VI Warshawski 21 - Overboard by Paretsky Sara

Author:Paretsky, Sara [Paretsky, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

28

Coney, Round Three

My first impulse was to get into the Mustang and drive out of town at top speed. However, I’ve never invested in a GPS jammer. If Coney wanted to find me, the CPD had access to surveillance drones that would locate my car easily enough. Fleeing a crime scene, tampering with evidence, fleeing jurisdiction—the state’s attorney wouldn’t blink twice before issuing a warrant.

I heard the cop cars before I saw them. Their goose-honk horns were warning drivers to get out of the way as they barreled down Lunt. I looked around wildly for a place to park the jacket and saw the synagogue’s mail slot. I stuffed the jacket through it a nanosecond before a squad car and an unmarked SUV screeched to a halt near the synagogue. The SUV had its butt in the road, blocking oncoming traffic, an arrogance that belonged to Coney.

His support thugs—Tillman and the other guy, whose name I never got—emerged from the squad car.

“Warshawski, hands in the air, down on your knees,” Coney barked.

The thugs had their hands on their service weapons. A homeless woman in a doorway next to the cleaners was watching with greedy interest. Arrests are always exciting, trebly so when a white woman is ordered to her knees.

Rana Jardin paused in the act of locking the dry cleaners. A guy on an electric scooter stopped to video, but passersby on my side of the street scuttled past as quickly as possible.

I raised my hands but stayed on my feet. Coney marched over to me and grabbed the lapels of my blazer, shook me. “What did you do with the jacket?”

“What jacket?” I asked.

His right hand swung back, ready to slug. I went limp and he took my whole weight with his left hand. He swore, dropped me, pulled out his taser. I performed an awkward cartwheel and backed away.

“Warshawski!” It was Sergeant Pizzello. I’d been focused on Coney and hadn’t seen her squad car pull up behind the thug twins. Her rookie, Officer Rudy Howard, was a few steps behind her.

“Don’t make the lieutenant give you an electric ride. Tell us what you did with the jacket.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Coney here smeared grease on this jacket, so it’s going straight to the cleaners.”

“Don’t be a wiseass, Warshawski,” Pizzello said. “It’s never attractive, and when you hold no cards at all, it’s pathetic. The victim in Warren Park. The person who called it in identified her as wearing a red jacket. The gal from Global News said you were there, that you looked at the dead woman. By the time we got there, the jacket was missing and so were you.”

“Sergeant, Beth Blacksin from Global News phoned me when she got the tip about the dead woman. She’d been listening to the 911 scanner and she was sure the dead woman was the Jane Doe who’s been missing all week. It wasn’t Jane. I told Blacksin that and left. I don’t know about the jacket.

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