The Dirty Secrets Club Read Free Page A

would be emptying out. Lots of traffic, lots of obstacles to slow it down.
    Like pedestrians.
    He skidded around the corner, manhandling the patrol car, and saw the BMW swerve to the right. Bam, it racketed along cars parked at the curb, shredding against them like a can opener. Losing control, losing speed—no. Preventing the passenger from leaping out, if she wanted to keep her arms and legs from getting mangled. He felt how dry his mouth had become. The Crown Vic's headlights caught the rear window of the M5. Inside the vehicle Cruz saw a flurry of motion. The passenger was punching the driver.
    And the driver kept the pedal flat. The car roared through narrowing streets rimmed in neon, red, and gold, with people flowing along the sidewalks. Cruz's siren boomed. Pedestrians stopped, stepped back, but he knew the odds were miserable. This was heading for disaster.
    In his headlights, he saw the BMW's license plate. It was a vanity tag, and he was finally close enough to read it. HARDGRL.
    Hard girl. Holy Mother, a woman was at the wheel, handling that big car like Jeff Gordon?
    With a burst of power the BMW roared away from him. She rounded another corner in a power skid. He followed seventy yards behind, in time to see her line up again, turn east on Stockton, and race out of sight.
    Goddamn. Stockton dead-ended a couple blocks that direction, directly above the tunnel. No way, Cruz thought—accelerating like that the M5 would never make the turn onto Bush. He lined up to round the corner and follow it, thinking: downhill, dead end, bridge railing. Beyond that was a fifty-foot drop to the street below. Even at this time of night, the cross street would be busy.
    "Slow down," Cruz willed her.
    He muscled the patrol car around the corner onto Stockton Street, and saw his wish granted. Oh, fuck.
    Dead ahead the BMW had stopped in the middle of the street. He slammed on the brakes.
    He saw her backup lights flash white as she put it in reverse. She floored it. Through plumes of tire smoke the BMW bore at him like a black missile.
    He had time, barely, to remember. Home. The baby. Shelly, asleep in their bed.
    Ten seconds later it was all over.
    3
    B lue lights dazzled the night. From a block away, they told Jo Beckett she was headed into trouble.
    Dancing against the red lights of the fire trucks and the spotlight Caltrans had erected, they erased the stars, turned the buildings and road and onlookers ice blue, threw Jo's shadow starkly behind her as she walked toward the scene. On the overpass above the tunnel, police officers milled near the bridge railing. A six-foot stretch was blown out of it. Even in the Halloween light she could see where the car had plowed through. A news helicopter circled overhead, grotesque emcee to the party. Two a.m., Bush Street at the Stockton Tunnel, tune in and feast your eyes, people. Last dance at the festival of carnage.
    Jo nudged between a television news crew and a clot of bystanders, and approached the yellow police tape. Her breath frosted the air. It was bitter for October, and diamond-clear. The fog had shriveled away. Even the weather declined to lay its veil over this scene. This was bad, and she had a feeling it was going to be big.
    She called to a uniformed officer standing inside the police tape. "Excuse me. I'm looking for Lieutenant Tang."
    "Amy Tang?"
    "She didn't give me her first name." Just a curt phone call, asking Jo to come to the scene.
    "You the doc?"
    Jo nodded. Though she focused on the cop, the scene behind him expanded to fill her horizon. Brightly lit, the tunnel was a shining m aw that shrank like a snake to the far end. Noise echoed through it, horns and traffic. And dead center in front of it sat the wreck. Though she knew it had crashed down from the road above, for all the world it looked like a metal gob the tunnel had hawked up.
    She was right: bad, and big.
    Car wrecks are either/or. Few are in between. It's either a Band-Aid on the elbow, or mutilation