A Bitch Called Hope Read Online Free

and a puzzled expression. The jacket she recognized was the same one he kept on a hanger in the cruiser when they’d gone out after shift. He brushed next to Lennox, his sleeve touching hers. He smelled minty fresh like he’d taken a bath in mouthwash. Nobody would guess he’d been swilling beer a half hour ago.
    “Change your mind?” he said to her in a low voice. As if they’d agreed to rendezvous at the Pike house. He turned to the officer. “The techs here yet?”
    If the officer had the wispiest of clues about her and Tommy, he didn’t let on. “Just called, sir. Probably ten minutes at the most.”
    “The body?”
    “Still upstairs. They’re waiting for your go-ahead. Detective Sloane is interviewing witnesses.”
    “My mother found the body,” Lennox said. “I’m here to bring her home.”
    “Your mother?” Tommy turned to Lennox as if it had never occurred to him that she would have a mother. Then he recovered.
    “Go ahead,” he said.
    The officer looked like he wanted to object but caught himself.
    “Show me the body,” Tommy told him.
    Lennox followed them through the open front door.
    Through the foyer into the Pikes’ enormous living room. Big enough so the fifty guests, give or take, could stay out of the way of the cops and EMTs. And judging by the way the guests pressed themselves against the walls and sofa cushions, that looked to be exactly what they were trying to do. Pumpkin-colored walls, russet upholstery, the room looked like it was slowly oxidizing, but in a tasteful way. A twelve-foot Christmas tree stood in the corner. Someone had unplugged the twinkle lights.
    Detective Sloane looked up from a witness and gave Lennox the stink-eye as she crossed the room to where her mother was sitting all by herself on the loveseat beneath the north windows. Aurora looked even smaller than she actually was. Her garnet-colored hair stood up like she’d been pulling on it. She was shivering.
    Lennox draped her leather jacket over her mother’s shoulders and sat down next to her so that their bodies touched, thigh to knee. Aurora was so tiny, the two of them cozied down on half a loveseat. Her mother smelled the way she always did: a braid of Coco Chanel, Listerine and Parliament 100’s.
    Lennox looked over at Sloane who smiled reassuringly at the next witness and motioned her to the chair facing him. The witness hesitated, probably scared to death of Sloane with his horse face and long yellow teeth. Lennox should be the one interviewing these people, and it was killing her to sit here on the sidelines with all the taxpayers.
    How she ended up losing her badge was a story Lennox had told over and over again to the Independent Police Review Authority, to Internal Affairs, and to the Police Board who eventually discharged her ass. Lennox and her partner, John Doran, were the first responders on a level-three assist, officers taking fire at 5260 North Russell. They had heard shots coming from the back of the residence as they pulled up. Lennox sprinted across side yards and vaulted a cyclone fence to reach the neighbor closest to the residence. As she peeked around the corner of the house she saw a man in a black tee shirt lying face down in the packed dirt. He wasn’t moving. Blood, patches of scrub grass, broken glass and a derelict sofa twenty feet from the back porch made up the yard. Two more men sprawled by the sofa, one in uniform, the other in jeans and a leather jacket. Both of them looked to be breathing. One of them groaned. The last officer standing was pinned behind the sofa.
    The shooter on the back porch popped up from a chest freezer long enough to take a shot at the sofa. Lennox sighted her gun from the edge of the house next door. Which is when she recognized Tommy as one of the downed men, the one in the leather jacket. He was collapsed on the ground curled around his wound, blood seeping into the ground from his body.
    What Lennox was supposed to do: wait for the cavalry so as