Page 30 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

“Two minutes for friends. Five minutes for police. He needs rest. Also, I have him on a hydrocodone drip for the pain, so he may be a little loopy. Best to save the important questions for tomorrow. Good luck,” she said, and scurried down the corridor to save more lives and spread her special brand of joy.

The four of us entered Shane’s room. His face lit up when he saw Kylie. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Did you catch the guy?”

“Not yet,” she said, leaning over and kissing him. “But we will.”

Edlund cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” Kylie said, stepping away from the bed. “Theywill.” She turned back to Edlund. “Can I at least ask him what happened? You know, asking for a friend.”

“I’ll ask,” Edlund said. “You can listen. Can you tell us what happened, Mr. Talbot?”

“I’m not sure,” Shane said. “I was checking out a crate of eggplants. I lifted my head up to order some, and I saw this man standing eight, maybe ten feet away with a gun pointing straight at me.”

“When you’re up to it,” Edlund said, “we’d like to get you together with a sketch artist.”

“He was white, about my age, but beyond that, I don’t think I’ll be much help. All I could see was that gun. My brain, my body—everything froze. And then... bang!”

“Did he say anything before he pulled the trigger?” Kylie blurted out.

I could see the look of exasperation on both Edlund’s and McDaniel’s faces. Kylie was pushing the envelope, but they let it go.

Shane caught it too. He winked at the two cops, then turned to Kylie. “Yeah, babe. I’m pretty sure he said, ‘Thirty dollars for a bowl of linguini with white clam sauce? You’re gonna die, motherfucker.’”

Kylie flipped him the bird. Edlund, McDaniel, and I all cracked up. It’s a rare moment to watch my partner get her comeuppance.

“Your two minutes are up,friends,” McDaniel said. “Time to go.”

“Wait. Hold on,” Shane said. He buried his head in one hand and massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. I had seen it before. Victims can sometimes be so overwhelmed by the trauma that they let the little details fade. But when you’re a cop, there are nolittledetails. We stood in silence as Shane tried to pull a critical memory from hisdrug-alteredbrain.

“Fuck!” he said, his head snapping up quickly. “Hedidsay something. It made no sense, so I guess I didn’t process it.”

“What did he say?” Kylie asked.

“‘Hell hath no fury.’”

“Hell hath no fury,” Kylie repeated. “You mean ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

“He didn’t say ‘like a woman scorned,’” Shane said. “If he did, it was after he pulled the trigger.”

“Do you know what woman he could have been talking about?” Kylie asked.

“Kylie,” Edlund said, shooting her a look. “I think he needs some time to recoup from the surgery.” He turned to Shane. “And, Mr. Talbot, this is very encouraging. More details may come back to you. For now we just want you to rest.”

Kylie knew she had pushed the other two cops to the limit. She walked back to the bed, whispered something in Shane’s ear, and kissed him. Deeper, longer than she had when she first walked in. She held his hand and gazed into his eyes for another ten seconds, let it go, and left the room.

I don’t know which was harder for her: to walk away from the man she was crazy about, or not to beknee-deepin the investigation.

Fortunately, we had two homicides to keep us busy.

CHAPTER 21

It had been fivehours since Kylie and I bolted out of Selma Kaplan’s office and raced to the hospital. We had called Captain Cates immediately to tell her that Shane had been shot, but it was the wrong time to fill her in on what Selma dug up overnight.

Now we were back at the station, and Cates was wrestling with the bomb we’d just dropped. Someone had tried to murder Curtis Hellman six months ago, and our prime suspect was the untouchable Brooke Hellman.

Cates sat at her desk, her right elbow digging into the arm of her chair, her mouth and chin resting on the knuckles of her right hand. It’s the familiar pose of Rodin’s bronze sculptureThe Thinker, and when the captain is in statue mode everyone else in the room knows to keep their mouth shut.

“It’s all circumstantial,” Cates said, breaking the silence. “I can think of a dozen reasons why Hellman got the wrong dose of insulin, any one of which would be all Sonia Blakely needs to convince a grand jury that the DA doesn’t have a case.”

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