Free The Cold Room by Robert Knightly

delinquent. That I didn’t suffer the fate of so many of my peers by running afoul of the law was due almost entirely to his intervention. Before we met, my options were limited to my druggie parents or a motley collection of street urchins on the Lower East Side. Conrad offered a third possibility; I could, if I wished, spend my afternoons in his Murray Hill apartment. I don’t want to take this too far – I never thought of Conrad as my father, or his wife, Helen, as my mother. Instead, what they provided, and what I needed, was stability, a dependable world equally free of the chaos offered by my parents and the casual violence of the streets.
    There was a second benefit to my relationship with Conrad, a benefit still with me twenty-five years later. Simply put, as I learned to swim competitively, water became my preferred element. With my goggles wet and every sound dampened by ear plugs, I was finally able to shut the world out, to turn my attention inward until I eventually became my own object, the insect under the glass. Double-stroke, then breathe. Turn, push off. After a while, you don’t have to look ahead to find the far wall, or even count your strokes as you cross the pool. Something inside you, the same something that makes your heart beat and your stomach digest, counts for you.
    I swam for an hour on that night, concentrating my attention on the case. I knew, going in, that if Jane wasn’t identified, her murder would never be avenged. As I knew that, for the time being, I needed to continue my canvas, gradually expanding the search area, and hope for the best. Still, at some point, assuming I didn’t identify her first, the law of diminishing returns would kick in with a vengeance. It’s a very big city. Myself, I didn’t intend to give up if I crossed that line because there was another possibility out there, a wild card named Bill Sarney.
    Now assigned to the Chief of Detectives office, Deputy-Inspector Bill Sarney had been in command of the One-Sixteen when Adele and I worked the case that put us on the outs with the job. Two-faced from the beginning, Sarney pretended to be my rabbi and my friend, all the while selling me out to Borough Command and his buddies at the Puzzle Palace.
    It took me awhile, but when I eventually uncovered his game, I’d threatened to expose him to a sitting grand jury. The threat was potent enough to secure a promise that I’d eventually be transferred to Homicide – my long-term goal from the day I stepped through the doors of the Academy – and that we’d meet in public from time to time. About the PBA and its whispering campaign he could do nothing.
    Working for the Chief of Detectives, Sarney had the kind of juice I’d need if I took the case in a different direction. Unidentified victims are not all that rare in New York, certainly not rare enough to attract attention from the press. True, the media occasionally takes up the cause of a Jane Doe, but cops who reach out to the media without the backing of the job’s Public Information Office pay a heavy price. Bill Sarney could get me that backing. All I’d have to do is beg.
    Almost from the minute my hands cut the water, I’d been making an attempt to banish Adele from my thoughts. By then I knew she wouldn’t return, as promised, by the weekend. On Monday, her mother was scheduled to undergo an endoscopy, a procedure that requires the insertion of a tube through the mouth and into the stomach. Leya Bentibi was beside herself, not least because Jovianna insisted that she make a living will.
    Adele could not simply desert her mother. Right? So there was nothing to consider. That’s what I told myself, and I almost made it stick. But then, as my stroke became ragged, an image of Adele rose, unbidden, to hang before my eyes. Adele was sitting in the lobby of North Shore Hospital, her face a mask of bandages, her ski jacket matted with dried blood.