Page 6 of White Wolf

He stared at her, the kind of gaze that made suspects squirm and request lawyers.

She stared back, heart thumping hard behind her ribs.

Lanny took his cig between his fingers, exhaled a plume of smoke, wet his lips. Prepared to say something.

“Detectives!” Harvey called.

Lanny flicked his cigarette to the wet pavement. “Coming.”

Trina shelved the conversation with every intention of continuing it later.

2

FRIENDS, PARTNERS, SECRET KEEPERS

Last year at Thanksgiving, Trina had been the lucky recipient of an invitation to the Webbs’ family dinner. Lanny’s mother had called her personally on her office line: “I told Roland you have to come, please tell me that bad boy actually invited you? He did? Good. Wonderful. You don’t need to bring a thing, sweetie, just your pretty face. We’ve got enough food to feed all of Queens.”

And they had, the narrow two-story brick house packed with relatives bearing covered casserole dishes.

Lanny’s mother, Trina had learned that day, was Italian-American, five-foot-eight, and a knockout. She had a mane of thick black hair that fell to her waist and which she was letting go gray naturally, which on her was a rich silver the color of a fox’s pelt. Wide-hipped, and dark-skinned, a mother of six, she’d reeled Trina in for a crushing hug the moment she met her and declared her “gorgeous.” “I don’t know why my boy doesn’t bring you around more often.”

“Ma,” Lanny had protested.

His father, by contrast, was English. Slender, pale as cream, soft-spoken and scholarly. He was a literature professor at NYU and favored thick wool sweaters. He hadn’t seemed like the father of six boisterous rounders, but when seen alongside his wife, they proved to be perfect complements, a delight of contrasts, each shoring up the other’s weak spots.

That Thanksgiving – seated at a long, cobbled-together table with what must have been every Webb and Moretti relative in existence – Trina had delighted in seeing her partner in his childhood home, meeting his people and learning the ways they’d shaped him.

Lanny had his mother’s eyes, and nose, her tan skin and her thick black hair. On the surface, he had her easy charm and humor. But he also had his father’s habit of holding things back, keeping his concerns and problems tucked deeply away. English in his reservations, using jokes to deflect anything too serious.

So when he said he was “fine,” Trina knew he was anything but. And she knew that if she pressed too hard too fast, he’d dig in his half-English heels and clam up.

She would have to tease it out of him, like handling a recalcitrant suspect.

Speaking of which…

The girl on the other side of the glass – mid-twenties, lots of makeup, blubbering into a tissue – had so far sobbed her way through a whole bunch of non-answers with the uniforms. She claimed to be the deceased’s – Chad Edwards, 25, organ donor, NYU grad student, TA – girlfriend. She hadn’t told Thompkins anything, had just cried and gone along like a lost lamb, was now waiting for a formal questioning.

“What did she tell you?” Trina asked Thompkins.

He shrugged. “Christa Jeffries, age twenty-one, also a grad student. They’ve been dating since undergrad. Tonight was the first time they went to Angelo’s. From what I could tell through the crying, he was the ‘best boyfriend on earth.’” He shrugged again. “Whatever that means.”

Trina bit back a smile. “I’m sure he was.”

Lanny stepped into the viewing room, three paper cups of shitty break room coffee balanced in his hands. He shot Trina a raised-brow look. “We set?”

She grabbed her notepad. “Yep.”

This interview room was the one they used for victims’ families. The chairs were sturdy and mostly comfortable. No one had scratched profanity or crude cartoon dicks into the tabletop. A wheeled cart offered an array of chips, and crackers, and candy bars. A window overlooked the street below.

That’s where Christa’s gaze was trained when Trina and Lanny entered the room, chewing at a now-ragged thumbnail and watching the coffee carts set up shop on the sidewalk. The rain had stopped and the sun was coming up. One of the coffee vendors was already sweating, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

Christa startled when she heard the door click open, whirling to face them, wiping at her eyes. She’d chewed off most of her lipstick and smeared her mascara into big raccoon rings.

No one wore grief well, but for some it was a costume. It was Trina’s job to figure out who was sincere, and who was playing dress-up.

“Hi, Christa,” she greeted, taking her time to pull out a chair and get settled, arranging her notepad, flicking her hair back. Casual, friendly. She sent a disarming, sympathetic smile across the table. “Sorry it’s been such a rough night. We just have a few questions.”

Lanny set down the coffee and slid one across to the girl. “Here, you look like you could use this.” He offered her one of his patented warm-eyed smiles. He was a hell of an interrogator – their captain swore he could get the Pope to confess to a murder he hadn’t even committed – and it all started with a smile. For someone who’d originally wanted to make a living beating the shit out of people, he sure had a soft side.

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