3
COINCIDENCE
He was a tall, raw boned, old Irish cop whom my partner and I had known for years. Tall and lanky, with a face slammed together with red flesh and unforgiving bone. He had blue eyes and a nose the size of a Goodyear blimp. He could be as hard as tempered steel or as soft as a brand new pair of kid gloves. It all depended on the situation. But the guy was a legend. As a uniformed beat cop for twenty years, Joe Flattery, and his partner Paul O'Connor, had worked on maybe a hundred or more homicide cases. The two had seen it all. Every kind of murder. From crazies going berserk to crazies going all Dr. Moriarty on their victims. But as the four of us stood in the small strip mall office, one glance at the faces of the two uniformed officers told the complete story. This was a
