the thin wire through my bra and tucked the tiny microphone between my breasts. I shivered again, only this time it wasn’t the cold. I tried to catch Mike’s eye, but he avoided my gaze.
“Cover up, Cosi,” he murmured.
I dropped my blouse, and Sully faced us again. The sergeant was wearing headphones, and he handed another headset to Quinn. Then he touched a button on the digital recorder. “Say something, Ms. Cosi.”
I locked eyes with Quinn. “This will work. I know it.”
“Loud and clear.” Sully grinned.
Quinn crossed his arms. “What if you’re wrong, Clare? What if Winslow’s not the man you saw outside of Fen’s and again this morning? You couldn’t ID the guy from the driver’s license photo I pulled up from the state’s database.”
“It was an eighteen-year-old photo and blurry.” The man in the picture was a lot thinner than the one I’d seen, and his hair was a lot longer, but he was the right age, had the same color hair and eyes. His nose was wrong, too, but he could have broken it sometime after the photo was taken.
Quinn exhaled. He still wasn’t happy.
“Listen to me, Mike, even if Winslow isn’t the man I saw, he might be one of the men who robbed the underground restaurant last night. If that’s the case, then he saw me with Roman, and he knows I’m not a cop.”
“And what if he’s not one of the robbers, either?”
I shrugged. “I’ll just have to work a little harder to be convincing.”
“Can’t fault her spirit,” Sergeant Sullivan said.
“Shut up, Sully.”
“Hey, Mike,” Sully replied, “I’m just saying that if this guy is selling deadly drugs without a prescription, then it’s our job to stop him. Ms. Cosi is just doing her civic duty to help keep the streets of our fair city safe from predators.”
Quinn rolled his eyes. “Enough with the public service announcement. Let’s get this over with.”
I took a deep breath. I guess I should have felt nervous, but what I mainly felt was exhilarated. I couldn’t wait to get in there and nail this jerk.
“We’ll be right outside, and we can hear everything you say,” Quinn told me. “If something happens, we’ll be through that door and into the apartment in seconds, no matter how many locks and dead bolts are on it. If Winslow makes a move, stay out of his reach until we can get to you.”
I nodded.
“Apartment ten-sixteen, through the fire doors and to the left,” Sully said, the headphones squeezed his carrot head. “Nail him, Cosi. You can do it.”
“Thanks, Sully.”
Thirty seconds later I knocked on the door. There was no response after a ten count, so I knocked again. Finally, I spied movement behind the peephole.
“What do you want?” The voice was male.
“Mr. Winslow. My name’s Clare. I’m a friend of Monica’s. Monica Purcell.”
I heard a click, then the rattle of a security chain. I recalled the size of the man I’d seen at Trend this morning and lifted my chin. But when the door opened, I was in for a surprise. The man who answered was tall, but he wasn’t the big man I was expecting. I’d never seen this guy.
Okay, Clare, don’t panic. You’ll just have to talk faster.
“Mr. Winslow—”
“Dr. Winslow. They haven’t taken the Ph.D. away from me. Not yet.”
The man appeared much older than fifty-seven, the age we’d come up with based on the birth date of his old driver’s license. He had a head too large for his scrawny body. His painfully thin frame was clad in gray sweatpants, and his matching sweatshirt was frayed at the neckline. Winslow’s facial features had been hard to make out on the old New York State license, but in person they appeared patrician. A thick head of brown hair crowned his chiseled WASPish features, but it was dirty, tangled, and thoroughly shot with gray. In short, the man was a sight, but his complexion was what truly unnerved me. Pale as a ghost, Winslow’s skin seemed almost powdered with the dust of ages past.
As he regarded me through slightly bulging eyes, I realized something was wrong with his pupils. They were too wide and dark, as if he were intoxicated, but I couldn’t smell alcohol on him, and (given my own difficult years with Matt) I’d bet the farm that he was on drugs right now.
“Well, Doctor,” I said, “I’m a friend of Monica’s, and I’m here to inform you that she’s out of the picture.”
The man gave me no reaction to