“I need the computer for a sec,” O’Donnell muttered.
“Sure.” Zoe tried to move away, but she couldn’t back her chair more than a few inches without ramming into the desk behind her. She was about to stand up and do the shuffling dance—squeeze behind O’Donnell to let her through—when O’Donnell simply leaned over Zoe, grabbing the computer mouse. Zoe awkwardly pushed her chair to the corner to give O’Donnell access to the keyboard. The detective smelled of lavender. She wore a different shirt than she had that morning. She must have showered in the station. That made Zoe think of her own odor after a very long day.
O’Donnell was intent on the screen, a strand of blonde hair draped on her cheek. She had very long eyelashes. It was a weird thing to notice—Zoe never paid much attention to eyelashes.
“Just two more,” O’Donnell said. She was checking some names to see if they had a police record.
“Sure, no problem,” Zoe said.
Both names returned blank results. O’Donnell pulled away. “Thanks.”
“It’s your computer.”
O’Donnell nodded distractedly. She marked a line on the page. “Where’s Agent Gray?”
“I think he went out for a drink.”
O’Donnell raised an eyebrow. “Really? Leaving you to do all the dirty work?”
Her tone was teasing, casual, but Zoe frowned in annoyance. Tatum had worked his ass off on this case, had in fact volunteered to work on it. They’d worked weekends and deep into the nights. The mere thought that O’Donnell would suggest Tatum was slacking off raised Zoe’s hackles. “We’ve been working really hard on this case for a very long time.”
“It’s okay, I was only—”
“I don’t see your own partner sitting here, contributing anything to the investigation.”
It was as if a layer of frost instantly coated the air between them. The tiny smile that had been hovering on O’Donnell’s lip dissipated. “Right.” Her voice was sharp, angry. She turned back to her papers.
Zoe turned back to her search queries, feeling that jolt of indignation that came when masking guilt.
The next twenty minutes stretched as she did search after search. She’d decided to keep looking for cases with needle marks. If it made this evening longer, it couldn’t be helped.
Her stomach grumbled. They’d been there for a couple of hours, and she hadn’t really eaten a proper dinner—just two slices of pizza. But seeing as there was hardly any noise in the room, her stomach’s growling filled the space, almost sounding like the rumble of distant thunder. She shifted uncomfortably. Cleared her throat. Another growl. O’Donnell’s lips quirked slightly. She opened a drawer, got a jar out of it, placed it between them. It was full of assorted nuts.
“Help yourself.” She opened it and took a handful. “It’s my night snack.”
“Thanks.” Zoe took a few nuts, ate one, enjoying the saltiness. “These are good.”
“Only the best for my guests.” Her tone was still cold.
“Your partner probably has a good reason for not being here,” Zoe suggested as a peace offering.
“I don’t have a partner.”
“Oh. Isn’t it mandatory for detectives in your department to work in pairs?”
“There are exceptions.”
“Are you one of the exceptions?”
O’Donnell didn’t answer, flipping a page in the call records. Zoe waited it out, but it seemed like their discussion was done. She sighed, turning back to the computer. Conversations seemed so easy when other people had them. But for Zoe, a conversation was a delicate butterfly she invariably managed to squash.
After ten minutes, O’Donnell placed the stack of papers on the desk with a loud thump. “Well, Catherine Lamb sure talked on the phone a lot, and with a bunch of different people.”
“Anything stand out?” Zoe asked, glancing at the pages. The top sheet had some rows marked with a bright-green marker.
“A few repeat numbers. The most frequent number is her father’s, both ingoing and outgoing calls. She has two female friends who talk to her occasionally, though lately they initiated all the calls, and the conversations were short. She talked with Patrick Carpenter every three or four days, and there are a few other repeat numbers here. She was both the church’s administrator and a religious counselor, so I guess the variety of phone calls is no surprise.”
“So you’re done for tonight?” Zoe asked. She was only through about half of the cases. She wondered if O’Donnell would let her stay.
“Nope. Still got her bank and credit statements. I have about an hour to go.” O’Donnell looked exhausted. She glanced at the time. “Aw, crap. It’s after eleven. I forgot to call my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?”
O’Donnell nodded, picking up her phone. “Nellie. She’s five.”
“Oh. That’s nice.” Zoe wasn’t in fact sure it was nice, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
O’Donnell nodded, phone to her ear. Then she said, “Hey, hon. Sorry. I didn’t notice the time. When did she go to sleep? Oh. No, that’s okay. I’m sorry. I should have . . . yeah.”
Zoe tried to concentrate on the screen, but she couldn’t focus. O’Donnell’s tone was so different, so much softer, when she talked on the phone; it was distracting.
“How was her school today?” O’Donnell asked. She listened for a few seconds, her face getting rigid. “They what? And what did she do?”
A long pause, in which Zoe quickly skimmed another case of a drug addict found shot, multiple needle holes in both arms. She didn’t even bother noting it. Irrelevant.
O’Donnell sighed. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow. Thanks. Good night, hon.” She hung up and promptly exploded. “Those bitches!”
Zoe blinked. “Is everything okay?”
“Nellie has a friend . . . had a friend. Winona. And now Winona became friends with this group of girls, and they don’t want to include Nellie in their sticker-collection group. It’s like . . . Smurf stickers or something. So today Winona told Nellie she’s not talking to her anymore.” O’Donnell’s voice trembled with rage. “And Nellie just spent the evening crying. It’s the third time this month she ends up crying at home.”
“It’ll pass. Kids fight,” Zoe said.
“Nellie doesn’t fight. She’s always so sweet. And last year, Winona didn’t have any friends. She was so happy Nellie would be her friend.”
“It’s probably a phase.” Zoe just wanted the discussion over. O’Donnell was overreacting.
“You know what I’d like to do? March in there, waving my gun around, maybe fire a few shots into the ceiling. Tell them I’m going to arrest them all. Put the fear of God into them.”
Zoe wondered if she’d misjudged O’Donnell. The woman had seemed like a reasonable person at first, but now she sounded demented. “Maybe Nellie needs a different friend,” she suggested weakly.
“Well, yeah, but she doesn’t want a different friend. She wants Winona to be her friend. I should get her to start a different sticker-collection group. With better stickers. It’ll be a sticker war.”