Without remorse - Tom Clancy [68]
'I'm hungry,' he told her.
'I hope I never have to do that again,' Douglas told his lieutenant, not for the first time.
'How did it go?'
'Well, that professor might make a formal complaint. I think I canned him down enough, but you never know with people like that.'
'Does Kelly know anything?'
'Nothing we can use,' Douglas replied. 'He's still too messed up from being shot and all to be coherent, but he didn't see any faces, didn't - hell, if he had seen anything, he would probably have done something. I even showed him the picture, trying to shake him a little. I thought the poor bastard would have a heart attack. The doctor went crazy. I'm not real proud of that, Em. Nobody should have to see something like that.'
'Including us, Tom, including us.' Lieutenant Emmet Ryan looked up from a large collection of photos, half taken at the scene, half at the coroner's office. What he saw there sickened him despite all his years of police work, especially because this wasn't a crime of madness or passion. No, this event had been done for a purpose by coldly rational men. 'I talked to Frank. This Kelly guy is a good scout, helped him clear the Gooding case. He's not linked up with anything. The doctors all say that he's clean, not a user.'
'Anything on the girl?' Douglas didn't need to say that this could have been the break they'd needed. If only Kelly had called them instead of Allen, who didn't know about their investigation. But he hadn't, and their best potential source of information was dead. 'The prints came back. Pamela Madden. She was picked up in Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans for prostitution. Never came to trial, never did any time. The judges just kept letting her go. Victimless crime, right?'
The sergeant suppressed a curse at the many idiots on the bench. 'Sure, Em, no victims at all. So we're not any closer to these people than we were six months ago, are we? We need more manpower,' Douglas said, stating the obvious.
'To chase down the murder of a street hooker?' the Lieutenant asked. 'The mayor didn't like the picture, but they've already told him what she was, and after a week, things go back to normal. You think we'll break something loose in a week, Tom?'
'You could let him know -'
'No.' Ryan shook his head. 'He'd talk. Ever know a politician who didn't? They've got somebody inside this building, Tom. You want more manpower? Tell me, where do we get it, the kind we can trust?'
'I know, Em.' Douglas conceded the point. 'But we're not getting anywhere.'
'Maybe Narcotics will shake something loose.'
'Sure.' Douglas snorted.
'Can Kelly help us?'
'No. Damned fool was just looking the wrong way.'
'Then do the usual follow-up, just to make sure everything looks okay and leave it at that. Forensics isn't in yet. Maybe they'll turn something.'
'Yes, sir,' Douglas replied. As so often happened in police work, you played for breaks, for mistakes the other side made. These people didn't make many, but sooner or later they all did, both officers told themselves. It was just that they never seemed to come soon enough.
Lieutenant Ryan looked back down at the photos. 'They sure had their fun with her. Just like the other one.'
'Good to see you're eating.'
Kelly looked up from a mostly empty plate. 'The cop was right, Sam. It's over. I have to get better, have to focus on something, right?'
'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know. Hell, I could always go back in the Navy or something.'
'You have to deal with your grief, John,' Sam said, sitting down next to the bed.
'I know how. I've had to do that before, remember?' He looked up. 'Oh - what did you tell the police about me?'
'How we met, that sort of thing. Why?'
'What I did over there. It's secret, Sam.' Kelly managed to look embarrassed. 'The unit I belonged to, it doesn't officially exist. The things we did, well, they never really happened, if you know what I. mean.'
'They didn't ask. Besides, you never really told me,' the surgeon said, puzzled - even more so by the relief on his patient's face.
'I got recommended to them by a pal in