Broken Places

Book 1: Chicago Mystery

by Tracy Clark

Genres: Private Investigators

Synopsis

Former cop Cass Raines has found the world of private investigation a less stressful way to eke out a living in the Windy City. But when she stumbles across the dead body of a respected member of the community, it's up to her to prove a murderer is on the loose....

Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. If anyone knows that it's Cass Raines, who took a bullet two years ago after an incompetent colleague screwed up a tense confrontation with an armed suspect. Deeply traumatized by the incident, Cass resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency, taking on just enough work to pay the bills. She spends the rest of her time keeping an eye on the tenants in her little Hyde Park apartment building, biking along the lakefront, and playing chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton.

When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby. She knew Pop, as she called him, had ticked off plenty of people, from slumlords to drug dealers and even some parishioners and politicians, with his uncompromising defense of the downtrodden. But a late-night random theft doesn't seem like much of a motive at a cash-strapped parish like Saint Brendan's.

The lead detective assigned to the case is all too ready to dismiss it as an interrupted burglary gone awry, just another statistic in a violent city. But Cass's instincts tell her otherwise, and badge or no badge, she intends to see justice done....

Release date: May 29, 2018

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chicago cops had to be on the lookout for any number of nefarious mopes eager to take a potshot, but this morning my biggest enemy was turning out to be the scorching rays of the summer sun. I slid into the driver’s seat of the unmarked car and cranked the windows down, balancing a rapidly melting iced tea, extra ice, between my thighs. A few feet away, my partner, Detective Ben Mickerson, stood in front of the Dairy Queen basking in the hellfire. “Vitamin D,” he said, ruddy face pointed skyward. “Soak in that vitamin D.”

“You say vitamin D, I say skin cancer,” I groused. The hot vinyl seats nearly seared through my blazer and pants—and they were both summer weight. I checked myself in the rearview. The little makeup I’d started the day with was long gone now, melted away by flop sweat. I flicked at the sweaty ringlets at the nape of my neck and wiggled uncomfortably in my bulletproof vest, my breasts pressed flat, as though squeezed between the hot plates of a waffle iron. I looked like I’d gone through a car wash, and it was just ten AM. No great loss, though. Five minutes tops was all I ever invested in primping. I didn’t have the patience for it, and in the long run it seemed rather silly. Thugs and killers didn’t care what I looked like. They spotted the cop car, they ran, then I had to run after them. I’d be thirty-five in the spring. Eyeliner and blush weren’t going to make the running any easier.

“The sun is going to kill you,” I yelled out the window.

“Tell that to my ex-wife,” Ben yelled back as he continued to sunbathe. “She thought it’d be this job.”

Summer in Chicago was no joke. They say black don’t crack, but it does wilt, and I was wilting. Days like these I imagined all the career paths I could have gone in for. I could have been an oceanographer, swimming with friendly little dolphins in cool, blue water. Or a research scientist stationed in the Arctic. I’d die to be in the Arctic right now. Or even in a bank. Cass Raines, bank manager. Banks had AC, unlike this smelly cop car that would run hot as Hades until January, then cold until summer rolled around again. Or Cass Raines, astronaut—one of only a handful of African-American women ever to go up in space, a footnote in history, just like Sally Ride. Space was cold, wasn’t it?

My tea was a watery mess. I was about to nag Ben to get back in the car so we could get rolling, when I saw him take a call. I watched as a grin broke out on his face and he pumped his fist. It was one hundred freaking degrees. What was he so happy about? Maybe he won the Powerball. If he won, I’d be happy for him, of course. What kind of partner wouldn’t be happy? But I was also going to be a little pissed off. Millionaires didn’t sweat their asses off in hot unmarked cars, their tits smashed between two boiler plates. Millionaires could buy enough ice to fill Wrigley Field and then hire the US hockey team to skate all over it.

“What?” I said as Ben slid into the passenger seat, buckled up.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. We’re on it.” He ended the call, slammed the door shut, and flashed me a triumphant grin. “Somebody just saw Jimmy Pick sneaking into his mother’s house. We got him.”

I flicked a look at my silent radio sitting beside me. “Why didn’t we get it over the radio?”

He held up his phone. “Because they tagged another unit and they’re already rolling on it, despite the fact that it’s our case, can you believe that? That was Smitty doing us a solid.”

I actually felt a shiver. “She’s on Sangamon, right?”

Ben stared at me. “Still freaks me out that you got a memory like an elephant.”

I shrugged. “It’s a blessing and a curse.” I meant it, too. I didn’t want to remember half the things rattling around in my brain.

“Go. We gotta catch up.”

I pulled out of the parking lot and shot out into traffic, lights and siren going, the heat no longer a concern. Jimmy Pick was the cold-blooded killer who’d been eluding us all summer; no one who knew him would give him up. Snitches get stitches. It was the way of things. “Who ratted him out?” I asked, scanning the streets.

“Anonymous. Tip line call. They even sent a photo of him waltzing through his mama’s front door.” He held his phone up for me to see. It was Jimmy, all right. He was young, but hard with a lifetime of street etched on his face.

“Maybe he missed her home cooking.”

Just nineteen, Jimmy had a juvie record as long as my arm: assaults, car thefts, and drug possession, but he graduated to homicide this past Fourth of July when he walked up behind a gang rival and blew his brains out. Then he ran. Because that’s what nineteen-year-olds do once the bravado wears off. The gangs had been sniping back and forth at each other for weeks—one side pulling off a drive-by, Jimmy’s side retaliating by shooting up a park, then a gang brawl to retaliate for the retaliation. All of it was senseless and stupid and utterly maddening. Four other young men were dead now because of Jimmy’s holiday kill, and we were just shy of Labor Day. Jimmy needed to be off the streets. I pressed my foot to the gas and punched it.

I ran through red lights, rolled through stop signs, my eyes checking the street for distracted pedestrians. I glanced over at Ben. “Who’re we meeting up with?”

“Solis, Lyles, Grimes.”

Cops worked in teams. Like salsa dancers and doubles partners. Ben was one short. “I can count, you know.”

Ben sighed. “Farraday. And there’s no point whining about it.”

I groaned. Farraday wasn’t a cop you wanted watching your six. He was pigheaded, haughty, and woefully slow on the uptake, but what he lacked in skill and temperament, he more than made up for in clout. Farraday was from a family of high-powered cops—sergeants, lieutenants, commanders, and chiefs—who’d paved the way for him. He’d risen through the ranks on the shoulders of giants. There seemed to be no mistake he could make egregious enough to derail his ascent; Farraday knew it and acted accordingly.

“But if he so much as blinks funny,” Ben said, “I’ll shove him down a sewer hole . . . Ferragamos last.”

The Pick house sat as dejected as a whipped dog, one of many that sat on a block of bedraggled frame houses subsidized by the government. The house, crudely painted lime green, appeared to lean to the left, as if an unkind fate had sapped the straightness right out of it. Instead of grass, a rusted car sat atop oil-stained cinder blocks. It was a place dreams went to die. I rang the bell, but no one answered. Solis and Lyles were at the head of the street. Farraday and Grimes were out back covering the alley. Farraday didn’t like it, but Pick belonged to Ben and me, and he knew it. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a warrant, so the porch was as far as we were authorized to go, unless there were exigent circumstances, and I couldn’t see any through the tattered bedsheets that passed for window drapes. I rang again, waited again, as Ben and me melted like butter pats in the midmorning heat, our bodies angled so we could watch both the street and the door simultaneously.

Something rattled around the side of the house. Ben and I exchanged a look, then carefully leaned over the wobbly railing just in time to see Jimmy sprint out the side door, fly down the gangway, and scale his mother’s back fence.

“Son of a bitch.” Ben took off down the steps with me right behind him. Jimmy crossed into his neighbor’s yard, hopped another fence, and took off down the alley. Ben relayed Jimmy’s description over the radio—approximate height six feet, wearing black track pants and a sleeveless yellow shirt. Jimmy, half a block ahead, saw us chasing him and sped up. It was too hot to run, but Jimmy was making a race of it, a race Ben and I could not afford to lose.

“Stop!” I shouted, digging in. “Police!” My holstered gun and radio bounced at my side. I caught up to Ben and passed him. Behind me, I could hear him puffing like a steam engine, but he kept it moving. He was knocking on the door to forty and in pretty good shape normally, but wind sprints in a heatwave would have been too much even for Usain Bolt. “Where are Farraday and Grimes?” I yelled. And where were the sirens? There should be sirens by now. Jimmy clambered over a row of garbage carts and scaled another fence. I called out the address so Ben could call it in and then grabbed a handful of chain link, prepared to scramble up and over, but the gate swung free in my hands. Spared the awkward climb, I shoved the gate open with more force than I probably needed, but now I was mad. I barreled through the yard, my eyes boring holes into Jimmy’s back.

“Jimmy, stop!” Goddammit. He glanced back, sneered, kept going. He flew through the yard and jumped another fence into the alley. Ben and I went up and over, but Jimmy was well ahead of us. We were losing him. I ramped it up, my legs wobbling from the effort.

“Where the hell’s our backup?” Ben yelled.

I scanned the alley. No Farraday. No Grimes. No Solis. No Lyles. “Don’t worry about it. Go.” But I did worry about it. I worried about it a lot. Jimmy rounded a corner, and I lost sight of him. I took the corner with Ben right behind me. The alley dead-ended. We skidded to a stop. East and west, apartment buildings loomed over the narrow alleyway. Ben and I stood facing south. Jimmy was nowhere. We were boxed into a canyon of apartment windows, the sound of our heavy breathing echoing off the dirty glass. Was someone lurking behind them? Watching? Were they armed? Did they hate cops? Ben and I moved in circles, checking every opening, looking for movement, praying we didn’t find any. It felt as though we were being tracked by a thousand eyes. “See anything?”

“Can’t depend on that,” Ben answered. “Left,” he called out, indicating which side of the alley he’d take. That meant the right side was mine to lock down. My eyes swept over every shadowy spot, every window, every alcove, my heart racing, my fingers suddenly cold. Minutes ago I’d been begging for relief from the heat, now I didn’t need it quite so much. In my head, I clicked through procedure, bracing myself for whatever came next, hoping to God I made the right choices and held up my end.

“Right,” I confirmed in a tight, clipped voice, my mouth bone dry. No backup. No backup? It was inconceivable but here the two of us were, alone . . . in an alley . . . in active pursuit. There was plenty of police chatter on our radios, but none of it pertained to us. What bizarre world had Ben and I stumbled our way into? Where was everybody?

“Stop! Police!” The brusque command rang out from above us. Ben and I looked up at the same time, drew our weapons and trained them in the direction of the shout.

“The roof,” Ben yelled. “The six-flat. There.” We bolted for the building. We found the ground-floor door unlocked, and barreled through, rushing into the darkened stairwell, blinking to adjust quickly to the dark. From the street, finally, sirens.

“I said, stop!” Again, the roof, but this time I recognized the voice. It was Farraday. My heart leapt into my throat.

“Holy shit,” Ben muttered. “How’d he get past us?” The door behind us flew open. We both reeled. Detective Grimes. “What the hell?” Ben’s eyes were wide, hyperalert. Mine were, too. “Why aren’t you with your partner?”

“He told me to cut off the alley,” Grimes said. He bent over to catch his breath. He was just two years out of uniform, still green, which accounted for the look of terror on his face. “He jumped out of the car and took off. I sped around, but then ran into the dead end. I left the unit and doubled back. Where is he?” Ben pointed toward the roof and we all three raced up the stairs. We had six flights to climb. Farraday was not the cop you wanted to leave alone on a roof with a kid who felt cornered. Our job was to serve and protect, using force only when necessary. With Farraday it was force first, always. He was a cowboy who wanted to be the hero and score bones with his family. Not the best motivators for a good cop, lethal motivators for a bad one. The more stairs I climbed the more there seemed to be. Ben lagged behind, but not by much. Grimes fell in behind him. Do not kill this kid, I prayed silently. Do not kill this kid.

We heard banging above us, a noise none of us could readily identify. Still three flights to go. Sirens blared outside—the cavalry at last. “Open the door!” Farraday shouted. “Now!”

Ben and I exchanged a foreboding look.

“Go!” I yelled, hoping to spur us both on. Two more flights. “Farraday! Stand down!” I called out, my voice reverberating off the dirty walls along with the banging from up top.

“What is that?” Ben asked.

“Sounds like somebody trying to push a door in,” Grimes offered, his sweat-soaked red hair plastered to his head. The three of us hustled up the steps double-time, finally reaching the last flight. When I rounded the final landing, I saw Farraday, his back pressed to the door jamb, sunlight streaming in from the roof. He’d gotten the door open, but it didn’t look like he was in any hurry to burst though it alone. It was the first smart thing he’d done all day. Farraday saw us there, his expression practically gleeful. It turned my stomach. “He’s out there.” Farraday kept his voice low. “I got him boxed in.”

Ben looked as though he might shoot Farraday himself. “How the hell did you get ahead of us?”

Farraday sneered. “I saw him shoot out of the yard. I took off after him. Not my fault you two are slow.”

Ben’s eyes flashed danger. “You took off without your partner?”

Farraday’s eyes darted toward Grimes. “He had the car. I got this.”

“I hear you all out there!” Jimmy yelled from the other side of the door. “You all need to back up. I ain’t going down. I ain’t going to jail!”

“Cover me,” Farraday said, pulling himself away from the door. “I’m going in.”

I grabbed him by the arm, pulled him back. “Like hell you are. We’re not killing this kid, you hear me? Now back off.”

Farraday pulled his arm free. “He’s my collar. I ran him down.”

Ben faced him. “Are you really that far gone that you’re itching to be the white cop who guns down a poor black kid on a rooftop?”

“Fuck you, Mickerson,” Farraday spat out. Ben looked as though he wanted to pound Farraday into sand; instead, he simply turned his back on him.

I turned to Grimes. “You hold the spot. He holds it, too. Understood?” Grimes looked as though he might faint, but he nodded a confirmation and held.

“This is bullshit, Raines, and you know it,” Farraday hissed.

My eyes held his. “I’ll tell you what I know. I know I’d better not see your stupid face on the other side of this door until we get this kid off the roof. Period. Now get the hell away from me!”

Farraday slunk back, seething, as Ben and I counted off three and then eased through the door a half step at a time. Maybe Jimmy had a gun, maybe he didn’t. I hoped he didn’t. The tar-covered rooftop seemed to sizzle under my feet and cling to the soles of my shoes. Guns up, we stepped farther out, checking everywhere for Jimmy Pick. We found him along the building’s edge, his back to us, as though he was thinking about jumping. His hands weren’t visible. My heart seized. Ben and I fanned out. He took right this time.

“Hey there, Jimmy,” I began, fighting hard to keep the quiver out of my voice. “Mind if we talk?”

“Ain’t in a talking mood, especially not to no cops.” Ben and I each took a step forward, flanking him. We exchanged a look, and Ben nodded, giving me the okay to take the lead on talking Jimmy down.

“I can respect that. A man’s entitled to talk to whoever he wants.” I slid another glance toward Ben. I had no idea where to go with this. Sweat pooled on Ben’s face, his jaw clenched tightly, as though it were chiseled in stone. “See? Thing is, Jimmy? You’re making a whole lot of people real nervous. I’d like to get you off this roof safe and sound, but I also need my partner and the other cops down there to be safe, too.”

“You don’t give a shit about me being safe.”

I balanced evenly on the balls of my feet. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jimmy. I’d like us all to be safe.”

“But I’ll be the one going to jail.”

I swallowed hard. There was no use lying to the kid. “Yeah, that’s true.... This is how it goes, Jimmy. You’ll put your hands way up and out where me and my partner can see them clearly. Then you’ll turn around really, really slow, facing us. We’ll ask you to get down on the ground, spread eagle, and then lace your hands behind your head, again, real slow, real easy. Then the cuffs go on, we stand you up, and take you down to the car. That’s it. That’s all. That’s how it has to be.” My gun weighed heavy in my hands, my palms sweating. “No one wants to hurt you, Jimmy.” God knows I didn’t. “But I’m going to need you to put your hands up and out now, just like I said. Up and out.”

Jimmy did not comply. He barely moved. I couldn’t be sure he’d even heard me. I wet my lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell Ben was bracing himself for what we both hoped wouldn’t come to pass. “Nobody has to die here today.”

Jimmy said nothing. He was likely watching the squad cars multiply down in the alley. He had no place to go. He had to know it. He had to feel it. “You cops like shooting black folks in the back,” Jimmy said. “So go ahead.”

Beads of sweat dripped into my eyes, and I quickly wiped them away with the sleeve of my blazer. “You’re wrong about that,” I said. “We don’t want to shoot anybody.” I shifted into firing position, my heart beating so wildly it seemed to ram against my rib cage. “Up and out . . . then around slowly.”

“Then what?” Jimmy asked.

My fingers tightened on the grip of my gun, my eyes pinned to Jimmy’s back. “Then on the ground, spread eagle, cuffs. Just like I said.”

“Then what?” he asked again. He was toying with me, goading us. Shit. Shit. Shit. Jimmy began to slowly turn, his hands still down.

“Hands up! Do it now!”

Ben and I shouted together. “Now!”

Jimmy slowly raised his hands, a contemptible scowl on his face. “I ain’t dying today, cop. I’m going to let you take me in.” He held his hands out to his sides. “You don’t shoot me, I don’t shoot you. Fair deal.”

“Down! Hands behind your head!” Niceties were done. Every cell in my body was operating in overdrive. I could hear the blood rushing through my veins, the valves in my heart opening and closing. I could count every pimple on Jimmy’s face. His pockets hung heavy. There could be a gun in one of them, or a cellphone. I couldn’t let his hands get anywhere near his pockets again.

Ben drew forward. “Get down. Face in the dirt. Now!” Ben and I made eye contact. He knew I had his back. I watched nervously as Ben slowly approached, keeping a safe distance. Jimmy, seemingly resigned now to going to jail, prepared to plaster himself to the rooftop. He’d just started his descent, when the door to the roof banged open, and Farraday barreled through like a runaway freight train.

“Down, you asshole!” he barked, gun drawn, his feral eyes boring into Jimmy’s confused ones.

“Farraday, stop! What the hell are you doing?” I yelled, but Farraday kept coming. I watched in horror as the expression on Jimmy’s face flipped from resigned acceptance to primal ferocity. We’d had a deal and this wasn’t it. He looked at me as though I’d betrayed him. I saw in his eyes the very moment he made up his mind to kill us all.

“Jimmy, don’t,” I pleaded. “Don’t do it.” Ben peddled backward, caught off guard by the sudden shift in activity. He dropped his handcuffs, raised his gun. A couple more minutes and we’d have had Jimmy cuffed and off the roof. Now this. “Farraday! What the hell? Back the fuck up!”

Jimmy let out an angry wail. “You lied!”

What happened next happened all at once and, seemingly, at twice the speed of light. Jimmy’s arms, once held in surrender, shot down to his sides, and his right hand plunged into his pocket. I registered the glint of shiny silver. Ben was exposed, caught flat-footed partway between the safety at my side and the danger Jimmy posed. Time meant nothing. Gun. Gun. Gun. It was all I could see; it was all my brain could process. Gun.

I fired. Jimmy fired. Ben fired. Farraday fired. The acrid stench of spent gunpowder and the heart-sickening sound of rapid gunfire ricocheted off the sides of the grimy buildings, whipped around my ears, and then hung in the air eerily suspended before melting away to nothing. The dizzying progression from glint of metal to muzzle flash seemed to take no more than a finger snap. I suddenly felt a sharp, searing pain in my chest so intense that it knocked me backward and off my feet. Time, which had raced like a thoroughbred horse just half a second earlier, stopped dead. Just stopped. Dead. Nothing moved, no one moved as the world beyond the rooftop fell away.

I began to fall, feeling myself go, my back crashing against the hot, sticky tar, my gun tumbling out of a hand that could no longer grasp it. I lay there stunned, my chest burning, and stared up at the clouds, watching as a bird flew overhead. These would be the last things I ever saw, I thought, the last things my senses would touch. Bile rose in my throat. I could feel warm blood pooling at my neck. The smell of my own sweat mingled with the metallic stench of fresh blood, my blood. The vest protected my chest—my heart, my lungs, the things that counted—but Jimmy’s bullet had caught me just above where the vest ended. It was my bad luck. Two minutes. Two seconds. No difference. There was no real time, only the rooftop and gunfire reverb, blood, sweat, gunpowder, bile, fear. Dammit. I was going to die today. Ben’s head shot into view, blocking out the sky. The stricken look on his face told me all I needed to know. It was bad. I felt for him. I didn’t want him to be the cop who lost a partner on a roof. It was a rough road to travel on. Still, I wanted the clouds back. I’d even take the bird, though I’d never liked them much. Way too chirpy.

“Hey, Cass,” Ben said, feverishly checking me for signs of life. My eyes were open. Weren’t they open? I could see the clouds, right? “Stay with me. Shit! You’re all right. You hear? Keep breathing. Farraday, you son of a bitch!” My eyes blurred, watered. Nauseous, I clenched my eyes shut, waiting for the worst to pass. It didn’t. Wouldn’t. I’d planned on pizza for dinner, and now I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d miss Christmas, I’d never have children, and I left dirty dishes in my sink. “Breathe,” Ben ordered, tears flooding his eyes. Wasn’t I breathing? I thought I was breathing. I watched, my vision fading, as he struggled out of his blazer, balled it and pressed it to my neck. A couple millimeters left or right and I’d have walked away from this. Ben’s efforts sent a fresh wave of agony through me, but I didn’t let on. I didn’t want him to feel bad. He’d never be able to wear the jacket again, of course. He’d never get my blood out of it. “Officer down! Officer down!” Ben shouted into his radio. I watched the clouds. I wanted them to be the last things I took in.

“Jimmy?” I croaked.

Ben shook his head. “You got him.”

But I didn’t want to get him. He was bad news, but he was just a kid. I wanted him to live. I wanted us all to live. What happened? Where had it gone wrong? Then I remembered.

Farraday.

The chatter over the radio sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel, and I couldn’t make sense of it. I turned my head only as far as I could manage and there was Farraday, his face as pale as a ghost, but very much alive and well. Jimmy Pick was dead. I was dead, too. But there he stood. I heard the paramedics coming, but it didn’t feel as though I could wait for them. I managed just one more half inhale before the sounds of salvation faded, and my field of vision shrank to the breadth of a pinprick. Calmly, silently, I let go of the world. I was cold at last and hadn’t even needed to go to space for it. I thought I had more time. I hadn’t planned on dying today.

“Wouldn’t you rather sit, Detective?” Dr. Voigt asked. “I don’t charge for the use of the chair.”

Dr. Nelson Voigt, dressed neatly for autumn in a white oxford shirt, navy knit vest, and black slacks, smiled and eyed me keenly from his overstuffed chair, his right leg crossed languidly over the left, his lean body perfectly still. Penetrating gray eyes that gave nothing away peered out of a narrow, clean-shaven face. Voigt, who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, didn’t strike me as a careless man, yet his socks were mismatched, one black, one navy blue. It was a small thing of little importance in the grander scheme, yet there they were.

“Good to know,” I said. There were just twenty-two minutes left in my fifty-minute session, and I was choosing to spend them as I’d spent the first twenty-eight, staring out of the police psychologist’s window at a sterile courtyard with its faux serenity fountain and small waxen trees meant to ape the real thing. Beyond the courtyard, a tree—a real one—had gone from crimson to brown, as trees did in fall. A cardboard skeleton dangled inside a window across the street, a reminder that Halloween was just a week away.

“Cass?”

I watched a skittish sparrow light on the limb of one of Voigt’s bogus trees before it suddenly flitted away again. I envied the bird. “I’ll stand.”

Voigt’s ballpoint pen scratched across the notepad on his lap. The scratching stopped. “Tell me about Jimmy Pick.”

I stiffened, took a moment. “He’s dead.” Jimmy had died where he fell. Two rounds from my gun had pierced his aorta. One of his had narrowly missed mine, leaving damage. My left arm was now weaker than it had been, and rehab was slow. I thought I would die, but I didn’t. Instead, I spent weeks in the ICU, tubes sticking out of me everywhere, the steady beeping of the monitors my only assurance that I was still among the living. Now I was here watching birds. Tell me about Jimmy Pick?

“How do you feel about that?” Voigt asked as though he were asking me how I felt about losing a pair of gloves on the Red Line. The bird was back, or maybe it was a different bird. “Anger would be a normal reaction,” Voigt prodded. “Anxiety, fear, even guilt for not being able to change the outcome are also normal. We haven’t talked about the shooting. Maybe we should?” Silence hung like a heavy mist. I didn’t feel compelled to break it. “So, what happened out there?” Voigt said gently after a time.

Farraday happened. I could have brought Jimmy in. I nearly had him. But Farraday wanted the collar; he wanted to be a hero. He didn’t give a fig whether Jimmy Pick lived or died. Apparently, he felt the same about Ben and me. I squeezed my hands into angry fists. I could feel Voigt’s eyes on my back, hear him scribbling. What was he writing down? What did he see that I couldn’t? “You read the report.”

Voigt paused for a moment. “The details were there, not your feelings.”

I rolled my eyes. Feelings. Damn it all to hell and back. “I gave my statement. I feel that’s enough.”

More scribbles. I wondered why Voigt pressed the pen so heavily against the paper that I could hear the scratching clear across the room. Was he afraid the ink would fly away? “Tell me about Detective Farraday. His account was rather different.”

I reeled to face him. “That’s because he’s a lousy liar.” The words shot out of my mouth before I had a chance to edit them, as rage blasted up from somewhere deep. “That kid would be alive, if not for him. He nearly got us all killed!”

Voigt watched me intently. “It was ruled a justifiable shoot.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, seething. Even thinking about James Farraday was almost too much. I opened them again, a little calmer, but not by much. “They gave him a commendation. Never mind the dead kid. Nobody wearing a star died, you see. That’s all that counts.”

“You backed up your partner. You did your job.”

“Did I? Tell that to the protestors marching in front of the district. Their signs have my picture on them. KID KILLER. KILLER KOP.” I took a breath, two. “I got a commendation, too, and so did Ben. You want to know why?”

Voigt stared at me intently. “Sure.”

“Because they couldn’t just give Farraday one, and they really wanted him to have it. A commendation looks good on your record. It’s what they look for when they move you up.”

“They?”

“Brass,” I said. “They’ve got plans for Farraday no matter how many times he gets it wrong, no matter how many kids die.”

“You take issue with how the department handled the situation.”

I inhaled deeply. “Maybe it takes almost dying to lower one’s tolerance for bullshit.”

“How’s the Xanax working?”

The little brown bottle was tucked inside the front pocket of my jeans. I could feel it there, pressed snugly against my right hip. I reached down and felt for it, disturbed by the level of comfort it gave me. The bottle was still full. “I don’t need pills.”

“It’s not a battle, you versus the pills. Taking them is not a sign of either weakness or surrender