Green Light (Sam Archer 7)

by Tom Barber

‘We just lost one of our own too,’ Marquez said.

  Royston paused. ‘Who?’

  ‘Detective Vargas. Not to mention two officers who were guarding her. So are you saying we shouldn’t investigate what happened to these women and find out who killed them?’

  ‘A case where all but one victim was a convicted criminal or prostitute? Christ, I thought you Counter Terrorism folks had better things to do with your time. My team will take over and clear up this mess.’

  ‘We should kick this up to the FBI,’ Shepherd said. ‘This is a nationwide, Federal deal. I’ve got a detective in Denver and a police department in Scranton wanting regular updates, and I haven’t even had a chance to get in touch with Chicago or San Diego’s PD yet.’

  ‘No way is this going Federal,’ Royston said. ‘My team and I will handle it.’

  ‘What, like last time?’ Hendricks said. ‘And as Marquez said, one of our own just died. That means we have point on this.’

  ‘You arguing with me, Sergeant?’

  ‘You bet your ass I am.’ Hendricks replied, jerking his head towards Archer. ‘I also know the strings you pulled to get him put in Rikers for the weekend. After what almost happened to him in there, you might want to reconsider your position. Sir.’

  ‘Oh he’s in more shit for that. I got a call from the prison telling me what happened in that shower block.’

  ‘Self-defence.’

  ‘Assaulting fellow inmates. He’s out of control.’

  Hendricks didn’t reply, staring at Royston, who managed to hold eye contact this time.

  However, he didn’t make any further attempt to move towards Archer.

  ‘Fine,’ he blustered, looking at the others. ‘You’re detectives in one of the most important Bureaus in the Department, but go ahead and waste months of your time trying to track down who killed a load of hookers and low-life gang members. You think the world will miss these people?’

  ‘That’s hardly the point, is it?’ Shepherd said. ‘We can’t decide whether or not someone’s murder is worth investigating depending on what job they do. You get assholes in all walks of life. Sir.’

  There was a sudden silence, the comment hanging in the air. Royston chose to ignore it, focusing on Archer instead and jabbing his finger in his direction.

  ‘You can do whatever the hell you like, but two things are going to happen; this investigation stays in the NYPD and I want him out of here. I don’t care if this case gets over a hundred bodies deep, he’s still suspended. I saw the incident report from the bar earlier tonight too; not only did he fire a weapon in a public space, he also got into that fight in jail. He stabbed two inmates and sliced up a third.’

  ‘They attacked me,’ Archer fired back. ‘I just gave them something to remember me by.’

  ‘Let’s see what the judge says about that,’ Royston snapped, shifting his attention to Shepherd. ‘He’s out of here in the next ten minutes. That’s a direct order. You disobey me, I’ll write you all up and you’ll be on the stand beside him for insubordination. Ten minutes and counting; that’s it.’

  With that, he stalked out of the room, leaving silence behind him.

  Across the city, Tully closed the doors on their van, having just parked up in their East-side warehouse after dealing with Vargas and getting out of the hospital before anyone saw them. He lay the cop’s radio carefully on the ground, keeping it switched on so they could keep up with the progress of the manhunt for them.

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ he told Henderson over the intermittent chatter, grinning.

  ‘It gets better,’ Henderson said, checking his phone. ‘I just got a message from our friend who’s monitoring the NYPD chatter. The wounded Russian at Mount Sinai died from his wounds.’

  Tully grinned again, checking his watch. ‘Saves us a job. And the nightclub just opened. Only four of those Priz bastards to go.’

  Henderson nodded, pulling his pistol and reloading it with a fresh clip. ‘No point in any subtlety this time; they know who we are. We can leave some bodies behind.’

  ‘Save one.’

  Henderson nodded. ‘Save one.’ He picked up an empty canister, preparing to fill it with more of their lye. ‘We’ll kill the last three and take him with us. We’ll save him for our friend.’

  He smiled.

  ‘After all, they’ve got some catching up to do.’

  At the Bureau, Shepherd had followed Royston down to the detective pit, catching up with him by the coffee machine.

  ‘I really need Archer here, sir.’

  ‘Are you kidding? No way.’

  ‘It was a heat of the moment action. He was wound up. He and Detective Vargas were very close. With the current situation, I really need him right now.’

  ‘I don’t care if they were joined at the hip. That son of a bitch knocked me out in front of my team. He’s going to pay for that.’

  ‘He’s a great cop. One of our best.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a shit. And he and his girlfriend still managed to get shot in that parking lot, despite both being outside their car and him being armed. Maybe he’s not as good as you think.’

  Close by, the team’s families were watching the exchange, Beth Shepherd looking at her husband with concern as he talked to Royston. She watched as the Lieutenant turned and jabbed his finger in Shepherd’s face.

  ‘You know what the problem is, Sergeant? Your detective won’t back down. That son of a bitch is too stubborn for his own good.’

  ‘And that’s a bad thing?’

  ‘Yes. He needs to learn when he’s beaten.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Shepherd replied before he could help himself.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  The exchange had now caught everyone’s attention but Shepherd wasn’t yet done, his frustration with the fat bullying Lieutenant standing in front of him finally spilling over.

  ‘You know what? I’ve been staring at the screen up there all night wondering what the point to all our work is,’ he said. ‘As hard as we try, people like Henderson, Tully, Lister and the Russians are still out there doing shit like this. And even if we put them down, others immediately step up and take their place.’

  He gestured to the floor above.

  ‘But I’ll never quit trying and neither will my team. And I’d take one Archer, Marquez, Blake, Hendricks or Vargas over a hundred of you.’

  Grabbing a pen and paper from a desk beside him, he slammed the items into the surprised Royston’s chest.

  ‘And you can write me up on that,’ Shepherd finished, turning and striding towards the stairs as everyone watched him go.

  THIRTY SEVEN

  Inside Conference Room 3, Archer and Marquez were sitting side by side on the table. Hendricks and Ethan had just left, April going with them but looking with concern at Archer as they closed the door behind them.

  Still stunned, Archer was staring unseeingly at the wall. After ticking past so slowly during the last four weeks, time now seemed to have stopped altogether. The case, the attacks on the families, rescuing April, all of it seemed so unimportant now.

  The day he’d met Vargas had been one of the toughest of his life, and violence and danger seemed to have been stalking them ever since. They’d been kindred spirits, two people who seemed incapable of living quiet lives but in it together, watching each other’s backs just as they had that night in the Harlem building.

  She’d been defenceless, lying in her hospital bed, everyone assuming she’d be safe with two cops guarding her. Archer pictured Henderson and Tully entering the room; locking the door and staring down at her. Restraining her if she woke up or working quietly if she didn’t.

  Drawing a bath and dragging her from the bed.

  Then pulling her towards the tub.

  He swallowed, forcing the images from his mind. ‘Shit. I only knew her for six months.’

  ‘But you couldn’t have packed more into them,’ Marquez replied, beside him. ‘You did more
in that half year together than most people do in a decade.’

  Archer didn’t reply; he saw Vargas on the Upper West Side, the first time he’d seen her, spinning round as she and her team were ambushed. An hour later, the two of them bloodied and beaten up, alone in a Harlem apartment block and fighting to stay alive.

  He saw her lying in the sitting room of their apartment, reading with Isabel asleep beside her, the girl’s head resting on her lap.

  And three months ago, the look on her face when he’d broken into an office building to save her life after she’d been kidnapped.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Juliana wasn’t my first child,’ Marquez suddenly said quietly. ‘I had a boy eleven years ago, just after I became a cop.’

  Archer shifted his gaze, looking at her.

  ‘His father ran off not long after I found out I was pregnant. I was alone when I went into labour. There were complications during the birth.’

  She looked down.

  ‘Two days after he was born, the doctor told me he wasn’t going to make it. I held him for forty five minutes until they turned off his ventilator. That’s a TV episode without commercials, or half a soccer match. I was telling him about me, his family, my interests, my life.’

  She swallowed.

  ‘When I was done, I realised he’d stopped breathing. While I’d been talking, he’d died.’

  Pausing, she took a moment.

  ‘But even though he was only alive for two days, I still have those memories; they’re always there for me whenever I want or need them. So do you with Alice; and you have six months of them.’

  Archer stared at her, seeing a different side to the normally tough and guarded detective he worked with every day.

  For a brief moment, she seemed vulnerable.

  A moment later, there was a quiet knock on the door and Shepherd walked into the room, easing the door shut behind him.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, guys,’ he said. ‘But Mount Sinai just put the word out. The surviving Russian died.’

  Neither Archer or Marquez replied.

  ‘I spoke to Detective Massaro again too. He said the Prizraki crew operate from a club on Brighton Beach. We’re gonna go down there, round up whoever’s left and bring them in for questioning to try to find out what the hell is going on.’

  ‘Wait,’ Marquez said. ‘Are we going down there to arrest them or save them from Henderson and Tully?’

  ‘A bit of both, I guess.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Arming up to save a group of Russian mobsters. Normal and ordinary definitely didn’t check in for work today.’

  Loose ends. They were what separated those who succeeded in any criminal activity from those who were caught. Fingerprints, shell casings, ballistics evidence, witnesses, camera footage, hair fibres, all potentially the difference between getting away with it or getting caught.

  If a mistake was made, it had to be fixed; a shell casing had to be retrieved, a bullet pulled from some drywall, an entire crime-scene bleached and wiped down.

  Sometimes however, tying off a loose end meant ending someone’s life altogether.

  The source of Henderson, Tully and Lister’s information inside the Department swallowed their nerves while watching Matt Shepherd gather his team. They hadn’t picked up on the leak’s involvement yet; that they’d been feeding Henderson and Tully information all night. Shepherd was about to lead a group down to Little Odessa where they would be taking the last four surviving Russian mob members into custody.

  However, the inside man didn’t care about that; those were Henderson and Tully’s loose ends.

  The leak’s concern was focused on just two people. The red-headed hooker and the blond police detective who’d just joined Shepherd and the others on the walkway. News of what had happened to Vargas had already spread; the person currently watching the team didn’t know why Henderson and Tully had greased her but fallout from that one action was inevitable.

  Archer was still dealing with the shock of what had happened right now but that would switch to focused anger soon enough. With Vargas gone, he’d stop at nothing to find Henderson and Tully and he’d dig deep. He could find everything.

  Sliding a hand into a pocket, the inside man withdrew a cell phone and started tapping a quick text message to the Latino gang contact he’d hired, who’d been demanding retribution after what went down in the prison shower block.

  Sam Archer was suspended, had been attacked in Rikers, fought off Henderson and Tully, and had just lost his girlfriend.

  But his night was about to get a whole lot worse.

  Upstairs, Shepherd and Marquez were almost ready to go. Hendricks was gathering his team comprising three men and two women, all hand-picked by Hendricks himself. As Marquez joined the group, Shepherd took Archer to one side, moving a few feet from everyone else on the walkway.

  Archer glanced down and saw Royston glaring up at him, standing by the coffee machine a few feet from Palmer who was just tucking her phone away in her bag.

  ‘We’re bound,’ Shepherd said. ‘Your case is still on hold. We can’t do anything about that. I have to obey the rules. You’ve gotta leave.’

  ‘It’s OK. I understand.’

  ‘Go home and rest up. When this is over, we’ll talk about your situation. I don’t give a shit what procedure says; you’re not leaving my team.’

  Archer smiled. ‘Appreciate that.’

  Pause.

  ‘So you’re going to bring in the last remaining Prizraki. What about Henderson and Tully?’

  ‘Massaro and his team are going to bait a trap and wait at the club to see if they show up. With everything that’s happened tonight, they’ll be desperate to get out of the city. If they’re gonna take out the remaining gang members, they’ll do it tonight. The news of what happened to Vargas and the two officers at St Luke’s has spread fast. Every cop in the city is looking for them. They’ll know they can’t hang around.’

  April had seen the two men talking and rose, walking out of the Conference Room towards them. Shepherd turned to her.

  ‘We’re stepping out for a moment. But you’ll be safe here.’

  ‘I thought I heard you telling him to go home?’ she asked, looking at Archer.

  ‘That’s right. But as I said, you’ll be safe here.’

  April’s eyes immediately widened; she shook her head. ‘I want to stay with him.’

  ‘There are over fifty detectives in this building.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘There are people out there hunting you,’ Shepherd told her.

  ‘He’ll protect me.’

  ‘You know he’s suspended.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit.’

  Shepherd looked at her for a moment; the girl stared straight back.

  ‘OK; if that’s what you want,’ Shepherd said. ‘I guess I can’t keep you here against your will. You got a spare change of clothes?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Vargas does,’ Archer said quietly.

  ‘OK. Go get cleaned up then go straight to the safe-house. Royston’s a piece of work but he’s right; you’re still technically suspended. Until that gets resolved, you can’t remain on site. But stay close to your phone.’

  Archer nodded. With that, Shepherd looked over at Hendricks; moments later the eight person team went quickly down the stairs. As they headed for the exit, Archer looked down into the detective pit and saw Palmer talking with some of the family members, Royston ten feet from her and still glaring up at him. The Lieutenant drained his coffee then made a big deal of checking his watch.

  Ignoring him, Archer focused on the family group and saw Isabel sitting close to Palmer and Melissa Hendricks, completely unaware that Vargas had died.

  Taking a deep breath, he turned to April.

  ‘Just give me a couple of minutes.’

  In the tall canyons of the Financial District, Henderson pulled up outside his place in their back-up van, killing the engine and loo
king over at Tully beside him. The two men had loaded up the rear of the vehicle with the last of their lye solution, ten canisters tightly sealed and stowed beside some barrels of bleach they were going to splash down the interior of the vehicles with, making completely sure every speck of DNA was destroyed.

  Shooting his cuff, Henderson checked his watch. The Little Odessa club would already be open and busy, a prime opportunity for them to do what they had to do and then get out before anyone realised what had happened.

  ‘Go sterilise your place,’ he told Tully. ‘Work fast. Meet me back here as soon as you’re done.’

  Nodding, the smaller man opened his door and stepped out, slamming it behind him, then jammed his hands into his pockets and headed across the street towards his apartment four blocks away. Henderson also jumped out, locked up then crossed the street and walked towards his apartment building, pushing the door open and keeping his head down to avoid looking into the lens of the security camera that was mounted in the lobby.

  After almost a year, the two men and their accomplice were finally leaving this place.

  But before they could go, there were just four last Russian Prizraki who needed to be dealt with.

  THIRTY EIGHT

  Sam Archer’s mother had died when he was eighteen. Cancer had weakened her body but a blood clot in her lung had been what finally ended her life. She’d been in a hospice in the UK when it had happened and he’d known it was coming, giving him a chance to prepare and say goodbye.

  However, he’d only ever lost one mother. Isabel had just lost her second and neither circumstance had been either peaceful or expected; no hospices, no opportunity to say farewell, just bullets and lye, violence and murder, pain and heartbreak.

  The day Archer had first met Vargas, she’d almost been killed protecting Isabel. The bond that had developed between the two had been as strong as titanium.

  Now, he had to tell her Vargas was gone forever, just like the rest of her blood family.

  Taking a deep breath, he eased the door to the room shut and turned to look at Isabel. Dressed in jeans and a white sweater, her dark hair hanging over her shoulders, she was sitting on the edge of the table swinging her legs, a look of childish naivety on her face as she looked at him. Most teenagers and adults could gauge when something was wrong from body language but she was still a bit too young.