A Clean Kill Read Online Free PDF Page A

every weekend, and sometimes they couldn't be revived.
    April brooded on the problem. Her unit didn't have the manpower (or womanpower for that matter) to do undercover work in the clubs. And the precinct captain, who was in charge of reducing crime in his area, should be relying on the Conditions Unit—the detectives in charge of monitoring unusual criminal activity in the precinct—to take care of these problems. Vice and DEA should also be involved. The captain should do the mopping up, not the detective unit that was responsible for all other crimes. April wondered what Avise was up to, asking her to go around the end zone on the precinct captain. In any case, the assignment was a threat to her honeymoon.
    She wished she didn't always have to pay such close attention to her boss. When she was little, her old-style Chinese mother had to yell to get her attention. "You stupid, ni? You blain go on vacation, Howaday Inn?"
    Before she was a cop, she didn't listen to anything she didn't want to hear, and she blew tasks off whenever she felt like it. For the police, however, every incident could have life-and-death consequences. Even though she wished her brain and her body could go on vacation to Holiday Inn, she couldn't ignore an order. The parent she called Skinny Dragon Mother still had a name for her: worm—triple stupid for being a cop, and a thousand times stupider than that for marrying another cop, who wasn't even Chinese. And ten thousand times stupider than all the previous stupids, for letting a bunch of white ghosts boss her around. Sometimes she was right.
    "Homicide in the Seventeenth," Woody -said, breaking into her reverie.
    "What?" Reluctantly, April tuned in.
    "Female, Fifty-second Street, town house, four hundred block. That's way east."
    "Shit," April muttered. The Seventeenth was Mike's precinct. The last thing they needed was a homicide now. Her cell phone began to ring in her purse. She plucked it out and saw that caller ID was blocked. That meant it could be anybody in the Department, or even her Skinny Dragon Mother.
    "Lieutenant Woo Sanchez." Sometimes she called herself Woo and sometimes Woo Sanchez to distinguish herself from her husband, the former Lieutenant Sanchez.
    "Querida, where are you?" As usual Mike's voice was calm in the eye of a storm. But she could feel his tension just the same.
    "Just heading up the West Side Drive, mi amor. What's up?" April already knew what was up, the new homicide. She glanced at Woody.
    "I want you to take a look at a body," he said quietly, then gave her the address.
    She heard the name. It was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Didn't matter. Someone was murdered. That always changed everything. "I'm on my way," she told him.

Five
    H omicides always caused a peculiar vibration in April's body. She could feel it start as the car changed direction and they headed east to look at the victim, instead of uptown to deal with drug-dealing strippers. April had been planning to put Sergeant Gelo, who'd fit right into the club scene, on the Justin Peret case. In the old days she used to drop her vacation plans and take care of everything herself, shut down whoever needed to be shut down. But now she had to get used to being a boss, and was trying to learn to delegate responsibility. She couldn't personally take on every single problem that came her way. Still, it didn't matter whose problem rogue strippers should be; when Avise told her to jump, she asked how high. She was a loyal officer, who always did what she was told. Almost always.
    Murder was the ultimate crime that pushed everything else onto the back burner. Each time it happened April was jolted into high gear. The harmony of life was shattered, and she wanted to jump out of the car, race after the perpetrator, and catch him quickly before he had a chance to escape. Or she did—whoever it was. Each time she was overwhelmed by rage at the wrong that had been done and felt an urgency to correct it.