Keith DeCandido: Four Walls

Now Jack had a weapon. He'd never killed anyone before. Beat lots of guys up, but that was it.

Barker, though, he'd earned it. He'd shown Jack up, not once, but twice. So now Jack would kill a man for the first time.

He wondered what it would feel like.

THE LAST TIME DETECTIVES Stella Bonasera and Lindsay Monroe had investigated a murder in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, the victim was also a teenage girl. Then, Lindsay had bolted from the scene, as seeing a dead teenager brought back all-too-vivid memories of being the only survivor of a massacre in a Bozeman, Montana, diner ten years earlier.

Lindsay had been in the bathroom when Daniel Kadems came into the diner. He had planned on robbing the place after it was closed but before the staff locked up; however, Lindsay and her friends' exuberant gabbing had kept the diner open later than expected. Kadems panicked when he realized his robbery attempt had gone sour and shot all the witnesses.

All but the one in the bathroom. Lindsay's response to the sound of gunfire had been to curl up in a corner until it went away. Afterward, she had felt compelled, for the sake of her best friends, to do something to stop people like Kadems from hurting others. But her paralyzed reaction to the shooting meant, in her mind, that becoming a police officer was probably not the right choice for her, so she went into forensic science instead.

Eventually, the memories of her friends and their violent deaths made it too painful to stay in Bozeman, so she moved as far away as she could: to New York, to join the Crime Scene Investigators of the NYPD, under the supervision of Detective Mac Taylor.

Which was fine, as long as she didn't see any dead teenage girls. Unfortunately, one night around Christmas last year, she'd come to Riverdale to find the body of Alison Mitchum, and Lindsay hadn't been able to handle it. Stella had been the one to cover for her with Mac.

Since then, the Bozeman cops had caught up with Daniel Kadems, and he'd been tried and convicted, in part on the strength of Lindsay's own testimony. So when they got the call to join Detective Angell at a new crime scene in Riverdale, Lindsay figured she could handle it this time, as that particular demon had finally been laid to rest. At least, that was what she had told Stella.

They drove up in one of the department SUVs. The Bronx was the northernmost of the five boroughs and the only one attached to the U.S. mainland. They were making good time; this early in the morning, most of the traffic was going into Manhattan, not leaving it. The last time, they had gone up the West Side Highway, but this morning Stella chose to take the FDR on the east side. "We got a memo," she explained as they took the exit for the Third Avenue Bridge. "Apparently, the crime lab's spending too much on E-Z Pass, so they want us to avoid tolls wherever possible."

Lindsay shook her head. "All the money we spend on our crime-scene equipment, and they're worried about tolls ?"

Stella shrugged, her long curls bouncing slightly. The SUV pulled onto the bridge, taking them over the Harlem River. Looking to her right, Lindsay saw Randalls Island and the Manhattan skyline through the haze of this humid morning.

"Apparently," Stella was saying, "we passed our toll allocation for the year by Memorial Day, so some bean counter got pissed. Hold on."

"Why should I-" Lindsay cut herself off when the SUV hit the end of the bridge and got back on regular paving. Or, rather, irregular paving. The road was one long series of massive potholes, and even the SUV's state-of-the-art suspension couldn't keep her from bouncing around in the passenger seat, the seat belt biting into her ribs.

After a few minutes, Stella made the left onto the entrance ramp that would put them on the Major Deegan Expressway. "That was fun," Lindsay muttered, now holding on to the handle over the SUV door for dear life. "You know, we don't even have toll bridges in Montana."

"You also can't get a decent cannoli, I bet." Stella grinned.

Lindsay grinned right back. "I wouldn't know, I've never had a cannoli."

After merging the SUV into traffic, Stella stole a shocked look at Lindsay. "You've been in New York how long now, and you've never had one of the finest Italian delicacies?"

"I thought that was pizza."

Stella shook her head. "Pizza's an American invention. Cannoli are real Italian food. The best ones I've ever had were at this place down by the courthouse in Little Italy." Stella got a momentary look of rapture on her face. Lindsay had never understood Stella's fascination with food. But then, Lindsay's idea of exotic food growing up was the Olive Garden. She'd made the mistake of saying that to Stella once, which had prompted a look of disgust on Stella's face that Lindsay had previously only seen reserved for serial killers.

Lindsay looked out the window again as they passed Yankee Stadium, with the massive edifice of the Bronx County Courthouse looming behind it. Lindsay had been up here to testify a few times. Each borough in the city was its own county, so each had its own courthouse. While most of the time Lindsay testified in the New York County Courthouse on Centre Street in downtown Manhattan-the one near Little Italy, as Stella had said-she'd been to the ones in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx several times, and even to Staten Island once.

The last time she was up here, Danny Messer had made noises about taking her to a game. She'd also seen the broken ground for the new Yankee Stadium that was scheduled to open in 2009-or, as Danny had called it, "the abomination." That was part of why he wanted to get her to a game; he wanted her to experience the "real" Yankee Stadium before it was gone.

Lindsay hadn't had the heart to tell Danny that she had no interest in baseball-football, yes, but not baseball. He was so cute when he started waxing rhapsodic about Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Reggie Jackson and Don Mattingly and how much he hated the Red Sox, not to mention his own short-lived minor-league career.

Soon they reached West 230th Street, where Stella got off and then navigated her way through some local streets that Lindsay quickly lost track of. Lindsay only did the driving when they stayed in Manhattan, with its grid-pattern streets. Once she got into the outer boroughs, she tended to get hopelessly lost.

They went up a very big, very steep hill, then pulled into an area of the street that was designated as a bus stop but in which two cars were parked-one a departmental sedan, probably Angell's, and a blue-and-white from the Fiftieth Precinct. Stella pulled in behind the blue-and-white.

Detective Jennifer Angell was standing outside the door to Belluso's Bakery, which faced the bus stop. A svelte brunette, she'd originally been temporarily promoted to take on Flack's caseload when he was injured and had been groomed to replace him if he didn't make it back. Flack did come back, but Angell did well enough during her probation that they gave her the full promotion anyhow. She'd put down a lot of good cases in the past year.

She also never got the memo about the dress code. Plainclothes cops who worked homicides were supposed to dress formally. Angell, however, mostly stuck to denim. Lindsay was surprised she hadn't gotten called on it. Today was no different: she wore a plain light-blue T-shirt and faded jeans. Her long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail in deference to the oppressive heat and humidity. Stella had actually done likewise with her curly locks, and Lindsay was starting to think she should have done the same.

Peering through the large picture window, Lindsay saw two long display cases perpendicular to each other, filled with pastries. There was a staircase in the center of the space going up to a balcony-style second floor. Around the staircase were several small round tables surrounded by three or four wooden chairs each. Two uniforms were inside, along with three young women and one older man.