James Patterson - The Quickie

I turned around. It was the fax machine. Jeez, Louise .

It rang again, and the sound was followed by an electronic bleep. One of the white sheets started to slowly slide down out of it.

Keep going, partner, I thought, not looking at him. Please. For me.

But out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mike turn around.

My face felt hot. He would see it in a second. My number repeated over and over again! What the hell could I say? Nothing came to mind. How could I get out of this one?

I turned all the way around as Mike lifted the first sheet out. I watched him squint, watched his hand go to his forehead.

That's when I noticed his reading glasses sitting there on the desk beside me, right where he'd left them.

I didn't think. I just acted.

I opened my bottom-left desk drawer, and with one of Scott's files swept Mike's glasses off his desk and into the drawer. Then I quietly kicked the drawer shut.

I pretended to ignore Mike until I heard him rummaging around on his desktop.

"Didn't I tell you to take a nap?" I said, annoyed. "You're not having another senior moment, are you?"

Mike exhaled a tired breath as he gave up the search for his glasses. He dropped Scott's phone records in my lap.

"All yours, sister," he said weakly. "Courtesy of Ma Bell. See you in sixty winks."

FOR TWO SOLID MINUTES, I spun my pencil through my fingers like a baton twirler, my old, creaky wooden office chair cawing as I rocked back and forth just staring at Scott's phone records.

I turned and squinted through the office glass at my mercifully still-busy boss, then looked back down at the eight number-filled sheets of paper in front of me.

The fact that I'd managed to get my hands on Scott's rec-ords was phenomenal, but after riffling through them, I realized I now had a new problem.

I stuck the pencil between my back teeth and began turning it into a chew toy.

How the hell was I going to remove my number from them?

The thirty-three times it occurred!

"Lauren," a voice said.

I almost swallowed the pencil's eraser as I looked up. My boss had exited his office and crossed the squad room without my noticing. He placed his hands flat on my desk as he leaned over me, his fingernails practically scratching the edge of the fax paper. Could he read upside down?

"How we looking on those D-D-fives?" Keane said. "Borough and Detective Division commanders want them ASAP. Any problem with that?"

"Give me an hour, chief," I said, bringing the form up on my computer screen.

"You've got half," he shot back over his shoulder as he left.

I leaned over my keyboard, trying to look busy and at the same time hide what I was doing.

My eyes went from the screen to the phone records. From the phone records to the screen. Waiting for something obvious to jump out at me.

Then, miraculously, it did.

The font of the phone records was a common one. Times New Roman.

A second later, an idea occurred to me all but fully formed.

Which was good, I thought as I clicked on the Microsoft Word icon on my screen, since I didn't have a second to spare.

First thing I did was find the number Scott called the most. It was a 718 area code with an exchange I wasn't familiar with.

I checked my notes and verified that it was Scott's home number.

I typed the number, hit "print," and compared it to the records. It was a little too big. I blocked the number out and dropped the font size from twelve to ten, printed that out, and compared it again.

Perfect, I thought. It would work.

I copied the number thirty-three times and hit "print" for the third time. Who knows? I thought, pocketing scissors and tape from my desk drawer. I lifted the records off my desk along with the sheets from the printer as I stood.

This just might work.

It took me five minutes of nonvirtual cutting and pasting in the last stall of the ladies' room to tape over every incident of my cell number on the LUDs with Scott's home number.

Everything important I learned in kindergarten, I thought as I flushed the scraps away.

One trip to the copying machine later – with a brief side trip to the shredder – and I had everything the way I wanted it.

Scott's new and improved phone records.

I was coming out of Keane's office after dropping off my completed crime-scene reports twenty minutes later, when Mike walked back into the squad room. He gaped at the undetectably doctored phone company records I had left on his desk. His reading glasses sat on top of them like a paper-weight.

"Don't worry," I said, giving him a pat on his wide back. "Dropping a little off your fastball is pretty much expected at your age."

I lifted my coat from the back of my chair.

"Where are you going?" he said.

"To see my friend Bonnie," I said. "Try to speed the crime-scene processing along."

"Why don't I go with you?" Mike said.

"Because you need to get back to the phone company and put faces to those numbers, see who Scott was calling."

"C'mon," Mike said as I was leaving. "I'll behave. I'm not just a big ugly man doll, you know. I have a sensitive side. I'm in Oprah's Book Club."

"Sorry," I said, knocking through the bullpen gate. "No boys allowed."

C'MON, C'MON, C'MON! Let's go, let's go!

I checked my watch as a cash register's electronic beep exploded through my skull for perhaps the thirty-seven-billionth time.

I had thought my one-purchase stop at the 57th and Broadway Duane Reade would be quick. But that was before I discovered the aisle-long line behind the lone checkout cashier.

Ten minutes later, I was one customer away from the promised land of the counter, when another cashier arrived and called, "Next."

Taking the one step needed to the newly opened register, I was nearly mowed down by a middle-aged Asian man in a doorman's suit.

"Hey!" I said.

In response, the line cutter showed me his back, boxing me out as he pushed a bag of Combos at the cashier.

The last thing I wanted was to make a scene, but I didn't have the time to be demure. I leaned in, snatched the Combos out of the cashier's hand, and sent them sailing down one of the crammed aisles behind me. Problem solving NYC-style.

"Next means next," I explained to the wide-eyed man as my purchase was scanned and bagged.

I waited until I was in my squad car, double-parked outside on Broadway, to open the bag. I pulled on a pair of rubber crime-scene gloves and took the men's reading glasses out of their package.

The lenses were round, silver rimmed. Just like the ones Paul had dropped at the crime scene. Just like the ones Bonnie hopefully hadn't processed yet.

I wiped them down with alcohol before snapping open an evidence bag and dropping them in. I lit the receipt with a match and scattered its ashes out the window onto Broadway. Then I turned the engine over and screeched away.

Next stop, police headquarters in Manhattan.

BONNIE HAD HER HEAD in one of her desk drawers when I stepped into her fifth-floor office at One Police Plaza.

"Hey, Bonnie," I said. "That is you , isn't it?"

"Lauren, what a happy surprise," Bonnie said, shaking a bag of Starbucks coffee as she stood. "And what perfect timing. How about some French roast?"

"So," she said, placing a steaming black mug in front of me a minute later. "How are things coming along?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing," I said.

"Even though this case is our priority, it's going to take some time. All we got so far is that the tarp Scott was wrapped in was a Neat Sheet, a mass-market picnic blanket. They sell them in supermarkets everywhere."