Winston Patrick Mystery 2-Book Bundle. David Russell W.

sat alone in the front corner of the café. The booth was recessed and provided at least some semblance of privacy. Andrea walked in as I nursed my latte, a decaf, in hopeful anticipation of repeating my successful previous night’s slumber. As usual, a few heads turned as she walked up to the counter to place her order for what I knew would not include any low fat or decaf product. Andy’s metabolism burned at a rate that required no special restrictions on her intake of calories.

      As she waited for her order to be filled, Andy opted to stand and gaze around the room, checking out products on the shelf and potential partners in the store. She was disappointed by both. Though she attracted the attention of a few patrons, none would live up to her exacting standards. No one in the room looked like they could consistently run a seven-minute mile in a ten-kilometre race.

      When her order arrived, she ambled over to my table as though spotting me for the first time.

      “Nothing too promising?” I asked her as she sat down.

      “The whole world isn’t a smorgasbord,” she replied. “That would be too easy.”

      “And so would you be.”

      “Sleep has not made you any less a smartass,” she observed. Nothing short of surgery was likely to do that. It was how I kept myself at a distance from anyone I didn’t want too near. Of course, it also kept at a distance some of those I might want to have near. “How has your day been?” she added.

      “Well, I spent a chunk of it at the local jail.”

      “You used to spend half your life at the local jail. One afternoon there is a step up.”

      “True.”

      “How’s your client?” she asked with real concern.

      “About as good as he can be, I suppose. A first taste of incarceration usually convinces people they do not want to be there. If we get him out of there, I’m not worried that he’s ever going to do anything to put himself back again.”

      She nodded thoughtfully as she took a sip of her latte. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who like their drinks absolutely piping, smoking hot and the rest of us. Andrea always orders her drinks extra hot, what she describes as “lawsuit temperature.” She has lips of steel. My bland, sensitive British stomach pretty much required the cooling of my caffeine to somewhere between lukewarm and kind of hot.

      “Derek on board?” she asked nonchalantly. I knew Andy was not at all happy at my choice of co-counsel, at least from a personal perspective. Anyone who might in some way reconnect me with my ex-wife was essentially persona non grata in her eyes. Andy also suspected, as did I, that Derek carried if not an Olympic-size torch, at least a camping-size one for her. Most would consider Derek an ideal catch. Andy couldn’t get past his connection to Sandi. Her disdain for my choice of first marriage knew no bounds.

      “Yep. He’s going to handle Carl’s first appearance on Monday.” I filled her in on the details of our conversation and laid out my initial plans for how Derek might handle some of the work my teaching might prevent me from getting to. She nodded her consent, though I wasn’t particularly looking for it.

      “That’s good,” she sighed, sitting back and taking another sip of her latte. “That’s good,” she repeated, nodding as though deep in thought. “I think you’re going to need the help on this one.”

      “Thank you,” I countered. I knew full well Andrea did not mean her comment as disparaging in any way. Still, it’s sometimes useful to make her feel guilty.

      “Don’t be a shit,” she scolded. This was obviously not one of those times. “You already knew this case was bigger than what you’re used to. I’m telling you, it’s got big and complicated written all over it.” This was her way of segueing into telling me she had found out something important during her afternoon of snooping.

      “What have we learned?” I asked, not wanting to beat around the bush any longer.

      She reached into her backpack and pulled out her notebook. She is a meticulous note keeper, writing down things that everyday people take for granted. I knew she would not have been able to take notes while she was hunting for information on Tricia’s case; she would have had to sneak out her data quickly, then find a quiet place to quickly record all of the information she had learned. This she did in a typical, spiral bound police notebook that every cop on television and in real life carried.

      “For starters,” she began, “this is big.”

      “You said that already,” I intoned.

      She looked up from her notes to scowl at me. “I thought it was big enough to merit repeating the cautionary note.” I loved it when she talked official.

      “My apologies. Please continue.”

      “Detectives Furlo and Smythe were out of the office, I think finally taking a few hours of downtime and to catch a little bit of sleep. They’ve pretty much been going around the clock since the discovery of the body.”

      “So I gathered. Furlo made a point of telling me how hard he’s been working to lock up my client,” I told her.

      “Furlo is the kind of cop that would like you to know how hard he is working. He would be telling you that even if the case fell into his lap, which in some ways, this one did.” She paused, ostensibly for dramatic effect. She wanted me to prompt her along. I obliged.

      “What do you mean it ‘fell into his lap’? You think the case is bogus?”

      “No,” she was quick to clarify, not wanting to cast any inaccurate aspersions on the professionalism of her colleagues, even one she wasn’t particularly fond of like Michael Furlo. “Furlo is the kind of cop who is looking for advancement, but he’s not going to risk his chance of promotion by busting someone he doesn’t believe is guilty. If Carl is behind bars, it’s at least in part because Furlo believes him to be guilty. Also, there’s no way in hell Jasmine Smythe would be part of any plot to arrest someone for political reasons. She is too straight-up for that. But the politics are huge.”

      “There’s interdepartmental squabbling on this one?” I asked, assuming personalities within the police command structure were coming into play in the investigation. While this could make individual officers a bit pissy to work with, it didn’t really concern me that much, at least in its impact on my defence.

      “The politics extend way beyond the detective division,” Andy continued solemnly. “The case file is still pretty preliminary at this point, since Furlo and Smythe are still working hard to gather evidence and haven’t had much time to complete a lot of the paperwork. But there are a few really interesting notations in the file.”

      My heart rate kicked it up a notch. “You actually went through the case file?” I nearly shrieked at her. “Jesus, Andy! I wanted your help, but you’re going to get yourself fired! I can’t take on a wrongful dismissal suit while I’m in the middle of a murder defence.”

      “Relax,” she told me and took a sip of hot liquid. “There was no one around, and I just took a few quick peeks. If anyone knew I had been in there, I would have known about it by now. There’s nothing I’m going to tell you that wouldn’t be disclosed to you during discovery anyway.”

      “All right, give it to me. I mean no disrespect to the victim here—I met her once, and she seemed like a hell of a kid—but what is so all hell-fired that her death is getting everything into an uproar? And who’s in an uproar?”

      “For starters, there are notations of a couple of very interesting phone messages coming into the inspector of the homicide division. The first message came from his excellency’s office.”

      “The mayor?”

      “None other. It appears that by sometime mid-morning on Thursday, the mayor had put in calls to the chief, who had forwarded inquiries to the inspector,” she confirmed.

      “The mayor is required by provincial statute not