The Dark Path

by Kevin McManus

  Hackett scrolled through the rundown. “Nothing big. Couple traffic violations, a paternity suit to round it all out.”

  “No felonies?”

  Hackett searched. “Negative. Guy’s been able to keep under the radar fairly well.”

  Morrigan kept his gaze leveled at Toombs as he dragged away at his cigarette, his beady marble-like eyes scanning with a surreptitious glint across the street for signs of anything out of the ordinary.

  “Should we talk to him?” Hackett asked.

  Morrigan ticked off the options in his head and shook his head. “No,” he said, tossing the cigarette out of the car. “I want to tail him.”

  Toombs flicked his butt into the street and did an about-face toward the front of the liquor store.

  “You think he’s leaving?” Hackett asked.

  Morrigan jutted his chin in Toombs’s direction. “Jerkoff is twirling his car keys,” he said as Toombs ducked back inside the shop. “I’d put money on him rolling out in the next couple of minutes.”

  Sure enough, two minutes later Toombs was in a shoddy Honda Civic parked near the rear of the store, the headlights on and painting the street with shades of white light as he slowly and cautiously made his way north.

  Morrigan tapped his index finger against his upper lip, his other hand clenching as the fingers drummed against his knee.

  “What do you want to do?” Hackett asked.

  Morrigan took another beat as the Civic hung a right down Fifty-Second Street. He smiled. “Big boy didn’t hit the turn indicator when he hung a right…”

  Hackett hit the lights on the dashboard, beams of red and blue dousing the back end of the Civic as it slowly pulled to the side of the road.

  Morrigan pulled on the handle and opened the door a half an inch as Hackett pulled up behind the Civic and removed the Sig attached to his hip. “Take the lead,” he said to Hackett and hopped out of the car before it could come to a settle.

  Morrigan and Hackett flanked the Civic, Hackett making a beeline for the driver’s side while Morrigan hung back a couple of feet and approached the passenger’s side.

  “License and registration, please,” Hackett said.

  Toombs sported an irked expression and began fishing inside his pockets. Up close, he was a lot greasier, his thinning comb-over a salt-and-pepper color that sat above a bushy and wiry pair of nicotine-stained eyebrows.

  “What’d I do?” Toombs asked.

  Hackett took Toombs’s license and looked it over for a few seconds before answering. “You turned right without signaling,” he said. “That’s illegal.”

  Toombs sucked air through his teeth. “Un-fucking-real,” he mumbled under his breath.

  Hackett handed back his ID. “Kind of early for you to be up and about. It’s not even midday yet.”

  Toombs gestured over his shoulder. “I work at a twenty-four-hour liquor store two blocks from here. I just finished my shift, officer.”

  “It’s Detective,” Morrigan said and rapped his knuckles on the passenger window. “And I want you to step out of the car.”

  Toombs cocked his head to the right and laid eyes on the big and brooding Irishman staring at him.

  “Who the hell are you guys?” Toombs asked, beginning to suspect that this wasn’t your average traffic stop.

  “Out of the car,” Morrigan said and knocked twice on the hood.

  Toombs stayed planted in his seat, his knuckles white as he twisted the wheel in front of him. “What for?”

  Hackett opened Toombs’s door like a valet attendant. “Get out.”

  The ball was in Toombs’s court. The guy knew that. He didn’t have to get out of the car. He had broken the law, yeah, but he was well within his rights to complain to the NYPD about how he was being hassled by a pair of their best detectives. But a man like Toombs also knew that going to the police would, perhaps, expose some of the more illicit activities that he had managed to float under the radar.

  He decided to comply.

  “This is bullshit,” he couldn’t help but protest as he got out the car.

  “So is an old lady getting popped across town,” Morrigan said.

  “That’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the trajectory of the investigation has led us to your doorstep, which means you’ve got a few questions to answer, whether you like it or not.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Fine. Get one. You can make a call for a public defender after I’ve taken you in for not co-operating with an official investigation.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  Morrigan clicked his teeth. “Try me…”

  Toombs huffed, threw up his hands, and leaned back against the driver’s side of his Civic. “Fine,” he said. “The fuck do you want to ask me?”

  Hackett said, “You know a guy named Jake Dalton, right?”

  Toombs became red in the face. “Little pill-popping prick. What the hell did he say to you?”

  Morrigan laughed. “So, you know him.”

  “I know him, but I don’t hang out with that goddamn cretin.”

  Morrigan sniffed the air around Toombs and winced. “You smell that?”

  “What?”

  Morrigan twirled his finger like a lasso. “It’s the smell of your bullshit. It’s hanging in a thick cloud over your fuckin’ head.”

  Beads of sweat began to form on Toombs’s brow. He was used to lying on the daily, but trying to pull one over on this particular pair of cops wouldn’t amount to anything.

  “Look,” he said, eyes shifting from Hackett to Morrigan, “what do you guys want? If you want me to dime someone out to get you off my back, I’ll do it. I only got loyalty to me, myself, and I.”

  “Poetic,” Morrigan huffed.

  “An old woman got popped last night,” Hackett said. “9mm Parabellum rounds in a custom jacket. Jake Dalton seems inclined to think that you might know who used the rounds.”

  Toombs waved them off. “I don’t sell that shit. Not anymore, at least.”

  Morrigan and Hackett exchanged glances: This guy is gonna make us work for it.

  “I’m serious!” Toombs insisted as he spotted the looks on their faces. “Not anymore. I got out of that game.”

  “Then why is Dalton pointing us in your direction?”

  “Maybe it’s because he went to work for these assholes from Ireland that came into town two months ago.”

  What the hell? Morrigan thought.

  “Ireland,” Hackett said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah!” Toombs said, eager to deflect all the heat away from himself.

  Morrigan crossed his arms. “Explain.”

  Toombs started speaking and slapping the back of his right hand into the palm of his left, in sync with each fact he laid out for Hackett and Morrigan. “Dalton’s on parole for selling H, right?”

  “Yeah,” Hackett said, recalling what he had pulled from Dalton’s jacket before they rousted him. “A few Jamaicans dimed his ass out when he started dealing on their territory.”

  Toombs huffed. “Bastard got off easy. They could’ve killed him. But there was too much heat on them from this rich kid from upstate or some shit getting whacked by a few of their boys after some beef that played out at a bar or something.”

  Morrigan nodded.

  “Tyler Gaines,” Toombs said. “He crossed the line and called one of the posse guys a… well, a title they don’t like, you know what I mean… and the dude blew him away.

  “A couple of your guys rousted me the last time you were trying to bring down the heat on Dalton but they didn’t have evidence. Point was that when the posse found out about Dalton dealing on their turf, they called in an anonymous tip instead of just kicking him off the planet.”

  Morrigan crossed his arms and shifted his weight, perturbed. “What’s your point, Toombs? ’Cause we’re running in fucking circles.”

  “My point,” Toombs said, holding up his h
ands like he was trying to surrender, “is that Dalton hooked up with these guys from Ireland when he got out. He told me about it. Dalton was acting like a middleman to help them get guns and bullets and stuff. It was an exclusive thing. Chatty fuck couldn’t stop talking about it when he came into that joint off 128th a while back. The way he was talking about it, the guys he was working for sounded like Irish hitmen or something. When Dalton got out of the can he asked me to hook him up with some sources. He was trying to cater to these guys any way he could.”

  “Did you help him?”

  “No. I’m a two-striker. I’d be back to jail before the sun comes up.”

  “So what?”

  “So, Dalton’s been dealing with a pair of hitmen recently, one of them is Eastern European. I think he is a Serbian or a Russian. The other guy is Irish. If anyone did it, odds are it might’ve been them. That’s why he sent you guys my way, man. I’m not the one selling merch to assassins. He is. He’s just jerking you off while he hides the shit back at his house.”

  Morrigan could sense the sincerity tracing Toombs’s words and looked at Hackett like he was staring at the countdown timer to a nuclear bomb that was only two seconds from going off. His heart skipped a beat, his instincts telling him that Toombs’s words were true.

  He just knew.

  Morrigan and Hackett were in the car and hightailing it back to Jake Dalton’s before Toombs could process what was happening.

  8

  Hit the Dirt

  The curtains in the front of Jake Dalton’s place fluttered with a hectic rhythm as Morrigan and Hackett’s car screeched to a halt.

  “Oh, boy,” Hackett hissed. “Little idiot knows we’re here.”

  Morrigan grabbed the handheld radio and clicked down on the transmit button. “This is Three-William-Eight, requesting backup at 128 North Fifty-Second Street.”

  The dispatch recognized Morrigan’s voice and promptly replied, “Roger, Three-William-Eight. Dispatching additional units to your area.”

  The front window to Dalton’s placed shattered—and then the barrel of a shotgun was leveled in Morrigan and Hackett’s direction.

  “Down!” Morrigan roared.

  The blast sounded like a cannon, the boom reverberating inside Morrigan and Hackett’s chests as they took cover behind the rear of their cruiser.

  “Shit,” Hackett spat, shaking his head. “I’m not wearing a vest.”

  Morrigan could hear the click of another shell being cocked into the chamber and the shuffling of feet moving to the east, toward the other side of Dalton’s home.

  “He’s taking up another position,” Morrigan said, shuffling to his right. “Move! Move! Move!”

  Hackett stayed tethered to Morrigan’s heels as they hustled in a crouch toward the brick wall sectioning off Dalton’s driveway from his next-door neighbor. They hugged the wall, moving in toward the backyard of the neighbor’s home as they scanned their pistols.

  Morrigan shook his head. “Backup will be here in less than a minute.” He took a step back and holstered his weapon, his feet planting in the ground as he positioned himself to take a leap over the wall. “Cover me.”

  Hackett took up a position and covered Morrigan’s rear. “Goddamn it…” he sighed as Morrigan jumped, pivoted, planted, and then vaulted over the wall into Dalton’s backyard.

  Another shotgun blast rang out ahead of Morrigan. It sounded like it was coming from the right side of the house facing the street. For a split-second Morrigan was unsure of what Dalton was firing at—and then he heard the wail of NYPD cruisers off in the distance.

  “Right on time, lads,” Morrigan said as Hackett’s feet hit the dirt behind him.

  Morrigan hustled up to the back door, Hackett right behind him, and they took positions on opposite sides of the door.

  “Might be better if we split up,” Morrigan said.

  Hackett shook his head. “Fuck that. Last time we did this I almost got shot by an eighty-year-old with an oxygen tank.”

  Morrigan took a step back as Hackett covered the door and raised his booted foot. “Suit yourself.”

  He kicked in the door, his gun raised as soon as he swept inside, Hackett following after him and clearing the back foyer with Morrigan as two more blasts rang out from the right.

  Morrigan held up a fist—Hang tight.

  Hackett stopped in his tracks, the collective whine of a fleet of NYPD cruisers crying out like a chorus as the inside of the house became saturated with colors of red and blue.

  Morrigan hugged the corner and prepared to peek around it, the living room straight ahead of them, and a den past that where Dalton was popping off rounds at their fellow brothers and sisters in arms.

  “Wait until he reloads,” Morrigan whispered.

  A nod from Hackett.

  A half-second later, three more collective shots blasted in quick succession from the den, and a half-second after that a metallic click echoed through the hall that urged Morrigan to move like the pop of a starter pistol.

  “Dalton!” Morrigan barked.

  Dalton, drenched with sweat like he had just gotten through a workout, shuddered and dropped the shotgun to the floor as he spun around and faced Morrigan—walking in a straight line with the barrel of his gun focused on Dalton’s sternum.

  Hackett took up position to the rear of Morrigan and checked to see that the rest of the house was clear. “Hey!” he shouted toward the window, “1-8 is inside! We need backup! Rear of the house is clear!”

  The booted shuffling and scattered shouts of the officers outside began to descend on the house.

  “Hands up, man,” Morrigan said with a jut of his chin. “Quick! Come on, now!”

  Dalton shook his head back and forth like he was trying to wake himself from a bad dream. “I can’t, man,” he said, a look in his eye like he wanted to quit but couldn’t. “I can’t…”

  Morrigan had seen this before, the wily eye that a perp sports right before he does something that he can’t walk away from.

  “Dalton,” Morrigan pleaded calmly. “Don’t do it. I know what you’re thinking—”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Hey!”

  But it was too late—Dalton pulled the Colt he had stuffed in the back of his pants and brought it up to level it at Morrigan in a limp-wristed fashion.

  POP! Morrigan clipped Dalton in the shoulder and spun him around, the gun knocked from Dalton’s grip before scattering across the floor. Dalton clutched his shoulder, spun, stumbled, and crashed to the floor.

  “Hot shit,” Hackett chimed in. “Not bad.”

  “Can it.”

  Morrigan shuffled to his right as Dalton stood up, his back to the window. He was almost weeping. Most cops would have rushed the suspect and planted a knee in their neck, but the old-school politics of the NYPD just didn’t fly anymore. Morrigan had done it before, and the prick—who was holding a kid hostage with a steak knife—got off on a two-year stretch when he should have been put away for life.

  The shot that Morrigan had taken was justified. He knew that.

  He just hoped the internal affairs team that looked into it afterward when he booked Dalton would say the same.

  “That’s it,” Morrigan said, holstering his pistol and moving in to arrest Dalton as Hackett covered him. “Just turn around, get down on your knees, and put your hands on top of your head.”

  He took out his cuffs from their pouch as Dalton turned around, mumbling something inaudible as spit formed at the corners of his mouth. “Morrigan, ple—”

  Then Dalton’s head cocked sharply to the right, like some invisible wooden bat had struck a hard blow on the left side of his head as the window next to him shattered. Morrigan saw a flash of red, pink, and white—a chunk the size of a baseball knocked clean out of the left side of Dalton’s head. Arterial spray doused the side of Morrigan’s face and the unmistakable snap of a gunshot cracked through the air like the swift fracturing of a tree branch.

  “W
hat the hell…” Morrigan said and took a step back, rage coursing through his veins as he prepared to storm out of the house and wring the neck of the asshole SWAT member with the itchy trigger finger that just blew Jake Dalton’s brains across the wall—and his jacket.

  The front door to the house flew open and six men in uniform cleared the inside. Hackett, gun at his side, hustled up to Morrigan and checked him over. “You good? You hit?”

  Morrigan shook his head. “No, I’m… fine,” he said, eyes glued to Dalton’s lifeless body, blood pouring out of the gaping wound in his skull. “I’m good…”

  The NYPD flooded the house in a sea of blue and Morrigan started tearing through the crowd to locate whoever had pulled the trigger.

  But no one was owning up to it.

  “Listen,” Captain Edmunds said, his hands in his trench coat and an impatient scowl etched in his narrow face as he stared the SWAT commander dead in his tough guy eyes, “someone took a shot, and I want to know who.”

  It was an hour after the madness and most of the neighbors were raising hell over the shenanigans at this early hour of the morning. Morrigan, Hackett, and their captain were on the street, gathered in a huddle by the SWAT tactical van with Edmunds and the SWAT commander, Bruce Shearer, standing practically toe-to-toe.

  Shearer smacked his gum and looked away, like he needed to take his attention off the person prodding him before he gave into his primal instincts and shoved the guy away. He was a professional. He knew that no one on his team was dumb enough to take a shot when the spotter said Morrigan had it under control. “This is bullshit,” he said. “I told you, none of my people pulled the trigger. We were barely out of the van when someone took the shot.”

  “It was a sniper rifle,” Morrigan said, matter-of-fact, flakes of Dalton’s blood still caked to his right ear. “I heard that crack before, and that sucker was a Remington rifle.”

  The SWAT commander turned his sights on Morrigan. “I heard the shot as well.”

  “You were also positioned in the same direction where the shot came from.”

  “We just pulled up on the fucking scene, lieutenant. I’m telling you how it is. Look, I’m not doubting that someone shot off a Remington, but it wasn’t one of mine. Get ballistics to check our gear if it’s going to help you sleep tonight, but whoever popped your guy was either a rookie or one of the next-door neighbors.”