****SPECIAL EXCERPT--YOU DON'T KNOW ME****

The night of the New York City Policeman’s Ball is shattered by the murders of a young officer, the police commissioner’s wife and Lorna Story, the wife of rising star Detective Owen Story. How can three murders take place in shouting distance of a room full of cops?

Devastated by his loss Owen delves into her death discovering he didn’t know her at all; that she had led a life involving secrets, sex, power and domination and had been strangely involved with Simon Chandler the ambitious police commissioner who drops the hammer on Owen turning him into the most wanted criminal in the city.

Owen runs for his life along a path strewn with obstacles: arrested by his brothers-in-blue in a bloody confrontation, party to his own mind-blowing escape and the last standing in a shoot out. With the help of an old friend and his partner, Owen manages to discover the killer—who was yet not the killer—in a bizarre twist of events not even God could have stopped.


"Lori A. Mathews knows how cops breathe, bleed, talk and suffer---and how they die. You Don't Know Me throws the reader headfirst into a world of violence, crosscurrents, intrigue and betrayal. A great story that will keep you up all night."

Marc Lecard
Author of Vinnie's Head

CHAPTER 1

“They’re all killers you know,” Felipe Montez’s voice trembled even as it rose over the pounding rendition of Benny Goodman’s, Don’t Be That Way. “I’ll step out and one of them’ll shoot me, blow my head all over this clean white kitchen then laugh about it; they’re like that you know--killers. You think I’d lie to you, Jose?”
Jose Ulloa, his co-worker shook his head as he went about collecting the loaded garbage bags.
“They’d think I was stealing instead of making an honest living here,” Felipe straightened to his full five feet two inches and spat in the sink where he was removing dirty utensils from a plastic tub. “How does one of the best nights in the city turn out to be the worst night of my fucking life you tell me,” he glared at Jose who passed by him with the bags.
“And you’re no better wasting your night off doing a favor for Sam-the-Man; no way I’d done it; not tonight. I wouldn’t be here now if Karas wasn’t on my ass about taking too many days off. Can I help it my mother’s sick and needs me? Man, if I could help it I wouldn’t be fifty miles near this place,” he jerked his head toward the kitchen door, “and los puercos.”
He put a hand on his pot belly, the other in the air, closed his eyes and rolled his hips to the music coming from the ballroom, “I’d be out in the street listening to Celia and dancing with a caliente little mama who can’t wait to get me home and naked.”
“You’re complaining as usual,” Jose said and bumped open the kitchen’s screened back door. “And dreaming as usual too,” he added as he left.
He walked down the alley thinking that the music was so loud outside it seemed to bounce from wall to wall. He was feeling good tonight and for once didn’t mind hauling the trash down to the rat-infested dumpster. No one else had wanted to work this evening’s shift and for two good reasons; reason number two, it was a warm and gorgeous night rarely seen in New York in late October, too beautiful to sacrifice to work. Reason number one, the most important, was because of who was attending the gala function in the main ballroom.
Sam, the head busboy, had begged to switch shifts with him. He’d come with his broad red face plastered with a grin, as he asked the favor in bad Spanish and had even sweetened the deal with an extra thirty bucks for what he’d called ‘Jose’s trouble’.
Though he would never tell Sam this, he would’ve taken his shift anyway and not because the man had practically gotten down on his knees and begged or for the extra cash, but because he had no problem helping out a co-worker, even one like Sam-the-Man who called him a ‘spic refugee’ behind his back.
At the dumpster Jose tossed over the bags; one of them missed the opening and dropped to the other side. He stood deciding if he should just leave it there, but if he didn’t retrieve it, rats by the truckload would tear it apart and he’d be left with a bigger mess to clean up.
He walked around back of the dumpster and screamed; a high pitched wail of terror that drowned out the thumping music and everything else except for the sight at his feet. A man and two women lay dead, obscene amounts of black blood pooled around their bodies, this was bad enough, what was worst were the rats; ten, more than ten and all the size of puppies slunk back and forth across the corpses sipping at the blood. As he watched frozen, one of them, its whiskers heavy with dripping blackness, took a nip out of the soft flesh underneath the dead man’s chin, sat up on its haunches and stared at Jose as it chewed.
At this, Jose’s nerve broke, he ran screaming and throwing terrified glances over his shoulder as if he were being chased by a rat welding a torn off body part. He slammed face first into the backdoor and didn’t feel it as he snatched the door open and almost fell into the room.
He collided with Felipe who dropped a tray of dirty glasses, the breaking glass sounded like gunshots, “Policia, policia,” Jose screamed and ran pass Felipe who stared after him.
Cursing, Felipe bent over the sea of broken glass at his feet. It took him a minute to register what Jose had yelled before he turned toward the fleeing man and yelled back, “Policia? Who needs a fucking cop? Ain’t it bad enough the place is crawling with them.”