Blindside (Michael Bennett #12)

Blindside (Michael Bennett #12)

James Patterson




CHAPTER 1


I DID EVERYTHING I could to distract Lucille Evans from noticing the bloody footprint. A responding patrol officer had tracked the blood into the hallway. One look at the scene inside and the veteran needed to run into the street. I didn’t blame him one bit.

The forensics people were in the small, two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of this building on 146th Street near Willis Avenue in the Bronx. The scene was so horrendous that the local detectives had called me to help even though it wasn’t technically considered part of Manhattan North Homicide’s usual territory. Two of the local detectives had lost it. It happens. It’s happened to me over the years. I lost it once at the scene of a murdered girl. Her stepfather had bashed her head in for crying because she was hungry. She reminded me of my own Shawna, staring up through blood splatters. When I heard her stepfather in the other room, talking with detectives, I snapped. It almost felt like another being possessed me. I burst into the room, ready to kill. Only the fact that my partner at the time, Gail Nodding, was as tough as nails and shoved me back out the door had kept me from killing the creep.

Now I considered this bloody scene. Who wouldn’t be affected by the sight of two bodies with bullet wounds in their heads? Large-caliber wounds. Not the usual .38s or 9mms used in the city. The bodies frozen in time. A mother trying to shield her little girl. I wanted to bolt home and hug my own children. But I had work to do.

I had my hands full with the sixty-five-year-old woman who merely wanted to say good-bye to her daughter and granddaughter.

Mrs. Evans tried to push past me to open the simple wooden door with the number 9 hanging upside down. The threadbare industrial carpet didn’t give my feet much traction. My semi-dress Skechers were more for walking comfort than for wrestling.

Mrs. Evans said, “Let me pass, young man. I have to see my babies.” She wasn’t loud. She wasn’t hysterical. She was determined.

So was I.

I said, “Ma’am, I’m not in charge. But I do have kids. I know loss. You don’t want what you see inside that apartment to be your final memory of your daughter and granddaughter. Please, I swear to God, you’ll get your chance to say good-bye.”

She stared me down as hard as any drug dealer ever had. But I was resolute. I’d already seen the horror behind the door. I wasn’t about to let this elegant, retired teacher see it, too. Her daughter, still in her nurse’s uniform from the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital. The left side of her face missing from a single, devastating gunshot. Lying over her daughter. A nine-year-old with a hole in the side of her head. This time, too, the girl reminded me of my Shawna.

The whole scene had shaken me to the core. Never believe a cop when he or she tells you they’ve seen it all. Nobody ever sees it all.

Mrs. Evans cracked. Tears started to flow. It’d finally hit her with full force. Two of her greatest treasures had been taken from her. Her watery eyes looked up at me again. She simply asked, “Why?”

She started to weep. I put a tentative arm around her. She fell into me and I hugged her. I remembered how I’d felt when Maeve, my wife, died. That was a slow death from cancer. It still tore me to pieces.

This poor woman had been blindsided.

I eased her onto one of the cheap plastic chairs a detective had set up in the apartment’s hallway. A little African American girl peeked out of one of the doorways down the hall. The light at the end of the hall near the stairs flickered.

Why would someone shoot a nurse and her little girl? Why did someone like Mrs. Evans have to suffer through this? How would I hold it all together?

I had to. It was my job.





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CHAPTER 2





THE UNIFORMED CAPTAIN from the Fortieth Precinct erupted into the hallway from the stairs. I knew the tall captain from my days on patrol. He yelled down the hall to the NYPD officers working diligently, “Let’s move this along, shall we, people?” Then he saw me.

I had just gotten Mrs. Evans seated. A young patrol officer stepped over and offered her a cup of cold water. She was starting to get that glazed look family members have after a murder.

The captain marched toward me and said, “This ain’t Manhattan North. What are you doing here? Trying to steal a stat?”

Sometimes cops embarrass me. Yeah, it’s a job, but it involves people. People with feelings. I kept it professional and said, “Just helping out, Captain Ramirez.”

The captain was almost as tall as me. He wore his dark hair slicked tightly against his scalp. There were definite cliques inside the NYPD. Divisions happen in all large organizations. The simple old Irish-versus-Italian rivalry had given way to a much more complicated system. Ramirez identified strongly with the Hispanic clique and didn’t give a crap if I was Irish, Italian, or black. I wasn’t Hispanic so he didn’t cut me any slack.

The captain barked, “Then help clear this scene. We got shit breaking all over the Bronx. There’s a goddamn protest about the price of housing. In New York. You think they’d realize housing prices are going to be crazy.”