Chapter Eight
As a beat officer and then detective in the NYPD for over ten years, I had seen enough to put people off policing for life. Mutilated bodies, industrial accidents, even kids with their lives cut brutally short, but the moment I stepped from Homicide onto the first-floor walkway and looked down into the main lobby of the 10th Precinct Station, it sucked the breath from me.
If there was ever a vision of hell, this was it. The entire space was burning floor to ceiling. Sections of the wall had crumbled, exposing the guts of the structure. Holes punched through from the outside made it look as though someone had taken a Howitzer to the building. Overhead, the modern designs and decorations had gone up like kindling. The sprinklers should have kicked in at the first sign of smok
