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and vomited on the sidewalk.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 4
     
     
    The
retching was over pretty quickly. I had nothing solid in my stomach to get rid
of. I was breathing hard when I finished and had to put a hand on the town car to
steady myself as I got my stomach back under control. Todd didn’t get out of
the car to see if I was all right. Either he hadn’t noticed the vomiting, or he
was too annoyed with me to care. It didn’t make all that much difference to me.
This kind of thing happened all the time lately. I was more sorry to lose what
was left of my mimosas than anything else.
    When I
felt reasonably steady again I started for the building’s main entrance,
ignoring the questioning looks from people on the sidewalk who had stopped to
watch me be sick. The stares didn’t bother me. Vomiting was hardly the most
embarrassing thing I’d ever done in public.
    There
was a line at the building’s entrance for the metal detector that anyone not
wearing a badge had to go through. I passed through it without anyone giving me
a second look. I didn’t have anything interesting in my pockets, and I hadn’t
bothered to bring a purse along. It occurred to me that that meant I didn’t
have any identification, but I didn’t think I’d be needing it any time soon.
    My
destination was on the 4 th floor of the building. I’d have preferred
to avoid a crowded elevator in case I got sick again. Throwing up on the
sidewalk was one thing. Doing it in an elevator was quite another. But there
was no way I was strong enough to get up four flights of stairs. My legs probably
wouldn’t start to shake for a few hours yet, but they felt weak and I’d already
had a lot more exertion than usual today.
    The
Homicide Division was in a large open room filled with desks arranged in pairs.
Offices for the higher-ranking officers lined the walls, giving each one a view
of San Diego’s downtown area. None of the offices were particularly large, and
a corner office here certainly didn’t have the cachet that a corner office in a
Fortune 500 company would carry, but once upon a time an office had been all I
wanted. Rank and power didn’t mean anything to me, but views were priceless.
    Nobody
gave me a second look until I was halfway to my destination, and then the
atmosphere in the room abruptly changed as I was noticed. Murmurs started up
instantly and a few people rose from their desks. I was a legend here, but
being a legend can carry as many bad things with it as it can good.
    A pretty
woman in her early thirties put herself directly in my path, forcing me to
stop. I looked at her curiously, struggling to remember her name. Had we been
friends?
    The
woman bit her lip nervously. “Nevada?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
    “Sarah,”
I said, remembering her. Of course. Sarah Winters had been new to Homicide when
I’d gotten the Laughing Man case. She’d been there for the beginning of the
end. I remembered her telling me I was her role model once. What a lousy judge
of character she’d turned out to be.
    “Yes,
I’m Sarah,” she said slowly, as if she was speaking to a lost tourist who
didn’t understand English. “Can you remember me?”
    For a
minute I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then it occurred to me
that she must think I’d gone off my meds and wandered in here by accident. It
was a reasonable conclusion given that I’d once been locked up in a psych ward,
but she was wrong about the meds. The only medication I’d ever been given in
there were tranquilizers to stop my uncontrollable, hysterical laughter. At
first. Later the same tranquilizers were used to stop me from screaming. After
my stint in the ward I’d been mandated to see a psychiatrist, but I’d thrown
the prescription he’d given me in the trash and never gone back.
    “I’m
fine, Sarah,” I told her. “It’s okay. I’m here to see Dan.”
    “Okay.”
She looked me up and down and I could see a blend of fear and sorrow in