Sudden Exposure Read Online Free PDF Page B

the other patrol officers had deposited it. I got in, shut the door, and called in for a CORPUS check on Pironnen, Johnson, and Ellen Waller, and for two backups. No priors on Pironnen, nothing on Waller, and—big surprise—the only thing on Sam Johnson was a complaint about him shooting tin cans in the waterfront park. It was a surprisingly rightist, fifties kind of hobby for a committed anarchist. I would have been amused had it not reminded me that Johnson was a practiced shot, certainly good enough to take out Bryn Wiley’s windows. I upped the request for backups to four.
    It was Howard who arrived as the top-side backup, blue eyes intent, but a grin trying doggedly to make it onto his mouth. Howard was pondering the nudist and his cold, uncomfortable hour under the house.
    Failing to suppress my own grin, I put a finger to his lips. All searches are serious. Any call could go any way. Cops die not only in shootouts with drug dealers but in innocuous car stops. You have to be ready all the time. It’s exhausting, but easy to get psyched by the intensity. And Howard—Once we got going, he’d be all business. But now the grin had taken full control and softly, softly he was humming the old Limeliters’ song that ended: “… when the cold, cold tailwinds blow.”
    We’d both been on patrol years ago, way before we’d become an item; we’d hashed over each other’s cases; but we’d never worked together like this. I loved hitting the lights and sirens, giving chase (or at least I had until the nudist—I’d have to rethink that tomorrow), and cruising around town after midnight when the streets belonged to me.
    Howard hadn’t been far away when I called. Beat 2—here—was his.
    “Not much chance the bare sprinter is still under the house. Still …” I said.
    “If he’s there, he’s ours.” Howard grinned. He’d hated to give up Narcotics Detail, where there were dealers still loose, and stings of his still unstung. But at six feet six with curly red hair, blue eyes, and a lantern chin, he was hardly a candidate for undercover work any longer. Unlike me, he had opted for the sergeant’s exam, rotated back onto patrol, and was prepared to work his way back to Narcotics Detail when a spot opened for a detective sergeant.
    “So, Jill, you think you can ID this guy?” He was grinning.
    “Sure, if it’s from the back and he’s moving. Course here, he’d be under the house for an hour cooling his … heels.” I kept my voice down to a whisper. But back in the station I knew no one was toning down their comments on my inaugural patrol chase. “Adam one and Adam eighteen are coming up the path from Codornices Park; Adam seven will be up here. As soon as they check in, we’ll move.”
    Again Howard nodded. One officer always has to be in charge. I was the one who’d called for backup; this operation was mine. Murakawa—Adam one—would call when he and eighteen arrived at the bottom of the steps in the park. I’d give them another three minutes to make their way up the flights of cement steps.
    We think of this area as in the hills, but it’s really part of the canyon system, with sudden, sharp, steep walls. We assume it’s tamer than bare canyons because those walls are padded with trees and brush, and houses that thumb their chimneys at earthquakes, cracked and hobbled houses like the one we were headed for.
    The radio crackled. “Adam one, with eighteen, ten ninety-seven.” Murakawa, and whoever was eighteen tonight, had arrived at the bottom. Levine—seven—pulled up behind us. He’d watch the street.
    “Let’s go.” We’d keep the channel clear, to be used only if essential, so the radios on our shoulders wouldn’t broadcast our arrival. When we were next to the open basement I yelled, “Po-lice! Get your hands where we can see them and walk out! Do you hear me?”
    No response.
    “Answer me!”
    Still nothing. I wasn’t surprised.
    With the smallest of movements, I motioned