The Quickie - James Patterson [28]
Everything important I learned in kindergarten, I thought as I flushed the scraps away.
One trip to the copying machine later — with a brief side trip to the shredder — and I had everything the way I wanted it.
Scott’s new and improved phone records.
I was coming out of Keane’s office after dropping off my completed crime-scene reports twenty minutes later, when Mike walked back into the squad room. He gaped at the undetectably doctored phone company records I had left on his desk. His reading glasses sat on top of them like a paper-weight.
“Don’t worry,” I said, giving him a pat on his wide back. “Dropping a little off your fastball is pretty much expected at your age.”
I lifted my coat from the back of my chair.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“To see my friend Bonnie,” I said. “Try to speed the crime-scene processing along.”
“Why don’t I go with you?” Mike said.
“Because you need to get back to the phone company and put faces to those numbers, see who Scott was calling.”
“C’mon,” Mike said as I was leaving. “I’ll behave. I’m not just a big ugly man doll, you know. I have a sensitive side. I’m in Oprah’s Book Club.”
“Sorry,” I said, knocking through the bullpen gate. “No boys allowed.”
Chapter 40
C’MON, C’MON, C’MON! Let’s go, let’s go!
I checked my watch as a cash register’s electronic beep exploded through my skull for perhaps the thirty-seven-billionth time.
I had thought my one-purchase stop at the 57th and Broadway Duane Reade would be quick. But that was before I discovered the aisle-long line behind the lone checkout cashier.
Ten minutes later, I was one customer away from the promised land of the counter, when another cashier arrived and called, “Next.”
Taking the one step needed to the newly opened register, I was nearly mowed down by a middle-aged Asian man in a doorman’s suit.
“Hey!” I said.
In response, the line cutter showed me his back, boxing me out as he pushed a bag of Combos at the cashier.
The last thing I wanted was to make a scene, but I didn’t have the time to be demure. I leaned in, snatched the Combos out of the cashier’s hand, and sent them sailing down one of the crammed aisles behind me. Problem solving NYC-style.
“Next means next,” I explained to the wide-eyed man as my purchase was scanned and bagged.
I waited until I was in my squad car, double-parked outside on Broadway, to open the bag. I pulled on a pair of rubber crime-scene gloves and took the men’s reading glasses out of their package.
The lenses were round, silver rimmed. Just like the ones Paul had dropped at the crime scene. Just like the ones Bonnie hopefully hadn’t processed yet.
I wiped them down with alcohol before snapping open an evidence bag and dropping them in. I lit the receipt with a match and scattered its ashes out the window onto Broadway. Then I turned the engine over and screeched away.
Next stop, police headquarters in Manhattan.
Chapter 41
BONNIE HAD HER HEAD in one of her desk drawers when I stepped into her fifth-floor office at One Police Plaza.
“Hey, Bonnie,” I said. “That is you, isn’t it?”
“Lauren, what a happy surprise,” Bonnie said, shaking a bag of Starbucks coffee as she stood. “And what perfect timing. How about some French roast?”
“So,” she said, placing a steaming black mug in front of me a minute later. “How are things coming along?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I said.
“Even though this case is our priority, it’s going to take some time. All we got so far is that the tarp Scott was wrapped in was a Neat Sheet, a mass-market picnic blanket. They sell them in supermarkets everywhere.”
I sipped my coffee, nodding. I’d bought it at Stop & Shop.
“What about the glasses?” I said.
“Not too much, sorry to say,” Bonnie said. “There were no visible fingerprints on the lenses themselves. I red-balled them down to the lab to see if they might pick up a partial on the rims, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. We’re