The Quickie - James Patterson [11]
I rolled west up Fordham Road. I passed under a sign above a broken streetlight that proclaimed, “The Bronx Is Back.” Where had it been? I thought, staring at the steel-shuttered Spanish clothing stores interrupted by the occasional Popeye’s Fried Chicken or Taco Bell.
I made a hard right onto Jerome Avenue.
And slammed on the Mini’s brakes with both feet.
Chapter 16
I’D NEVER SEEN SO MANY NYPD cop cars in one place. They were on the sidewalk, under the elevated track, parked like a wagon train in St. James, a block-square concrete park. Every one of their blue and red and yellow lights was flying full throttle. There was so much yellow crime-scene tape, it looked like Christo had decided to do a yellow-and-black installation in the Bronx.
Keep going, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Some ER doctor is sewing Scott’s stitches right at this very moment. Or, who knew? Maybe Paul had already dropped him back at his place.
Get out of this wretched place right now. You’ll get into trouble, big trouble, if you stay here.
But I couldn’t go. I needed to be sure. I needed to act responsibly. Starting right now.
I rolled directly toward the commotion.
The thin, silver-haired cop directing traffic around the light show gave me a look of eye-boggled shock as I stopped my car almost on top of him.
He was reaching for his cuffs when I opened the door and all but fell out of my car. When I went into my handbag, he changed his mind and went for his Glock instead.
But then I took it out.
Took out my badge.
The gold badge I’d been given when the NYPD promoted me to detective.
“Jesus,” the relieved-looking uniform said as he lifted the yellow tape behind him and beckoned me under.
“Why didn’t you just say you were on The Job?”
Chapter 17
I’D BEEN A COP FOR SEVEN YEARS, the last year and a half as a Detective First Grade on the Bronx Homicide Task Force. Which made my co-worker Scott Thayer a cop, too. Detective Third Grade with Bronx Narcotics.
What can I say?
Office affairs happen in the NYPD, too.
I dodged under the yellow tape and walked toward the blinding white floodlights the Crime Scene Unit had set up at the center of the park. Maybe it was just my frazzled state, but I was all too familiar with crime scenes and I’d never seen one quite so frantic, or one filled with so many pissed-off cops. What the hell was going on?
I walked past rusted monkey bars and a graffiti-covered wall for handball.
I stopped in the darkness just beyond where the lights blazed down on a fountain so old and exhaust-stained that its granite looked black.
A blue plastic tarp around its ornate base was half floating in the water, covering something. What was under the blue tarp?
I had a feeling it wasn’t some new artwork about to be unveiled up here in the Bronx.
I almost jumped as a hand, large and warm, palmed the standing hairs at the back of my neck.
“What are you doing here, Lauren?” Detective Mike Ortiz said with his ever-serene half-smile.
Mike, my partner for the past year, was in his midforties and about as laid-back as he was large. He was constantly being mistaken for The Rock, so I guess that made him confident enough to be laid-back, or any other way he wanted to be.
“Aren’t you supposed to be down in Quantico, handing out, I mean, picking up, tips at the FBI Academy?” Mike asked.
My seminar in Virginia was with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, an NYPD-sponsored brushup on the latest investigative techniques.
“Missed my flight,” I managed to get out. “I’ll get an early one tomorrow.”
Mike clucked his tongue as he nudged me forward into the spotlight beside the fountain. “I have a funny feeling you’re going to wish you’d made that plane,” he said.
My partner tossed me a pair of rubber boots and gloves as we got to the