Murder in Focus Read Free Page A

was a thump and a clang and steam poured up from the nozzle once again.
    This assignment shouldn’t take that long, he thought more cheerfully: maybe he’d be back in Ottawa by next week. He picked up the soap and stepped under the shower one more time. Whoever had been hanging around the workers at the construction site last week, asking odd questions, should turn up again soon enough. And when he did, it was just a question of playing him a bit—leading him on, finding out why he was interested, snatching him, and getting who was behind him. Routine stuff. Maybe he could risk calling Betty from the restaurant after he reported in. He jumped out of the tub, winced as a blister banged against the stool, and began drying himself vigorously.

Chapter 2
    Monday, May 15
    In Toronto, Monday morning’s rising sun shone in Inspector John Sanders’s red and gritty eyes as he tried to make out what was happening on the top of the apartment building across the street. Twenty minutes before, he had been slithering backward across the same roof in a burst of gunfire before dropping feet first through an open trapdoor. Someone had already called for the Emergency Response Unit, which had been waiting, bulletproof vests on and snipers poised, for him to get the hell out of their line of fire. Pity. The stupid fool was going to try to shoot his way out of this mess, and that would be the end of him. If he had put down that goddamned arsenal of his and come out peacefully when Sanders had finally tracked him down, he would have been found unfit to stand trial. Six or eight years making leather wallets and he’d be free again. Instead of ending up with his face ground into a gravel-and-asphalt roof. Sanders turned away. He didn’t want to watch. Yawning, he headed back to the car, where Ed Dubinsky, his partner, was already sitting, massive and patient, waiting for him.
    â€œYou’re supposed to call in,” he said. “Want some coffee?”
    â€œNaw,” said Sanders, too tired for coffee. “What the hell for?”
    â€œSomething about packing your bags and heading off to Ottawa this morning. Flanagan’s sick again—it’s that seminar the Mounties are running on how to catch terrorists.”
    â€œFor chrissake, it’ll take me all morning to do the paperwork on this thing,” Sanders said, nodding in the direction of the silent apartment building.
    â€œI’ll do it,” said Dubinsky, reaching forward to turn on the ignition. “I’ll make like you wasn’t even there, boss.”
    â€œLayoff, Dubinsky.” Sanders let his head drop forward as far as it would go in an effort to ease his aching shoulder muscles. It didn’t work.
    â€œBesides, it’s those guys over there that are going to have to write out the reports, anyway.” Dubinsky nodded at the square yellow van parked across from them, out of which the Response Unit had poured.
    â€œGoddammit! I don’t want to go to Ottawa. I want to go home to bed. Jesus!” Sanders swore as he reached for the car radio.
    Sanders shifted irritably in the driver’s seat. A hot, needling pain stabbed his right knee, the long muscle running down the right side of his back was beginning to knot up, and he could feel a frozen immobility starting up in his left shoulder that presaged a stiff neck and a rotten temper. Above him the sky was a deep, impossible blue; sun poured down on the road, bleaching the gray concrete to blinding white. The car thumped monotonously over the black joints in the road surface. Trees on either side of the wide, almost empty highway afforded no relief to his burning eyes. They were at worst completely bare, at best outlined with only a faint, ragged web of pale green or reddish budding leaves. What in hell was he doing heading north in May? In Toronto you could be reasonably sure that winter was over by now. In Ottawa, with his luck, it would snow.
    Up ahead a