Valentino Pier (Rapid Reads) by Reed Farrel Coleman Read Free Book Online Page A

anything. People who blamed aliens or Elvis’s ghost.
    For the first few years, Gulliver shared the tips with the police. Then he stopped. Keisha’s murder was still officially an open case. But even a dead cop’s case is pushed to the bottom of the pile when the trail is cold. The first detectives on the case were now both retired. Gulliver had hoped the detectives who took over would see something the others hadn’t. Fresh eyes can be good. Nothing came of it. It wasn’t that the cops didn’t care. They did. Everybody cared. There was just nothing new.
    Gulliver had to confess that he himself wasn’t as tireless in chasing down leads as he had been. At first, there was no lead he wouldn’t follow. No lead he wouldn’t push the cops to follow. Once he got his PI license, his carry permit, his knife and fighting training, there was no place he wouldn’t go to track down a lead or a suspect. It was a good thing his job paid him well. He had spent a lot of time and money traveling all over to talk to people. He had even gone to Alaska to talk to a retired cop who had worked in Keisha’s precinct for a few months. But, like all the other leads, it came to nothing.
    That cop had some crazy theory about a secret plan inside the NYPD. A plot to do away with cops who refused to join a secret society. It turned out that the guy had a very bad record. That he was trouble no matter where he went. He had been transferred fifteen times in twenty years. He had been on medical leave many times. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why. He was crazy. When Gulliver talked to other cops who had worked with the guy, they all laughed. Nuts . Paranoid . Schizo . Loony . Bonkers . Cuckoo . Wack-job . Out there , was how they described him.
    In the last year Gulliver had lost heart. And he had been so busy with his own cases. He knew Keisha would be okay with that. She’d always wanted him to shed his bitterness. To make a life for himself the way she had. He’d wondered what Keisha would think of Mia. That’s what got him started looking at his old files on Keisha’s murder. And then there was Detective Patrick. It was amazing that of all the detectives in the NYPD, it was Patrick who caught the Ellis Torres case. That happens in life sometimes. Things come together by accident.
    So when Gulliver got back to the loft, he took out his old Keisha files. He felt many things. His heart sank at the huge size of the pile. It was nearly as tall as he was. And that wasn’t even counting the things he had stored on his computer. Thousands of tips. Hundreds of interviews. All of it leading nowhere. Then deep sadness as he recalled identifying Keisha’s body. The horror at the sight of what the bullets had done to her. Then happiness as he recalled how much they had loved each other. It was always the two of them against the world. Then swelling pride for what his sister had done with her life.
    He began looking through the files. One by one. What he noticed was that then-Patrol Officer Samuel Patrick’s name came up a lot. Not in a bad way. Almost ever+. ed he saidy cop in their precinct had said that Sam Patrick and Keisha were friends. That they were close. Even the psycho in Alaska had mentioned that Keisha and Sam were close.
    Gulliver hadn’t paid any attention to that before. It made sense. In the past, he hadn’t been looking for cops Keisha liked. Not her friends. Not the ones she got along with. No. He had been looking for the ones she didn’t like. The ones who gave her a hard time about being black. About being a woman. About being too heavy. About being too tough. About not being tough enough. Yes. When this case was done, he would have to sit down with Detective Patrick. If for no other reason than to be reminded of what was so cool about his sister.
    Lost in the files, Gulliver let time slip away. He barely had time to shower and dress before Mia arrived. Only she didn’t get there. Tick…tick…tick. All of his clocks