Read Online The Cold Room by J.T. Ellison - Free Book Online

subtly—a command shift here, a group moved there, and Taylor hadn’t worried about it too much. A new chief would certainly have new plans. And then he started replacing the upper levels of management with his own people.
    He followed with a Machiavellian administrative swoop, moving many of the criminal investigative detectives into the six separate city precincts. By splitting up seasoned teams and bringing in new people, the homicide close rate of eighty-six percent dropped to a measly forty-one. Decentralization of the homicide teams had been only one of the huge shifts in the past few years. Buyouts and early retirements cut a swath through the experienced ranks of the detective division—all of the Criminal Investigative Division groups had been affected.
    Despite the vociferous complaints by the rank and file, the realignments went on. The new chief publicly claimed that the crime rates were dropping dramatically, when in actuality there was simply some creative accounting going on. One of the new guidelines that upset Taylor was the new definitions for rape. An assault could no longer be called a rape unless there was penile penetration. Taylor knew a few women who’d gotten away by the skin of their teeth, had been forced to fellate an attacker, had been beaten and terrorized, but it was only categorized as a sexual assault.
    It burned her to no end, these little petty political plays. Her force was being dismantled, slowly, but surely.
    Her own world had suffered the most dramatically of all. Taylor’s team was known as the murder squad. They worked out of the old offices, handled high-profile cases. To be on the murder squad, you had to be the cream of the crop. As the homicide lieutenant, Taylor had run it for three years. The loyalties of her men and women were unassailable, and they’d managed to get past the decentralization and keep on solving crimes, which was the only purpose they had.
    But Captain Delores Norris was the new head of the Office of Professional Accountability, and hated Taylor with a passion. They’d gone head-to-head, and for now, Taylor had lost, and big. Her team had been split apart, reassigned to other sectors and her boss, Mitchell Price, fired. Price was fighting tooth and nail to get his job back, and the Fraternal Order of Police was backing him to the hilt. They just needed time to make the case and take Metro to court.
    By breaking her away from Lincoln Ross and MarcusWade, trying to force her sergeant, Pete Fitzgerald, into early retirement, Delores Norris guaranteed herself a spot on Taylor’s shit list. But getting Taylor demoted two spots, back to detective…Well, Taylor was fighting that with her union rep strong at her side. Totalitarianism had no place in this police force, and it would, eventually, be eradicated. All it would take would be a massive mistake on the chief’s part, or a mayor with the balls and foresight to concede his city was being torn apart.
    But for the meantime, if Taylor wanted to keep her job, she had to show up in her old office and play nice. And that’s exactly what she planned to do.
    She was about to swipe her pass card when the door swung open. A group of young Academy cadets clattered out and down the stairs, happy and joking. One solemnly stopped and held the door for her. Once the path was cleared, she smiled at the young man and entered the CJC.
    She followed the blue arrows embedded in the linoleum floor to the Homicide offices. The halls were relatively quiet and she was inside the small room within moments.
    Lieutenant Elm stood in the door to her—no, his—office. His arms were crossed, his bushy brown hair smoothed into place. He greeted her with a smile, which completely caught her off guard. She almost saw his third molars as the smile widened, a pink tongue nestled deep inside.
    â€œGood morning, Detective,” he said. Pleasant, nonthreatening, disarming. Taylor wasn’t