With Covington detectives checking Gruber’s phone records, Fassbinder sent Kovach and Slamowitz to interview the other two officers featured on LadyCops. “Find out if they know whether she had a boyfriend,” Will said and regretted it. They knew that.
Schmidt was dispatched to the Seven Hills Marina, where Gruber moored the boat. Would her car be in the parking lot? Someone would need to look into cases she had worked. Will volunteered. But first, he set off for the home of a dead cop.
***
Kristen Gruber lived in a high-rise condo at the end of a long cul-de-sac that ran off McMillan Street. It was on a palisade overlooking the Ohio River at the edge of Walnut Hills, a short drive east from downtown. Walk a few blocks and you’d be in the heart of a ghetto. But this street was quiet, empty and framed by trees, the remnants of the thunderstorm still dripping off the leaves. The storms had moved east, leaving the air smelling of rain. Will sat in his unmarked car, driver’s window open to the damp night air, waiting for the Covington detective. Cheryl Beth Wilson was way too much on his mind. He had been so nervous he hadn’t even asked what she was doing now that the hospital had closed. Did she think he was rude? And what if something did develop between them? His body was different now. Could he perform as a man? He gently pushed her face out of his mind, flipped on a flashlight, and began reading Kristen’s personnel jacket.
She was thirty-four years old, five-feet-seven, one-hundred-thirty pounds, single. She had joined the force ten years ago after graduating from the University of Cincinnati. After four years on patrol, she had joined Central Vice, then became PIO. The jacket held a slick folder used to promote LadyCops. Inside that was a color eight-and-half-by-eleven photo of Kristen, wearing a black T-shirt, black flack vest emblazoned with “POLICE,” and a smile with perfect teeth and seamless confidence. The other two officers on the show were uniforms, one white with brown hair, the other black and average-looking. Neither had the fine looks of Kristen.
Gruber’s record looked almost too clean: No excessive force complaints, no shootings, not even an accidental firearm discharge. She had plenty of commendations. Will flipped through the supervisor reviews: “proactive,” “highly effective,” “diffused dangerous situation,” “dedicated,” “tough,” “unrelenting.” Will knew some of these sergeants and lieutenants, and a few were still back in the Stone Age about female officers. They would be much more likely to grade her hard. Yet she uniformly won them over. That and the all-American-girl face: an Ivory Soap complexion for Ivory’s hometown. He remembered her from the academy: even then she seemed like a comer.