Shutter Man (20 page)

The target building was a three-story converted row house on Tasker, between Fifth and Sixth streets, in a section of the city known as Dickinson Narrows.

The perimeter team went in first and cut the bolts from the back fence. The backup team deployed in two vans, parked half a block away on either side of the target house.

Even though the detail had to wait for the go command, having a search warrant signed, there was no need for the actual paper to be delivered to the scene.

Jessica waited on the phone in the tech van. At just after two o’clock she took a call from her office.

‘We’ve got it,’ she said into her two-way.

The plan was to have a single officer approach the house in the guise of a public works employee. If the officer could get the drop on the man, and there was no further threat from inside the building, the operation could stand down.

In addition to the Makarov, there were also a half-dozen other weapons registered to the man who lived in the house. And those were the ones the PPD knew about.

Depending on how badly this suspect wanted to stand his ground, the potential for a violent encounter was great. Because this was a homicide warrant, they could take no chances. Most police-involved shootings took place in three to five seconds. There was no margin for error.

Jessica looked out the mirrored windows of the van.

She saw that there was no shortage of teenagers and even younger kids on the corners with cell phones. The possibility of the subject being tipped off and escaping was highly probable.

As she watched the scene unfold, she felt adrenalin kick in. Part of her wanted to be on the entry team, like she had been in the old days; part of her was glad she was not.

A few seconds later she heard the detail commander give the go order. On screen, she saw the officer walk up the street. In his left hand he held a clipboard. He wore a public works windbreaker and ball cap. Jessica knew he had a Kevlar vest on beneath the windbreaker.

He stood in front of the house, got a read on the windows and door. He scribbled a few things on the clipboard, in case he was being observed.

He rang the bell, waited. He rang it a second time. A few seconds later the door opened. Through the pole cam directly in front of the house, Jessica could see that the subject was in his mid-thirties, had close-cropped hair.

In a blur the officer had his weapon drawn, leveled. The subject got on the ground in front of the row house and seconds later was in custody.

A pair of SWAT officers breached the door, followed by Kevin Byrne and Josh Bontrager, all deployed in Kevlar vests.

Jessica found that she was holding her breath.

Eventually Byrne emerged, holstering his weapon as he walked down the steps. He threw a glance at the pole cam.

‘Premises clear,’ one of the SWAT officers said over the radio.

Jessica exhaled.

The first floor of the space was currently being remodeled from what was once a residence to a retail space. Along the left side was a long display counter. Behind it were shelving units. The walls had been patched and repaired, but not yet painted.

The subject sat on a folding chair at the back end of the space, his hands still cuffed behind him. Although he had no criminal record, information gleaned from both the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Licenses and Inspections identified him as Timothy Gallagher, aged thirty-eight.

Four detectives from South Division had conducted a search of the premises, as well as Gallagher’s car – a 2014 Audi 4 that was parked a half-block away in a city lot – and come up empty. No weapons were recovered.

Depending on how this initial interview went, time would tell if the car would be impounded and towed to the police garage, where it would be processed for blood, hair and fiber.

While Byrne pulled up a chair opposite Gallagher, Jessica held back, sat in a chair on the other side of the counter. Josh Bontrager and John Shepherd stood near the door.

A video camera, trained on Gallagher, was on top of the display case. He had called his lawyer, who had not yet arrived. He had every right to not say a word.

‘Mr Gallagher, my name is Detective Kevin Byrne. I’m with the homicide unit of the Philadelphia Police Department.’

Gallagher looked up at Byrne, but said nothing.

‘Do you know why we’re here?’

‘My lawyer should be here any minute. We’ll talk then. If at all.’

Byrne nodded. ‘You have that right, of course. But there’s nothing stopping me from telling you why we’re here. It’s about your Makarov.’

The man looked up. ‘My Makarov?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t own a Makarov.’

Byrne reached into his coat, took out a folded document, pushed it across the desk. An official form from BATFE, the 4473 was mandatory in Pennsylvania for the legal, over-the-counter purchase of a firearm from a dealer. The man barely scanned it, perhaps only looking for his name and signature.

‘Did you read the date on this?’ Gallagher asked.

‘I did, sir.’

‘I don’t have this gun anymore.’

‘Who has it?’

‘I have no idea. It was stolen.’

‘When was it stolen?’

‘Two years ago. Right before Christmas. It was about a month after I had a robbery.’

‘Did you report this burglary to the police?’

He looked at Jessica, back. ‘Of course I did. Who doesn’t report a burglary to the police?’

You’d be surprised, Jessica thought.

‘Which agency did you report it to?’ Byrne asked.

‘State police. This happened at my old store in Quakertown.’

Quakertown was a town of approximately nine thousand residents in the northeast portion of Upper Bucks County, about thirty miles north of Philadelphia.

Byrne shared a quick glance with Jessica. They’d been down this road before. Communication between state and city and county and federal agencies left a lot to be desired. If they’d had the information about the stolen weapon, they could have stood down this entire operation. They still would have talked to this man, but not in handcuffs.

Josh Bontrager took out his phone, stepped out of the building. He would follow up on this. Byrne turned back to Gallagher. Until he heard that the story of the burglary was true, the man would remain in cuffs.

‘Tell me how you came to acquire the Makarov,’ he said.

Gallagher paused, took a deep breath. ‘Not much to tell. I bought it at a gun show fifteen years ago.’ He nodded at the 4473. ‘It’s all there.’

‘Where was the show?’

‘Over in Greencastle.’

‘Why did you buy it?’

‘I sell stamps and coins,’ he said. ‘I buy and sell gold. I have cash on hand. Why do you think?’

Byrne moved on. ‘Did anyone ever borrow this weapon from you?’

‘Never.’

‘Not even for an afternoon, to go to the range or something?’

‘Not once.’

‘Can you tell me the general details of the burglary?’

‘What’s to tell? It was the middle of the night. I’d locked up, put the system on, shut the safe.’

‘Where was the gun?’

‘I kept it under the counter.’

‘Why not in the safe?’ Byrne asked.

‘What the hell good would it do me there? I just tell the bad guys to hold on a minute while I get my weapon? If I hadn’t had it to hand a month earlier, I’d be dead.’

Byrne took a moment. He’d meant, why not in the safe at night. He didn’t care for the man’s attitude, but cut him some slack. He didn’t think he would be too happy if this had happened to him.

‘What else was stolen during the burglary?’ he asked.

‘Some rare coins, some silver jewelry. A few books of stamps. Nothing precious. Maybe four to five thousand all told.’

‘Was it customary to leave these items out?’

‘You can’t put everything in the safe, every night,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t leave an Inverted Jenny out. That’s the —’

‘First US airmail stamp,’ Byrne said. ‘Curtiss JN-4 printed upside down.’

Gallagher looked surprised. ‘You know your stamps.’

Byrne said nothing.

‘Besides, don’t the police always tell you to leave a little something out?’ Gallagher said.

It was true. The conventional wisdom was that if a burglar got absolutely nothing, they were more likely to trash the place in anger.

Josh Bontrager re-entered the store, caught Byrne’s eye, nodded. It meant that the man’s story checked out. He had been burglarized, and he had claimed the Makarov was taken. It was all in the police report.

Byrne stood, crossed the room, unlocked the man’s handcuffs. ‘First off, let me say I’m sorry about this.’

The man rubbed his wrists, said nothing.

‘Tell us about the robbery at the Quakertown store.’

Gallagher’s account of the incident matched the official police report. Two men with ski masks on had come into the store just before closing. They’d pointed a weapon at Gallagher, who managed to get the Makarov out from under the counter. Both men fired. The robbers left. It was the slug from the Makarov, dug out of the drywall, that had provided the match to the bullet evidence in the Channing and Rousseau cases.

A month later came the burglary.

‘Do you have any ideas about who might have committed the burglary?’ Byrne asked.

Gallagher looked at each of the detectives in turn, said: ‘I have my ideas. But it was a long time ago. Doesn’t really matter anymore.’

Byrne waited for more. More didn’t come.

‘As you might have guessed, this is an extremely important matter. It would be very helpful if you would share these ideas with us.’

Gallagher ran a hand over his chin.

‘This was a long time ago, mind you. Long before the burglary.’

Byrne listened in silence.

‘My father had just opened a shop over on Grays Ferry Avenue. Do you know it?’

Byrne nodded.

‘We were doing all right. This was back when people collected. Now it’s all bullion metals, sports memorabilia. Back then it was collectors.’ Gallagher thought for a few moments, clearly unused to talking about whatever it was that he was going to say. He continued.

‘So we’re open a few months, and one day, just before closing – a Saturday, of course – this guy comes in. Big guy, older – fifties or sixties maybe – tough-looking, prison tats. I knew right away it was a shakedown. Wasn’t my first rodeo.’

‘What did he say?’

‘You know the routine. He said it was all about the Irish sticking together, how the police weren’t always going to help. I told him that half the police force in Philly were Irish. He didn’t find the humor or the logic.’

‘So you paid him protection money.’

Gallagher looked at the floor, back up. ‘What was I supposed to do? I asked around, talked to the other merchants and shopkeepers. These guys were fucking animals. This one guy, Ralph Brady, used to own a little sporting goods store on South. He said he missed a payment and came home to find his family dog hanging from a tree in the back yard. Pinned to the dog’s collar was a photograph of his seven-year-old daughter.’

‘How long did this go on?’

Gallagher shrugged. ‘Two years, maybe? We opened two more stores, and I had to pay for them, too.’

Byrne made the notes. Gallagher continued.

‘Like I said, the burglary wasn’t here. I had five stores back then. The Makarov was up in Quakertown.’

‘And you think it was these men? The men who extorted money from you?’

‘I
know
it was them. I couldn’t exactly tell the police this. All things considered.’

‘And you’re certain that the Makarov was stolen in this burglary?’

‘I’m one hundred percent sure.’

Jessica considered this. If the gun was stolen this long ago, it could have been sold and resold a hundred times. No paperwork involved.

‘I take it you are no longer paying these people for protection,’ Byrne said.

The man hesitated.

‘After the burglary, I hired private security. They drove me to and from the bank, to and from my house. I spent about six grand on my house – alarms, motion-sensing lights, fencing; five times that much on my stores. I have three pit bulls at home that would eat you for an appetizer. After the fire, they stopped coming around. Went for easier pickings, I guess.’

On the word
fire
, Byrne glanced over at Jessica.

‘There was a fire?’ Byrne asked.

‘Oh yeah. After they stole everything they could carry, they burned the place to the ground. I was insured, of course, but I lost a lot of irreplaceable things. Stamps, mostly.’

‘Might it have been a bomb?’ Byrne asked.

‘Could have been. To me, a fire is a fire.’

‘Who were these guys, Mr Gallagher?’

‘I never knew the names of the guys who actually collected.’

‘Do you think you’d recognize them if you saw them again?’

‘I think so. It’s been a while, but I’d remember.’

‘We’d really like it if you could come down to the Roundhouse and look through some mug shots,’ Byrne said.

‘What,
now
?’

‘It’s very important, Mr Gallagher.’

Gallagher hung his head for a few moments, glanced at his watch. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s not like I’m going to get anything done today. Let’s do it.’

Back at the Roundhouse, Byrne made phone calls to not only the state police in Dublin, Pennsylvania, but also the captain of the fire department regarding the burning down of Tim Gallagher’s store.

He learned that the arson investigator for that crime had ruled that no accelerant was used. He also said that no arrests were ever made, and that he had not run into this MO in all the years since.

Byrne asked if the crime-scene photos, as well as the reports, could be emailed. The chief said it would be no problem. Byrne thanked him, hung up. About ten minutes later, the files arrived. Byrne didn’t bother looking at them, because he didn’t have a clue as to what to look for.

He called Zach Brooks at the bomb squad, who said he had some time to look at the pictures and the files. Byrne forwarded them.