by Tom Barber
‘You’re under arrest,’ Richie replied bluntly.
‘For what?’
‘Illegal purchase of prescription drugs, solicitation of murder for hire, and bribery.’ He tapped the signed confessions from the managers who’d sent Kat out the door. ‘That last one we have you nailed down for.’
‘You can’t prove any of this.’
The Robbery Homicide lieutenant smiled and rose, pulling his handcuffs from his belt. ‘Maybe not. But let’s see, shall we.’
*
‘The Loughlin clan are a bigger problem than anyone outside the region could’ve guessed,’ a US Marshal explained to Marquez, standing with a colleague in the visitor’s room serving one of the hospital wards in Syracuse, NY as he passed her a folder. She was in a hospital gown sitting in a chair, bandaged and strapped up with lines feeding her antibiotics and painkillers.
‘How bad?’
‘We’re helping build a case, but every time we turn over a rock, something else crawls out. If you have a prison captain, a county sheriff and three county jail guards willing to do what the men at Onondaga did at the snap of Brooks Loughlin’s fingers, it shows the influence he and his family had.’
‘Were they related to any of these guys?’
‘A couple distantly, but not all. Also helps explain some of the stuff that’s happened in Onondaga County over the last ten years or so.’ He dropped another file in front of her. ‘Remember the two boys who sent you through the window and tried to kill your friend at the auto-shop?’
She opened it and read the first lines of the report inside. ‘You gotta be kidding me.’
‘They’re the same pair who were waiting outside ‘Daga County, day you and Archer almost got killed and Reyes escaped. Sheriff sold them out to try and pitch for a deal. They’re local boys, sent to waste Archer after he shot Craig Loughlin on that bridge in West Virginia. Brooks set it up.
‘They were in Cleveland to get your colleague, not you. Which must’ve been why they didn’t finish you off when you fell out the window. Kept trying to track Archer but couldn’t find him. Then his cell came back on and they tracked him to that auto-shop.’
‘They’re childhood friends of Brooks, Billy and Craig,’ she read from the arrest reports and confessions.
‘Guess they didn’t anticipate how hard it’d be to kill you and Archer. Catching sight of Reyes on the morning he was apprehended was just a stroke of luck for them. Day before, they used a dump-car with two suppressed sub-machine guns in the trunk and left it in a lot in Rochester after they tried to knock you off in Cleveland and then Archer on their way home. Attempted to torch it, but a passer-by saw the car on fire and reported it before the flames really took hold.’
‘A passing cruiser got them on camera leaving Chautauqua County,’ the other Marshal said. ‘The ballistics match the bullets dug out of the walls at the motel and mechanics’ shop. When we arrested them and broke them down, they confirmed the Sheriff sent them after Archer on Brooks’ orders. They almost bagged you instead.’
‘We were working with the Oneida Sheriff’s Office when we came to town.’
‘Good thing you and Archer didn’t spend a lot of alone time with the chief,’ the first deputy replied. ‘He’d have been looking to set you two up for another shot and they’d have got you eventually. No-one’s that lucky.’
‘Those brothers seem to have had a lot of pull.’
‘Brooks headed up the family after his father died and even though he was stuck doing life down in Virginia, he still called the shots. Put him, his two brothers and a load of other relations together, and no-one was ever brave or dumb enough to go against them. Piss one off, you got all of them on your case, so just because someone was on the outside didn’t mean they were safe from Brooks and Billy inside Gatlin. People seemed to have always believed that the brothers would escape one day. Just didn’t expect it to be the Friday before Labor Day weekend.’
‘But how’d they find us? Archer was at an auto-shop in the middle of nowhere. I was back in Ohio at a motel.’
‘Sheriff called your Bureau in New York pretending to be working with you guys. Your sergeant checked his credentials and had no reason to suspect a trap; told him Archer was holing up in a hotel in the city. Once we found the chief was dirty, we ran a search on all the computers he had access to. He used one to do a cell ping trace six times on Archer’s phone. How they found him again at that auto-shop in Chautauqua County.’
As he said that, Marquez went cold and felt her mouth go dry; she was suddenly picturing herself in an orange jumpsuit too, something all too easy to imagine. The speed the tech search had produced results unsettled her, knowing they could do exactly the same with Prez Rainey’s cell phone records if they ever found his number. The Marshals had wanted to meet with her today to give an update on what had happened, but she’d been in their position before and knew they could be feeding her information to see how she reacted.
Perhaps they already knew about her communications with the biker. Or maybe she was just getting paranoid.
‘How long did the riot at Onondaga actually run for?’ she asked.
‘Almost until sundown. Riot team got you and Archer out, but by then the entire place had gone crazy. Police and federal agents didn’t have a chance to find out Nicky Reyes was missing until they regained full control and could do a count.’
‘He just walked out past you all?’
‘One of the COs was found injured and handcuffed in a toilet in his underwear and socks. No uniform. That’s when they realized Reyes must’ve slipped through at some point, straight past the response team.’
‘He’s getting good at that.’
‘Whatever. We got him once. We’ll catch him again.’
Marquez looked at the two Marshals carefully, keeping her face impassive. ‘I’m being investigated too, right?’
‘For what?’
‘Firing a weapon in the prison.’
‘You didn’t bring the piece in, and you two were trapped in the block with criminals who were intending to murder you. Don’t think you’re gonna have any issues with State investigators about that.’ The Marshal leaned forward. ‘But what’s the last thing you can recall?’
‘Brooks and Billy rushing me and Sam in the food hall.’
‘You don’t remember how the younger brother was killed?’
‘No.’ Pause. ‘Why?’
‘We’ve been trying to work out how someone your size managed to get around him, pick up a weighted sock and found enough power to brain him over the back of the skull. Guy had a head like a slab of concrete.’ The two Marshals were watching her very closely.
‘His eye was damaged. He couldn’t see properly which would’ve made it easier. Archer must’ve got him.’
‘While trying to fight off three hundred pounds of Brooks Loughlin? So someone else didn’t do it?’
‘You’ll have to go by what Archer says. I told you, Billy had knocked me out.’
‘You’re sure you didn’t see anyone else?’
‘Like who?’
‘Someone with a grudge against them, maybe. Who they’d broken into the jail in the first place to kill.’
‘We were hoping you could confirm that for us,’ the other Marshal said.
There was a pause.
‘Nicky Reyes never killed anyone while he was on the run, did he, Deputy?’ she suddenly asked, reversing the questioning, knowing full well what they were driving at.
‘No. What’s your point?’
‘I got smashed out of a motel room window and was stabbed in the jail. Archer got cut up way worse than I did and was attacked on a prison transport bus. He was also shot at in Cleveland, on the road and at the auto-shop. We spent three days tracking these fugitives across State Lines and watched good people die on the way. But it feels like you’re trying to say we might’ve stood by, watched Reyes kill Billy Loughlin then let him escape? I’m catching that right?’
The deputy Marshal lic
ked his lips. Trying to get clues and tells was a lot harder when the person you were interviewing was a detective with Marquez’s experience.
‘I know every badge from here to Ohio wants the Reyes collar,’ she continued. ‘And how you must’ve gotten chewed out by leadership for trusting local law enforcement and Onondaga County with him once he was caught. But you want to pin someone for inside help, take a look at the Oneida Sheriff’s Office or the local police all over this area. Because you got real problems here. Not with us.’
‘We’re low on leads on Reyes,’ the other Marshal said. ‘We came up with a theory.’
‘After all that happened to us, why the hell would we help him?’
He looked at her but didn’t answer. He couldn’t; he didn’t have one.
‘You run this past your Chief?’
‘No.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
Also wearing a hospital gown and robe, Archer was sitting in the ward’s communal room staring out of the window, bored and frustrated with his enforced inactivity when he saw Marquez walk in, slowly wheeling her IV drip stand.
‘How’d it go?’ he asked.
‘They won’t be back anytime soon,’ she said, and Archer understood the hidden message without her needing to elaborate. ‘Pointed out some facts of life.’ She touched the stitching on her head. ‘The assholes who gave me this and went at you at the auto-shop were those two boys we saw loitering in the parking lot outside the Sheriff’s Office and County. Childhood friends of the Loughlins, sent after you by Brooks because you put down Craig. They’re hunters.’
‘Explains how good they were.’
‘Yeah, but this time they were after you, not the local wildlife.’
‘How’d they find me at the hotel?’
‘CT Bureau in New York got a call from the Sheriff who said he wanted to contact you. Shep made sure he was legit, then gave him your cell number and let him know you were currently at that hotel in Cleveland. These two were dispatched-’
‘But you’d taken over the room instead of me,’ he said, looking at the stitched cut on the side of her head where the hair had been shaved. ‘Sorry, Lis.’
‘Like you said, it’ll grow back soon.’ Her smile turned into a grimace. ‘It better.’
‘But how’d they find me at the auto-shop then? Shep didn’t know I was there.’
‘GPS. The area you were in was mostly warehouses, so you weren’t hard to find. After you went into the river, your phone was dead until you got to Chautauqua County on Sunday, right?’
‘And they showed up a few hours after I turned it on again. I get it. The sheriff tried to get us killed.’
‘On Brooks’ orders. When we find Lupinetti, he and the Sheriff can fight over who gets top bunk in a cell.’
Archer went quiet for a moment, Marquez’s comment reminding him that their man was still out there. ‘Marshals any closer to finding Reyes?’
‘Still no trace of him, or the contents of Kat O’Mara’s deposit box. One of the locals who lives near the woods where Kat died phoned in to say he thought he might’ve seen a man in uniform moving through the area later that day. Took him to be another investigator, so didn’t take any more notice.’
Archer didn’t respond as Marquez looked at him. She’d told the Marshal the truth when she said she’d been out cold when Billy had been killed, and Archer had told her later he’d been the one to hit him. He’d held her gaze when he said that, but they both knew he’d been trying to fend off Brooks Loughlin just before she was struck by the knockout punch. When consciousness returned and she’d found herself leaning against the wall with Archer beside her holding a stab wound to his leg, she hadn’t noticed anything other than the bodies of the two brothers. It took until later when someone had asked how the Loughlins had managed to get through the various doors inside the county lockup that she realized no-one had mentioned finding the keys Brooks had been holding when they’d cornered them in the chow hall, which would have answered the question. And Nicky Reyes happened to have disappeared from the jail at around the same time.
Archer had told investigators during his own questioning that he’d been in and out of consciousness from blood loss, and with the cameras in the block shut off, his was the only account they could use on the report. She’d never pushed it, in the same way he wasn’t pushing her about her phone-calls to Prez during the manhunts. This entire situation had been complicated. Nothing black and white, with good and bad on both sides. And some things were better left unsaid.
But she was concerned about her fellow detective. Archer had been unusually subdued since they’d been admitted to the hospital, which was understandable considering the injuries he’d sustained. However, she knew from long experience how resilient he was and that he’d definitely suffered worse in his time, so she felt that getting stabbed was unlikely to be the cause of his uncharacteristically low mood. She guessed that Lupinetti still being out there was eating away at him, just as it was for her. The other members of their team had driven up to visit a couple of times, Shepherd now working with the Marshals Office on tracking Lupinetti down, but she knew Sam was as frustrated as she was by being stuck in the hospital, both of them wanting to be the ones to find him and complete their task. Archer didn’t take failure or unfinished business easily. Neither did she.
The Marshals’ questions had her reliving that situation in the jail, and she remembered how when they’d been locked inside Onondaga, Archer’s first concern had been to strap up her torso with the magazines to protect her, then the punishment he’d taken to help keep her alive. Without him, she would’ve been shanked in the liver and be dead by now.
But before she could say anything more, she saw him look past her, surprise on his face.
‘What are you doing here?’ Archer asked as his sister appeared in the doorway, getting to his feet slowly as his brother-in-law pushed her wheelchair into the ward.
‘Decided to take a drive to Niagara Falls.’ She glanced at Marquez. ‘This was on the way.’
‘You called them?’ Archer asked Marquez.
‘Heard you’ve been recovering. Again,’ Sarah answered instead, smiling as she stopped beside them in her chair.
‘We’ve got to stop meeting in hospitals,’ Archer said. ‘Don’t want these injuries becoming the story of our liv-’
But then Marquez saw his expression change. He went from looking subdued to almost as if a light had suddenly been switched on inside him.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he said quietly.
‘Come again?’ his brother-in-law Jack said, as Sarah stared in surprise at her brother.
Archer turned to Marquez, excitement back in his eyes, that bored and frustrated look he’d been wearing a moment ago gone. ‘I think I know where we can find Frank; if we’re not too late.’
EPILOGUE
As Marquez had proven in her interview with the two Marshals at the hospital, trying to trip up an experienced detective during questioning wasn’t easy and neither was tracking one down if they wanted to remain hidden. Since he’d split from the Loughlins on that road by the NY-PA State border, Frank Lupinetti had successfully evaded capture in the ten days since. He’d quickly dumped the car and after travelling by night and laying low during the days that followed, he’d eventually ended up back in New York City, the place where he knew best how to hide.
He hadn’t lied to Brooks and Billy Loughlin when he’d told them he still had plenty of money hidden, cash he’d accumulated during his years as a corrupt cop in the NYPD. After making contact with an old and trusted former colleague of his who’d been the one to wire the Loughlins money when Frank was still in Gatlin, desperate to keep himself alive and to ensure he got protection after the last attack, Lupinetti had borrowed money from the guy, bought some clothes, a smartphone and a ticket out to New Jersey on the promise that when he returned, his friend would be repaid in full with interest. Dressed in his new threads with his tattoos covered, wearing an Islanders ballcap and
now with a burgeoning beard, Lupinetti wasn’t easily recognizable and didn’t attract any attention. Up to that point, things had gone to plan and he was beginning to feel pretty confident.
But when he got off at his stop, Bloomfield, and walked another twenty minutes to his destination, he swore quietly and repeatedly to himself as he stared at a new housing development, in the process of being built on what had been a totally deserted tract of land two years ago. The site was busy with workmen and with all the activity, there was nothing he could do until night fell to check the place out properly. He walked back to the nearest town, bought a shovel and gloves then waited impatiently for the sun to go down before returning to the now empty development site.
With the sound of traffic passing on the nearby highway, but confident he was almost invisible in the dark despite the moonlight, Lupinetti took out his cell phone and checked the coordinates he wanted, pinpointing the specific area he was looking for. It was on the left side of the development and to his intense relief, although the area had been marked, the land was still undisturbed.
He found the spot, pulled on the gloves, stamped the shovel into the ground and started to dig.
After almost twenty minutes of hard work, he went to scoop more earth when the shovel hit something. He was about to clear the space around it, but stopped when he thought he heard the sound of an engine, closer than the cars on the road. He waited for a few moments, but hearing nothing else, he returned his attention to the hole he’d just dug and with his heart beating even faster, quickly uncovered a dirt-covered strap.