06 Every Three Hours

by Chris Mooney

  It was Hill who saw her first, Hill backing away from Murphy like the man had suddenly burst into flames. Hill stared at her in cold fear and Darby felt that slow-motion terror creeping through her as Hill shifted his gaze to Coop, who had also recognized him, Coop’s momentary confusion and uncertainty – This can’t be Danny, Danny’s dead – snapping into a larger confusion on how to proceed because Hill wasn’t dead and now he was here having some clandestine meeting in the lumber section of Lowe’s with Murphy.

  Danny Hill had his hands tucked in his coat pockets. They stayed in there even when his back bumped up against the tower of lumber behind him, Hill developing the awful stillness of a mongrel dog that was about to strike, rip flesh from limbs.

  But not Murphy; he was shocked to see Coop – and at the moment he only saw Coop. He didn’t see the agents who were crowding the other end of the aisle, and Murphy, strangely, looked relieved and grateful, like he had been marooned on a desert island and had given up all hope of ever being rescued.

  ‘He killed Warren and the old black lady and her family,’ Murphy said, his voice loud, his words drawing the attention of the customers in the aisle, a good handful who weren’t moving yet, Darby wanting to tell them to leave their shopping carts or whatever it was they were holding in their hands and to leave now. She was standing well behind Coop and Murphy was moving to him and she lost sight of Hill as Murphy said, ‘Let’s keep this in the family, okay? He gave himself up. Let me bring him in and –’

  A gunshot went off and Darby saw Murphy’s forehead explode like a watermelon before she dropped to the floor, people screaming and running. Coop had his sidearm out and he didn’t have a clear shot and the agents swarming in the aisle didn’t have a clear shot because everyone was running and screaming, Coop shouting at Hill to drop his weapon when Hill tore a woman away from her shopping carriage and yanked a kid twelve or eighteen months old from the seat.

  Darby left her Sig tucked in the waistband of her jeans as she scrambled to her feet, Hill clutching the kid close to his chest, using him like a shield the way the gunman had used the pregnant woman. The boy, dressed in a bright red parka, was frightened and trying to squirm away and he jumped when Hill screamed at the top of his lungs: ‘Back away, back the fuck away right now, you lying sons of bitches, or I’ll pull the trigger!’

  Coop’s face, Darby saw, and the front of his jacket and clothes were splattered with blood and pieces of Murphy. The agents were looking to him for direction; he was the senior man, the one in charge. He nodded and as they retreated to give him some room, Coop said, ‘Danny, I’m gonna put my gun away, okay?’

  ‘Put it on that shelf next to you.’ Hill was looking at Darby now, too, Darby standing in the aisle with them, not about to leave Coop. ‘Then both of you, do it.’

  Coop said, ‘No problem. Look, I’m putting my gun down.’

  Coop placed it on the shelf to his left. Darby’s jacket was unzipped; she pulled the leather aside and said, ‘I’m not armed, Danny. We didn’t come here for you. We came here to speak to Murphy.’

  ‘Goddamn liar is what he is.’

  ‘I know that,’ Darby said, keeping her tone calm, using it to get Hill to calm down, too, hopefully. Hill had his back pressed up against a stack of two-by-fours and he had dug the muzzle of his nine-millimetre against the boy’s stomach, the boy crying now, calling ‘mama’. Darby could hear the woman screeching from somewhere behind her, in another aisle, the agents doing everything they could to calm her down, get her to be quiet.

  ‘Goddamn liar,’ Hill said again, and this time his gaze dropped to Murphy, who lay against the floor, motionless, the wreck that was his face mercifully pressed against the floor, out of view. ‘Bunch of goddamn liars, all of them.’

  It was then that Darby noticed he was drunk. He was slurring his words and he was having trouble standing up straight, his eyes rheumy, threaded with tiny pink veins.

  Darby showed Hill her empty hands, kept them near her sides. ‘We came here for Murphy,’ she said, fighting the trembling feeling sliding up and down her arms and legs. ‘We just came here to talk to him.’

  ‘Talk,’ Hill snorted. ‘Like talking ever solved anything. Nobody listens when you talk. I don’t want FBI boy here.’ He nodded with his chin to Coop. ‘Go back to the rest of the liars and thieves, FBI boy.’

  Darby said, ‘We didn’t know you were alive, Danny. Why didn’t you call us? Why didn’t you let us help you?’

  His eyes, bright with alcohol (and she could smell it now, too), kept bouncing from her and Coop and the end of the aisles where the agents had taken strategic positions, waiting for orders. No doubt SWAT had been called, emergency vehicles. She prayed to God it wouldn’t come to that.

  ‘I’m not going to jail,’ he screamed. ‘You people aren’t gonna pin any more shit on me.’

  The kid was bawling in the way only a one-year-old could: piercing shrieks that felt like glass being ground into the eardrums. Hill shook him. ‘Shut up.’ Shook him again. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘We didn’t come for you, Danny, we came for Murphy,’ Darby said again. ‘We thought you were dead.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be, right?’ Hill snorted again. Swallowed. ‘Took the day off to help my brother with some stuff and then he calls.’ Hill nodded with his chin to Murphy. ‘Calls and tells me to drop what I’m doing ’cause he needs my help, shit’s about to go down today.’

  ‘So Murphy was purposely waiting in the lobby today?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. He was there to talk to a ghost.’ Hill giggled drunkenly.

  ‘Walter Karl Torres,’ Darby said.

  She saw the name hit home, Hill tightening his grip on the kid.

  ‘Son of a bitch was in my house,’ Hill said. ‘Put a bomb in there and then blew it up.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Raised my kids there – my wife, God rest her soul, she died there. In our bed.’

  ‘Heart attack, right? Went peacefully.’

  The kid was squirming in his arms and Hill was using all of his energy to keep standing up straight. ‘My house,’ he said again.

  ‘I know. Someone was in there today, someone we thought might’ve been you – a guy with a Marine tattoo.’

  ‘My brother. We had the same tattoos, on the same leg. Got them together when we went into the Marines.’ Hill paused for a moment, fixed on a private memory. His eyes were bright and his voice was tight with emotion when he said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  Darby nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said solemnly. ‘Yeah, he is. I’m sorry.’

  Hill nodded, wiped his nose on the kid’s jacket. ‘Been staying with me. My brother. Wife finally left him. They always do, you know. Women. You use us and then spit us out. We’re never good enough. I’ve gotta sit.’

  Hill slid awkwardly to the floor and then crossed his legs, trying to keep the kid close to his chest, the kid squirming and trying to claw free and not giving a shit if it pissed off Hill because the kid had no idea what a gun was. All he wanted was his mother. All he wanted was for the steel tube digging into his stomach to go away.

  ‘I’m going to sit with you, Danny.’ She didn’t want to be looming over him. ‘I’m going to sit right across from you and Coop’s going to leave, right, Coop?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, numb with adrenaline. ‘Yeah, sure thing.’

  Blood was pooling all over the floor around Murphy. She stepped over the blood and, with her hands raised near her shoulders, carefully made her way to the shelving across from Hill.

  58

  +09.08

  ‘I’m going to sit down now,’ Darby said.

  Hill said nothing, lost inside his thoughts. She lowered herself to the floor and then sat with her left leg bent and her arm propped on her knee, the Sig digging into her back, the kid’s screams piercing her skull like nails, hammering into the meat of her brain. ‘You and I need to work this shit out.’

  ‘Goddamn right we will.’

  ‘I ca
n’t hear you over the screaming. Let him go so you and I can talk. Just put him on the floor and let him crawl away, and then you and I can sit here for as long as you want, until we figure out what we need to do.’

  Hill put his pinkie finger in the kid’s mouth. The boy stopped wailing, traded it for chewing.

  Hill winced. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, his head swaying a bit. ‘Little guy’s teething.’

  ‘You got kids, right? A girl and a boy?’

  ‘Two girls. Grown. Claire just had a kid. A boy. Parker.’ Hill snorted. Shook his head. ‘Jesus, what an awful name. That’s her husband’s doing, his choice. Watched too many soap operas, I think. But he’s the breadwinner, and when you’re the person with all the money, you get to make all the rules.’

  Then Hill’s gaze jumped to Murphy. Coop, Darby saw, was no longer standing in the aisle, no doubt coordinating the resources with Gelfand.

  ‘Murph was a good kid,’ Hill said.

  Then why did you kill him? Darby wanted to say.

  ‘Known him since he was a patrolman,’ Hill said, wiggling his finger inside the kid’s mouth as he bounced him up and down, trying to soothe him. ‘Didn’t know about the other stuff until much later, until it was too late.’

  ‘What other stuff?’

  ‘I tried. I really did. I tried to do the right thing.’

  Darby waited, her gaze locked on Hill.

  ‘But sometimes people take that power away from you when you’re not looking,’ Hill said. ‘Like Murphy. I didn’t tell him to kill Warren and Lacy and whoever else. He did that all on his own. Came here to give me the gun, asked me to get rid of it for him.’

  ‘You called him?’

  ‘No. No, he called me.’

  ‘Where have you been all day?’

  ‘His house. Couldn’t go back to mine. Hanging out there while we tried to figure out what was happening.’

  ‘Walk me through it so I can understand.’

  Hill looked down at the kid, who was greedily gnawing on his finger, the kid no longer crying but his eyes still bright with tears, his nose running. A ghost of a smile flickered on Hill’s face then vanished.

  ‘Murph called me early this morning. Said there was a gunman inside the police lobby and he took three hostages. Said we had a problem.’

  ‘What kind of problem?’ Darby asked.

  ‘Murph got a call early this morning from someone, this guy with a bad cold, he said. Guy said he wanted to meet Murph inside the station this morning, to talk about a few important matters.’ Hill kept widening his eyes. His mouth was dry, spittle dotting his lips. ‘Said he had information on who killed Sean Ellis after he got out of prison.’

  Darby weighed the next question, debating whether she should ask it or just let Hill keep talking.

  It didn’t matter. Hill wanted to talk. He said, ‘I didn’t kill Ellis. That was him.’

  ‘Murphy?’

  Hill nodded. ‘And Ventura and Owen. The Three Amigos, we called them. Did everything together when they were patrolmen. When they were coming up.’

  ‘Why did they kill Sean Ellis?’

  ‘Because Ellis was going to go ahead with a civil trial, bring certain things to light – things that wouldn’t be good for Murphy and the others. For any of us.’

  ‘You talking about BPD?’

  ‘I’m talking about the Feds. They’re the ones who can make people disappear with a snap of their fingers, wave a magic wand and give anyone they want a real name – or sell them down the river.’

  ‘Send people to jail based on faulty or made-up evidence.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Hill looking at her like she really understood him. ‘Warren, the fingerprint guy? Deep down, he wasn’t a bad guy, but he had some vices, like we all do. And they exploited that. They made him do shit with fingerprints to close cases. And the guy who was running ballistics back in the day, this guy Vickers – it was the same thing. Fudge the ballistics report, make some evidence disappear or asked to look the other way. Same thing with me, same thing with … No, not Murphy. He got off on it. He liked being in control.’

  ‘Who gave the orders, Danny? Who inside BPD?’

  Hill looked at her as though she had dropped a hundred IQ points. ‘You can only make deals on a federal level,’ he said. ‘I mean, look at the mortgage crisis from a few years back. Investment bankers caused it. Stockbrokers and mortgage companies – they all preyed on people, and they lost their homes and their life savings. Then the federal government bails them out and the guys who did it? They still get their fifty-million-dollar-a-year bonus. Not a single one of them went to jail. Shit, not a single one of them was even arrested.’

  Darby wasn’t sure where he was going, if his alcohol-fuelled brain was making a connection back to what was happening at the police station or if he was simply babbling. She decided to let him continue, feigned listening, all the while watching for Hill to move the kid away just far enough so she could get a shot, just a clean shot. One was all it would take.

  ‘What I’m saying is, the people who are really responsible don’t get punished. They’re too high up, protected by paper. You play chess, who’s the most valuable piece? The king. You protect the king or the game’s over, right? That’s why you sacrifice the pawns. Same thing with wars. Generals don’t go rushing into enemy fire. You sacrifice your infantrymen. And no matter who you are, you think you’re smart enough to avoid that trap. But anyone can put you into that spot any time they want. No one protects you in this life. You’ve got to do that yourself.’

  Then a thought wormed its way through his drunken haze and his eyes brightened. ‘I want to make a deal,’ he said. ‘Give me immunity and I’ll tell you what you people want to know. Briggs and the garage, everything.’

  ‘You can talk to a lawyer. We can –’

  ‘Don’t want a lawyer, I want someone in charge. Tell the district attorney to come here.’

  ‘DA’s not coming here, Danny, not with you holding a gun, not with you holding a gun on a kid.’

  ‘I’m not gonna hurt him.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘But I’ve gotta hold on to him ’cause they were going to kill me. Second I let him go, someone here will kill me.’ He swallowed, his eyes bright with tears. ‘Our thing isn’t nine to five. You don’t check out at the end of the day and put what you do behind you, go back to your family. You carry what you do and the stuff you see. It’s there when you hit the pillow. You don’t get any break from it. You have to carry this shit, learn to live with it, you know?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They don’t teach you how to do that. How to carry the stuff. How to lock it in a box and learn to … not forget, but how to make room for it. How to live with it. And when you do reach out for help, the people who are supposed to help you don’t. So where’s that leave you? Purgatory. You stay there and it’s like you’re living every moment with a held breath, waiting for your number to come up. And now it’s my turn.’

  He wasn’t making much sense. Darby was trying to get him to a point when she said, ‘Tell me what you’re holding, Danny. Tell me so I can help.’

  ‘Don’t run that psych bullshit on me, okay? Just don’t. Things I’ve seen and had to live with? I …’ Hill shook his head. ‘Gave up my life for this city. Those cases I worked on? They were righteous. Then the Feds come in and screw everything ’cause they’ve got to protect their confidential informants – make us take the freight. “Put that evidence over here,” they say. “Make this guy the suspect,” they say. And I get swept up in the tide. I didn’t know the guys who said they had my back were working deals with the Feds to protect Sullivan and the others. I mean, what other choice did I have?’

  It’s all about choices, Darby wanted to say. ‘You’ve got a choice now, Danny. You and I can go and make a deal with the DA. I can … What’s so funny?’

  ‘I was thinking about something your old man used to say, how “it’s all about choices”. Big Red said tha
t all the time.’ Then a dreamy, boozy smile tugged the corner of his mouth. ‘He was a good man.’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘He didn’t deserve to go out like that. But you know what I admired about him the most? He always tried to do the right thing. Stuck to his guns and never turned his back on anyone. Went out with respect.’

  ‘Do you know Big Red, Danny?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Murph didn’t tell you anything.’

  Hill shook his head. ‘He just said not to worry, that he’d take care of everything, the way he always did. Now look at him. At us.’

  ‘Walter Karl Torres,’ Darby said.

  For a moment, Hill turned as still as a statue.

  ‘We know he was a federal informant,’ Darby said.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  Darby shook her head. ‘We have some evidence that shows Torres is alive – that he’s the gunman.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘No. No bullshit. I just found out myself. He –’

  Hill suddenly let go of the kid. Darby’s attention wasn’t on the child; it was on Hill, who was bringing the gun up towards his chin, taking the coward’s way out. Let him do it, a part of her said – and she would have too, if she didn’t need him as a witness. Her hand was already gripping the Sig when she brought it up and fired.

  59

  +09.11

  Darby walked numbly out of the aisle, dimly aware of the agents and mix of SWAT and emergency personnel flooding past her and crashing into her, asking her questions she could barely hear behind the ringing in her ears from the gunshot. The mother of the kid was crying somewhere behind her and men were shouting in front of her and all the sounds seemed distant and garbled, as though she was listening to them from somewhere deep underwater. She brushed off an EMT who wanted to help her and stepped across the centre aisle and entered an open-space area of waist-high shelving and counters holding an array of power saws and blades that could cut through concrete and steel.