Amanda's Blue Marine Read Free Page B

that fast?"
    "I'll make sure I do."
    Kelly straightened and reached out to shake her hand again.
    "You're going to be okay," he said. "I promise. We'll get this guy."
    Mandy nodded, releasing his hard fingers.
    "I'll walk you out," he said.
    Mandy held up her hand. "That's fine. I've taken up enough of your time. I can find my way through the labyrinth."
    "You're sure? People have vanished down here never to be heard from again."
    She smiled. "I'll see you in the morning, Detective Kelly."
    "Just Kelly," he said, watching her walk away.
    "Kelly," she repeated, wondering what the "B" on his handmade office sign represented.
    Kelly waited for her to leave and then started tapping the laptop keys, getting started on his list of suspects.
    * * * * *
    Mandy went back to her cubbyhole in the District Attorney’s office and tried to concentrate on the material she was reading, but thoughts of her visit with the police kept intruding as she made notes and formulated arguments for the case she was supporting. By the time Karen Warren stuck her head into Mandy’s cubicle and announced, “Lunchtime,” Mandy had accomplished very little and had worried quite a bit.
    “So?” Karen said. “How did it go with the cops?”
    Mandy shrugged as she shut down her laptop and rose to go, picking up her purse. “I don’t know. Lieutenant Manning was very nice, but he would be polite to me for my father’s sake even if he thought I was hallucinating the whole problem.”
    “I’m sure he doesn’t think that,” Karen said. “You’ve turned over the notes to the police, they’re real. You haven’t been sending them to yourself.”
    “Who can guess what they think? They all have this veneer of surface courtesy but you can tell their minds are whirring away behind their eyes, sorting and filing.”
    Mandy followed Karen into the hall and then through the large marble floored lobby of the District Attorney’s office building. They paused at the revolving door at the entrance and then slipped through it. The two women trotted down the steps and traversed the intersection outside to reach Salon Verde , a lunch spot which serviced office workers across the street.
    “You’ve had enough experience with cops to know that is standard procedure,” Karen said, as they got in line for the salad bar behind a stream of management assistants and state workers, attorneys and paralegals. Karen surveyed the offerings on the buffet and made a face.
    “I don’t know why we come here. The lettuce is wilted and the tomatoes look anemic. They’re sunset orange.”
    Mandy didn’t reply. Karen was one step away from anorexia, she barely ate and complained bitterly about the quality of the meager supply of nourishment that she permitted herself. She had always been that way and hadn’t died yet, and Mandy had known her forever, so it seemed unlikely she would drop now. They shuffled along as Mandy asked, “So how are things in the ER?”
    Karen shrugged. “The usual.” Karen was an emergency medicine resident at Mercy Hospital. Her frustrating patient load of overdosing addicts, gasping asthmatics and expiring senior citizens had made her even more cynical than she had been in school. She was always maintaining that she would leave the hospital and open up a spa dedicated to emptying the wallets of the idle rich.
    It hadn’t happened yet.
    “So who did they assign to your case?” Karen asked. She knew many of the policemen who worked at Metro from her job. She met them when they interviewed and arrested some of the less than law abiding members of her ER clientele. She had an opinion on all of the cops, often not a favorable one.
    “Somebody new,” Mandy replied. “A sub for a senior officer who got injured, apparently. My guy used to be in this district, then was transferred out a couple of years ago. They brought him back when he was promoted. A detective named Kelly.”
    “They’re all named Kelly,” Karen said darkly. “Or Riley or