The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 21: The Other Side of the Coin

But Dee didn't. And so she was perfectly positioned to jump back into the fray when the penthouse floor of the downtown Sheraton was obliterated nearly two months after the destruction of the house. She was still sorting through the mountain of physical evidence Forensics had gathered there, including a number of rather badly damaged bodies, when, a mere 24 hours later, this happened. Dee slowly shook her head.

"Looks like the war is back on," she mused to herself with a frown, taking the line of police tape in one hand to lift it out of the way.

But before she could hoist the thick yellow plastic up and out of her path, a man's voice called out from behind her.

"Detective McMaster?"

She paused and looked over her shoulder to find a uniformed officer, clad in the swat combat gear that all of the onsite officers were wearing, complete with flak jacket, dark blue combat fatigues and automatic rifle. The name patch on his left breast read 'Peters', the insignia on his sleeve marking him as a constable in the PD.

"Yes, constable?" she replied, slowly easing the tape back into place as she turned to face the uniformed officer.

Peters pulled his heavy helmet off, along with its fireproof inner lining that had covered his head and neck and most of his face. He then flashed her a quick smile before he drew a heavy notebook from a utility pouch on his belt.

"I'm Constable Harry Peters, commander of the rapid response team that first arrived on the scene. I'm assuming by your presence, ma'am, that the mayor's taskforce is about to descend on this crime scene and take possession of it. Would you like what CSI and the onsite officers have gathered so far?"

"Hmmm," Dee said in the way of a reply as she swung her eyes back over what could only be described as a battle scene. The constable was right; the taskforce were coming in here to take this thing over from them. Although not for the benefit of the investigation.

"Yeah," she said after a moment's thought. To hell with Simpkins and her bunch of sycophants. "Why don't you give me what you fellas have found so far, Harry?" A light grin touched her face. "Although I suspect somebody's going to tell me that it's another one of those so-called 'gas explosions'."

Peters grinned tightly as he flipped open his notebook, already filled with several pages of cramped notes.

"Yeah, so says the FD." The grin evaporated as he looked down at his notebook. "But, this time, not only do we have officers that arrived on the scene to catch the last few minutes of the incident, we actually have civilian eyewitnesses. Witnesses that say some sort of fire fight ripped this place apart about a half hour or so ago."

"Fire fight, huh?" Dee couldn't help but smile fiercely. It was in complete confirmation of every suspicion she had about this whole damn affair! Finally, a little hard data that they could rely on. And some gosh damn witnesses to boot!

"I'll need to talk to both the officers and your witnesses. Where are they?"

"The witnesses are over there, with a couple of constables." Peters pointed to a knot of uniformed officers standing closely to a trio of obviously terrified people being looked at by a pair of paramedics. There were two elderly Asians, a man and a woman, and a young white man, maybe in his late teens or early twenties. As Dee let her eyes scan over them, she could see that the young man was literally trembling with reaction as the paramedic looking him over took his blood pressure.

"The couple own a corner store right over there." Again Peters' pointing finger captured Dee's attention as he indicated one of the shops lining the street, its windows shattered, glass liberally spread all over the sidewalk in front of the tiny store as smoke lazily curled out of the seared interior.