The Sinai Secret

SIXTEEN

Headquarters, Atlanta Police Department

Ponce de Leon Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia

At the Same Time

Det. Franklin Morse read the report for a third time. It made no sense. None. Somebody over at the state crime lab been sampling the shit the narcs sent for analysis from drug busts. Either that or the place had gone loony tunes.

The powder from that professor's lab over at Georgia Tech… Something here was totally and terminally fucked. But then, why should Morse be surprised? Everything that had to do with that Reilly guy Was equally screwed. Couple of years back a burglar had taken a dive off Reilly's twenty-fourth-story balcony. Year after that, some dude put enough sulfur nitrate and diesel fuel in Reilly's little toy of a car to reduce it to metallic confetti.

No reason, no explanation.

The worn casters of Morse's swivel chair squeaked as he pushed back from his cubicle and tried to think of something else for a second or two. This report combined with Reilly was enough to ensure a permanent migraine.

Think of something else. The hum of the office, the sound of rain.

He did not have to look out a window to know it was raining. He could hear the dripping of water from leaks in the football field-sized roof into a dozen or so buckets, trays, and whatever else could be requisitioned from a cash-strapped city. It wasn't enough to keep the smell of mildew out of the worn and soiled electric blue carpet or the faded and peeling gray wall covering.

City Hall East, they called it. An old, clapped-out, and outdated Sears mail-order center was what is was, a real estate acquisition from the venerable old retailer that rivaled only the sale of Manhattan for twenty-six dollars' worth of beads in naivete.

The city's naivete.

But the purchase had funneled a lot of cash in commissions to the then-mayor's friends, as well as demonstrating that his minority-participation plan would really work.

And that P. T. Barnum had been right.

The neighborhood had been so tough that female officers demanded escorts to the dark, damp parking lot. There were more winos, hookers, and small-time thieves on the streets than cops.

But that was changing. Fifty-dollar-a-week flops were being transformed into fashionable loft condos for yuppies and dinks (double income, no kids), and word was, the city was going to sell the old brick pile to developers who, no doubt, were friends of the present mayor.

Morse pushed his chair farther back, almost colliding with the woman who had the cubicle next to his. He stood and, clutching the report, made his way to the captain's office across the room. Let the brass try to make sense of this one.

If Morse couldn't solve the problem, he could do the next best thing: kick it upstairs.