The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club 17)

“It’s obscene,” Millie said. “I can’t be exact, but I can count three other killings, Sergeant Boxer, and none of them have been properly investigated. I saw your picture in the paper after the bombing, and I felt something for you. Like a connection.”

As we stood to go, I told Millie I would follow up, giving her my card.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Sometimes I forget to charge it,” she said. But she pulled an old flip phone from her pocket and showed me.

I forced some small bills on her, then told her I’d look into the case of Jimmy Dolan. I paid the tab and headed back to the Hall.

I thought about Millie as I walked. She was well spoken. Seemed educated and sane. Her story and Millie herself were believable.

I wondered how she’d ended up on the street.

As I climbed the Hall of Justice steps, I felt light-headed. I had lied to Millie when I said I’d had breakfast. I’d gulped coffee and kissed my family good-bye, expecting to have another cup of coffee at my desk. Honestly, I hadn’t felt hungry, which wasn’t normal for me. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and entered the Homicide squad room.

After saying “hey” to Conklin, I went to the break room and snagged the last donut in the box. Someone had hacked off a piece of it. In my humble opinion, that was an irrelevant detail.

It was chocolate-glazed chocolate, the very best kind. I bit into it. It was good.

CHAPTER 11

THE HOMICIDE SQUAD room is a square gray bull pen with our receptionist just inside the door, our lieutenant’s glassed-in office in the back corner with a window onto the freeway. In between, on both sides of the narrow center aisle, are a handful of desks used by the other Homicide inspectors. There has been some talk that we’ll be moving to newer quarters within the decade, and I hope it’s more than gossip.

Conklin and I have facing desks at the front of the room, equidistant from the entrance and the break room. I shucked off my jacket, threw it over the back of my chair, and dropped into the seat.

Conklin said, “You have chocolate right here.”

He pointed to the right side of his mouth.

I sighed, grabbed a tissue, and, under his direction, rubbed at the spot.

“Okay now?” I asked him.

Conklin and I have known each other for years. He was a beat cop who told me he’d like to be in Homicide. When positions in our department reshuffled, my former partner, Warren Jacobi, got a promotion and Rich Conklin and I became a team.

Known around the Hall as Inspector Hottie, Conklin is in his midthirties, brown eyed, brown haired, good lookin’ and good doin’, altogether just about the perfect American boy next door. We love each other like siblings without the rivalry, complement each other’s strengths, and shore up the other’s weaknesses.

In confrontational situations, interrogations for instance, I’m the one throwing fastballs and Richie is the “good cop,” telling me to take it easy. Wink-wink. He’s especially good with women. They trust him on sight.

Conklin gave me a thumbs-up after assessing the chocolate. He said, “You going to tell me about your mystery breakfast?”

Phones were ringing. The overhead TV was on low, but not mute, and people were talking over the ambient noise.

I said, “A homeless woman named Millie Cushing tagged me as I was coming through the door. She wanted to tell me that a series of homeless people have been shot to death over the last year or so, and that the cops haven’t done anything about it.”

“First I’ve heard of this,” Rich said.

“The shootings have been happening in Central Station’s beat, that’s why.”

“Aw, jeez,” my partner said. “This isn’t good.”

While the citywide Homicide Detail is located here at Southern Station, a vestigial Homicide Detail operates out of Central Station, the result of a redistricting before my time. Officially called a station investigative team, Central Homicide sweeps up homicides that are called into their district during the graveyard shift.

That’s fine with me. God knows we have enough crimes to solve right here in our own house.

I told my partner what Cushing had told me: that a man named Jimmy Dolan had been shot sometime in the wee hours down on Front Street. Since I hadn’t heard about any killings of street pe

ople on our beat—and I would have—it could only mean that all of these shootings had happened in Central.