12th of Never

Chapter 20

BRADY’S GLASS-WALLED OFFICE is about the size and shape of a votive candleholder. He was sitting at his desk, dwarfing it with his bulk, his head bowed over an open file, phone clapped to his ear.

I no longer felt steamed that this once was my office when I was squad lieutenant. I had wanted to work hands-on, on the street, and I wanted that badly enough to ask for a demotion to sergeant. I rarely regretted that decision.

I knocked on the glass door and Brady looked up, said into the phone, “I’ll call you later.” He hung up, got to his feet, reached across the desk, and shook my hand.

“Good to have you back, Boxer. You feel okay? Want desk work for a couple of weeks? Kind of ease back into things?”

“I’m good, Lieutenant. I’ve been running. Doing tai chi. I’m good.”

He nodded, said, “Sit down. I think the chief told you—Peters asked for time off. Oxner transferred to Vice, so I’m down a team. I’ve been working with Conklin but he needs a real partner. I have to manage the bullshit going on around here.”

“Sure. I understand.”

As Brady sat back down and began patting down his desk, I thought about how much we’d been through since he joined the squad a year and a half ago. His first day, he told me to my face that I was nowhere on my current case. That I was sucking swamp water. He wasn’t running for office, that’s for sure, and I didn’t like him.

About a week after that, we were bringing down a freaking serial psycho killer together. Bombs went off and Brady took a stance in front of a moving car and unloaded his gun.

Six months ago—another killer, a different day—Brady took two bullets during another act of profound bravery.

Jackson Brady didn’t give good eye contact. He didn’t sugarcoat anything. I didn’t love his management style. But I did respect him.

He was a good cop.

He found the file he was looking for and started filling me in on the death of Faye Farmer, former Project Runway winner and late, great designer to the stars.

“Take a look,” Brady said. He handed me a sheaf of crimescene photos of the victim in the driver’s seat of a late-model Audi, slumped against the car window. Close-ups of the gunshot wound made it look to me like the shot had been delivered at close range.

Brady said, “You and Conklin are on this case. He’ll bring you up to speed.”

“Sure thing.”

“I wish it was a sure thing,” said Brady. “Conklin will tell you. The DB has vanished from the morgue.”

“Vanished how?”

“Vanished—poof,” Brady said. “The case of the purloined corpse. The media is going to go nuts when they find out. Claire says doors were opened with keys. Surveillance disk was jacked. It had to be an inside job, so talk to her. We find out why her body went poof, we’ve got a lead into who killed her. It goes without saying I want to be kept posted.”

Brady was already back on the phone before I left his office to find my partner.