St. Patrick's Day Murder (3 page)

“Oh, God,” Jean said, her voice breaking.

I pulled the door open, and we ran. All I could think of was Jack, Jack. Please don’t let it be Jack. The windchill was awful. My eyes were tearing in the far corners. There was a third shot and tires squealed. A car with its lights out turned onto the street from the parking lot and took off away from us. As we reached the lot, Jean began calling, “Scotty! Scotty!” while I kept my scream inside.

I saw Jack first and called his name. He was holstering his gun and moving fast. “It’s Scotty. He’s been shot.” He dropped to his knees between two cars as he spoke.

Jean lurched forward, screaming her husband’s name.

“Get her
outa
here, Chris,” Jack shouted. “Go back to the bar and call 911. Tell them ‘shots fired’ and an officer’s down.”

He had his jacket off. He folded it quickly and placed it under Scotty’s head. I took my own coat off and dropped it over Scotty. “Keep him warm,” I said, as though I knew something about first aid.

Jean was screaming now. “Scotty! Don’t die, Scotty.”

“Get her
outa
here, Chris,” Jack roared, and I took Jean by the arm and dragged her away.

The bartender gave me a phone, and I made the call, hanging on to Jean to keep her with me. All the unwritten rules were operating now. An officer’s wife is trouble on the scene if he’s been hurt. You have to keep her away even if it looks as though her husband is dying. The corollary is that no policeman dies on the pavement or in a parking lot. Even if he seems to be dead, if there are no vital signs at all, he will be taken to a hospital where he will be worked over and worked over. Officially he will die in the hospital after everything possible has been tried.

I had few doubts and little hope for Scotty. My glimpse of him on the ground had left me chilled far beyond what the weather had done. Now I sat holding Jean. She had become very quiet, one hand clutching mine, her eyes far away. We had heard sirens almost from the moment I hung up and now they were arriving.

“They’ll get him to the hospital,” I said.

She didn’t even nod. In the mirror behind the bar I could see the reflection of flashing lights.

We sat for several minutes without speaking. The evening host of Gillen’s was keeping people away and trying to keep the patrons calm. Every time he glanced at us, his face looked grimmer. Finally the door opened and two young policemen came in.

“Mrs. McVeigh?” one said, looking our way.

We both stood as he came over. I had a strong feeling this was the first time he had been involved in anything like this and wished he were anywhere but here.

“Is he all right?” Jean asked in a half whisper.

“They’ve got him in the ambulance, ma’am. We’ll take you to the hospital.” A noncomittal answer. It wasn’t his job to carry the news.

We went outside. A blue-and-white was at the curb. As I got in, a policeman in uniform came running, carrying my coat. I thanked him and put it on gratefully. The air was freezing.

As we passed the parking lot, I looked for Jack. He was standing almost where we had left him, near the row of cars, talking to someone who looked older and very serious. In a second we had passed by.

“Everybody loves Scotty,” Jean said. “Everybody.”

I held her hand tightly and felt tears on my face.

They took us to Kings County Hospital. That’s one of the places Jack had told me police always take their own. In Manhattan, it’s Bellevue. The emergency room staffers in both hospitals have a reputation for extraordinary measures to save police officers’ lives, probably because they also see so much of the city’s violence. Officers have been known to stuff a wounded comrade in a car and drive him to one of those hospitals rather than wait for an ambulance to take him somewhere else.

But no hospital could make a difference tonight. Jean found a phone while we waited and called her mother. Someone brought us hot coffee and nurses offered anything they could think of to make Jean comfortable. Eventually a doctor, accompanied by a police chaplain and a captain in uniform, came out and told Jean he was very sorry.

Jack showed up just as we were about to get driven home. He hugged Jean, and I turned away. There seemed to be a lot of people around all of a sudden, men and a couple of women, in and out of uniform. It occurred to me the news would have been broadcast by now and friends of Scotty’s might have come, along with fellow officers who might want to donate blood.

“I have to call Ray,” Jack said somewhere near me, and he went down the hall toward a coin telephone. While he was gone, a few of the men near the waiting room came in and
talked to Jean. She looked as though she hardly heard them, but she said “Thank you” several times.

“Got him,” Jack said, returning.

“I can take you home now, ma’am,” one of the officers who had brought us to the hospital said.

“Thank you.”

We all went in the same car, Jean sitting between Jack and me in the backseat.

“Tell me what happened,” Jean said in a dull voice.

“Not now, Jean.”

“You were there, Jack,” she said firmly. “I want to know and I want you to tell me. Now.”

He took a breath. “There was a car parked at the back of the lot, facing the street, right between the two rows of parked cars. I didn’t see it till it was too late. He kept his lights out, and he must have started moving as I opened my car door.”

“He was waiting for Scotty.”

“He must have been. I had the key in my lock when I heard the first shot. I couldn’t see anything because my car was parked on the left and Scotty was on the right and the shooter’s car was between us.”

“I heard three shots,” Jean said.

“I got one off at the back of the car as it hit the street. First shot I ever fired.”

I felt a chill down my back.

Jean put a hand over Jack’s. “They take your weapon?”

“I gave it to the duty captain.”

The police car stopped first at Jean’s mother’s house, which was only a few blocks from Petra’s apartment. I went to the door with her and stayed a few minutes. I didn’t envy her her morning when her children got up for breakfast. But her mother seemed in control and said I should leave.

The car then took us back to the parking lot where Jack’s car was, where it had all begun. Ray Hansen was there, a solitary shadow standing near the crime scene tape and staring at the taped outline of his friend’s body. The investigation team had left by then, and probably the TV crew along with them. A lone officer was posted to guard the crime
scene until a daylight search of the parking lot could be made. Without the bright lights it was night again. The BMW was gone, along with most of the other cars that had been parked there. Jack’s car was the only one on the left side of the lot.

“Show me,” Ray said as we approached.

I watched them walk to the back of the lot where the shooter’s car had been waiting and come back again. I heard Jack repeat substantially what he had told Jean and what I supposed he had told the investigators before he got to the hospital.

“He must’ve been facing the car door with his key,” he said, “because he hadn’t gotten the door open yet. The car was parked front end out.”

“The door would’ve shielded him.”

“Right. So the shooter must have started down when Scotty walked between the two cars. He shot once—probably hit him in the side—count two, then shot again.”

“Hit him in the chest?”

“I think so.” Jack turned to me. “Your coat bloody?”

“Just a little.”

“Where’s Jean?”

“With her mother,” Jack said.

“It doesn’t make sense. We talked a couple of days ago. He didn’t tell me anything that could’ve brought this on. He said he was having the time of his life. Leave it to Scotty to get wrapped up in his beat. God, he loved the job.”

“And you don’t hit a guy with his family.”

“Unless you’re a very dumb son of a bitch,” Ray said. “Or you just don’t care.”

“I gotta get Chris home.”

“Talk to you tomorrow.”

We got into Jack’s car and drove to the curb. As we turned down the street, I looked back and saw the shadow of Ray Hansen standing and looking down at where the body of his friend no longer lay.

Inside the apartment, Jack removed the empty ankle holster and tossed it on the kitchen counter. It was the first time since I had met him that I didn’t see him carefully put away
his gun as he entered the apartment. For that matter, the last couple of hours were the first he had been unarmed out-of-doors since I had met him.

“Why did they take your gun?”

“To check it and because I wasn’t suppose to shoot it.”

I felt more than bewildered. I felt dizzy with fatigue, confused. I knew I could not have heard him right.

“The shooter was no longer a danger. He was a fleeing suspect. What I did was against the rules.”

“He had just shot a police officer,” I said, making a point he had surely not overlooked.

“But he had stopped shooting and was leaving the scene. He wasn’t a danger to anyone at that point.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Not really.” He managed a little smile.

Before hanging my coat in the closet, he looked at the stains on the lining. They weren’t bad, but I didn’t like to think of seeing them every time I put the coat on or took it off.

“What did you mean that you don’t hit a guy with his family?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but there are unwritten rules about killing a cop and one of them is you don’t do it when he’s with his family. You do it when he’s on duty or alone somewhere.”

“The protocol of cop killing.” I was undressing sloppily, the last of my reserve energy petering out with the first light of day. Jack picked up my brown pants from the chair where I had dropped them and held them upside down to smooth them out and fold them. Seeing him do it, a small, caring kindness, I felt tears tumble down my cheeks.

He came over and held me, but all I could think of was Jean McVeigh at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, standing on Fifth Avenue with her little boy on her shoulders, looking for Daddy.

“Get some sleep, kid,” Jack said. “Let’s put this day behind us.”

It made every news broadcast on radio and television, every newspaper. I stayed in Brooklyn on Monday, telephoning my sometimes employer, lawyer Arnold Gold, that I would not be in for a few days. In the morning, I went to Scotty’s precinct and gave a statement. In the afternoon, I drove Jean and her children back home to Queens. A couple of neighbors and the wives of some fellow officers of Scotty’s dropped in to help her out. They knew the ropes. One of them was a police widow herself. A few police officers and a PBA official came and went. Even in death there are police rules and duties that must be observed.

Before I left, Jack stopped over.

Seeing him, Jean perked up. “You didn’t have to, Jack,” she said. “It’s way out of your way.” But it was clear she was glad to see him.

We sat at the kitchen table, and I poured from a coffeepot that had been replenished all day.

“They found the shooter’s car this afternoon,” Jack said. “In Brooklyn, a couple of miles away.” He didn’t have to say away from what. “There’s a bullet hole in the trunk and ballistics is checking out the bullet against my gun.”

“They found the bullet?” Jean said.

“In the back of the backseat. It was a stolen car. The owner reported it about eight o’clock this morning.”

“Any idea when it was stolen?” I asked.

“He parked it Friday night, in a spot that was good all weekend, and never used it. He went out to get it this morning and it wasn’t there. Said he walked the neighborhood looking for it before he called in the report.”

“Somebody really wanted Scotty dead,” Jean said.

Jack nodded.

“Why, Jack?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows. There aren’t any rumors, there’s no dirt, nobody’s speculating. There’s nothing.”

“Scotty’s been walking that beat for over a year now,” Jean said sadly. “He patted kids’ heads and schmoozed with shopkeepers and went to PTA and precinct community council meetings. He really cared about those people, Jack. If there was a beef, he sure didn’t know anything about it.”

“We’ll get the guy. They’re scraping that car clean looking for leads. The whole city’s working on this one.”

“I know.”

He looked worn and tired. He had barely tasted the coffee, then pushed it away. I had the feeling nothing tasted good to him today. “Look, Jean, you may have some benefits coming because Scotty was a vet. And the job has benefits for the family. You know where his department and discharge papers are?”

“There’s a box of stuff upstairs. I’ll look for it.”

“Anything you need, you just tell me.”

“I know.”

He got up, took another gulp of coffee, and went to the sink to rinse the mug out.

“Go home, Chris,” Jean said. “Everything’s under control.”

I stopped and said good-bye to the children, then to the women. When I had my coat on, Jean handed me a paper bag.

“Just a little supper,” she said. “You don’t need to cook tonight.”

We hugged and she gave Jack a peck on the cheek. We left together.

“I got my interview and official dressing-down today,” he said when we were outside. “Got called into the captain’s office. He was very nice and very firm. ‘I understand why you did it, but don’t ever let it happen again.’ That kind of thing.”

“He would have done it himself.”

“That’s why it probably won’t mean a complaint or a trip to Poplar Street to see Internal Affairs.”

I hadn’t thought of that as a possibility. To me the shot he fired was both justified and understandable. “I’m glad it’s over.”

“They took two slugs out of Scotty,” he said. “They were forty-fours. The first one hit his shoulder. It was the second one that did it.”

“And nobody knows why.”

“Not a glimmer. Not a whisper. I’m not on the case, but I called everyone I’ve ever known who knew Scotty and I came up with nothing.”

“Maybe the answer’s on his beat. It was his life. Maybe it was his death, too.”

“Chris, they’ve got guys out there talking to anything that moves. They’re questioning the dogs and cats on the street.”