“You know exactly what I’m talking about. The man who came to my house last night wasn’t alone, was he? He had help. That’s how he was downstairs and upstairs at the same time.”

He tried croaking an answer, but Sandy wasn’t listening anymore.

“Were you in my house?” she shouted. “Was it you?”

He was gasping for air and unable to speak. The only thing that stopped him from passing out was the arrival of a detective who’d detoured from headquarters after hearing Sandy’s unit number on the radio. When he pulled up on the sidewalk in his black Mercury Marquis, the crowd began to disperse. He jumped out of the car and knelt beside Sandy Jackson, knowing that her anger had already gotten the best of her.

“Let him go, Sandy,” Coletti said in a soothing voice. “If you kill him, we’ll never find out the truth.”

Her eyes were wild and sweat dripped down her face. She looked like she was someplace else, and Coletti spoke calmly to try to bring her back.

“I know what happened last night was wrong,” he said. “But you’re going to be a lieutenant soon. You can’t throw your career away over this.”

She loosened her grip on the nightstick and gently laid the suspect on the ground. Two ninth district patrol officers picked him up and placed him in the back of another squad car.

As Sandy made her way back to her own car, the rage still simmering inside, Coletti walked beside her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Of course I’m all right,” she said. “We got one. I just wonder how many more of them are out there.”

“At least one,” he said. “Maybe more.”

“So what were you planning on doing about it?” she asked.

Coletti stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked off into the distance.

“Charlie’s connecting the dots between the guy we found this morning and whoever he’s working with. Mary’s putting together a list of men who fit the profile of the ringleader.”

“And what are you doing?” Sandy asked.

Coletti thought for a few moments before he spoke. “I’m praying a lot.”

“And what’s that gotten you?”

“I don’t know,” Coletti said. “I guess we’ll see soon enough.”

Chapter 15

Commissioner Lynch strode into the radio room, and the civilian dispatchers looked up in disbelief. Many of them had been there for twenty years or more, and they had never seen a commissioner on the second floor, let alone walking through the radio room.

The lieutenant in charge spotted him and became anxious. There had been problems in the radio room before. The signal had been knocked out, leaving patrol officers with no communication. On-air shenanigans had exposed bitter love triangles between dispatchers and officers. Heads had rolled, and the lieutenant was determined to make sure his wasn’t next.