Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,34

made his way back to the mansion to the small apartment on the second floor where he and Betty lived.

Chapter 13

At ten o’clock the following morning, Sinclair and Braddock waited for the elevator on the second-floor balcony of the PAB. “Still not sleeping?” Braddock asked.

She was surely seeing the same the dark circles under his eyes that Sinclair had seen in the mirror this morning. “Woke up early thinking about the case,” he said.

The truth was he had woken with a jolt and sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. The clock on his nightstand read 4:38 AM. He went into the bathroom, stripped off his wet T-shirt and shorts and climbed into the shower. The dream was one of several different ones that took turns rotating through his subconscious every few nights. In this one, a faceless man appeared in front of him with a gun. Sinclair drew his sidearm and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled the trigger again, harder, and continued pulling it repeatedly until he finally woke up with a cramp in his forearm. After the shower, he dressed, made coffee, and drove to a 6 AM AA meeting in Lafayette, a meeting he had attended regularly in his early sobriety but hadn’t been to in months.

“Is there something wrong with your arm?” Braddock asked.

He hadn’t realized he was massaging the muscles of his right forearm, which felt like a taut rope. “Too many reverse curls in the gym the other day,” he said.

The elevator took them to the fourth floor. Sinclair pressed the button alongside a door marked only by a room number. The intelligence unit consisted of one sergeant and four officers, each of whom had a specialty such as outlaw motorcycle gangs, terrorism, Asian gangs, or organized crime. Officers who were assigned to intelligence seldom took a promotional exam, because Intel had more freedom and perks than any other assignment in the department. A white man in his midforties with shoulder-length hair, wearing jeans and a leather vest, opened the door. Sinclair knew this officer as one of the foremost experts on the Hells Angels in the state. The main office had four workstations, each with double computer monitors. Heavy file cabinets with combination locks lined a wall. Tiny red lights blinked from a motion detection sensor in the corner of the room. The intelligence unit was the only office in the PAB that had a separate intrusion alarm.

A door to their right opened, and a smooth-faced black man wearing a golf shirt, khaki pants, and a huge smile stepped out. Phil Roberts was the sergeant in charge of intelligence and had been Sinclair’s partner for his first four years in homicide and Braddock’s for her first six months. Roberts had grown up as an Air Force brat, living on different military bases in the United States and England. He attended Boston College for two years until he was accepted to the University of Oxford, from which he graduated with a degree in English Literature. Upon graduation, Roberts got a job as a grant writer for a consortium of nonprofits in the Bay Area, but he hated it within a year. He took the test for police officer at OPD twenty-three years ago and never regretted his decision.

Roberts and Sinclair did the handshake/half-hug routine. Roberts went for a full hug with Braddock.

“Isn’t that prohibited in the workplace these days?” Sinclair said.

“We in Intel operate in a covert status and aren’t subject to the sexual harassment regs you mere mortals are,” Roberts said.

“Do you still like it up here?” asked Braddock.

“What’s not to like? Unlimited overtime, no one watching over me, and we’re privy to all the secrets.”

“Like who’s running the escorts services in the Bay Area?” Sinclair asked.

Roberts ushered them into his office and shut the door. The windowless room was twice the size of the homicide lieutenant’s office. Two guest chairs faced a large wooden desk. A matching bookshelf filled with three-ring binders and a row of file cabinets covered one wall. A brown tweed couch backed against the other wall. Seated on it was a slim man in his fifties, dressed in a pinstripe suit and a white shirt with too much starch.

“Mark Cummings, IRS,” Roberts said. “My old homicide partners, Matt Sinclair and Cathy Braddock.”

Cummings rose slowly and shook hands with Sinclair and Braddock.

“CI special agent?” Sinclair asked, knowing there was a huge difference between an IRS agent and a criminal investigation special agent, whose qualifications and authority were