Death Never Lies
Page 3
Useless’ second transgression was referring to the threat on the life of Mr. Justice Hopper as “the Supremes Case” as if it had anything to do with the Office of Special Investigations, which it absolutely did not. Thirdly, it was just plain stupid to think that anyone was going to let the Office anywhere near that investigation.
The Marshals, the Secret Service and the FBI were already engaged in a full-scale turf war over that one. The job of protecting federal courthouses and the judges in them belonged to the U.S. Marshals. The job of protecting high-ranking government officials was historically the province of the Secret Service and the job of investigating attacks on federal judges belonged to the FBI. Since this was still only a threat the Marshals and the Secret Service were claiming jurisdiction. Since it had the potential to become an actual attack the FBI wanted in. It was absolutely idiotic to think that anyone was going to let their little office get involved.
Eustace took Kane’s silence as interest and bent closer, lowering his voice.
“Whoever has a piece of catching the nut-job will get a big gold star on his record,” Eustace said. “I wouldn’t mind getting bumped up to GS 14. We could both use the extra money, right partner?”
Typical magical thinking, Kane thought. Just wanting something badly enough will get if for you. Glory-seeking moron! Greg bit his tongue and started typing.
“You’re a pain in the ass sometimes, Kane,” Eustace said, “but you do good work. I’m thinking that you can do your Sherlock Holmes voodoo while I keep the bosses off your back and together I bet we could break this thing. Division of labor, right?” Eustace gave Kane a friendly slap on the shoulder. Greg had been typing “searched” and scowled when it ended up “swarhed.”
That did it. Kane’s control snapped and he spun around.
“Grant, you’re a moron. And not just an ordinary moron. You’ve raised the bar on moronhood so high that if you got paid for it you’d qualify as a Professional Moron.”
“See, that right there,” Eustace said, laughing and slapping Kane’s shoulder again, “is why we make such a great team. You can get all your grouchy bits exercised on me instead of somebody who’ll take it personally. If you pulled that stuff on some FBI SAC you’d end up investigating people who put Canadian quarters in parking meters, but me, it just rolls off my back like a duck.” Like a duck? Greg thought. Oblivious, Eustace babbled on. “Then, once you’ve gotten it out of your system, you can go back to solving the case while I handle the bosses and type up the paperwork. Well, I won’t personally type it. The girl will handle that. Or, Kid Wannabee over there.” Eustace tilted his head in Danny’s direction.
Kane struggled to unfreeze his brain. So much stupidity, so little time.
“Grant, they’re not going to let us investigate a threat on Justice Hopper. It’s not going to happen.”
“Well, not with that attitude. Me, I prefer to think positive.”
Positively, Kane screamed inside his head. It’s an adverb!
Eustace glanced at Kane’s monitor. “What are you workin’ on? We got a new case?”
“Yes,” Kane answered through clenched lips. “The Administrator in charge of the HHS department that monitors importing potential bioterrorist materials has gone missing.”
“Missing, huh?” Eustace said, peering at the screen. “How long?”
“Since last Thursday morning.”
“Too long for your usual bender or shack-up. Any chance that he drove his car off a cliff or something?”
“There aren’t any cliffs between his apartment and the HHS building.”
“Into the Potomac maybe?”
“Unlikely,” Kane said with an edge that could cut steel.
“OK, well, we’ll find him I guess, sooner or later. Hope it’s sooner in case Dad can get us a piece of the Supremes Case.”
“Grant, go home. Please. Go home.”
“Yeah, good idea. It’s been a long day.”
Eustace smiled, gave Kane a last friendly pat on his shoulder and sauntered toward the door. Kane closed his eyes and took five long, slow breaths, holding each one for a count of two before exhaling, just the way he had been taught in anger management class. When he opened them again he and Danny were alone in the room.
“Is there anything I can help you with, Agent Kane?”
“What?”
“You were in the field all afternoon and now you’re working on your report so I thought that if you needed any records checked or something I could do that for you.”
“I can’t authorize any overtime.”
“That’s OK. I’ll do if off the clock. Maybe I’ll learn something, you know, for when I get to be an agent.”
Greg mentally did the math. Marty Fouchet needed Brownstein found ASAP. Technically he had a partner to help him but there was a reason he called Eustace “Useless.” Then there was Rosewood – no law enforcement experience, average intelligence, but friendly and anxious to please, essentially the human equivalent of a one-year-old Labrador retriever. It was a no-brainer.
“I need all of the surveillance tapes for the block around Albert Brownstein’s apartment for the entire week before he went missing. If that doesn’t get us anything then we’ll have to widen the search to the HHS building. I’m sending you my notes.” Kane pounded a few keys and copied the file to Stan Ewald’s machine.
“What should I look for?” Rosewood asked, apparently unfazed by the huge amount of work that Kane’s request entailed.
“If somebody grabbed Brownstein they probably would have cased his apartment. We’re looking for any person or vehicle that shows up too much, anyone who might be watching the building or Brownstein. He had a car but I followed up with his personal assistant. She told me that he took the bus to work unless the weather was bad so we’re looking for anyone who might have followed him from his building in the morning or from the bus stop back to his building at night. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to spot their car and get a plate number.”
Kane waited for questions or an excuse to get out of a job that was a lot bigger than Rosewood had expected but instead Danny said, “That’s a good idea, checking the area for the days before he went missing. I’m going to add that to my journal under ‘Things To Do When Starting A New Case.’ Thanks Agent Kane.”
Hmmmm, Kane thought. I wonder if there’s some way I can trade Useless for Rosewood? I just need to find the right lever. What would it take to get Useless to request a transfer?
CHAPTER SIX
Kane grabbed some take-out Chinese on the way home and ate it at his kitchen table. With his marriage long gone the apartment seemed especially empty. ESPN was probably running a basketball game from someplace but Kane couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for the idea. Before he got shot he had loved watching sports but now it mostly irritated him. He saw too many mistakes, too many missed opportunities, and he just ended up shouting at the TV.
On the other hand before he got shot he hadn’t been able to play a musical instrument. Like every kid he’d picked away at an old guitar but he never seemed to be able to coordinate the left-hand fingering with the right-hand plucking. But when his brain healed something must have gotten re-wired.
It had started almost as an accident back when he was still married. He’d fled the house after another of his shouting matches with Elaine and taken refuge at Malloy’s Pub, his new home away from home. Along the back wall Kevin had a battered upright piano on which had been played more renditions of Danny Boy and Born In The USA than Kane cared to remember. On his way to the can one night, half in the bag from self-medicating on shots of scotch, he had bumped against it, trilling his fingers across the keys as he passed. The sounds pulled at him like a child’s eye drawn to a shiny toy.
Greg plinked his fingers across the keys, first the right hand then the left, and something seemed to click. He couldn’t play it, of course. It was all just a series of random notes, but he had this feeling that he almost could do it. He fiddled with the pi
ano for several minutes until Malloy yelled at him to “Stop torturing the elephant.”
“Nobody uses ivory for keys anymore, genius!” Kane shouted back then wobbled into the john. The next day he bought a USB keyboard, a set of headphones and a $90 program called “Piano Suite.” To his surprise he found that he not only could learn to play but that he had a talent for it. When he tapped the keys his fingers felt like they were remotely controlled by some higher, soothing power. A month later Malloy was giving him free drinks for as long as the customers shouted out requests.
The music helped soothe his otherwise constant sense of frustration. On the other hand the booze and the long nights at Malloy’s Pub and his hair-trigger temper ended up destroying first his marriage and then his job. Now, he had a certificate of completion, not achievement, from an HMO-approved anger management class and playing still soothed his nerves.
Kane plugged in the keyboard, slipped on the headphones and let his tensions drain into the keys. Eyes closed, the music swelling in his ears, Greg let his mind drift off to the Brownstein case. He hated missing-persons cases. Why did this have to be a missing person’s case? Wasn’t one enough, more than enough? As a detective he had always despised them – kids gone, everyone knew they were dead, chopped up, buried in some hole, dumped down some well, but you had to keep looking, always looking for something you knew you were never going to find. It was bad enough when you were just the cop. It was ten times worse when you were involved, when it was your own blood. Like everything else in his life these days it all looped back to that morning at Sam’s Speedy Mart, back to Franco Herrera. . . .
* * *
“How’re they doing?” Tony Canaro asked Sergeant Ed Helburg, the first uniform he saw in the ER.
“Amoroso didn’t make it. Kane took one in the head. The docs are operating on him now.”
“What about the perps?”
Helburg pulled out his pad and flipped a couple of pages. “Ricky Bazzel, two-time loser. Got out of the joint three months ago. DOA at the scene. Kane,” Helburg nodded vaguely toward the operating rooms, “took him out after Bazzel shot Amoroso. Perp number two is Franco Herrera. We should call him ‘Mr. Timex,’ takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Canaro gave the Sergeant a hard stare and Helburg quickly glanced back at his pad. “Shot six times, both shoulders, two in the legs, one in the arm, last one in the gut. Apparently none of them hit anything vital. The docs say he’s gonna make it.”
“Jesus wept!” Canaro muttered and pulled out his phone. “Terri, it’s Tony. I’m at the hospital. Kane and one of the perps are still in surgery. It’s going to be awhile. I’m going out to the scene. I’ll meet you back here in two hours.”
Six hours later a nurse whose brother was on the job let Canaro and his partner, Theresa Quinn, into Franco Herrera’s room. They paused just inside the door and stared at the man who had helped kill their friend. Herrera looked like a half-wrapped mummy except that his left wrist was handcuffed to the bed. The prisoner gave them a distracted glance as they approached.
“Where am I?” Herrera asked.
“Hospital, moron,” Tony told him.
“Hospital Moron? I never been to that one. Do they take Blue Cross?” Herrera’s laugh turned into a cough.
“You killed a cop,” Theresa said in a voice like ice cracking.
“Me? I can’t remember a thing. Man, those drugs, they really mess you up. It’s all a blur.” Herrera smiled. “Hey, don’t you got to read me my rights?”
Canaro glanced at his partner then at the door. “Terri, you should call your mom, let her know you’re all right.” Quinn looked from Canaro to the prisoner and back to Tony.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Dead sure.”
Quinn paused for two heartbeats then turned and wordlessly left the room.
“Hey, where’s Cutie Pie going?”
Canaro ignored Herrera and started going through the cabinet on the far side of the room. He found a plastic-wrapped insulin syringe in the back of the third drawer down. He stuffed the cellophane wrapper into his pocket and pulled the plunger all the way back.
“What are you, a doctor now?” Herrera asked, eyeing the needle.
“I don’t have a lot of time here, Franco. You killed a cop and my friend. You’re either going to go to the joint for the rest of your miserable life or you’re going to die from your wounds. It’s up to me which one you get.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you need to convince me that I should let you live.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Actually, I don’t think you can.”
Canaro fingered the injection port on the IV tube.
“You think if you pinch off my medicine I’m going to get all upset and cooperate?”
“I’m not going to cut off your drugs, Franco. I’m going to add to them, not much, just a little bubble of air. Right in this line. Once it’s inside you it’s going to block up your plumbing.” Canaro made a fake choking noise then laughed. “Shot six times, nobody’s gonna be surprised that you didn’t make it.” Tony stuck the needle into the port.
“Hey!” Herrera shouted, “Somebody–” Canaro slapped his hand over Herrera’s mouth.
“Live or die, Franco, it’s up to you. What’s it going to be?” Tony paused for a second, then reached for the syringe that was still inserted in the injection port. “OK, die it is.”
Herrera tried to break free but with one wrist handcuffed to the bed and wounds in both shoulders he had no chance. His eyes stared wildly as Canaro fingered the plunger.
“Arrrugh aajllltlk!”
“You want to say something, Franco? You want me to take my hand off your mouth?” Herrera nodded as best he could. “OK, but no shouting or I’m going to finish you real fast.” Canaro lifted his palm a couple of inches above Herrera’s mouth. “You’ve got five seconds. Make it good.”
“Man, you can’t just–”
“Four seconds. . . . Three seconds. . . .”
“Wait, wait, OK. I’ll give you the Randies.”
“The who?”
“The Randies. The guys who sold me the guns!”
“Busting some two-bit gun dealer isn’t worth keeping you alive.”
“It’s not a dealer. It’s a gang and they’re into everything – guns, explosives, dope. Man, they’re big-time. That bomb at the DMV building – that was them. That meth lab the feds busted in Fells Point – that was theirs.”
Canaro paused for a moment, then shook his head. “Naw! Meth cookers are a dime a dozen. I’d rather see you dead than them locked up.”
“No, No! There’s more. You heard about those two Feds who went missing last year? They killed them both. These guys are serious, political.”
“What do you mean, ‘political’?”
“Their name is from some book or something about getting rid of the government. No government, that’s what they’re after.”
“Randies? After Ayn Rand?”
“I don’t know. Is that a book?”
“You bought your guns from them?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Canaro thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No deal. So they sold you a couple of automatic weapons. Even if the jury believed you, even if we got a conviction, all they’d get would be a slap on the wrist. That’s not worth keeping you alive.”
Canaro reached again for the plunger.
“No, no! I can give you the head guy. His name’s Ryan Munroe. I know where he keeps his stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Everything – guns, C4, hand grenades, the chemicals he uses to cook the meth.” Herrera gave Canaro a crafty look. “I’m not supposed to know but I was fucking one of their bitches and she let it slip. I got a way with the ladies,” Herrera said with a smirk.
“I’m supposed to believe that you just asked some girl and she gave up this Munroe’s storehouse?”
&nbs
p; “I had to convince her a little. Ricky and me figured we might rip the place off. Hah! We were stoned at the time, you know. Once we got straight we thought it over and decided that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“What happened to the girl?”
“Oh,” Herrera said, glancing away, “she’s around someplace.” It was all Canaro could do not to shove the plunger down right then. “You watch the place, like with a telescope or something,” Herrera continued, “and when Munroe shows up you bust him with the stuff. With all that dope and guns he ain’t gettin’ out of that.” Herrera smiled.
“What’s the address?”
“Hell, man, I don’t know. It’s a big barn on a farm out on Wittetca Road near Freeland up by the Pennsylvania border. The girl said that Munroe liked the name, Freeland, you know, Free Land.”
Tony fingered the plunger and tried to make up his mind. One monster dead or another monster locked up? Bird in the hand or bird in the bush? After about ten seconds he looked down at Herrera.
“Here’s how it’s going to go. I want you dead. I want you dead real bad. I’m going to bring a video camera in here and you’re going to make a statement on tape about everything, Munroe, the barn, the guns, the drugs, the explosives, the girl, everything. Then we’re going to get a warrant and bust him. If that doesn’t happen, if the barn isn’t there or the stuff isn’t there or we can’t tie it to Munroe, then you’re gonna die. If I can’t get to you, some other cop will. If none of us can we’ll promise some con in the joint a pass if he takes you out. There are a lot of guys locked up who’d kill you for a carton of cigarettes. Just think what they’d do if we promised to help them get an early parole or we agreed to trash the evidence against them so that they’d get a walk. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I don’t think you do. If anything goes wrong, if you change your story, if Munroe gets away, if this bust fucks up in any way, you’re not going to live long enough to go to trial. Period. End of story.”