by Steven Henry
“So spare me the protective bullshit,” she said. “I know what’s on the line. Yes, I think it’s sweet that you don’t want me to get killed. I’ll call you after, let you know I’m okay.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Luke said. Erin glanced at him and saw that he really did seem to mean it. “Here we are,” he said, pulling up outside her apartment.
She leaned across the seat and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said. Then she jumped out of the car, high heels dangling from one hand, and scampered across the concrete.
Chapter 8
With her uniform on her back, her Glock on her hip, and her dog at her side, Erin felt much better. She had a job to do, and as long as she focused on that, she could push her memories to the back of her mind. She knew she’d be seeing Brunanski’s sheet-white face, and feeling the warmth of his blood seeping through her fingers, for a long time to come. But not tonight.
She picked up her squad car from the precinct motor pool. This was technically against regulations, as she wasn’t on duty, but Lieutenant Murphy had given her permission, so no one was going to say anything about it. She drove the Charger as unobtrusively as she could. No flashing lights, no sirens.
The Huntington residence was a brick duplex on 165th, a couple of blocks from the uniform store. Erin pulled up to the house two doors down. She didn’t want to give him time to run for it. She checked her watch. It was quarter past two. That was both good and bad. Cal was probably home, asleep, but according to his file, he lived with Mom and Dad, so his parents were there, too. They’d be a complication.
She took a few moments to case the house, making a quick walk-around. Most of the lights were off, but a glow came from one of the ground-floor windows. She stepped close to the window and peered around the edge of the shade.
Cal Huntington was at his computer, a pair of headphones clamped to his skull, completely oblivious to the outside world.
Erin sighed. A movie cop would break the window and haul Cal’s sorry ass out into the street, or kick in the door with all the righteous fury of the NYPD. She couldn’t do any of those things, not if she still wanted to have her shield come Monday morning. She needed probable cause or a warrant in order to enter a private residence without permission.
Constrained by the rules of civilized behavior, she did the only thing she could. She went to the front door and rang the bell.
She had to ring three times, waiting a half-minute between attempts, before an upstairs light signaled that one of the older Huntingtons had crawled out of bed. A short while later, the bulb over the doorstep flicked on. Erin stood with her back straight, doing her best to look every inch the tough, businesslike cop. Rolf, at her side, kept his ears perked forward and his long, intense face focused on the door.
Erin had found that the uniform could be either a blessing or a curse in situations like this. Most New Yorkers would hesitate to open their doors to a stranger in the middle of the night, but an officer could at least have a conversation across the chain of a night-lock. But lots of citizens, law-abiding or not, weren’t too fond of the police.
Mr. Huntington, eyes bleary, graying hair sticking out at odd angles, opened the door and blinked at her. He was wearing striped pajamas, an old bathrobe, and brown fuzzy slippers.
“Officer? What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I need to talk to Calvin,” Erin said.
Wakeful wariness came into Mr. Huntington’s face. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not without a lawyer. You people have gotten him in enough trouble already.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Erin said. “He’s not the one in trouble. In fact, we need his help. If he can give us some information, it’ll stand him in good stead. I may be able to get the charges against him dropped.”
She saw the sudden hope in Cal’s father’s eyes. Her gut twisted in self-disgust at manipulating a parent’s emotions. But not only was it necessary, it was also true. If Cal gave up the museum thieves, Erin was sure the D.A. would agree that tossing out the burglary charge was a more than fair trade.
“All right,” Mr. Huntington said. “Come on in.”
Erin and Rolf trooped into the house. Its furnishings were worn, but the home was neat and well-kept. It was your basic middle-class Queens family residence.
The door to the den was closed, light seeping under it. Mr. Huntington paused outside. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on being present,” he said. “You understand, I’m sure?”
“Perfectly,” Erin said, managing to only grit her teeth a little. She needed to play hardball with the kid, and that was going to be more difficult with his dad as referee. Cal was over eighteen, so there was no legal requirement for another adult to be present. Still, Mr. Huntington didn’t strike her as a particularly hard case. Things might work out anyway.
Cal barely glanced up as his father opened the door. He returned his attention to his computer screen. Then, as his brain caught up with his glimpse of Erin’s face just behind his dad, he did a classic double-take. His eyes widened in a look of dismay that would have been comical in other circumstances.
Erin moved past Mr. Huntington before he could get in her way, crossing the room in five quick strides. Rolf kept pace with her. Sensing her mood, the dog raised his hackles and emitted a low, rumbling growl.
Cal started to get out of his swivel chair. Erin clamped her hands on the arms of the chair, trapping him in place. She swung the seat to face her head-on. As the kid stared up at her, she raised her left hand and snatched off his headphones.
“Evening, Calvin,” she said in a dangerously quiet voice.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Not you again.”
“Listen to me very carefully, Calvin,” Erin said, leaning close so that her face was only a few inches from his. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. You got that?”
“Hey, I don’t have to say anything,” he protested. “My lawyer said—”
“Your lawyer didn’t say anything about protecting cop-killers,” Erin snapped.
“Cop what now?” Cal blurted, his face showing genuine confusion.
Mr. Huntington stepped hesitantly forward. “Listen, ma’am, I don’t think you can just—” he started to say.
Erin didn’t let him finish. “Your friends, Calvin, the ones you helped steal those uniforms, just shot a police officer. You know what that makes you?”
He started to say something, but it had been a rhetorical question. She rode right over him. “It makes you an accessory to murder. You helped them set it up. That means you did it, too.”
She doubted the jury would see it quite that way, but that wasn’t the point. Cal needed to see it that way. She needed him to be scared. Looking into his eyes, less than a foot away from her own, she saw what she wanted. Now it was time to dangle a little hope, see if he went for it. “You were protecting your friends, and I respect that. But this is a lot more serious now. I don’t think you knew what was going to happen, Cal. Jake just told you it was a little harmless fun and profit. Isn’t that what happened?”
He grabbed at the line she’d given him and hung on like a drowning man. “Yeah!” he said eagerly. “It was just a prank, really. He didn’t say nothing about anyone getting hurt. You gotta believe me!”
“I believe you, Cal,” she said, “but you’re going to have to convince more than just me. Your buddy Jake shot a police officer. He’s going to prison for the rest of his life. Do you want to go with him?”
“He’s not my buddy!” Cal protested. “I know him, sure, but we’re not, like, friends!”
“Where do you know him from?” Erin demanded, leaning in still closer.
“Around! I don’t know! He’s just this guy, you know?” The kid’s eyes darted wildly. His father edged closer, but didn’t intervene.
“You can do better than that,” Erin snapped. “Where does he live?”
“An apartment on 164th, just across Union Turnpike!” Ca
l said.
“What’s his full name?”
“Gallagher. Jake Gallagher.” The kid kept shrinking back into his chair.
Erin straightened up. “Good. That’s good, Cal. Now, Jake had some friends with him tonight. Three other guys. Do you know the names of any of the guys he hangs out with? Guys who might have helped him out?”
“Well, there’s Randy, and Mike, and maybe Joey,” Cal said, relaxing a little now that Erin wasn’t in his face.
“Do Randy, Mike, and Joey have last names?”
“I don’t know them real well,” he said.
Erin took a deep breath. “Okay, thank you, Calvin,” she said. “You’re being a big help. If you can give me just a little more, I’ll be on my way. I want you to think carefully. What do these guys look like?”
Cal thought it over. “Randy’s tall and real skinny, like six-two or something, with a sketchy beard and messy, curly hair. Black hair.”
Erin mentally ticked off one of the two guards who had held the fake criminal during the heist. He’d been tall and thin, but he’d apparently shaved off the goatee and combed his hair for the occasion. “Go on,” she said.
“Joey’s a little dude, kinda mean-looking. He’s got some ink he’s proud of, a tattoo of a chick on his chest.”
“When you say chick, you mean…?” Erin prompted.
Cal looked at his dad and squirmed a little. “A naked girl.”
“Okay, good,” she said. “And Mike?”
“Mike’s crazy,” Cal said. “He’s always getting into fights, loves to talk about all the guys he’s fu—I mean, messed up. He’s really strong, into the whole weightlifting thing.”
Erin nodded. The other guard who’d held the hapless museum patron had been very muscular. “This Mike, does he have a shaved head, like Jake?”
“Yeah!” Cal exclaimed. “And crazy eyes. Bright blue, and they look right past you when he’s talking to you.”
“Okay, Calvin,” Erin said. She’d pulled out her hip notebook and scribbled a few quick notes. “Thanks for your cooperation. I’ll need you to come in to the precinct and sign a statement. You do that, and I’ll see what I can do about your little burglary problem.” She turned to Mr. Huntington. “Sir, thank you. You’ve helped the NYPD, but you’ve also helped your son. I’m sorry for disturbing your sleep. I’ll be going now, and let you get back to bed.”
Mr. Huntington escorted her to the door with the same weak, half-hearted manner he’d displayed the whole time. Erin wanted to smack him. If he’d shown a little more authority when his kid was growing up, she thought, maybe Cal wouldn’t be running around with guys like Jake and Mike.
As soon as she was out of the house, she jogged to her car and picked up the radio. “Dispatch, this is O’Reilly, four-six-four-oh. I need an address on a Jake Gallagher, near 164th and Union Turnpike,” she said.
After a moment, the answer came: “78-34 164th, Apartment 301.”
“Okay. I need any available officers. I’ve got a tip on the location on one of the museum shooters.”
Erin was all in favor of going it alone, but she wasn’t about to barge in on an apartment that might be full of armed, desperate men. For this, she was definitely going to want more backup than her dog.
* * *
Erin got to the apartment first, since she was already en route, but other officers arrived quickly afterward. Half a dozen squad cars converged on the building from all directions. Police threw up a cordon around the site, setting barricades at either end of the block. The officers double-checked their body armor and pumped shells into their shotguns. There was none of the usual banter. Their faces were hard and intense.
She buckled Rolf into his K-9 bulletproof vest, press-checked her Glock to ensure a round was chambered, and looked for the officer in command. It was Sergeant Daniels, a lean, quiet man from Harlem. Erin was glad to see him. Daniels was a good man in a crisis.
“O’Reilly,” he said, catching sight of her. “You called this in?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I got a tipoff from an associate. Suspect’s name is Gallagher, Jake or Jacob. Six-two, maybe six-three, muscular, shaved head, with a tattoo of a snake on his right arm. There may be up to three others, Randy, Mike, and Joey. Randy’s tall and skinny, Mike’s got a shaved head and is bulky like Gallagher, and Joey’s small, with a tattoo of a naked girl on his chest.”
Daniels looked closely at her. “Is this information good?”
“I think so,” she said. “I braced an accomplice from a burglary. The descriptions match the guys I saw at the museum tonight.”
“You were there?” he asked, surprised. “You see it go down?”
She nodded. “I can ID the suspects.”
“Excellent.” Daniels motioned to five nearby officers. “Circle up. I heard from Dispatch. ESU’s not available. They’re downtown, on another mission, could take hours. We’re going in, apartment 301. Stewart, you lead with the sledgehammer. Once you breach, the rest of us go in. Paulson, then me, then Giametti, Ramirez, and Cox. O’Reilly, you follow up with your K-9. We clear the apartment and detain everybody inside. Once we’ve secured it, I want O’Reilly to sweep the place with the dog. Make sure we get everyone and everything there.”
He gave them a grim look. “These guys already shot one cop tonight. Make sure no one else gets hit. Remember, we’re here to do our job, not for revenge. Don’t go in shooting, but if a guy goes for a weapon, or if you take fire, you put these bastards on the ground. Got it?”
There were nods and murmurs of assent all round.
“Okay,” Daniels said. “Let’s do this.”
The apartment building was red brick, with a wrought-iron fence running along the sidewalk. The breaching team entered through the parking lot and made their way through the lobby. They called the elevators down to the main floor, another officer holding them there. The team went up the stairs, guns raised and ready. The time was three in the morning and the complex was dead silent. They met no one in the stairwell or hallway.
Officer Stewart, a brawny guy with a bushy mustache, hefted his sledgehammer. He nodded to Paulson, a small, wiry man who’d been an Army Ranger before joining the NYPD. Paulson rapped sharply on the door.
“Open up! NYPD!”
They gave it two seconds, and then Stewart swung the hammer in a sideways arc. The doorframe splintered, the lock smashing straight through the flimsy woodwork. The door swung open. Paulson was inside in an instant, shotgun poised, clearing the vulnerable doorway. Daniels was right behind him.
Erin, standing at the back, fumed impatiently. She wanted to be up front. She watched one officer after another rush into the apartment, heard the shouts of “Living room clear!” “Bathroom clear!” and “Bedroom clear!” Then it was her turn. She and Rolf lunged into the apartment.
It was anticlimactic. Policemen emerged from various doorways, shaking their heads. Stewart slammed his fist against the wall in frustration. “No one here, Sarge,” he growled.
“Okay, search the place,” Daniels said. “Be thorough, people. Paulson, watch the hallway.”
Erin turned Rolf loose with the single German word “Such,” giving him his “search” command. The dog put his nose to the old, worn carpet and made a full examination of the area. When he was finished, he turned to Erin, sat, and cocked his head. He was trained to search for people and explosives, and he’d found neither.
She fought back her disappointment. For just a moment, she’d thought the solution would be easy. She’d pictured the police bursting in on the stunned criminals, sweeping up the whole gang at one go. She’d let herself imagine a commendation from Lieutenant Murphy. While the others began searching the bedroom, closet, and living room, she went into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror.
The reflection of a red-eyed, utterly exhausted woman stared back. She’d been on the go for what felt like days. Her emotions were balanced on a ragged edge of raw nerves. She closed her eyes and clenched her hand
s. In her helpless anger, she nearly punched the bathroom mirror.
Proper crime-scene procedure stopped her hand mid-motion. She wasn’t supposed to touch anything without gloves, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to break anything. As she paused to retrieve a pair of latex gloves from a pocket of her vest, the habitual action put her mind in evidence-collecting mode. She tried to pull herself together, to get through the task in front of her.
Still staring at the mirror, she stretched the gloves over her hands and pulled, revealing the medicine cabinet. It was mostly empty, with just the sort of meds she’d expect to find in a bachelor’s pill compartment: Aspirin, antacid, shaving cream, a disposable razor, and a couple prescription bottles. She picked up one of these and squinted at the lettering printed on the side. It was a bottle of Vicodin, prescribed by a Dr. Boland at Queens Hospital and dated the week before last.
What did that mean? Jake was probably either at a hideout, or with one of his friends. Where would a criminal go, when he had a wounded comrade?
“Sarge!” she called, feeling a hint of her previous excitement.
Daniels appeared in the doorway. “What’ve you got?” he asked.
“Pain pills,” she said, showing him the bottle. “Prescription stuff.”
“You think he’s a junkie?” he asked, examining the bottle.
“Maybe,” Erin said. “But mostly what I was thinking is, if he’s got a crooked doc who slips him these happy pills, that might be who he’d go see if one of his pals got hurt.”
Daniels snapped his fingers. “Bingo,” he said, grinning. “Good thought, O’Reilly. Call the hospital. We’ll have guys from the Bureau check it out ASAP.”
“I can go right down there,” Erin suggested. “We don’t have to wait. It’s practically across the street.”
“You’re not a detective, O’Reilly,” Daniels said. “Let’s pass this one up the chain.”
“Murphy said I could follow through on this,” she argued. “Let me do this, Sarge.”
Giametti knocked on the doorframe. “Hey, guys,” he said. “This just came in over the net. Brunanski didn’t make it.”