Shattered Bond by Sophie Littlefield

Author:Sophie Littlefield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Star

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WHEN JOE PULLED into the station he saw a familiar car in a visitor space.

“Francescis are here,” he said to Odell.

“So’s my girlfriend,” Odell said, pointing to the KTFU van. “Anna-Maria? She wishes she could take me in that van and have her way with me. Man, I’d like to get under her news desk while she was doing the noon news, you hear what I’m saying? Get in there and . . .”

His voice trailed off as a dusty Tahoe pulled in next to the Francescis and a short woman with red hair cut in a severe bob got out. “Oh, shit,” Odell said.

“Hello, mayor,” Joe called.

“They got the whole damn town coming to this?” Odell grumbled.

Joe waited for Mayor Donovan to catch up with them, holding the door open for her.

“How’s your dad?” she asked. She had been an attorney back when Osman Bashir was attacked. She and Joe’s parents had briefly talked about a civil suit. To this day Joe didn’t know who approached whom, only that his parents dropped the idea. Mumtaz did not like to talk about it at all; it was as though that chapter of her husband’s life had taken place before they had ever met.

“Very well, thank you.”

“Wonderful. Please give him my regards.” She hesitated, her normally implacable expression slipping. “This is god-awful. I just—I can’t—in our town.”

Joe said nothing, waiting until she preceded him down the hall.

The briefing room had been given extra attention the night before: the custodian had set the chairs out in neat rows, and the papers that people tended to leave on the counter along the wall had been neatly stacked, the trash emptied, the coffee area wiped down. In the front of the room, Allenspach was talking to Army. Anna-Maria Lopez conferred with her cameraman, one of several newspeople staking out the best angles in the room.

“I’m going to go talk to Fisch for a minute,” Joe said to Odell, who kept his eyes fixed on Anna-Maria and grunted.

Fisch’s door was closed, a rarity. When Joe knocked, it opened a couple of inches; when Fisch saw Joe, he opened it the rest of the way.

“Come on in. I was just going over things with Mrs. Cole.”

Joe pulled the door shut behind him. Heather Cole was hunched over the small round table that the chief kept in his office for impromptu “bull sessions,” as he liked to call them. She leaned on her elbows, her forehead resting on her arms. She barely stirred when Joe cleared his throat. On either side of her were Hale and Zandra Francesci, who looked like they hadn’t slept.

“Good morning,” Joe said, then instantly regretted his choice of salutation. Harmless though it was, Heather Cole wasn’t likely to have a good morning for quite some time.

She slowly raised her head and looked at him with unfocused eyes. She was wearing a pink cardigan knit in some lacy pattern that showed the pale skin of her arms underneath. At her throat was a gold cross.

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