Read Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series) for Free Online Page B

parking garage across the street from her office Sarah was thinking about which of her clients to call first, assuming, of course, that one of them hadn’t already beaten her to the punch and left a panicked message recounting the day’s first crisis. She was too preoccupied to notice that the blue station wagon that had followed her all the way down Sutter Street had parked only a few spaces away.
    •   •   •
    LEE’S QUICK SEARCH of old News’ stories had yielded a rough portrait of Detective Bobbie Connors as a woman accustomed to being first. She had been first in her class at the police academy as well as the first black woman to make detective in the San Francisco police force. Connors also had been the first lesbian cop to walk in uniform in San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride parade.
    She was 42 and had a reputation as one of the department’s top homicide detectives. Lee guessed that she had gotten a rough reception early in her career from the old-line cops, including the top brass, who were predominantly white, Irish and macho. She must be both smart and tough to have gotten where she was.
    Lee almost hadn’t bothered calling on Connors. He figured the follow up to the deaths of Judge Gilbert and Orson Adams would be handled by the police and court reporters. But, every time he tried to focus on one of his feature assignments, the questions kept pulling him back. What did it add up to? How did Sarah’s brush with death figure into it, if it did at all? Maybe Connors knew something that helped it make sense. At least he could share his concerns with the detective. Maybe she could figure out what the hell was going on.
    Connors was dressed casually, wearing khaki pants and a white golf shirt. She had a tiny cubicle to herself created from thin, plastic partitions colored white and pale green. On one wall hung a framed poster of two women in a convertible advertising the movie “Thelma and Louise.” On her desk sat a Chicago Bears helmet. She flashed Lee a friendly smile.
    “Scoop. Or should I say, ‘Mister Lee.’ We meet again.”
    “Thanks for seeing me,” said Lee.
    “Always happy to spend time with the press,” said Connors. “Take a load off.” She gestured to the single chair in front of her desk.
    “Thanks,” said Lee, settling down. “So…uh…did I get the story right?”
    “About the judge? Yup. No complaints here.”
    “That’s nice for a change,” said Lee. “Say, you’re handling the Orson Adams case, too, right?”
    “You got that right,” said Connors. “Busy week.”
    “Anything new on that one?”
    Connors grimaced and shook her head slowly.
    “We’re working on it,” she said. “We’re working on it.”
    “Do you expect any developments soon?” Lee tried again.
    “Can’t say. I’ll let you know if something breaks, though.”
    “Okay. Thanks,” said Lee. He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.
    “Listen,” he continued. “Something happened yesterday that I thought you might want to know about. In the morning…right outside the News building…a young woman was hit by a van. She wasn’t hurt badly. But, it was a hit-and-run, just like Adams. I saw it happen and it looked like the driver tried to hit her. I thought there might be a connection.”
    “Was there any ID on the van or the driver?” asked Connors.
    “Not much,” said Lee, shaking his head. “It was a maroon Chrysler. No one got the license number. Someone saw a driver with long hair but they didn’t know if it was a man or a woman.”
    “Not a helluva lot to go on. Hmmm. Who’s the victim?”
    “Sarah Armstrong,” said Lee. “She’s the niece of Judge Miriam Gilbert.”
    “Oh my goodness! I see…hmmm.”
    “Right.” Lee watched while Connors entwined her fingers and rested her chin on her knuckles as she pondered what he had told her. Lee wondered what other bits of information in Connors’ head might be clicking into place to make sense of the last three