Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel by Steve Martini Read Free Book Online Page B

nailed by a sniper.
    Before I can even ask her, Harry says, “Fine, let’s have Brenda do it!” Ever helpful, he’s quick to give me a hand, making points with my secretary. I will owe her a lunch, and Sofia, when I can get her to call in, will owe her an apology.
    I finish dictating some letters into the computer behind my desk and check my watch. It’s just before noon. I’m thinking of grabbing Harry and getting some lunch when the phone on my desk rings. I turn and look. It’s the com line. I pick it up. “Yes?”
    Sally’s voice: “There’re two detectives here from the sheriff’s department to see you.”
    For a moment I think maybe I’ve blown a scheduled appointment. It wouldn’t be the first time. I check my watch to see if it’s stopped and glance at the calendar. But both my watch and the clock on my desk say no and my calendar is clear.
    “What’s it about? Did they give you a client name?”
    “No. Just a business card.”
    “Ask ’em for the client’s name and pull the file, please,” I tell her.
    She checks. I hear the muffled voices as she covers the mouthpiece with her hand. When she comes back on the line she says, “It’s not about a client. It’s something private. They want to talk to you.”
    The way she says it triggers an alarm in my head and acid in my stomach.
    “Show them in.” I hang up, turn, and dim the screen behind me. Before I can swing back around there’s a rap on wood from the outside.
    “It’s open.”
    As it does I look up. A hulking shadow in a dark suit stands there filling my doorway. He’s big enough to play linebacker for the NFL but looks old enough to be retired. I’m guessing in his early fifties, close-cropped hair, something between an old flattop and a butch. What’s left of it is losing the battle to the rebels in the war between the brown and the gray.
    “Mr. Madriani?”
    “Come in. Have a seat.”
    As he clears the door I can see the other one, younger, more dapper, blond, tall, and lean in tan slacks and a dark polo shirt. He strolls in and navigates around the mountain that is his partner. His unbuttoned blue blazer flashes open so that he gives me a peek at the bulge of brown leather and black gunmetal threaded onto his belt. It’s accented by the glint of brass from the shield on his other side.
    The older man in the wrinkled serge suit says, “I take it you are Paul Madriani?” They don’t sit, they just stand there looking down at me. The dour expression on his face, his tone, the way he looks at me like an insect under glass, cause me to wonder if they’re about to arrest me.
    “I am. Is there something I can help you with?”
    “I’m Detective Brad Owen. This is my partner, Jerry Noland. We’re with the sheriff’s Homicide Unit. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you. You have an employee by the name of Sadie Maria Leon?”
    The flood of adrenaline to my heart gives birth to a surge of panic. I read it in his eyes, hear it in the undertaker’s tone of his voice, a message he has delivered a thousand times. The oracle of pitiless loss. I know what is coming, but I don’t want to hear it.
    “No. No. The girl who works here, her name is Sofia.” I shake my head. “You’ve got the wrong person.” I want them to go away.
    He looks at a notebook in his hand. “Name on the driver’s license reads Sadie Maria—”
    “Our girl uses the name Sofia.”
    “She did,” says the younger cop. “But not anymore. She’s dead.” He drops Sofia’s business card on my desk directly in front of me. Disbelief slams at light speed into the wall of reality. “We found that one and several more just like it in the purse near her body.”
    The brief moment of premonition is not enough to dampen the shock. I sit there as my paralyzed brain tries to cope. Denial and desire freeze time as my mind scrambles madly to swim back up the river to those golden seconds of safety before they knocked on my door.

EIGHT
    A re you all