Affairs of Steak Read Online Free PDF Page B

authority I could imagine flocked to Lexington Place. Mostly men, they crammed into every available space outside the perimeter Kooch had established. Amid murmured discussions and shouted directives, I understood they were waiting for the scene to be processed. I grasped Sargeant’s arm again, pulling him into a small area as far from the active crime scene as possible.
    We shared a corner of the huge kitchen, a nook just big enough for us both to sit in as long as we kept our knees up. Sargeant leaned against a portable refrigeration unit facing me, looking like a well-dressed little boy forced to sit in the corner until he behaved. I leaned against the tile wall facing him. Except for the many law enforcement legs running back and forth between us and the tilt-skillets, we had a direct view of everything.
    “Why won’t they let us go?” he asked, “Doesn’t it make more sense to get us out of here?”
    “They’ll want to talk to both of us while everything is still fresh in our minds.”
    “Fresh in our minds!” His voice grew loud enough to catch the attention of the officers nearest us. Sargeantpretended not to see them, continuing in a whisper, “Do they really believe I’d be able to forget a moment of this tragedy? I’m not like you. I don’t stumble across things like this on a daily basis. I will be as accurate a witness tomorrow as I am right now. In fact, I would prefer to go home for the day. I’ve had quite enough.”
    He began to rise, but I stopped him with a look. “Peter, they’re going to want you to walk them, step by step, through every move we made in here. They need to figure out where we left fingerprints, hair, DNA. They need to see everything through your eyes. Just be patient. They’ll come for us soon.”
    “Easy for you to say. You’re the expert on criminals and their behavior.”
    “Gee, thanks, Peter.” Little did he know that for all my calm talk I was shaking in my shoes. Sure, I’d been involved with violence and crime before, but I’d never gotten used to it. I certainly never expected to come across dead bodies stuffed into kitchen equipment.
    “You think they were murdered?” he asked, stealing a glance to his right.
    “They didn’t climb in there by themselves.”
    He shuddered.
    I texted my second-in-command, Bucky, with a cryptic message that said I’d been delayed and didn’t know when I’d be back. I suggested he handle the rest of the day himself.
    Less than a minute after sending, my little phone registered an incoming text from Bucky.
Uh-oh. What happened now?
    After many hours of fielding questions, repeating answers, and clarifying those answers with more people than I usually talk to in a week, Sargeant and I were finally released. I hesitated at the front doors. “Hang on a minute,” I said, backing up. “Look out there.”
    Beyond the yellow crime scene tape that quivered in thebreeze, dozens of reporters waited outside, eyes bright, microphones ready, itching to snap up juicy details.
    “I don’t want to go out there,” I said.
    Sargeant sniffed. “I thought you liked being the center of attention.”
    I shot him a withering look.
    Jorjanna sidled up. “I can’t leave. They need me to stick around until the building’s representatives get here.” She looked at her watch with disgust. “Where are they, anyway? New Zealand?” Pointing toward a side door, she said, “Nobody is camped out on that side. I’ll call you two a cab.”
    Total relief. “Thanks, Jorjanna,” I said. “I owe ya.”
    Ten minutes later, Sargeant and I were safely ensconced in the back seat of a taxi.
    “Where we headed?” the driver asked.
    Sargeant started to say, “The White—”
    I interrupted. “The W Hotel. Fifteenth street side.”
    Sargeant looked at me like I’d grown a second nose. I ignored him. The W was practically next door to the White House. With all the activity out front here at the Lexington, and once the full story broke, our taxi