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Conklin said, “He was also at Jamie’s funeral, for sure. Rae pointed him out.”
I agreed, saying for Alvarez’s benefit, “Rae said he attended only because she asked him to be there.”
Conklin said, “I’ll run his name. Brock Picard?”
“This is like my Padre lead,” said Alvarez. “It almost fits but doesn’t fit at all.”
She passed me her favorite snack, the family-size bag oftruffle oil potato chips. I snatched it before she changed her mind—and that’s when a scuffle started at the front desk. Bobby was tackling someone who’d tried to charge past the desk. Bob had been a court officer before coming to the Homicide desk and he still knew how to jujitsu a man.
Through the shouting and thudding of bodies hitting the floor, I heard my name being shouted from under Bobby’s thick body twenty feet away.
“Sergeant!”
I launched myself toward the sounds of men fighting and saw that it was Christophe, red-faced and struggling to get out from under Bobby’s weight.
I was joined by Conklin and then Brady appeared, coming through the bullpen entrance. He told Bob to step aside.
Brady is instinctively battle-ready. He grabbed a frenzied Christophe Picard with both hands, jerked him to his feet, threw him against the wall, and pinned him there. Then Brady stared around furiously until his ice-blue eyes found me.
“Who is this man, Boxer?”
“Christophe—”
I didn’t finish the introduction. Chris interrupted me, pleaded to talk only to me, and in a fashion he did. His voice was a hoarse, paralyzing scream.
“Rae is dead! She was murdered!”
CHAPTER 108
CHRISTOPHE’S SCREAMS NEARLY stopped my heart. I’d seen him less than an hour before, and he’d told me how much he loved Holly. And now he was here, reporting Rae’s murder.
Was it true? Or had he mentally skidded off the rails into a ravine? No one moved. His next directive broke the spell.
“I sent you the video!” Chris shouted at me. “Open it!”
I shifted my eyes first to Conklin, then Alvarez, then Brady. Christophe was keening.
Brady said to me. “Go ahead. I’ll keep him here.”
A torrent of dread washed over me. I went to the pod, took my chair, and opened my inbox. I stared at the long stack of email on my screen but I made no move to open any of them. Alvarez got up and walked behind me. She reached over my shoulder and found incoming mail from CP@Bonhomie. She clicked on it with a forefinger.
Alvarez is fearless.
The email was blank with a video attachment. Alvarezstood beside me as I opened it. I was looking directly at Rae Bergen’s face, full screen and animated. She was alive, in what looked like a home office, speaking to Christophe, visible in a small window in the corner of the screen.
Chris was saying, “You can’t baby him anymore, Rae—”
There was movement behind Rae’s image. It was the camera’s-eye view of a male torso, from waist to right shoulder, coming into the frame. The figure pointed a .40-caliber at the back of her head and fired.
Rae’s eyelids flashed wide-open for a split second as the bullet sped from the back of her head through her forehead, blowing out a hole in her forehead the size of a golf ball.
Instinctively, my eyes slammed shut and when I opened them a second later, Rae’s head and upper torso had fallen forward across her laptop. I heard Chris’s voice coming over Rae’s computer. He screamed “Rae!” and the picture went black.
The image of Rae’s last breath had burned into my brain, and I couldn’t blink it away. I heard Alvarez repeating my name. Christophe bellowed from the wall beside the front desk.
“He killed her, Sergeant. Rae is dead.”
“Who? Who did it?”