FIVE

Finnegan’s call with the DEA turned up nothing. A golden kiwi was an unrecognised symbol anywhere in the tristate area. The mystery only building up, their only logical next move was to search Vissicchio’s apartment.

Peebles successfully earned them a search warrant and the detective and his partner headed over immediately. Though Finnegan had already seen the place once before, did a quick sweep of the apartment first, noting the rather normal look of the place, as opposed to Heat’s crazy mazes of papers and pictures. With nothing in particular standing out immediately, Peebles headed to the bedroom to search under the bed and through the closet for secret rooms, while Finnegan swept through the flawlessly clean kitchen.

Finnegan, remembering Heat’s similarly organised kitchen, pulled out all the knives out of their shelf. He checked each cabinet door. He even peered into the refrigerator. It wasn’t until he got to a tall, thin closet in the corner of the room that he found an odd sock. It was the only locked door in the entire apartment. A crazy idea formed in his head and he pulled out his Glock and aimed it at the lock. The gunshot sounded loud and clear through the entire place, drawing Peebles into the kitchen with him.

“Peebles, look,” he said, running his hand down the smooth wooden surface. “Not even a dent.”

“Check this out,” Peebles said as a reply. He held up a plastic evidence bag. Inside it was a dagger, with half of its blade missing. “Ten bucks it’s the same metal as the metal piece we already have,” he gloated. “Another ten bucks it’s the weapon itself.”

As they continued their sweep, Finnegan spotted something behind the couch in the living room. He had noticed the moment he had walked in that the box that he yearned for was missing from top of the bookcase. But Vissicchio must’ve thrown it aside in a hurry and forgotten about it, for it was now lying discarded on the carpet. Finnegan picked up the box rather carefully. He took a breath and, his heart beating with anticipation, tucked a few fingers into the crease and…

“What the hell is going on here?”

They both turned, Finnegan almost dropping the box and Peebles managing to drop the dagger on his partner’s foot.

“Sorry,” Peebles mumbled and picked it up sheepishly.

Kate Vissicchio stood at the threshold, her face an expression of total horror. “What the hell is going on here?” she repeated.

“Kate Vissicchio, we have a search warrant,” Finnegan announced authoritatively.

“For what?”

“For this. Whatever this is, whatever this symbol means, it’s a secret that you were never willing to talk about. We now know this is at the heart of this case, so whatever you’re hiding in here, we’re going to find out.”

Kate pursued her lips. Her face flushed, painting her cheek red, but she just crossed her arms and looked at the detectives, as if daring them to try and open the box.

Finnegan cocked an eyebrow at her silence. Taking it as a challenge, he refocused on the box. With another deep breath, he flipped it open. Finally…

Finnegan’s jaw dropped dramatically.

It was empty.

 

 

Detective Finnegan strutted into Interrogation 1 with his chest forward, shoulders back, spine straightened. He slapped a folder on the desk, the nice, crisp sound making her jump. Then he kicked the chair back and plopped himself in it. He made a show of throwing his weight around. Now came the crackdown.

“You didn’t strike me as the secretive type at first, you know,” he began. “No criminal record, totally clean slate, generally liked at work…”

Finnegan paused, looking for a reaction. Nothing yet.

“So when all this business started, I had no reason to suspect you,” he continued. “But now you’ve come to a tight spot. I know you know more about this case than you’re letting on. I know you’re hiding something. Now, I haven’t been able to deduce why. Why would you keep something from me? Why would you refuse to talk? Why would you kill your best friend?”

Vissicchio flinched violently. Finnegan thought she was about to burst out, but she bit her lip and kept her silence.

“Let me start by asking you this,” the detective said. “Where were you in the past couple days? Where did you go? The plane ticket was bought last-minute. What were you running away from?”

“I was not running away from anything,” she said quietly, but defiantly. “I was at my grandmother’s funeral. She died two months ago. We couldn’t arrange a funeral until now, but I wasn’t aware that the funeral was arranged until I got an official invitation letter from my aunt which arrived only a couple days before the actual funeral. I had to hurry like crazy.”

“We’ll be sure to check that.”

Finnegan made a quick note and moved onto the next item of business. From the folder, he pulled out a plastic evidence bag containing the broken metal blade. He placed in front of Vissicchio to take a look. He saw in her eyes that she recognised it. “We found this in your apartment. Preliminary tests show that this is made with the exact same material as murder weapon. How much trouble do you think you’ll be in if tests show that it is the weapon?”

“None. It’s not the weapon,” she said simply. She looked directly at him when she said the statement, not to be pushed around by the detective. “I found that months ago. It hasn’t left my closet since.”

“Where did you find it?”

“I…” she hesitated.

“Why did you keep it locked in a closet?”

She closed her mouth and closed her eyes, deep in thought.

Finnegan decided to help her out in her decision making: “If you don’t cooperate, I will find a way to keep you locked up until I can break you.” She opened her eyes. His eyes pierced coldly into hers.

She held the gaze for a breath before looking away. “I am in no position to hand over that information to you. And by the law, you cannot make me tell you,” she added more defiantly.

“Just more and more secrets, Kate.”

Finnegan flipped open the folder lying on the desk and made a show of looking it over, though he had reviewed everything he had on her many times before the interrogation. “You quit your job at The New York Times two months ago, correct?” She nodded. “Soon after you quit, you split with Heat and moved out. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said, unclear where this was going.

“Then how is it that you, the one without a real, stable job, can afford a nice apartment while Heat was forced into a run-down apartment, where she couldn’t keep anything organised?”

He waited for an answer. Vissicchio kept her silence, unwilling to make any more mistakes.

“You’re not helping yourself, Kate,” he said. “I have a witness that saw you and Heat arguing right before you decided to ditch The Times.”

“We were just talking,” she said calmly. She saw the detective open his mouth to protest but she held up her hand, for once, stopped him from interrupting. “I had an issue about the job that I couldn’t handle and I just had to quit. Renee tried to talk me out of it then but I just couldn’t stay. It got a bit emotional with the good-byes, that’s all, but there was no acts, or thoughts, of contempt. We’re best friends, not enemies. We did not fight.”

“What issues? What kind of issues could you possibly run into in the field of journalism that led you to quit and move out within a week? If I couldn’t see the strength behind your eyes right now, I’d say you were scared.”

She bit her lower lip, keeping herself from talking while her brain took its time working it out. After a minute, she said quietly, “It wasn’t the journalism.”

“Where did the money come from, Kate?” Finnegan asked suddenly. “Renee and you both spent more money than you could’ve possibly earned from The Times. You were receiving periodic wire transfers from Renee. A large sum of money, enough to beef up your income to pay for your luxury apartment, but that didn’t last, did it? Heat stopped making the transfers, right after you quit and moved out. So yes, I believe you when you say it wasn’t the journalism, because The New York Times does not give off large amount of cash to its reporters. But whoever did, only gave to Heat. You were at her mercy to get that money. When she stopped, you had to take over. You had to find a new way to get that money.”

“Are you saying,” Vissicchio hissed, “that I killed my friend, my best friend, for money?”

“How else do you explain your luxurious life with no job, no wire transfers of money, compared to Heat’s rundown place? You killed her so you could have the entire pot to yourself, instead of splitting it between the two of you, because that’s what she tried to do to you.”

“No, you’re wrong. I didn’t need the money. I saved up enough to last me decades of retirement. So save me your accusations, I did not kill her out of greed.”

“Then what? What was this issue with the job? Because I’m getting the feeling that this job is something other than journalism.”

She took a long pause.

“Kate,” Finnegan said more forcefully, “what’s the golden kiwi?”

She looked up with a curious look on her face, something like a mix of comprehension and fear. “This is not something I can tell you,” she said, looking away. “It’s beyond my power.”

“What? Some top-secret case file, is it?” The detective was half-joking, but he saw from Vissicchio’s silence that it was true. At least to some degree.

He admitted defeat. He was not going to get anywhere with this secret of hers right now. So he tackled at her with a new angle. “Where were you Thursday morning, between midnight and two?”

“Are you serious? After all I’ve just explained?” she asked incredulously. She snarled, “I did not kill her.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” He added in a quiet but threatening voice, “Whatever this secret is about, it was enough to scare you into silence. Now all I need to answer is, was it enough to kill for?”

 

 

“No?”

“Nope,” Peebles confirmed. “Dr. Azri just sent me the results. The piece doesn’t match the dagger. It’s not the weapon we’re looking for.”

Finnegan swore. “So we have nothing.”

“Maybe not nothing,” Peebles said as he finished flipping through his notes. “Okay, her alibi checks out. The doorman and security footage places her at her apartment from 11 PM ’til well past 10 AM on Thursday. No way she could’ve slipped out and attacked her. Again, Nevada PD confirms that there was a funeral near Black Mountains just a couple days ago. Her relatives and friends place Vissicchio at the funeral. She was telling the truth about all of that.

“But,” he said dramatically, “I just got off the phone with The Times and they know nothing about this secret Vissicchio is so afraid to tell us. They denied everything and anything about her working on anything so sensitive that she couldn’t talk about it to the police.”

“So what? We already knew it wasn’t going to be connected with the newspaper. We have nothing, Peebles, nothing. We have no evidence against Vissicchio, nothing concrete.”

“What if Vissicchio didn’t kill her?” Peebles suggested.

“Then who else?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to believe that woman is capable of killing her best friend. I’m just not getting that vibe from her,” Peebles said. “Look, if they were really part of some drug cartel, the mess created by murder is a lot more than a simple story of revenge cooks up.”

Finnegan had to agree. It was incredibly unlikely that Vissicchio really murdered Heat because she was betrayed and booted off the team. Killing Heat would have consequences, ones that Finnegan felt that Vissicchio wouldn’t be willing to suffer. “They were involved in something. But what…?”