Free Among Thieves by David Hosp Page A

I want to get over to the Body Shop as early as possible.”
    “No problem,” Lissa said. “You ready?” she asked Sally.
    The girl got up and picked up her bag. She walked over to the door and looked back at Lissa. Lissa started toward the door,
     then turned and walked back to Kozlowski, lifting herself up on her toes and giving him a kiss that lasted longer than necessary.
     Kozlowski was taken by surprise, but she didn’t care. She turned and walked past Sally, whose mouth was open wide enough to
     count teeth. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go.” With that, Lissa opened the door and walked out, a broad, amused smile breaking
     over her face as Sally followed her out to the car.

    Detective Stone crouched near the spot where Vinny Murphy’s body had been found. He stared down at the rough outline traced
     around what had been left of the man before they poured it into a body bag, rolled it on a stretcher, loaded it into a van,
     and drove it to the morgue to be deposited in a refrigerated drawer. The autopsy had revealed little that wasn’t apparent
     from a visual inspection. The injuries that preceded the fatal shot to the head had been inflicted carefully, to maximize
     pain while keeping Murphy alive and conscious.
    It was still an hour before Stone’s shift started at nine o’clock, and he’d already been at the Body Shop for half an hour,
     considering the entire scene in the glint of the morning. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was there. It was unlikely that the
     teams of forensic specialists that had been there the day before had missed anything. And yet there he was, squatting by the
     dark stain that was the last impression Murphy would leave on the world.
    It was because he wanted to gain Sanchez’s approval, he recognized. There was no getting around it. He hoped to gain some
     additional insight he might share with Sanchez at the start of their shift to earn her respect. It was foolish, probably.
     He was a damned good cop, and if she couldn’t see that already, she would likely not be convinced. They had gone back to the
     station house the previous day and she had gotten on her computer and tapped away at the keyboard for more than an hour. He’d
     asked twice what she was researching, but she hadn’t responded. He could see why she lost partners.
    He stood up, taking one last look around the garage before walking back out to the parking lot. As he approached his car,
     a tiny, battered convertible pulled into the driveway, rolling over the line of yellow police tape Stone had left on the ground.
    Stone waved his arms and yelled, “You can’t come in here! This is a police investigation scene!” Ultimately it mattered little—the
     forensics team had swept the entire property for anything that might be helpful to them. They had taken plaster molds of tire
     tracks and sifted through the dirt of the driveway for anything they could find, like archeologists on a dig, bagging and
     tagging every cigarette butt and every piece of trash. Nevertheless, Stone had no intention of letting civilians into the
     crime scene area while the investigation was continued. It would open the door for a defense lawyer to argue that the evidence
     was tainted if they ever caught the bastards. He waved his arms again as he pulled out his badge and held it up for the driver
     to see.
    The car pulled to a stop, but didn’t turn around. Instead, both doors opened and two men got out. Stone squared his shoulders,
     drawing on the authority of indignation. He slowed, though, as the bigger of the two men pulled himself from the low-slung
     passenger seat and looked at him. Stone recognized the man instantly.
    “Jesus,” Stone said. “Kozlowski. You’ll get yourself shot, pulling into a crime scene like that, y’know? You’re not a cop
     anymore, in case you’d forgotten.”
    “Maybe if they’d put a real cop in charge here it wouldn’t be such a problem,” Kozlowski replied. “Maybe someone who