by Steven Henry
Erin didn’t even bother asking. She knew these guys, some of them personally, and knew they weren’t going to give the cops a single thing they could use. She saw no point in embarrassing herself more than she already had.
“Okay,” Vic said to Erin after his fruitless canvassing. “How many of these jokers are we arresting?”
“I guess the question is what we’re arresting them for,” she replied. “What’s Webb think?”
“I haven’t asked him,” Vic said. Webb was still out back handling the latest scene, probably wishing he had two or three packs of cigarettes. “I think it’s your call. Aiding and abetting?”
“Aiding and abetting whom?” she replied. “Siobhan wasn’t a fugitive yet.”
Vic sighed. “I’d really, really like to bust Cars Carlyle for something. I swear, that guy’s suits must be made of Teflon. Everything just slides right off him.”
“Maybe another day,” Erin said diplomatically.
“At least we’ve got his boy, Thompson,” Vic said more cheerfully. “It’s not everyone commits a homicide right in front of ESU. He’s going down.”
Erin was silent. She wasn’t at all sure of that.
“Can’t we at least take Carlyle downtown for questioning?” Vic almost pleaded.
“I don’t see how it’ll help,” she said. She wanted to talk to Carlyle, but not in front of other officers and not on the record. She gave Carlyle as hard a look as she dared, but he gave nothing away. He just stood there, tight-lipped and tense.
Webb came in the front door, accompanied by a pair of Patrol officers. He walked over to Erin and Vic.
“Any leads?” he asked.
Both of them shook their heads.
“We’ll put out a BOLO,” he said wearily. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. CSU will get here when they can, but they’re a little overbooked, as you may have heard. I’ve got uniforms on perimeter duty.”
“Where’s Thompson?” Vic asked.
“Cuffed in the back of the Cat,” Webb said. “I figured we’d want to talk to him back at the precinct. I don’t see any reason for the two of you to hang around here, if you want to take him in and see what he’s willing to say.”
“Sure thing,” Vic said.
“Hey, can I hitch along?” Piekarski asked, coming over. “My ride’s back at the station.”
They booked Ian and took him into the interrogation room. He was calm and polite the entire time, taking everything in stride. He didn’t lawyer up, but he also didn’t talk. He’d retreated inside himself, to some quiet interior room in his mind. While he sat waiting, hands neatly folded, wrists cuffed, perfectly still, the detectives ran his information in the next room.
“His gun’s legal,” Erin announced.
“No way,” Vic said.
“Yeah. Legitimate concealed carry permit. Serial number’s on file, everything looks clean and aboveboard.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in all my years on the Job,” Vic said. “Doesn’t matter, though. He still shot a guy with it.”
“Okay,” Erin said. “Let’s see what he’s got to say about it.”
“I’ll watch,” Piekarski said. “This should be good.”
“Keep an eye on Rolf for me, would you?” Erin asked. It was better not to take a K-9 into an interrogation room.
“Sure thing.” Piekarski scratched the K-9 between the ears.
Erin and Vic went in. Ian looked at them with a cool, calculating stare. Erin had the feeling he was gauging distances, trajectories, and potential threats. He was a young man, but a very experienced one, every inch a soldier.
“What’s your name?” Erin asked, for the record
“Thompson, ma’am. Ian F.” No smartass answer, no hint that they already knew each other.
“Age?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Occupation?”
“Personal assistant and driver.”
“To whom?”
He paused just a moment. “Mr. Carlyle, ma’am.”
“What were you doing tonight?”
“I was asked to give someone a ride.”
“Who?”
“A friend of Mr. Carlyle’s.”
“What’s the name of this friend?” Vic interjected.
Ian cocked his head slightly. “I didn’t ask, sir.”
“Where were you taking her?” Erin asked, using the female pronoun deliberately.
“Airport, ma’am.”
“Which airport?”
“JFK.”
“What flight was she getting on?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Why’d you start popping off rounds?” Vic demanded.
Ian turned his attention back to the Russian. “I’d heard there might be trouble, sir. I wasn’t able to get out of the way of the police vehicle. When my vehicle was disabled, the airbag deployed. I deflated it with my knife and assessed the situation. The police were containing the threat on my three. I saw a Tango on my nine, in the process of engaging the officers from a flanking position, so I engaged him. Range was about fifteen meters. I fired twice, neutralizing the threat.”
Vic glanced at Erin. Neither of them had ever had an interrogation go quite this way before.
“You’re saying you shot him because he was aiming at us?” Erin asked.
“At you, ma’am. You were in cover behind your vehicle, but open to the flank and rear. He was on your five, in your blind spot.”
“Hold it,” Vic said. “You claim you shot and killed a man to protect the NYPD?”
“To protect Detective O’Reilly, sir,” Ian clarified, angling his head toward Erin.
“You know O’Reilly?” Vic asked.
“We’ve met previously, sir. In her professional capacity.”
“You shoot a lot of people?”
“Not anymore, sir.”
“Not since when?”
“Since my discharge.”
“You shoot a lot of guys before then?”
Ian’s face didn’t change. In fact, it went completely rigid, as if it was carved out of stone. “Some.”
“You like doing it?”
Ian didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question, punk,” Vic said.
Ian looked straight ahead, not making eye contact with Vic. “No opinion,” he said. Erin considered how those words could express a very strong opinion, depending on the context.
“Who told you to take Finneran to the airport?” Vic demanded.
Ian didn’t answer.
“Did Carlyle tell you to?”
Ian continued to stare at a point on the interrogation room wall. Except for a slight tightening of his jaw, he gave no sign he’d even heard.
Vic stood up and leaned forward, planting his hands on the table, putting himself right in Ian’s face. “Look, asswipe, you may think you’re some hotshot Marine. But you’re not a soldier now. You’re a goddamn civilian, in my city, and you don’t get to go around blowing people away just because you feel like it. This isn’t Iraq, you know that?”
Ian blinked slowly and looked at Vic as if noticing him for the first time. “No,” he said quietly, “it’s not Iraq.”
“Your war hero bullshit doesn’t carry any weight with me,” Vic continued. “You got that? Here, now, you’re just another asshole with a gun. You’re going to prison, buddy.”
Ian’s face went still again.
Vic shook his head. “We’re wasting our time,” he said to Erin. “Numbnuts here doesn’t know what’s good for him.” He went to the door and opened it.
After a second, Erin stood up and followed him.
“Vic, what the hell was that?” she snapped, turning on him the moment the interrogation room door closed.
“Huh?” Vic looked genuinely startled. “What’re you talking about?”
“Were you trying to pick a fight with him?”
“Of course I was. I was trying to rattle his cage, shake him up. We do that all the time in interro
gation, Erin. Sheesh. What’s your problem?”
“The war hero thing isn’t bullshit, Vic. You’ve read his file. It’s the truth.”
“So what? That doesn’t mean he gets a pass to come back all screwed up in the head and murder people!”
“This wasn’t murder!”
“He shot a man in downtown Manhattan!”
“A man who was gunning for cops! A man who was about to shoot me!”
“Says him!”
“I saw the gun, Vic! The same guy tried to kill me a couple hours ago!” Erin held up her bandaged hand. “That’s how close he came!”
“I can’t believe you’re defending this guy! He’s one of them!”
“He didn’t commit a crime!”
They stared at each other. In the momentary pause, a woman carefully cleared her throat. The detectives turned to see Piekarski and Rolf peering around the door of the observation room. Rolf’s head was cocked to the side, with his enormous Shepherd ears comically tilted.
“Uh… should I go somewhere else?” Piekarski asked.
“Nah, it’s okay,” Vic said. “Erin’s right. Thompson’s gonna walk. I just… Jesus, he shot a man! You think that’s the only guy he’s killed since he came home?”
“I don’t know,” Erin said quietly. “But we can’t nail guys for what we think they might’ve done.”
“It’s been a long night,” Piekarski said. “You two just need to blow off some steam. In my squad, Logan says everyone gets a freebie after a hard shift.”
“What kind of freebie?” Vic asked.
“A do-over,” she said. “For any one thing we do or say, as long as it’s not illegal and doesn’t get anyone hurt.”
“Good policy,” Vic said. “Look, I’m sorry, Erin. Guess I’m wound a little tight.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Me, too.” She didn’t add that Ian was the guy Vic should’ve been apologizing to, mainly because she figured Vic would rather break his own knuckles with a hammer than apologize to a suspect.
“What else we got to do here?” Vic asked.
“I’ll process Thompson,” she said. “You can take off.”
“You sure? Webb may not want me running out right now.”
“I’m in charge of the unit when Webb’s not around,” she said. “We’ve been on duty almost a full day. Get out of here. That’s an order.”
Vic smiled wearily. “Yes, ma’am.”
Piekarski handed Rolf’s leash to Erin. “See you later, Detective.” Then she walked off with Vic.
Erin watched them go and rubbed Rolf’s head. “Well, looks like someone’s getting some tonight,” she said. "You and I don’t get to go home just yet. You good for a while, kiddo?”
Rolf wagged his tail. He could go as far as she asked him to.
Erin left the K-9 in the observation room for a moment and went back into the interrogation room. Ian was sitting exactly the way he’d been when she’d left. She pulled out her cuff key and unlocked his wrists.
“Sorry about that,” she said quietly.
“No need, ma’am,” he said. “We’re all just doing our jobs.”
“And thanks,” Erin said. “Looks like you had my back. Somehow.”
He looked at her without answering. Erin remembered something she’d heard once about veterans. If you looked in a man’s eyes, they said, you could tell how much war he’d seen. In Ian’s face, she saw a faint echo of all the combat he’d been in, all the bullets and blood and death. She wondered how he could possibly be so calm. Then she saw that he wasn’t calm at all. That was just the surface he showed to the world. Underneath, he was always on duty, always ready to fight. Trauma psychologists called it hyperawareness. He couldn’t help himself. That was how he’d managed, disoriented from a car crash, to maintain his situational awareness enough to see a gunman sneaking up from a direction no one expected. No wonder Carlyle called him the most dangerous man in New York City.
And she was turning him loose. Even stranger, it felt like the right decision.
“You’re free to go,” she said. “I apologize for the in¬con-ven¬i¬ence.”
He stood up. “Thank you, ma’am. Good night.”
Chapter 17
Erin finally left Precinct 8 after taking care of as much of the case paperwork as she could stand. She drove home as the eastern horizon turned pink. She’d been working pretty much around the clock. There was time to grab a shower and maybe sleep a couple of hours before she’d need to be back at the precinct. Doctors and cops, she thought ruefully. Two occupations that couldn’t afford to screw up, and they were the ones expected to run for days without sleep.
She made a mental note to ask her brother how much caffeine a person could take before it became dangerous. Then she realized how crazy that question was, and chalked it up to too much adrenaline and too little sleep. She parked her Charger and got out.
As she stepped out of her car in her apartment’s garage, she saw a black Chevy Suburban SUV she didn’t recognize. It was idling near the exit. Even as she looked at it, she saw a couple of men coming toward her out of the corner of her eye, out of the shadows from the opposite direction.
Erin was tired, but not too tired to recognize an ambush. She’d been bushwhacked in her garage once before, and had promised herself it would never happen again. Before she’d fully identified the situation, she’d unholstered her Glock and stepped back behind her car door, putting it between her and the two guys.
Then she recognized one of them and didn’t feel any better. The lead guy was one of the largest men she’d ever seen. Mickey Connor, former heavyweight boxer, chief enforcer for Evan O’Malley, nearly three hundred pounds of sadistic muscle. The guy beside him looked like one of his heavies, a goon with no neck and enormous arms. Neither one had a weapon in hand, but that was no comfort. Carlyle had warned her that Mickey didn’t need a weapon, didn’t even bother to carry a gun most of the time.
“Come on, O’Reilly,” Mickey said in his rough, gravelly Brooklyn street accent. “We’re going for a ride.”
He continued toward her. Erin gauged the distance. Ten yards. Seven was the magic number, the infamous “twenty-one foot rule.” At that range, they taught cops, a man with a knife was an immediate deadly threat. She wondered how many bullets it’d take to put Mickey down. He was a bulky guy, and he might be wearing a vest. A head shot was chancy, but might be her best option.
“That’s close enough, Mickey,” she said, trying to put an edge of steel in her voice.
He halted. His lips curled into a hint of a mocking smile.
“Relax, O’Reilly. The boss wants to talk to you, that’s all. Just talk.”
“I’ll bet,” she said. Like hell she was getting in a car with Mickey Connor. She could think of safer, less painful ways to commit suicide.
“We already got your boyfriend,” he said, pointing toward the Suburban. When she glanced involuntarily that direction, he took the opportunity to take another step toward her, moving with surprising grace for a man his size. His buddy had spread out a little, drifting to Erin’s left.
“You ever been shot, Mick?” she asked.
“Couple times,” he said. “Didn’t take.”
“You come one step closer, you’re going to get shot again.”
“I make you nervous?”
“Nah. I just don’t like the way you smell.”
She heard the click of a car door opening behind her and cursed inwardly. The O’Malleys had planned things well. She couldn’t keep an eye on Mickey and his henchman while still covering her rear. But the two guys in front of her didn’t have guns out. She closed her car door with one hand and used the rearview mirror on it to take a look behind.
Evan O’Malley was standing there, slim, well-dressed, impassive.
“That’s enough, Mickey,” Evan said. His voice was quiet, but it carried. “You’re making Miss O’Reilly uncomfortable.”
Mickey took a step back and folded his hands in front of his
belt. His posture relaxed slightly, but Erin wasn’t about to take her attention off him.
“I apologize if my men alarmed you, Miss O’Reilly,” Evan said, walking toward her. “I fear they’ve given you the wrong impression. I only hoped for a few minutes’ conversation with you, to clear up some potential misunderstandings. I simply thought my car would be a warm and comfortable place to have our discussion. However, if you’d be more at ease at another location, I’m at your disposal. We could step inside your home, perhaps?”
“Here’s fine,” Erin said. She liked the idea of Mickey and Evan in her apartment even less than having them in her garage.
Evan paused. “It’s rather a public venue for discussion, don’t you think? But if you’re certain…”
“I’m okay with this,” she said.
“Very well,” he said. He raised his left hand and snapped his fingers. The front passenger door of the Suburban opened and Carlyle got out. He didn’t look any the worse for wear, but Erin could see the strain on him. Another O’Malley guy climbed out of the back of the SUV behind Carlyle, an unspoken threat.
“Would you join us, Mr. Carlyle?” Evan said quietly. “We’ve just a few things to discuss, and then we can all be on our way.”
Erin’s pistol was still in her hand, resting against her leg. She knew exactly what was at stake here. This conversation would determine whether she, Carlyle, and Evan would all walk away from each other still breathing. Her life quite literally depended on what she said and did in the next few minutes.
And the gun wouldn’t help her. She could shoot Evan, or Mickey, or even try to gun down all the O’Malley goons, but the odds weren’t good, and even if she succeeded, it would only get her in more trouble. She slowly holstered her Glock and leaned against the door of her Charger, trying to appear relaxed.
“Okay, Mr. O’Malley,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
Carlyle stood just to one side of Erin, on Evan’s right. Mickey and his guy approached from the other side, but kept about five yards away. If they were trying to be unobtrusive and nonthreatening, they were failing.