“He told me to tell you you’re on your own as far as legal counsel’s concerned,” Richards explained, half-expecting someone from the department to show up any minute. “Oh, and that if you keep being uncooperative, he’ll go public with your ties to Venezuelan drug cartels.”
Carter’s jaw clenched and his knuckles turned white. “He wouldn’t…”
“I think he would.” The smile disappeared from Richards’ face. “And you’re not exactly in a position to do anything about it… are you?”
CHAPTER 21
Fifteen years ago...
Late-night stakeouts were no fun, especially when Paul Andersen had to go about them by himself. His partner had planned on tagging along, but family commitments took precedence. Paul was honestly surprised Janice didn't put up more of a fuss about him being out all night tailing a suspected dirty cop, but the fact that Brian and Jill were away on a summer camp probably had something to do with it. Not that Paul liked being out all night, away from his wife on the rare occasion they had the house to themselves, but he couldn't let the proverbial trail go cold.
His coffee, on the other hand, already had. The steam had long ago faded from the travel mug sitting in the cup holder. He normally took his coffee black, but on a lark had decided to try one of the vanilla flavorings several of the uniforms fancied. One sip had told Paul that was a mistake, so the mug had sat unattended to, mostly full. He had been on this stakeout for almost six hours now, and his stomach gargled far too loudly in the silent car for his liking. The corner of Eutaw and Lafayette was quiet this time of night, so much so that if Paul wasn't careful, Officer Brady would likely spot him.
That was the trouble with tailing cops: more often than not, they knew all the strategies because they worked out of the same playbook.
Just as Paul was about to crank the motor, momentarily abandon his stakeout in favor of finding food, something rapped against the driver's side window. The sound made Paul freeze, his right hand hovering just above the keys jammed into the ignition.
“Hands away from the wheel,” the muffled voice commanded. “Roll down your window. Slowly.”
Paul did as commanded, rolling the window halfway down before raising his arms, his hands level with his head. He took in a deep breath to steady his nerves, even as his heartbeat thundered away against his ribcage. He kept his blue eyes on the windshield, not wanting to chance anything by stealing a glance.
“Badge and gun,” a male voice ordered. “Toss them out the window.”
Paul frowned. “I don't --”
“Badge. And. Gun.” The man cocked his gun. “Toss 'em!”
With careful, deliberate motions, Paul eased his gun from its holster and his badge from the clip on his belt before dropping them both to the wet pavement. A steady rain had blown through the area earlier in the evening, washing out the Orioles' game against the Minnesota Twins until the next day. No sooner did the badge and gun clatter against the ground, Paul glanced up to see a masked man kick them aside and reach in through the window with his free hand, popping the door open.
“C'mon out,” the man ordered, stepping back as the door swung open. “Nice and slow now.”
Despite every instinct telling Paul to grab for the man's arm, the detective kept his hands right where they were, his shoulder pushing the door the rest of the way open as he climbed out of the vehicle. The masked man slammed the door shut once Paul was upright, and not once did the barrel of the gun waver from its target -- which, apparently, was the middle of Paul's neck -- exactly where his bulletproof vest wasn't protecting him.
“Andersen, is it?” The masked man cocked his head to the side, prowling in a circle around the detective before standing directly in front of him. “Yeah, I've heard about you.”
A dozen different wisecracks popped into Paul's head at that moment, but with a gun trained on him, he bit his tongue. Instead, his eyes studied as much of the figure in front of him as they could, and for the first time, Paul wondered why the muffled voice behind the mask was so familiar to him. He wondered if perhaps the man he had been tailing for much of the evening and night had gotten the drop on him. If that were the case, then Paul was rather embarrassed.
“Why are you tailin' me?”
“I'm investigating a murder,” Paul explained. “16-year-old kid.”
“Shit, they actually sent a detective out for that?” The man made a tsk sound and shook his head. “Used to be, Downtown would shove that under the rug.”
“Kid was murdered. That can't slide.”
“Lemme tell you about that... kid,” the man hissed, stepping forward and pressing the barrel of his gun against Paul's neck. “High school dropout, has an older brother that runs with one of the gangs in northwest Baltimore. While all his buddies are on the football team and applying to colleges, this little shit was throwing up gang signs in all his family photos.”
“Funny.” Paul pursed his lips. “Those looked like peace signs to me.”
“Yeah, that kid was a real fuckin' angel.”
“Still doesn't give anyone the right to kill him,” Paul argued. “Officer Brady.”
Rather than shoot Paul, Officer Brady smacked him in the temple with the butt of his gun. The detective dropped to his knees with a grunt, a trail of blood running down the left side of his face. Before the masked man could take another swing, though, Paul socked Officer Brady in the stomach. When he dropped his gun and doubled over in pain, Paul slammed the palm of his hand into Officer Brady's chin. Once the officer fell in a heap onto the pavement, Paul wiped off some of the blood with his thumb before picking up his gun and badge.
Before he could reach for the handcuffs in his back pocket, though, Paul felt the barrel of another gun press into the back of his head. The sound of the gun being cocked stopped him in his tracks.
CHAPTER 22
Present day...
The next time Nolan Carter found himself in the interrogation room, he was by himself. And when Detective Stevens kicked the door to the room open and the officer flinched, Stevens couldn't help the smile the spread across his face. He let the door slam shut on its own, hovering just shy of the rusted table as he studied the manila file folder in his hands. Let the bastard sweat it out a little, especially since all of his other buddies were still in Holding. The Fourth’s captain had been calling non-stop wanting to know why the Seventh was holding four of its officers, and more than one high-priced lawyer had called threatening legal action, but to this point, none of them had a leg to stand on.
Especially after the phone call from Gregor
“You're a real sick fucker, you know that?” Stevens started, scraping the chair against the floor so it made a god-awful noise before plunking himself in the seat.
“Nice to see you too, Detective.”
“Look, shitstain.” Stevens leaned in. “You can boast all you want about your buddies at the Bishop. But even they won’t take kindly to you bein’ on the take.”
Carter arched his brows and folded his arms over his chest. He had all the entitlement of those five-star recruit quarterbacks Stevens once earned a scholarship by planting face-first into the turf. “Is that so?”
Without another word, Stevens opened the folder and spread several glossy, high-resolution photographs. Spreading them out onto the table in front of Carter, Stevens watched as the officer's eyes darted downward to take in the pictures -- stills Tech had grabbed from the laptop they had pulled from Carter's apartment once they had finally gotten a warrant. Carter unfolded his arms and straightened his posture, a crease forming on his forehead as he frowned. Grabbing one of the pictures, Carter shook his head and cupped a hand over his mouth.
“Yeah,” Stevens said. “Turns out Ol’ Man Richie Rich was tellin’ the truth.”
“What...” Carter scoffed and tossed the photograph aside; his tough guy act was a thing of the past. “You think that's me?!”
“We found it on your laptop!”
“Bullshit!” Carter sho
uted, springing from his chair and pacing around the interrogation room.
Stevens rested his right hand on the Sig Sauer resting on his hip. “Nolan Carter, sit your ass down!”
“That’s not me!” he yelled, pointing at the photographs.
“I said sit!”
Carter fell quiet for a beat, his hands curling into fists. Stevens tightened his grip on his weapon in response, arching a brow as if he were daring the other cop to try something. Not that Stevens necessarily wanted to discharge his firearm -- that was a stack of paperwork he did not want to fill out -- but if the suspect wasn't cooperating, he had to at least consider it.
But Carter did sit, slowly lowering himself back into the chair with a ragged breath. His eyes never left the photographs.
Stevens released his grip on his handgun with a sigh. “Alright, now... deny all you want, but these?” He tapped one of the photographs. “Were on your computer.”
“I don't know what to tell you, Detective, but the man in those shots isn’t me.” The anger and righteousness that had been written all over his face were gone, replaced with a panic normally reserved for those who realized there was no getting out of their predicament. Most of the suspects Stevens saw with that face looked like that once they noticed the cops had discovered everything, that they were looking at a long jail sentence regardless of what went happened going forward.
Long and short of it, Carter was cornered. He was also a terrible liar.
“Your laptop, your apartment,” Stevens countered. “Your fingerprints.”
Carter raked his hands over his face and shook his head. Tears brimmed in his eyes and he clenched his jaw. For the first time since he found himself in the Seventh Precinct, Officer Carter was scared. He had been so sure of himself when he was first brought in, questioned in one of the conference rooms out of courtesy, and even once he officially became a suspect after roughing up Colonel Downs, he acted like nothing was wrong and that everything would fall into place soon enough.
But now...
“We're in the process of getting warrants to search everyone else's apartments,” Stevens explained. “What do you think we'll find? Hm?”
“I don't know,” Carter choked out.
“You sure?” Stevens arched a brow. “You sure they’re not takin’ money too?”
“No!” Carter yelled, two tears streaming down his face. “I am a lot of things, Detective, but I am not a drug pusher!”
“Evidence says otherwise.” Stevens tucked the photographs into the folder again before rising from his chair. “Enjoy your last few hours in Holding, asswipe. Tomorrow morning, the DA's filing charges and we're shipping your ass outta here.”
CHAPTER 23
“I understand that.” Daniel Richards cradled his office phone against his shoulder, arms folded over his chest as he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He could feel one of his stress headaches beginning to form, as it almost always did whenever Deputy Commissioner Baldwin called. A small television sitting atop a rusted file cabinet played with the sound off, the local sports anchor running through that night's baseball highlights. The Orioles had defeated the Chicago Cubs 5-3 in an interleague match-up, which seemed to be the only good news in the city at the moment.
So far, his detectives hadn’t provided any more detail on David Gregor’s alleged ties to Officer Carter. So either Gregor had been bluffing when he had called earlier that day, or he was giving Carter some time. Richards had no idea what to think when it came to Gregor; that man was as enigmatic as any the captain had ever met.
“You can't possibly be asking me to tell my detectives not to do their jobs,” Richards added, grabbing the remote control and flipping through the channels. At this hour, there was no telling what was on, but once he reached one of the twenty-four hour cable news stations, and saw a white-haired man in a blood-red suit on his screen, Richards sat up a little straighter and took the television off mute.
Sure enough, the man on the screen was David Gregor. The chyron under his name read Police Under Seige.
Oh, this will end well...
“You keep telling yourself that,” Richards said with a shake of his head. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Hanging up before the deputy commissioner could say anything else, Richards turned the volume up on the television.
“David, you can't be serious,” the anchor with impossibly perfect hair argued with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Are police just... not supposed to do their jobs?”
“That's not what I'm saying at all,” Gregor cautioned. “In fact, the police not doing their jobs is the problem here. Instead of focusing their attention on actual matters of substance, instead of chasing after actual criminals, these thugs with badges decided to intimidate a young boy. Nothing more than bullies with badges, if you ask me.”
“So this... boy's drug history doesn't concern you.”
“Not to the point that it justifies the police killing him, no.” Off the anchor’s exaggerated eye roll, Gregor sat up straighter and pressed on. “We’re talking about a 17-year-old, Sean. What teenager hasn’t done something dumb at that age?”
“I really don't know what's going on in your city,” the anchor practically growled. “Drug arrests have doubled over the last three years, homicides have quadrupled, you're executing cops-turned-serial-killers... and that doesn't even get into the fact that you've got a freak out there who thinks she can play dress-up and bust people's heads. What do you have to say for your hometown, David?”
“If the police would do their jobs, we wouldn't need a costumed vigilante in our city,” Gregor replied with a casual shrug. Richards dropped the remote and shook his head with a rueful chuckle, half-tempted to reach for the bottle of bourbon sitting behind his desk. “The fact is, Sean, that Bounty is doing good things for this city. She dismantled the Order. She has taken hardened criminals off of our streets, and she has proven to the citizens of Baltimore that there's someone out there they can trust.”
“Never mind the fact that she's breaking the law.”
Another shrug from Gregor. “So did the officers who killed Devin Buckner.”
The anchor was clearly angry at this point, tightly clutching his pen and clenching his jaw. Even though the TV was standard definition, Richards could see the vein throbbing on the anchor's forehead. Clearly an ideological blowhard with his own agenda, this man didn't appreciate his guest -- normally very friendly with that particular network -- going off-script.
“Ain't that some shit,” Richards mumbled to himself with a sideways grin.
CHAPTER 24
“Hey, Hi,” Ramon called out as he came out of the break room, a fresh mug of steaming coffee in his grasp, “any word from Tech yet on that mystery call?”
“Nothing yet,” Hitori Watson answered, his voice muffled by the pencil clutched between his teeth as his fingers danced over his keyboard. Inter-departmental emails were his preferred method of communication -- phone calls were not Watson's forte. In what felt like a stroke of irony, Tech was notoriously slow at responding to emails. Watson's lack of patience was in direct conflict with the other department's slow-but-steady approach, and he was in the process of typing his third email inquiry of the day -- and he still had an hour before lunch.
“You know what would be funny?” Ramon asked before cringing. “I mean, not funny, necessarily, but...”
Watson looked up from his monitor. “Ramon.”
“What if that voice was Detective Paulson?”
Watson removed the pencil from his mouth, placing it in a mug next to the framed photograph he kept of his parents from a trip they had taken back to their native Japan before he was born. His father had died a month ago, and after finding the picture while going through his things, Watson was determined to keep the reminder of where he came from close. “You don't really believe that, do you?”
“No.” Ramon took his first sip. “But the guy's a Grade A prick, and his badge is going to waste.�
��
“Could say that about a lot of the cops in this city.”
The elevator dinged, and Ramon turned in time to see Officer Sorenson emerge from the car with Mitch in tow. The blond and purple dreads clashed with her maroon hoodie and khaki-colored cargo pants. Mitch favored large, loose-fitting clothes, and she struck Ramon as the sort of person who liked covering up from head to toe even if the weather was warm.
“Mitch,” he called out in surprise. “Is everything alright?”
“She insisted I bring her here to see you,” Sorenson explained. “Never seen someone so eager to talk to a cop when they weren't in any danger.”
“Thanks, Greg.” Ramon tilted his head to the side and started back toward the break room. “C'mon. I'll get ya something to drink.”
◊◊◊
“Got any hot chocolate?” Mitch asked as soon as Ramon shut the door to the break room.
“Um... not sure.” Ramon frowned and opened the faded blue cabinet above the coffee pot, his eyes scanning the almost-bare shelves. “Most of us around here are coffee addicts. I know I can't live without the stuff... even if it tastes like warmed-over piss half the time.”
A small grin tugged on Mitch’s lips as she hoisted herself onto one of the stools surrounding a circular break table. “Not even gonna ask how you know that.”
Setting his mug on the table next to Mitch, Ramon crossed over to the vending machine. Ramming his shoulder into the side of the machine, Ramon caused it to briefly lift off the ground before he heard the telltale thunk of a soda can dropping into the reservoir in the bottom. He grabbed the ice-cold can and slid it across the table Mitch's way before taking the stool opposite of her.
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