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thought of the crime’s proximity.
    Kendall stood and walked back into the kitchen to make a herbal tea. Something to calm her nerves, like chamomile. She wished she’d stayed in bed instead of waking up to this. Forget the lack of work. This trumped everything. A terrible tragedy in her neighborhood that, if not for fate, might have found her involved.
    What a way to start a day.

Chapter 4

     
     
    LANCE O’GRADY LOOKED OVER AT his partner, Trip Lindsay, and said, “This is not the way to start a day.
    They hadn’t been to bed yet, so technically this day had started yesterday. They’d attended the Café Amaretto murder scene late last night. The last time he’d checked, thirty minutes and two strong black coffees ago, it was still only around seven in the morning.
    Since this had begun, they’d spent four hours at the crime scene, answered over twenty inquiries and phone-in leads, and had two update meetings with their sergeant, with more to come. By Lance’s estimates, they would still be here until six tonight with everything they needed to do to keep the police commissioner and the mayor happy.
    Everything they’d learned so far, made the crime cut and dried to him. Lunatic walks into a popular Italian restaurant and goes berserk with an axe. Out go seven bodies, with at least one survivor currently in intensive care probably about to make it a tally of a neat round eight. To say that he’d never seen anything like the bloody scene he’d walked into last night was not just an understatement, it missed the spot by a million miles.
    So far, they understood little of what set the guy off. All they knew was bank clerk Toby Benson decided to hack his way through the rear entrance of Café Amaretto. Once in, he sliced and diced three of the staff in the kitchen, then took to patrons in the dining room simply enjoying a meal. No provocation and, so far, no claims of association with any terrorist groups.
    Police arrived at the café approximately six minutes after the event began, thanks to several mobile calls from terrified patrons. Benson then decided to take a swing at the officers. Of course, the size of his axe was irrelevant. Guns trump axe pretty much every time. So their Friday the 13 th wannabe ended up as the repository of a dozen bullets and just as dead as his unfortunate victims.
    Everybody from O’Grady’s boss to the mayor to the goddam president (if the already churning rumor mill could be believed) wanted to know how this could happen. This not-easily-answered question landed on his and Trip’s plate to figure out. The police commissioner demanded answers yesterday because the PR minions wanted everything tied up in a neat little bow for the six o’clock news.
    Even though there was an investigating team, the responsibility for managing the investigation fell on Trip’s and his shoulders. As senior detectives of the city’s smallish major case unit—small because these types of crime didn’t usually happen in their city—it was expected they pull all-nighters. Only a few hours in, those responsibility-carrying shoulder were already weary.
    With the killer as dead as his victims, the only urgency O’Grady saw was in giving the mayor something to calm the public. If the mayor had a little patience and foresight—which he clearly lacked—he’d find the next bad news story blowing in, would cause the public to quickly forget this.
    It never took Joe Public long to move to the next news sensation. Downed airliners, earthquakes in China, tsunamis killing tens of thousands, or myriad of disasters that trotted across the news bulletins regularly, all of them were always replaced by the next big headline.
    “Are you ready?” said Trip. “The sooner we get out door knocking, the sooner we get some sleep. I’ve gotten hold of Benson’s boss at the bank. He’ll see us just after eight. Then I think a visit to Benson’s apartment in case CSI missed something.”
    O’Grady stood, pulling