15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(43)

“With all due respect, Jacobi, that’s a load of bull. It was bad, but I handled it. That’s what the job is. I hardly have a scratch on me. So stop treating me like a victim. I’m fully functional and absolutely sane. This is my case and I’m on it. OK? OK?”

I went to my desk and typed up a report. I handed it to Brady, then went down to the street and emptied my glove box and got my bag out of the front footwell before my fatally crippled Explorer was loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken out to the forensics lab.

Conklin drove me home. I didn’t talk during the ride, but I grabbed his hand and squeezed it before I got out of his car. And then he came around and opened the passenger door. I gave him a look that should have stopped him.

“Shut up,” he said. “I’m going in with you.”

Once inside my apartment, I greeted our nanny and said good night and good-bye to my partner. I showered, then ate something with tomato sauce, I don’t remember what.

I played blocks with my daughter and put her to bed. After that, I rechecked the locks and the security system and looked out at the patrol cars parked down on the street. I put my gun on the night table, and then I got into bed with Martha and fell asleep. I didn’t think and I didn’t dream.

When I woke up in the morning I was madder than I’d ever been before in my life. I understood now that I was being treated like an orphaned kitten not just because I had been repeatedly attacked and almost killed. It was also because Joe had left me without a word.

The men who’d tried to kill me would answer for what they’d done if it was the last thing I did in my life.

And that went for my husband, too.





CHAPTER 66


OFFICER EVELYN FINLEY drove me slowly and carefully to the Hall that morning, as if she were transporting vintage glass Christmas ornaments. She also walked me through the lobby and waited with me until the elevator came.

“Following orders,” she said.

Damn it.

“Thanks, Finley,” I said. “I can take it from here.”

I rounded Brenda’s desk at the entrance to the bullpen and saw that Conklin, Chi, McNeil, and Brady were in some kind of huddle near Chi’s desk. Apparently, a meeting was in progress. Maybe I hadn’t been purposefully excluded. Maybe it just felt that way.

Conklin waved me over and both he and Brady scrambled to get me a chair. I almost laughed. Instead, I muttered, “Thanks. I’ve got it. I’ve got it.”

Cappy McNeil is almost fifty, carrying too much weight around his middle, but he’s a steady old hand and a very good cop.

His partner, Sergeant Paul Chi, is ten years younger and one of the sharpest cops in the city. The two of them were getting their first look at my face of a million cuts, but they’d already heard about the turkey shoot last night.

Cappy said, “Ahh, sheet, Boxer. This is just wrong.”

He patted my arm and passed me one of his two untouched donuts.

Once I was settled in, Chi resumed his briefing.

“Lindsay, to bring you up to speed, I have a CI who lives over a grocery store on the corner of Jackson and Stockton. He called me last night to say he’s seen about four Asian businessmen, well dressed, driving deluxe vehicles, coming and going at odd hours. They’re apparently based in a crappy apartment building right here.”

Chi pulled up a map on his computer, street view. He stabbed a location on Stockton, middle of the block, east side.

“This is it,” said Chi. “Ten Thirty-Five Stockton. Low-rent joint with a dry cleaner downstairs. Now, the tenant of the presumed crappy apartment is Henry Yee. Two small-time drug busts. He works in the noodle shop over here. Corner of Jackson. He’s subletting his place to these guys, sleeps at the restaurant.

“Now, rumor has it that these men are here on some kind of government business. They’re not into drugs or—”

I stopped him. “Wait. What government?”

“Chinese, I’m guessing, but no one knows,” Chi said. “My CI called last night because last week, he sees these men unloading long, heavy boxes from a black or blue SUV. He didn’t think much of it until last night.

“According to my snitch, around eight p.m. last night, one of those slick Chinese guys parks his SUV on Stockton near the corner of Jackson. The car’s got two busted headlights. And now my snitch is thinking back on those heavy loads that were taken out of the SUV last week and wonders if that stuff wasn’t artillery. My guy’s a junkie, but he’s not stupid. I tend to believe him.”

I said, “Some kind of dark vehicle smashed my front end last night. And then I backed hard into the vehicle behind me. This SUV you’re telling us about had to be one of those cars.”

Brady called Jacobi, who came downstairs and joined us. An hour later, we had a plan.





CHAPTER 67


BY FOUR-THIRTY that afternoon, three teams from Homicide and our SWAT unit were deployed discreetly around Stockton and Jackson, a neighborhood known for its traditional Chinese shops and also for its drug, gambling, and gang activity.

I took it all in from where Conklin and I waited in our parked car on Stockton.

Our focus was on a three-story beige stucco apartment building across the street from us in the middle of the block. Next to the dry cleaner Chi had referred to was a gray-painted door that led to the apartments upstairs.