Karma Patrol (6 page)

The address on Jade’s sentinel event notice was in the middle of Midtown West, just a few blocks away from Times Square. It was also cordoned off with police tape, surrounded by curious tourists and concerned locals, and guarded by several irritated-looking cops in uniform.

Jade was grateful both for her cover job and for her own foresight in grabbing her camera bag when she’d left her apartment. Her press pass gave her an excuse to stand at the edge of the crime scene and take pictures, although the cops there gave her evil looks for it. They weren’t likely to let her cross the tape to get closer, even though she had NYPD-issued press credentials, but that was fine. She didn’t need to get closer in order to see what all the fuss was about.

The crime scene was a mess, and no one had bothered to do any cleaning up yet. The bodies were gone, but the chalk outlines remained, as did the dried pools of blood that suggested this had been a violent set of murders. Three outlines of victims stretched across half a block of sidewalk between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

“–idea where the shooter was?” asked a voice at the very edge of Jade’s hearing.

She strained to eavesdrop on the two men in trench coats standing a short distance away on the other side of the crime scene tape. Detectives, probably. They would be her best bet to figure out what happened.

“I’m guessing he was in one of those windows, or maybe on the roof.” The taller man pointed at a nearby tenement building, indicating the upper floors. “He had a sniper rifle. We’ll send uniforms to canvass the apartments, but I suspect he’s long gone.”

“You don’t shoot three people in cold blood and then stick around waiting for the cops to come up and find you,” the first man agreed, and the second man sighed.

“This one’s going to be nasty, Aaron. I can feel it.”

Not if Jade had anything to say about it. A mass shooting and a killer on the loose had the potential to destroy the karmic balance of Midtown West, and she would do whatever it took to solve the problem before the Powers found out about it.

She took a closer look at the detectives, pausing for a moment to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of the taller one. They were both good-looking, but he was the perfect Hollywood image of a ruggedly handsome action hero. He also had a beautifully balanced aura, the faintest shade of green peeking through its white base color. The other detective had a light green aura, as did all of the uniformed officers she’d seen so far that morning. Their collective positive karma lowered her concern that any of them might be involved with the shooting or some sort of cover-up. That sort of thing was rare, but this was shaping up to be the most important case of her life, so she couldn’t afford to overlook anything.

Jade took pictures of both detectives in profile in case she needed to reference them later, noting again how attractive the taller one was. She didn’t have time to flirt with cute cops right now, but if she had to go haring off after a murderer in order to get her catchment area under control, at least she could do it with some quality eye candy to look at. The cops manning the tape barricade weren’t hard on the eyes either, she realized belatedly as she glanced over at them. The nearest cop was watching her, no doubt suspicious that she’d been eavesdropping on the oblivious detectives. She gave him a winning smile and he reddened, turning away.

The detectives came toward her. She stood her ground, offering them the same bright smile she’d given the patrol officer. The shorter one, Aaron, smiled back, but the tall handsome one seemed unamused.

“Any comment you’d like to make for the press?” she asked, knowing the answer but asking the question anyway for form’s sake. The taller man gave her a disgusted look as he shouldered past her.

“Get lost,” he told her flatly, and continued on toward the unmarked police car parked at the corner.

His partner wasn’t any more helpful, but he did offer her an apologetic look and a shrug as he followed the first man down the street. Her cell phone rang, and she let her camera drop to hang around her neck as she rummaged through her bag for the phone. She expected it to be Celia, returning her earlier call, but it was Shannon.

“Hey,” she greeted the other woman, lifting her camera again and taking a few snaps of the good-looking uniformed officers just for fun before starting off down the street. She wasn’t going to learn anything more from the crime scene, but once she figured out who the victims were, she would be able to use her Karma Division app to track down their intended karmic paths. From there, she could start to rebuild all of the other paths that had been disrupted when these three were killed off-schedule. “Did you hear about the shooting in Midtown West this morning?”

“Jade, you found him!”

“Found who?” she asked blankly, and heard Shannon laugh.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t recognize him when you saw him!”

“Saw
who
, Shannon?” Jade persisted, her patience starting to wear thin.

“Your soulmate. My app just pinged me to say that you passed within five feet of each other.”

“What?”

“You found your soulmate, Jade! God, don’t tell me you’re standing on a busy corner with six dozen guys or something. It’ll take you forever to figure out which one he is.”

“No, I–” She trailed off, turning around to glance back in the direction of the crime scene she’d just left. It was in front of a tenement building, but she hadn’t passed within five feet of any of the apartments. The only people she’d been that close to in the last ten minutes were the cops guarding the crime scene and the two detectives who’d refused to talk to her. “Oh.”

“Oh?
Oh
?” Shannon sounded apoplectic. “Is that all you have to say? Jade, who is he?”

“He’s a cop.” She thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. She had no objections to falling in love with a cop, and she was willing to admit to a weakness for men in uniform, although she would’ve preferred someone who didn’t risk his life on a daily basis.

“My app says his name is Luke Jackson. That’s a good name. Gruff. Manly. I like it.”

“I was at a crime scene, Shannon,” she said dryly. “I didn’t ask for the cops’ names.” The shorter detective had been ‘Aaron,’ though, so he was out of the running unless he went by his middle name. “What does your app say he looks like?”

“Um… six foot two, 190 pounds, dark hair, brown eyes. Hang on, there’s a picture.” There was a brief silence, and then Shannon whistled. “Oh, Jade, this one was totally
worth the wait.”

One of the cops at the barricade was blond and another was too short, but one other uniformed officer was still in the running, as was the tall detective. She briefly considered going back to the crime scene to check the cop’s nametag, even though there were a million other things she should be doing, but then she realized she didn’t need to.

“I took their pictures,” she told Shannon. “Look, I have to get to work fixing the disaster this shooting caused, but are you free for lunch? We can compare pictures and you can tell me all about the lucky guy.”

“Deal,” Shannon agreed. “Meet me for sushi at one, at that place on Restaurant Row.”

“See you then.”

She wasn’t sure how she felt about her soulmate finally turning up. She’d fantasized about it for years, but now that it was actually happening, all she could think was
not now
. After taking so many years to show up, couldn’t he have waited just a few more weeks?

Her phone rang again before she could put it back into her bag, and she glanced at it, expecting it to be Shannon calling back with some vital piece of data about her soulmate’s shoe size. It was Celia, though, and the sight of her boss’s name helped to put all thoughts of cute cops and soulmates right out of her head.

“Celia, what’s going on?” she demanded, stopping in the shade of a high-rise building to talk uninterrupted. “There was a sentinel event—”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Her boss sounded even more harried than usual. “Listen, Jade, I know you’re going to hate this, but you’ve got to back off.”

“What?”

“The clearance level on the report from the sentinel event says Account Specialization, but that’s not who’s running this show.”

“Then who—”

“Destiny Division.”

Jade sucked in a sharp breath, and she could practically hear Celia nodding.

“All I could get out of them was that there’s some sort of massive destiny screwup and they’re investigating it themselves. Do what you can to repair the damage it caused in your area, but don’t get involved in whatever caused it.”

“It was a murder,” she informed Celia. “Three murders, actually. The cops think it was someone with a sniper rifle firing from one of the tenements on Forty-Eighth Street.”

“Yeah, and Penzler from Account Specialization nearly got himself killed last night because he’s as nosy as you are. What part of ‘don’t get involved’ do you not understand?”

“What happened to Penzler?” Jade asked, momentarily sidetracked, and Celia made a frustrated noise.

“I’m not telling you anything that might inspire you to do something stupid. If you get killed, I have to fill out a metric ton of paperwork, and I hate paperwork, so you need to go the hell home and stay out of Destiny Division’s way.”

“I wasn’t trying to get in anyone’s way. I came to check out the scene before you called me.”

“And now you’re done. Go home, Jade.”

“I can’t just go home and let everything fall apart. If my area’s balance stays this high, you and I both know there’s no way I’m getting promoted to Account Specialization.”

Celia sighed, her frustration audible, and Jade pressed her advantage.

“I promise I won’t do anything else to investigate the murders. It doesn’t matter anyway; the damage is done. All I really need are the names of the people who were killed so I can start tracing their intended paths forward to repair the damage.”

“It’s going to be tough to get that information,” Celia warned her, and Jade shrugged, although she knew her boss couldn’t see her.

“We don’t have to get it from Destiny Division,” she pointed out. “I’ve done enough freelance work for the
Bulletin
that I know most of their reporters. I’ll go see if I can find someone there who’s willing to talk to me.”

“Fine. Do it. I’ll talk to Destiny Division, assuming they’re willing to take my call. If they’re going to make a karmic mess, the least they can do is clean up after themselves. You stay out of trouble.”

“Don’t I always?”

“You’re not funny, Bailey.”

Jade snickered, ending the call and tucking her phone back into her purse. She needed a source at the paper who wouldn’t balk at giving her sensitive information, and she knew just the guy.

The offices of the
New York Bulletin
were only a couple of blocks from her apartment in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen. Despite the short distance, it took her over half an hour to make it there. On the way, she had to stop to repair three separate interrupted karmic paths. It was a depressing confirmation that the morning’s events had seriously skewed karmic performance in her territory.

She did her best to shake off her frustration and entered the press bullpen with a bright smile on her face and the V-shaped neckline of her sweater dress pulled subtly downward. She knew from previous experience that if she needed to milk information out of one of the male reporters, all it would take was a smile and a little extra cleavage on display.

Paul Burnham was the first reporter she came across, but her cleavage was unlikely to entice him. He gave her a knowing smile when he saw her appearance.

“Is my favorite photogrpher looking for a scoop?” he murmured when she was close enough that he wouldn’t be overheard, and she laughed.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about the shooting this morning,” she began, but he shook his head.

“Not my story. Mike covered that one.”

She couldn’t quite hide her triumphant smirk, and Paul grinned.

“Try not to give him a heart attack when you shove all of that southern charm in his face,” he advised her, gesturing to her décolletage.

“I make no promises,” she replied, and put a little swing in her hips as she walked away from Paul and over to Mike’s desk.

Mike Hardesty, who’d been a reporter for the
Bulletin
for nearly thirty years, had an obsessive need to find the facts of every story, a need which was second only to his obsession with beautiful women. When he glanced up and caught sight of Jade, he set aside his paperwork with a grin in favor of watching her walk toward him.

Jade knew she was attractive by society’s standards. Her mother had raised her to appreciate the value of a polished appearance. Her carefully curled hair and impeccable makeup, paired with a dress that hinted at her ample assets and displayed her slender legs to their best effect, gave her an advantage with both men and women. Men saw her as an object of desire, not as a threat, and women were typically either envious or impressed by her efforts. It was rare for anyone she encountered to recognize her true motives, which was one of the reasons she was so effective at redirecting people onto their intended karmic paths. It also turned getting information from men like Mike Hardesty into child’s play.