The Craving (24 page)

“What about her?”

“She’s dead.”

At first, the words had no effect. They just seemed like part of mindless conversation. Instead of
She’s dead
, Shawn could have said
It’s a beautiful day today
or
I like your shoes
.

Then the meaning suddenly hit. Geri was breathless, her legs weak.

“What do you mean she’s dead? The hell’re you talking about?”

“She was shot in her apartment.”

“Shot? What does shot mean?” She understood, but she didn’t want to believe it.

“It happened early this morning. Somebody came in, they think through the fire escape, and shot her.”

“What? The apartment faces the street. There were cops right outside the building. How’s this possible?”

“Maybe you wanna go sit down before you hear the rest,” Shawn said.

“Tell me what the hell’s going on!” Geri shouted.

A few other cops nearby, and the receptionist, looked over.

“The protection order was removed last night,” Shawn said.

“What?”
Geri said.

“I couldn’t believe it myself,” Shawn said. “It was ’cause of the marathon. They needed more cops downtown, so—”

“There was supposed to be twenty-four-hour protection till there was an arrest in the case. Who the hell removed that order?”

Shawn was looking beyond Geri, toward the entrance to the main part of the precinct. Geri looked back and saw Dan McCarthy standing there.

“Let’s take it easy, okay?” Dan said.

“
You
did this?” Geri was walking toward Dan.

“I said let’s—”

“You had no right to do that. I promised that woman protection.”

“Okay, let’s take this inside.”

“I want to know what the hell’s going on here.”

“Inside, I said.”

Geri was so furious—her brain swirling, thinking about so many things at once—that she didn’t remember going down the corridor with Dan to his office. She just seemed to wind up in there, screaming at him, “How could you do this? How could you?”

“Hey, just shut up, just shut the hell up and listen to me,” Dan said. “I’ve had it with you causing scenes here, all right? This is a police station, not a goddamn playground.”

“Tell me why,” Geri said, trying her best to stay calm. “Just tell me why.”

“We were undermanned for the marathon.”

“Come on, they couldn’t get some cops from Brooklyn and Queens who wanted triple pay?”

“She wasn’t a credible witness,” Dan said.

“Whoever shot her thought she was credible, and now she’s dead and the killer’s still out there.”

“She was useless at the lineup yesterday,” Dan said. “I don’t believe she was ever planning to help us, she was just busting our balls.”

“That wasn’t your call to make.”

“As the commanding officer at this precinct, actually it
is
my call
to make. But before I made my decision I consulted with Santoro and Reese.”

“You didn’t consult with me.”

“You weren’t here.”

“Come on, that’s bull—”

“Look, I’m as upset about this as you are. You think I’m not upset?”

“The only thing you seem upset about is protecting your own ass.”

“Look, Rodriguez, I’ve just about had it with you—”

“I gave that woman my word, goddamn it,” Geri said. “I told her we would protect her, and now because of your…” She was going to say
your stupidity
but caught herself and said, “This isn’t right. I told her we would protect her. I promised her.”

“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You knew we could only protect her for a limited amount of time. If the case went unsolved for a month, for a year, you knew we wouldn’t have cops out there forever, she wasn’t going into the freakin’ witness protection program. Eventually she was going to be on her own.”

“It was two days after she agreed to talk to us,” Geri said. “Two days.”

“Look, I agree this is an unfortunate situation; it sucks, okay, and despite what you think, I am extremely upset about it. But the fact remains, the past is the past and there’s nothing we can do about it now except deal with it.”

“Yeah, well I want to hear you explain to her family why this
unfortunate
situation went down the way it did. And I want to hear how you explain it to the press too, because you know when word
gets out that a witness who was supposed to be under police protection was murdered, they’re going to be all over this.”

“I won’t have to explain it,” Dan said. “You will.”

“Excuse me?”

“As lead detective on this case you’ll go to the crime scene in Washington Heights and make a statement on behalf of the department. You’ll explain why we made the decision.”

“If you think I’m taking the fall—”

“You aren’t the NYPD,” Dan said. “I’m tired of your attitude that you’re in this alone. You’re part of a team.”

“I wasn’t part of the team that made this decision.”

“You’re still part of the team and lead detective on the case. One thing I won’t tolerate around here is an atmosphere of finger pointing and blame.”

“You expect me to go out there and lie?”

“No, I expect you to go out there and do your job.”

“Yeah, do my job, so you can cover your own ass.”

“I’m not asking you; I’m giving you an order, is that understood?”

“What if I don’t take it?”

“That would be the biggest mistake of your career.”

Geri glared at Dan, using every bit of restraint she could muster up not to go ballistic on him, and then she stormed out of the office, passing Shawn, who was sitting and eating a Pop Tart, saying, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Driving uptown on the Henry Hudson Parkway, Shawn next to her, Geri put the siren on, not only because she wanted to get to Washington Heights in a hurry, but because she wanted to speed, let out stress. An angry driver to begin with, she was out of control, going eighty, cutting over two lanes to pass an SUV.

Shawn, still holding a chunk of Pop Tart, said, “Take it easy, will ya?
When I die I don’t want it to be closed casket, know what I’m sayin’?”

Geri didn’t slow down, pushing the needle past eighty-five.

“Hey, look, I know you’re pissed off,” Shawn said, “but you wanna be a cop, sometimes you gotta roll with the punches.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You’d better do that. It’s called a pecking order.”

“Pecking order my PR ass,” Geri said. “If it wasn’t for my ethnicity, if I wasn’t a woman, you think we’d be having this conversation? Dan had a problem with my promotion to begin with, and this is how he’s taking it out on me. And he’s like, ‘What can she do about it?’ ’cause he knows it’s like I’m on probation one more year till I move up a grade. He knows I can’t rock the boat ’less I want to walk off the plank.”

“I don’t know about walkin’ planks,” Shawn said. “All I know is you’re gonna kill both of us if you don’t slow the hell down.”

Realizing ninety on the Henry Hudson was getting out of control, Geri slowed to seventy-five.

“Good, now we’re at open casket again,” Shawn said. “Least my kids can see me one last time before they put me in the ground.” Then he said, “But you think I didn’t have to take hits on my way up? Nobody makes it without getting past the bumps in the road. And if you don’t like it, then quit. Be a security guard, work the door at a strip club. You walk away, trust me, there’ll be cops lining up to take your spot, you can count on that.”

In Washington Heights, when they turned onto 184th Street, they saw news trucks from the major networks double-parked in front of Morales’s building. There were also several marked and a couple of unmarked police cars, and reporters, cops, and dozens of bystanders milling around the area.

“Guess these cops had to leave the marathon early,” Geri said sarcastically.

When Geri and Shawn got out of the car they were intercepted by Annabelle—Geri couldn’t recall her last name—a media relations person for the NYPD whom Geri had met a couple of times before.

“When do you want to make a statement?” Annabelle asked.

“Gimme a few,” Geri said.

Reporters shouted questions as Geri and Shawn bypassed them and went into the building and up to Carlita’s apartment. Santoro and Reese were there.

“Sorry about this,” Santoro said. “I really am.”

Geri didn’t want to hear any apologies. Though she had a feeling Santoro was being sincere, she didn’t say anything.

“So what do we got?” Geri asked.

“What you see is what you get,” Santoro said. “Perp may have entered via the fire escape. Apparently the victim was in the bathroom at the time. No sign of struggle, seemed to be surprised, two gunshots to the head, and then he was gone.”

“What’s forensics saying?” Geri asked.

“Not much, unfortunately. Might have partial prints on the fire escape, but apparently kids were playing on the fire escape yesterday, so that may turn out to be nothing.”

“What about witnesses?” Geri asked. “Wait, lemme take a wild guess, nobody saw or heard anything.”

“Nobody saw or heard anything,” Santoro said.

“Gee, what a surprise,” Geri said. “One witness gets taken out and nobody else wants to talk. Gee. I wonder why.”

“Nobody wanted it to go down this way,” Santoro said.

“It didn’t have to,” Geri said. “So why’d you agree to getting rid
of protection? And please don’t tell me it had to do with getting cops down to the marathon.”

“We can’t protect everybody who gives us a tip or a sketch,” Santoro said. “You know that. But, just so you know, I told Dan I didn’t feel right about throwing you out to the sharks on this. I was fully willing to shoulder the responsibility, but it wasn’t my call.”

Geri could tell that Santoro, unlike Dan, seemed legitimately upset.

“Whatever,” Geri said. “Guess it’s all part of my initiation, right? Last in, first to take the fall.”

One of the forensics workers, a young black guy, came in, and Santoro told him to check the roof and the roofs of the other buildings on the block.

When the forensics guy left, Santoro said to Geri, “We’re still trying to figure out how the perp gained access to the apartment. Even if the perp came through the window, he had to get into the building somehow. He probably just bypassed the double door security; somebody could’ve buzzed him in.”

“The entrance to the roof locked?” Geri asked.

“No, lock’s been broken, the super said. Of course he could’ve entered through another building and dropped down the fire escape, but one thing is the perp probably did his recon; he seemed to be pretty familiar with the building.”

“Well, guess it’s time to face the storm,” Geri said.

She was leaving the apartment when Shawn came over and said, “I’ll talk to them with you if you want.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Geri said. “I can handle it. But I appreciate the offer.”

Geri went downstairs, noticing when she got to the vestibule that
there were a lot more reporters there than there had been ten or however many minutes ago. Any hopes that this wasn’t going to be a major news story were fading fast.

As Geri exited the building, Annabelle asked her, “You want to go over anything first?”

“Nah,” Geri said. “Think I’m just gonna wing it.”

With mikes and a few TV cameras aimed at her, she gave an official police statement about the incident. While she was tempted to tell the truth, that this murder could have been avoided and had nothing to do with her, she spoke in a formal “police-ese” tone, saying, “Yesterday we made a decision to remove police protection of Carlita Morales, which had an unfortunate result.” She went on, explaining what had happened, hating that she had to be so cold and unemotional.

She kept the statement short and sweet and was dying to get away, but she had to take a few questions.

“Were there any direct threats?” a reporter asked.

“No, there were not,” Geri said.

“Do you have any leads in the shooting?” another reporter shouted.

“I can’t comment specifically on anything regarding the investigation itself at this time,” Geri said.

“Are there threats against anyone else?” a reporter in the back of the group asked.

“No, we’re not aware of any at this time.”

Thankfully Annabelle cut in, rescuing her. Geri was heading back into the building when a man to her right, several yards away, behind the police barricade, shouted to her, “My sister died ’cause of you!”