Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [22]
Maybe he was a spy.
“It also concerns the dad.”
Rick: “We are so past the damn dad.”
Nervous giggles. Bored, cynical looks.
“Just so you know, legal says Mr. Murphy has threatened to sue. Claims he sprained his back during the altercation with Special Agent Grey.”
Thirty sets of eyes went my way, including Andrew’s.
“What altercation?” I said defensively. “He tripped on a rug.”
Rick now was ratcheting the handcuffs with a rhythmic, grating sound.
“Oh, please,” I went on, “I admonished him about the cell phone, he took a swing at me and slipped on a Chinese rug. He was fine.”
“When he was barricaded in the rest room,” Rick seemed to have to ask, “why didn’t you call for backup? There was a surveillance team outside.”
“What were the ladies supposed to do?” cracked Andrew. “Bring in the artillery because the guy was taking a good, long shit?”
Amazement. Big laughs. Margaret squealing: “An-drew! I’m going to kill you!”
I wanted to crawl under the table. Don’t make this a fight!
Andrew must have stuck his head under the shower in the locker room because he looked refreshed. His thick dark hair was slicked back; he wore his shield on his hip, a hand-tooled leather gun belt and a fresh lilac blue shirt with a monogrammed cuff through which you could see the sculpted moves of his shoulders.
Still, I wanted to throttle him, especially when, as I pushed away from the table to leave, he said, “Where are you off to?” as if we were the only two people in the room.
“Back to the office.”
“What about ‘Arizona?’” It sounded like a code. People were watching us.
My gut clenched. “It’s premature to talk about ‘Arizona.’”
Margaret shook her hair and took a long throaty draw on the water. “Sounds like Ana doesn’t want to share.”
“It’s a promising lead but needs to be developed,” I said dismissively.
Andrew replied, “Bullshit.”
“It is bullshit,” I repeated, now confused. We had not discussed this. I was not ready to present some half-baked theory based on the statements of a crazy homeless person.
Rick: “Could you two clue us in?”
“Sure,” said Andrew. “The source is a transient named Willie John Black.”
It was a bad moment, as I feared it would be. Andrew’s own people guffawed and began offering comments on their encounters with Black, who apparently was famous in the world of social services for his movable collection of wire hangers, coils of nylon tied with the precision of a yachtsman, cereal boxes, gloves, strips of fabric, milk cartons and the occasional flag mounted onto a trio of bicycles tied together, upon which he had somehow secured a full-sized camping tent. They didn’t let him take it on the Promenade so he kept the thing parked in an alley across the street.
“Black puts the victim with a young white male,” said Andrew, who seemed the only one at ease in the room. He held a small investigator’s notebook, to which he did not need to refer, and spoke with an authority that held the respect of a bunch of disbelieving, overtired cops.
“We know Juliana went there to buy marijuana. I make the suspect as a dealer. He has a camera, which he uses as a cover. Black says the guy is from Arizona, so I want to use narcotics investigators on the local level to identify this individual. We should reach out immediately to law enforcement in Arizona.”
Nobody spoke. Margaret Forrester—peacekeeper and liaison—was mouthing the water bottle, big eyes gone bland, as if she had nothing to do with any of this. My heart was jackhammering; I was hoping Rick would not force me to make the call.
“Sounds like a poor use of resources,” he said. “Mr. Black is obviously a questionable source.”
“That’s your judgment.”
“Of course it’s his judgment,” I said nicely. “This is an FBI investigation.”
Andrew shut me down with a cold-blooded look—“Now you’re telling me who’s in charge?”—and my overbeating heart clutched at the shock of his anger.
His lieutenant intervened: “We’ll employ our own resources to follow up on Detective Berringer’s recommendation.”
“Thank you, Barry,” said Rick.
The pager went off again.
“This