Page 14 of Trust my Heart

“Leaving them.”

We made a mess of them anyway. I got two buttons of his shirt and then stopped counting buttons. He got my tie off in one pull and dropped it somewhere behind the couch, and his hands were in my hair and then at my belt and then flat against my chest, not pushing, just holding on. He said my name once, quiet, in the voice that wasn’t for anywhere else. I put my mouth to the warm skin of his throat until his breath changed, and his knee came up along the outside of my leg, and the couch complained about all of it and we ignored the old thing.

“You’re freezing,” he said, into my neck, and did nothing about it except pull me closer, which was the correct thing to do about it.

“It’s raining, detective genius.”

“I knew it.” His mouth was at my ear, and his hands went under my shirt, flat and warm against cold skin, and I heard myself make a sound I would deny in any official setting. He laughed, pleased with himself, and did it again.

The rain stayed on the window. The lamp stayed on. The silent hockey panel disagreed about something else. I stopped thinking about the day at all, and it was the easiest thing in the world, because he was warm and laughing and mine, with terrible opinions about towels, and every part of the evening that had rattled loose in the car quieted under his hands.

“How was court,” he said again, against my jaw, not meaning it as a question this time?

“Long. Tell you tomorrow.”

And that was the last either of us said for a while.

Chapter 5: Paper Trail

Ryan

Luke started the dinner argument on the steps of the division, which was early even for us.

“Soup,” he said.

“We just had breakfast.”

“I’m planning ahead. Look at that sky. It’s going to rain all day again, and rain means soup.”

“It’s Spring.”

“Tell Mother Nature.” He pulled the door open and held it. “Soup weather is soup weather, whatever the calendar says.”

“Your soup place has the wobbly chairs. Last time I got the one by the window and rocked in it for an hour, and you watched me do it and said nothing.”

“It was a good hour,” Luke said, and went in ahead of me.

As we entered the division, the constant humming of activity felt like home. Chen was on the phones already, saying no to somebody in the patient voice she saved for repeat callers. Reid was in early, eating a muffin over a napkin so the crumbs wouldn’t end up in his keyboard. Wright stood at the duty board with two of the day constables, explaining something, and both of them were grinning.

We split at the desks. Luke pulled up whatever he’d left half-finished before heading to court. I had disclosure copying waiting on a robbery, a morning of dull and useful work, and I was looking forward to it. I went up to the good machine on the second floor for coffee, came back down, and had time for one sip.

Murphy didn’t call across the floor. He looked out of his office, found me, tipped his head an inch, and went back inside. That was all it was, and it was worse than being shouted for.

I put the coffee down. Luke was deep into reading a thick file. I crossed the floor, went in, and shut the door behind me.

Two case files sat on the desk, squared to the edge, closed, and Murphy had his glasses on. He took them off to talk and left them on for paper. They stayed on.

“Sit down, Carlson.”

I obeyed.

“The file review came back this week,” he said. “Two of yours have flags on them.” He opened the top folder and turned it so I could see, which was a courtesy. “The Kellner break and enter. The phone you seized is exactly where it belongs. The entry you filed on it is not. Wrong tag number in the property log, and it stood that way until the review caught it.”

I looked at the page. The tag number was how we proved the phone in the courtroom was the phone from the scene, untouched in between. The phone hadn’t moved an inch. The entry I’d typed said otherwise, and had since the day I filed it.

“Kellner took a plea,” Murphy said, “so this one costs us nothing. The tag’s been fixed, the file’s closed, nobody outside this building will ever see it. But that same wrong number on a live exhibit, on a file headed for trial, is a different animal. A defense lawyer doesn’t have to prove anybody touched the phone. He asks how we know it’s the same phone, and our paperwork being wrong for two weeks is not an answer that helps us. This one landed on a closed file. That’s the only reason it’s nothing.” He opened the second folder. “The canvass on Winchester Street. Signed off as complete. Two addresses in the middle of it with nothing written beside them.”

The canvass sheet was the record that every door on the street had been knocked and asked. Mine said two never were. This break-in had closed weeks back, so the gap cost nothing. On an open file it could hide the one witness the case needed, and nobody would know to go back for them, not until the camera footage had been taped over and the neighbors had stopped remembering.