14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 30

AT QUARTER TO eight the next morning, my partner and I met in the break room and made coffee. Conklin’s face was lined from sleeping facedown, and I’m sure I looked like I’d gotten no sleep at all. Which was true.

When Julie wasn’t calling for something, Martha was edging me off my side of the bed.

And then there were my vivid, disturbing dreams about Maya Perez, in which she begged me not to let her die. I knew enough pop-culture dream analysis to know that I was Maya in that dream and I didn’t want to die or let anything hurt my baby.

Conklin and I sugared our coffees and went to our computers. I took A to M and he took N to Z as we started going through Human Resources files looking for “sore thumbs.” That was what we were calling disgruntled cops who’d been demoted or dropped or had stalled in dead-end careers—the type of malcontent who might risk life in a federal pen without chance of parole in return for a quick payday.

We found plenty of sore thumbs, none of them named Juan, but every last one of them had guns and a navy-blue Windbreaker with white letters across the chest and back spelling out SFPD.

At eight thirty Brady called us into his office.

One look at him and I knew it was Groundhog Day. Just as he’d been every day this week, Brady was grouchy.

I almost said “What now?” but I kept my mouth shut.

Brady said, “I’m sorry I’ve been a pain in the ass.”

What? Say that again?

“Jacobi thinks the whole station is going down the tubes This is between us three, OK?”

“OK,” Conklin said. “What’s happened?”

Brady said, “In the past year, a half dozen drug dealers have been shot in crack houses and stash pads all across the city. The cash and the drugs disappear, never to be seen again. Word on the street is that the robbers are cops.”

No wonder Brady was pissed. There was a bad cop epidemic. And we were just about the last to know.

I said, “Are you thinking these cops who’re ripping off drug dealers could be the same rogue cops we’re looking at for the check-cashing stores?”

“Could be, or maybe not. We’ve got no surveillance of the shooters, of course, and no one’s naming names. I’m just saying, keep this in mind.”

When I got back to my desk, there was a note on my chair, handwritten on my own FROM THE DESK OF LINDSAY BOXER notepad.

The note was in block letters.

It read, WATCH YOUR BACK, BITCH. REMEMBER WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE. THEY WEAR BLUE.

I looked around the squad room.

The night-shift guys were getting ready to check out while the day shift was just settling in. I saw about a dozen and a half cops I’d worked with for years. I loved some of them, liked many of them. But one of these guys was warning me not to cross the thin blue line.

Not even if catching bad cops meant catching murderers.

But then, blind loyalty was a bone-deep part of being a cop. I did wonder, though, if this note was from one of the Windbreaker cops. Could one or more of them work in this very squad? Or was the note from any one of the cops in this room who had simply seen the open investigation file I had left in plain sight on the computer?

I showed the note to Conklin, who gave me a questioning look. I shrugged and put the note in my handbag.

I would watch my back. But I was shaken. Next chance I got, I was going to have to report this to Brady.