The Squad Room

by John Cutter

  Rivera laughed. “What’d they do?”

  “One of the Sergeants responded and saved his ass. They wanted him arrested—they didn’t know he was a cop—but they had a problem with their liquor license, so one hand washed the other, and the whole thing blew over. They put him back in uniform after that, but he never forgot how they refused to serve him. He used to talk about how that experience showed him how it was for people to be judged by their appearance, how the blacks must suffer from that kind of prejudice, and all that. He couldn’t stand to see that kind of injustice. I remember when I was real young to the job, riding in a radio car with him in the wintertime, real freezing outside. We were patrolling, and all of a sudden he tells me to stop the car. I’m thinking, What do we got? Man with a gun? Drug deal?—but there’s no one on the street. Then I see we’re outside the Blarney Stone, and he gets out, picks up one of those metal trash cans from the corner, and throws it right through their front window. Then he gets back in the car and asks me if I’m okay with it.”

  “That’s perfect, man,” laughed Rivera. “That’s really perfect. So what’d you say to that?”

  “I just shrugged and said, Okay with what? and we finished our tour. Next thing I know, he’s asking the roll call guy to make us steady partners.”

  “Sounds like a good guy.”

  “Yeah, I always liked working with him. But you know, even before he moved up in politics, we lost touch. You know how it goes—you just start moving in different circles, not running into each other as much.” A familiar, faraway look came over Morrison. “When Billy died—well, Harrington always had a thing about funerals, and he still went. He doesn’t go to them, ever; it’s not his style. I always respected him for that, for some reason. But he still went to Billy’s.”

  Rivera nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say: it seemed there was nothing to say. The silence rang between them.

  “Hey Cap, it’s late,” Rivera said finally, looking at his watch. “You and me both ought to get some sleep.” He rose to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to head in.”

  “All right,” Morrison said, a weary smile returning to him. There wouldn’t be much room at the inn tonight. “I’m just going to try to catch a few here, I think. Shut that door after you, will you?”

  “All right, you got it.”

  “Goodnight, Sergeant.”

  “Goodnight, Cap,” said Rivera; and a moment later, Morrison heard his footfalls sounding quietly down the hallway towards the dorm.

  4

  Early the next day, Detectives and Sergeants began to roll out of the dorm for day two, hoping nothing else had come in overnight. Thankfully there was no sign of the Night Watch Squad as yet, so they knew they could take their time getting themselves together. Several detectives from the other specialty squads were already sticking their heads in to ask what the story was on Sutton Place, and though no one was talking at this point, the atmosphere was tense. Everyone knew a stubbed toe on Sutton Place could turn into a storm quickly, given a slow enough news day.

  The usual parade of useless bosses, which started practically with business hours, certainly didn’t help things. Whenever a case was high-profile enough to guarantee phone calls and visits from the headquarter’s brass, there were sure to be a gaggle of these promotion-seekers hanging around the squad room—mid-level officials who usually spent their time in their offices reading the Wall Street Journal or watching ESPN, who were invariably drawn out by the prospect of being perceived, by the right people, to be hard at work. They were a nuisance, but not much more than that: they tended to set up shop quickly in the squad commander’s office, there to remain until media attention had subsided, and were almost always gone soon after 1700 hours, when their bosses at headquarters wrapped up for the day.

  But then, some of them were worse than others.

  At 0930 on the dot, Chief of Detectives Frederick Arndt arrived.

  Captain Morrison, who had slept poorly and should have been too tired to care, openly grimaced at the sight of the man. It was not Arndt’s usual ridiculous green-tinted suit that offended Morrison’s sensibilities this morning, or even his ostentatiously shined shoes, so much as his tie: a loud multi-colored “Save the Children” monstrosity emblazoned with cartoon images of people holding hands. If the irony of the tie was lost on anyone, it wasn’t on Bill Morrison, who remembered when Arndt was a lieutenant and had wanted to put the fire hoses on the crowd at a rowdy demonstration, as though he were Bull Conner in 1962 Birmingham. Save the children—! Phony liberal sentiments or no, the man was a manipulative, self-centered asshole, and Morrison knew it—as well as he knew that Arndt was only even there because the Police Commissioner was looking for answers.

  The squad held back laughter as Arndt walked self-importantly past Morrison to wait for him in Morrison’s office. When Morrison had closed the door behind him, Arndt looked up from the chair he’d taken and started right in on him, clearly flustered.

  “This woman on Sutton Place, Victoria Adams, is a really important person—we’re going to have to pull out all the stops,” he said, not bothering to acknowledge Morrison. “Overtime is approved big-time for this one. Downtown is already aware of it, and wants results. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill homicide.”

  “Why’s that?” Morrison asked disinterestedly, seating himself. It was more of a rhetorical question than anything, but he asked it anyway.

  Arndt gave him an exasperated look. “She’s tied to the Wilmington family,” he said.

  When he didn’t say anything further, Morrison sighed. “More politics, huh?” he asked. “Let me guess—her family was on the Mayflower.”

  Arndt looked as though he’d been slapped, but Morrison wasn’t waiting for him to recover. “You know, I’m getting to be pretty sick of this shit, Arndt,” he continued. “Every homicide is important to us. We had a triple last week, and you wouldn’t give me fifty cents to work with. Now it’s a really important person, and the checkbook’s open. How’s that fair?”

  Arndt regarded him with a cold sneer. “Well, if it comes to fairness, I don’t think it’s fair that I can’t relieve you of this command right now.”

  “So I guess because the victim isn’t a minority, this isn’t just another misdemeanor homicide to you,” Morrison went on, ignoring him. “You know, we got a lot of cops around here—black, white, and Hispanic—who hate that shit, and they know the rules you play by. You remember those pictures of Abbott & Costello you used to have up in your office? I was there the day you had them taken down to put up pictures of JFK and Nelson Mandela, trying to be politically correct; but I ought to tell you, with stuff like this, everyone sees through the act. We’re going to do everything we can—but it won’t be because she’s important, or because it’s what’ll make you look good. It’ll be because it’s what we do all the time.”

  The color had drained from Arndt’s face. “Watch your tone, Captain,” he said quietly. “You’re flirting with your career here.” He smiled suddenly, his lips tight. “You have a map of the boroughs, don’t you, Captain? Long Island commute? You know, you could always have a patrol-duty Captain’s spot, get some nice around-the-clock work someplace far from home. They always need good captains on Staten Island, I understand.”

  Morrison decided he’d already listened to this long enough.

  “All right,” he said in a low voice. “You know what, Arndt? Go ahead. Fuck me, put me on the street—then find yourself someone better to run this squad. See how that makes you look. I may not be the most popular guy around the in-crowd at headquarters, but you and I both know that until you all decide you want to work hard, you need guys like me to deal with the day-to-day crap you don’t want to deal with.”

  “Captain, you need to learn to calm yourself down,” Arndt said in a patronizing tone. “You’re out of control. You know, you haven’t been the same since your son died.”

  Morrison’s face went red-hot and he gripped his chair, struggling to keep
the fury down. “You asshole,” he said, eyes fixed on the desk, his voice a whisper of rage. “You never even went to his wake, much less the funeral, and you aren’t going to bring him up with me now.”

  Even Arndt knew when he’d crossed the line. “Captain—” he began.

  Morrison looked up at him, and his glare stopped Arndt in his tracks. “Listen,” he said slowly. “I don’t care who you are—you so much as mention my Billy again, you’ll get a hard lesson in how we fuck someone up in this department. Understand?”

  “Okay, okay,” Arndt choked, his eyes tearing up at the corners. It was a strange and terrible personality trait of Arndt’s, that he seemed to weep under pressure; no one had ever been able to figure out if it was a real stress response, or just another manipulative habit he’d picked up over the years. To many, including Morrison, it was utterly revolting. “I’m sorry I brought up your son. I know his funeral was very hard for everyone.”

  And how would you know that, you slick motherfucker? Morrison thought. Everyone knew Arndt had been in Florida the whole time, soaking up rays. But things had already gone far enough. Morrison took a deep breath.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Arndt said again. “I just need a briefing, all right? The PC wants to know—just brief me on the case.”

  You need information, so I get an apology, Morrison thought, the rage welling up in him again. He took another deep breath to master himself before going on.

  “It’s a complex forensic case so far,” he said through gritted teeth. “Sexual assault is usually more a crime of violent hatred than passion, as you know”—he said this last with a barely perceptible scoff—“and this was a total invasion. There are a lot of twists to the evidence on hand, but it’s pretty sick stuff. Bite marks, amputations, the works. It has all the appearances of a predatory job, but we aren’t sure of that yet.”

  Morrison spread out a few copies of photographs and lab requisitions from the case file he’d brought with him. “They got a lot of evidence from Victoria’s body, as well as from the scene itself—potential DNA samples and multiple fingerprints,” he said. “We’ll have to wait for the results. Since it’s Christmas, it’ll probably take some time for the guys in the lab to come up with anything. In the meantime we’re going to start with the usual suspects: husband and boyfriends. If nothing else, we’ll get a sense of what her life was like. Victoria Adams was an attractive woman, and we know she was out there on the party scene. She was also married to a successful guy who travels for his job and was away at the time of her death. He’s out of the country currently; we’re not exactly sure where yet. He’s likely either in Italy or Thailand—once we sort that out we’ll have an in-person notification made to him. I should say that there aren’t any clear indicators yet that he would have had anything to do with a crime like this. Now, as these photographs suggest—”

  “All right, all right,” Arndt said with a bored air, cutting him off. “Put together a full summary for me—I’ll need it ready in two hours.”

  Morrison stared at him. Normally the Chief of Detectives would take notes on the information given him in a briefing of this kind; but Arndt, with his soft memory for anything he was told, was passing the buck as usual.

  Just then there was a knock at the door, and Sergeant Simmons poked his head in. As though summoned, Arndt got up abruptly to leave.

  “You’ll have to excuse me; I’m needed elsewhere,” he said curtly. “I’ll be back for that report this afternoon, Captain.”

  Without another word, he was gone. Morrison shook his head gravely.

  “Good timing, Simmons,” he said.

  “Yeah, thought that might save you, Cap,” Simmons smiled. “Guy’s not too comfortable around minorities.”

  Morrison laughed. “Well, thank God he’s gone for now. I thought I was going to lose it. Anyway, we have work to do. What’ve we got?”

  “Well, it turns out our victim has a place in the Hamptons and a place in Manhattan,” Simmons said, handing him a few copies of property reports, “and the husband’s in Italy. We’ve got him on a plane back today.”

  “Away over the holidays, huh?” Morrison said. “We have any idea whether they got along?”

  “Neighbors and doormen seem to think so, along with the friends we’ve talked to.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Well, there’s some New York Post–type Page 6 stuff, but that’s inconclusive so far.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, we’ve got her cell phone and email, and what looks like a book she was trying to write; so far we’ve got one number on her cell that pops up every day, and often at night. Seems like a writing buddy, but you never know. We’ll be heading up to Rye Brook to talk to him later today.”

  “Him?”

  “Yeah, we know it’s a guy.”

  “Sounds like Boyfriend Time to me,” Morrison mused, leafing absently through the papers on his desk. “Continuous calls at night while your husband’s out of the country? Unless you’re on the job, or maybe a fireman, that’s interesting to me.”

  “Sure, sure. I’ll let you know what we get out of that, Cap. You mind if I take Tina with me, from Gangs?”

  “No problem—everyone else here’ll be running around anyway, following up on the local stuff.”

  “Okay, great. I’ll call you when we have something.”

  “Thanks. And Simmons,” Morrison called after him, “send George in here, will you? I want to get him on some of these leads.”

  “Will do.”

  “George” was Detective George Hanrahan, another senior member of the Homicide Squad. His father had been a firefighter in the city, and had died in the line of duty when George was eight, leaving him to be raised by his mother. She’d made sure George had gone to college before he could even think about becoming a cop, and he’d gone all the way through a Master’s in Public Administration at—of all places for a detective to have studied—Columbia. A gentle giant whose bad side even Morrison didn’t particularly want to see, he was a quiet, shut-in type, and spent virtually all of his off time in the Bronx with his wife and the sheepdogs they’d gotten when they’d proven unable to have children.

  Morrison looked over his “Things to Do” list, checking on the irons they already had in the fire. Phone and email records were already being processed, and a few potential suspects were due for interviews today. Compiled video footage from Sutton Place was being combed through for anything related to the incident, and the word had already been put out to other departments for similar crimes in the area. The other teams were back at the scene, canvassing whatever neighbors hadn’t answered their doors the day before. The homeless guy they’d picked up seemed to be a dead end, as predicted—just another innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Morrison was Googling the Adams’ Hamptons address when George Hanrahan came in, silently as always, and looked at him with his usual expression of intelligent seriousness.

  “Hey, George,” Morrison said. “I want you to follow up on this Hamptons property our victim owned. According to the canvas at Sutton Place she spent most of her time out there, except when the husband was off traveling.”

  “Sure thing,” George said. “What type of place is it?”

  “Oh, the usual; looks like Wayne Manor,” Morrison said, pulling up the street view online. “Must have been a fortune—look at this. Beautiful place. Right on the beach, big pool, probably a full staff.” He chuckled. “Not nearly as nice as my place in Levittown, of course, but hey, what is? My tennis courts are a lot bigger—they just happen to be in the public park instead of the backyard. Anyway, get what you can—have someone reach out to the Suffolk County cops for anything they might have.”

  “Depending on where the house is, there are a couple of smaller town departments out there that might know more, too.”

  “Right, I forgot about that—the Hamptons have a few departments, don’t they? Let’s touch them all. Actually, we might as well ch
eck the whole tri-state area. Hit them by phone, so they know we’re serious—not just VICAP alerts.”

  “Got it. You want to call Suffolk yourself? They might respond better to your rank.”

  “I would, but I’m still burned over that Highway Patrol nonsense.”

  Hanrahan smiled. The story had gone all over the precinct. A while back, before Morrison’s daughter had been on the job herself, she’d been pulled over on the Long Island Expressway for failing to signal while exiting. When she’d handed the patrolman her dad’s courtesy card along with her license and registration, he’d thrown it back in her face, telling her he didn’t know any captains, and written her out the ticket. The ticket itself hadn’t been such a big deal, but the patrolman’s disrespect for his daughter had really gotten to Morrison. It was one of those signs that things had changed for the worse, and to cap it all off, when Morrison had spoken to the guy’s CO later, he’d been told that the patrolman was undeniably an asshole, but too politically connected to be punished for it.

  “All right, I’ll handle Suffolk,” George said. “Anything else?”

  “Who do we have who can talk to the FBI without having a breakdown?”

  Hanrahan thought for a moment. “Well, Tommy Quinn’s our unofficial liaison with the feds—he’s got a kid in the ATF, so he’s usually able to work pretty well with them.”

  “Okay. Get Detective Quinn on the phone with the feds, and you hit everyone else,” Morrison said, the first signs of a dull headache beginning to creep in behind his eyes. God, this early in the day—! Kelley’s was generally welcoming at the end of a shift, but today he knew it’d be particularly so. “Get everything on this Hamptons property and the owners that you can. We’re already on the Manhattan property and looking for other local leads, so I’ll need you guys to work quickly with the outside areas to keep everything together.”