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“Detective,” Mitchell said stiffly.
Turning to Jason, Rebecca asked, “Anything?”
“The usual. Saturday night seems to bring out all the perverts. LongJohn hasn’t shown up though. I’m not entirely certain that he will, since we already have a specified meeting time tomorrow night. On the other hand, I want to be here if he does log on.”
Catherine nodded in agreement. “He may very well want to be sure that you’re still interested, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he sends a few more verbal tests in your direction—to verify your authenticity. He’s got to be suspicious that you—BigMac, I should say—might be law enforcement. I would suggest you appear enthusiastic, but don’t probe too overtly for more information.”
“Gotcha.” Jason reached to his right and thumbed through an inch high pile of computer printouts. “These are from the last couple of days, and there might be some other possibles in here.” Glancing at Catherine he said apologetically, “Have you got a few minutes?”
Catherine hesitated, looking at Rebecca, who shrugged infinitesimally. By unspoken agreement, they had thus far kept their personal involvement private from the others in the group, for no other reason than that they both preferred to separate their professional and personal lives whenever possible. “Sure,” Catherine said. “I’ll just take them back to the conference room and go through them.”
As she lifted the pile and turned to leave, Rebecca looked pointedly at Mitchell and said, “Officer, let’s take a walk.”
“Yes ma’am,” Mitchell said and rose instantly.
The two of them headed in the opposite direction from the conference room toward the far end of the vast loft space, finally stopping beneath an expanse of windows that afforded them a view all the way into southern New Jersey. Between them and the industrial center of Camden ran the Delaware River, illuminated by the lights of oil barges and other ships. “Captain Rodriguez called me this afternoon,” Rebecca began without preamble, referring to one of the uniform commanders and Mitchell’s superior. “He told me that all they need is your paperwork cleared up and you’ll be reassigned to street patrol.”
“I don’t want to be reassigned,” she said immediately.
“Is there some problem in house?”
Mitchell glanced at her sideways, surprised by the question. It was rare for detectives to take any interest in uniform officers, and rarer still for them to question the workings of other divisions. Frye was essentially asking her if she had a problem with her superiors or her fellow officers, which was to her knowledge, unheard of. “No ma’am. No problems.”
“Okay.” Rebecca expected no other answer from Mitchell. The young officer was clearly a by-the-book cop, and if she were having problems, she’d keep it to herself like any good cop and try to handle it on her own. Rebecca didn’t intend to push her on it, not now. They had other issues to get clear on. “Then why don’t you want to go back to your regular duty?”
Mitchell squared her shoulders and said directly, “Because I want to stay on this assignment. I like working with Sloan and McBride… and I like working with you.”
Rebecca turned her head and regarded Mitchell steadily. “Every uniform wants the gold shield, at least any uniform worth anything at all.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve got a long ways to go before that, Mitchell.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But you’ve made a good start.” Rebecca slid her hands into her pockets and rocked slightly on the balls of her feet as she watched the night slide by on the river below. “I’ll see what I can do about keeping you around.”
“Thank you very much,” Mitchell said, trying not to sound as relieved as she felt. Frye was not the type you kissed up to.
“One more thing.”
Mitchell looked at her questioningly. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You want to tell me about you and Sandy Dyer?”
Mitchell’s heart began to race. Suddenly, for the first time since the day she had stood on the parade ground at West Point as a new cadet, she felt her knees shaking. In a clear voice that she willed not to waver, she answered, “No, ma’am, I do not.”
“If you get between me and this investigation, or any other investigation, I’ll have your badge.”
“Understood.”
“Good,” Rebecca said. “We’ll meet here tomorrow afternoon at 4 p.m. to review the details of the operation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell said, hoping that the shock didn’t show in her voice. Frye had just invited her along on a high level tactical maneuver. It was more than a dream come true, it was a career making opportunity. And that after asking her about Sandy. How in hell had she known?
“And Mitchell,” Rebecca added as if in afterthought, “never turn your back on the night. You never know who might be watching.”
Catherine reappeared an hour and a half later. Rebecca sat with her feet up on the counter, leaning back in a swivel chair, watching a computer monitor. Jason and Mitchell were busy inputting data into one of their seemingly endless analysis programs.
“I’ve pulled three that I think have promise. Officer Mitchell,” Catherine said, “I’ve circled the identifiers that I’d like you to cross-reference.”
“I’ll get on it right away.”
“Tomorrow will surely be soon enough,” Catherine said with a smile. Glancing at her watch, she said, “It’s nearly 11:30. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need a break. Where’s Sloan, by the way? She seems to be the only one of us with any common sense.”
Jason laughed. “Don’t you believe it. She went to the airport to pick up Michael. If it hadn’t been for that, you can bet she’d be right here.”
“Michael?” Catherine said, trying to remember if she had forgotten someone on the team.
“Her lover.”
“Oh,” Catherine said, somewhat surprised. She would have thought Sloan was a lesbian, but perhaps that was just because she found her attractive. Smiling inwardly, she reminded herself that appearances were most often deceiving. “Well then, I’ll say goodnight.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Rebecca said, getting to her feet. “Jason—call me if anything comes up. Mitchell—go home.”
Both of them nodded, but they were already engrossed in some bit of electronic information, their heads bent close together over a print out. Neither of them said goodnight.
Michael Lassiter glanced at her passenger. “I could have taken the train from the airport, you know.”
Sloan reclined in the passenger seat, her left hand resting loosely in Michael’s right, their fingers intertwined. Smiling, she replied without opening her eyes, “I know that. I just wanted to be there when you came home.”
“I’m glad you were,” Michael said softly, her voice thick with a panoply of emotions—wonder, gratitude, desire. In all the years of her marriage to Nicholas, she had never felt this kind of welcome or the peaceful sense of wellbeing that came from knowing precisely where you belonged in the universe. “I love you.”
“Good thing,” Sloan said drowsily. “Because I’m mad about you.”
Michael had rarely seen Sloan exhausted, but she had known when she’d left for Boston that it was unlikely that her lover would sleep at all in her absence. From everything she had gathered, things were moving so quickly on the new investigation that even had she been in town, Sloan would probably have been working nearly twenty-four hours a day. It was only her quiet insistence that her lover get an occasional hour or two of sleep that ever brought her upstairs during this kind of intensive assignment. Turning off the four lane highway that ran along the river onto the narrow streets of Old City, she stated emphatically, “When we get home, you’re going straight to bed.”
“Promise?” Sloan rejoined, turning her head on the seat and finally opening her eyes. Grinning, life clearly returning to her features, she added, “I think you’re exactly what I need to jump start my engines.”
“Well, you can just motor down, hotrod,” Michael said with a laugh. “Maybe in the morning I’ll take you for a ride.”
“I’ll pencil you in to my schedule then.”
Michael was about to launch a comeback as she turned onto their block. Slowing, peering at the unexpected obstacle in her path, she muttered in frustration, “For God’s sake, who would leave that right in front of the driveway.”
Had Sloan been less tired, perhaps she would have been faster to make a connection. As Michael downshifted into park and opened the driver’s door to get out, Sloan glanced idly out her window toward her building. A shopping cart, turned over on its side, lay on the sidewalk in front of the wide double doors leading into their garage. Odd, she thought to herself, as she dimly registered the sound of an engine starting nearby. Suddenly some long-ingrained distrust pulsed through her brain, and she turned just as Michael stepped from the car. “Michael, no…”
The words were lost in the sound of squealing tires, a muffled scream, and the rending of metal as the driver’s door of the Porsche was torn off and catapulted down the street. By the time Sloan extricated herself from the car, which had been pushed into a parked minivan, the vehicle which had struck her lover was gone.
Ten feet away, Michael lay motionless on the street, a dark pool spreading on the pavement beneath her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
“MY GOD, DID you hear that?” Catherine exclaimed as she and Rebecca stepped from the elevator.
“Sounds like a hell of a fender bender,” Rebecca muttered, instantly alert, “and it was awfully close.”
Suddenly, the sounds of frantic shouting were audible from just outside and Rebecca hurriedly pushed through the door to the street. Directly in front of her at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance, Sloan’s Porsche was canted onto the sidewalk with the engine still running. She glanced inside through a spider web of shattered safety glass. Empty. From the far side, she could hear strangled cries. “Catherine, stay here for a minute.”
“Rebecca, someone’s hurt. I’m a doctor,” Catherine said urgently from just behind her. “I need to attend to the victims.”
“I know that,” Rebecca said sharply, not used to having her authority questioned at a scene. “But you’ll have to wait. I don’t know what happened here. It might not have been an accident and I don’t want another victim.” Especially not you.
There was no time for discussion, and the detective didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she climbed over the rear bumper of the parked minivan which now housed a portion of the front of Sloan’s abandoned vehicle, her cell phone in one hand and her automatic in the other. Even as she assessed the activity in the street, visually searching for possible assailants, she called for an ambulance and back-up in clipped, commanding tones. From the corner of her eye, she checked the figures in the street. Sloan, blood streaking her face and arms, was on her knees above the prone body of an unconscious blond woman Rebecca did not recognize. She couldn’t tell how badly either was injured and she couldn’t allow her concern to divert her mind from more important tasks. Like insuring that there were no further threats remaining in the immediate area and preserving any evidence of the crime.
Catherine clambered over the wreck after her and Rebecca cursed. “Keep down at least,” the detective barked, blocking the three women as best she could from the street with her body, scouring the windows in the buildings on both sides of them, searching for any kind of movement behind the many darkened windows. She could see nothing suspicious, but it was impossible for her to tell if any of the people in the densely packed buildings might represent a danger. Curious onlookers were approaching from down the block, but fortunately there were no vehicles to be diverted yet. She glanced down once more and saw a widening pool of blood beneath the blond’s head. “Catherine, keep them right there until back-up arrives.”
“No one is moving her without a backboard,” Catherine said grimly after one quick look.
Mitchell and Jason burst from the building. “Oh god,” Jason gasped, stopping in his tracks and staring in horror.
Rebecca, turning at the sound, ordered, “Mitchell, secure the scene. Backup is on the way. I’ll call for a crime scene unit and find out where the fuck the ambulances are. This was a hit and run at best.”
“Right,” Mitchell responded crisply, her face tight with shock but her voice strong as she clipped her badge to the waist band of her jeans. Glancing once at the badly smashed car, she asked in a quiet voice only Rebecca could hear, “Intentional?”
“We have to assume so, until proven otherwise,” Rebecca affirmed, noting approvingly the officer’s quick, intelligent assessment. “Keep your eyes open. Just because this was a vehicle hit doesn’t mean there won’t be someone in the crowd or on a rooftop with a gun. I’ll call Watts down to canvas with you.”
“I’m on it,” the officer replied, heading off in the direction of a group of civilians who were rapidly approaching.
“Jason,” Rebecca added brusquely, “you get back inside.”
Unsurprisingly, he ignored her and made his way to Sloan.
“Fuck,” Rebecca muttered in surrender and phoned Watts.
Sloan, still on her knees, curled protectively over Michael’s motionless form, her hand gripping her lover’s limp one, a world of anguish on her face. “Call an ambulance…” she implored to no one in particular, her eyes fixed on Michael’s pale face. “Oh, Jesus, please… Michael.”
“Sloan,” Catherine said gently, carefully placing her hand on the dark-haired woman’s shoulder. “I need to be where you are so I can evaluate her.” The injured woman lay nearly under a parked car and Catherine couldn’t get room to assess her status.
“No.” The sound was choked, agonized. Looking up into Catherine’s face, eyes unfocused, Sloan insisted desperately, “No. I’m not leaving her.”
“No, of course you’re not,” Catherine said quietly. “Just let me close enough to help her.”
Jason moved forward and knelt next to his friend. “Sloan—let Catherine help Michael. Just move back a little bit. You don’t have to leave her.”
Sloan looked at him as if she didn’t recognize him, and then she blinked and her eyes seemed to clear. “It was supposed to have been me, Jason. It’s my car. She was driving…”
“It’s okay. We’ll worry about it later.” His voice trembled on the words.
Mutely, Sloan shifted a fraction, tenaciously gripping Michael’s right hand. Catherine gently displaced her further until she could lean down and place her fingers on the woman’s neck, searching for a pulse. Automatically, as often happened when examining a patient no matter whether physically or psychologically, she observed many things at once, assimilating impressions almost unconsciously. While her fingers registered the faint, thready beat of blood through the artery she probed, her mind noted how achingly beautiful the injured woman was. The perfect unmarred features fit for an artist’s canvas, incongruously free of any sign of pain, as if she were only peacefully slumbering. The left hand lying gently between her breasts, a heavy platinum band glinting in the halo of light from the streetlights overhead. The lover bending to her, devotion etched in every line of her hauntingly handsome face. Only the maroon circle of blood rapidly darkening to black cast a nightmare pall over the ethereal tableau.
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