The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(29)

After two years in operation, you started to hear some things about these guys. Illegal seizures, low-level guys on the street getting robbed and beaten. Nothing to lose any sleep over, since they were making arrests every day, piling up numbers that a homicide detective could only dream of. The crime rate went down. The mayor was happy. The brass was happy. So the rumors were ignored, and every uniformed officer—like those guys standing down there in the parking lot, letting Bloome walk by with nothing but a nod—they all kissed SIS ass, because SIS was what every Chicago cop wanted to be. They were stars. Celebrity cops.

Bloome passed by Sandoval without even looking at him. He went into the room. Sandoval waited. A minute later, Bloome came back out. He leaned over the railing, breathing in the night air. Then he finally looked up and noticed Sandoval standing there.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Detective Sandoval. Area Central Homicide. Got a question for you.”

“For me?”

“You’re SIS,” Sandoval said. “Jameson was SIS.”

“Wow, you’re some kind of investigator,” Bloome said. “Whose dick did you suck to make detective?”

“Why was he here alone?”

Bloome took his arms off the railing and stood up straight. “Guy I worked with for twenty f*cking years is dead on the floor in there,” he said. “A friend. A great cop. So I’m not in the mood to answer your bullshit questions.”

“You see a suitcase? He wasn’t staying here. What was he doing, meeting a CI?”

“He was doing whatever the f*ck he was doing,” Bloome said. “Before somebody blew a hole in him. We’re taking this case, by the way, so you can leave.”

“It was never mine,” Sandoval said. “Ryan’s downstairs. He’s caught it.”

Bloome worked that over in his head for a moment. “Then what the f*ck are you doing here?” he said. “That’s a dead cop on the floor. You got no respect?”

“I’m working on something else,” Sandoval said. “Thought it might be connected.”

“Connected to what?” Bloome said. “What the f*ck’s the matter with you? Do you let guys off the street come walking onto your crime scenes?”

He stopped and looked at Sandoval’s star again.

“Wait a minute,” Bloome said. “You’re Sandoval? Gary Higgins’s partner?”

Sandoval nodded.

Bloome looked him up and down. “Here’s what’s gonna happen, Detective. You’re gonna get the f*ck out of here right now and I’m not gonna see your face again. Any crime scene. Anyplace got anything to do with me, with my men, with SIS. Just stay the f*ck away from us so the real cops can do their job.”

Sandoval nodded. “That’s one way. Other way is I tell you to f*ck off and I keep doing my job.”

Sandoval turned and walked down the hallway. When he was in the parking lot, he looked back up at the balcony and saw Bloome watching him. Then he walked through the glare of the news team’s camera lights, got in his car, and drove away.





15




Ten hours after committing his first murder, Nick Mason was desperate to find one good reason for it.

He had to see his daughter.

Mason went to the same house, the house where Adriana woke up every morning. Came home from school, did her homework. Went outside to play. Went to sleep. Did she still have nightmares? She had them two or three nights a week when she was four years old. How many more did she have when her father was taken away?

He took off his sunglasses and tilted the rearview mirror to look at himself. The scrape over his left eye was still an angry red, both cheeks were still swollen, and the bruises were turning every shade of black, blue, green, and even a little yellow. Mason had been in fights before, more than he could count, and he’d lost his share of them. But it had been a long time since he looked this bad.

When Diana had seen him that morning, she had put together another bag of ice for him, and she had stood over him for a few moments, getting a better look.

“Let me guess,” she finally said to him, almost smiling. “I should see the other guy, right?”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “Something like that.”

The way he said it made her smile slip away. “Don’t say another word.”

She gave him some ibuprofen for the swelling. Then she went to work. Mason got in his new Camaro and came out to Elmhurst. It was becoming obvious that the house was empty. He put the rearview mirror back in position and started the car.

As he was driving away, a couple of facts came together in Mason’s mind. Gina had said that her husband and Adriana were at practice the other day. Mason remembered seeing the soccer goal in the garage, too. It was a Saturday morning in July. Maybe today was game day.

He’d seen the high school on his way here, so he backtracked and looked for soccer fields, but saw only a football field, and the whole place was deserted, anyway. He went up a couple of blocks and found Elmhurst College and a soccer field with players on it, but no young kids. He drove around for another few minutes and was about to give up when he saw a soccer ball sticker on the back of a minivan. He followed it south, all the way to Oak Park, into a big parking lot where a half-dozen kids—all around Adriana’s age and dressed for soccer—piled out.