Karma Patrol (3 page)

“I don’t actually have it yet,” she reminded him. “I have to keep my territory under control until the end of the month before it becomes official.”

“You will,” he replied, and she envied his calm confidence. “I have faith in you.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” Intellectually, she knew there was no reason she couldn’t do it, but part of her still worried.

“Any other news?” From his tone, she got the impression he was fishing for something in particular, and he gave away his intentions with his next words. “I don’t suppose there’s been any sign of your soulmate.”

She stiffened, irritated. “I can manage my own affairs,” she began, a little heat slipping into her voice. Her father’s chuckle only served to aggravate her further.

“Still touchy about that subject, I see,” he observed dryly. “It’s no matter, Jade Ann. You never did have much in the way of patience, but you can’t rush this sort of thing. He’ll come when he’s destined to come and not a moment sooner.”

“I have to go, Daddy.”

He could have made an issue of it, but that wasn’t her father’s style. “Have a nice evening, Jade Ann,” he said instead, yielding gracefully. “Congratulations on your success.”

“Thank you,” she replied, the words clipped as she hung up the phone. She’d reached the Starbucks while she talked, and she ducked inside as she took a deep breath to calm herself. She knew that she was being unfair, that her father only wanted her to be happy, but she wished he didn’t know she was supposed to be half of a soulmate pair. She was bitter enough about her as-yet-undiscovered soulmate’s absence without her father constantly reminding her of it.

“You’d think making the short list would be enough,” she muttered, and the barista gave her an odd look. “Sorry, Laura,” she apologized. “My mind was wandering.”

“Long day?”

“You don’t know the half of it. I’ll have my usual, if you don’t mind.”

“If you aren’t changing your order to decaf after noon, it really must have been a long day.” Laura took a paper coffee cup out of the stack in front of her, labeling it in black permanent marker with the unintelligible hieroglyphics that signified Jade’s usual order. Not that Tony, who was making the drinks, actually needed instructions. Jade stopped here every morning on her way to make her rounds, and all of the baristas were accustomed to her quirky demands.

“Caffeine in the afternoon?” Tony asked as he took the cup from Laura. Jade looked up from the credit card reader long enough to give him a grin.

“Some days you just have to have a little extra help,” she told him, and he laughed.

“You got that right, sister,” he informed her, moving over to his workstation to start making her partially caffeinated monstrosity.

“How are things going with the new puppy?” Jade asked Laura, although she already knew the answer. Laura had smashed her ex-boyfriend’s laptop out of anger during their breakup, leaving her with a negative karmic balance that was currently being paid off by having to put up with the dog’s lack of house training. Even though Jade knew Laura had earned her current misery, she listened sympathetically as the younger woman complained. Everyone had to suffer through the karmic consequences of their own actions, but that didn’t mean Laura had to enjoy stepping in puddles all over her living room.

“Here you go,” Tony interrupted as Laura waxed poetic about the damage to her apartment’s antique hardwood floors. “One venti three-quarter caf light whip soy milk hazelnut macchiato, two pumps of raspberry and three pumps of sugar-free caramel, heated to one hundred fifty degrees exactly.”

“Thanks, Tony,” she said warmly, accepting the cup he handed her and taking a long inhalation of the steam rising from it. She could tell just from the smell that he’d made it perfectly to her order, and she glanced reflexively at his aura. It was holding steady at the lightest possible shade of green, she realized, and smiled to herself.

As a catchment area, she needed this segment of Manhattan to remain as close to an overall karmic balance of zero as possible, the good deeds cancelling out the bad ones, but it was rare to find an individual person whose aura hovered at the null balance point. Most people tended toward the good or the bad by one or two tenths of a point. Tony was one of the exceptions to the good-or-bad tendency rule; his karmic account balance was almost always a perfect zero. At some point in the next five minutes, he would intentionally make a tiny mistake on the drink of a regular he didn’t like, resetting his aura’s faint green shimmer to the fuzzy white of television static.

“Why do you always order three-quarter caf?” Tony asked, repeating a conversation they had at least once a week. “You’re the only regular we have who does that. It kind of labels you as high maintenance.”

“I’m not high maintenance. I just know what I want,” she replied, as usual, and smiled as he shook his head.

“I pity your boyfriend.”

“I don’t have one,” she informed him, heading for the door. “I’m holding out for Prince Charming.”

“Lucky him,” Tony teased, and Laura gave her a little wave.

“Stay safe out there,” the other woman called after her as Jade pushed the door open.

“Make good choices,” she countered, and stepped out into the bustle of the city.

Four blocks away, Detective Luke Jackson poured his partner a cup of stale coffee and handed him the mug with a raised eyebrow.

“You think the secretary killed him?”

“It all fits,” Aaron argued, accepting the coffee and taking a sip, then wincing. “Christ, that’s terrible.”

Luke took a sip of his own coffee and shrugged.

“Tastes fine to me.”

“That’s because you have terrible taste.” Aaron picked up the container of powdered creamer, considering it for a moment before shrugging and dumping half of its contents into his mug. “We know our victim was blackmailing someone. The pictures we found suggest it was either the secretary or her boss. We have photographic proof that the two of them were having an affair—”

“Thanks to the dead pervert who took the pictures,” Luke pointed out.

“And the most likely scenario is that the mystery bank account the blackmail was paid from belongs to one of them,” his partner concluded, ignoring the interjection. “It could have been the boss, but my money’s on the secretary. He was sweating like a pig, but she was completely cool in the interrogation room, even when we showed her the crime scene photos. She’s got sociopath written all over her.”

“I don’t know,” Luke replied, following Aaron back out into the squad room with his coffee mug in hand. “I think there might be more to it than that.”

“You don’t have another one of those gut feelings, do you?” Aaron sighed. “The last time you had a gut feeling, I almost got killed by a professional assassin working for the Japanese mafia.”

“I was right about that case, though, wasn’t I?” Luke pointed out. “And I’m right this time. Something about this doesn’t add up.”

“Can’t we ever catch a straightforward case?” Aaron directed the rhetorical question toward the ceiling, then glanced over at the empty pair of desks across from theirs as the silence in the room finally alerted him to what was missing. “Where are Kalindi and Mitch? I haven’t seen either of them all day.”

“Parker called in sick. I haven’t heard from Patel.”

“Detective Patel is in court,” Captain Hawkes said from the doorway of his office, having caught the tail end of their conversation. “Where are you on the dead pervert?”

“We’re still not sure which one of them killed him,” Aaron replied, ignoring Luke’s smug expression at the captain’s wording. “It was probably either the secretary or the boss, though. Neither one of them has an alibi, and they both had motive.”

“The secretary looks familiar,” Luke said suddenly, her picture on the bulletin board catching his attention. “Bridget Hanlon. Bridget Hanlon… why do I know that name?”

“We talked to her for half an hour this morning and you never said you knew her,” Aaron told him.

Luke shook his head. “I didn’t recognize her in person, but I feel like I’ve seen her picture before.”

“Run her background,” Hawkes advised them. “Maybe something will jog that steel trap between your ears, Jackson. And try to get this case wrapped up by Wednesday. There’s a full moon this weekend, so all the freaks will be out murdering each other and we’ll get slammed. Oh, and don’t forget to finish the online diversity seminar before Friday or HR’s gonna have all our asses.”

Luke’s faith in his gut feelings didn’t extend to the type of superstition the captain indulged in, but he was their boss, so both detectives nodded their assent as he disappeared into his office.

“I should be exempt from the diversity seminars,” Aaron grumbled, once the captain’s office door was safely shut. “I’m a bisexual black cop. I’m a walking diversity seminar.”

“If they only made the straight white cops take the seminar, wouldn’t that be discrimination?” Luke needled, and Aaron made a rude gesture in his general direction.

“I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life, Jackson. I’m not talking to you.”

“Good. Maybe now I’ll be able to get some work done.”

Luke booted up his computer to start the background search on Bridget Hanlon, only looking up when he realized Aaron was watching him.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Aaron was quiet for a moment, but Luke knew his partner couldn’t tolerate empty silence for long. He gave it three minutes before Aaron was off and running on a topic completely unrelated to the case.

He’d made it as far as the login page for the NCIC database before Aaron spoke again, and after a brief glance at his watch, he congratulated himself on his accuracy. Aaron had lasted two minutes and forty-nine seconds.

“What are you doing tonight?”

Luke gestured at the computer in front of him and Aaron groaned.

“Come on, man, you can’t spend your entire life in this building. We live in the greatest city in the world, and the only time you see any of it is when you’re headed to a crime scene.”

“I don’t need you to be my cruise director, Sanford.”

Luke returned his attention to the computer screen, hoping his partner would consider the matter closed. He’d managed to train the other detective to recognize the use of his surname as a subtle warning that Luke was nearing the limit of his patience, but the odds were good that he wouldn’t be able to resist one final effort to force his partner out into the real world. Aaron was the only person at the precinct who Luke called by his first name, and it had taken three years of being partners for Aaron to convince him to do it. Luke had thought that concession would be enough to get Aaron off his back, but now the other man had become fixated on the idea of forcing Luke to socialize with their colleagues outside of work. So far it had proven to be an impossible task, but Aaron seemed determined to succeed, even if it took another three years.

“I know you like to come off as uninterested in the doings of us mere mortals, but it would be good for you to get out once in a while. I’m going over to Hannigan’s after work with some of the guys from the gang unit. Kalindi will probably show up too. What do you say? You know it’ll be fun.”

“I’ve already told you that you can stop inviting me to tag along on your outings,” Luke replied. “I don’t have any interest in being dragged out on the town, and you and Patel will have plenty of fun without me.”

Aaron raised his hands in surrender. “Just checking,” he said innocently.

Luke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This was the part of the conversation when Aaron would rack his brain for a change of subject, trying to divert his partner’s irritation to another target. It was football season, and Luke’s favorite team had just fumbled their way to a crushing defeat, so the most likely topic would be–

“Hey, did you see the Giants game this weekend?”

Luke looked away from the computer screen long enough to pin him with a disgusted glare. Aaron laughed; he didn’t care about football, and he never missed an opportunity to poke at his Brooklyn-born partner when his team lost.

“See, that’s why I only watch baseball. At least the Yankees don’t make it their goal in life to disappoint me all season long.”