Free Cold Truth by Mariah Stewart

steps and watched as the car left the lot on two wheels.
    Well, shit,
she thought.
That doesn’t bode well.
    “You on your way to pick up that car, Detective?”
    She turned at the sound of the chief’s voice.
    “Yes, I’m meeting Helms there. I spoke with our vic’s roommate. She said the car keys are still on the hook inside the front door, where Lisa left them.”
    “Good. I’m on my way to the mayor’s office to go over what little we know before the press conference he decided to call. Want to trade places?”
    “No thanks.”
    Denver started to walk past her and she touched his arm.
    “Chief, Detective Spencer just . . .” She pointed to the street.
    “Ex-detective Spencer. He’s no longer with the department.”
    “What?” Her jaw dropped.
    “His choice. He’s going back to Minnesota or Michigan . . .”
    “Wisconsin.” She supplied the name of Spencer’s home state.
    “Whatever,” Denver grumbled. “His wife hates it here, she hates the beach, she misses her mother, she misses her sister, she hates that he’s at work all the time, she hates that she has no friends here, the baby’s always sick, he’s never around to help her . . .”
    He paused. “Did I miss anything?”
    “If you did, it probably doesn’t matter.”
    “I knew there was something going on there, his attitude has changed over the past month or two. So we had to have a chat. Told him that I need him to be on the case, one hundred percent, you know, we have a killer here, we need his full attention and if he can’t give it to us, he needs to rethink his career choice.” He paused again. “Apparently he had already done that. He’d applied for and was offered a job at a police department fifteen miles from his hometown.”
    “So he’s leaving? He’s just walking out?”
    “Easier for some than for others, I guess. So, yes, to answer your question, he took accrued vacation, sick days, and personal time and is probably, as we speak, packing to leave, if his wife hasn’t already done that. He starts his new job on the first of next month.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Hardly just like that, he’s had this planned for weeks. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he did say he’d planned on giving his notice early in the week, but we found the first body. Then the second.”
    “I thought he seemed a bit off,” Cass said, recalling the way Spencer had held back and let her take the lead, not just that morning, but at the crime scene earlier in the week. “But I figured maybe he was just tired. You know, so much going on around here all of a sudden, and they have that new baby.”
    “Well, he’s taking that new baby and leaving us holding the bag.”
    “Did you ask him to stay for a few more days?”
    “What would be the point? Mentally, he’s already out of here. Might as well let him go. He wouldn’t be much use to us anyway, not in the state of mind he’s in right now.”
    Cass thought back to that morning, when Jeff had been late getting to the crime scene, and had been pretty much ineffective even after he arrived.
    “So, I guess it’s you, me, and a couple of uniforms against our boy, Cass.”
    Denver walked down the steps and didn’t turn back until he reached his car.
    “Finish up with the car and with Tasha, then go on home and get some sleep. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

F ive
    Her newly found enthusiasm for healthy living having been inspired a few weeks earlier by a visit from an old friend of her father’s who happened to be a holistic physician, Regan Landry added a banana to the skim milk, yogurt, and assorted powders in the blender and hit the
Pulverize
button. The little appliance whirred noisily while she found a glass and searched for a straw. She hit
Stop
and a blessed silence followed. She poured her breakfast into the glass and sat down at the small round kitchen table and opened the newspaper. Bored after a few minutes of skimming the headlines, she searched under the