As Jonny lay helpless in the webbing of his sex swing, staring down the blue-black eye of the pistol she’d just slid from her garter, the room smelled of cheap perfume and bad decisions. It hit him then—this wasn’t just another luscious dame chasing a bedtime story about a roll in the hay with a famous detective. Her voice trembled, but the muzzle didn’t. “Your incompetence killed my Daddy,” she said, tears bright as broken glass in those beautiful eyes. “You let him face the hangman’s noose for a crime he didn’t commit.” Revenge had a pulse, and it was thudding in his ears. She was about to pull the trigger when fate padded down the stairs on four short legs—Boris, on his third midnight snack—who let loose a flying judo kick that sent the gun clattering like loose change across the floor.
They both remembered the case like yesterday, back when they were flatfoots pounding a beat and believing the badge meant something. They’d had the goods on the real killer—a big shot tucked into the Van Nuys comptroller’s office—but the department took care of its own in those days. Evidence went missing, reports got rewritten, and the noose tightened around James Cleveland: decent man, community pillar, father to a baby girl who’d grown up feeding on the cold diet of injustice. One look at her anguished face told Jonny and Boris the truth they couldn’t dodge anymore. The past had come calling with a loaded gun, and it was time to reopen the case—this time with the lights on and no favors owed.