Warren Ellis - Gun Machine

The captain looked, to Tallow’s eye, simply too weak to talk. He was only ten years older than Turkel, but he had thirty-five years on the job to Turkel’s twenty-five, and the past ten had evidently bled the man in ways Tallow had never learned of. It was left to the lieutenant to negotiate the landmines Turkel had scattered.

“None of us ever expected that ECTs would be tested like this, of course,” she said. “And I’m not averse, in principle, to the idea of us receiving help from the public sector. I would like to know how the chain of evidence is going to work, sir.”

“Oh, no need, no need. Just think of it as adding an extra link or two to the chain. I’ve known Jason Westover a long, long time. He really does understand our needs in this.”

Tallow prickled.

“And he is…?” asked the lieutenant.

“The founder and CEO of Spearpoint Security. We go way back.” The assistant chief said it in that dismissive, it’s-nothing way that meant it was not to be dismissed and that it was in fact very important for everyone to know he knew wealthy and impressive people.

“I met Jason Westover earlier today,” said Tallow.

To Tallow, in that second, it seemed very much like ghost bombs were hanging from invisible threads above the room: like the cascade of circumstance had guided him into a trap when all the while he’d believed he was slogging his way toward the light. Like the hopeful sunrise at the end of all this turning out to be the glow of burning bodies and a house on fire.

“Really?” said the assistant chief, with a half-raised eyebrow of feigned half interest. Tallow could read the man. He was very interested.

“Yes. And his wife.”

“Oh, yes, yes, Emily. She hasn’t been well recently. I’m hoping it wasn’t, um, a professional…?”

“Not really a subject for the room, sir.”

Turkel’s face lit up. “Right. Yes. Thank you.”

“So,” said Tallow, “I have two people from Spearpoint literally loading my evidence into boxes and intending to drive it all to one of their storage facilities in two trips.”

“They told you that?” the lieutenant said, wincing a little.

“Yes, ma’am. Right after they explained to me that the very elaborate security mechanism on the apartment’s door came from Spearpoint.”

“What?”

“That’s right, ma’am. Which, in an ideal world, would lead us to sales and installation data at Spearpoint that would put a name on our man. But this is the real world, and I fully expect CSU to eventually match a gun from the cache to a dead Spearpoint employee who used to take on side jobs for cash. Just like we found a dead man from the Property Office when we looked for an explanation of how Son of Sam’s handgun was in the cache.”

Tallow discovered that the captain was looking at him, the expression on the man’s face difficult to decipher. “What was your name again, Detective?”

“Tallow, sir.”

“No. Your full name.”

“John Tallow, sir.”

“John Tallow. Okay. Carry on.”

Tallow had no idea what that was about. “Well, I don’t have a lot more to say, right at this moment. The assistant chief obviously couldn’t know that the kind offer from his friend came from the same company that fitted the locks to our man’s door. Perhaps that doesn’t even matter. That said, the same company that had a security system walk out of its depot and affix itself to the door of a presumed serial killer is intending to look after almost all of our evidence overnight.”

“Detective,” warned the lieutenant.

The captain stirred himself. “I think John’s just laying out the obvious concerns here, Lieutenant.”

“Yes,” said Turkel. “Well. It was a very kind offer from a company that wants to help serve this city and a police department already overstressed by case management. I don’t think we can throw that kind of offer away on the strength of could-bes.”

Turkel stood, adding, “The pursuit of this entire case is somewhat quixotic, in any event.”

That escaped nobody.

Tallow decided to trip a trap and see what fell.

“By the way, Lieutenant,” Tallow said mildly, “we got another ballistics match. Our man killed Assistant Chief Tenn’s daughter.”

The current assistant chief stopped moving.

The captain blinked slowly, like a lizard taking in the sun, and opened yellowish eyes on Tallow. “Del Tenn’s kid?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“That was a stray bullet from a gang firefight.”

“No, sir,” Tallow said, speaking to the captain but daring to look directly at the assistant chief. “We have the gun in the Pearl Street cache. Our man simply waited for the most opportune time to make the hit. Gunfire, chaos. He hid his kill amid all the others. Just like every other kill he’s made.”

“Damn,” the captain mused, sagging into himself in the chair. “You know what I liked about Del Tenn? He said to me once, ‘Everyone tells me I can keep getting promoted and keep getting promoted till finally I’m not doing a job at all. I guard the south of Manhattan, where I was born and where my father was born. Why would I want another job?’”

“I didn’t know him,” said the lieutenant.

“Lovely guy,” said the captain. “Went to pieces when his little girl was lost. At the funeral he said to me that it was like Manhattan had betrayed him. Never saw him again.”

“Yes,” said the assistant chief. “Well.”

Tallow gave him an amiable smile without letting him off the cold hook of his gaze. “Quixotic, sir, yes. But as you can see, we’re putting together a picture of our man. The way he works.”

“Yes,” said the assistant chief. “Well.”

“The sort of people he deals with.”

“Yes,” said the assistant chief.

“Did you know Assistant Chief Tenn, sir?”

“No, Detective. Well. Not well. Marcus Casson took over from Tenn, and I took over from Casson.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said the captain quietly, as if speaking from a distant cave. “Casson moved on to Transit as a bureau chief. After Beverly Garza died.”

The threads of the net, thought Tallow, are so fine as to be invisible, until the light catches them.

“How did she die, Captain?”

“If you’ll excuse me,” the assistant chief said. Tallow was still standing in front of the door.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“If you’ll excuse me,” he repeated, “I have to get back to my office.”

“Oh,” said Tallow. “Yes, sir. You have to get back to work.” He took a step to the side and opened the door for Turkel. “Thank you for coming over and explaining things to us. Very kind of you. I think we all know where we stand now.”

Assistant Chief Turkel gave Tallow a hard look. Tallow saw a man without empathy. He’d heard of it, could fake it when he needed to, but felt nothing for anything himself. He looked at Tallow as if Tallow were a dead animal on the side of the road.

“You’re working this case on your own, yes?”

“Yes,” said Tallow.

“Shouldn’t you be mandatorily off the street?”

“I was told we didn’t really have the resources for that, sir. The whole system’s out of whack, after all. So I was put where I’ll do the most good.”

“Perhaps,” the assistant chief said, and left. Tallow closed the door.

“John Tallow,” said the captain, “I did not know that you were a smart man.”

“Jury’s out on that,” said the lieutenant.

The captain laughed a whispery laugh, standing with difficulty. “You know,” he said, “if you’d been a smart man all this time, I would have heard about you. But I’ll tell you a thing. When I was a detective, I was partnered with a smart lady. Very smart. So smart that she got promoted, up the chain and away from me. My next partner, God love him, he was so stupid that the squad room had to make up new words to describe him. It was like I didn’t have a partner at all. And it was at that point, John Tallow, that I finally began to learn how to be police. You were probably a smart boy when you were assigned here. But I have a feeling that only just now did you start becoming a smart man.”