The Quickie - James Patterson [39]
“Why don’t you tell this kid to get you over to Jacobi before the commissioner shows up. After the hospital, go home and unplug the phone. I’ll keep the sewer rats away until you catch your breath. Give me a call sometime tomorrow. You need anything right now?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even begin to think of an answer to that question.
“You did real good, kid,” my boss said before he left. “Made us all proud.”
I sat there, watching him walk away.
The department had their shooter.
Paul was probably off the hook.
Brooke and her kids would be taken care of, as they ought to be.
I watched the blue NYPD helicopter skim over the razor wire at the rail yard’s fence, then sail into the bright blue sky. Out of the corner of one eye I saw the CSU camera lights pop in the glassless window of the train car.
Everything had worked out okay, hadn’t it? This was the end of the mess.
So why was I crying?
Chapter 57
IT WAS SUNNY and cool the following Monday morning.
Standing at attention out on the steps of St. Michael’s on 41st Street in Woodside, I was glad for the warmth of my dress blues, and for the body heat coming from the officers around me.
Though there were maybe three or four thousand cops on the cordoned-off street, waiting for the arrival of Scott’s hearse, the only sound was the snapping of the honor guard’s flag; the only movement, the billow of its bright stars and stripes.
The rattle of snare drums began at the first tolling of St. Michael’s bells. From around the corner of the stone church came a forty-member contingent of the NYPD Emerald Society, the bagpipes silenced, the drummers sounding a funeral march on black-draped drums.
Behind them came a seemingly endless two-by-two line of motorcycle police, their engines crackling as they rode at parade speed.
When the sleek black body of the hearse finally slid into view, you could almost hear the lumps forming in thousands of throats. Presidents don’t get put in the ground with more heart-wrenching class than an NYPD cop killed in the line of duty.
My muscles in my jaw stood out as I prevented myself from shaking, moving, breaking down completely.
From the limo that pulled to a stop behind the hearse, Brooke Thayer finally appeared. She was holding her baby and her four-year-old daughter.
A member of the honor guard suddenly broke rank and leaned into the limousine with an extended hand. Then Scott’s two-year-old son finally emerged, wearing a black suit.
A black suit and his father’s eight-point policeman’s cap.
The Mass was excruciating. Scott’s mother broke down during the second reading and his sister during the eulogy.
It was even worse when Roy Khuong, Scott’s oldest friend and partner, told a story about how Scott had saved his life during a gun battle. He finished it by turning from the pulpit toward the crucifix and saying with a simple yet startling conviction, “I love you, Scott.”
How I got through the rest of it, I’m not sure. People can survive amazing things. Look at that hiker who cut off his own arm with a pocketknife when it got stuck under a boulder. We are capable of anything, aren’t we?
Well, I am. I know I am now.
They buried Scott in Calvary Cemetery on a high hill overlooking an unobstructed Manhattan skyline.
The mayor of New York gestured toward the city as he finished his graveside words.
“We ask that Scott do what he did so well in life. Watch over us, Scott. We will never forget your sacrifice.”
Brooke embraced me like a vise after I had dropped my rose among the hundreds that buried the casket’s varnished lid. She touched the bandage on the side of my face.
“I know what you did for me,” she whispered. “What you did for my family. I can sleep now. Thank you for that, Detective.”
I pulled the black lip of my cap even more tightly over my eyes to shield them, nodded stupidly, and then moved along.
Chapter 58
I SAT ALONE IN MY CAR before leaving Calvary. I could see the flower-covered casket in my rearview.
When the skirl of the