Karma Patrol (7 page)

“Hey there, Mike,” she purred as she approached his desk, perching on its edge and leaning forward to place her cleavage at eye level. “I haven’t seen you for a while. Keeping busy?”

“I always have time for you,” he replied, his gaze fixed on her chest. “What’s going on, Jade? Big assignment?”

“Not for me, but I heard you have one. The Forty-Eighth Street shooter?”

Consternation warred with lust in his expression, and consternation won out by a hair. “I can’t talk about that until the story runs. What if you gave away my scoop to another paper?”

Jade widened her eyes. “Me? Why, Mike, would you really suspect little old me of newspaper treason?”

She would never sell out the
Bulletin
to another paper, more because she didn’t care enough to do it than because she had any specific loyalty to the
Bulletin
, but that argument was hardly likely to sway Mike.

“It’s not even really for me,” she said instead, deciding her best bet was to play on his sympathies. “It’s just—I have a lot of friends in Midtown West, you know? By the time I got down there this morning, the bodies were all gone. I just want to make sure it wasn’t anyone I know.”

Mike’s expression softened, as she’d known it would, and after a glance over his shoulder, he slid a sheet of paper toward her from the stack on his desk.

“No one finds out you have this, gorgeous,” he told her with a wink, and she returned the wink with a smile.

“Cross my heart,” she promised, managing to keep herself from looking down at the paper until she was safely away from Mike’s desk and headed out the door of the pressroom.

The names were neatly typed on the page, with as much detail next to them as Mike and the
Bulletin
’s research interns had been able to find in the scant time between the shooting and the online release of the article covering it. The first was listed as
Emil Stankovic: Serbian
national, employed by the Serbian Embassy/ambassadorial staff. In NY for three weeks. Political ramifications?’

Jade sighed. Politicians were a chancy proposition. Either they were minor blips on Destiny Division’s radar or they were fiercely guarded, depending on how their lives were destined to turn out. Stankovic might be the reason Destiny Division was involved in the shooting in the first place. Regardless of their destiny status, all politicians tended to be karmic disasters, and he was probably a big part of why her area’s balance had gone haywire.

The next name on the list was Rachel Smith, and all it said in the margins was,
You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you know how many Rachel freaking Smiths there are in this city?

That drew a snicker from Jade, and she glanced down at the phone in her hand, hoping a quick search of Rachel Smiths would turn up one listed as ‘recently deceased.’ It didn’t, but those records weren’t always kept in the system. If people died with their karmic balance at or near zero, often they were simply erased from Karma Division’s database. If Smith had been deleted, it meant she hadn’t had much karmic impact left to make, which would make Jade’s repair job easier.

The third name stood out to her even though it was a common name: Jared Evans. There was a state senator named Jared Evans, which she knew because he was also one of her biggest karmic challenges. He lived in Midtown West and, like most politicians, was as corrupt as the day was long. He was also adept at dodging the karmic consequences for his negative actions, which seemed to be a gift among the political set. People like him were a big part of why she wanted to become an account specialist. It would be nice to have the luxury of focusing only on the big karmic spenders, to solve the large problems instead of spending her time slapping Band-Aids over the tiny traumas of the everyday.

Sure enough, the notation next to his name was nearly three paragraphs on New York State Senator Jared Evans’ illustrious political career. Next to that was another comment about the possible political ramifications of his death. Jade wondered if it had occurred to anyone else that Evans and Stankovic might have been meeting each other outside the tenement, and if anyone was looking into whatever connections they might have to one another, but then she shook her head. Not only was the
Bulletin
practically guaranteed to search high and low for proof of a conspiracy that they could blow up into the dramatic news story of the month, but it wasn’t her problem either way. She didn’t care why the victims had been targeted or whether there was some shadowy ulterior motive behind the murders. All she cared about was putting things back into balance before the Powers That Be decided if she was fit to be promoted to account specialist.

he normally sedate atmosphere of the squad room had transformed into controlled chaos. Captain Hawkes had pulled a handful of detectives and uniforms off their other duties and put them on the shooting investigation, and every cop in the room was working at their assigned task with grim determination.

“Senator Evans’ personal assistant says he was scheduled to be at a television studio twelve blocks away—”

“–because everyone at the Serbian Embassy is stonewalling me. I can’t even get the receptionist to—”

“–husband’s name is Connor Smith. He’s coming in now. I’m going to need a room—”

“Are you okay?”

Luke, sitting at his computer and letting the cacophony of the investigation wash over him, took a moment to realize the last question was directed at him.

“What?” he said belatedly, tilting his head up to find Kalindi Patel watching him. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You look exhausted.”

He felt her studying his appearance, and he tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at him. He was disheveled, with his crooked tie and the five o’ clock shadow on his jaw visible signs of fatigue. They’d both worked through the night on the mob-related killing they’d solved before this shooting had been dumped in their laps, and she looked at least as rumpled as he did. What was normal for the rest of them, however, was distinctly unusual for Luke. He had strong opinions about how a detective should present himself, and while he wouldn’t know a designer suit from a bargain basement special, he always made an effort to look professional. Patel had worked with him long enough to know that he kept a razor, two clean dress shirts, and a spare tie in the bottom drawer of his desk. This was the first time he’d pulled an all-nighter with her and hadn’t bothered to shave or change when morning rolled around. He wasn’t surprised when her next question was spoken with a tinge of concern.

“Why don’t you go crash for a couple of hours?”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I was just thinking.”

He couldn’t tell her what he’d been thinking about. If anyone ever found out that grim, no-nonsense Luke Jackson had gotten sidetracked during a major investigation because he was fantasizing about a cute reporter he’d met at a crime scene, he would become the laughingstock of the entire precinct.

“You’re working on the shooting itself, right?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Anything to avoid dealing with the politicians,” he replied, grateful for his reputation. Being the department hard-ass made him the last person Captain Hawkes would ever pick to interact with either the Serbian Embassy or Senator Evans’ camp.

“Want to walk me through what you have so far?” she proposed. “Maybe it’ll help you work out whatever you’re stuck on.”

He wasn’t sure it would be helpful, but at least it would be a distraction from the memory of the blonde journalist.

“Here,” he said, pointing to the computer monitor as he started a replay of the scenario he’d set up with the help of one of the tech guys. “The blue figure is Jared Evans, the green is Emil Stankovic, and the yellow is Rachel Smith. Using ballistics data from the bullets recovered from the scene and all three bodies, the reconstruction puts the shooter on top of this apartment building across the street.”

Kalindi studied the screen. “Do we know how he got up there?”

“The building has an internal stairwell and an external fire escape; he could’ve used either one. Uniforms are canvassing the apartments in the building to see if anyone saw anything, but we both know the likelihood of anyone volunteering as a witness is slim.”

“Any security cameras in the area that might have caught him?” she asked.

“None of the nearby buildings have video coverage. The crime scene unit came up empty on the roof, too.” He sighed, leaning back in his chair and letting his gaze travel across the room as he took in the frantic efforts of his colleagues to find a connection between the victims. “I hope we find a motive somewhere in this mess.”

“You do?”

“Best-case scenario, the shooter was a professional hired to kill either the senator or the Serbian national. Worst-case scenario…”

He trailed off, and Kalindi’s clouded expression told him she’d followed his train of thought.

“Worst-case scenario, he’s a spree killer who’s doing this to cause chaos,” she finished for him.

Luke nodded. “If he’s a hitman and he finished the job he was hired to do, then it’s over. If he’s killing for the fun of it, he’s not going to stop until we catch him.”

After a relatively fruitful morning spent tracking down and repairing some of the karmic paths that had been disrupted when Jared Evans was killed, Jade made her way up Restaurant Row to Shannon’s favorite sushi place. Shannon had beaten her there and was already halfway through an order of
gyoza
by the time Jade sat down across from her.

“Thanks for waiting on me to order,” Jade said with a wry smile, reaching across the table to snag one of Shannon’s dumplings as the other woman grinned at her.

“Thanks for noticing your soulmate
when you met him,” Shannon fired back, swatting at Jade’s fingers with her chopsticks. Unfortunately for Shannon, Jade had a younger sister and was well practiced in the art of stealing food off an unwilling participant’s plate. Shannon ended up short two more dumplings before she got smart and moved the plate out of Jade’s reach.

“How was I supposed to know which one he was?” Jade asked reasonably. “It wasn’t like he was wearing a flashing neon sign that labeled him as my soulmate. Unless I fell madly in love with him at first sight, there was no way for me to know which good-looking cop to choose. Making sure that I met him and recognized him as my soulmate was
your
job, and I don’t remember seeing you at that crime scene.”