Cold Hit
by Stephen J. Cannell
Category: Fiction

What if, under the PATRIOT Act, federal bureaucrats could take murder cases away from local cops—then bury those cases so they're never investigated again? What if government agents could bug your home, your car, your place of business—your entire life—with nothing more than spoken permission from a secret panel of judges? What if the Department of Homeland Security could pull police officers off the street and hold them in cells indefinitely as material witnesses—because they're working on "sensitive" investigations? They can . . . The PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act give enormous power to our nation's top federal law enforcement officials. They operate under the presumption that these officials are honest, diligent, and fair. But what if they're not? In THE COLD HIT, Detective Shane Scully suspects that the regional boss of the Department of Homeland Security is thwarting a major murder investigation. But why? Robert Allen Virtue can act without oversight or accountability. There's no way to question him; there's no way to way to check up on him; there's no way to find out if he's exceeding his authority. Virtually at will, he can bug anyone he considers a threat to national security, take over criminal investigations, and jail cops. Even if he is breaking the law, there's no way to know it. There's nothing to rely on but his integrity. His professional commitment. His good name. Virtue. That may be a very big mistake. Shane and his partner are investigating "the Fingertip Killer," a serial murderer preying on homeless Vietnam vets in Los Angeles. A bullet taken from one victim's skull matches the bullet that killed another man ten years earlier—an unexpected ballistics match linking one unsolved case to another that police call a "cold hit." When the earlier victim turns out to have been an LAPD cop, the investigation becomes very personal for Shane. But there's a problem: Robert Allen Virtue wants him taken off it. To solve the cop's murder, and possibly the Fingertip case, Scully must go behind the powerful bureaucrat's back and deep undercover—where he will begin unraveling a deadly far-reaching conspiracy that threatens to destroy everything he loves: his career, his freedom, and his family.