Niles stayed on the windowsill and stared down at his empty food bowl.
‘I get the hint,’ his owner said, taking another swig of beer.
She walked into the pantry and carried out the bag of lams Less Active.
Tm gonna tell you this right now,’ his owner said as she filled Niles’s handmade ceramic food bowl, ‘if you walked on my keyboard again or screwed around under my desk and unplugged anything, you’ve had it.’
Niles jumped down silently and crunched on his boring, fat-free, meatless food.
West left the kitchen for her office, dreading what she might find. Abyssinians were unusually intelligent cats, and Niles certainly went beyond the norm, which was a problem since he was curious by nature and didn’t have enough to do.
‘Goddammit,’ West exclaimed. ‘How the fuck did you do that?’
Glowing on her computer screen was a crime map of the city. That simply could not be possible. She was certain the computer had been turned off when she left the house that morning.
‘Holy shit,’ she muttered as she seated herself in front of the terminal. ‘Niles! Get your butt in here right now!’
Nor did she remember the map’s colors being orange, blue, green and purple. What happened to the pale yellow and white spaces? What were all these small, bright blue fish icons clustered in second precinct’s beat 219? West looked at the icons one could click on at the bottom of the screen. Homicides were plus signs, robberies were dots, aggravated assaults were stars, burglaries were triangles, vehicle thefts were little cars. But there were no fish, blue or otherwise.
In fact, there was no such thing as a fish icon in COMSTAT’s computer network, absolutely not, and she could think of no explanation whatsoever for why beat 219 was filled with fish, or why the beat was outlined in flashing blood red. West reached for the phone.
CHAPTER eight
Andy Brazil also lived in the Fan, but on Plum Street in a fifteen-foot-wide row house with a flat roof and cornices of plain brick, and old plumbing and appliances, and creaking hardwood floors scattered with worn-out braided rugs.
The house was furnished and owned by the old spinster Ruby Sink, a shrewd businesswoman and busybody, one of the first who heard the NIJ team was coming to town and might need a place to stay. As it so happened, she had one vacant rental property she had been trying to fill for months. Brazil had taken it sight unseen.
Like West, he regretted his choice in living accommodations. The trap he had fallen into was plain to see. Miss Sink was rich, lonely, cranky and a compulsive talker. She popped over whenever she wished, ostensibly to check on the small patch of landscaping in front, or to make sure no repair work or touch-ups were needed, or to bring Brazil homemade banana bread or cookies and to inquire about his job and personal life.
Brazil climbed the steps to the front porch, where a package was propped against the front screen door. He recognized Miss Sink’s fussy cursive penmanship on the brown wrapping paper and got depressed. It was late. He was exhausted. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t gone to the store in days. The last thing he wanted was another one of Miss Sink’s cakes or tins of cookies, which was sure to be followed by yet another visit or a phone call.
‘I’m home,’ he irritably and sarcastically announced to nobody as he tossed his keys on a chair. ‘What’s for dinner?’
He was answered by a dripping faucet in the guest bath down the dark paneled hall. Brazil began unbuttoning his uniform shirt as he walked in the direction of the master bedroom, on the first floor and barely big enough for the double bed and two chests of drawers.
He unsnapped his holster and slipped out the Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol, setting it on a bedside table. He unbuckled his duty belt, took off his boots, pants and lightweight body armor. He rubbed his lower back as he headed to the kitchen in his socks, briefs and sweaty undershirt. His office was set up in the dining room, and as he passed by it, he was shocked by what was on his computer screen.