Time of Death

‘Three,’ said Robbie Truax, walking in and putting his knapsack on the floor beside his desk. Robbie was a former Aurora PD detective. He was Ren’s pal; kind, wholesome, blond-haired, blue-eyed, healthy – an elongated boy scout. He was also a strict Mormon – no caffeine, no alcohol, no swearing, no sex before marriage. Robbie was the 30-Year-Old Virgin.

The TV screen flashed quickly across the first few lines of faces on the Fifty Most Wanted list. A stab of anger hit Ren.

When the hell did this change happen?

Gary picked a few fugitives from the list, pushed by producers, as always, to choose the most glamorous cases – the fallen-child-star fugitive, the murderous teen, the homecoming hooker … The Crimestoppers number scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Ren stood up and went over to the office gallery of the Fifty Most Wanted, pinned across a huge corkboard on the wall.

Cliff checked his watch. ‘Ren, don’t bother – Gary will be back in a half-hour. He said he’d go through it all when everyone’s here.’

‘Well, let me just do this—’ Ren began grabbing pins from the photos and stabbing them into the top five faces as she re-arranged them.

‘Easy tiger,’ said Cliff.

2 (#ulink_29f566f1-d94c-57b9-a592-6dd11e2742ed)

Gary slipped quietly into his office without visiting the bullpen, but Ren had seen his car drive into the lot. She paused outside his door. Despite her years at Safe Streets, there were still times when she took a moment before going in. Gary’s office was like a Dutch minimalist armchair – handsome and elegant, but you wouldn’t want to stay in it for too long. It was as if it had been designed as a quick stop-off on your way to solving a case.

Ren knocked. Gary didn’t respond. If someone said jump, Gary Dettling, wouldn’t say ‘How high?’ He would probably never jump again for the rest of his life.

Ren leaned an ear to the door.

‘Come in,’ said Gary.

He was sitting at his desk. Ren imagined him there on his first day in the job, carefully flattening out a sheet of graph paper and marking in the exact location of each piece of furniture and drawing red circles with Xs through them over any spot that would typically hold a personal touch. But Ren knew that the polished mahogany, the pristine blue carpet, the sharp lines, the austerity did not define the man. It masked him. Gary was not just head of the Safe Streets Task Force, he also trained the FBI’s UCEs – undercover employees. He had spent so long in deep-cover assignments that hiding his real life had become a habit. He had a wife, a teenage daughter, a house in the mountains, but his office gave no indication of who Gary Dettling really was.

After her own deep-cover assignment, Ren had gone the other way. Once it was all over, she wanted to reinforce who she was more than ever. The problem was, she had never worked out who Ren Bryce was. And somewhere along the way, she had given up. Now, her workspace was as impersonal as Gary’s.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Gary looked up. ‘What’s up?’

‘Uh … the Most Wanted, maybe?’

‘Late-breaking change of play.’

‘How did you let that happen?’ said Ren.

Gary stared at her. ‘It happened. US Marshals wanted it that way. I said, sure, OK.’

‘Right …’

‘Ren, it’s done,’ said Gary.

‘I know, but …’

‘You still get to highlight the Val Pando three. OK, so they’ve dropped a few places on the Billboard charts …’ He shrugged.

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Ren, here’s the deal. Last year, we almost had the Val Pandos. And it dead-ended. This new top two have had confirmed sightings in Denver in the last month …’

‘Ah, meaning it’s going to be easier to strike this top two off the list. So everyone looks better?’

‘Including you,’ said Gary.

‘I could give two shits,’ said Ren.

Gary looked at her patiently. And glanced at the door behind her.

‘Fine. OK,’ said Ren.

‘Where are the others?’ said Gary.

‘In various states of “on their way”.’

Back in the task force office, Ren checked her email, flagged most of the new messages, then ignored them.

‘Coffee, anyone?’ Colin Grabien walked in the door with an offer he usually didn’t make until at least two hours into the day.

Colin Grabien had transferred to Safe Streets from the FBI White Collar Squad and was the task force’s IT and numbers expert. He was five foot eight in the flesh, six foot eight in spirit and a ball of latent anger. He was the mosquito – Ren was the citronella candle.

Gary finally appeared in the office as Ren was walking out with her makeup bag hidden by her side. She didn’t wear a lot – sheer foundation, brown or gray eyeshadow, black mascara on her poker-straight lashes and clear lip gloss – but she couldn’t go without it, even when it meant applying it in the ergonomically challenged Safe Streets ladies room.

‘Nice makeup,’ said Colin when she got back.

‘Fuck you,’ Ren coughed into her hand.

‘OK,’ said Gary, ‘everyone’s here. I’m going to give the lowdown on one and two on our list. Ren will do three through five.’

‘Sure,’ said Ren.

Gary’s phone beeped. ‘Ren, go ahead. I need to take care of this.’

Ren stood up. ‘OK, gentlemen: here’s the lowdown on the Val Pando posse. If I’m repeating myself, please realize that I don’t care. First up, number three – Domenica Val Pando, Latina, DOB 10/02/64.

‘Domenica was head of a huge cartel operating in New Mexico in the nineties – people trafficking, drugs, weapons, branching into biological weapons. No one has actually seen her since she disappeared the night the compound was stormed, with her seven-year-old son, Gavino Val Pando and her fifty-year-old husband, Augusto Val Pando.

‘Domenica showed up on the radar again last August when she was attempting to set up a lab outside Breckenridge to make H

S – colorless, odorless, fatal in seconds. We stopped her. But we couldn’t make any firm links to her, because she was, sadly, too fucking smart.’

Ren stood back. ‘This photo is eleven years old.’ The team followed her gaze to the noticeboard. Domenica Val Pando used to have an exotic beauty, but she had Americanized it, tweaked her features with surgery. Her hair was now the yellow-blonde that only very dark hair can be dyed. It was perfectly styled, but wrong. Her eyes were deep brown, slightly protruding, her lips full.

‘Not every psycho is dead in the eyes,’ said Ren.

Colin stared a little too long at the picture. ‘I’d hit it,’ he said.

‘Your standards are rising,’ said Ren. ‘Let me quickly give you the lowdown on Gavino Val Pando, Domenica’s son.’ She pointed to his photo, stapled under his mother’s.