Page 15 of State of Retribution

“No chance of that around here.Talk to you later.”

“Have a good day.”

“You do the same, Doc.”

Sam joined Vernon in the hallway.“Let me ask you something.”

“Anything you want.”

“How many extra agents were on duty for the event yesterday?”

“We had close to a thousand of our people there, with hundreds each from multiple other agencies as well as perimeter support from the MPD.”

“Wow.”

“That’s pretty typical for high-profile public events like that.”

“It’s amazing to me, even as someone under protection, how the massive presence doesn’t show.”

“That’s the goal.We don’t want to detract from the enjoyment of the event, but we want it to be safe for everyone.A lot of planning and strategy go into it ahead of time.”

“Thank you for that, and please give my thanks to everyone else, too.We appreciate all you do to keep us safe, and we probably don’t say that often enough.”

“I’ll pass that on.It’ll mean a lot to everyone.”

“How close to me do you have to be today?”

“I need to keep you in sight.”

“Good thing we have glass walls around here.”To her team, gathered in the pit, she said, “Morning, citizens.Give me five minutes and then meet me in the conference room.”

“Welcome back, LT,” Detective Cameron Green said.“We missed you.”

“I missed you, too.Not.”

Chapter Four

The others laughed as Sam went into her office to stash her jacket and fire up her computer, experiencing the familiar jolt of adrenaline that came with being in her place with her people doing the job she loved.Despite the grimness of their work, it never got old for her.Maybe that was because she loved the people she got to do that grim work with and knew they loved her right back.That made even the most unbearable days less so than they would be otherwise.

While she often wondered what the rest of their colleagues thought of having the first lady in their midst, she hadn’t received much pushback and had decided no news was good news on that front.The people who mattered to her, the ones she worked most closely with, were supportive, and that was all she cared about.

Sam emerged from her office and headed for the conference room, aware of Vernon following her but keeping her focus where it belonged.The demands of the job took up all the available space in her brain on most days without worrying about what someone else was doing.He’d promised to stay out of her way, and she believed him.

“Hope everyone who wasn’t working had a nice weekend and a happy Easter.Who wants to brief me on the new case?”

“I will.”Gonzo clicked on the space bar of the laptop to display the image of a Black woman with short gray hair and a warm smile on the screen at the front of the room.“Lorraine Sweeny, age sixty-two, was a nurse at the Green Acres Nursing Home in Northeast, which serves a low-income population.She’d worked a three-to-eleven shift on Saturday and was attacked as she walked home from the Metro.Her husband noticed her phone had stopped moving and went to find out what was holding her up.He found her body.”

Sam winced on behalf of the poor man who’d made such a dreadful discovery.“And we’re sure he had nothing to do with it?”

“He was despondent,” Detective Neveah Charles said.“We had him transported to the ER.”

Sam nodded.“What was the cause of death for Mrs.Sweeny?”

“Blunt force trauma to the back of her head with no defensive wounds, which means she never saw it coming,” Green said.

“Are we thinking it was random?”

“Hard to say,” Charles said.“We’re digging into her life, looking for anyone who might’ve had a beef and not finding anything other than that she was a kind, compassionate woman who gave of herself to her patients, her family and her church.From what we can see, she went to work, came home, spent time with friends and family, went to church, rinse and repeat.She had five young grandchildren she was very devoted to.”

---