Read Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] for Free Online

matter.”
    Trask walked back over and sat down. Not too close. He looked at the gravestone, not at Carter.
    “Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote that the greatest sin of all wasn’t even written in the Ten Commandments. He said that you had to be a man to accept responsibility for your actions, but that you had to be a bigger man to forgive yourself when you didn’t measure up. Otherwise, you were committing heresy by throwing the Maker’s forgiveness back in his face and substituting your own judgment for his.”
    “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”
    “I’m not. They just made me read a lot in school.”
    Carter nodded. “Saint Thomas sounds like a good man who never got his partner killed.”
    “Even if that happened, and I don’t believe it did, there’s another partner waiting for you who’s willing to bet that you’d never let it happen again.”
    Carter scowled at him. “Who is it?’
    Trask stood up and started back over the rise. “You’ll have to see for yourself when you’re ready. I thought it was a good pick.”
    He walked back toward the Jeep.
    Hell if I know who Willie picked to survive your self-loathing, to try to measure up to Juan, but you’re a detective, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got a curiosity chip in your head that’s just as big as mine, and I’m betting that right now you’re really pissed that Sivella told anybody before he told you. You’re also trying to figure out who he picked and who I thought was a good choice. I’ll bet you’re in the Cap’s office in an hour.
    He opened the door to the Jeep.
    I hope it really is a good pick…
    Trask crossed the Potomac on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, circled around the Lincoln Memorial, and headed east on Independence Avenue, driving along the south side of the Capitol Mall. He saw the usual crowds of tourists on the sidewalks on either side of the Mall, gawking at the huge granite buildings, heading for the Monument or the Smithsonian.
    Stay on the Mall, children , he thought. Six blocks the wrong way and you might end up as a statistic. We had hundreds of murders here last year, more if you count the ’burbs.
    He turned southeast where Independence turned into Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed over the Anacostia on the Sousa Bridge. Just past Branch Avenue, he pulled into the parking lot of the Penn Branch Shopping Center. From the street the place looked like a 1960s-vintage shopping mall. There was a tax preparation office, a sandwich shop, and some other storefronts along the façade. Once inside, he found the room number for the Violent Crimes Unit of the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department.
    Trask walked past the detectives’ cubicles in the main room before he found the office of Commander William Sivella. The door was open, and he saw that Barry Doroz was already inside, sitting in one of the worn leather armchairs in front of the desk. Sivella looked up from behind the desk and waved him on in.
    “Hello, Jeff. Any trouble finding the place?”
    “Not at all. This one’s a lot easier to get to than your old command at 7D.”
    The police precincts in the District of Columbia were called districts. Sivella had recently commanded the Seventh District, or 7D, including the southeast area of the city next to the Anacostia River.
    “That it is. We’re on a main drag here. The city owns about half the building now. Just a few shops and other offices left. Otherwise, it’s kind of City Hall East.”
    “I would have thought that Homicide would be in the headquarters building.”
    “It was at one time. Then they split it up and splintered the detectives out to each one of the districts, the theory being that the guys could concentrate on certain neighborhoods and know them better. That system didn’t work. It ignored the mobility that individual killers and gangs enjoy these days. You have one victim in 7D one day, another in 4D the next… same shooter.
    “They reunited the unit and stuck us out here.