Free Death Angel by Martha Powers Page A

his
breathing had softened in sleep, she held him.  
    Dry-eyed she stared into the darkness,
her arms aching for the child she would never hold again.

 
    “Judas Priest, Bea!” Carl Leidecker
glowered down at the mug in his hand. “Can’t anyone around here make decent
coffee?”
    “That’s probably left over from last
night. Amy’ll be in shortly and she’ll make a fresh pot.” Bea Johnson smoothed
a hand over her crisp gray curls, avoiding his eyes.
    “Couldn’t you make a pot? I’d do it, but
I don’t know how to run the machine.”
    Besides being the assistant chief of
police, Bea made the best coffee in the department.  
    “Typical male copout.” She snorted at
the pleading look on Carl’s face. With ill grace she got to her feet, snatched
the extended mug, and stalked to the door of his office. “You owe me,
Leidecker.”
    “Anything. I swear it.” He grinned after
her departing figure.  
    Bea was forty-nine, divorced, and had
three college-aged children. She’d gone to the police academy in Milwaukee and
worked as a cop for a year before she was married and moved to Pickard and stayed
home with her kids. When she turned thirty, her husband left her for a
twenty-one-year-old secretary in his office. She’d cried for a month then
talked Chief Corcoran into hiring her. She’d been with the department for
nineteen years.  
    Eight years earlier, Carl had been hired
as assistant chief of police with the understanding that he’d take over when
Chief Corcoran retired. He had two years to evaluate the department before he
became chief.  
    When he became chief, he asked Bea to be
his assistant. She took the job with two conditions. She wanted her salary
doubled and an understanding that she could quit at fifty.  
    At the time, it was easy to agree, but
now Bea was forty-nine and Carl wondered if he or the department could do
without her.
    He leaned back in his desk chair and
stared through the glass partition at the activity in the outer offices of the
police station. It was barely seven. People were beginning to drift in for the
seven-thirty briefing. Noise and conversation mingled in a low, unintelligible
murmur.
    One of the first things Carl had done as
police chief was to establish procedures to handle violent crime. Pickard had
36,000 residents and a fifty-person police force. In normal circumstances, the
town was adequately manned. With so many people involved in the Warner case,
their resources would be strained. He and Bea had been working since six
o’clock, reviewing the progress and adding to the assignments of the
five-member crisis team.  
    Deputy Lieutenant Bob Jackson, a
soft-spoken, humorless African-American, was the most senior of the team. When
Carl had been brought to Pickard over Bob’s head, the man had held no
resentment. He’d acknowledged that the town wasn’t ready for a black police
chief, and he was too old to fight the system. Bob had proven to be an
indefatigable worker.  
    Detective Diego Garcia was on the team
because he had an eye for out-of-place details which sometimes made the
difference in solving a crime.  
    After some consideration, Detective
Anthony Torrentino had been added. Tony dressed and acted like a Chicago
mobster, but he had the tenacity of a rat terrier when he was involved in a
case.  
    The fourth member of the team was
Sergeant Jas Walker. Working as a Chicago police photographer, he’d earned the
nickname “Squint” and had been lured to Pickard when Carl became chief. After
looking over the facilities, Squint had set up a first-rate photo lab, and had
trained a group of officers in photography procedures.  
    Owing to the nature of this crime, Ellen
Fredricks, the youth officer, had been added to the team. Although she was
younger than the others, she was tough enough and intelligent enough not to be
intimidated.
    When Bea returned, Carl eagerly accepted
the mug of coffee, took a careful sip of the steaming contents and sighed