Morrigan heard mumbling on the other side of the line for a few seconds before Hackett turned his head and said, “It’s your brother, Tommy. He said he just got in from the airport.”
Morrigan drew a breath. “Tell him to head to my apartment,” he said. “I’ll be there in a couple of hours. By the time I get back, so will he.”
Hackett relayed the information before hanging up, calling Edmunds, and telling him that a pair of uniforms stationed at Denny Maisano’s room at the hospital would be in everyone’s best interest.
Hackett knocked twice on the screen door of Mr. William Henry Thompson. It was your average, run-of-the-mill Long Island one-story situated near the causeway. It was one of those homes that probably survived several generations of the same family.
The door opened a minute later, and William Thompson, clocking in at five feet and eleven inches, opened the door with a perplexed expression as his seventy-one-year-old face stuck its way partly through the screen door. “Yes?” he greeted them with a wary inflection.
Morrigan and Hackett showed their badges.
“Mr. Thompson,” Morrigan said. “I’m Lieutenant John Morrigan.” A nod to Hackett. “This is Detective Hackett. Could we bother you for a moment?”
“Depends. What’s this about?”
“The home invasion that took place here back in 2016.”
Thompson huffed as flashes of the past crept into his mind. He crossed his arms and propped the screen door open with his slipper-covered foot. “Thought all was said and done on that end,” he said. “I killed that damn bastard who tried to steal from me.” Thompson’s words were laced with no remorse or fear—a true, red-blooded American.
“You remember his name?” Hackett said, his voice going up a half octave.
“Brian Rogers,” Thompson said. “Sounded like a fake name if you ask me.”
Morrigan had thought the same thing. He pulled the evidence bag with Denny Maisano’s fake passport bearing Brian Rogers’ name on the inside out of his pocket. “Is this him?”
Thompson looked at the picture and shook his head as he laughed.
Morrigan and Hackett exchanged looks. “Everything okay?” Hackett asked.
“That ain’t Brian Rogers,” Thompson said.
“Yeah,” Morrigan said as he took back the passport. “We kind of figured.”
Thompson wagged a finger. “No. You don’t get it. That picture, the one on that passport there, it belongs to the other guy that was here that night when I killed the real Brian Rogers. He just got away before he had a chance to take one in the back from my .357.”
It was a tantalizing lead, a unique spin in a story that was starting to hold more twists and turns than most cases—if not any of the cases—that John Morrigan had participated in. After asking William Thompson something in the ballpark of forty more questions, Morrigan assigned Hackett to work with Bukowski, now free of her open-and-shut 187 case, to go about discovering the identity of the mystery blond man who held Brian Rogers’ name on the passport.
“Try known associates first,” Morrigan said, his cell pressed against his ear as he moved up the stairs to his apartment. “Pull it all up. Do the same with Jake Dalton and Denny Maisano.”
“Copy that,” Bukowski said over the phone. “When will you be back?”
“Soon. No longer than an hour. I’m just stopping by to let my brother in.”
“Oh, yeah. Tommy, right?”
“Yeah. He should be here any—”
Morrigan ceased speaking when he rounded the top of the stairs. Seated on the floor with one knee up, a canvas bag next to him, and a leather jacket passed down to him from Morrigan’s father, Sean, on his shoulders, was Tommy Morrigan, the black sheep of the family. He was charming, even when he wasn’t speaking, his devilishly handsome Irish looks like a trap for those of the opposite sex. Even though he inherited the looks in the Morrigan family (though John himself thought he was a good-looking cat), Tommy couldn’t seem to break free of the spell of landing in hot water.
“I’ll call you back,” Morrigan said and hung up on Bukowski, pocketing his phone.
Tommy, a good-to-see-you smile on his face, hopped up, outstretched his arms and shrugged his shoulder. “Come on, man. Get in here.”
John hugged his brother, torn between telling him off and reminiscing about the better years.
“You gonna let me in?” Tommy asked as he broke the hug.
John said nothing but slipped his key into the lock, opened the door, and stood aside for his brother to enter.
Tommy looked around and tossed his bag down on the couch. “Can I crash here?”
John nodded. “How long are you staying?” he said, swiping a two-day-old deli sandwich still in its paper wrapping from the kitchen worktop.
Tommy braced against the breakfast counter. “Right to business, huh?”
John took a bite of his food. “You’re family,” he said through mouthfuls. “You can stay here as long as you want. I’ll be in and out. We’re right in the middle of something at work right now.”
“What’s going on? Who’s trying to burn down the city today?”
John leveled his gaze at his brother. You know I can’t tell you.
Tommy held up his hands in surrender. “Forget I asked.”
“Come on, I’ll give you a grand tour of the apartment.”
“Thanks, Skip,” Tommy said. “I appreciate it.”
John looked his brother dead in the eye.
“What?” Tommy said. “You’re looking at me like I did something wrong.”
“Because that’s what you probably did…”
Tommy’s face went from relaxed and beaming to clenched up and defensive. “Hell’s that mean, Skip?”
John crossed his arms and took a step back. “It means that I want to know why you’re here. I’m starting to think that maybe you weren’t a hundred percent with me over the phone.”
“Psh. You saying I broke out of jail?”
“No, I checked the records. You’re free on your own accord. I just feel like the bit with your parole officer letting you go anywhere you want is horseshit.”
“Then call him to check it out. See if I care.”
“I will. I just thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt first.”
Both brothers squared off slightly, much like they did back when they were kids and one brother damaged or straight-up stole the other’s G.I. Joe—which is exactly what Tommy had done on several occasions.
Tommy, taking a deep breath and depressing his puffed-up chest, leaned against the wall in the hallway and slipped his hands in his pockets. “I just wanted to see you,” he said, traces of sadness lingering in his tone. “That’s all. I don’t have to stay here if you don’t want. I just thought…” He sighed. “I don’t know. I just thought that maybe we’d have a beer or two and try and salvage what’s left of us being brothers. That’s all.”
John heard the sincerity in his brother’s voice. The guy had never let his guard down that much in his life. The two of them hadn’t been able to interact with each other with the familiarity and intimacy that most family members had. They were more like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages. It would take some calibration to make it work. The only catch was that John had to be willing to do it.
“I gotta go to work,” John said. “But I was planning on decking out around midnight.”
Tommy jutted his chin and waved his brother off. “I get it. No worries. I can keep myself occupied.”
John nodded and turned toward the door. He stopped after two paces and turned back around. “Want to grab a drink when I’m back?”
Tommy smiled. “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
John saluted, said nothing more, and headed out the door, leaving Tommy to his own devices and feeling like maybe—just maybe—he could rekindle the relationship he once had with a kid he used to be inseparable from.
Tommy, ditching the warm smile as
soon as Morrigan locked the door behind him, took out the burner phone he had purchased, dialed a number, and told the guy on the other side exactly where his brother John was going.
11
Thin Ice
Miller was a twitchy crime scene tech who preferred offices to being out on the streets. Clocking in at one hundred and fifty pounds and a staggering six feet four inches, Miller sported the wiry hair and bespectacled look one associated with most tech-associated geniuses, a carefree way of dressing down and a skeptical look in his eyes that darted around the room for fear of making eye contact with someone longer than two seconds.
“How you doing, Miller?” Morrigan asked, giving the kid a few feet of distance as Miller sat hunched over his computer in a dark office in the back of the precinct—his lair.
Miller shrugged, his focus still glued to the computer in front of him. “I’m doing okay. What time is it?”
Morrigan checked his watch: “It’s 7:30 in the evening.”
“What day?”
Morrigan huffed. “Wednesday. What day did you think it was?”
“I thought it was Tuesday still,” Miller said with a sigh, turning around in his chair.
“Do you ever go home, Miller?”
“Sometimes.”
“Right.” Morrigan sighed, realizing that small talk wasn’t Miller’s thing.
“I’ve been working the ballistics on the bullet the medical examiner pulled out of Jake Dalton’s skull.”
“Anything noteworthy to report? And give me the basics, please. I flunked biology in high school.”
Miller smirked. “This isn’t biology, Morrigan. It’s physics. It’s—”
Morrigan held up a hand. “I get it.”
Miller nodded, clicking the mouse as he pointed to the screen. “The bullet was fired from a Remington model 700 like you thought.”
“And the bullet itself?”
“That’s the noteworthy part—it was custom.”
Morrigan hung his head. “Another custom round?”
“Yeah. We scoured the scene to recover the shell. Obviously, we didn’t find it.”
Miller began glancing around the precinct outside the windows of his office with a suspicious glint in his eye. He motioned for Morrigan to lean in close as he lowered his voice and said, “I was thinking about your theory on the SWAT guys.”
“I’m listening… and it’s just a theory.” Morrigan held up his hand defensively.
“I’d need to look at the tactical gear the SWAT team had on them the night Jake Dalton got shot.”
Morrigan puttered air through his lips. The request was a daunting notion. “You know what kind of clearance you’re going to need on that…?”
Miller was already nodding repeatedly as Morrigan spoke.
“I mean,” Morrigan continued, “you’re talking a go-ahead from at least five different—”
“We’re at a stalemate until I can check out those weapons,” Miller cut in. “The Remington rifles in particular.”
“Boil it down for me: what are the chances, according to that genius little noggin of yours, that the SWAT team were the ones who took the shot?”
Miller thought on it long and hard. He nodded. “I think there’s a pretty strong chance. Yeah.”
Morrigan took a beat to think through the options before telling Miller, “Talk to Edmunds. Tell him what you think, and we’ll go from there. If we’re going to look into SWAT we need to tiptoe carefully through the procedures. ‘Thin ice’ is the key phrase here.”
“Understood,” Miller said as three knocks came on the door behind them.
Morrigan turned and found Bukowski leaning against the doorframe, a sight for sore eyes, jutting her chin in Morrigan’s direction. “Ready to have your mind blown?”
Morrigan was on his feet and following her out before Bukowski finished speaking.
“Anthony Klein,” Morrigan said like a question as he stood behind Bukowski’s desk, his eyes on her monitor and staring at the same blond-haired rube pictured on one of Maisano’s fake passports. The picture on the screen wasn’t a mug shot. It wasn’t a surveillance photo. It was from a Washington Post article about “up-and-coming” entrepreneurs and fresh-faced millennials trying to get into politics. The picture of Anthony Klein featured himself and four other men dressed like pledges for some fraternity in an upper-echelon university that prided itself on having a token person of color stuck in the background for the sake of diversity.
“Where’s this from?” Morrigan asked.
“Some kind of fundraiser,” Bukowski said. “I was working my way through mug shots to try and see if I could find your guy using the Brian Rogers alias on that passport when Alvaro from homicide tipped me off about Mr. Klein.”
“How did Alvaro recognize him?”
“I showed her the photo on that passport you got from Maisano and she said she recalled seeing this guy Klein posting a bunch of far-right stuff on his Twitter account. She remembered his face from his profile picture. I checked it out—sure enough it was him.”
Morrigan leaned in and smirked. “Unreal,” he said. “What are the chances?”
“It happens,” Bukowski said. “I believe they call that a ‘lucky break.’”
“Did you look up Klein?”
“I did. There wasn’t a damn thing on his record. Not even a parking ticket. He’s got an Upper West Side address.”
Morrigan stroked the stubble on his chin that was now starting to turn into a beard.
“What are you thinking?” Bukowski asked.
“What move to make. We need to talk to this guy Klein. If the narrative that’s played out so far is true, then apparently Mr. Klein was involved in a botched home invasion back in 2016.”
Bukowski shook her head. “Why the hell would a trust fund baby be ripping off a house in Long Island?”
Morrigan crossed his arms. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re going to find out.”
12
Klein
Morrigan drove. Bukowski rode shotgun. They were out of the precinct about ten minutes after Bukowski showed Morrigan Anthony Klein’s face on the computer. Their car settled in the middle of traffic on Fifth Avenue as the streets around them slowly turned from the historic and artistic museums of the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan to the financial Mecca that was Wall Street.
“What about William Thompson?” Bukowski asked, looking over her notes. “Maybe you should hit him up again.”
Morrigan nodded. “Most definitely. We work Klein first. Once we make a move on him we’ll go from there. One step at a time.”
Bukowski scribbled down notes and shuffled papers around for a few minutes as the car continued its stop-and-go through the honking traffic.
“How’d your night pan out?” Morrigan asked.
Bukowski looked at him with a perplexed expression.
“The bar,” Morrigan said. “You trying to get lucky. Remember?”
Bukowski was smiling and shaking her head before Morrigan finished. “No dice,” she said. “I think I was coming off a tad too aggressive.”
“You? I can’t see it.”
“Morrigan, you are one smart-ass. By the way, how’s your brother?”
Morrigan wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t know. We’re playing it by ear.”
“You said he got out on parole?”
“He did. I checked it out. I was going to call his PO in a bit to double-check the conditions of his release.”
“Sounds like you guys have a lot of trust issues.”
Flashes of the past ran through Morrigan’s brain. “Yeah, you could say that… But it’s warranted.”
They pulled up outside a high-rise condominium complex with polished marble, pristine red brick, and a doorman in a crisp navy blue uniform standing with a jovial expression outside the door.
Morrigan whistled. “Nice digs.”
“Yeah,” Bukowski said, putting away her notebook. “The price tag on a one-bedroom here
runs about ten grand a month, apparently.”
Morrigan laughed. “Anything for the price of comfort.”
They scoped out the front. A wealthy couple with copious amounts of cosmetic work were leaving through the front lobby as the doorman bade them goodbye—which they did not return.
“What do you want to do?” Bukowski asked. “You want to knock on his door?”
Morrigan pondered. “Let’s wait a minute,” he said. “We’re investigating a rich dude and rich dudes don’t like cops calling around to their homes.”
“Even though they put on a smile when they’re talking to you.”
A nod. “That they do.”
A couple of minutes later Morrigan perked up and pointed out the window toward the lobby. “Look, look, look!” he said with glee. “Check it out. Right there!”
Bukowski followed the direction of his finger and saw none other than Anthony Klein, with a cocky pep in his step as the doorman opened the door and wished him a “Good afternoon, sir!”
Klein, hands in his pockets, moved toward the buffed and shined BMW with slick-looking tires near the curb. Klein opened the back door, gracefully slipped inside, and the BMW pulled out into traffic.
Morrigan already had his Subaru in gear as Klein’s car pulled out.
“Where do you think he’s going?” Bukowski asked as they stayed three car lengths away to avoid being spotted.
“Squash game,” Morrigan said. “Board room meeting. Hell if I know.”
They followed after Klein’s car for fifteen minutes before it pulled up outside a high-class restaurant with an outdoor patio surrounded by glass that was probably cleaned and freed from smudges every fifteen minutes. Based on the well-dressed clientele sitting inside, and the overall sense of wealth that the restaurant evoked, it was clear that the bill in this kind of place was more than the average cop could afford.
Morrigan put the Subaru in park about a half block away from the restaurant as Klein slipped out of his car and walked toward the entrance.
The Dark Path Page 7