Mission Hill Read Free

studios to liquor stores and bail bondsmen. The GPS instructs me to take a left, but Kevin mentioned a shortcut. I reach over to the passenger seat and feel around for the paper with his directions. I must’ve hit a patch of ice—I skid and regain control of the car.
    A group of gang kids watches me drive by, one spits on the sidewalk—a sign of disrespect, aimed at me. He’s made me, in spite of the Prius. I want to tell him that I’m a lawyer, not a cop. I can’t arrest him. I don’t carry a gun. I’m lost. And I’m scared.

 
    Chapter Four
    The area around the tow lot is controlled chaos. A swarm of uniforms and plainclothes detectives hold flashlights as they scour for evidence. Technicians roll measuring wheels and use white chalk to mark distances. The crime scene unit erects a white tent, affording investigators privacy, shielding the victim from view. Lookie-loos gather, assess, speculate. A pack of reporters and cameramen prepare to set up live shots. A young aide in a rumpled suit sets up a podium with the city seal, a sign that there’s going to be a press conference.
    My boss, District Attorney Max Lombardo, is standing on the sidelines, talking to Mayor Ray Harris. Lately, Max has been putting out feelers, toying with the idea of running for mayor, and Ray knows it. The two men are political rivals, vying for attention, usually taking swipes at each other in the press. Tonight they seem to have set aside their differences. They look united in their solemnity and purpose.
    Max catches my eye and holds up a finger, signaling that he’ll be with me in a minute. I nod in recognition and duck under the yellow crime scene tape.
    â€œEvening, ADA Endicott,” Officer Santos Muniz says. “Kevin Farnsworth has been looking for you. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
    Santos is holding a clipboard, and he writes down my name. Everyone who crosses the perimeter must be accounted for.
    â€œThanks, Santos,” I say. “Booties?”
    He offers up a cardboard dispenser filled with blue paper shoe covers, and I take two.
    â€œIf I was you, I wouldn’t be in a rush to get over there,” he says.
    â€œI appreciate the heads-up, but at this point, I’ve pretty much seen it all.”
    â€œYeah, me too. But this one is really bad. I wish there was a way to un-see what I just seen.”
    The sight of a dead body repulses me. I know that it’s important to view the decedent firsthand, that every corpse tells a story, but I prefer to get the information secondhand from the medical examiner. When I was new to the homicide unit, I forced myself to attend every autopsy. Once I made my bones, had several convictions under my belt, I begged off.
    Memories of those procedures still haunt me. The bodies of my victims, splayed out on a cold, hard slab. The medical examiner holding a scalpel, slicing into the torso, making a Y-shaped incision, and prying open the flaps of skin. The lab assistant plopping the rubbery, reddish-brown liver onto a scale, and dumping the stomach contents into a plastic container. And there’s the smell, the unforgettable combination of odors, formaldehyde and freshly cut bowels. I tried all sorts of tricks to mask it. Wearing heavy perfume. Breathing only through my mouth. Drinking from a can of Coke with a smear of VapoRub under my nose. Nothing worked.
    I glove up, steady myself on a hydrant and slip the booties on over my pumps. Carl Ostroff, an anchor from Channel 7, charges over. Carl has camera-ready good looks, overbleached white teeth, and perfect hair, but he’s not afraid to roll around in the mud. We have about as good a relationship as a reporter and a prosecutor can have. I leak information to him when it serves my case, and he gets the exclusive. He hasn’t double-crossed me yet, but chances are that he will.
    Carl stops just short of the crime scene tape and pushes a microphone in my face. A