James Patterson: The Quickie

"Did you get the plate number?" Mike said expectantly.

No, I thought, wincing. Please, God, make her say no.

"No," Ms. Phelps said.

I had to force myself to release my breath silently.

"It was too dark?" Mike said, disappointed.

"No," Ms. Phelps said, looking at him like he was a student who'd forgotten to raise his hand. "There were no plates."

"Did you call the police and tell them what you saw?" I said.

Ms. Phelps patted me on the knee.

"In this neighborhood, Detective, staying out of other people's affairs is an acquired necessity."

"Then, why did you tell the police officer who knocked on your door that you saw something?" Mike said, curious.

"They asked," Ms. Phelps said with a prim nod. "I am not a liar."

That makes one of us, I thought.

"Would you be able to pick out the man you saw from a lineup?" I asked with a tight smile.

"Undoubtedly," Ms. Phelps said.

"Terrific," I said as I handed Ms. Phelps my card. "We'll be in touch."

"You can count on it," added Mike.

MIKE HAD HIS BIFOCALS on top of his head as we left Amelia Phelps's house and walked back into the park. He mumbled to himself excitedly as he went over his interview notes. He was pumped. He had to feel we were getting closer to the killer. It was a great feeling, I knew. Being a detective, being the good guy.

I missed it terribly.

I felt horrible about lying to Mike and the rest of the cops who were traipsing around in the rain out there. When one cop goes down, all cops feel it. There's the instant outrage, of course, but underneath is unsettling fear. Have I made a mistake in choosing this dangerous job? Is it worth dying for?

I knew my friends and co-workers were reeling, hurting. By telling the truth, I could erase their anxious tension. The thought that somebody else could possibly get hurt out there made me almost physically sick.

I closed my eyes, listening to the crackle of police radio chatter and the rain in the trees.

I didn't say anything to anyone about what I knew, what had actually happened to Scott.

I kept my head down and my mouth shut.

I looked up only when I saw some commotion alongside the fountain.

A couple of dozen uniforms were arraying themselves in parallel lines from the fountain to the medical examiner's black station wagon, waiting underneath the rusted el on Jerome.

"They're taking him out," I heard one of the uniforms say as he rushed past me to grab a place in the line.

An honor guard of six cops carefully stepped into the water of the fountain and received from the medical examiner's team the green-black body bag Scott had already been placed in. They handled him as if he were a sick person who was still alive. Oh, God, I wished that were true. I wished I could take this entire night back, every second of it.

Along that stock-still, midnight-blue rank, someone started singing "Danny Boy" in a high, clear, haunting tenor that would have made Ronan Tynan jealous.

You want a definition of forlorn ? How about half a dozen cops slowly bearing one of their dead through a dark Bronx tenement valley while the rain falls and the pipes, the pipes are calling. Was Scott even Irish? I didn't know. All dead cops are Irish, I guess.

I watched the rain splatter like flung holy water against the body bag as the procession passed me. Everywhere men were weeping openly. I watched as even the commissioner, standing beside the ME office's hearse, cupped a hand over his eyes.

An overhead passing number 4 train sounded out a martial drum snare as Scott was slid into the back of the wagon like a file returned to a drawer.

Tears drained out of my eyes as if my tear ducts had been slit.

I CAUGHT A WHITE BLUR out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly I was enveloped in a wall of warm Tyvek.

"Oh, Lauren," an academy classmate of mine, Bonnie Clesnik, whispered in my ear as she hugged me to her side. "This is so horrible. That poor guy."

Bonnie had been premed at NYU before she dropped out to become a cop, and she was now a sergeant in the Crime Scene Unit. As the only female former professionals in a class filled mostly with twenty-two-year-old, smooth-faced boys from Long Island, we had formed a quick bond. I'd stayed over at "the Bonster" and her partner Tatum's loft on St. Mark's Place so many times, they named the futon after me.

Bonnie fished a Kleenex out of her suit and wiped the corners of her eyes, then handed me a tissue, too.

"Look at us," she said with a laugh. "Badass cops, huh? It's been – what? A year? You did something to your hair. I like it."

"Thanks," Mike said, stepping between us. "I just washed it. And you are?"

"Bonnie, this fool is my partner, Mike," I said, introducing them. "I thought you worked days."

"When I heard the news, I came running, just like everybody else," Bonnie said. "I haven't seen this many cops in one place since St. Paddy's. Or Ground Zero."

She took off the freezer bag that was strapped across her chest beside several cameras.

"I'm glad I did, though, Lauren. I'm really glad. I think I found something."

I accepted the freezer bag from her, held it up.

Every light in the park and beyond seemed to surge suddenly with a white-hot brightness. The rain felt like it was falling right through me.

I turned Paul's silver, wired-rimmed glasses slowly in my hand.

"They were in the sheet Scott was wrapped in," Bonnie said. "I already called one of the guys in his narcotics unit. Scott didn't wear glasses. If they're prescription, we can go through the files of every ophthalmologist in the tristate area and nail the four-eyed son of a bitch who did this."

I felt a tingling behind my left eye as Mike whooped and gave Bonnie a high five.

A stream of electrified chatter leaked from Mike's radio a moment later.

"It's the boss man, Lauren," he said. "The commissioner has entered the donut bus and wants a briefing."

"Are you okay, Lauren?" Bonnie said, putting a hand on my back. "You don't look so hot."

I looked at her, at the concern in her eyes. Christ, how I longed to break down right there and then. Bonnie was a friend, a woman, and a cop. Out of everybody, she'd be the most likely to understand. Tell me what to do. Help me.

But what could I say to her? I was screwing the deceased, who, by the way, was blown away by my husband? I looked away from Bonnie. Nobody could help me, I realized. I was completely and utterly on my own.

"I'm fine," I said.

"We're all a little overwrought," Mike explained to Bonnie as he led me away toward the Command Center bus. "Even some of those dealers by the bodega teared up when that red-haired uniform was singing 'Danny Boy.' "

Mike put his arm around me as we walked. He really was a good guy, one of the best.

"Our guy is messing up, Lauren," Mike said. "At first I thought we were screwed. You know as well as I do how hard dump jobs are to solve. But look. Mistake after mistake. We're looking at an amateur. I can almost see him out there thinking he's covering his tracks, but his mind is racing and he's fucking up, just leading us closer and closer. A twelve-pack of Sam Adams says we lay hands on his sorry ass by this time tomorrow. You down?"

I shook my head as I labored to stay on my feet, to keep moving toward the bus.

"That's okay, Mike," I said. "I don't take sucker bets."

A SHORT BLUR OF TIME LATER, I was making myself stand up straight in the antiseptic glare of the Command Center bus interior.

Everywhere there were cops in front of laptops. White-shirted bosses were barking into cell phones. A map of the area was projected up in a wide-screen PowerPoint display. It looked like the situation room at the Pentagon, or maybe on the TV show 24 .