The Betrayer (9 page)

McVicker closed the office door
behind them. He and Johnny stood at one end of the narrow room, Cat and
Fiermonte at the other. Between them was an old metal desk, its drawers missing.
There was very little space for anything else.

Fiermonte said to
McVicker, “We’d like to talk to Johnny in private.”

Johnny shook his
head and said flatly, “He stays.”

Cat wasn’t
surprised by this — Johnny, the soldier in the family, valued loyalty above all
else, always had. Whether or not it was blind loyalty didn’t really matter to
him, not years ago and clearly not now.

“This doesn’t
concern him,” Fiermonte said.

Cat cut in. “It’s
all right.”

If Johnny was the
soldier in the family, then she was the peacemaker. Interesting how family
dynamics can continue, she thought, even between adult children, even when
whatever childhood bond you may have had has long since been broken.

Fiermonte backed
down, but he wasn’t happy, that much was obvious. And he was nervous, too. But
most people were around McVicker, even men with the power of the state behind
them.

“Thanks for
coming,” she said to Johnny. The last time she had seen him was two years ago,
shortly before his trip to Vietnam. She had tried to talk him out of going — what
would be gained by retracing their father’s steps? she’d said. Why not just
save the money he’d inherited — life insurance, their father’s minor savings,
proceeds from the sale of the house in Ossining. Or why not use it to buy a
place, like she had? Why the need to burn through it?

But while the
allegations that had been leveled against their father had troubled her and
caused her career to suffer, Johnny had been all but devastated by them. He’d
built his life around the notion of honor and service. And heroics. The Coyle
Family Tradition — a long list of fighters going back to the Revolutionary War.
Their father’s posthumous disgrace, which followed too quickly the abrupt end
to Johnny’s own promising military career, had been a one-two punch that set
him back on his heels.

Everything he had
believed, plus everything he had worked for — just gone.

“How are you,
Cat?” Johnny said. It was a reserved greeting, at best, but she wasn’t
expecting anything more.

“I’m fine.”

“Dickey said you
needed my help with something.”

It was obvious
that Johnny wanted to get down to business, that seeing his sister and asking
how she was doing was as much of a family reunion as he was interested in at
this moment.

Cat gestured toward
Fiermonte. “Actually, we both do.”

Johnny glanced at
the man standing behind her.

“Good to see you
again, son,” Fiermonte said.

Johnny nodded, respectfully,
then looked back at his sister.

In his mind — still
a Ranger’s mind — he was counting the minutes till he needed to call Haley.

He has changed,
Cat thought. Or, more accurately, he was the Johnny she remembered, only so much
more so. Guarded, taciturn, standoffish. A human fortress in every way. She had
become accustomed to people — colleagues — treating her coldly, so this
disconnect, and the utter loneliness it stirred deep within her, was something
she had dealt with many times before.

Still, to get
this from Johnny was difficult for her.

“I don’t really
have a lot of time,” Johnny said.

Cat nodded. “So let’s
get to it.”

She’d brought along a laptop
computer and quickly set it up on the metal desk, then stepped aside with
Fiermonte so Johnny and McVicker could watch a video playback.

It was grainy surveillance
video that showed a motorcycle pulling to a stop on a city street. Color
footage, but no sound. A time and date stamp ran along the lower edge of the
frame. Today’s date, just shy of one in the morning.

Nearly twelve
hours ago.

The camera that
had taken this footage was motion-activated — the fact that there was no shot
of the empty street prior to the motorcycle entering the frame made that obvious.
The helmeted rider backed the motorcycle till its rear tire touched the curb,
then lowered the kickstand with his heel and killed the motor. It was after the
rider had dismounted that he removed his helmet.

Despite the poor
quality of the image, and the limited lighting of the street, Johnny
immediately recognized his kid brother.

Leather jacket,
jeans, backpack.

Johnny glanced at
Cat, then looked back at the screen.

Jeremy had removed
his leather gloves and was tucking them inside the helmet. Then he did
something that struck Johnny as strange. He looked up and straight into the surveillance
camera.

And waved.

Had he parked
there on purpose? Had he known the camera would be there? Johnny asked Cat what
street this was.

“Clinton, north
of Delancey.”

Johnny nodded and
continued to watch.

Jeremy exited the
frame, then, after a quick cut, reentered it immediately. Johnny read the time
stamp. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed from the time Jeremy had exited and
re-entered.

But now Jeremy
was moving fast. His gloves were on but not his helmet. He was still wearing
the backpack. He reached the bike and mounted it, scrambled to insert the key
and turn the ignition. He was looking at something out of frame, something in
the direction from which he had come.

It appeared for a
second as if he were about to pull the helmet on, but another quick look in
that same direction caused him to drop the helmet to the pavement. Upon
landing, its visor broke free, became airborne, and then landed several feet
away. Leaning forward and grabbing the handlebars, Jeremy pulled in the clutch
with his left hand, stomped the foot peg shifter down into first gear with his
left foot, and then released the clutch, cranking the accelerator with his
right hand.

His back wheel
spun slightly on the wet pavement, the bike fishtailed, but Jeremy expertly
eased back on the accelerator and quickly regained control.

A figure entered
the frame just as Jeremy sped from it.

A man — a large
man. The long bill of a baseball cap obscured his face. In his right hand was a
handgun fitted with a suppressor. With his left he kept reaching up and pressing
his fingertips to his left eyebrow, then pulling his hand away and looking at
it as if he was checking for blood.

The large man
exited the frame, too, following Jeremy, then re-entered it one more time. According
to the time stamp, barely two minutes had passed. The man was running, but he paused
to scoop up the helmet, though he either didn’t see the visor a few feet away
or didn’t care about it. Johnny noted that the man was no longer carrying his
handgun. With the helmet in hand, he continued running and exited the frame.

The video ended there.
McVicker stood back and Johnny looked at Cat.

“We found the
visor,” she said. “There was some blood on it, and we’re assuming it belongs to
Jeremy’s attacker. The fact that his eye was bleeding and he grabbed the helmet
means Jeremy must have hit him with it at some point. It’ll take a few days to
get DNA.”

“Do you know any
of what happened off camera?”

Fiermonte
answered. “He fired shots at Jeremy.”

“How do you know
that?”

“There were
witnesses. Four of them, coming out of the Delancey.”

Johnny addressed
Cat. “Was Jeremy hit?”

“No. He dropped
the bike, but he got right up and took off on foot.”

“Where did he
go?”

“No one saw.”

“How many shots
were fired?”

“Three. A triple tap.”

Johnny thought
about that but said nothing.

“The thing is,”
Fiermonte said, “according to the witnesses, the shots were loud.”

“The gun I saw
was fitted with a suppressor.”

“And yet the
witnesses insist they heard gunshots.”

“That doesn’t
make sense,” Johnny said.

Cat nodded. “It
doesn’t make sense to us, either.”

From behind Johnny,
McVicker spoke. “I can think of a reason why someone would do that.”

All eyes went to
him.

“The shooter
wanted his shots to be heard,” he said.

Fiermonte
scowled. “This guy has the markings of a pro, Dickey. The triple tap, the
equipment he carried. Delancey Street isn’t exactly deserted, even at one in
the morning. Why would he want witnesses to hear the shots?”

“I didn’t say anything
about the witnesses.” He paused, then: “The bike Jeremy took off on was a Ducati
Monster. The engine is an 1100 V-twin, and exhaust looked to me like a Leo
Vince. That’s an open exhaust. And the catalytic converter was missing from the
header pipe, so that means it’s an aftermarket racing pipe, probably has ‘for
track use only’ stamped somewhere on it. All of this adds up to that being a very
loud bike. Particularly to the person sitting on it.”

“He wanted Jeremy
to hear the shots,” Cat said.

Fiermonte was
still scowling. “Why would he want that?”

“The first time
someone fired shots at me,” McVicker said, “I ran. I’d never run so fast in my
life.” He looked at Johnny. “They used live ammo during your training, right? Fired
it over your heads, to get you used to it. Weren’t you scared the first time?”

Johnny nodded.
“Yeah.”

“And let’s not
forget what we just saw on that video. The man was chasing Jeremy with his
weapon drawn and ready. He could have taken a shot while Jeremy was getting on
the bike, would have been shooting a stationary target and not a moving one, but
he didn’t. He waited till Jeremy was speeding away before firing.”

“But what would
he gain by doing that?” Cat asked. “Why would he want to scare Jeremy?”

“That’s the
question, isn’t it?” McVicker said.

“Send him
running?” Fiermonte suggested, speaking to the group. “Scare him off, get him
to quit whatever he’s up to.”

McVicker
shrugged. “Maybe. Or the opposite of that.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Drive him in a
direction you want him to go. Scare him enough that he does something you want
him to do.” He paused. “Or goes to
someone you want him to go to.”

No one spoke for
a long moment.

Finally, Cat turned
to Fiermonte, looked at him as if asking for his permission. He nodded, and Cat
said to her brother, “Donnie thinks Jeremy might be up to something.”

“What does that
mean?”

“I think it has
something to do with your father,” Fiermonte said.

“Why would you
think that?”

Fiermonte glanced
at the man standing behind Johnny, hesitated, then looked at Johnny again and
said, “Let’s just say I have my reasons.”

Cat knew
Fiermonte’s mind well enough to know what he was thinking.

The less McVicker
knew, the better.

But she also knew
Johnny, so she wasn’t at all surprised by his reply.

“You’re going to
have to tell me what those reasons are.”

Fiermonte
hesitated again, glanced at McVicker, then said, “He called me about a month
ago, said he had remembered some things about the night your father was killed.”

“What things?”

“He wouldn’t say.
He sounded kind of out there. Manic.” Fiermonte shrugged. “Paranoid, even.”

Cat said, “And last
night he left a note with what might be clues on it. I think he left it for me
to find.”

“What kind of
clues?”

“A phone number. We
did a reverse look up, and it’s his cell phone. I’ve tried calling it, but it
goes straight to voice mail. It doesn’t even ring. My phone does that when it’s
shut off, or when the battery has died.”

Fiermonte said,
“He also left an eight-digit number, maybe a code, but we don’t know to what. And
there was the address of a park two blocks from where this surveillance footage
was taken.”

“Parks are popular
places to buy drugs,” Johnny said.

“They are,” Cat
conceded. “But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.”

“Jeremy is an
addict, Cat.”

“The man chasing
him was a pro,” Fiermonte said. “Not some street dealer.”

“You can’t know
that for certain. He could just be ex-military and down on his luck. Men like
that exist, you know. Too many of them these days. He could be a dealer, or he
could be an enforcer for a dealer.” Johnny glanced over his shoulder at
McVicker. “And suppressors — particularly homemade ones — can greatly diminish a
handgun’s long-range accuracy. He could have removed it for that reason alone. And
Jeremy could have been too far away by the time the man unscrewed it, he could
have simply missed.”

“All that may be
true,” Cat said, “but you saw the video. Did Jeremy look high to you? Or strung
out, for that matter? Because he didn’t look that way to me. The fact that he
waved to the camera means he knew it was there. Obviously, he parked there
because he wanted whatever was going to happen to be recorded. Which means he probably
knew beforehand that the camera would be there. That’s an indication of a man
with a plan, not some junkie desperate for a fix. That’s a man leaving a trail
to be followed. So is the note.” She paused, then: “We can at least agree that
Jeremy is in trouble, right?”