Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"You're forgiven. You're a model of filial deportment compared to the way I acted at your age. Listen, we got us a little problem here."

"I didn't do anything." Wary.

"I know you didn't, but they think for some reason you're withholding information, and you can't do that. Recall that you're still on probation from that stunt you pulled last year. You do not want the police cross with you. Sit down and tell me what happened."

Lucy slumped in her chair and closed her book with a bang. She took a deep breath and began. "Okay. After school I went to Holy Redeemer looking for David. He wasn't there, so I scouted around the neighborhood, you know, the homeless hangouts, and then I went down to the yards. I talked to Real Ali-"

"Excuse me, this is Moses Belton?"

"I don't know about that. I've always called him Ali, or Ali Rashid. I'm teaching him a little Arabic. He's a Muslim, the regular kind. Anyway, no one else was around, so I looked in Canman's paper house. There was someone on the bed there, and at first I thought it was Canman. He was all covered up with blankets. But then I realized that his dog wasn't there. And I went over and touched him, and I saw that it was Fake Ali. We call him… I mean, we called him that because he really thought he was the fighter. He was pretty crazy, but harmless, really a very sweet person, except if he thought you were George Foreman. Anyway, I saw he was dead. And… I sort of lost it then-I ran back to Ali's and told him, and he calmed me down, and I walked up the block and found a pay phone and called the cops. That's it."

Marlene sighed heavily in the silence after this. "You really have the life, don't you, baby?"

The girl looked away from this sympathy and piled her books into the old musette bag she used. "Yeah. Could we go now?"

"Not quite. The detective out there thinks there's something you're not telling. About this guy Canman. John Carey Williams. He's a friend of yours?"

"Just one of the guys."

"Lucy, darling, now is not the time to be evasive."

Lucy bowed her head and froze. Marlene waited a minute. She could hear her daughter's breath go in and out. Then Lucy said, "I guess I saw him. When I came out of the paper house. He was on the access walk, maybe a hundred yards away, and I saw Maggie. His dog. I yelled at him, but he turned away and ran. I'm sorry. I should have told the cops, but…"

"He's a friend of yours. I understand. You know, the cops are starting to like him for the slasher. What do you think?"

"I don't know, Mom!" The tears started to leak. "I don't know anything anymore. Now, could we please go home?"

"You've read this already?" asked Karp, indicating the homicide report on the Lomax shooting. It had arrived four days after he had asked for it, the day the case, assuming all the players could be rounded up, would actually be presented to the grand jury, having been rescheduled from the previous Friday.

"Yeah," said his special assistant.

"What do you think?"

Murrow gathered his thoughts. "I don't know, chief. A couple of cars sliding around on the wet road, bullets flying everywhere… I mean, who knows what really happened? The report says the evidence is not inconsistent with the testimony of the officers involved."

"Yeah, but that's like saying the Warren Report is not inconsistent with the evidence they decided to gather and use." Karp tapped the folder on his desk. "There's something funny in this thing. No, two things funny. You know what they are?"

"No, and I'll bet you're going to tell me."

"No, you tell me." Karp opened the folder, splaying out the crimescene photographs over his desk. "What's wrong with this picture?" Murrow leafed through them. They were of the Cherokee and the surrounding road, and the unmarked police vehicle. The Cherokee was full of bullet holes, and its left fender and headlamp were smashed. The police unmarked was similarly damaged, with a severe crumpling of the left front and side. That much was clear; the pictures of the road and the side barriers, with chalk marks and tape measures, were more obscure.

"Well, there was a glancing head-on crash of some kind," Murrow ventured. "That confirms the cops' story at least. Lots of bullet holes in the Jeep. You can see where the slugs went through the rear seat. But wait a second…" He shuffled through the eight-by-ten glossies. "The windshield has three holes in it. That seems to confirm the police story. I guess I'm stumped on the fishy part."

Karp smiled. "The autopsy, Murrow! Holes in the windshield, but no holes in the front of the vic. Lomax was killed from behind. But I doubt if your pal Flatow is intending to bring that out to the grand jury. The guy had ten bullet wounds in him, with eight bullets recovered. Of those, seven were from Cooley's gun, one from Nash's. Nash must have shot the man after the cars stopped moving because he was driving during the chase and didn't have his gun out. Cooley was shooting from outside the car, too. But, of course, it's impossible to distinguish the shots he took then from the ones he fired during the chase. Like you say, cars whirling around, night, a confused situation. Lomax could have been bouncing around in there, and just by chance all the bullets ended up in his rear."

"Pretty unlikely, don't you think?"

"Very. But we don't build cases on unlikely, especially not with the Blue Wall holding solid. In any case, that's what the grand jury will hear." Karp collected the photographs, stacked them neatly, and returned them to the report folder. "Well, what else is new? A cop does a bad shooting and skates." He seemed lost in thought. Murrow waited a decent interval and asked, "What was the other thing? You said two things were fishy."

"Oh, right. The other thing is we got two experienced cops sitting on a street in the middle of the night waiting for a major collar to go down. They're waiting for a gun dealer, they're going to grab a bunch of automatic weapons-a pretty big deal. Then this car drives by. The officers state that they recognized the vehicle as stolen from a radio report and pursued it, which led to the chase in question and all the shooting."

"That's fishy?"

"Murrow, it's the fishiest thing about this goddamn case. It makes no sense at all. Let's say they made it as hot. Let's say the car belonged to, I don't know, the mayor's favorite aunt. Is it credible to you that they would have left their assigned position in a gun bust they'd been working on for weeks to go chase it? And if they chased it, does it make sense that they would have tried so hard to stop it with gunfire, in clear violation of police department regulations? I mean, where was the win in it for them? Even if they caught the guy, even if the chase didn't result in someone running into a car full of nuns, they were still headed for a gigantic chewing out. You assholes left your post for what? A stolen car? Give me a break! So what was it?"

"They were overtaken by a sudden insane animus against car thieves?"

"Maybe," said Karp, laughing, "but then they would have used the old sudden-insane-animus defense. No, really-it's the key to the whole thing. A fishy shooting is always a pain in the butt, even if it's a lot clearer than this one; you get a cop up there, he says he was in fear of his life, it's hard to prove even manslaughter beyond a reasonable doubt, never mind depraved-indifference murder, unless maybe he put ten bullets into an unarmed old lady in a nightgown in broad daylight in front of a bunch of Shriners. Here you got darkness and danger, you got a known felon in commission of a felony, you got a motor vehicle, deadly weapon in use-typically, that would be a gimme for the cops, and, you know, I wouldn't have even looked at it probably, if it wasn't so obvious that they were trying to sneak something through. On the other hand, if what we're looking at here is a personal thing, if Cooley and Nash weren't just pursuing a random hot car, if the reason they were so weirdly anxious for a crappy stolen-car collar was because they knew Mr. Lomax…"