Toys - James Patterson [86]
“I cued up the music, Linds,” said Yuki. “We’re on.”
My God.
Joe and I were really getting married.
RAIN WAS BATTERING the hood and sheeting down the windshield as I pulled my ancient Explorer into the lot next to the Medical Examiner’s office on Harriet Street, right behind the Hall of Justice. I had some anxiety about returning to work after taking time off to get married.
In a few minutes, I was going to have some catching up to do, and then there was this new fact I would have to deal with.
I would be reporting to a new lieutenant.
I was prepared for that—as much as I could be.
I pulled up the collar of my well-used blue blazer and made a wild, wet dash for the back entrance of the Hall, the granite building that housed the Justice Department, the Criminal Court, two jails, and the Southern Station of the SFPD.
I flashed my badge to Kevin at the back door, then took the stairs at a jog. When I got to the third floor, I opened the stairwell door to the Homicide Division and pushed through the double-hinged gate to the squad room.
It was a zoo.
I said “Hey, there” to Brenda, who stood up and gave me a hug and a paper towel.
“I wish you so much happiness,” she said.
I thanked Brenda, promised wedding pictures, and mopped up my face and hair with the paper towel. I took a visual inventory of who was on the job at 7:45 a.m.
The bull pen was packed.
The night shift was straightening up, sinking refuse into trash baskets, and a half dozen day-shift cops were waiting for their desks. Last time I was here, Jacobi still occupied what we laughingly call the corner office: a ten-square-foot glass cubicle overlooking the James Lick Freeway.
Since then, Jacobi had been bumped upstairs as Chief of Police, and the new guy, Jackson Brady, had scored the lieutenant’s job.
I had a little history with Brady. He had transferred to San Francisco from Miami PD only a month before, and in his first weeks as a floater, he had shown heroism in the field. I worked with him on that explosive, multiple-homicide case, which put him on the short list for Jacobi’s old job.
I’d been offered the job, too, thanks very much, but I’d turned it down. I’d already held down the corner office for a few years until I got sick of the administrative overload—the budgets, payrolls, meetings with everyone, and layers of bureaucratic bull.
Brady could have the job with my blessings.
I just hoped he’d let me do mine.
I saw Brady through the walls of his cube. His white-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore a shoulder holster over a starched blue cotton shirt that stretched across his massive chest.
He looked up and signaled to me to come to his office. As I got there, he hung up the phone. Reaching across the desk that was once mine, he shook my hand and congratulated me.
“Are you using Boxer or Molinari?” he asked me.
“Boxer.”
“Well, have a seat, Sergeant Boxer,” he said, waving me toward the chair across from his desk. “I got a call from Major Case Division about ten minutes ago. They’re short on manpower and asked for help. I want you and Conklin to check it out.”
“The case is a homicide?” I asked.
“Could be. Or maybe not. Right now it’s an open case. Your open case.”
What kind of bull was this?
Step out of line for a couple of weeks and the only open case was a spillover from another unit? Or was Brady testing me—alpha-dog management style?
“Conklin has the case file,” Brady said. “Keep me in the loop. And welcome back, Boxer.”
Welcome back indeed.
I showed myself out, feeling like all eyes in the squad were on me as I crossed the room to find my partner.
DR. ARI RIFKIN was intense—and busy, judging from the incessant buzz of her pager. Still, she seemed eager to brief me and my partner, Richard Conklin, aka Inspector Hottie. Conklin scribbled in his notebook as Dr. Rifkin talked.
“Her name is Avis Richardson, age fifteen. She was hemorrhaging when she was brought into the ER two hours ago,” the doctor said, wiping her wire-rimmed specs with her