Buried (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) Read Free

in short, a nice girl and a good cop.
    Her radio sputtered and she answered.
    The dispatcher said urgently without a hint of the usual boredom, “We’ve got a shooting and we think there’s possibly an officer down. The phones are lighting up. How close are you to KK?”
    KK meant Kinnickinnic Avenue. Jason’s heart rate shot up. Officer down . Close, but it was a fairly long street … officer down ?
    “Minutes away,” Crawford said, her voice catching. “What do we have?”
    “Shots fired at what seems like a routine traffic stop. We aren’t sure what happened, but we need as many officers to respond as quickly as possible.”
    It was a Saturday, and the street would be busy. “Give me the address. I’m close. I’m already driving.”
    Maybe it was just as well Jason had asked, out of sheer boredom, if he could ride along.
    KK had recently become retro chic and there were nice but quirky restaurants and little shops where tourists and locals browsed. The sound of sirens shrieked everywhere as they sped along and it wasn’t hard to figure out exactly where they needed to be.
    The man sprawled in the street in a spreading pool of blood was definitely in uniform, his hat lying a few feet away, one arm flung out, the other limp at his side. His patrol car was parked, but the door was still open.
    “Oh God.” Danni’s voice echoed horror. “Jason, oh God. I think it’s Chad.”
    She didn’t quite get the car in park before she was out and running. He did it for her, feeling the jerk as the transmission locked, a chill creeping over his skin.
    She shouldered her way through the crowd, Jason following, and knelt by the side of the fallen officer. With shaking hands she sought a pulse as the sirens neared.
    Jason also recognized him with a shock that froze his muscles.
    No ambulance with even the most skilled emergency personnel was going to save him, he realized, looking down at his still face. The man was dead.
    And Chad Brown and Danni had dated, for what? Four years now?
    Jason reached down and touched her shoulder. “Hey.”
    Danni started trembling uncontrollably. She crawled to the curb and vomited, her body reacting to her emotions so powerfully she couldn’t help it.
    This is not happening, Jason thought numbly.
    Chad Brown . Jesus, it was Chad.
    Danni and Chad had never said they were serious, but Jason had seen firsthand how comfortable they were with each other. Lovers, friends, colleagues …
    As she dropped her head, probably to keep from passing out, in the distance, someone said, “Ma’am—Officer—you okay?”
    “I’ve got this.” Jason’s voice was curt but he was hurting too, in shock, a little paralyzed by what had happened. “Hey, hold on. Come on, Danni, he’d want you to keep it together.”
    “I know.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat up, but she was starkly pale and trembling.
    Definitely not fit to be in charge. He said quietly, “Stay here. This is a homicide anyway. Let me handle it. Right?”
    He did. Producing his badge—no one needed to know he wasn’t officially on duty—firing off questions about witnesses, directing the other officers arriving on the scene to look for casings in the street, ostensibly taking over even though he really didn’t have the authority at the moment, but someone needed to besides the pale-faced officer who had just emptied her stomach into the gutter.
    She crawled back to the body and touched Chad’s face.
    When she looked up, her face was streaked with tears. “I’ve been trying to drop the weight, you know? I kept telling him no engagement until I lose twenty pounds. He always said he loved me just the way I am. To stop worrying about it so much. Why did I worry?”
    Man, if there was anything he was bad at, it was a moment like this. Jason crouched down next to her and said the most profound thing he could think of.
    “Whoever did this is fucking going down.”

 
    Chapter 2
     
    The creak gave away there