Cold Hit Read Online Free PDF Page B

rounded the corner and I stopped at the cart to buy us each another round of coffee. Mike called up to the vendor to throw in a cruller for him, too. “Couldn’t eat a thing last night. Kept looking into that hole in the back of Gert’s head every time I closed my eyes.”
    “No court on Friday. The defendant’s a Muslim. Today’s his holy day,” I answered, hanging my identification tag on a chain around my neck as we approached the entrance to the District Attorney’s Office.
    “Reggie Bramwell’s a Muslim? I collared him on a gun case five years ago, and he was a full-press Baptist then. I’m sure of it.”
    “Jailhouse conversion, Mike,” I said, pushing through the revolving doors and holding the security gate open for one of my colleagues who was on her way out of the building, headed toward the other courthouse, pushing a shopping cart loaded with evidence. “A week ago Thursday, in fact. Must have been a deeply religious experience. Someone at Rikers Island convinced him of the joys of the three-day workweek. The judge uses Wednesday as a calendar day, and the prisoner — Reggie Bramwell, now also known to the court as Reggie X — gets to worship on Friday. Just prolongs my agony for a few days. In fact, I think he’s just doing this because he knows I wanted some vacation time this month — and if he can’t go to the beach, why should I?”
    We waited for one of the three elevators to return to the lobby floor, while a small commotion started behind us. “Alex, tell this jerk who I am, will you please?” a familiar voice called out.
    My colleague Pat McKinney was standing in front of the security counter dressed in his running clothes, which were drenched with sweat, arguing with the officer on duty. Pat’s already reddened complexion was deepening and appeared to spreading to the tips of his ears and down his neck.
    “I’m telling you I left my I.D. on top of that pad next to the telephone before I went out at nine thirty. Now, if somebody moved it or walked off with it, that’s
your
problem and not mine.”
    The cop, obviously a summer replacement who was stuck with this security detail, didn’t recognize the deputy chief of the Trial Division. Most of us who jogged from time to time during our lunch hours had taken to leaving our photo identification tags at the entrance desk and picking them up on our way back in. The officers from the Fifth Precinct who regularly worked the desk knew most of us by sight and held the tags in a pile on the corner of the counter, behind the bank of telephones. I had no time for running these days, because of my hearings, and no inclination either, because of the intense heat. McKinney, who liked to take his daily jog earlier than the lunch hour break during the hot summer months, was probably more aggravated by the fact that this police officer didn’t recognize him than that the officer had misplaced his only means of official access to the building.
    I held the bucking elevator door open with my left arm and started to explain to the officer that I would vouch for McKinney, despite the fact that he hated my guts.
    Chapman nudged me out of the way by bumping his hip up against mine and clamping his hand on the button that said
Close
. He was also calling out to the cop as the doors came together in front of my face. “Hey, Officer. Don’t let that guy in. He’s a whack job — comes around here all the time, looking to get in. The real McKinney has a huge wart on the tip of his nose and foams at the mouth a lot.”
    “That’ll do wonders to break the ice between me and my supervisor, don’t you think?” I asked as I pressed the button for the eighth floor and replaced my sunglasses in their case.
    “What’s the difference? McKinney hasn’t had a decent word to say about you in the entire time you’ve been here. Screw him. Who’s going to miss him for the next half hour, his girlfriend?”
    “What girlfriend? You mean Ellen? She just works for