by J. A. Faura
He still needed to be careful with what he said, however, because whatever else Grady might be, he was not stupid, “Detective Grady, I don’t know what it is you are referring to, but if this has something to do with the shooting at the courthouse, you need to know I was in a meeting, a videoconference as a matter of fact, at the time the shooting occurred.”
Grady paused. Had he made a big mistake? Like with Riche, had he made his move too soon, made too many assumptions? Then it hit him. Of course Loomis would have thought to have an ironclad alibi, something that was solid. He probably had at least a dozen people who would swear that he had been in that conference room at the time of the shooting. Now what, did he push the point with Loomis or did he take more time and regroup?
Maybe he’d settle for something in the middle, “I see. Well, my mistake, I thought I would call you, you would own up to shooting the man that murdered your daughter, which we both know you did, and then we would figure out what to do next. I forgot about the resources at your disposal and that you would have an airtight alibi before you ever thought of actually shooting him.”
Loomis felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he was right, maybe he should just own up to it now. That was the problem, though, maybe that was the thing to do.
He needed time to figure out what he was going to do next, what the right thing to do was, and that meant that now was not the time. “Detective Grady, I know it’s been a difficult case and that you and your team have invested a lot in it, but I’m not your man. I can see why you would think that it was me, but I’ve been straight with you throughout this whole thing, and like I just explained, I was in a meeting at the time.”
Grady listened. Loomis almost had him going again. Almost. Robert Grady had honed his instincts over a lot of years, working cases in vice, organized crimes and homicide, and whatever else he knew to be true, he knew that this man had shot Donald Riche just an hour earlier.
“Well, my mistake then. I am sorry about your daughter, Loomis. You take care.”
On his end of the phone, Steven hung his head and said his goodbye, again with a pang of guilt, “I appreciate it, detective. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Grady couldn’t resist, “Yup, I think you can count on that.”
They both hung up. Loomis finished packing his things and finally left his office. He had the bag with the things he would need from home ready and packed in a small duffle bag he’d left in the GIC lobby behind the front desk. He picked up the duffle bag, went down to the street, caught a cab to the airport, and got on his way to his in-laws’ house.
As a police officer Robert Grady had always enjoyed the clarity of what was right and what was wrong. It was true that in 25 years on the force there had been times when that line had been blurred, but in the end he had always been able to come back to the compass that had guided him through his career. This was different. He had been conflicted from the beginning, from the moment that he allowed Loomis to become a part of the investigation. He had known that in reality it was the most prudent thing to do, that the man’s experience, resources and most of all his motivation would make him more of a hindrance to the investigation had he tried to shut him out, but deep down inside Robert Grady had known that this scenario was in one way or another a very real possibility. He had known that because he himself was a father, because Loomis’s entire career and training was geared toward assessing situations and coming up with an operational objective to be met.
Grady could rationalize all he wanted and try to make himself believe that he thought Loomis just wanted closure, just to know what happened to his daughter so he could move on. He could try to do it, but now he knew he would never succeed.
What bothered Robert Grady the most about all of it, however, wasn’t that he had known this was going to happen and hadn’t done anything about it, actually had facilitated it to an extent. No, what bothered Robert Grady the most was that he was actually glad it had happened. It was something he would have never believed of himself. Throughout his career, he had run into the worst humanity had to offer and as much as he had wanted an angry father or husband or brother to exact revenge, to punish those that had hurt their families, he believed in the justice system, believed in his job and in the job of all of those that were charged with bringing the bad guys to justice. He had never felt sympathy for those that wanted to play police, judge and executioner, and yet here he was, sitting in his office, glad that the son of a bitch had his brain blown out, that he was no longer drawing air.
As he was sitting in his office lost in contemplation, he heard a knock at his door. He turned to see Mark Mullins on the other side of the glass and he waved him in.
Mullins came in and was clearly excited, “Hey, Bob, were you there when…”
He caught himself in mid-sentence when he saw Grady and saw that his suit was covered in blood spatter.
He looked at the cup in his hand and the bottle on the desk and let himself plop down on the chair on the other side of the desk, “Mind if I get myself one of those?”
Grady pushed the bottle toward him. Mullins downed the coffee he had left in his mug and poured himself a stiff drink.
“I guess you were pretty close, huh?”
Grady smiled sideways, “About as close as I could get without getting shot myself…”
Mullins took a sip of his drink, “Any idea about who did it?”
Grady drained his cup. If he hadn’t put it together yet on his own, maybe it would be better to leave Mullins out of it. “Nope, you’ve heard the news, they sent half of the NYPD looking for the guy and they came up with nothing.” Both men sat without saying anything for a couple of minutes.
Finally Mullins broke the silence, “You know it had to be a pro, right? I mean, it definitely wasn’t some wacko with a gun taking pot shots. I’ve been at that building and I’ve loaded plenty of perps at the loading dock. To put a shot in there from any distance, you’d have to have had some training. Do you think it might have been an inside job? Plenty of people out there who wanted the guy dead.”
Grady listened to his friend and just looked at him.
He was quiet for two beats after Mullins was finished speaking and then he spoke himself, “Well, you are definitely right about one thing, whoever did it had some training and not just some training, he had to be a sniper or a marksman.
“He also had to know enough about police procedures and how Riche would be transported. He also had to know the speed with which the department would respond and how far the immediate response net would reach, because he would have had to had set up the shot far enough away that he would be beyond the immediate perimeter.
Mullins was listening and nodding. Everything Grady was saying made perfect sense. “You’re right, that’s a pretty specific set of skills, the thing now is going to be looking into who had enough of a reason to…”
It was then that it also hit Mark Mullins, “Oh, my god…Loomis?” Grady just looked at him.
Mullins went on, “He couldn’t have, Bob! He’s not a nut or some sort of wacked-out vigilante, I mean, is he?”
Grady gave Mullins a knowing look, “I just spoke with Loomis, caught him at his office. He says he was in a meeting, a videoconference, at the time the shooting went down. That means that not only were there other people in the same room who will swear up and down that he was in that meeting, but there is a video feed with a time stamp that can be checked to corroborate his story.”
Mullins stared at Grady as he was processing what he had just heard. Like Grady, once he made the connection, there was no doubt as to who had done this. There were simply too many coincidences, not based only on the facts as everyone knew them: that Loomis’s daughter had been one of the victims, that Loomis had been a Navy SEAL commander for 10 years, and that the shot that had killed Riche could only be made by a few people, most likely with sniper training.
Those things alone made Loomis a prime suspect. Mullins
also knew what Grady knew, that he had been in on part of the investigation, that he had been the catalyst for the police to go into Riche’s warehouse, that he had seen his daughter in that freezer. Those were all things that, for Mullins, made Loomis not the prime suspect but the only suspect. Hearing what he had just heard from Grady went directly against what he thought was certain and like Grady he was going through a moment of doubt. His own moment of thinking that maybe, just maybe, it really hadn’t been Loomis. But like Grady, he was also not a green detective with just a couple of years under his belt. He was a seasoned homicide detective with years of experience in investigation.
Grady just watched Mullins go through the same process he’d gone through when he had spoken to Loomis. He watched him go through his own moment of doubt and also watched as he had come back to what he knew to be the truth.
Mullins shook his head, “I don’t care if Jesus himself comes down from heaven and swears on a bible that Loomis was in that meeting, it was him. You know it and I know it.”
Grady didn’t say anything; he simply took a sip from his cup and nodded.
Mullins went on, “Shit, we let him into this, we let him see his daughter! Goddamnit!”
Grady leaned forward and looked at Mullins. He could see he was really taking this hard, “Listen, first of all we don’t have any evidence that it was him. I mean, I think we both know it was him, but the man has a pretty rock-solid alibi and he’s denied doing it.
“Until there is some concrete evidence, there is absolutely nothing that ties Loomis to the shooting…nothing except for us and what we know.”
Mullins looked intensely at Grady without saying anything. Both men were thinking the same thing, ‘Are we going to say anything?’ In the end that was really the question, wasn’t it? Grady was right, there was absolutely no physical evidence and both men knew that there would be none, that if it had been Loomis, not a hair would be found anywhere near the shooter’s position. And even finding the shooter’s position was going to be difficult to do if not impossible.
Finally Grady broke the silence, “You know we are going to have to say something…actually, I’m going to say something. It was my call to let him into the investigation.”
Mullins looked truly insulted, “You’re shitting me, right? We both made the call. There’s no way I’m letting you take the rap for this, no way!”
Grady shot back, “Mark, listen, the only reason for us to say something is to bring Loomis in and only one of us needs to say something to make that happen. There’s no reason for both of us to ruin our careers. C’mon, it doesn’t make sense, man. Listen, if it had to be both of us to say something to make a case against him, I could understand, but it doesn’t have to be like that.”
Mullins just stared at Grady. He knew he had a point, but he still felt like shit and there was nothing Robert Grady would be able to say to change that.
Mullins shook his head, “I can’t believe this, you know if we hadn’t let him in he would have done it on his own, and he would have gotten in the way. It was just a no-win deal all along.”
Grady nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s about right, he would have put himself right in the middle of it. But we both know we only got into the warehouse because of him, and sooner or later Riche’s defense lawyers would have looked into that.”
Mullins nodded. Both officers could see that their careers were most likely over and that it was going to be because they let a good man take the embodiment of evil off the face of the earth. Both men knew that in the end they would do the right thing and would provide whatever information they had to in order to make this case.
Grady was the next to speak, “Well, let’s see how the investigation goes. For all we know, he’s telling the truth, it may not have anything to do with Loomis.”
Mullins nodded, “I guess that’s probably the best for now. Damn, just never saw this coming, Loomis or not. I honestly never saw this coming.”
Grady got up and walked to the window, and lied, “Neither did I, Mark, neither did I. Let’s think about what we want to do next. You know that even if we do share everything we know, even if we flat out say it was Loomis, we wouldn’t get very far once he presents his alibi, the video, all of it. And let’s not forget who it is we’re talking about him taking out, a fucking monster.”
Mullins got up and walked to the window next to Grady, “Yeah, I thought about it myself. It would be a hell of a hard case to make, even if we did give up what we know about Loomis and his involvement. The investigation, the trial, everything, it would be a lot of resources to bring him up on charges, that’s if the DA and the grand jury were willing to look past his alibi and all the evidence that he was in that meeting.”
Grady turned to look at Mullins, “Well, that’s why I said let’s think about what we do next.”
Chapter 13
Steven Loomis made it to his in-laws’ without incident. On the way there he thought about his family and about what the General had said. There were things he needed to take care of, things he had thought about but which now were not just potential plans but realities.
His family had been expecting him and when he got there it had been his children that had greeted him first. Christopher was too young to know what the situation was, he was just happy to see his daddy and ran to him as soon as he saw him. After picking up his son and giving him a big hug and a kiss, Steven saw his daughter Bethany. Even though she was only nine, she knew what had happened to her sister and what her family was going through. Bethany had always been the more introspective and thoughtful of his children. She had been mature beyond her years from an early age and had tested through the roof on every standardized test she had ever taken. Her parents had refused to have her skip a grade twice because they’d been worried about her growing up too fast. Now looking at her, Steven knew that she might not know exactly what had happened to her sister, but she knew, she felt, how deep it went and could see what it was doing to her family. In these past weeks Steven could see his daughter had grown up far beyond her short years and it broke his heart.
She didn’t run up to her dad, she simply walked over to him and gave him a long hug, “I missed you, Dad. I miss Tracy and I miss all of us being together.”
Steven held her close and took a couple of seconds before responding to her, so she wouldn’t hear his voice cracking, but he failed miserably, “I know, baby, I know. I miss all of that too. But we’re here now,” Steven now held her at arm’s length, “and you know what, we’re going to start making things better, okay? I’ll need your help to do that, though. I need you to try and go back to doing the stuff you’ve always done, talk to your friends, do all that stuff you do on the Internet looking up interesting things from different countries, that stuff.”
Bethany, tears streaming down her face, said, “I’ll try, Dad. I’ve been trying, it’s just hard. It’s going to take a long time to just go back to how things were. I’ll be okay, though. Mom needs your help more than I do.”
Steven kissed the top of her head. Yes, regardless of what his or his wife’s wishes were, his daughter had grown much older than her nine years, “I know, sweetie, that’s why I’m here, to try to help her. Will you help me with her too?”
Bethany wiped the tears from her eyes, smiled a small, pained smile and nodded. Steven gave her one last squeeze and let her go.
After greeting his kids outside, he walked through his in-laws’ front door and as he was putting his bags down his father-in-law, Tom Delaney, came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. “Hey there. How was your trip?”
Steven walked over to where he was standing and shook the man’s hand, “Uneventful, thankfully.”
They both went into the kitchen where Steven could see Tom had been making himself a sandwich.
“Where are Lucy and Beth?”
Tom finished making his sandwich and offered half to Steven, who only now realized he was starving. He took the hal
f Tom was offering and began to wolf it down.
“Easy there, you’re going to give yourself heartburn. I loaded it with Dijon mustard. They went into town to get some stuff for dinner. Neither one of them was up for making anything nor were they willing to trust my cooking skills.”
Both men sat down at the kitchen table. Tom brought a couple of bottles of cold beer and handed one to Steven.
Steven took two long pulls from the beer, “God, that tastes good.”
Tom nodded, “You must be exhausted. I can’t imagine that you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep while this has been going on.”
Steven confirmed that for him, “You’re right, I haven’t gotten more than two or three hours of consecutive sleep since this all started.”
Tom nodded and both men drank from their beer. They both sat at the table in quiet thought as they finished their beer. Over the years Steven and Tom had enjoyed many such moments. Neither man was the type to have to keep talking when they were alone with each other, something that was rare and which Steven appreciated immensely. Tom Delaney had been the most solid role model Steven had to look to until he met Art Goodman, the General. When Steven had met Marybeth Delaney during his time at the Naval Academy, he had known he would marry her after their first date. A mutual friend had introduced them. Steven had dated some in high school, nothing serious or long-term. He had been focused on sports and on his studies and figured he would think about getting married after he was finished with school, maybe once he was an officer. All of that had gone out the window when he met Beth. They had spent the entire night that first date talking, about life, about their dreams, their pasts, everything. They had started at a restaurant and when the place closed they had gone to an apartment that belonged to a friend of hers near the Academy. They had not realized how long they had been talking until they saw the first rays of sun coming through the window. Steven had driven her home and had walked her to the door. Tom Delaney had been waiting for his daughter and he was not pleased. When she went to open the door, he beat her to it and pulled it open himself. The first thing Steven had thought right then was ‘Why didn’t Beth tell me Charles Bronson is her dad?’ Steven had also learned at that moment that one could project power and intimidation without being boisterous or trying to be tough.