― Louise Penny
”So what’s the plan for today?” Clare asks.
We’re sitting in the front room of my loft sipping coffee and munching croissants.
“To prevent the fiend and to kill vermin,” I quip.
She frowns and sips at her coffee. “Sounds like a line from a book I never read.”
“You never read King Lear?” I tease. “His evil daughters turned against him and tried to kill him.”
“Sort of sounds like us—someone in our work family wants us dead and we’re trying to avoid it and capture him.”
“Yep, that’s the problem with writing fiction—for the sake of realism you end up killing your darlings.”
“Well that won’t happen to us,” Clare growls fiercely.
“I am woman hear me roar,” I smile.
“Yeah, and you better believe it,” she hisses, imagining our stalker and clenching her fists.
Seeing the sparks in her eyes, I donn’t doubt it.
She has passion enough for both of us, but will that be enough to catch our perp? I can only hope so
.
”We better get going,” I say, glancing at the clock.
“We’ll review yesterday’s tapes and see who Robyn’s been talking to.”
“We might want to look into the other female officer that was killed,” Clare suggests.
“I thought forensics checked that out and saw it as a separate grudge?”
“Maybe, but that was before Robyn became a suspect.”
“I can’t see any link to me.” I frown.
“That’s because you’re a man—you have to think like a woman.”
“You're sure someone would be jealous enough to kill twice for me?”
“Don’t know about killing, but I can understand the passion,” she smiles coquettishly.
My stomach flips as I get her meaning.
“We better go,” I insist, “or we’ll end up staying here longer than we should.”
“Yeah, she teases back, “sometimes you have to sublimate those urges.”
I roll my eyes, but know exactly what she's saying
.
We drive to the detachment in separate cars, solely for the sake of prying eyes.
Mostly everybody knows we were more than partners but we respect the badge too much to flaunt any impropriety.
I hang back and let Clare arrive first and even stop at Timmies to buy everyone coffee. Yeah, it's out of guilt but it doesn’t hurt to be on good terms with comrades.
Clare and I both pass on drinking coffee and it doesn’t take a Sherlock to figure out the reason. Cyril winks at me but thankfully says nothing.
We closet ourselves in the interrogation room fast forwarding Robyn’s tedious routines. The results seem disappointing—the girl barely interacted with anyone.
Clare's disappointed too and was just about ready to give up when she suddenly hits the pause button.
“Here we go,” she hisses, “look at this.”
I come and lean over her shoulder, peering at the monitor.
“Sorry, I see nothing—no smoking gun here.”
“Let’s zoom in closer,” she answers.
And there it is—a USB device, palmed by the officer and slipped into Robyn’s hand. It all happened so smoothly it looked like sleight of hand.
“How did you see that?” I ask amazed.
“The way Robyn’s fingers clung a second longer than necessary. Not only did they exchange a flash drive but they’re probably exchanging more than that on the side.”
“What do you mean, contraband?”
She gives me a knowing look as if to say, are you new?
“Oh,” I colour, “you mean bodily fluids.”
“That’s a crass way of putting it, but yeah, you’re right—those two are more than friends.”
“I’d like to see what’s on that thumb drive,” I tell her.
She arches an eyebrow. “No, you wouldn’t.”
Again, I colour. For someone with a background in profiling, Clare makes me look like an amateur.
But now the question is, where to go from here and how much slack do we cut this pair of conspirators?