Free Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead by Steven Womack Page A

God for electric razors that plug into cigarette lighters.”
    “Jesus, man, how long they expect you to keep this up?”
    “Until it’s over, I guess. C’mon, Harry, I don’t have time for this happy horseshit. What’s on your mind?”
    How much could I tell him? I stood there for a moment, tongue-tied, clumsy.
    “I’ve got a real good friend who’s in the morgue right now, and I’m worried about her, man. I want to know if there’s anything I can do to help, if there’s—”
    “For starters, get the hell out of here. Doc Helms is doing fine. Everything’s under control.”
    My head must have twitched at his mention of Marsha’s name. He grinned wearily at me, one of the few times I’d ever seen him smile.
    “You know?” I asked, momentarily slack-jawed.
    “Good God, Harry, what do you take me for? The whole damn department knows. It’s the biggest unkept secret in the city.”
    I had to laugh myself. “Hell, Howard, we’ve been so careful, so discreet.”
    “It’s Kay Delacorte. She suspected something was going on and confronted Doc about it a few weeks ago. Doc Helms swore her to secrecy.”
    “Which meant Katie bar the door, right?” I said, then laughed at the whole damn situation.
    “Right, if you want something to spread through the latrine-o-gram network like wildfire, make Kay Delacorte swear to keep her mouth shut.”
    “Oh, hell,” I said. “I’m embarrassed. But now you understand why I’m so—”
    “Of course. But there ain’t a thing you can do.”
    I felt my jaw tighten and my back molars scrape together. “I know. That’s what’s driving me nuts. I hate this.”
    “It’s no picnic for us. This is a weird one. Most hostage situations I’ve ever been involved in, you’ve got a disorganized, usually panicked psycho holding a gun to somebody’s head. This time, you’ve got a group of highly organized fanatics with enough firepower to make a real fight of it, but your hostages are basically safe—as long as they don’t starve.”
    It was as if Howard was thinking out loud more than talking to me. “So what can you do?” I asked.
    “The mayor says he does not, emphasize
not
, want another Waco, Texas, here. He doesn’t care what happens to anybody, as long as this city’s image isn’t damaged. It’s all politics, Harry. The new arena, the SecondAvenue renovation … they’re thinking about expanding the Convention Center.”
    “So whatever happens, just clean it up neatly, right?”
    “You got it, cowboy.”
    “I don’t envy you,” I said, suddenly weary myself.
    “You don’t have to.”
    I looked off to our left, up First Avenue. At the crest of the hill, there was a line of squad cars parked around a large box van, which served as the police command post.
    “Howard,” I asked. “Can I go up there? I want to see it.”
    Spellman stuck his hands in his pockets. “Damn it, Harry.”
    “I’ve never asked you anything as a friend before. I’m asking now.”
    He took a couple of steps toward the unmarked car. “What the hell, I’ll run you up there real quick. But you can only go to the second line, not the first.”
    I followed him to the car. “Second line?”
    The air-conditioning inside the car was set on MEAT LOCKER . Spellman dropped the car into gear and we sped up the hill.
    “We’ve set up three lines. The first is across the parking lot from their line of Winnebagos. The second is farther back, at the hill where you can just look down on the morgue. The outside perimeter is the command post on Hermitage Avenue.”
    “The newspapers said the vans broke through a chain-link fence,” I said as he braked to a stop behind the command post.
    He jerked the driver’s side door open and hauled himself out. “As usual, they got it wrong.”
    I followed him as we stepped over to the van. Uniformed officers in blue Kevlar vests and helmets with face shields milled around, casually toting their assault rifles. Large block white letters—