Dust Up: A Thriller by Jon McGoran Read Free Book Online

that what you’re telling me?”
    He let out a sigh. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
    I nodded and got up to go.
    As I walked out of his office, he called after me, “I’ll talk to Myerson, Warren’s lieutenant. Make sure he follows up on that other stuff.”
    *   *   *
    I walked out of his office, past my desk, out of the squad room, and down the steps and onto the street. Part of me was proud of myself, of my maturity, of my willingness to let it go, to get past the stubbornness that I usually allowed to ruin my life and my career. But mostly, I felt like I was giving up when I knew something was wrong, when I knew someone bad was getting away with something, someone good was going down for it, and someone stupid was having their way with how the world should be.
    I wanted alcohol, not for its intoxicating qualities but as a disinfectant, to cleanse myself of the slime that seemed to cover me. Okay, maybe not just for the cleansing properties. But it was nine thirty in the morning—getting loaded might have made more of a statement than I was really intending to make.
    Instead, I got coffee.
    The Roundhouse is on the eastern edge of Chinatown, hemmed in by the Vine Street Expressway to the north and a caffeine desert of museums, monuments, and parks to the south and east. I headed west to Ray’s Café, a Taiwanese teahouse with good, strong coffee made with a strange siphon contraption that one of these years I was going to ask about.
    The girl behind the counter asked me if I wanted one of their little cookies to go with my coffee. I said no. They didn’t seem to match my mood, and I didn’t feel like I deserved a cookie, walking away from a botched case like that. But I regretted it the whole time I sat at the counter drinking my coffee.
    When I was finished, I ordered a coffee to go. And a cookie.
    Stepping back outside, I felt better. The caffeine helped. So did the cookie. My insides were still churning over walking away from the case, basically acknowledging that it would probably never be solved, and we would never learn who killed a stranger on our doorstep.
    I put the last of the cookie in my mouth, trying not to let those thoughts sour the taste of it, when I noticed a black Toyota Corolla pacing me down Ninth Street.
    The driver was wearing a wig and shades, and as she pulled up next to me, she lowered her window.
    “You’re looking for me. You found me. Get in.”
    It was Miriam Hartwell.

 
    15
    We stared at each other through the car window for a couple of seconds. I’m not easily surprised, but this caught me off guard. I didn’t know whether to turn around and keep walking or arrest her on the spot.
    “Okay, never mind,” she said, putting the window back up.
    “Hold on,” I said, getting in.
    Even through her disguise, I could tell she was terrified.
    “You know the police are looking for you?” I asked.
    She laughed, a ragged bark. “Aren’t you the police? Besides, there’s a lot of people looking for me.” Her voice sounded like a poorly played violin.
    We zigzagged up to Eleventh Street, then north into Fairmount. She turned and looked at me, her bottom lip trembling.
    “Are you going to kill me?”
    “What?”
    “Ron and I were going to trust our lives with you. He didn’t get to. If I’m making a mistake by talking to you, I’d just as soon know now.”
    “I’m not going to kill you,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened. Why your husband was shot dead on my front steps.”
    She looked back at me, staring for an uncomfortably long time as we sped up the narrow city streets.
    “It’s a long story,” she said finally, looking back at the road, jerking the wheel slightly. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
    We stayed on Eleventh Street, past once-blighted neighborhoods being gentrified by hipsters and young professionals, through Temple University and the newer public housing projects, houses with porches and window boxes where