14th Deadly Sin (Women's Murder Club 14)

“Ted. Ted, don’t you dare leave me.”

He coughed up blood. I gripped his hand.

I heard a cop shouting from afar.

“Get out of the car with your hands up! Get out of the car now!”

A voice shouted back, “You’re a dead man!”

There were loud bursts of automatic gunfire. Then an echoey silence. I heard Brady’s voice coming over my car radio asking for the buses to come in.

I stood up and shouted his name over the roof of my car. A moment later, Brady, our homicide lieutenant with the shining blond hair, was standing with me.

“You OK?” he asked me.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m good.”

He bent at the waist and said “Swanson” to the downed man in the SFPD Windbreaker. “Swanson, speak to me.”

“Yo,” Swanson said. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow.

“He’s losing blood,” I said. “Where the hell’s the bus?”

Brady left to direct the ambulance, and I stayed with Swanson until the paramedics got to us. I watched as they loaded him onto the board, strapped him down, and lifted the board into the bus.

Unlike Robertson, Swanson had a family, and the only way they’d get benefits was if he died on the job. And there Swanson was, with holes in

his SFPD Windbreaker. He’d seen his chance and he had taken it.

I grabbed one of the EMTs, pulled him to the side of the bus, and asked, “Is he going to make it?”

First the EMT shrugged; then he shook his head; and then he climbed into the bus and closed the doors.

I had wanted Swanson to tell me who else was in his “crew.” But I had a strong feeling that even if he’d lived, he wouldn’t have given his people away.

CHAPTER 97

AMBULANCES WERE COMING in, taking away the injured. The ME’s van had arrived, and Claire was talking to Clapper. CSU had barricaded all but one slim lane of the road. Techs were setting up lights and an evidence tent, and investigators were working the scene as best they could under the circumstances.

According to Brady, the body count was four, and all of the dead were unidentified shooters. One car had gotten away, and the number and identities of the people inside were unknown.

I sat in my car, and after I’d checked in with Joe and with Conklin, I called Nancy Swanson.

“I have to see you,” I said when she answered.

“What happened? Did something happen to Ted?”

“He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”

“What happened? Tell me—now.”

“I’ll be at your house in fifteen minutes. I’m driving you to the hospital. Get someone to watch your kids.”

Her phone clunked to the floor. I called her name, but she was screaming and calling to her children.

I took the quickest, fastest route to the Swanson house, thinking that now, maybe, Nancy would tell me what she knew.