She spun to face the others. “Was there a white man down there? On the street?”
Carlton turned to face her. “What do you mean?”
“The kids, the gun sales. Any of them white?”
“No.” He came to stand beside her at the window. “Why?”
“That guy, the runner. He was white.” Confused, Hailey stared at the dead kid’s face. Had that man killed these two? Why? What would he have wanted from this scene? Was he here for the police officer or for the gunrunners?
It had to mean something.
The paramedics wheeled the officer out of the room.
Hailey found a single latex glove, tucked in the Velcro pocket of her bulletproof vest, and snapped it over her right hand to peel back the suspect’s hooded sweatshirt. The spatter of blood was there, sprayed against his dark T-shirt.
Someone had closed his jacket after shooting him.
But why?
Hailey pulled the sweatshirt open farther and found the answer—a white circle pinned just above his heart.
She saw the button at Jim’s house. Now here. Two buttons in one night after more than a year. Why the long delay? Why now? Why Jim and this black kid?
Damn it, she hoped Hal had caught that guy.
She raised dispatch on the radio, told them to have the hospital search for a button on the cop who’d been shot.
Just then, Hal’s breathless voice called on her radio. “Lost him.”
Shit. “You better come up here, Hal. He left us a present.”
“I hope it’s something good.”
Hailey glanced at the dead kid’s face, reached out to touch his throat again as though he might have come back to life. “It’s not.” Her finger slipped off the radio, her focus on the dead, black kid.
The connection was the guns. It had to be. There was nothing else that linked them. Which meant she was going to have to start pressing Jim for some answers.
With gloved fingers, Hailey closed the kid’s eyelids, wished they’d caught him with a pulse.
“What the hell is that?” Carlton asked, pointing to the button.
She shook her head, too overwhelmed to answer but unable to pull her gaze from the one-inch white pin with blue lettering.
Around the outside it read, “Wage peace, not war.”
Inside a circle, were the letters NRA with a thick blue line through them.
“’Wage peace not war?’ That’s no street kid mantra, I’ll tell you that. Never seen anything like it.”
Hailey wished she hadn’t either.
But she’d seen two in that many hours.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Hal watched through the observation window as Dwayne Carson scraped under his fingernails with the broken shirt clip from a ballpoint pen.
His white sweatshirt hung off the back of his chair. His shirt was ripped across the neck and partway down one shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He was the only kid who’d emerged from the sting without a bullet wound and yet, he was as cool as the bodies already on ice.
Carson had sworn he didn’t know where the guns had come from, that he was just along for the ride, and Hal didn’t have high expectations for much more.
Shakley, the officer who’d been shot in that room was their best bet for answers, but he was at the hospital, listed as critical.
No button had been found on him.
Apathy was already etched into the swollen pupils of Carson’s narrowed eyes. Resignation tightened the straight line of his mouth and wiped clean any trace of laughter.
Seventeen and he was already gone.
Hal hated this part, made worse because he couldn’t do anything to change it.
The police couldn’t protect him from the dangers of the people who lived in his neighborhood.
In reality, the police were more likely to tie on the bricks and drop his ass into the swamp and Carson knew it.
They needed answers from Carson. That put him in the power position.
Carson knew that, too.
Hal wasn’t even sure Carson knew anything about the white guy fleeing from the scene.
Carson had come out of the BMW, not the building. Aside from those few minutes on the street, there was nothing to tie Carson to the buyers. Nothing to indicate he had any knowledge of who else was inside.
Nothing about the white guy made sense.
The ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education had done nothing to touch segregation on the streets. Black delinquents dealt with other black delinquents.
Maybe interracial—but not white. If the guy really was white—and Hal hadn’t known Hailey to be wrong yet—then he’d come from inside the building in order to shoot two men and leave a button on only one.
The same button found on Jim.
The same one found in three other homicides before today.
No matter how he turned them, those pieces didn’t fit.
His phone rang. “Harris.”
“Any news?” Hailey asked.
“Waiting for Triggerlock,” he told her. “You?”
“I’m with Roger,” she said. “Still working on the button but they finished printing the fire escape.”
Hal sat up, hopeful. “And?”
“Nothing. Clean.”
“Damn. You see gloves on that guy?”
“It was dark.”
“But you saw his face.”
“Yeah. Caught under a street light.” She paused. “And he was white,” she added, an edge to her voice.
“Easy,” Hal said, hearing her defensiveness. “I believed you the first time.”
“Well, apparently you’re the only one. Did you talk to the kid?”
Hal glanced down at the gun box in his hand. “No. I got his gun and I’m going in as soon as the Triggerlock guy shows, but it doesn’t look good.”
Hailey sighed. “Call me when it’s over.”
Hal ended the call as Mike Neill stopped in the doorway. Neill could probably have been a businessman as easily as a cop. He was thin, gray-haired and clean-shaven, the kind of guy who used hair gel. But what did Hal know? Maybe he would have used hair gel, too, if he had any hair. “You want to come?” Neill asked.
Hal nodded. “If it’s okay.”
“Be my guest.”
Together, they stepped into the room with Carson.
Neill went first. He was five-ten or eleven with short gray hair.
Carson barely glanced up at them before returning his attention to what must have been some stubborn dirt beneath the nail of his right index finger.
Hal dropped the box from one of the guns stolen from Dennigs onto the table as Neill walked behind Carson to the far side of the room, just out of Carson’s peripheral vision. Carson kept his eyes focused in his lap.
“Let’s hear about these guns, Dwayne,” Neill said.
Carson averted his gaze from the box on the table and shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands out to his sides like he was doing moves for a music video. “I told that other guy I don’t know nothing about them guns.”
Hal tapped on the box. “Yeah. I’m not buying that bullshit.”
“I swear. Got nothing to do with that scene. Didn’t know what was going down. Saw the cops and shit and got to the ground like you said. Don’t know nothing about guns. Shit, I was afraid they would explode or something.”
They’d heard all the stories already. Kids turned on friends, called it police conspiracy, pointed to strangers.
They blamed younger siblings, knowing that anyone under sixteen had a better chance of getting off.
Hal flipped open the gun box so the lid clattered to the plastic tabletop.
This particular gun had come off Carson’s ankle, but they’d dusted all three of the weapons he�
�d been carrying and the only prints they’d found were his. “What about this? It’s a nice piece.”
The gun’s metal had a bluish tint and its grip was inlaid wood. SIGs in general were common, standard issue for the department, but this particular gun was more obscure.
A recoil-operated, locked breech handgun, with a modified Browning HI-Power-style barrel locking, the P210 was known as an incredibly accurate military handgun.
According to the guys in ballistics, it was expensive. Not a likely choice for someone on the streets. Which meant it was stolen. Almost certainly. Now they just needed to tie Carson back to the robbery at Dennig Distribution to find a link to the murders. But they weren’t having much luck with that part.
“It ain’t mine,” Carson protested.
Neill stepped forward. “Had your prints all over it.”
“So I touched it. Touched the door to that Beamer, too. Don’t mean I own it.”
Hal studied the gun, felt Carson watching him as he turned it in his hands. “You think we can link this gun to murder, Dwayne?”
He didn’t answer.
Hal hitched his thumb toward the door. “How about the other two? Because we do that, you know where you’re headed?”
He tipped his chair back, shook his head. “I told you. Ain’t got nothing to do with guns.”
Neill shoved Carson’s chair flat again.
Carson jumped up. “Hey, man.”
“Sit down,” Neill commanded.
Carson moved the chair to the far end of the table and sat.
Hal pulled a holster from the box, the one they’d found strapped on his ankle. “How about this? You just happened to have it?”
“Got it from a friend, like a gift.”
Hal laughed coarsely, Carson starting slightly from the sound, which echoed off the small room. He knew how to rattle these guys. They needed to be taken seriously. Showing fear could get them killed. If they didn’t act invincible, someone would take them down. “Weird gift for a guy with no gun.”
“Yeah, my friend, a weird dude,” Carson said, his voice dropping, the tone less confident.
“We’ve got a lot of dead kids, Carson. You don’t start talking, you’re going upstate.”
Carson didn’t answer.
“Maybe there was someone else out there, someone we couldn’t see.”
He narrowed his eyes as though sensing a trap. “Yeah. Sure.”
“You see anyone else?” Neill asked.
“Nah. No one else.”
“Was there a white guy?”
“A white cop?”
Hal shook his head. “With you guys.”
“Didn’t see no white guy. But what do I know? I didn’t know they was going to pull that shit either.”
Hal kept pressing. “How about the guys in the building?”
“Told you I don’t know nothing about them.”
“So you didn’t see a white guy with them?”
“Didn’t see no white guy except the cops.”
Hal tipped his chair back then forward again, landing with a thwack on the linoleum, watching Carson in silence.
Neill rounded the table to stand beside him. “You’re seventeen—means you’re an adult in the eyes of the law. You ever been to prison?”
Carson didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at the ceiling like it was a screen playing a movie he’d never seen.
Neill put his palms on the table. “Nice-looking guy like you. You be some fresh meat.”
Carson didn’t make eye contact.
Hal thought they were losing him.
“You know what they’re going to do with you? Some big guy’s going to make you his girlfriend, Dwayne. You go that way? You like being some guy’s girlfriend?”
Kid like this, he’d heard these threats before. Most of his friends had probably been to jail. This was Neill’s witness, but Hal felt him slipping away. Waited for Neill to give Hal some room to work.
“Ain’t no faggot.”
“Only thing standing between you and prison is me, Dwayne.”
Hal sat back, glanced at his watch and rubbed the face gently with his shirtsleeve. His only link to the murders. Come on, Neill.
“You got sixty seconds to start talking,” Neill said.
Carson patted his pocket and sat up in his chair, something in his expression relaxing as though he realized he’d had the answer the whole time. Whatever fear was there vanished. “I want my lawyer.”
Hal watched him draw something from his pocket.
“What bullshit is this, a lawyer?” Neill said.
Carson handed Hal a worn business card. Martin L. Abbott, Esquire.
A lawyer. Hal turned away and clenched his jaw. It was over. Abbott was high profile and expensive, not someone this kid would have access to. Not on his own, anyway.
Someone was helping him.
Hal handed it to Neill who tossed it back at Carson.
“You think that lawyer’s going to help you,” Neill barked. “How are you going to pay him, Dwayne? A guy like that costs five hundred bucks an hour.”
“I ain’t talking without my lawyer.”
“You’d be saving yourself a lot of trouble by telling us who hired you to sell those guns,” Neill said.
He didn’t respond.
Hal smacked his palm on the table, making it stutter across the floor. “This isn’t a game, Dwayne.”
“I ain’t playing at nothing, officer.”
Hal heard the knock on the door and knew they were done.
Carson had asked for an attorney. No more questions until he made his call. And to Martin Abbott.
That was bad luck.
Down in the lab, Hal found Hailey pacing the speckled linoleum floor. One of the techs, Naomi Muir, was working at a station nearby.
“She driving you crazy?” he asked Naomi.
Hailey stopped and scowled at Hal.
“Not at all,” Naomi said. “I like the noise.”
Across the room Roger sat hunched over his keyboard across the room. Roger had a condition called alopecia universalis, which left him completely hairless and it had taken Hal some time to get used to the way a person looked without eyebrows or eyelashes.
Even after five years, it was still the first thing he noticed whenever he saw him. Seemed like it shouldn’t be that way but there it was. Like seeing someone’s color first. He knew enough about that. As a way of an unspoken apology, Hal had brought Roger a bumper sticker a few months back. It hung on the wall of his workspace.
With a body like this, who needs hair?
“Can you make her stop?” Roger asked.
“No way,” Hal said. “She’s the boss, man.”
He and Hailey had both been up most of the night and while he moved slowly, dragging his limbs like he was underwater, sleep deprivation made Hailey antsy. And the more exhausted she was, the harder it became for her to sit still.
She still had no answers from Jim who had been given a sedative at the hospital and was sleeping. CSU had spent much of the night processing the house, though they hadn’t come up with anything particularly useful in the process.
Hailey finally stopped pacing long enough to ask him what had happened with Dwayne Carson.
“Kid’s a dead-end with a high-priced attorney.” He filled her in on Martin Abbott.
Hailey sank into a chair.
“Martin Abbott,” she whispered. Her shoulders tightened, and for a moment, she was completely still.
Hal tried to read her reaction. What was she thinking? “Did Jim know Abbott?”
She shrugged, an awkward jerky motion, without looking at him. The way she averted her gaze, hesitated to answer questions related to her family—that was not new. It had started in the months since John died.
In the weeks after his father’s death, he, too, had distanced himself from his friends, creating a safe buffer to see whether they settled on his side or the other. He’d been a kid—only twenty-three. So much about that time was blurry now. He wished he could share it with her, tell her that it had been a mistake not to trust in the people who had always been there for him. But how could he?
How could he do that without confronting her about how secretive she’d become?
She finally looked up, caught his stare and said, “They’re friends, I guess, but I can’t see what either would want with that kid.”
“But Jim, Colby Wesson, Dennigs, the gunrunner—they all got buttons. Then, we’ve got a kid who calls Abbott… It’s too tight a circle. There’s got to be some link. The only thing that makes sense is the guns.”
Hailey said nothing so Hal turned to Roger, who was still typing at the computer. “What’ve you got, baldy?”
Roger smiled, one bald man to another. “Just getting a read on the button now. Letter’s still running.”
Hal had seen the letter the night before. After the interview with Carson, he had stopped by the lab to talk to Roger. The letter had been inside the FedEx envelope lying beside Jim.
Now, he followed Hailey across the room and looked again at the single page, printed on a HP LaserJet in Times New Roman font and read the words out loud. “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people. I know your darkness, Senator. Yours is a very old special.”
“It’s Jung,” Roger said.
Hal and Hailey said nothing.
“Carl Jung,” Roger added. “The famous—”
“Okay, Doctor Wikipedia.”
Roger laughed.
“It sound like anything else you’ve seen?” Hal asked Hailey.
She shook her head. “I’m sure Jim gets all sorts of weird stuff.”
“But usually not with a bullet,” he pressed.
“Right,” Hailey agreed. She met his gaze and held it, not with her normal confidence but more like it was a dare she didn’t want to lose.
Finally, she rubbed her arms, and said, “I don’t honestly know,” and resumed her pacing.
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