The Quickie - James Patterson [22]
“We don’t really know yet, Brooke,” I said. “We found him shot in a park, St. James Park in the Bronx. It’s a known drug area.”
Her face contorted, her lips quivering. Her left eye began to twitch.
“Ooooooh! I knew it,” she finally said, nodding vigorously. “ ‘Undercover’s a promotion, Brooke. They always watch my back.’ Not always, huh, you goddamned idiot.”
I racked my brain about what to say next in the silence that followed. The walls seemed to move in on me. I needed to get out of there. Something ripe was starting to churn in my stomach. I had to have some air.
What would I normally say in an investigation I didn’t already know all too much about? I took out my notebook again.
“When was the last time you saw Scott?” I asked her, trying to act like a detective.
“He left around eight tonight. Said he had to go in for a few hours. He kept insane hours. Scotty was almost never home lately.”
“He didn’t say specifically where he was going, did he? Was there a phone call that preceded his departure?”
“Not that I can think of this second. No. I don’t remember any call.”
Brooke started bawling again all of a sudden.
“Oh, God. His poor mom and sister . . . they were so close. They’re going to be . . . I don’t think I could tell them. No, I . . . Could you? Detective . . . ?”
“Lauren.”
“Could you call her, Lauren? Scotty’s mom, I mean. Will you make the call?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Are you from his unit?”
“No,” I said. “I’m from Bronx Homicide.”
“Did you know Scotty?” she asked then.
In the silence, I listened to the splutter of Scott’s son greedily finishing his bottle.
“No,” I said. “We were out of the same precinct, but we never had the chance to work together.”
“I’m sorry about what happened with Taylor. My four-year-old,” Brooke said. “She doesn’t respond well to strangers. She’s autistic.”
I stood there, breathless.
That was it.
It. The thing that finally took me over the top.
“I hope I didn’t frighten her,” I heard myself say as I nearly ran out of the room. “Could I use your bathroom?”
“Down the hall on your right.”
The vomit came up a foot or more before I made it to the toilet. I threw both taps on to cover the sound of more retching. And left them on to cover the tea kettle–high primal shrieks that escaped my throat.
I used the entire roll of toilet paper, cleaning up. I actually took out my gun as I sat on the pink-carpeted toilet lid. I wondered if the coroner would put Death by Guilt on my certificate. I finally put the gun away and went downstairs. Not because I didn’t want to kill myself anymore. I just thought that Brooke Thayer was having a bad enough night as it was.
In the kitchen, Mike offered to tell the mother.
“That’s okay, Mike,” I said, smiling insanely as I dialed the number from the open address book. “Why break precedent?”
I held the phone away from my ear after I told Scott’s mother that her son was dead. I eyed my partner across the kitchen as we listened to the agonized sounds coming from the earpiece.
Mike lifted a crayon-scribbled picture from underneath a Blue’s Clues magnet on the fridge and shook his head. One of the kids had drawn a two-headed dragon.
“You find the ones responsible,” Brooke said to me as we made our way to the door a few minutes later. The two-year-old boy was up now, too. He was attached to the leg that the four-year-old had neglected. The baby in Brooke’s arms started to cry again.
“YOU FIND THEM!” followed us out the door. “FIND SCOTTY’S KILLER!”
Chapter 33
OTHER THAN BROOKE’S WORDS still ringing in my ears, our ride back to the Bronx was dead silent.
Scott’s multi-agency Drug Enforcement Task Force team was waiting for us in their squad room on the second floor of the 48th Precinct. My Homicide unit was on the fourth. I averted my eyes from the doorway of the muster room Scott and I had met in as I made my way up the stairs.
The guys in Scott’s unit didn’t look like typical cops, even to me. For a second, I thought I’d made a