In police work you gradually acquire a distance from nonpolicemen. People on the outside have such a limited concept of what you really do that they might as well know nothing at all. They see only the headlines, the endless propagandizing of the newspapers. Crimes are reported, their solution is not. As a result the people you meet outside of the force see you as incompetent. “You’re a cop? Why don’t you get the muggers off the street? I never see a cop on the street. I thought that’s what we paid you for.” Then you might see that same person dead somewhere, the victim of the very crime he said you wouldn’t protect him from. It does something to you to realize that you aren’t going to protect everybody, you aren’t going to make the world a hell of a lot safer by your work. You are there to hold life together, not to bring on the millennium. When you see the incredible suffering and degradation, you begin to realize the truth of that. Sooner or later crooks and victims all merge together into one miserable, bloody mass of whining, twisted bodies and fear-glazed eyes. Murder after murder comes before you, each with its sordid tale of failed lives…
And then you get a thing like this. It doesn’t make sense, it scares you. There’s a chilly feeling that something wrong has happened but you don’t quite know what it is. You want like hell to solve the crime because the victims were your people. The twisted bodies were from the inside, from the real world of the department, not from that chaos that swirls around outside.
Usually there is no mystery to a cop’s death. He knocks on a door and a junkie blows him away. He hollers freeze at some kid running out of a liquor store and gets a bullet in the face. That’s the way cops get killed, suddenly and without mystery. Death in the line of duty—rare, but it happens.
“Here’s the car,” Wilson said. Becky had walked right past it; she had been too deeply engrossed in her thoughts. But she got in, drove mechanically through the increasingly heavy rain, listening to it drum on the roof, listening to the wind soughing past the closed windows, feeling the pervasive dirty damp of the afternoon.
Headquarters was dark and gray, standing like some black monument in the storm. They pulled into the garage beneath the building, into the sudden flood of fluorescent lights, the squeal of brakes and tires as they maneuvered through the garage and found a parking space in the area marked off for the Homicide Division.
Underwood was not alone in his office. With him was a young man in a polyester suit and round rimless glasses. For an instant Becky was reminded of John Dean, then the face looked up and the impression of boyishness disappeared: the man’s eyes were cold, his face thinner than it should be, his lips set in a terse line.
“Good afternoon,” Underwood said stiffly, half rising from behind his deck, “this is Assistant District Attorney Kupferman.” He then introduced Neff and Wilson. The two detectives pulled up chairs; this was going to be a work session and there was no time to stand on formality.
Becky relaxed into the comfortable leather wing chair Wilson had gotten for her. The Chief’s office was all leather and paneling; it looked like an expensive private library without books. Hunting scenes were hung on the wall a pewter chandelier from the ceiling. The whole impression was one of subdued bad taste—a sort of subtle and completely unintentional self-mockery.
“Let’s go,” Underwood said. “I told the papers we’d have a statement tonight. Was I right?”
“Yeah,” Wilson said. He looked at the assistant DA. “You’re chewing. Got any gum?” The man held out a pack of sugar-free gum. “Thanks. I’m not supposed to smoke.”
“I want to know if you’ve found out anything about those guys that might justify us getting into the act,” the assistant DA said.
So that was what he was here for. He was the District Attorney’s little watchdog, sent here to sniff out any departmental wrongdoing. Maybe the two dead cops were bent, the thinking would go, maybe that’s why they were dead.
“There’s nothing like that,” Wilson said. “These guys were Auto Squad, not Narcotics. They weren’t into anything.”
Becky’s mind flashed to her husband Dick, to the Narcotics Squad. Just as quickly she pulled her thoughts away, returning them to this conversation. What was it that made her worry so about Dick, especially lately? She couldn’t allow herself to think about it now. As firmly as she could, she returned her thoughts to the question at hand.
“You’re sure?”
“We haven’t investigated that aspect,” Becky put in. “We’ve just now established a cause of death.”
This was obviously the part Underwood wanted to hear about. He leaned forward and made a little pulling motion with his hands. “It was the dogs,” Wilson said tonelessly.
“Oh, no, you can’t tell me that! I can’t have that!”
“It’s the truth as far as we know. They were killed by dogs.”
“Hell no. That’s completely unacceptable. I’m not putting that in any press releases. Let the damn Commissioner do it, it’s his responsibility.”
The way he began to back off would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad. He had called them down here hoping to get some glory thrown his way when they solved the crime; but now that it looked like this he wasn’t so eager to be associated with it. Let the Commissioner tell the world that two fully armed policemen got themselves killed by a bunch of dogs; Underwood sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.
“We didn’t believe it ourselves,” Becky said, “but Evans is sure. The only thing out of the ordinary was some residual carbon monoxide—”
“Carbon monoxide! That’s incapacitating! Then it makes some sense, the guys were out cold. Now that’s better, why didn’t you start off telling me that?” He glared an instant at Wilson. “That’s the crucial piece of change, as far as I’m concerned. Did the M. E. say where they got it?”
“Background atmosphere,” Wilson cut in. “It’s not important. There are probably higher levels in your blood right now.”
“Did anybody check their car, find out if the exhaust system was defective?”
Wilson laughed, a sneering little noise in the back of his throat. Becky wished to God he had never made that sound. “The CO count wasn’t high enough.”
“It’s an angle, man! If I can use that, I don’t have to put this case down to The Unexplained. Think about what we’re confronting here! Cops were killed by dogs. It’s stupid. It’s bad for the department, it makes the men look like a bunch of jerkoffs, getting themselves killed by a pack of mutts. You don’t tell the papers, yeah, here are a couple of dopes who got themselves done in by a bunch of dogs, didn’t even have the sense to defend themselves. I can’t make a statement like that.”
“Which is why you’ll try to get the Commissioner to make the statement. You don’t want to be associated with it.”
“It’s his responsibility, Detective. And I don’t think I like your attitude!”
“Thank you.”
The Chief’s eyes bored into Wilson’s impassive face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Thank you. Nothing more or less. I’ve told you all I know about this case. Give me a few more days and a little luck and I’ll know more. As far as the cause of death is concerned, it appears to have been the dogs. I don’t like it any more than you do, I’ve got to tell you. But those are the facts. If you want a statement for the press, that’s got to be it.”
“The hell. The carbon monoxide did it. Had to. And that’s damn well what I’m going to say.”
“Have you considered the consequences, sir?” Becky said. She had, and a statement like the one Underwood planned to make was a serious mistake, even a dangerous one.
“Like?”