The Squad Room (11 page)

“You going to see her again?”

“Yeah, I am. I think I’m going to try to work on it. Maybe try to keep that happiness going.”

“That’s great, Cap.” McNamara looked out the window. “How’s—how are things with your wife, anyhow?”

Morrison made a noise, something between a cough and a laugh. “Oh, the same old,” he said. “We don’t ever talk about our son, and she blames me for what happened.”

“Do you need to talk about him?” McNamara asked.

“Sometimes,” Morrison said. “But when I do, I talk to myself.” He gripped the steering wheel, his jaw tensing. “You know, I blame myself for his death, too,” he added abruptly. “I know I always will.”

The silence hung between them. Outside, passersby surged through the lurid light of shopfronts, an anonymous mass.

“I mean, how many cases did we do last year? I don’t even know.” Morrison’s voice sounded faraway, preoccupied; it was as though he were talking to no one. “And it isn’t like it used to be, nothing like that, but we still get the most gruesome shit. Look at these homicides we’ve been dealing with. Who
does
this shit? And how do you leave your family at home and go to work, when your work is dealing with
that?”

“I don’t know,” said McNamara thoughtfully, “but I also don’t know what I’m going to do when it’s over.”

The radio chatter suddenly picked up with the shouts of an officer on the other end.
10-13, shots fired, officer down, 44th and Broadway
—Morrison and McNamara could hear the gunfire in the background.

The car turned smoothly and quickly, as though imbued with a life of its own. Not a word passed between the two men, but a certain tense clarity had entered between them, as between two surgeons in a trauma unit. They knew it was unlikely that any ambulance had been called; police transport each other, and prefer not to let anyone else touch their wounded until absolutely necessary.

When they arrived, the scene was all too familiar. A uniformed cop was being hustled into the backseat of a radio car, ready to leave for Roosevelt Hospital. A young black man lay on the ground, in handcuffs though evidently dead. The sight, smell and sound were the same as they always were: dumped cars, flashing lights, blood, burnt rubber.
Morrison grabbed one of the cops who’d been helping to load the injured officer into the car.

“How is he?” he asked.

“Gunshot wound to the head, boss,” said the other cop. He was covered in the wounded officer’s blood, and seemed close to shock himself. “It looks pretty bad.”

“Okay, let’s get him to Roosevelt,” Morrison said, gesturing to two other officers on the scene. “What happened?”

“Not sure yet; we know the perp shot him with his own gun.”

Morrison gestured toward the cuffed body on the ground. “And him?”

“Shot down by the responding officers. He’s dead.”

“God, does he have to go to Roosevelt?” McNamara asked idly as the others drove off. “I hate it there.”

Morrison shrugged helplessly. It was the closest hospital to the scene, and besides, for a cop, no hospital was good enough when another cop was down.

“What’s the cop’s name?” he asked.

“Tong—Nguyen Tong. First-generation Vietnamese. His dad was a cop too. One of those cops directing traffic in Vietnam, with the white helmets—they called them White Mice.”

Morrison looked around grimly, foreseeing the same miserable routine playing itself out. The uniformed bosses would be all over the scene soon. All the cops who worked with Officer Tong—and many who didn’t—would be in the hospital overnight, crowding into the hallways outside the emergency room, praying, anxiously awaiting any word. Though Tong wouldn’t need it, they’d all offer to give their blood for him; it was a symbolic gesture, and one that helped to relieve the feeling of helplessness they all felt when one of them was in trouble.

Morrison felt the old subliminal screaming hatred come over him. It was an irrational rage, a rage simply at everyone who wasn’t a cop, but it went hand-in-hand with the intense feeling of brotherhood on the force that incidents like this brought sharply into focus. At times
like these he would think of everyone he’d ever heard make the familiar claim that the police were public servants, that it was taxpayer dollars that paid their salaries.
Take a look at that cop,
he thought,
and tell me if you’re paying enough. Tell me—

McNamara patted him gently on the arm.

“Come on, Cap,” he said quietly. “This isn’t our place anymore; if they need us here, they’ll tell us. Let’s get over to the hospital, huh?”

Morrison nodded and walked back over to the car, his heart heavy and the bagpipes blowing loud.

10

Morrison’s detectives were gathered for Sergeant Rivera’s daily briefing on their daily assignments. The tension in the squad room was palpable. A week had gone by since their case’s second homicide, and the task force seemed to be no closer to solving the two cases than they were the first day.

It was a familiar axiom to most police departments that cases left unsolved after four days were in for the long haul. This had been a more pointed statement back when most homicides were committed by victims’ acquaintances; since the eighties, when crack hit the streets, homicides had become increasingly difficult to solve, due to the frequency with which murders were perpetrated by people the victims had never met or had much of anything to do with, outside of proximity or connection to the drug trade. But serial-killer cases were harder still in this respect; these were the cases where the connection between victim and killer was often altogether nonexistent.

“Galipoli and Garriga,” Rivera called out, passing photocopied sheets to the two detectives. “Here’s a list of all the big Fifth Avenue stores we haven’t hit yet. I want you guys to bring pictures of both victims with you, and hit every one of those shops to see if anyone working there recognizes either of them. We need to know if they remember anything
about who might have helped them, or if anyone approached them in the store, to see if we can pick up some common link between the two.”

“You got it,” said Garriga.

“This is bullshit,” Galipoli muttered under his breath.

Morrison, listening at the back of the room, slammed his door open. “Galipoli, in my office—
now,”
he said.

Galipoli shrugged back at him. “What’d I do?” he asked casually. “Just get in here,” Morrison said. “We’re going to discuss it in private.”

Galipoli stood and headed over, snickering as Morrison shut the door behind him.

“You think this is funny?” Morrison barked. “Well, let me tell you something, pal: you’re a detective, and a brand-new one at that. Believe me, there’s absolutely
nothing
you ought to be laughing at around here right now, if you value your job.”

Galipoli stepped into Morrison’s face until he was standing toe-to-toe with him.

“Captain, let me tell you something,” he said, the same insufferable smirk still on his face. “I’ve been here a week now, and all I get are bullshit assignments. Go out and canvas this location, go check for cameras at that location. I’m not even getting to read the whole case folder; just the little bits and pieces that Rivera gives me at the morning briefing. But look, I’m not stupid. I know you guys are having team meetings without me, and that’s fucked up. I’ve got the right to know just as much as anyone else, and—”

“Sit the fuck down, Galipoli!” Morrison suddenly shouted. Startled for a moment out of his cocky pose, Galipoli took a seat.

“Now listen,” Morrison went on, “because
I’m
going to tell
you
what you have a right to in this office. This isn’t a schoolyard, or a Young Republicans meeting, or some other bullshit place where you get to have your say. This is a detective squad; and here, I’m the boss. That means, what I say goes. You get to know exactly what I want you to know. You aren’t the case detective here, you’re here to assist, and if that means
you get one shitty assignment after another, guess what? You’re going to go out and do it, and be glad you’re getting to do anything at all. You don’t
ever
question an assignment given to you, especially on a case like this. As far as you know, the stores we’re sending you to could provide us with the only possible link between the victims in this fucking case. And let me say another thing,” he said more intensely, “just because I know what you’re thinking right now. I don’t give a shit
who
you have backing your assignment to my task force. I really don’t. If I think your presence is going to hurt this case, you’ll be gone in a heartbeat. You get that? The chief can only cover your ass so much. You have a lot of talented people around you, so rather than putting on your tough-guy prima donna act, you ought to try to learn something from them.”

Galipoli glared at him, a bright redness suffusing his face. “I’m as good as any of those people,” he seethed.

Morrison laughed in his face, then leaned in close to the furious detective. “You wouldn’t make a good pimple on one of their asses,” he said.

“You’re never going to know how wrong you are,” Galipoli said strangely, the smirk returning at the edge of his mouth.

“I’m sure I won’t,” Morrison shot back. “Now get your partner and get the fuck out of here.”

Galipoli stood and stormed out, grabbing his jacket on the way out of the squad room. Amid the restrained laughter of the others, Morrison called after Garriga.

“Hey Francisco,” he said. “Make sure all those stores get covered, whether he likes it or not.”

“You know it, boss,” Garriga replied.

“Thanks. And Garriga,” Morrison added, “just be careful out there, huh? We’ve got to deal with him for now, but I don’t trust that guy.”

“No worries, boss.” Garriga waved back at him with a broad smile. “I got him.”

A short while later, Detective Medveded poked his head in at the
Captain’s door, a manila folder in his hand.

“Hey boss, you got a minute?” he asked.

“Sure,” Morrison said, gesturing him in. “What’s up, Alex?”

Medveded sat. “Well, I’ve been going over this case, and something’s been bothering me about the two scenes,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

The detective opened up the folder. “Well, look at these photos from the first scene at Sutton Place.”

“Okay, sure.”

“What do you see?”

“I see the victim: mutilated, some torn and scattered clothing, some potential DNA evidence, not much more.”

Medveded flipped ahead through the folder. “Okay. Now look at the second scene we discovered in Queens, and tell me what you see there.”

“Same thing: mutilated victim, torn clothing, some evidence of the victim being bound. Multiple cigarette butts, shoe prints on the carpet. So what are you thinking?”

“Well, unlike the first scene, this one takes place in multiple rooms, right? Doesn’t it seem to have been more chaotic than Sutton Place?”

“Sure, I guess you could say that.”

“Well, Cap, I think there’s a good reason for that. I think the one in Queens was committed first, before Sutton Place. At Sutton Place, they’re better at their craft: no cigarette butts left behind, no shoe prints, et cetera.”

“You may be right. Can we get confirmation from the medical examiner? If they can pinpoint the time of death for both our victims, it might help us down the road to catch these guys.”

“I’ll talk to them. We need to check with the lab guys anyway, to see if any of our fingerprint evidence has turned out.”

“Great. Thanks, Alex.”

As Medveded went out, Morrison mulled over this new information. The glimmer of hope it contained wasn’t much, but the change
of direction could be good for the case. They’d been spending so much time on the Sutton Place murder, thinking it’d been the first; if Medveded was right, this would involve quite a shifting of gears.

The office phone rang. It was Detective Hanrahan.

“Hey, Cap,” he said, his voice urgent, “we may have gotten a break here.”

“Yeah? What’ve you got, George?”

“Well, me and Tina went back over to Sutton Place to do some additional canvassing, and see if there we saw anything out of the ordinary, right? So as we’re working the block, we noticed a camera on the corner of 59
^th
Street and Sutton Place, on a building we had no record of talking to before today.”

“All right, good. And—?”

“So me and Tina get the building’s super and ask him if anyone from the PD had spoken to him, and he says no. I figure it’s a stretch, since it’s a couple of blocks from the crime scene, but we ask him if he has the video saved from the night we’re thinking our murder took place. He tells us his video’s saved for sixty days—most of these buildings overwrite before thirty, you know, but this guy’s a tech guy. So he takes us into his office and sits there with us for a few hours, reviewing the footage, and based on what we saw, I think we have our victim walking towards her building alone.”

“You sure?”

“We can’t be one hundred percent, because it’s dark and the video is a little grainy, but we think it’s her. We also got what looks like two guys exiting a black car from the opposite corner, walking behind her.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, a couple of preppy types. Not sure if they followed her all the way home, but what’s interesting is, several hours later we see these same two guys going back toward their car. They’re in an awful hurry and they look all disheveled, like they’d been in a fight.”

Morrison was ecstatic. “George, this is great work! Don’t tell me the video has a time and date stamp on it—?”

“Yep, as a matter of fact, it does, boss,” Hanrahan said. “We already have a couple of copies. And there’s more, too—when these guys get back in their car we get a shot of their license plate. It’s blurry, but we can see it isn’t a New York plate.”

“Oh man, that’s awesome news, George—really great news. Let’s get the video over to our guys in the lab and see if they can enhance what we have there. We’ll also need to pull a couple of teams to go back over all the video in the area, now that we have a possible timeframe—we could easily have overlooked something before. Great work, you two.”