Sacred Cows

by Karen E. Olson

Genres: Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

A Connecticut crime reporter investigates the murder of an Ivy League escort in this award-winning mystery series debut. After a late night on the town, Connecticut crime reporter Annie Seymour only wants to sleep. But a call from her editor drags her to a cold, wet New Haven street, where she’s soon staring at the body of a curious murder victim. The young woman had been a Yale student by day and a high-priced escort by night. Eager to get the scoop, Annie quickly uncovers a trail of vice and fraud that leads to the city’s highest levels. Then comes the real shocker: Annie’s mother is involved. Now with the help of a sexy private investigator, Annie must uncover the truth, even as she’s forced to cover the surreal appearance of fiberglass cows placed in herds throughout the city. Out there is a killer story that can get Annie that elusive Pulitzer . . . or a mention in the next day’s obituary column. Winner of the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award

Release date: July 31, 2007

Publisher: Mysterious Press

Print pages: 235

Sample

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FIRST AND FOREMOST, I must thank Kristen Weber, Susan Richman, and Les Pockell at Mysterious Press/Warner Books for choosing Sacred Cows as the winner of the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award. I’m very honored and thrilled by their enthusiasm.

Second, I must thank my agent, Jack Scovil, who’s traveled much of the long road with me and never wavered in his encouragement and belief in my work.

I would never have found Jack if it weren’t for writer Thomas Fleming and a long-ago interview on his front porch in Westbrook, Connecticut. Tom made good on his offhand comment to help me out someday, probably not realizing I’d call him on it.

Where would a writer be without those critiques and kudos from fellow writers and friends: Kerri Pedersen, who told me after seventy-five pages that it wasn’t a piece of crap and I should continue; Eleanor Kohlsaat and Liz Medcalf, my first readers; my writers’ group buddies, Liz Cipollina, Roberta Isleib, Chris Falcone, Cindy Warm, and Angelo Pompano, whose help I couldn’t have done without; Tara York and Maria Garriga, fellow journalists who boosted me during difficult times; and my sister, Sandy Corr, and friend Melanie Stengel, who pointed out things no one had noticed in myriad readings.

Much thanks go to Michael Barbaro, intern extraordinaire who’s made it to the Big Time, for his lengthy and entertaining tour of Yale, and to Webkazoo’s Mike Jones and Barbara Kagan for a super Web site.

Newspapers and the media in general have gone through some tough times in the last few years. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge those I’ve worked with throughout my career, especially for their support and senses of humor, which make this business still worth it for me. But no, you won’t recognize yourselves on these pages, so don’t even try.

I have taken some literary license with locations, but most of them are intact and where they should be. New Haven has never had a CowParade; this is merely my vision of what it might be like if it did. Thanks to Harriet Dobin and Ron Fox of CowParade Holdings Corp. for amusing cow puns and assistance.

And finally, my husband, Chris, and daughter, Julia, get big gold stars for their patience, smiles, and hugs when I needed them the most.

CHAPTER 1

My hand closed over the cold steel in that second between hearing the phone ring and before my eyes opened. I squinted at the clock, the red numbers glowed 3:42, and I pushed the drawer shut, my paranoia possibly the result of too many beers. I knocked the phone off the table, and I could hear “Hello? Hello?” as I fumbled for the receiver on the floor.

“Yeah?” was the only sound that I could force through the fog of sleep.

“Get out of bed, Annie. There’s a dead girl in the road in front of University Towers on York Street. She took a dive.”

I heard the click, then the dial tone. Asshole, I thought as I pulled myself up on my elbows in an attempt to do what he said, but the room started to spin and I had to stop for a minute. What had I been thinking? I don’t drink like that anymore. It’s too dangerous, in too many ways.

A dead girl, that’s what Marty said. In the road. I’m not the fucking cops, they’re not going to tell me anything anyway, but I dragged my sorry butt into the bathroom. I almost screamed when I saw my reflection: my hair hanging in tangled clumps, lipstick smeared across one cheek, mascara smudged under my eyes. I was naked, but that wasn’t anything new.

A blast of water was what I needed, even though I’d probably miss something by not leaving the house sooner. But if I didn’t shower, get myself sobered up some, I’d miss more.

I grabbed a pair of leggings out of the laundry basket and pulled on a big sweatshirt. It was almost 4:00 A.M., for Christ’s sake, and she was dead. No one was going to call the fashion police on me. My hair still hung in a clump, but at least it was clean and the alcohol haze had faded.

I stuffed my notebook in my bag and went out into the dark for the second time that night, the rain startling me as it slammed into my forehead. I cursed Marty for the umpteenth time, the dead girl for being dead at such an ungodly hour. I knew nothing, I was going into it cold, I hated this job.

The blue and red lights flashed against the black backdrop of the narrow street. I double-parked next to a cruiser; they’d be pissed, but what did I care, they weren’t leaving before me anyway. The yellow tape stopped just where the cops stood talking to one another, their notebooks getting soaked. I still hadn’t taken mine out of my purse.

I saw her before any of them saw me. She was facedown, the rain beating into her bare back, her body slumped over the sidewalk and into the road, her hair a waterfall into the catch basin. Her arms were at her side, her fingers spread, clawing the pavement. The spotlight accentuated her white skin, the pool of dark liquid under her head. Someone had put a raincoat over her bottom half, but a mangled leg peeked out from underneath.

The rain was washing all the evidence away.

I looked up at the balconies over me, my eyes finally resting on the barbed wire fence between the sidewalk and the building.

I caught bits and pieces of conversation around me, but I ignored them, finally seeing the detective I knew would be there.

“Hi, Tom,” I said, my voice still husky from the booze.

“What cat dragged you in?” He chuckled.

“Got a call. Thought I’d stop by.”

“Didn’t think you’d be up to it.” He winked, and I could still feel his mouth on mine as he said goodbye. He was gone by the time Marty called; I hadn’t heard his pager, but that’s not a surprise, considering.

“I’m always up for it, you know that.”

“I like your outfit.” His Paul Newman-blue eyes caressed my body, and I struggled to bring myself back to the matter at hand.

“What happened?”

“She fell or she jumped, who knows?”

“Who is she?”

He shrugged, and I could see him putting on his armor. “Don’t know yet. No ID.”

“Where’d she fall from?”

He smiled patronizingly and put his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll call you when we’re done here.”

Yeah, and then I’d never get any information. We’d been playing this cat-and-mouse game for a year now, and he still didn’t get it. This was my job, I had to be a pain in his ass.

“Where’d she fall from?” I asked again.

He sighed. “We don’t know. We’re checking every apartment.”

A row of balconies loomed over us. She had to have been on one of them.

“She bounced off the fence,” he said wearily.

I didn’t want to think about it. At least she hadn’t gotten impaled. I forced myself to get my train of thought going in a different direction. “What time did she take her leap?”

“Coroner’s guessing she’s been here about an hour.”

“Who found her?”

Tom glanced across the sea of officers at a tall woman teetering on high heels. One of New Haven’s better-known prostitutes, her name is Patricia, but I think it used to be Peter. “Coming home from a late date?” I guessed.

“If you want to hang out, okay, but you have to let us do our job. Can you do that?” Tom began to walk away from me, the story of my life.

“Does it look like she fell or jumped?” I tried to keep him talking, but he just shook his head and kept moving out of my line of fire. He hadn’t done that three hours ago.

“What happened?” I heard the voice behind me. I almost could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

“Who called you?” I demanded.

Dick Whitfield held up his portable scanner. “Heard it on this. Thought I might get a head start.”

“This is my beat, now get the fuck out of here.” I couldn’t blame my attitude on my hangover, I always talked to Dick this way. It was the only way he could hear me, I swear.

“Wow,” he muttered as he stared past me at the girl. “What happened?”

Exactly what I wanted to know, and exactly what I wouldn’t tell him even if I did.

“Seriously, Dick. Go home, I’ve got this covered.”

“Is that your boyfriend over there?”

I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him a few feet away. “Listen, I’m not in the mood for this right now. Marty called me, I’m here, you can go home.”

Dick Whitfield was the newsroom boob, but the editors liked his “enthusiasm.” Even Marty. If he got wind of this confrontation, I’d be dog meat. I wished I hadn’t had so much to drink, it was making me even more cranky than usual. I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. “There really isn’t anything for you to do. I’ve got it covered.”

A shout from above and my head moved back so fast I saw double for a second and thought I was going to throw up.

Someone was shouting, waving, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tom run into the building. That was it, that was the balcony, now how was I going to get rid of Louis Lane here? But when I looked at him, I saw his eyes were blank.

I glanced back over at Patricia, she was still talking to the cops. It was worth a try. “See that woman over there?”

Dick nodded.

“She found the body. We need to get some quotes from her, can you do that?”

If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging. It was pathetic. I watched his long, skinny frame lope through the rain, and my wet hair dripped into my eyes.

The night had started out better than this. I had a new dress on; it was black and slinky and sexy. The cold beer slid down my throat as Tom’s hand caressed my knee under the table. We both knew what was going to happen; it always did, at least for the past year. Before that, it was just a lot of fantasizing and cold showers.

He shouldn’t be seeing me, either. It was a conflict of interest for both of us, since I was the cop reporter. But the attraction was too strong. Not enough for more than what it was, neither of us wanted to get tied down, but we were monogamous in a weird sort of way. I didn’t see anyone else, and neither did he. At least I liked to think so.

I wasn’t sure why I got drunk, but I suppose it was just the whole scene, piano player banging out great jazz, candles flickering, the light making me look younger than my almost forty years. Sure, it was a great night. Until now. Wouldn’t you know I’d have an editor who was an insomniac and kept his scanner on all the time.

I slipped in past the cop at the door; he was too busy interrogating some guy with a dog who wanted to go out. I could’ve been anyone who got caught in the rain. One elevator was stuck at 14; it seemed like a good place to start, so I took the other one up, the jolt stirring my stomach. When the doors opened, I was met by a patrolman who wouldn’t let me out. I stuck my hand across the door so it wouldn’t close.

“This is a crime scene, ma’am.”

I could’ve forgiven anything but the “ma’am.” It really pissed me off. “Let me out, goddammit. People live here, you know. You can’t keep me from my home.” I prayed Tom was too far away to hear me. I pushed my way out and moved down the hall, like I really lived there, and when the officer turned around, I made a beeline for the apartment with the open door and sounds of cops inside.

It had been tastefully and inexpensively furnished by IKEA. A plush sofa edged up against a sleek Scandinavian coffee table large enough to seat a family of five; a couple of chairs perched on the corner of a dark blue rug covering the standard beige apartment carpeting. A print of Gauguin’s Tahitian women splashed the room with much-needed color. A big-screen TV stretched across one wall; a glass cabinet housed a sound system.

A few candles were scattered on the coffee table, all in various sizes, their wicks charred. A small pile of books lay like dominoes on a small table next to the couch. There were no strewn newspapers, no dirty laundry, no signs of life.

A galley kitchen was off to the right, the countertops gleaming, the stylish stainless steel dish drainer empty.

They were out on the balcony and in the bedroom. I bumped into Tom as he came down the hall with a pair of jeans in a plastic bag.

“How the hell did you get up here?” But he was distracted. He didn’t focus on me; his eyes were darting around like mine, taking in the scene, wondering what happened to that girl, how did she end up on the pavement.

“Come on, Tom, give me something and I’ll leave. I promise.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right. You never leave.”

When I thought about it, I realized he was right. He was always the one who was gone in the morning, not me. But we were usually at my place.

“Are those hers?” I asked, pointing to the bag in his hands.

He nodded.

“Any ID up here?”

He sighed, biting his lip, and I wished I could bite it for him. “Yeah.”

The wall was up, and I could be any reporter asking the questions. “Come on, can you give me anything?”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said roughly, trying to get past me.

“Any sign of anyone else here?” I was pushing it, and he glared.

“Leave. Now. You know about next of kin notification. Let us do our job.” He gave me a little push toward the door.

“Okay, okay. Don’t have a coronary. I’m gone.”

The cop at the elevator gave me a dirty look but didn’t say anything. I thought about shooting him the finger as the doors closed between us, but I was too tired.

There was no sign of Dick Whitfield when I stepped back outside. The rain settled on my sweatshirt, drops rolling down my neck. The coroner was bent over the body; the flash blinded me as someone took pictures. Cops mingled everywhere, curious people formed a circle outside the yellow tape. It’s funny how a crime scene will attract people at the oddest hours.

“How’d she die?” I yelled over the tape.

The coroner looked up, his mouth twitching with the unpleasantness of his task.

“I’m with the Herald,” I offered.

“Call me tomorrow.” He turned back to the body.

I sidled up to another cop, Tim something-or-other. “Anyone else see it?”

He shrugged. “Canvassing now.” He turned away, back to his colleagues.

I couldn’t see what else I could accomplish. It was too late to get a story into the paper, too early to go to work. I could still get a couple hours of sleep. I wondered if Dick Whitfield ever slept.

My car was cold and had barely heated up when I pulled up in front of my brownstone. Once inside, I stripped down to my birthday suit and crawled back under my comforter. Even though I liked Tom in my bed, it was nice to sprawl out in the middle all by myself.

I think I fell asleep in about a minute.

CHAPTER 2

I forgot to set the alarm. Both times I went to bed. The first time, I could see how I’d been forgetful. After all, Tom had been undressing me and I had been undressing him and somehow the clock slipped my mind. The second time, I’d been hungover, and I’d had to deal with Tom in a completely different way, the way I hated.

So it was 8:00 A.M. and the phone was ringing again. This time, I knew it was Marty, where are you, tell me what’s going on, what happened, how much did you get? I wasn’t in much better shape than I’d been during our first call, but he hadn’t given me a chance to talk then. When I opened my mouth to tell him what I knew, such a sound came out that I was startled. God knows, Marty was speechless.

“What happened to you last night?” he finally asked.

“I had a rough night,” I managed to croak. “Lay off.”

“Dick is already here.”

“Fuck Dick.” I said it before I thought about it.

“He says she was found about three o’clock by that prostitute who hangs out near there.” I was glad he ignored me, but it could come back and bite me on the ass if I wasn’t more careful. “But the cops wouldn’t tell him anything else. You have connections, you get anything?”

I hated it that everyone thought I had “connections” just because I was fucking a detective. We weren’t exactly sharing job-related information during sex.

“She’s a Yale student. Melissa Peabody,” Marty said when I hesitated, his words hanging between us for a few seconds.

“No shit?” This was an interesting twist.

“We should find out if it was her apartment.” Marty’s voice was grim.

I doubted it. It was way too clean for a college student’s apartment. But if not, then whose apartment was it? Who was she with, and why was she there? Another thought leapt across the fog into my brain: Maybe she jumped. Maybe she was one of those kids who just couldn’t hack it. Maybe there was nothing sinister about this.

But she had been naked. If I was going to off myself, I don’t think I’d strip first. The indignity would be a little too much.

Marty’s voice brought me back.

“You know how this screws everything up.” He meant because she was a Yalie. I could feel for him. Our publisher didn’t like bad things to happen at Yale because it meant the prestigious Ivy League institution would have to be slapped across the front page with a 100-point headline about death. Who would want to send their kids there then? New Haven wasn’t exactly standing on its own merits.

Two calls would be made to the publisher: one from the powers that be at the university lambasting us for publicizing something they’d claim was “private business”; the other from City Hall, lambasting us for ruining the city’s “image.” I didn’t envy Marty, having to go upstairs to that office that I’d been in once and explain that the dead girl on the pavement was some rich, smart kid who was only visiting our fair city while she got the best education money could buy.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, thankful that my middle-of-the-night outing had somewhat cleared the hangover web from my brain.

“I need a shower, then I’ll get back out there. Cops are probably still there,” I told Marty.

I heard the phone click, he’d done his job: He’d gotten me out of bed, he’d threatened me with Dick’s presence. I wasn’t sure I cared enough about this job anymore to worry about some asshole moving in on my territory. There were way too many kids at the paper now, not like it had been fifteen years ago when I started. I was the kid then. I’d joined a crack reporting team, but only three of us were left. Others had moved on, to the Hartford Courant, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer. I hadn’t updated my résumé since I’d started at the Herald, more laziness than anything else. But lately I was getting too cynical, even for me. Maybe it was time for a change. This would be the best time, before I got too old and no one would want me and I’d be stuck at the New Haven Herald until I died.

What a pathetic thought.

I stood in the shower for the second time in four hours, washing away the crime scene. I could always go work for my father. He’d said that a million times. He’d give me some cushy job at the casino he managed and I would have weekends and holidays off and probably make a helluva lot more money than I was making now. But could I be a flack in Las Vegas? It’s too hot and dry, lights flashing 24/7, glowing in the sunlight, every shabby facade showing its flaws, like all the old prostitutes who dared to bare it all anytime, anyplace.

When he got the job there, my mother said Vegas was no place to raise a child, so I grew up with a part-time dad. I was in middle school, and my mother and I waited for his weekend visits in our house in Westville, a neighborhood with a large Jewish population, New Haven’s very small-scale Upper West Side with great delis and a synagogue. My mother grew up there in the house we lived in, a big white behemoth that towered over rose gardens and apple trees.

In high school I started rummaging through desks when no one was home and found old black-and-white pictures of my dad with his arm around strangers in suits, ties, and hats, sitting around the table, cocktails in front of them, cigarettes in unsmiling mouths. One woman in a long, sequined dress, her hair falling into her eyes, her hand on her hip, seemed glamorous, but I wasn’t that naive. Dad grew up in New Haven’s Little Naples, now called Little Italy for those tourists who may not know where Naples is, over on the other side of the city, which is known as the safest neighborhood because of its “connections.” That’s where I live now.

My mother endured the long-distance relationship with my dad for several years, but finally divorced him when I went to college.

Technically, I wasn’t really his daughter. My mother divorced my biological father when I was two, and he died a couple of years later, some sort of construction accident. Being a reporter, I could look into it, but my curiosity extends only to those things outside my family. Otherwise I just don’t want to know.

I shook myself out of my ruminations and gazed longingly at my jeans but pulled on a pair of khakis and a white shirt. The paper was cracking down on the dress code. Too many people coming to work like slobs, the memo said, Fridays were dress-down days. But no jean. . .