Compromised (7 page)

“Good thinking. I’d like to visit the scene of the shooting as soon as we’re done.”

“Just as soon as you’ve had your fill of bacon and cow parts.”

Harry grimaced. I think he was having difficulty swallowing my zany euphemism for a hamburger. “You have a strange way of speaking, Chalice. Did my brother have trouble understanding you?”

“I don’t think so.” Yana had moved to New York after graduating from university in Japan. He was a naturalized citizen with a family and, after years as an Upper East Side resident, had somewhat assimilated to local culture. “Didn’t he say that he enjoyed my sense of humor?”

“You assume too much,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Yana said you had a prolific sense of humor. He never said he enjoyed it.”

“What?”

He chuckled.

“You find this funny, do you? You were on shaky ground there for a minute, Harry. I’ve killed for less. Speaking of which, you’ll need a weapon.”

“Unnecessary.”

“We’re pursuing an armed murderer.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“How?”

“Even here, I am not without resources.”

“Oh?” I said. “I brought an extra bulletproof vest.”

“Okay,” he said, casually acknowledging my comment.

He didn’t seem all that concerned for his own personal safety, and I wondered if he possessed some mad Bruce Lee martial-arts skills. I envisioned him flying through the air, leg extended, hands poised to strike. “I don’t intend to put you in harm’s way,” I told him. “I know that you were the one who reached out to me from Japan, but you’re just a citizen here with no official standing, so I’d planned on using your mind more so than your body.”

He finished his burger, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and balled it up in his hand. “Let me worry about it.” He stood and glanced around the restaurant.
“
Keshooshitsu
?”

Shit zoo, huh? That can only mean one thing in any language.
“The restroom? I think it’s downstairs.”

He winked at me and took off.

Harry took the metal stairs two at a time. Following the arrows and international men’s room symbols, he walked down a short corridor and past a service technician, who was working within a double-door electrical closet. He glanced into the closet as he walked by. It looked like almost all of the commercial service panels he had ever seen, with warning symbols and parallel rows of heavy-duty electrical conduits feeding into master electrical boxes, except . . . he froze in his tracks. Three small metal conduit boxes were positioned in a row. They were identical, with large black buttons and round green lights beneath them.

“Hey, you all right?” the electrician asked.

Harry felt lightheaded, and it took a moment for him to come around. He finally responded, “Sure, sure,” but continued to stare at the three metal boxes. “Uh,
rest-a-room
,” he said, making it obvious that he was foreign and needed assistance.

“Down the hall and to the right, buddy.”

“Thank you.” He hurried into the restroom, locked himself in a stall, and slumped against the door with his full weight. He rubbed his eyes, but the image of the three conduit boxes refused to disappear. And why should it? The three boxes were familiar in the very worst way imaginable, and their image had been permanently burned into his mind. They looked exactly like the trapdoor-actuating buttons at the Kyoto Detention House execution chamber.

I needed a moment to mentally prepare myself before exiting the car and viewing the crime scene.
Gus and the doctors had repeatedly warned me that anxiety or extreme agitation might trigger additional seizures, so I closed my eyes, clasped my hands together, and whispered, “Namaste.” I hoped it would help to calm the inner me even though I’d only taken one yoga class in my entire life.

“Are you ready?” Harry waited patiently for me to gather myself before getting out of the rented SUV. “Have you been back here since the shooting?”

“No.”

“I think this must be quite difficult for you.”

I sighed, “Yes, it is,” and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”

It was a bright sunny day, and I had an unobstructed view of the rooftop. The building was eight stories high with a fence around the roof, which served as a sundeck for residents. I pointed to it so that Harry could see from where the shots had been fired. “The sniper used a thirty-caliber rifle. I could hit a squirrel from this distance let alone a human target.”

He appeared to be studying the rooftop. I saw his Adam’s apple catch when he swallowed, and I wondered if he were imagining the shooter with his rifle poised on the rooftop railing, his sight trained on Yana.

The crime scene tape was long gone and our blood washed off the pavement, but the concrete was still stained. There were two large and distinct areas. I studied the perimeters of the stains and cringed when I saw where the two pools of blood had run together. There was also a narrow gouge in the concrete not far from where we’d been hit.

That’s mine. That must be where the bullet hit the ground and ricocheted.
It’s often impossible to determine the angle of ricochet. It depends on a multitude of variables, but right-angle ricochet is somewhat common. I tried to judge the angle at which the bullet hit the sidewalk and a right-angle ricochet. I positioned myself exactly where I thought the bullet had hit me, and my layman’s theory appeared to hold up. From there it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to an abrupt freak-out. I felt my pulse quicken and the blood drain from my face.
Namaste. Namaste. Calm down. You can handle this.
It didn’t help.

“You look pale, Chalice. Are you sure that you can do this?”

“I’ll be all right, but let’s get off the street. I don’t want to be seen.” Translation: Get me the hell out of here.

“Yes. Okay,” Harry said. “I can come back later and look around on my own if I need to. I don’t think your husband is looking for
me
.”

The building’s elevator smelled from pine disinfectant. The elevator itself was clean polished metal, and the finish looked to me like something that was designed to resist graffiti. The ceiling was made of common Celotex panels.

Harry seemed pensive on our ride up to the roof, and I wondered what was going through his mind. He had flown to New York to bury his brother and had returned to Japan soon afterward. It was during his short stay here that he had come to visit me in the hospital, and then after, the unexpected phone call in which he expressed his strong desire to assist in the murderer’s apprehension. “I’m thinking,” he said as if he somehow knew what I was wondering about. “I’m thinking about how it will feel to stand where the assassin stood when he pulled the trigger and killed Yana.”

I touched his arm. “Think about how it will feel when he’s captured. Think about the look on his face when he knows we’ve got him dead to rights. Block out everything else.”

“I will try,” he said solemnly. “I will try.”

A rooftop deck is a nice feature, but the building was predominately occupied by blue-collar tenants who had little or no time for sunbathing. I walked to the railing and looked out from the point where it was most likely the shooter stood. I saw that there was a clear and unobstructed line of sight to where Yana and I had been shot.

“Not a difficult shot,” I said. “Especially on that night. Don’t ask me how I know, but I have the feeling that the wind was very still.” I certainly wasn’t recalling from memory. Perhaps it was just my mind projecting what it thought I wanted to believe.

“As you said, you could hit a squirrel from this distance. I understand that the thirty-caliber is often used for small-game hunting.”

“Yes. It can be, but snipers also commonly use it.”

“Yet the bullet was just small enough to slip between my brother’s ribs and rupture his heart. Had the bullet been of a larger caliber, it might’ve hit one of his ribs, been deflected by it, and missed his heart completely.” He turned to me. “This is the essence of paradox, is it not?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Have you ever shot and killed a man, Chalice?”

“I’ve pulled my gun three times and killed two men.”

“How does it feel to shoot someone?”

“I take it you’ve never shot anyone?”

“No.”

“It was horrible the first time as well as the second, but they were both kill-or-be-killed scenarios. I didn’t have a choice.”

“I don’t understand why my brother was shot. I’m standing here, and I can’t understand. What did he do to bring such violence upon himself?”

“I don’t know, Harry. I just don’t know. We’d just interviewed the parents of a homicide victim in this building, a seventeen-year-old girl. I really doubt that they had any connection to the shooting.”

“Is your memory coming back, or is this what you read in your notes and the police report?”

“From the notes, unfortunately. My memory of that day is still a blank. It’s been so long now—I wonder if I’ll ever remember what really happened that day.” As I looked out at where Yana and I had been shot, the shadow of a nearby tree moved as the sun changed its position in the sky. I clutched my heart. The shadow now stretched across the pavement, and the image it cast looked like that of a body sprawled out across the ground.

Lido clocked in and made straight for the watch commander’s desk.
It was the morning after Stephanie’s disappearance. He had barely slept at all.

Ridon had the phone in one hand and a breakfast burrito in the other. His eyes were glazed over but did an oh-brother roll when he saw Lido poke his head into his office. He covered the mouthpiece. “Estoban is on the rag again.” He shook his head, looking upward. “Why me, God? Why me? She’s been bouncing around from command to command like a friggin’ pinball. Jeez.” He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Estoban, hold on a minute . . . I said, hold on a minute.” He placed the call on hold. “Bet you dollars to doughnuts she doesn’t even break stride. Guaranteed she’ll still be blowing gale-force winds when I pick up the call. Anyway, you look like shit. What’s up?”

“Who’s working the Ramirez case?”

“Be specific, Lido. There are at least three Ramirez files out on the floor. It’s kind of a common name.”

“The one Stephanie was working on, Serafina Ramirez. With all that’s happened over the last month, I’ve lost track of who was working it.”

“McIntyre and Kelleher. Why?”

“Are they making any progress on it?”

“I did say McIntyre and Kelleher, didn’t I?”

“So no, then?”

“Read between the lines, Detective.”

“Any chance I could pick it up?”

“Why would you want it? It’s a high-jingo nightmare. A pretty little high school girl gets raped and murdered, and the department is still tripping on its dick a month and half later. Sure you want to wade through a murky stream like that?”

“What can I say, man? I’m a glutton for punishment.”

Ridon’s expression read
schmuck.
“Talk to Egan. There’s a task force assigned to the case, and the captain is up to his ass in hot water. Like I said, it’s all high-jingo now. The principal of the school the Ramirez girl attended is an at-large member of CPAC.”

“Meaning?”

“The Citizen’s Police Advisory Committee, Lido, and they have coffee and doughnuts with the executive brass once a month. Believe me when I tell you this group has lots of sway and they want this bastard found and punished pronto.” Ridon reached for the phone console. “Why are you still standing here? Vamoose! I told you Egan needs all the help he can get.” He hit the blinking light, and once again, Margarita Estoban’s incensed voice bled over the earpiece. Ridon mouthed, “Someone shoot me.”

Captain James Egan was also on the phone. He waved Lido into the office. Cupping the receiver, he said, “I’ll just be a minute,” in a reserved voice.

Lido sank into a chair and waited until Egan was finished with his call. “Sorry to barge in,” he began.

“Forget it, Lido. Spending five minutes with a hardworking cop is a hell of a lot more important than the hour I just wasted on a dumb compliance conference call.”

“More red tape?”

“Miles of it, Lido, procedural initiatives, new chain of evidence protocol . . .” He puffed out his lips. “Pretty soon the squad will have to spend the bulk of its time in a classroom instead of being out on the street. Anyway, how’s Stephanie? Coming along?”

Lido sensed that he was taking too much time to respond and threw out a quick, innocuous answer. “You know Stephanie, she’s like a force of nature.”

Egan snorted. “I’ll bet that woman keeps you on your toes.”

Lido grinned. “You’ve got no idea, Captain, no idea whatsoever.”

“So what can I do you for, Lido?”

“The case Stephanie was working on before the shooting—Serafina Ramirez—can I get in on it?”

“You’re just stepping back into the ring, Gus. You’re not even up to speed on your own caseload. Why the sudden interest in the Ramirez case?” He glanced at Lido over the top of his glasses. “You wouldn’t possibly be interested because you think it’ll help you find your wife’s shooter, would you? Not that I would blame you for trying.”

“I hear you’re forming a task force. I also hear the brass are chewing their way down the ranks.”

“Down the ranks and up my ass,” Egan said flatly. He closed his day planner and pushed back in his chair. “You know, I could give you an earful of shit about conflict of interest, protocols, and the rest of that mindless mumbo jumbo, but you’re a good cop and I can use all the help I can get. You want in? You’re in. I’ll add you to the task force, but I’m not pulling you off any of your current assignments, and I’m not giving you carte blanche to carry out a vendetta. Is that clear?”

“Completely clear, Captain.”

“Good! Find the Ramirez killer and the cop killer, and find them fast. People are watching us. Important people. I’ve got the brass so far up my rectum, I could shit bullets.”

Lido gave Egan a thumbs-up.

“Okay, then. Get out of here, Lido, and don’t make me regret my decision.”