Free Broken by Matthew Storm Page B

hadn’t thought of myself as having a case in a long time, but here I
was getting territorial over it. Old habits.
    I
watched as two men heaved Todd’s body onto the gurney and then rolled him out
of my house. I had an almost overwhelming need to apologize to him, or to
someone, but I held it in. I could not let the people in this house see me
being weak.
    My
bottle sat on the table in front of me. I didn’t touch it, as much as I wanted
to. I wouldn’t drink in front of Dan and Sarah. There would be time for that
later.
    Dan
still had his hands on his hips, but he seemed satisfied by Sarah’s explanation
of events. The two nameless homicide detectives left the house and he and Sarah
came back to where I was sitting on the couch. “CSI is going to finish up and then
they’ll get out of your hair,” Dan said. “I get what happened here but they
still have to do their jobs. I can’t tell them to fuck off because you used to
work for me.”
    “It’s
not a problem,” I said.
    “Are you
sure that’s all it was with him? He was afraid you’d talk about the affair?”
    “I can’t
think of anything else,” I lied.
    Dan sat
down on the couch next to me. “All right.”
    “All
right,” I said.
    “You
need anything else?” Dan asked Sarah.
    “No. I’m
done for now. I’ll need to follow up later, but we can do that at the station.”
    Dan
nodded. “Step outside and wait for me. I have some other questions for you.”
    Sarah
put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. I managed not to shake her off. She
gave me a sympathetic smile and left the house.
    Dan
sighed deeply and leaned back, putting his hands behind his head. “Well, this
is a complete goatfuck.”
    I
shrugged. “Seen worse,” I said quietly.
    Dan gave
me a meaningful look. I knew where this was going and decided to try to head it
off. “I’m fine, boss. It’s not the first guy I’ve killed.”
    “I know
that.”
    “It’s
not the second guy, either. Or the third.”
    “I
know.”
    “The Union-Tribune was making noise about it even before…” I didn’t want to say the name tonight. “Before
my last case. Said the police department had hired their own executioner.”
    “That
was bullshit.”
    “I don’t
know if it was.”
    “I do. I
sent you after some really bad guys, and they didn’t always come in easy. Your
shoots were all clean. If any of them hadn’t been I’d have brought you up on
charges. You know that’s true.”
    I smiled
weakly at him. Honest Dan. He really would have, too.
    “I’m not
sure what you want me to say right now,” I told him.
    “I want
you to tell me how you’re doing.”
    I eyed
the vodka again, but didn’t reach for it. “I hate this,” I said quietly. “I
hate that there was a dead guy on my floor just now and I’m the one that put
him there. Okay? I fucking hate it.”
    “Okay.”
    “But I’m
all right. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m all right.”
    He
glanced at the vodka. “You really call this all right, Nevada?”
    “We’re
not getting into that tonight.”
    He
sighed. “Fine. Not tonight. You’ve been through enough.”
    I
reached out and patted his arm. It was as close to hugging him as I’d let
myself get. “You didn’t need to come,” I said. “Sarah was doing fine.”
    “I
didn’t come to check on Sarah,” he said.
    “I
know.”
    “Besides,”
he said. “It’s not just me. Everyone came.”
    I
frowned. “What do you mean, ‘everyone came?’”
    “Go look
out the door.”
    I stood
up, reaching instinctively for my vodka to take it along, but let my hand fall
back empty. Not yet. I walked over to my open front door and looked outside. I
had expected a few squad cars to be there, and possibly the ambulance that had
come earlier if they’d stuck around. But instead the street was full of SDPD
cruisers, all with their lights flashing. They stretched all the way down the
block in each direction, lining both sides of the street. There had to be fifty
cops