Author: J.A. Jance
. P. Beaumont may be an old homicide hand now, but back when he was a rookie working with his first partner, Milton Gurkey - a.k.a. Pickles - things took a turn for the worse . . . One day, at the end of Beaumont and Pickles's shift, a stop at the Doghouse restaurant quickly turns deadly. Not feeling well, Pickles steps out into the parking lot for a breath of fresh air and stumbles into a crime in progress. Suffering from a heart attack, he is found unconscious, with a dead woman on the ground nearby and the murder weapon in his hand.