A Love For All Time

by Chloe Douglas

  A Love for All Time

  Chloe Douglas

  New York Boston

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  Prologue

  Kingsborough Community College

  Brooklyn, New York

  September 21, 2012

  “While he might be a murdering scumbag, our suspect definitely has an office with a view. Who’d ever guess that a two-year college would be located in such a primo location?”

  As he maneuvered the Chevy Impala through the slow-moving campus traffic, Brooklyn homicide detective Mick Giovanni jutted his chin at the school’s private beach. Located at the eastern end of Coney Island, Kingsborough Community College was surrounded on three sides by water.

  “Too bad for Randall Thibodaux, huh? The last time I checked, the view from Central Lockup wasn’t nearly as nice.”

  “That’s the risk you take when you pay a Russian mobster to kill your wife,” his partner Tommy O’Fallon sniggered. “The supposedly grieving spouse will learn soon enough that you can’t trust the guys in the Red Mafia to keep your dirty little secrets.”

  In fact, Mick figured that, right about now, Thibodaux, the school’s Director of Budget & Finance, was sitting pretty in his office with a view, secure in the knowledge that he’d successfully pulled a fast one on New York’s Finest. Nothing like a false sense of security to ruin a perfectly good Monday morning.

  Mick slowly braked to a stop, allowing a group of jeans-clad, jaywalking students to cross the street. “Once we finish up here, how about we swing past Villa Fiorita on the way back to the precinct? I’m in the mood for a little veal with eggplant.”

  “Like it could even compare to a home-cooked meal at Mama Giovanni’s,” Tommy said wistfully. “Man, I envy you. If I had a mother who could cook like that, I’d never have left home.”

  Lately, Mick had begun to wonder why he ever did. There was no denying it: things were bad between him and Diane. So bad that he could no longer pretend they’d merely hit a rough patch in the marriage.

  Stalled behind a UPS delivery truck, Mick rubbed a hand over the tightened muscles on the back of his neck. While he knew it was tough being married to a homicide detective, not all cop marriages ended in divorce. They’d taken a vow to hang tight through the good times and also the not-so-good ones. Unfortunately, those words meant more to him than they did to Diane.

  “How do you and Chrissy do it?” Mick asked Tommy out of the proverbial blue. The classic Irish-Italian cop team, they’d been partners for five years and best friends for more than fifteen.

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “The two of you have been married nearly as long as Diane and me.” He paused. Having begun the fishing expedition, Mick wasn’t altogether sure how to cast his line. “I mean, you guys make it look so easy. What’s your secret?” When the four of them had recently gotten together over Labor Day, he’d actually caught his partner cuddling with Chrissy, who was six months pregnant with their third kid and sporting a belly the size of a Sugar Baby watermelon. Wonder what his partner would think if he confessed that he’d been jealous as hell.

  Tommy O’Fallon’s freckled Irish face broke out in an amused grin. “Fake it ’til you make it, that’s my motto. Early on, I learned not to put myself in a situation where I’d say something to Chrissy that I’d later regret.” Tommy shot a quick sideways glance in Mick’s direction. “And judging from your hangdog expression, I’m guessing my advice might be a little late in coming.”

  Mick wordlessly nodded. He didn’t see the sense in hiding the truth. Not from Tommy, anyway. He’d known his partner since their rookie days at the Nine-four and considered him the brother he’d never had.

  Squinting, Tommy flipped down the visor to block out the late morning sunshine. “Maybe I’m coming at this from left field, but Diane’s clock is ticking, if you know what I mean. No doubt, the miscarriage was hard on her. But surely enough time has passed to give it another try.”

  “Hey, good idea.” Mick waited several beats before delivering the punch line. “However, in order for Diane to get pregnant, we’d have to first start sharing the same bed. And I’ve got a funny feeling that it will take an act of divine— Holy Shit!”

  In that instant, several gunshots rang out. Windows in the upper story of a nearby building were blown out, and sheets and shimmering shards of mirrored glass arced through the air.

  Mick immediately reached under the seat for the siren and slapped it onto the roof of the car.

  “I don’t believe it,” Tommy hollered as he switched on the grill lights. “Do you think somebody just detonated a bomb?”

  “I have no freakin’ idea. What building is that?”

  Tommy checked the GPS display. “It’s the school library. Whip into that parking lot on the left and we can cut across the campus,” he co-piloted as he reached for the radio. In a noticeably hoarse voice, Tommy informed the dispatcher that a gunman had opened fire inside the Robert J. Kibbee Library.

  “Why the hell can’t these deranged shooters just go out into the woods and quietly commit suicide? Why do they always have to take a shitload of innocent bystanders along for the ride?” Mick muttered as he drove the Impala over a curb and across a manicured lawn.

  No one should ever have to die because some attention-grabbing asswipe wanted his ten minutes of infamy.

  Pulling up as close to the front entrance of the library as possible, Mick slammed on the brakes and cut the ignition. No sooner had they exited the vehicle than they were greeted with the chilling rat-a-tat-tat of another round of semi-automatic gunfire.

  “He’s on one of the upper floors,” Tommy rasped as they charged up the thirty or so steps that led to the library’s main entrance. “What do you think? Should we wait for backup before we—”

  “And let this bastard kill how many people while we’re waiting?”

  Tommy yanked open the entrance door. “Point taken.”

  To Mick’s consternation, the other side of the entryway was dimly lit, the only illumination coming from overhead skylights.

  “Christ, somebody cut off the electric power.” Mick yanked his Glock out of its shoulder holster. “A deranged gunman who plans ahead. Gotta love that.”

  With weapons drawn, he and Tommy ran into an unruly herd of panicked students who were stampeding in the opposite direction as they tried to escape the building. Almost every one of them had a cell phone slapped to their ear, all excitedly yammering away.

  “Police. Out of the way!” Mick bellowed as he bulldozed his way through the throng.

  Since the shooter had opened fire less than two minutes ago, the police and emergency rescue teams had yet to arrive, although Mick could hear the wail of sirens in the far distance. Closer to home, he heard weapons fire somewhere above them. How many floors up, he had no idea. The library looked like it was at least ten stories high.

  Winded already, Mick drew a ragged breath as they raced down the main corridor. While he’d had no problem passing his yearly physical, the last time he ran down a perp the Marlboros had definitely caught up to him. Today was no different; his lungs burned like a mother.

  “When this is all over, I’m kicking the ha
bit,” he muttered under his breath.

  For a brief instant, the grim expression on Tommy’s face brightened with his trademark lopsided grin. “That’s a promise I’m gonna hold you to, buddy.”

  A few seconds later, running on Tommy’s coattails, Mick burst into the lobby. To his immediate left, he caught sight of a security guard screaming into a telephone at the circulation desk. He charged over to the guard while Tommy checked out the library floor plan that was mounted on a nearby wall.

  In every direction, terrified students were scurrying pell-mell. More than a few had tears streaming down their faces. And who could blame ’em? They were understandably terrified. Nobody studying for the next day’s exam would ever expect they’d suddenly be hurled into a war zone.

  “NYPD,” Mick announced without preamble as he whipped out his badge and flashed it at the security guard.

  “You guys got here quick.”

  “We were already on campus. What floor is he on?” Mick demanded, not there to shoot the breeze.

  “Fifth floor. But the elevators are out of order because the power is off.”

  Just then, Tommy rushed over to them. “We got stairwells at each of these corners,” he said, pointing in two different directions. “I’ll take the northeastern corner; you take the southeastern.”

  “According to the security guard, the gunman’s holed up on the fifth floor,” Mick apprised his partner.

  “Gotcha.” Spinning on his heel, Tommy charged toward the stairwell on the far side of the expansive lobby.

  As Mick was about to take off, a flush-faced female student hurried toward him. “When I came down the hallway, I saw a guy all dressed in black and carrying a gun!” she exclaimed.

  Two gunmen. Shit.

  While most mass murderers preferred to work alone—why share the infamy when you don’t have to?—there were exceptions to the rule, most notably the Columbine school shooting.

  “Okay. Calm down,” Mick said to the young woman, who looked like she was on the verge of full-blown hysteria. “Where exactly did you see the gunman?”

  Raising a trembling arm, she pointed toward a dimly lit passageway. “He ran down the hall, headed in that direction!”

  “That corridor leads to the adjacent building. That’s where the theater and college bookstore are located,” the security guard informed him.

  Needing to give Tommy an update, Mick craned his neck to find his partner in the crowd. But he was nowhere in sight.

  Shit.

  “I can pursue the second gunman while you head up to the fifth floor,” the security guard volunteered.

  Given the fact that the older man was at least thirty pounds overweight and probably hadn’t fired his weapon in God knows how long, Mick vetoed the suggestion with a brusque shake of the head. “You stay here in the lobby and help evacuate the students. You’ll also need to give the first responders an update when they arrive.”

  Orders given, Mick sprinted down the corridor that led to the adjacent building.

  Within seconds, he heard another bloodcurdling rat-a-tat-tat. This time it didn’t let up.

  The upstairs gunman is emptying his clip!

  As he barreled through a swarm of frightened students, Mick suddenly had a bad feeling in the pit of his belly… like he’d just made a fatal mistake.

  Chapter 1

  94th Police Precinct

  Brooklyn, New York

  November 4, 2013

  “Hey, Micky. The lieutenant wants to see you in her office. Pronto.”

  Glancing toward the closed office door on the other side of the homicide department, Mick Giovanni muttered a few choice words under his breath. His shift had ended two hours ago. The only reason that he was still at the precinct was to finish the paperwork on the Paco Rivera collar. Resigned to his fate, he shoved himself to his feet, unable to shake the feeling that the gangbanger’s earlier arrest was exactly what Lieutenant Wanda Chu wanted to speak to him about.

  Squaring his shoulders, Mick strode toward the closed door, giving it an obligatory knock before entering. His supervisor had a well-deserved reputation as a ball-breaker, and he wasn’t about to let her take a cattle prod to any of his private parts. If it hadn’t been for him, Rivera would still be hanging at Delgado’s Cantina instead of jockeying for elbow room at Central Booking.

  Believing that the ends justified the means—at least when it came to murdering gang-bangers like Paco Rivera—Mick beat his hard-nosed supervisor to the punch. “You’re going to ream me over the Rivera collar, aren’t you?”

  “I’m impressed. You’ve just added mind reader to your super-hero résumé.”

  “Glad I caught you in a good mood,” Mick deadpanned as he plopped into one of the two chairs situated in front of Chu’s desk.

  “You do know, Giovanni, that your badass cop routine is starting to wear thin.”

  “All right. So the Powers-That-Be won’t be giving me a commendation for the collar.” Mick gave a disinterested shrug. “That still doesn’t take away from the fact that I nailed our man.”

  “The way I heard it, you were one step away from smashing a beer bottle over his head.”

  “Hey, all I did was pour the beer onto his head.” And, yeah, maybe he did then make a few bellicose threats with the empty Bud bottle that, in hindsight, were a little over the top.

  “Let’s hope that Paco Rivera doesn’t get the bright idea to file a lawsuit against you.”

  Mick snorted, letting her know what he thought about that idea.

  To his consternation, Wanda Chu’s glacial expression suddenly softened. “I’m worried about you, Mick. Lately, you’ve been displaying the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  Post-traumatic stress disorder? Battling a strong urge to bolt from the office, Mick said, “I think you’re blowing the bust at the cantina way out of proportion.”

  “Bullshit,” she shot back, proving what Mick knew all along—there wasn’t a meek bone in Wanda Chu’s 5’2” body. “Your behavior is getting more erratic with each passing month. Look, I know that Tommy O’Fallon’s death was hard to take, and your divorce didn’t help matters. If those were the only two things you had to contend with, you probably could have grieved the losses and moved on with your life. But while the rest of New York was watching the Kingsborough Massacre unravel on their big-screen TVs, you were right there amidst the carnage. That’s a painful cross for any man to bear.”

  Lieutenant, you have no freakin’ idea just how heavy that particular cross is.

  For nearly fourteen months, Mick had been Monday-morning quarterbacking. Imagining, again and again, what he could have done differently on that fateful day. For starters, he would never have chased after the second gunman. Because, as he discovered three minutes after he’d rushed from the library lobby, the male student menacingly dressed in black tactical attire had been clutching a cell phone in his hand rather than a semi-automatic handgun.

  In those three lost minutes, a lone gunman had slaughtered thirty-one people and wounded another twenty-four in the northeastern stairwell of the Robert J. Kibbee Library.

  The gunman, a twenty-three-year-old male student who suffered from anxiety disorder and had an obsession with violent video games, had meticulously plotted the massacre. Not only had the murderous bastard purchased a locksmith’s master key online—which he’d used to access the library’s electrical circuit box—but he’d purposefully blown out the windows on the fifth floor, inciting a wild stampede of students into the stairwell. And because the gunman had used his master key beforehand to lock the stairwell doors leading to the second through fourth floors, he was then able to stand at the top of the stairs and gun down the terrified mob of students with a semi-automatic rifle outfitted with a 100-round drum magazine. Like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel.

  Tommy O’Fallon had been trapped in that panic-stricken crush. Although he managed to fire fifteen rounds, fatally wounding the gunman, Tommy didn’t make it ou
t alive; he died a bonafide hero, having made the ultimate sacrifice. One that didn’t have to happen. If Mick had done things differently that day, if he’d been there to back up his partner, maybe Tommy would have lived. Had Mick immediately ascended the other stairwell, he could have snuck up on the gunman from behind and taken him out, saving an untold number of lives.

  Instead, Mick had lost his best friend, best man, and brother-in-arms. In the massacre’s aftermath, he also eventually lost his wife and, according to some people, his youth. But Mick figured that was bandied about simply because his dark hair had gone salt-and-pepper over the last year.

  “Okay, so I’m suffering from a mild case of burnout,” Mick said, hoping to pacify the Lieutenant. “If I cut back on the longer shifts, will that you make you happy?”

  “If I thought it was nothing more than a ‘mild case of burnout,’ we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I can’t keep making excuses for you, Mick. This past year you’ve been Satan’s gift to law enforcement.”

  “I’ve also closed more cases this past year than anyone else in the department,” he argued in his defense.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is the point?” Christ, this was worse than having an argument with his ex.

  Holding his gaze, Chu slid a small white card across the desk, motioning that she wanted him to pick it up. When he did, Mick audibly groaned.

  “This group therapy shit is for wusses.”

  “And being Rambo cop is going to get you thrown off the force. Face it, Giovanni, you’ve become an adrenaline junkie. You’re living from high to high in order to suppress the emotional pain of having witnessed the city’s worst atrocity since 9/11.”

  Trying to ignore the acid churning in his gut, Mick said, “No disrespect, Lieutenant, but I don’t see Ph.D. printed on your nameplate. Whoever said we were supposed to treat these sleazeballs with kid gloves?”

  “You’re a professional. That means following protocol when making an arrest.”