Death and Taxes by Susan Dunlap Read Free Book Online Page A

detective to jump to the conclusion the magnifica had been imperiled.
    I washed and dried the shovel, put it back in the garage, and headed to the house for my swimming gear.

CHAPTER 5
    I KEEP MY SWIMBAG packed so I don’t find myself toweling dry later with no underwear or makeup to put on. I don’t eat before swimming—too much to drag around the pool. So all I have to do is slide into my sweats and VW. The bug almost drives itself.
    I left the house before Howard woke up, closing the door silently, passing the Azalea a bit less magnifìca , tilting inebriately half out of its hole.
    The pool is always crowded at 6:30 A.M. In the fast lanes, if you swim too slow, someone taps your foot and sprints around you. It’s humiliating to be the tappee, and for the tapper infuriating to have to break pace. Swim instructors tell you to take the first laps slowly. Doing that would be like pulling onto the freeway in first gear. The difference is that on the freeway it might get you killed, but at least you wouldn’t have to face the people you’ve held up day after day, afterward—when you’re naked in the shower. I’ve got my diver’s watch (good to 150 feet below, about 135 more than I’m likely to go). I set the stopwatch, and I go all out till my mile is done.
    I was standing at the end of lane 3 adjusting my goggles when Howard walked out on the deck. Lane 4, the other fast lane, was twice as crowded, but he didn’t even waver toward mine. Nor did he give any indication of having noticed the azalea. I pushed off, kicking full out for the next 5,280 feet.
    I was out of the pool and in the redecorated women’s shower before it occurred to me to wonder if Philip Drem had made it through the night.
    Saturdays, Inspector Doyle takes off. Today I was up; I subbed for him. It was 7:35 when I got to the station, which meant no time to do anything but snag a donut from the dispatcher’s box and check the In-Custody tray. Only two prisoners still in from last night. I stashed the donut in my office, gave one of the in-custodys to Al “Eggs” Eggenburger, and hunted up the rap sheet for the other, one Erin Williams.
    Williams had a couple of priors in Contra Costa County to the north. True to form, the rap sheet listed the arrests but not the outcome. I’d have to call Martinez, the county seat in Contra Costa County, for that. In the meantime there were the patrol officers’ reports to scout up. I found them in the patrol sergeant’s box; got the file to the court liaison officer at 7:43, and slid into my chair for Morning Meeting just as Chief Larkin settled in his. Jackson, my fellow in Homicide Detail, passed me a mug of Peet’s coffee, liquid adrenaline.
    “Bless you,” I mouthed.
    Chief Larkin had already started the meeting by the time I spotted Pereira. Beat officers don’t come to Detectives’ Morning Meeting unless they have something germane to report. Griseki, from Vice and Substance Abuse, summarized a cocaine bust on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, but the chief didn’t call on Howard to report his disaster. I took that as a good sign.
    Heling, one of the patrol officers, recounted the latest altercation of the People’s Park free box. “Berkeley’s answer to the Bavarian Christmas Pageants,” she said. “Just as reliable, but more frequent. Citizens leave clothes in the box, street people come to get them, the university starts hauling off the box, a mob forms, Campus Patrol hauls off the demonstrators in the park, we pick up the ones on city land. In a day or two the university relents, and the box returns. At least there were no injuries this time. But tonight’s Saturday night, and virtually the full moon. It could mean another round.”
    I was listening to Heling but watching Pereira, illogically hoping she had taken the squeal on a bank robbery or collared the guy who’d been boosting Mercedes sedans all over the East Bay—anything but bad news on the body I’d last seen being shoved into the