THE STREETS had not yet clogged up with the morning rush hour and Hemingway punched the big truck around the corner in a smoking drift that sounded like an angry Tyrannosaurus rex. The lights thumped and the sirens screeched and she had her foot to the floor as they drifted west, the city’s architecture sliding sideways across the windshield.
Phelps was belted in, one hand on the holy shit handle, the other on the center console to keep him from slamming back and forth as she screeched through the corners and punched to the red line on the straightaways. A cruiser closed up their path; it had started out in the lead to clear the way but she had quickly grown tired of sitting behind it and had barreled past after two blocks.
Phelps hadn’t so much as flinched. But he swore.
The ride usually took about twenty minutes at night, forty in traffic. Hemingway made it in seven.
They rounded the final corner in a swinging arc of smoke that scattered the reporters lined up at the edge of the road. She didn’t slow, but hammered up the middle of the street, skidding to a stop a foot from the side door of the cruiser that blocked the road.
She ran through the tape, past the uniformed officer, through two more cops who tried to stop her, and pushed aside the EMT men crouching in her doorway. One tumbled back and fell down the stairs.
There was a white plastic sheet over the body that lay across her threshold. One of the EMT guys started back up the steps but Phelps stopped him.
Hemingway stood there, looking down at the sheet. The world went prismatic as tears filled her eyes. She closed them and the tears shook loose. She crouched down, reached out, and wrapped her fingers around the sheet.
There was nothing else in her focus except her fear.
She needed to see. Needed to know. And then she could fall apart.
She needed him. Loved him. He had been taken by a killer who enjoyed disassembling little boys.
Another bad man who wouldn’t leave her alone.
She tightened her grip. The plastic was warm and humid, and her hand shook so badly that the sheet vibrated with her touch.
A big shadow that could only be Phelps blocked out the sun. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
Hemingway pulled the sheet back, and looked down at the twisted black blood-spattered grimace on her sister’s face.