Free Shield of Justice by Radclyffe Page B

sat, fists clenched in her lap, and watched the clock. The men from the day shift stayed, even though many of them had been on duty for close to eighteen hours by that time. Gina Simmons, a young rookie, came in silently, piled boxes of pizza on the littered coffee counter, and left without saying a word. But she scored points, and someone, someday, would remember and give her a break. Rebecca shook her head when someone offered her a slice. Everyone stood around in groups eating and spilling bits of oil and cheese on the floor.
    The call finally came in at 10:30. A cruiser had spotted Jeff’s department sedan on a deserted pier at the waterfront, tucked under an overhanging abutment, where it hadn’t been seen before from the road. Rebecca was on her feet and halfway to the door when a hand on her arm restrained her.
    “I’ll ride with you, Sarge.”
    Rebecca turned toward the stocky man beside her, shrugging off the hand impatiently, and when she saw to whom the hand belonged, she had to struggle to control her temper. She had never liked William Watts. He was a cynical, sarcastic cop, who didn’t seem to give a damn about his job. She couldn’t figure out why he was a cop, and she didn’t want to deal with him now.
    “Not tonight, Watts,” she said.
    He was trying to step in front of her as he jerked his head toward the closed frosted glass door at the far end of the room. His face impassive, he said flatly, “Captain’s orders.”
    “I don’t have time for this bullshit.” She turned on her heel and headed toward the stairs. Watts hurried after her.
    Rebecca gunned her Corvette out of the station house lot and slapped the flashing red light onto her dash. When the traffic ahead didn’t yield fast enough, she veered around it into the oncoming lanes. She and Watts didn’t speak, but when he reached into the inside pocket of his rumpled, out-of-style sports coat and pulled out an equally battered pack of cigarettes, she gave him a look that made him wince. He slipped the pack back into his pocket and stared out the window.
    They were the first detectives to reach the scene. Half a dozen cruisers were pulled off the four-lane highway at odd angles, and men with dogs were moving along the waterfront. Flashlight beams sent fleeting beacons of pale light skittering across the river’s surface.
    Rebecca parked and climbed out at the entrance to a huge, deserted, blacktopped parking lot. She stood in the semidarkness and surveyed the area, her nerves settling as her cop instincts kicked in.
Do the job. Just do the job.
    The halogen lights spaced along the highway behind her penetrated the darkness for a fair distance into the lot, enough to make out Jeff’s car parked under the overpass fifty yards away. The river on the far side looked nearly black. To her right, a huge crane loomed like a lonely sentinel over the abandoned site of someone’s waterfront dream. To her left, facing the water, stood a cluster of darkened buildings—the maritime museum, an attached souvenir shop, and a curbside food stand.
    She headed deliberately toward the buildings with Watts close behind. She neither spoke to him nor acknowledged his presence.
    “Why not the crane?” he asked, out of breath from the pace Rebecca had set.
    “Too obvious during the day. There wouldn’t have been enough people around for cover. And Jeff and Jimmy would have wanted to keep their meeting private, just in case someone was tailing Jimmy,” she answered, still not looking at him.
    “Yeah, but the way I see it—”
    She turned so fast he collided with her, his bulky form bouncing back a step off her surprisingly hard body. “Look, Watts,” she seethed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass
what
you think. I
know
my partner. So just keep out of my way, or better yet, get lost.”
    Watts held both hands up in the air in front of him. “Okay, Frye, okay. You’re the sergeant. I’ll just tag along like a good little boy.”
    Wordlessly, she walked