CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When she arrived at the precinct the next morning, Ava was so distracted by the need to close Carter Epps’s case within the span of a day that she missed the fleeting glances the other cops and detectives were directing her way. She initially headed in the direction of the stairs that would lead her down to the Women’s Bureau, hoping some insight from detectives who weren’t close to the case might help to redirect her thinking.
But on the way, she saw Frank. He was sitting at his desk with the day’s paper in his hand. He caught her eye and waved her over. As she changed direction and headed to his desk, she finally noticed that at least half the people in the large room were looking at her. Some were talking quietly, a few even going so far as to speak behind their hands.
This, of course, was nothing new to her. She’d been the subject of much scrutiny ever since she’d become a detective. But it had been a while since she’d felt the pressure of it. She’d almost come to the conclusion that things would be okay—that the men in the precinct would get used to her presence and it would eventually become a new normal to them. But now she felt that maybe this had been nothing but a hopeful dream.
As she neared Frank’s desk, she saw worry in his face and she suddenly found the murmuring people behind her all the more frightening.
“What is it?” Ava asked as she approached the desk.
“I’m not sure how it happened,” Frank said, “but this was in the paper this morning.”
He placed the newspaper he’d been reading on his desk. It was opened to the second page, where the first headline in the left-hand column caught her attention. Ava grew cold as she read it, feeling fear and a sense of betrayal. It read: Infamous Detective Gold Delays Murderer Sentencing.
“Frank, this is not…well, not entirely accurate.”
“I figured,” he said.
Ava picked up the paper and read the article. It was brief, but there was more than enough there to make it seem as if she were both entitled and stubborn. The way the article was worded, it told the events of yesterday, when she’d approached the judge unannounced. It said that she had demanded the trial be postponed because of a lack of evidence. It then went on to state that there was plenty of evidence and there was even a reliable witness to back the whole thing up.
“How bad can this get?” she asked.
“Depends on how the day goes,” he said. “If I were you, I’d get out of here before Minard has a chance to call you in. He, of course, knows that you’d never be as spoiled or as forceful as the article makes you out to be, so I don’t think he’d press you too hard. But I do think he’d sideline you.”
“Ah, but don’t forget…the judge only gave me today.”
Frank reached out and took the paper from her. “Then what are you doing in here? Get going before one of these brown-nosers tells Minard you got in.”
She nodded and started walking quickly away from the desk. She stopped when she heard Frank whispering at her. “Katz’s Diner,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”
She gave a quick nod without turning around. As she made her way to the front of the building, it seemed that no one was going to make much of an effort to pretend she wasn’t the prime topic of conversation for the morning. She was always aware of at least two officers walking in the direction of Minard’s office; one of them kept sending her angry looks, as if he wanted her to know that he was headed to Minard so he could rat on her.
Ava hurried out and when she got on the street, she allowed herself a deep breath. Away from the prying eyes and already starting to walk toward Katz’s Diner, she recapped the article in her mind. A small part of her was willing to admit the sharpest hurt that had come from it. Up until this point of her career, she’d been the bee’s knees. The papers and reporters had loved her, seeing her as a ray of hope for the city. But now it seemed that the media had turned on her. Not only that, but it had turned quickly. Literally overnight.
She also assumed this meant that someone in the department had managed to find out what she was up to and reported it to the papers. The only other solution she could think of was that the judge had done it, but that seemed rather unlikely.
All of these scenarios ran through her mind as she entered Katz’s. As she found a table by the window, she noted that several people were reading the paper with their breakfasts. She knew she was not so well known that everyone would know her face, but she still felt on edge knowing that a false and demeaning story about her was currently in the hands of a few of the diner’s patrons.
She ordered a coffee and waited for Frank to arrive. She wondered if he was catching any grief from the macks back at the station. Even though they had no idea there was a romantic relationship between them, it was no secret at all that they were partners. She was sure he was getting plenty of jokes about not being able to keep his partner in line, about how that ditzy dame he worked with was starting to get a little too big for her britches.
Her coffee arrived and she also ordered eggs for breakfast, though she’d grabbed something to eat before leaving the apartment. She figured she may want to fuel up while she had the chance because today was going to have to be wide open and very rushed if she planned to try freeing Carter Epps by the end of the day.
Her fried eggs arrived shortly before Frank came walking in the door. He was moving quickly and with purpose. When he sat down in the chair across from Ava, it almost looked like he was partially collapsing.
“Is it that bad?” she asked.
“Just some crude jokes and comments,” he said. “You may also want to know that about two minutes after you made your way out, Minard came over to me, looking for you. I just told him straight because, like I said, I think he’d be on your side with this. He does, of course, also have the entire precinct to think about, too.”
“Straight? What exactly did you tell him?”
“I told him that for you to make this story go away, you needed to do exactly what you said you were going to do—prove that Carter Epps was innocent. And it wasn’t anything you were going to get done sitting in the station. He nodded in that sort of sneaky little way he does sometimes. He understands what we’re up to but I think if you can’t really pull this off, there might be repercussions. I think he was pretty steamed that you went right in front of a judge like that, but that’s the worst of it.”
“Well, for now,” Ava said, idly slicing into one of her eggs. “If I can’t close this thing by five o’clock this afternoon, that will be the worst of it. The paper will have a field day with it and Carter Epps is going to go to prison for something I really don’t think he did.”
Frank sighed and waved the waiter over for a cup of coffee. He then leaned slightly into the table and said, “Yeah, I don’t think he did it, either.”
“That settles it, then,” Ava said. “Let’s get out there and figure this thing out.”