Irish Eyes (30 page)

“No,” I said flatly. “Bucky wouldn’t have done that. You don’t know him like I know him, Mac.”

“People change, Callahan,” Mac said quietly. “You’ve changed. I’ve changed. Bucky was an ambitious guy. For the first time in years, he had a serious girlfriend. You told me yourself he was talking about settling down. Maybe he wanted more out of life than a police pension. Maybe he got tired of
having to work two and three extra jobs just to get caught up with his bills.”

“No way,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” Mac said. “But face it, you’re in over your head. Edna told me what happened when you went snooping around that housing project. You nearly got killed. And you’ve just told me you’re on the outside looking in. Maybe it’s time to share what you know with the authorities, instead of trying to make sense of it all by yourself.”

“I’ve tried,” I protested. “I told Lisa Dugan I thought a cop was involved in trying to kill Bucky. She had a fit and walked out on me. She won’t even return my phone calls. And I told Major Mackey exactly what I think was going on. He’s the commander of the homicide unit. He’s not a stupid man. But he was enraged that I would suggest such a thing. He practically threw me out of his office, Mac. It makes me wonder now if Mackey might have been involved, too. I mean, he wears an FBI Academy ring.”

“Everything makes you wonder.” Mac laughed. “You’re the original conspiracy nut, you know that?”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“You’ve taken this as far as you can. You wanted to find out who shot Bucky and why, and it looks like you’ve done it. If Mackey won’t listen to you, tell somebody else. Tell the chief, or the GBI, or somebody like that.”

“According to C. W., the FBI’s involved now,” I said. “I guess I could talk to one of their agents. C.W. said he heard they’d already had chats with Boylan and some others.”

“Do it,” Mac urged. “I’m serious. You can’t take on the whole Atlanta Police Department. You’ve done some good work. Now it’s time to step back and let the law do the rest.”

“Give it to the big boys, huh? Go back to my dusting and mending?”

“You know I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “Are we going to have another fight?”

“Naw,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “I’m tired of fighting. Make love, not war—that’s my new motto.”

“That can be arranged,” he said.

Mac got off the Interstate at the North Avenue exit and drove toward Candler Park. We were at the light at North Highland when I glanced over to the right, at Manuel’s Tavern.

“Look at that,” I said, pointing at the parking lot. It was jammed with police cruisers. And not just white APD cars. There were cruisers of every color and description. Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Lexington, Kentucky; Richmond, Virginia; Detroit; Miami; New Orleans.

“Is it some kind of convention?” Mac asked, craning his neck to get a look.

“No,” I said slowly. “I’d forgotten. Tomorrow is Sean Ragan’s funeral. They’re all in town for a cop’s funeral.”

“There must be a couple hundred cars in that lot,” Mac said, pulling forward when the light turned green.

“The wake was tonight,” I said. “This is nothing. You wait until tomorrow. There’ll be hundreds more, from all over the country.”

“For a cop’s funeral? They don’t even know Sean Ragan.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s a cop. A fallen comrade. When an officer’s killed, especially in the line of duty, it’s a mark of respect to muster as big a show of manpower as possible.”

“Even if that cop is a thug? A renegade who tried to kill another officer?” Mac asked.

“They don’t know that,” I said. “At least, most of them don’t.”

I honestly tried to keep my mind off the subject of Bucky Deavers, and instead keep myself engaged on the topic of Mac and me, but the conversation petered out a few blocks from home. At least, I thought, we had agreed that a compromise might be possible. It was a start.

We kissed goodnight in the Blazer. It was a sweet, lingering, where-can-this-take-us kind of embrace.

“Come home with me tonight,” Mac urged.

“Can’t,” I said, full of regrets. “What about Friday night at your place? I’ll spend the whole weekend.”

“You got a deal.”

Edna was waiting by the door, her face white. “Where on earth have you been? One minute you walked outside, the next minute you were gone.”

“Relax,” I said, patting her arm. “I was with Mac. You’ll be happy to know that we’ve patched things up. We might even have worked out a compromise on this Nashville thing.”

“I’ve got bad news,” Edna said. “That Major Mackey called. He said I should tell you they found Deecie Styles. Jules, she’s dead.”

I
followed her blindly into the kitchen, sank down into a chair. “What happened?”

“He didn’t say. Just said I should tell you her body was found this afternoon.”

Deecie was dead. Faheem’s mother, dead. I was dialing the police department while Edna went on fretting about that sick little baby all alone at the hospital.

There was nobody in the office, Manuel’s. That’s where Mackey was, of course. Where nearly every cop in town would be. Paying homage to the fallen hero. A sour taste rose up in the back of my throat.

Deecie was dead. William was right. Something bad had happened. And it was still going on. Sean Ragan might be dead, but he’d had help in those robberies. And that helper was still out there, still killing. I took the key that Deecie had given me out of my pocket and turned it over and over.

Thing had definitely gotten out of hand. First Bucky, then Ragan, now Deecie. It was time to get some help. Years ago, I’d known the FBI agents who worked in the Atlanta field office. But after the bombing at Olympic Centennial Park, when the
feds had mistakenly tried to make a case against an innocent bystander, a lot of those agents had taken early retirement or accepted transfer out of the city.

The best I could do was leave a voice mail message addressed to whomever it may concern.

“This is Callahan Garrity,” the message said. “I am a licensed private investigator and a former Atlanta police detective, and I have information pertaining to the shooting of Atlanta Police Detective Bucky Deavers and the murder of Atlanta Police Officer Sean Ragan. Please contact me as soon as possible.”

My luck, I thought glumly, they’d probably think I was some crackpot. Oh, well. I’d tried.

I called C. W. too. “Deecie Styles was murdered today,” I said.

“Shit. What do you want me to do?”

“A couple things. Your sources at the APD—have you got anybody who could check the call-out logs?”

“Maybe. What do you need?”

“Lisa Dugan,” I said. “She was supposedly on a call-out Wednesday night, when she didn’t show up at the St. Patrick’s Day party. I want to know when she got the call, and what time she logged out on it. Also, the night before, when that robbery went down in Hapeville—find out if she was anywhere around. Hell, for that matter, find out where she was Saturday night when Ragan was killed.”

“I’ll try.”

“One more thing. Maybe Linda could help with this. There’s a young man sitting in the waiting room over at Egleston. His name is William. He’s going to need a friend.”

“We’re friendly folks,” C. W. said.

“I know. Thanks.”

A rough plan had begun to form. I had to try three different spellings before directory information found him for me.

“You’re sure this is a good idea?” he asked.

“I’m not sure of anything,” I said tartly. “Except that these killings have to stop. You don’t have to help if you don’t want to.”

Then I called Manuel’s, asked for Bishop, and told him my plan.

He wasn’t enthusiastic. “I’m supposed to get off in fifteen minutes.”

“This is for Bucky,” I told him. “The person who’s responsible for shooting him is in the bar tonight, I guarantee it. There’s been another murder, too. Just today. Come on, Bishop, I’ve got nobody else to turn to.”

“There’s a million cops in here, Garrity,” he said.

“That’s the point,” I said. “I think it was a cop behind all this.”

“Aw, all right,” he said. “But if my old lady wants to know why I’m late, I’m blaming it on you.”

“Fair enough.”

Bishop was right. There were about a million cops in Manuel’s. They were all dolled up in their dress uniforms; starched shirts, ties, jackets, all of them with gleaming badges covered in strips of black tape, mourning dress for the fallen hero. The Shamrocks were out in force, too, all of them in the same green blazer Bucky had worn on St. Patrick’s Day.

Mackey was sitting at one of the big round tables in the front room. I’d never seen him in his dress uniform before, but tonight he was all starch and brass. Lisa Dugan was sitting beside him. Her face was pale against the dark green Shamrock blazer she wore. Sitting beside Lisa was a very young, very pregnant woman with soft, shoulder-length brown hair and red-rimmed eyes.

This, I realized, would be Alexis Ragan, Sean Ragan’s widow. She wore an ill-fitting pink maternity dress with a big red bow at the neck, and despite the crying eyes, she looked childishly excited by all the attention being paid her by her late husband’s boss and colleagues.

Mackey frowned when he saw me approaching. He stood up, put a protective hand on Alexis Ragan’s arm. “This is Callahan Garrity,” he said. “She used to be on the force. She’s friends with Deavers.”

Alexis misunderstood. She smiled up at me. “Thank you for coming tonight. I can’t believe it. All these people,” she
said, gesturing around the room. “They’re strangers. But they came here for my Sean. From all over the country. Major Mackey says it’s going to be the biggest policeman’s funeral this city has ever seen.”

Lisa Dugan patted Alexis’s hand. “They’re not strangers. Fellow officers. And there are at least a hundred Shamrocks here, too. The bagpipe and drum unit is here from Chicago, you know. Ten officers.”

“I’m sure it will be a very moving funeral,” I said. Turning to Mackey, I said quietly, “Could I talk to you?”

He followed me to the bar, where I’d spotted Bishop as soon as I walked in.

“Jack and water,” I told Bishop. “And make it a double. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“You got my message?” Mackey asked. “About Deecie Styles?”

“What happened? I saw her earlier today, over at Egleston Hospital, with her little boy. She never came back.”

“You saw her?” Mackey asked sharply. “When was this? Why didn’t you let somebody know?”

“About three o’clock. Her baby was in serious condition. He has sickle cell anemia. I wasn’t going to turn her in with a sick kid. Get real, Mackey.”

“If you’d turned her in, she might still be alive,” Mackey said. “We got a call about seven o’clock, from a resident at that apartment complex she lived at. The neighbor said she heard somebody in the apartment, and she knew this Monique Bell wasn’t home. We sent an officer over, he found the door unlocked. The body was in the living room.”

“How was she killed?” I asked dully.

Mackey tugged at the end of his mustache. “Her throat had been slit.”

Bishop set my drink on the bar and I took a long gulp. “Jesus.”

“There’s more,” he said.

“I don’t want to hear any more. When is this going to end? When are you going to believe me that cops are involved in this thing? Boylan and Viatkos and the rest of their Irish asshole
buddies are up to their ears in these robberies, and you know it, Mackey.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” Mackey said. “So just shut up and listen, would you? We found a bank bag hidden in a heat duct in the bathroom at that apartment. The deposit slip was still with it. A little over twelve hundred dollars in cash from the Budget Bottle Shop. There was no masked robber, Garrity. It was only your girlfriend, Deecie Styles. Bucky must have walked in on her while she was cleaning out the register. She panicked and shot him, then set it up to look like it was a masked gunman. That’s why she stole the tape out of the video camera. And that’s why she booked.”

I sipped my drink. I’d been expecting something like this, ever since Edna had given me the news about Deecie’s murder.

“If she shot Bucky and took the money, why’d she hang around?” I asked. “Twelve hundred dollars was probably the most money she’d ever seen in her life. Why’d she hit the panic button? She could have taken the money and run out the back door. Then, later, why’d she call me? She was ready to come in and testify about what she saw. She knew who shot Bucky. It was somebody she recognized. That’s why she was so scared. And that’s what got her killed.”

“That money and that mouth is what got her killed,” Mackey said hoarsely. “It was all over the street in that project that she was hiding money in that apartment. Some crackhead went looking for it, and when he found her instead, he cut her throat.”

“Had the apartment been ransacked?” I asked.

“Who knows with these people?” Mackey snapped. “It was wrecked, yeah. That’s what crackheads do.”

“Have you considered that maybe it was a setup? That the killer wasn’t looking for the money at all? That maybe he was looking for that missing videotape? And maybe the bank bag was planted there by the killer?”

Mackey slammed his beer down on the bar in disgust. “I’m not listening to any more of this shit.”

I took the key out of my pocket and held it up for him to
see. “Deecie Styles was killed by somebody who wanted to shut her up for good,” I said.

“But what he didn’t know was that she was so scared she called me and had me take her and the baby to the hospital. She admitted to me that she’d lied about the robbery, that it hadn’t gone down quite the way she’d told it. In fact, she saw the guy’s face. Recognized him. And when he ran out of the store, she saw something else. She went out in that alley and she saw a truck. Pete Viatkos’s truck, parked in the alley with the lights off. A minute later, it was gone. Who was in that truck? Viatkos? The guy who tried to kill Bucky? And you wanna know who tried to kill Bucky, Major Mackey? I’ll tell you who it was, but you’re not gonna like it.”

He leaned in close. “Who was it, Garrity? The chief? The mayor? Or maybe it was me?”