J Bertrand - Back on Murder

“You were lucky to get out from under the Morales shooting when you did,” he says. “If that thing goes down now, it’ll be a miracle. No hard feelings, huh? If I overplayed my hand, I’m sorry. I got a talking to from Terry Cavallo yesterday, telling me you were good people. I shouldn’t have come down so hard. What can I say? It was a big break for me, and I kind of blew it.”

He cocks his round head, smiling anxiously, practically willing me to accept his apology. But I’m too stunned to react all at once. I buy myself some time by nodding and shrugging, a song and dance of body language meant to convey something like it happens to us all and don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s easy to be gracious in the ascendant.

“Forget about it,” I say, hoping the words don’t sound as hollow to him as they do to me.

Lorenz takes me literally, blinking a couple of times, smiling, and generally acting as though he doesn’t know who he is or how he got here. He tips his cup in salute and walks away.

When she arrives a while later, Cavallo turns a number of middle-aged heads, but if she notices the stir, she gives no sign. Aguilar grows attentive all the sudden, abandoning his own desk and pulling a chair up to mine. The crowding seems too ridiculous not to comment on, but Cavallo says nothing so I keep quiet, too. Every time I glance his way, he gives a subtle, conspiratorial grin. My desk phone rings.

“Can you come up here?” Wilcox says. “There’s something I want you to see.”

I grab my jacket and leave the field to Aguilar, who seems grateful for the uninterrupted view.

“You need me?” Cavallo asks.

Over her shoulder, Aguilar’s eyebrows rise slightly in alarm.

“I can handle this one on my own.”

For the first time in more than a year, Wilcox’s lips curl upward at my approach, though his smile is charged not with friendship but triumph. He pulls me into the office, then closes the door.

“We got him.”

I turn. “Who?”

“Have a seat,” he says. “All will be revealed.”

My heart’s already racing as I sit down. He circles the desk, grabs a thin folder, and slaps it down in front of me, the same way a poker player throws down a winning hand. The paper trembles in my hand. Inside the folder are test results on the handgun recovered from Salazar’s boat.

“First off, there was dried blood on the muzzle and slide, which had been wiped down but not too carefully. The samples match Joe Thomson.”

A long breath escapes me. “This is it.”

“There’s more. The drop-in barrel and the rounds in the magazine both had prints all over them, also Thomson’s.”

“And the frame?”

His smile’s as wide as a crocodile’s, showing just as many teeth. “That’s where it gets really good. Like I said, the gun was wiped down. The lab had a hard time lifting prints from the frame and slide. But they pulled a partial off the hammer, another partial off the front of the trigger, and a thumb that wasn’t Thomson’s on the magazine.”

“Are you going to tell me whose it was?”

“Look and see.”

I flip the page over, scanning the lines, until my eye rests on the name. REGINALD ALLAN KELLER. I let out another breath. “The man himself.”

“And it gets better. That particular P229, the serial number traces back to Keller, too.”

“So it’s airtight.”

“Exactly.”

We observe a moment of silence. This was a long time coming, and now that it’s here, now that my old nemesis is literally in my hands, it doesn’t seem real. The feeling’s very different from the sense I had kneeling next to Hannah Mayhew’s corpse, the numbness at the end of what I knew all along would be an unfulfilled quest. There’s nothing conflicted or ambiguous about this. If anything, I’m giddy, and Wilcox must be, too, the way he’s grinning ear to ear, the way he insisted on us sharing this moment together.

I start to laugh.

He laughs, too, slapping his hand on the desk. “You got him.”

“I got him,” I say. “No, we got him.”

He shrugs the honor off. “It was all you, March.”

“It was Thomson,” I say. “If his conscience hadn’t gotten to him – ”

“It was you.”

He comes around the desk, clasps my hand in his, shaking, stoking the ember inside me into a full-blown flame. Whatever came between us before, whatever drove Wilcox away, it’s not there anymore, or at least it’s abated for now. I rise out of the chair and he gives me a manly, one-armed hug, beating my shoulder blade with his open hand.

“Now what?” I ask, reeling back.

“What do you mean, now what? We’re gonna frog-march him out of here. The man killed a cop. He’s going down.”

“When?”

“I’ve got people on him now. He’s holed up in his apartment as we speak. As soon as I can get the team together, we’re taking him. The warrant’s in process now.”

“I’m in.”

“I know you are.”

“And what about Salazar?”

“We don’t have eyes on him, but we will.” His smile fades. “To be honest, I’m not sure we can make as strong a case there – ”

“It was Salazar who tried to have me killed,” I say, my voice thick.

“I realize that, but tying it to him is another matter.”

“We have him on video carrying the body. It’s his boat the gun was on.”

“Right,” he says. “Now, think about that. Why would Salazar hold on to that gun? I’m assuming Keller didn’t intend him to. If you ask me, he kept it so he’d have some leverage over his boss, just in case. Which means Salazar might be willing to pull a Thomson. He might be willing to roll over on Keller. Would you be okay with that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“You might want to prepare yourself.”

So the guy who dirtied up my shooting years back will go down, but the one who undoubtedly arranged to take me off the board gets a walk? It’s hard to wrap my mind around. So I don’t even try. There’s no point admitting clouds on what ought to be a sunshine moment. Keller’s done, that’s what’s important.

My head’s still swimming as I exit the elevator on the sixth floor, punching the keypad code to admit myself into Homicide. When I return to my desk, Aguilar’s gone, replaced by an unexpected visitor. Carter Robb sits across from Cavallo, elbows on his knees, talking earnestly in a subdued voice.

“What’s the deal?” I ask.

They both look up. Cavallo speaks first. “Carter came by to talk. He’s got some interesting ideas about the case.”

“Really.”

He gazes up at me with haunted eyes, an expression I recognize all too well from the mirror. I know this man is carrying a load of guilt, floundering for some way to slough it off, but I also know he’s not going to find deliverance here, not through talking. And anything helpful he might have been able to give is already in our hands. Cavallo is too compassionate to tell him so, and if I didn’t have somewhere to be, an old enemy to slap the cuffs on, I might even play along. I like the guy, after all. But Wilcox is going to give the signal any second, and I don’t have time to mess around.

“It can’t be a coincidence her body was found so close to the outreach center,” Robb says. He rubs at his face the whole time he speaks, probably not aware of what he’s doing, running his fingers so hard across the stubble on his cheeks that I can hear the friction. “There’s some kind of connection, isn’t there? And that’s when all the trouble in Hannah’s life began, when I took the kids to the outreach center. That’s where everything started going wrong.”

I check my watch. “Mr. Robb, I’m going to have Detective Cavallo take another statement from you, all right? I’ve got to be somewhere, otherwise – ”