Read Blowout for Free Online Page A

stepfather?”
    She felt her mother flinch. She was listening. Callie hoped that Detective Raven—what kind of name was that?—had something to tell them. He didn’t answer her immediately because he was looking out the back window to see if any of the media were following. He turned back and said, “All we know so far is that we have one guard, Henry Biggs, who’s in the hospital unconscious because someone whacked him on the head when he went out for a smoke, took his clothes and waltzed right into the building. When Officer Biggs regains consciousness, and the doctors aren’t saying yet if he’ll make it, then we’ll find out all the details. The guards didn’t pay much attention, probably because the killer looked enough like Henry Biggs in size. So that means the uniform fit him well enough.
    “The FBI forensic teams are superb. You can bet they will come up with some evidence. It’s rare that a murderer leaves a pristine crime scene.”
    “The man who killed my stepfather must have followed him around,” Callie said, “learned his routine, hung around the Supreme Court Building, learned the guards’ routines. Someone had to have seen him, noticed him. Wait, there’s closed-circuit TV in the building. The cameras would show him, wouldn’t they?”
    “Yeah, we’re already checking the security tapes to see if the killer shows us any features we can use to identify him. The guy had to have visited the building several times, probably in one of the tours. Maybe we’ll see him.”
    Callie was stroking her mother’s gloved hands, staring through the windshield at the soft snow. “So that leaves us right now with no obvious motive, and a guard in the hospital with a cracked skull, still unconscious so we can’t talk to him. What does he look like?”
    “The Supreme Court marshal told us that Biggs is tall, beefy through the chest, a white guy, around fifty. So our guy can’t be that far off in appearance. I assume you got home before midnight last night, Ms. Markham?”
    “Why yes I did. And isn’t this just lovely. I’m a suspect.”
    “It’s my job, ma’am. I’m just doing my job.”
    Again, Callie wanted to smile, but didn’t. “Do you know,” she said slowly, turning to look out the car window, “I can accept that he’s dead, intellectually.” But there was nothing intellectual about how devastated her mother was. She supposed that it would hit her soon, but for now, she had to protect her mother. It gave her mind focus.
    Margaret said, not looking up from Callie’s shoulder, “Callie wasn’t supposed to be home until tomorrow, Detective. We were having a surprise birthday party for her.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Califano. How old are you tomorrow, Ms. Markham?”
    “Twenty-eight, Detective Raven. How old are you on your next birthday?”
    “Thirty-two on March twentieth.”
    Margaret raised her head. “My daughter wouldn’t kill anyone, Detective.”
    Callie said, “Well, the thing is, Mom, if I’d had a gun last night, I might have shot that jerk Jonah. As for the bimbo he was with, I thought about drop-kicking her out the window.”
    Ben grinned, couldn’t help himself. He was suddenly thrown against the door. Bobby was slipping and sliding all over the street, which was, thankfully, empty. Only cops and idiots would be out in this. It was only another mile or so to the Daly Building. He watched a big black SUV slide very gracefully across the road into a fire hydrant, barely missing an old Caddy. It was a strange moment, he thought, sitting next to this woman, her grief palpable, her life as she’d known it gone in a flash.
    “Yes, Detective Raven, I got home about eleven o’clock last night. Delta Shuttle from La Guardia into Reagan. It never even occurred to me to stay in New York.”
    He would check that she’d been on board that Delta flight from New York City in any case.

CHAPTER
5
    T HE H ENRY J. D ALY B UILDING
M ETROPOLITAN P OLICE H EADQUARTERS
J UDICIARY S