And this morning, when Chief Constance Barnes wouldn't look her in the eye when she entered the building, she had a feeling things were about to come crashing down around her.

Shortly before ten, Barnes came over to her desk and asked her to accompany her to one of the interrogation rooms. When she got there, she saw a man from the Internal Affairs Department was already in a chair. She'd met this guy before. Stanley Dinkins was his name.

"Have a seat," Barnes said.

Marta sat.

The chief had a sorrowful expression on her face as Dinkins opened a folder that sat on the desk in front of him.

"Look, before this gets underway, I can pretty much guess what you're going to say, so there are some things I'd like to clear the air about," Marta said.

Barnes and Dinkins waited.

"When I learned my brother-in-law was being blackmailed by someone claiming to be Billy Finster, whose murder, as you know, I was investigating, I should have immediately stepped back and let someone else handle the investigation. I didn't. That was wrong. My only excuse is developments were happening at such a rate I felt turning it over to someone else could have hampered things. It's entirely possible my personal connection compromised my judgment. If that means I'm subject to some sort of disciplinary procedure, I accept that. If you want to fire me, well, that's also your prerogative. My wife would be delighted. So, anyway, that's my statement. I'll answer any questions you have about that."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Finally, Dinkins spoke. "That's not what we're here to talk about, Detective. What we want to talk about is Billy Finster."

Marta blinked. "Okay."

"What previous encounters have you had with Mr. Finster?"

"Previous encounters?"

"That's correct."

"None."

"You'd never met Mr. Finster? Never had any interactions with him at all?"

"No. I mean, none that I know of. Maybe, when I was still in uniform, I pulled him over for speeding or something, but no, I have no recollection of any dealings with Mr. Finster."

"You're sure."

"That's what I'm saying. The only time I ever got near him was when he was dead."

The chief and the Internal Affairs guy were quiet.

"What's this about? What's going on?"

Chief Barnes stepped in. "Detective," she said, "we've read your report, we've been through your statement about everything that happened Tuesday night, but there's something that leaves us somewhat puzzled. You're sure there's nothing you've already told us that you'd like to amend?"

"Nothing."

"Because we've been doing our due diligence," the chief said. "Checking everything, going over every aspect of what happened." She sighed and said to Dinkins, "Can you pass me that ballistics report?"

Dinkins slid a sheet of paper across the desk to her.

"Which ballistics report is this?" Marta asked.

Barnes looked at her and asked, "We're wondering if you might find it curious that the bullet taken from the woman you shot at Walnut Beach is a match for the bullet taken from Billy Finster."