LITMIR.BIZ

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      Charlie’s head came up, as did those of half of the squad room. All eyes went to Captain Edward Warren who stood at his office door with a scowl on his face. “Get your carcasses in here! Now!”

      Quickly Charlie hung up the telephone, not bothering to finish dialing the number. She darted a glance over at her partner and mouthed the words What’s up? Vince shrugged in response while he attempted to finish his phone call. Pushing away from her desk, Charlie grabbed her black jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it on.

      “I’ll get back to you,” Vince told the person on the other end of the phone line and ended the call. “What gives?” he asked her as the two of them started toward the captain’s office.

      “Beats me,” she said. Together they entered the office. Big, black and bald, Captain Warren was a cop’s cop who had worked his way up the ranks. He was a tough taskmaster but a fair man who didn’t let politics get in the way of the job. And in a sue-the-police-force mentality that had begun to permeate society, the captain always went to bat for his officers. She respected him for that. She also was grateful to him for believing in her and giving her a chance to be a real homicide detective and not a token female with the title who was stuck behind a desk shuffling papers in order to meet some minority quota. She and Vince waited in front of his desk. “You wanted to see us, sir.”

      “Shut the door,” he ordered, then pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. He retrieved a bottle of antacid tablets. He dumped out a handful of the chalky-looking tablets and shoved them all into his mouth.

      Whatever it was, it was bad, Charlie realized. Everyone in the department knew that the way to gauge the captain’s mood was by the number of antacids he took. Three tablets meant he wasn’t happy. Four meant he was angry and five meant you were in real trouble. But never, ever, in the three years since she was assigned to Homicide had she seen the man take an entire fistful of the things all at once. Whatever had riled the captain was major. She glanced over at Vince and saw from his expression that he knew it, too.

      When the captain finished the tablets and returned his attention to them, he looked mad enough to chew nails. “Did I or did I not instruct you to use discretion in the Hill murder investigation?”

      “You did, sir,” Vince informed him.

      When he looked at Charlie, she said, “Yes, sir, you did.”

      “And weren’t you told that there were no statements to be given to the press until I authorized it personally?”

      “Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

      Charlie got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and she hoped that she was wrong, that her sister Anne hadn’t done something stupid and landed both Vince and her in hot water. But when the captain shifted his gaze from Vince and trained it on her, Charlie knew she didn’t have a prayer.

      “Then how do you explain the five o’clock newscast?” he demanded.

      “Sir, I’m afraid we haven’t seen it,” she told him. “We’ve been working the case.”

      “Then allow me to show you what you missed,” he said dryly and hit the remote button for the portable TV set in the corner of the room. The set was tuned to the channel where the WWL-TV station reran the news broadcasts throughout the day. And there in living color was Anne in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art with a microphone in her hand.

      “It appears that for now the reason for cancellation of the fairy-tale event remains a mystery,” Anne announced. “However, a source, who has asked not to be identified, told this reporter that the police were seen at Mr. Stratton’s home this afternoon.”

      “Anne, do we know why the police were at the Stratton home?” Bill Capo asked.

      “No, Bill, we don’t. But I’m sure many of the guests who were invited are wondering just as we are if the reason for the cancellation of the wedding is something much more serious than cold feet.”

      “Thank you, Anne.”

      “Thank you, Bill. This is Anne Le Blanc reporting live for Channel 4 Eyewitness News.”

      The captain turned off the TV set. When he turned his attention back to the two of them, Charlie feared the veins in his neck would burst. “Sir, I don’t know who my sister’s source was,” she told him. “But it wasn’t me or Detective Kossak.”

      He leaned forward, dropped his voice to a deep growl and asked, “Then who in the hell was it, Detective? Because let me tell you, I’d like to know who is responsible for me spending the last twenty minutes on the phone with the superintendent of police ripping me a new one because my detectives ignored a direct order from the chief himself that there was to be no information on the Hill homicide given to the press.”

      Charlie checked the urge to flinch. She met the captain’s angry gaze. “Sir, you have my word, I did not tell my sister anything about the case.”

      “Then how do you explain your sister breaking the story, Le Blanc?”

      “I can’t, sir. But I can tell you that my sister arrived at the Stratton home as we were leaving. I refused to comment on our reason for being there.”

      “She’s telling the truth, sir. I can attest to that,” Vince said. “Detective Le Blanc made it…um…clear to her sister that she had nothing to say.”

      “Evidently she didn’t make it clear enough,” the captain remarked.

      “If I might point out, sir, my sister Anne isn’t stupid. She knows I’m a homicide cop and she saw me leaving the Stratton residence. My guess is she put two and two together when the wedding was canceled.”

      He seemed to consider that. “Then how do you explain your sister showing up there in the first place?”

      “I can’t, sir,” Charlie told him.

      “If I might speculate, Captain?” Vince asked.

      “I’m listening.”

      “Anne…Detective Le Blanc’s sister is a good reporter and like any good reporter, she has a nose for news,” he began.

      Charlie looked up at her partner. She knew her sister was a good reporter and she knew Anne had the instincts of a bloodhound when it came to sniffing out a story. But she hadn’t realized that Vince knew it or that he had paid enough attention to Anne to discover that fact. Charlie frowned, recalling now that during the last month Vince had been commenting on her sister’s reports, asking about her family. Damn, she thought. Did her partner have a thing for her kid sister?

      “…and she mentioned to me last week that she would be covering the wedding for the TV station. It’s possible she was there to interview Stratton before the ceremony as part of her story. That would explain her being at the house.”

      “And I’m supposed to believe that it was just a coincidence, her being there at the same time you were?” the captain asked skeptically.

      “I’m not a big believer in coincidences either, sir. But every now and then, they happen. And I think that’s what happened.”

      “What about you, Le Blanc?” the captain asked. “What’s your theory?”

      “I don’t have one, sir. But what Detective Kossak said makes sense, with respect to my sister’s reason for being at the Stratton house. If you want me to, sir, I could ask her.”

      He waited a long moment and then said, “Don’t bother. I’ll see what I can do to smooth things over with the chief. But I’m warning both of you, any more leaks to the press and all the slick talking in the world isn’t going to save any of our asses. Understood?”

      “Understood, sir,” Vince told him.

      “Understood, Captain,” she replied.

      He nodded. “Now tell me what you’ve got so far.”

      They

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