Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel Read Online Free PDF

Trust me, I won’t get lost.”
    By all rights I should have Herman doing this. He’s the firm’s investigator, a burly six-foot-three black man who’s been part of the firm’s family for more than a decade. But he’s out of the office this afternoon, working another case.
    “Give me a call if there’s any problem. I’ll leave my phone on vibrate just in case.”
    “I’ll be fine. See you Monday morning,” she says.
    “And Sofia!”
    She turns to look at me.
    “Thanks, you were a huge help. Brauer was upset. She didn’t expect to be arrested, not here, not today. You being here made it easier on all of us.”
    “Thanks.” She beams a smile at me from the open doorway. It melts me in my chair. Then she’s out the door. A few seconds later I see her jogging, long-legged in her short skirt, down the walkway out in front toward her car.

FIVE
    T he female voice from the maps on the iPhone told her that she had arrived. Her destination was “on the right.” It was a good thing. Sofia was having trouble finding or reading any of the numbers on the houses. The single cone of light, the naked ray from a vapor lamp that hung off one of the telephone poles halfway down the street, offered little relief.
    What poor illumination punctured the darkness came here and there, soft yellow emissions filtered through slatted blinds and closed living room curtains from the houses that lined both sides of the street. The homes looked as if they were shoehorned onto the narrow lots and piled up against the wooden fences or the occasional brick walls that separated them.
    Once she confirmed the address from the four brass numbers on the wall next to the garage door, Sofia swung her car into the narrow driveway. She put it in park, turned off the engine, and doused her headlights. It had taken her more than an hour to follow the snaking directions north from Coronado. She had been bucking the end of the traffic bulge from the evening rush all the way out, and she was tired. She was anxious to pick up the dog and get home.
    As she stepped from her car, the flicker from a television screen in one of the houses across the way stabbed the darkness with blue flashes. Like distant lightning, the thunder followed. Climactic bars of muted music from the sound track and the noise of canned explosions carried on the cool evening air. Signs of life in the suburbs.
    None came from Brauer’s house. Like its owner, the place looked every inch its age, worn and forlorn. It stood deserted and dark behind the small island of dying Bermuda grass. Two dead and fallen palm fronds lay in the planter bed between the grass and the front of the house. Emma wasn’t much of a gardener, it seemed.
    Except for the fact that Sofia had talked to one of Emma’s neighbors during the drive from the office, she would never have guessed that little more than an hour earlier the place had been crawling with cops. Emma had given her the neighbor’s phone number as she and Sofia chatted in the bathroom before the police took Emma away.
    And a good thing, too. Because when Sofia called, the neighbor told her that the police, who were just finishing up their search, were making an issue over the dog. They insisted that Dingus had to be taken by animal control to the pound.
    The neighbor offered to take charge of the dog and to care for it until Brauer came home. But the police said no. This was out of the question. Protocol required animal control to take custody unless the owner gave express authority in writing to transfer the dog to someone else. There were no other family members living in the house, so that was it. They told her that Brauer or anyone she designated could pick the dog up at the pound later, as long as they did it within thirty days. After that the dog would either be put up for adoption or be put down.
    Sofia’s blood was up. They were not taking the dog. Not if she had anything to say about it. She could have called the office for