The Art of Detection
Chapter One
ONE
Earlier that morning, the call had come while Inspector Kate Martinelli of the San Francisco Police Department was in the middle of a highly volatile negotiation.
"I'll hurt myself," the person on the other side of the room threatened.
"Now, that's no good." Kate's response employed the voice of patient reason that she had clung to for the last few minutes, as she desperately wished that the official negotiator would return and take command.
"Yes it is good." Her opponent saw with crystal clarity that self-destruction was a powerful weapon against Kate.
"Now, think about it, sweetie. If you hurt yourself, it's going to hurt."
The mop of curly yellow hair went still as the green eyes narrowed in thought, and Kate's soul contracted with the weird mixture of stifled laughter and heart-wrenching submission that had welled up inside ten thousand times over the past three years and ten months: The child was so like her mother-her looks, her intelligence, her innate sensitivity-she might have been a clone. Kate pushed the sensation away from her throat and said, still reasonable, ... read full excerpt from The Art of Detection ebook
