Carla Neggers - Night’s Landing

Juliet tossed the paper cup and poured herself more coffee. It smelled fine to her, but people had been complaining about it all morning. “Most people kind of wilt for a bit after getting chewed out by Nate. He’s not exactly your warm and fuzzy marshal.”

Sarah managed a smile. “Is there such a thing?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. “Did you learn anything about Hector Sanchez?”

Juliet had no intention of getting into the scuttlebutt on Sanchez. “Just what’s in the media. Turns out two witnesses identified him. Said they saw him crouched in the bushes on the bank just below Central Park South. He had a rifle.”

“Does the FBI believe he’s their shooter?”

“There’s been no official comment-”

“Tell me unofficially then.”

Juliet thought a moment. Sarah was upset, if not about Nate catching her following him, then about her brother, the whole situation. She deserved what answers Juliet could give her. “It’s hard to say. Nobody’s talking right now. Everyone’s being tight-lipped around here. We can’t afford to screw up. No one wants the shooter to have another crack at Nate and Rob-or anyone else.”

“Why doesn’t Nate have a security detail?”

Juliet smiled. “He is a security detail.”

Sarah didn’t seem satisfied with that explanation. “Rob has guards just because he’s more seriously injured?”

“Correct.”

With both hands, she raked her fingers through her hair, then made an abrupt change in the subject. “I’ve been in Scotland on and off for months, working nonstop to finish a major project. I saw Rob briefly in Amsterdam last month, but it wasn’t nearly enough time to get caught up with each other. What happened to the two of you?”

Juliet shrugged. “We did great when we were working out of different district offices-not so great when we both ended up in New York.”

“You were here first?”

“That wasn’t the problem. I’m more ambitious than your brother.”

Sarah smiled. “Rob can be very driven, but he’s not ambitious.”

Juliet nodded in spite of her own urge to give Sarah Dunnemore hell for following a marshal. “I should find myself a nice guy who doesn’t know how to shoot. Why on earth did Rob become a marshal? I never figured that one out.”

“I’ve always thought he watched too many Bat Masterson reruns as a kid.”

“Yep. We marshals tamed the Wild West.”

But Sarah, rising suddenly, shook her head. “I think Rob just liked the idea of doing something that made a tangible difference. Catching fugitives and escaped prisoners, protecting the federal courts-it’s more straightforward than what our father does. It’s more like what our ancestors did.”

“He told me some of them were bank robbers.”

“Trains and riverboats, mostly. Not that many banks. And it was only one-Jesse Dunnemore. He ended up going west and getting killed.”

“Probably by a marshal from the sound of him.”

Sarah picked up the coffeepot, but seemed oblivious to how old and nasty its contents were. “Nate-does he hold a grudge?”

Juliet tossed her crumpled cup into the trash. “Forever.”

To her credit, Sarah seemed neither surprised nor distressed at the prospect of having fallen out of his good graces. She set the coffeepot down, obviously having reconsidered the merits of pouring herself a cup-Juliet figured it was rough enough coffee even for a committed coffee-drinker like herself.

“I’m going to check on Rob,” Sarah mumbled.

Given her track record, Juliet followed her down the hall and made sure Sarah was inside the I.C.U. before retreating back to the waiting room.

Juliet was fidgety and jumpy from too much bad coffee and her prolonged high state of tension. She knew Hector Sanchez. Most people in the district office did. Rob had reeled him in as an informant three months ago. He’d provided good information that had led to several high-profile arrests, ones the news conference yesterday had underscored. There’d been rumors Rob had tried to get Hector into the witness protection program, but Hector had balked. He didn’t want to leave behind his neighborhood. Someone had told Juliet that Hector was a peripheral figure who was too chicken to be a real criminal and too stupid to be a real player.

And he was a drug addict who always vowed he was going to stay clean.

The idea of Sanchez figuring out that Nate and Rob were at the news conference, where it was being held, where he should hide to get a couple of shots off-the idea of him even owning a rifle that could do the job-

None of it washed.

Juliet cleaned up the beverage area and found herself staring into a half-filled mug of cold coffee, gray and filmed over, seeing a dead Hector Sanchez, an AR-15 and a stash of cocaine next to his body. The cocaine she could believe. A drug overdose. Hector dead at twenty-nine. All that made sense. But the AR-15? The silencer? Executing the difficult shots to hit Rob in the gut and even Nate in the arm?

She dumped the coffee into the trash.

Not a chance.

Rob looked better and sounded more alert, less hoarse and confused, but he was still tethered to various tubes and monitors. He gave Nate a weak grin. “I can’t believe Sarah followed you. Holy shit. What was she thinking?”

“She wasn’t thinking.” Nate hadn’t ratted Sarah out to his younger colleague-she’d done it herself before Nate got in there. But if he were in Rob’s position, he’d want to know what was going on. Even if he were at death’s door, he wouldn’t tolerate anyone coddling him. He expected Rob was of a similar mind. “We can get her a counselor if you’d think that’d help.”

“Nah. She’s just like this. Where did you go?”

“I checked in with someone I know in Spanish Harlem.”

It was all he could give Rob. Nate had already talked to Joe Collins about his visit with Maria Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican ex-nun who’d moved to New York three years ago. Within a month of her arrival, she contacted Nate with information that had exonerated a man the USMS was looking for. She’d become a regular informant, but only on her terms, only when she could save someone.

She knew Hector Sanchez, not as a street thug or the confidential informant who’d helped Rob Dunnemore take down a USMS Top Fifteen Most Wanted fugitive-Rob’s biggest coup as a deputy-but as a young man who was trying to put his life back together. Sister Maria, as she was known on the street, had encouraged him to listen to Rob and talk to the U.S. attorney, pursue entry into WITSEC. But Hector couldn’t bring himself to fully give up the life he’d known since he was thirteen.

Now he was dead.

Sister Maria insisted he hadn’t tried to murder Rob and Nate in Central Park. That he couldn’t have. She was adamant, and her certainty had nothing to do with her faith in him as a person. She was a realist-she knew Hector would have setbacks, would lie, would disappoint her. He’d done it before. But she was convinced he hadn’t committed the sniper attack two days ago because he couldn’t. He’d cut a tendon in his right hand a year ago and couldn’t pull a trigger, much less manage a sniper rifle.

Hector Sanchez was physically unable to fire an AR-15.

Nate had suggested Joe Collins make sure the autopsy on Sanchez included a check of his right hand. Not that Collins needed any advice-and he sure as hell wasn’t thrilled when Nate refused to tell him his source.

But that was the way it was-he wasn’t putting Sister Maria through an FBI interrogation. She worked in her neighborhood and believed in its people, and no matter how many times one or another of them betrayed her trust, she would never betray theirs.