The Big Exit Read Online Free Page B

says, feeling his face redden.
    The new nickname comes courtesy of an article written about him in the
Almanac
, a small local paper, about his decision not to retire. Under the state and city’s “3 at 50” pension formula for public safety
     employees, cops who were hired before 2010 could retire as early as age fifty and receive 3 percent of their highest annual
     salary for each year they’d worked for the city, up to thirty years. That meant Madden was eligible to retire and collect
     90 percent of his current salary for the rest of his life. The article’s headline asked, W HY I S T HIS M AN W ORKING F OR M INIMUM W AGE W HEN H E D OESN’T N EED T O ?
    It was a good question, one he should never have agreed to answer. He ended up sounding like a Boy Scout, gushing how he was
     grateful to have been given the opportunity to serve his city in thecapacity he had, even though earlier in his career some people thought his handicap might be a liability. “I happen to love
     my job,” he told the reporter, “I worked hard to get here, and I’m not ready to retire, even if many of my peers have left
     the force. So, call me stupid but I’m happy to work for minimum wage to give back a little to the community that’s given me
     so much.”
    After Billings saw the article, he told Madden he hoped he was running for office or that someone had slipped him some Prozac,
     because that was just about the goddamn hokiest thing he’d ever heard. “Christ, man, I know you think this is Mayberry, but
     Andy Griffith wouldn’t have read that if it was in the script.”
    As a kid, they’d called him Chester after that character on
Gun-smoke
who had a limp. Now he’s Minimum Wage. Not exactly an improvement. Looking at Lyons now, Madden wonders whether he’s taking
     a jab at him or just giving him a little good-natured ribbing.
    “Well, one thing’s clear,” he hears a woman’s voice say from behind the screen. “Guy had good taste in his vehicles. That
     this year’s model, Mr. Lee?”
    “Last,” says Vincent Lee, the diminutive crime-scene photographer.
    Madden walks past Lyons and looks behind the screen. Lydia Ramirez, one of Lyons’s investigators, wearing orange goggles,
     is examining something on the pavement just outside the garage, he can’t tell what exactly, near the front wheel of a metallic
     blue BMW M6, as Lee snaps pictures of the spot. Ramirez is short and muscular, a workout fiend. She’s generally quiet and
     brooding but has a passion for restoring sports cars from the eighties.
    Mark McGregor’s body is positioned exactly as it was when Madden saw it earlier. It’s lying in the middle of the garage next
     to a black Porsche Cayenne parked on the right. What’s interesting is that both the M6 and the wife’s Mercedes SUV are parked
     outside. Inside, the garage is neatly in order, with tools and gardening items either put away in drawers or hung on the wall.
     He makes a mental note to ask Hill about whether they usually left the cars parked outside the garage or pulled them in.
    McGregor’s body is mostly on its stomach, though the right arm is tucked awkwardly underneath so the chest and torso aren’t
     completely flush with the cement floor. However, his head—or rather theright side of his face—is pressed against the floor, resting in a pool of blood that’s six or seven feet in diameter and stretches
     all the way to the wall of the garage. His nose and cheekbone appear to have taken the brunt of one blow and a huge gash is
     open on the right lower portion of the neck just above the clavicle. Three additional deep gashes—one on each side of his
     upper back, the third about eight inches down on the right side—are plainly visible.
    What a goddamn mess
, Madden thinks again. However, the clinical giddiness he felt when he initially encountered the body is gone, replaced by
     a more uncomfortable feeling he can’t quite pinpoint.
    McGregor was twenty-nine when Madden first