Read A Blind Eye: Book 1 in the Adam Kaminski Mystery Series for Free Online Page B

belonged to my grandmother, who left it to my mother, who passed it on to me. My neighbors all knew my mother when she was young, so it feels like I am always surrounded by family.”
    She smiled, and Adam’s attention was diverted from the beauty of the neighborhood to the beauty of her smile, the faint scent of lavender that surrounded her.
    The tram pushed forward, turning along Warsaw’s crooked streets.

9
    T en minutes later , Adam and Sylvia ascended a short flight of marble steps up to the yellow stone building on Ulica Wilcza that housed Warsaw’s central police station.
    “ Nie! To nie prawda! ” A man’s angry shout greeted them as they entered the cramped space. The man slammed his fist down on the gray countertop as he shouted at the uniformed officer standing behind it.
    Adam and Sylvia stopped short in the entranceway.
    “What’s going on?” he whispered in her ear.
    She put a hand up to touch his shoulder. “I don’t know, something happened to that tall man and they seem not to believe him.” She kept her attention on the scene as she spoke.
    “What are they saying?” Adam asked again.
    “It does not concern us.” Sylvia shook her head as she spoke.
    Adam watched the interaction without understanding a word.
    The man confronting the officers was tall and well dressed, though his elegant clothes were well worn. He rubbed his hand across his forehead as he talked and when he did, Adam could see that he favored his right side, as if he had been recently injured. After the outburst Adam and Sylvia had walked in on, he had not yelled again. But his voice held a tension and anger that did not need translation.
    The response of the two officers behind the desk made Adam question their training. In a similar situation at home, the uniformed officers would take steps to calm and reassure an angry member of the public, either to elicit accurate information or just to get him out of their hair. These officers smirked up at the tall man, rolling their eyes in response to his statements. One leaned heavily against the cracked countertop and rolled a rubber stamp around between his fingers as he spoke.
    A glint of metal from around the collar of the shorter officer caught Adam’s eye, and he jerked his head to the left as he recognized the pendant the officer pulled out from behind his shirt. As the officer fingered the small gold medal of Saint Casimir, the patron saint of Poland, Adam stiffened. His hand reached out for Sylvia’s shoulder, looking for something real. A human touch to keep his mind here, in the present.
    He could see the other Saint Casimir medal as if that Philly cop were standing in front of him. Smell the scent of the lilies. That cop had thought the kids deserved it. Adam could tell by the way he swaggered toward the grave. The way he glanced at the parents out of the corner of his eye. Black kids, center city Philadelphia, of course they deserved it.
    But Adam knew better. And he knew that cop, and others like him, were the reason too many kids were being hurt in the city. With no one to defend them. No one to look out for them.
    Adam felt himself falling. Knew he was at risk of losing himself in the memory. The shame. The anger.
    Finally, a third uniformed officer approached from a back room and said a few sharp words to the two behind the counter. He turned to the tall man. “ Nie możemy pomóc, Panie Kamiński .”
    The words were enough to pull Adam back to the present. Back to the station where the tall man had stopped speaking and was now nodding. Adam tore his eyes away from the medal, trying to forget the past and focus on the present. “What did that officer just say?”
    Sylvia shook her head and frowned but didn’t answer.
    The newly arrived policeman reached under the counter. Producing a sheaf of papers, he pulled off the top sheet and handed it to the officers at the counter. These two shared a look. Adam wasn’t sure of its meaning. Was it derision? Concern? The