Free The Quickie by James Patterson Page A

commissioner’s shoulder, bye-bye Brooke, bye-bye kids.
    My eyes almost bugged out of my head as I considered these particular details.
    It would also be so long line-of-duty death benefits for the Thayer family!
    I pictured Brooke rocking with her poor daughter. Instead of getting Scott’s pension, she would be left with jack squat.
    I stood up in the shower. Tried to catch my breath.
    My little decision-making meeting was adjourned.
    If this were just about me, I would turn myself in. I would go into my room right now, get dressed, and march into my boss’s office. I would confess.
    But it wasn’t just about me. It was about Paul. It was about Brooke.
    And most of all her three fatherless kids.
    Who was I kidding? There wasn’t any choice, at least not right now.
    I had to make everything right again.
    The water roared in my ears like thunder as I thrust my face under the spray.
    But how could I make everything right?

Chapter 37
    PAUL WAS STILL SNORING when I left for work. I would have liked to speak with him. To say we had a lot to deal with was quite the understatement. But since I didn’t think they offered marriage counseling in prison, I decided that instead of waking him up, priority numero uno was getting back to work to see if I had a shot at keeping my husband out of jail.
    Mike was writing Scott’s name on the bullpen Homicide chart when I stepped into the squad room.
    I was more or less happily surprised when I realized nobody was looking at me suspiciously. I guess adrenaline-flooded and terror-struck have a passing resemblance to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Through the smeared glass wall of the rear office, I could see my boss, Lieutenant Keane, talking on his desk phone while dialing his cell.
    “What do we got?” I said, handing Mike a bodega coffee from the brown bag I was carrying. Starbucks had yet to make inroads into Soundview.
    “Shit,” Mike said, flicking the plastic coffee lid sliver across his desk as he sat. “No sign of either Ordonez. Turns out the pilot’s off work until next Wednesday, and he wasn’t at his apartment. Of the younger and even scummier brother, Victor, we have no sign at all.”
    Mike handed me a file folder.
    “Check out the family album.”
    The Ordonez brothers were the only children of Dominican immigrants. On the slightly older brother, Mark, the Air Force pilot, there was surprisingly little. A single assault bust when he was twenty-one. But the younger one, Victor, had a crime-ography that was a long and interesting read.
    From the age of sixteen, Victor had been in and out of jail, putting up MVP crime stats. Burglary, narcotics sales, attempted rape, assaults of prisoners while incarcerated, possession of a deadly weapon.
    But for me, one charge stood out as if it had been marked with a neon highlighter.
    Attempted murder of a police officer.
    The abstract described how at the age of seventeen, Victor, while resisting arrest for yet another possession charge, drew a concealed .380 semiautomatic, pointed it at the officer’s face, and pulled the trigger several times. After he was wrestled to the ground, it was discovered that the gun hadn’t discharged due solely to the fortuitous fact that young Victor, new to the wonderful world of semiautomatics, had forgotten to rack the slide and jack the first round into the chamber. To show you what kind of straits the New York criminal justice system was in during the crack epidemic of the early nineties, Victor did just one year.
    I blinked down at the sheet in disbelief.
    Victor Ordonez was looking so good for Scott’s murder, I was almost convinced he did it.
    I pointed my chin at the file stacks covering both of our adjoining desks and the floor as I sat down.
    “Scott’s previous Narcotics cases?” I said.
    Mike nodded grimly. He chucked his reading glasses onto his desk and rubbed his eyes.
    “I’m not cracking spine one of that saga until we have a talk with our Dominican friends,” he said. “I