LITMIR.BIZ

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the small notebook he always used to take down information that came his way.

      “I need you here,” Tony told him. “I’ll have a patrolman drive her in.” He spared a glance at Sasha. “I’ll see you at the station.”

      “Doesn’t matter where you’ll see me,” she informed him, “the answers will still be the same.”

      He merely nodded, walking away to speak to one of the patrolman. “Good, means you’re not lying.”

      Sasha felt a flash of temper. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, feeling it more prudent not to say anything until she had more control over what could come out. All she knew right now was that the detective was getting under her skin at an amazing speed and rubbing her completely the wrong way.

       Chapter 4

       “C an I get you anything?”

      The voice came from behind her. Sasha twisted around in the hardback chair to see Tony approaching her in the squad room. She’d been sitting beside his desk for the last fifteen minutes, waiting for him to make an appearance. She couldn’t help wondering if he was making her wait on purpose.

      “A time machine,” she quipped, turning back around to face him as he moved his chair out.

      Tony sat down and turned on his computer. A low grinding noise began to hum through the office as it went through its paces.

      “Why?” he asked. “How far back would you go?”

      “Two weeks.”

      He looked at her. Two weeks was the amount of time separating the two murders. Was she making a backhanded confession?

      “And maybe I’d start taking the bus to work,” Sasha added, thinking out loud. “Coming across one victim was bad enough. Two…” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head.

      Then she raised her eyes to his and Tony found himself thinking that he’d never seen eyes quite that shade of blue before. Intense. Beautiful. And pretty damn hypnotic if he allowed them to be. Mentally, he pulled himself back.

      “I know you’re overworked here and under-staffed,” she said, edging closer on her chair, “but you must have some kind of a lead, a clue, a hunch—”

      Tony regarded her with mild interest. People didn’t usually attribute human frailties to the police department. They expected tireless, around-the-clock vigilance. And crimes to be solved in a timely fashion—as in yesterday. All the best crime dramas on television made it seem easy.

      If only.

      “How do you know we’re overworked and under-staffed?” he wanted to know.

      Was the man born antagonistic, or had he just acquired the habit along the way? She was trying to be nice here.

      “Well, aren’t you? Why should you be any different from the rest of the world? Besides,” she sighed, sitting back again, “that’s the way it always was when my father was with the two-six in Queens.”

      She’d succeeded in getting his attention, Sasha thought. The look in his eyes changed. “Your father was on the job?”

      Tony noted the way she smiled before she answered. Pride mingled with memories. A family girl, he thought. He should have realized that. Because of his own situation, he had a tendency to think of people simply as detached individuals. He wasn’t close to either one of his brothers, even though they both lived in the city and worked for it, Joe as a detective in Brooklyn and Tim as a firefighter in Staten Island. But for all the contact they’d had in the last five years, they could have just as well have been spread out all over the country.

      “Twenty-six years,” she told him. Definitely pride there, he thought. It was audible in her voice. “Josef Pulaski. He made detective before he retired.”

      Just like his father had been, he thought. Except that he was willing to bet that was where the similarity ended. If he’d ever been proud of his father, that had changed a long time ago—by the time he could understand what was going on behind his parents’ closed door.

      He nodded in response to her words. “So that makes you more aware of procedure than most of the people who’ve sat in that chair.”

      She couldn’t tell if he was attempting to extend an olive branch or not. “If you mean do I know that you have to rule me out as a potential suspect before you can move on, yes.”

      Maybe she wasn’t going to give him trouble after all, he thought. The computer sat, ready, its grinding noise reduced to a soft, constant hum. Time to get started.

      “No run-ins with—” Tony paused, referring to his notes. The victim’s name had momentarily escaped him.

      “Rachel,” Sasha supplied before he could flip to another page. He raised his eyes to hers. “No, no run-ins. I don’t know all that much about her, actually,” she warned him. She and the older woman hadn’t been friends by any stretch of the imagination, although their paths had crossed a number of times. “Only that she was past retirement age.”

      The woman had looked it, Tony thought. “Then why didn’t she retire?” In his experience, retirement was the carrot people coveted. “She love the job that much?”

      Sasha thought of the couple of times she’d overheard the slain nurse complaining about conditions at the hospital, or about a supervisor who was riding her. “I think it was more of a case of her tolerating the job.”

      “Then why—?” Tony left it to her to fill in the rest.

      “The same reason a lot of people stay at a job they don’t like. Money. She needed the money,” Sasha emphasized. “Rachel had two grandchildren to raise. Her son’s sons. Eight and ten I think.”

      She was making his job easier for him.

      He raised his eyes to hers for a second. “Where’s the son?” he asked, tapping slowly on the computer keyboard. He typed like someone who had no knowledge of where the letters were arranged.

      Sasha shrugged. “Ran off somewhere.” She tried to remember what the hospital gossip had been. “I don’t think she knew where.”

      He stopped searching for keys. “So this son took a powder, leaving his kids high and dry, and Rachel stepped in?”

      Sasha nodded in response to his question. “According to what I heard, he left the boys with her for the weekend two years ago. Mailed her a letter a month later, said he couldn’t handle being a father. Rachel complained about it.” To anyone who would listen, she recalled. “But she said she couldn’t just let the county raise the boys.”

      Her words struck a chord. Aunt Tess had said something similar once. Tony shut down the momentary flashback.

      Staring at the keyboard, he hunted and pecked in the new information. “Anyone else in the picture?”

      He typed so slowly, she had the urge to push him aside and take over. Sasha knotted her hands in her lap. “Her husband. He’s a handyman. I think he does work for the apartment complex where they live.” She stopped trying to remember bits and pieces and looked at the detective who was engaged in a hopeless duel with the keyboard. “Why are you asking me this? Wouldn’t you get more information from PM’s Human Resources Department?” They all had forms they’d had to fill out when coming to work for the hospital. PM was extremely careful about who they ultimately hired.

      “You’re doing just fine.” Hitting the period that brought the last sentence to an end, he sat back and regarded her for a second. “For someone who didn’t know the victim, you have a lot of information at your disposal.”

      Was it her imagination, or was that a veiled accusation of some sort? Sasha could feel herself growing defensive. “I pay attention when people talk.”

      The look he gave her was very pointed. “So do I.”

      Except,

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