Beneath swirling clouds of hate, the Special Crimes Team struggles to maintain a beacon of hope. Innocent lives are lost as hatred rains down like a monsoon in spring.
Vandalism of a women’s center whose co-founder wears a hijab; an old homeless woman beaten unconscious dies of her injuries. A lesbian woman attacked and raped in her own garage; her home vandalized.
The minister of a storefront, white supremacist church posts encouragement to the perpetrator as news of these crimes hits the streets.
Sergeant Nita Slowater and the Special Crimes Team follow a bloody trail that twists through a morass of hate rhetoric and a long history of violence. The urgency to stop this predator ramps up when a drive-by shooter takes aim at Nita and her wife, Dawn Samira, as they jog along a public roadway close to their home.
Seattle has always prided itself on inclusiveness and diversity. Is the city about to show a far different face to the world? Are these random attacks against minorities or is something more sinister arising from the busy streets of Seattle?
Excerpt
Prologue
May 16
Monday 3 a.m.
The light of the half-moon couldn’t conquer the city lights and reach the darkened building. A light pole topped with a halogen lamp stood more than half a block away. The small puddle of dirty-white light barely scratched the surrounding area. At this hour in the morning, Seattle belonged to the homeless and the drunks and the gangs.
This area of Aurora Avenue, however, clung to a desperate civility and the gangs and the whores weren’t very interested in it. Consequently, the night lay undisturbed, except for a homeless man sleeping in a doorway, cuddling his wine bottle. Two figures dressed in dark clothes and full-face ski masks climbed out of an old beater car that hung onto the dull shine of some dark color.
Gravel from the small parking lot crunched beneath their shoes as they made their way to the back door of A Woman’s Place. With a swift kick, the jamb gave way and the door swung inward. The two strode inside with only the blank faces of commercial buildings and sleeping apartment buildings encircling the women’s center to witness the invasion.
As the smaller figure headed through the double doors leading from the kitchen to the open area in front, the sound of breaking dishes filled the air.
After a while, the person walked from the kitchen into the open area and set down three gallon jugs of blood. Ski mask rolled up to the forehead, hands propped on hips, a scowl marred the ordinary face. “This is a piss poor job! What’s wrong with you? You love sand niggers?” Booted feet stomped a plastic truck and gloved hands tore the head from a baby doll then flung it down.
“No! You know I don’t, but the kids...” Panicked eyes flashed to the smashed toys.
The back of a hand lashed across the protester’s cheek. The skin on the cheekbone split and a trickle of blood ran from the wound. “They’re as much a sand nigger as their mommas and daddies.
The only way to get rid of lice, my daddy said, was to kill the nits. Get this blood splashed around; and do a decent job this time.”
Once the jugs were empty, the two figures tossed them to the floor and headed toward the kitchen. The double doors from the kitchen swung open and an elderly woman walked in.
Dark eyes blazed from a walnut brown face. She studied the pale faces not yet hidden again behind the rolled up ski masks. “You’ve done evil this night. May Allah have....”
Before the old woman completed the sentence, a fist slammed into her face. Her cheekbone shattered from the impact as she fell toward the sharp corner of one of the children’s broken tables.
The third book in the funny Silver Sisters Mysteries series. The twins and their 80 year-old mother and uncle get into trouble sleuthing in Sin City.
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Do you love a Mystery? How about a Ghost Story? Grab some pure entertainment! Enter the world of “Nancy Drew Meets CSI”. Follow the new girl detective, Annie Tillery, as she navigates her way through intriguing plots with good forensic science, narro
