“The guy from the airport?”
“Yeah. The manager. Get ’em to his house ASAP. If he’s there, tell them to make sure he stays there. And make sure they stay with him.” Justin slammed the phone down. He turned back to Reggie. “Come on,” he said.
“Like this?” She pointed down to her noncoplike clothes.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just like that.”
Justin stopped only to grab the gun that he kept locked in his desk drawer. He didn’t brush against Reggie on the way out or grab her by the hand. He looked at her the way he’d look at any other cop and just said, “There’s another one, goddammit! There’s already a goddamn fifth person.”
He knew it. As soon as he realized that Ray Lockhardt was in the picture, that Ray had also known that the plane that Hutchinson Cooke crashed had not gone down by accident, he knew he was going to be too late. And he was.
There was very little traffic this early at the East End airport. Ray’s office was dark and locked. Justin told Reggie to wait there and then he moved slowly, a defeated gait to his walk, to the nearer of the two private charter services. The guy working the counter was named Don and Justin asked if he’d seen Ray Lockhardt yet this morning.
“No,” Don said. “He’s usually in by now, checkin’ up on things, but I ain’t seen him.”
Justin went back to Lockhardt’s office.
“You know how to pick a lock?” Reggie asked.
“Sure,” Justin said, and took his gun out of its holster, used the butt to smash the beveled glass panel above the doorknob, then reached inside and opened the door. He didn’t wait for Reggie, he stepped quickly inside the office, flicked the light on.
Ray Lockhardt was sitting in his chair, behind his desk. Everything looked fairly normal. Except for the blood splattered on the back wall of the office. And the bullet that had shredded most of the right side of Ray’s face.
Justin rubbed his eyes. The headache was coming on big-time.
Dr. Morgan Davidson walked into the East End Harbor police station. He nodded at the usual bunch of cops, all of whom he knew. And he smiled at the sexy young woman sitting at one of the policemen’s desks. Dr. Davidson had an eye for the ladies. And they were usually pretty good about eyeing him back.
“If there’s anything you need,” he said to the woman with a wink, “let me know. If they’re not doing what they should for you. I know these guys pretty well.” She nodded. “Morgan Davidson,” he said. “Doctor Davidson.”
“Reggie Bokkenheuser,” the woman said. “Sergeant Bokkenheuser. If you’re here to see Chief Westwood, he’s in the office back there.” As the flustered physician bobbed his head up and down nervously, then headed for the office, she added, “And thanks for the tip, Doc. I’ll let you know if I need you.” Then she winked.
Inside the small office, Davidson closed the door behind him. “New officer?” he asked.
“You mind if we skip the small talk just now, Morgan? I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
The doctor shrugged, put his report on the desk in front of Justin. “Lockhardt’s been dead about twelve hours. Which means he was probably killed around seven or eight last night. No surprise, it was the bullet that did all the damage. Probably a.38, shot from very close range. That’s about all I can give you right now.” When Justin didn’t answer, Davidson said, “You all right?”
“Oh yeah,” Justin said. “I’m just great.”
When the doctor left, Justin sat on the edge of the desk for a good minute.
Bradford Collins, Hutchinson Cooke, Chuck Billings, Martin Heffernan, and now Ray Lockhardt. Not to mention Jimmy Leggett and nearly seventy other innocent victims.
He picked up the phone, called Wanda Chinkle, once again insisted she call him back on a secure line. When she returned the call, he told her that Lockhardt was dead.
“You still want to think about what you’re going to do?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Wanda,” he said. “What do you think it is that makes a good cop? I don’t mean just cop, I mean investigator, FBI, whatever.”
“Lots of things,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Doggedness. Determination. The ability not to panic under pressure.”
“Yeah. All that’s true.”
“But that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“No. You know what makes a good investigator?”
“What?”
“The ability to see things.”
“What kind of things, Jay?”
“Patterns. Why people do things. How they do things. But mostly a good cop sees something that happens over here, then connects it to something that happens over there. You agree?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll go along with that.”
“Well, there’s a connection, I mean a real connection, between what happened at Harper’s and what happened at La Cucina. Not just a connection, a lead. A way to find out who’s behind all this. Only your guys are ignoring it. Because they don’t want to find out who’s behind it.”
“I can’t believe that, Jay.”
“How about if I make you believe me?”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I’ll catch the guy who did it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll catch the guy who blew up the two restaurants. The guy the lying scumbags you work with don’t want caught.”
“You’re a good cop, Jay. And you can make all the connections you want. But you’re a crazy son of a bitch if you even think about getting in the middle of this.”
“I am a crazy son of a bitch, Wanda. That’s why you’ve gotta find something out for me. Just one thing. If you can do it without getting yourself killed.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Jacks,” he told her.”
“What?”
“Jacks. The little kid’s game. The little pointy things.”
“Whatever you might think, I’m still a girl. I know what jacks are. What about them?”
“I want to know if your boys found any in La Cucina. After the bombing. But be careful. I’m not screwing around here. Don’t go anywhere without other people. Other people you know and trust. Don’t get caught alone. And especially watch out for anyone official who’s involved in this investigation.”
She paused again. Then: “While I’m being careful. . and while, as usual, I’m spending my life trying to give you something you need to know. . what exactly are you going to do?”
“I’m the new chief of police,” Justin Westwood said. “I’m gonna do my fucking job.”
PART TWO
16
Special Agent Hubbell Schrader had never thought of himself as a violent man.
He had never struck his wife, or any other woman, no matter the provocation, nor had he so much as spanked any of his three children when they were still of spanking age.
He rarely raised his voice, he did not grind his teeth, he had never experienced even the remotest form of road rage, he did not have a residue of anger that he carried around with him, as so many law enforcement officers he knew carried with them, and as best as he could remember, going all the way back to childhood, he had never even been in a fistfight.
Which is why he was so surprised when he woke up several mornings ago to realize that he had, in his life, killed six people.
He had no regrets about any of the first five deaths. They had all come in the line of duty and all of them had been fully investigated and validated. Three of the killings were, in fact, viewed so positively he could trace his latest promotion-Special Agent in Charge of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation-directly back to them. They had occurred at the end of a kidnapping case; the six-year-old daughter of the U.S. senator from Oregon had been taken, part of a protest against the senator’s stand in favor of gay marriage. At least that’s what the kidnappers had said. Schrader knew that was bullshit. Kidnappings were never political. Kidnappings were only and always about one of two things. They were either personal-someone couldn’t have a child but wanted one; someone hated the parent and wanted to deprive him or her of a most beloved possession-or they were about money. Nothing in between. The senator’s daughter was about money. But the people who snatched the kid weren’t bright enough to pull it off. They left a trail so traceable they might as well have scattered breadcrumbs leading to their doorway. Schrader had broken the case easily but the endgame got messy. Three of the kidnappers-two men, one woman-used the little girl as a hostage. There was a shootout. One agent serving under Schrader took a bullet in the leg, had his kneecap shattered, and was now on permanent disability. Schrader took out all three perps. The little girl was saved, Schrader was proclaimed a hero-got his fifteen minutes of fame on the front page of the New York Post and even had some movie producer give him thirty-five thousand dollars as option for his “life rights,” although nothing ever came of it other than his wife got a long weekend in Bermuda and his kids’ college funds got padded. Within a few weeks of the rescue, he was put in charge of the New York office.