"We need to talk with you, Morrison. It's as simple as that. Let your colleagues handle this arrest and come with us."
She took another step forward and I matched her.
"No. I don't think so," Morrison said, looking down at Hix and over to the running cop who seemed to be frozen by the turn of events. "You don't order me around, bitch."
I heard a jostle behind me and then a large, broad-chested man in uniform with sergeant stripes on his arm pushed through.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," he said to Richards as he passed her and then turned. "Goddammit, Officer Morrison, you are screwin' this up for everyone. Now surrender your weapon. I call the goddamn shots on this shift."
The collection of uniforms, polished leather, bristling chrome and brushed-steel weaponry was uncharacteristically caught up in indecision. One of their own was freaking. One of their own was way out of line, right in front of them. There was no standard procedure for it. No chapter in the manual.
Off to one side and behind Morrison, a figure came out of the dark and then stopped. I could tell by his size and shape it was O'Shea, on foot. But he too froze at the sight before him and no one on the line seemed to notice him.
They must have been watching as Morrison used his right hand to deliberately and slowly unsnap the leather guard on his holster.
"Officer Morrison," the sergeant said again, thinking it was a calming voice, thinking the cop's beef had to be with Richards for some reason. "I gave you an order, son. I'm the officer in charge here."
No one on the line said a word, but I saw the cop next to Morrison move away and I heard the clicks of several holster snaps behind me.
"No sir," Morrison said. "I beg to differ."
He pulled his 9mm and raised it, barrel first, and pointed it in our direction and just as every cop is trained, and just as every one on the line knew, it was a death sentence that Morrison now controlled.
At least a dozen rounds exploded from behind and to the side of us, many of them hitting their mark only twenty feet away and Morrison went down without once pulling his trigger.
Marci screamed and turned away. David Hix yelped and curled up into a ball on the grass. I looked down the line at Richards and she had not moved to draw her own weapon.
CHAPTER 33
It was early morning and the sun had broken white and molten like a heavy bubble stretching up and then off the horizon. I was in my beach chair, sipping my coffee, watching the sky and water absorb the blue light of refraction over the rim of my cup.
There was not a ripple of breeze and the ocean lay flat like a hot sheet of glass. The black-footed terns were working the shoreline, pecking and dancing. I would have at least another hour before the electrician came to install a new light over the dining room table. I had not been able to sleep on the couch with the smell of fresh paint in my nose so I had camped out on the beach since long before dawn.
Billy had called me late last night, amusement in his voice over the receipt of official notice informing him as the legal representative of Colin O'Shea that all charges had been dropped against his client. It had been weeks.
"The wheels of justice and paperwork," he'd said and left it to me to fill in whatever ending I wished.
David Hix had been arrested and charged in both the assault on Rodrigo and attorney Sarah O'Kelly. Our Filipino friend stayed in the hospital for several days but neither Billy nor I could convince him to stay. He went home to Manila with his wife, who had accepted the cruise line's money to come to America and retrieve him.
"I thank you with my life, Mr. Max," he had said when we had gone to see him in the hospital. "But your America is not a safe place. All I wanted to do was work and bring money to my family."
He was holding his wife's hand when we left and in the parking lot Billy stood at the window of my truck while I got in. I had been beating myself up over the man's injuries, one heaped on top of the other, because no one had been there to protect him.
"You are not r-responsible for the world, my friend," he said. "Even though you may think it is so."
I had stared out past him into the vision of the taped-off crime scene out at the end of a desolate road in the Glades where technicians and assistants from the medical examiner's officer were meticulously sorting out what would turn out to be the partial remains of four young women, including Amy Strausshiem and Suzy Martin.
The cause of Morrison's death had been ruled a suicide by cop. His choice. But I was not displeased with the ending. As far as the families of those young women were concerned, their daughters' killer was just as dead, and perhaps more forgettable without the drawn out process of law.
Billy's statement about responsibility and who carried it had stuck in my head for days afterward. We had all met a man in Colin O'Shea whose shoulders had been widest.
Colin had kept up his surveillance of Marci for nearly twenty hours until she had gone to work. There he recognized Morrison's squad car in the parking lot and was trying to move to another position when Morrison suddenly accelerated out toward the park. He tailed him. He was following on foot, crossing the field when he saw the line of cops open fire. From his distance and with Morrison's back to him, it had looked, he said, like a firing squad.
"Even the brotherhood of blue gotta break at some point, Freeman," he said later while we both sipped our whiskeys at Kim's and neither of us, with our histories, was smiling. O'Shea said he had never been a part of the sex games his fellow officers had played with Faith Hamlin. It had in fact disgusted him. "But I didn't have the guts to turn them in," he said.
But he knew the girl and her adoptive family. She had told him that her stepfather, an Irishman himself, had labeled her a whore when IAD began snooping around the case. "And I also knew the married redheaded son of a bitch who fathered Jessica," he said. "Her life would've been hell there. So I took her away."
He had helped support and counsel Faith Hamlin ever since and had never looked back "until you came along and partnered up with me again, Freeman."
His rescue of the girl had been an act of redemption for him. Of his own volition, he'd stepped over the line more than a few times as a cop; his decision this time was to save her and let the pieces fall where they may. There was a look of resignation in his face when I told him there was no way Richards could keep it a secret. She'd have to report the discovery of a missing person to the Philadelphia department. He'd have to go back and face it.
"Guess your ex-wife ain't gonna get those captain's bars after all," he said, smiling as he thought about it.
"She'll find a way," I answered, trying not to.
It would be a media circus when the news broke. Someone would get a photo of the little girl. Someone else's life was going to crash. We were both quiet for a few drinks.
"It's a hell of a thing to do, lad," Colin suddenly said, using his old Irish brogue. "Goin' home again." We both drank to that.
Now I was thinking about sleet and spitting snow while the sun traveled higher in front of me and a sheen of sweat began to form on my chest. Beside me I picked up a movement of bright yellow and green in the corner of my eye. The young boy with the blue eyes was standing beside me, his sand bucket and shovel in hand.
"Josh," a woman's voice called from behind me. "Go down to the water, honey, and wash your bucket."
The boy turned and skipped toward the ocean and I looked up as a pair of legs stepped into his place.
"Good morning," the woman said.
I had to shield my eyes to see her face. She was young and very tanned and her dark hair was tucked through the back of a baseball cap.
"It is," I said.
"You know," she said, dropping down to face level, her knees resting in the sand, "you have my son infatuated."
I raised my eyebrows and pointed out to the boy. While she nodded I glanced at her left hand.