SEVERAL PEOPLE SCRIBBLED or typed out notes in the deepening and troubling silence that followed. I didn’t want to dominate the meeting, so I handed it right back to Bree for the rest of the Q amp;A. Richter grilled her hard, but she never backed down from her domineering boss. Sampson was right about Bree-she was going places in the MPD, or she was going to get tossed by some jealous superior.
Afterward, we were gathering up our materials in the empty briefing room when she stopped and looked at me. “You’re pretty good at this,” she said. “Maybe even better than your hot-shit reputation.”
I shrugged her off with a smile, but deep down I enjoyed the compliment. “I’ve done a lot of these meetings. Besides, you carried it, and you know it.”
“Not the meeting, Alex. This. This work. You’re the best I’ve seen. By a lot. If you want to know the truth, I think we’re pretty good together. How scary is that?”
I stopped organizing the files in my hands and stared at her. “Then, Bree, why do I feel like we’re headed in the wrong direction on this thing?”
She looked stunned by what I’d said. “Excuse me?”
It had been bugging me since just before the meeting ended. Everything had been moving so fast. This was really the first opportunity to hold our stuff up to scrutiny. And now I felt as if we were missing something important. I was almost sure of it. I hated the timing, but I couldn’t help the feeling I had. My famous goddamn feelings! My gut was calling out to me to review all the bidding so far, everything that we thought we believed.
“Maybe this all makes sense because it’s what he wants us to think,” I said. “That’s just a hunch I have, but it bothers the hell out of me.”
I’d been burned like this before, not too long ago. We’d spent a lot of time on the Mary, Mary case in LA, running down an obvious but misleading persona instead of the actual killer. More people had died while we figured that out.
Bree started pulling papers from the briefcase she’d just packed. “Okay, fine. Let’s break it apart again. What do we need to know to nail this thing down the right way?”
The obvious answer to her question was that another murder would provide a hell of a lot more information for us.