Page 16 of Shadow of Doubt

“And second,” she pressed, not allowing him to derail her, “I wasn’t angry until I walked in here and saw that you’d turned this crime scene into an open house for your buddies from the DGSE. That’s unprofessional. I won’t have that. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” Gibert responded. “But I’m telling you, Jadot’s murder is work-related. That’s why I said it runs straight through the DGSE. We’re not going to solve this without them. Anything we can do to keep them cooperative, benefits the investigation.”

“What if it’s not work-related? What if this was a crime of passion or opportunity?”

“That’s not what my gut’s telling me.”

Brunelle looked at him.

“I’ve been a homicide inspector for over two decades,” he continued. “You learn to trust your intuition. And mine tells me this is work-related.”

“And what did your intuition tell you about me?”

“Fuck off, Karine.”

“No, tell me. I’d like to know.”

“Honestly?” he asked.

“Honestly,” she replied.

Gibert traveled back in his mind, back to when they had first worked together, before their relationship had crossed the line.

“I thought you were smart,” he said. “Maybe a little too smart. And weird. You were standoffish. The other cops thought you were cold, bitchy even, but that wasn’t it.”

“No?”

“No. You were lonely. You probably still are. You push everybody away. Of course every time you do, you’ve got a perfect excuse why, but somewhere, deep down, you know you’re lying to yourself. You’re a misanthrope. And until you truly learn to like yourself, you’re going to be incapable of liking, much less loving other people.”

After a long pause, Brunelle began to clap, slowly. “Well said. It’s like having the great Molière himself right here in the kitchen imparting his wisdom.”

“Go ahead, make jokes,” Gibert responded. “Deflect. I should’ve washed my hands of you a lot sooner.”

She could have let that go, but she was still angry. “Speaking of hands,” she replied, needling him, “I see you’ve started wearing your wedding ring again. Was that your idea? Or your wife’s?”

“Fuck you, Karine. I mean it. Fuck you to hell. I don’t know why I bother with you.”

At that moment, patrol officer Leconte approached the kitchen to let them know that the evidence technicians had arrived.

Whatever this was between them was, for the moment, over.

“You know the rules,” said Gibert as he left to go talk with the techs. “Look all you want. Just don’t touch anything.”

If only you had obeyed that rule,she thought to herself,we could have saved each other a lot of heartache.

Tired of the back-and-forth, she nodded. No additional venom. No more witty rejoinders. Just seeing him again had taken a lot out of her. She needed some air.

She glanced around the kitchen one last time, committing everything to memory, looking for anything unusual or out of place.

Her eyes landed on the set of keys sitting on the counter. There wasn’t anything strange about them per se, but attached to the ring was a car’s key fob. It gave her an idea.

Searching the neighborhood for Jadot’s vehicle would allow her to get out of the apartment and away from Vincent while continuing to move the investigation forward.

Pulling a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, she put them on and walked over to the counter. Picking up the keys, she studied the fob.

It was black, with chrome accents, and had three buttons—door lock, door unlock, and trunk release. Pretty standard stuff. Separating the fob from the key ring, she slid it into her pocket and texted a colleague back at the office to run Jadot’s name through their vehicle registry database.

Crouching down, she inspected the revolver. It was a Manurhin MR 73, chambered in .357 Magnum. The wooden grips were worn and the weapon itself was scratched up. It was an old gun that had been around. Parts of it appeared to have some sort of gunk on it. She didn’t have to touch it to know what it was. She had a pretty good idea what she was looking at.

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