The Dark Halo by David Stanley

Author:David Stanley [Stanley, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

24

COOMBES SAT IN THE task force room staring at the wall. Not the wall they’d covered with information, but the blank wall above Grace Sato’s head. The room affected his concentration in a way he couldn’t define. He preferred to work alone or, at most, with a partner. Being part of a large group didn’t work for him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t delegate, it was that the small apparently insignificant steps that were part of every investigation were actually part of his process, and often where a case broke. To notice inconsistencies in data, one person had to view all of it.

His eyes dipped and he saw that Sato was watching him.

She’s quite beautiful, he thought. Grace held his eye contact until he looked away. His interest in her was shifting from professional into something that should never exist between partners.

Coombes stood and left the room.

He needed to be moving, to feel like he was getting somewhere, because it was obvious to him that he wasn’t. The Ferryman case was going nowhere. He rode the elevator down to the street and stood at the entrance in the still air in front of the building. At one time, when it had been legal, cops had been able to go outside for a smoke and think through their cases. Coombes had never smoked, so he did the next best thing, and set out for a coffee.

When he got back to his desk, he was about halfway through a cup of coffee the size of his head. One day soon, he was certain they’d serve coffee in popcorn buckets. He was ready for that day, he’d been ready for years. He decided to finish the cup before he returned to the task force, on account of the coffee he hadn’t brought for anyone else.

The phone on his desk rang.

“Coombes.”

“Detective, this is Officer Fleet out of Hollenbeck. We met a couple of times when you worked Hollywood station, and briefly again last year.”

Coombes leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

“Fleet,” he said, trying to remember. He pictured a kid in his twenties that looked like he hadn’t started shaving yet. “Are you the snot-nosed punk that contaminated my crime scene on the Lilly Nichols case?”

An awkward laugh came down the line.

“Uh. Officer snot-nosed punk, reporting for duty.”

“What can I do for you today, Fleet?”

“I read about your case in the Times and thought of something that might be related.”

“All right.”

“A few weeks ago, I attended a fatal accident. One Adrian Blackstone out of Bel Air. His car took the Fourth Street exit of the I-5 in excess of 100 mph and hit the side of an RV that was crossing the intersection. We figured he fell asleep and his car drifted onto the exit lane. There were no skid marks until he was almost at the traffic signal, which is when we assumed he woke up. At that point, there was no chance of stopping his car.”

“Okay.”

Not an unreasonable assumption.

“That

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