Guilty Read Free

getting this really bad vibe.
    "Yeah," Charlie replied, to Tom's instant relief. Until he realized that his excitable brother's voice was absolutely flat, and he could hear Charlie breathing hard. "Um, look, I gotta go."
    "Okay, well, you tell your sweet little wife Marcia hello for me, hear?" Tom's tone was hearty. Cold sweat prickled to life at his hairline. "Tell her I'm looking forward to that homemade lasagna she promised me."
    "I'll do that," Charlie said, and his phone went dead.
    With that answer ringing in his ears, Tom practically ran through the red light he was rushing up on. Slamming on the brakes hard enough to make the department-issue black Taurus fishtail on the wet street, he managed to stop just in time to avoid barreling out into the middle of the busy intersection. Despite the fact that he was way too close to it, he was all but blind to the traffic that began rolling past just inches from his front bumper. The steady procession of headlights made the gloomy day seem even darker than it really was. Rain sluiced down over his windshield, pounding on the roof and hood with big, fat drops that hit with a quick rat-a-tat and splattered on impact. The windshield wipers were working hard on high. The radio played easy listening.
    He was oblivious to all of it.
    Charlie's wife was named Terry. And fixing peanut-butter sandwiches for their two little hooligans was about as good as her kitchen skills got.
    "Jesus." It was both prayer and expletive.
    Taking a deep breath, Tom called on years of experience to separate mind from emotion, and did what he had been trained to do in emergency situations: What came next. Unwanted, an image of Charlie as he'd last seen him flashed into his head. Black-haired, lean and good-looking, as all the Braga siblings were, Charlie had been sitting in a plastic blow-up kiddie pool in his tiny backyard about three weekends back, clad only in trunks, happily yelling for help while his four-year-old twins dumped bucket after bucket of hose-cold water over his head. Seeing his brother's laughing face in his mind's eye didn't help, so Tom did his best to banish it as he punched buttons on his cell phone. His hand was steady. His thoughts were clear. His pulse raced like a thoroughbred pounding for the finish line.
    An infinity seemed to pass as he listened to the ringing on the other end.
    Pick up, pick up, damn you to hell, Bruce Johnson, pick up.
    "Johnson here."
    "Tom Braga." Tom identified himself to Charlie's supervisor. The cold sweat that had started at his hairline had by now spread to his whole body. Adrenaline rushed through his veins like speed. There was a tightness to his voice that he could hear himself, yet at the same time he felt very focused, very calm. "Where's Charlie?"
    "Charlie?" Johnson paused. Tom could picture him kicked back in his chair, coffee and a newspaper on his desk, an island of good-natured calm in the center of never-ending chaos.  The Philly sheriff's office was large, with numerous departments and hundreds of deputies and support staff, but he and Johnson had grown up together in tough South Philly and in consequence knew each other well. The big, burly sergeant was a favorite with Tom's whole family. "Let me check."
    He covered the mouthpiece—not well—and yelled, "Anybody know where Charlie Braga is this morning?"
    Hurry, Tom thought, gritting his teeth. Then, having realized what he was doing, he deliberately relaxed his jaw.
    Seconds later Johnson was back on the line. "He took a witness from the jail over to the Justice Center. Wasn't that long ago, so he should still be there. Any particular reason why you're interested?"
    The Justice Center. Tom could see it, a little more than a block away on the right. It was a tall stone rectangle topped by a dome, with vertical lines of windows glowing yellow through the rain.
    The light was green and the intersection in front of him was clear. He registered that and at about the same time became aware