The Squad Room (9 page)

“Oh, man.” Detective Koreski was visibly floored.

“Yeah.” Morrison sipped off the last of his whiskey. “Moral of the story: it wasn’t you, Tina. He was a fuckhead, and he hung himself for himself. Don’t even worry about it. Fucked up as it is, it’s the kind of thing we see around here. Now,” he said, getting up to offer her a refill, “shall we talk about your new squad a bit?”

8

Chief of Detectives Frederick Arndt tried to calm himself as he took a slow ride from One Police Plaza to the Midtown South Precinct. He could still feel the redness in his face from his meeting with the Commissioner.

Over the nine months he’d been Chief of Detectives, he’d survived pretty well on the strength of his test-taking skills, on his political connections, and on the payback of the higher-ranking officials in the department for whom he’d done so many favors on the way up. But this was different. The briefing had started well; but as soon as the Commissioner had started asking questions, everything went downhill. Arndt hadn’t been prepared for questions about the plan moving forward, or whether the Medical Examiner’s Office had fast-tracked its DNA tests; now he felt his ineptitude had been dangerously exposed. He’d fumbled through that part of the briefing, and stuttered with nerves. Damn that asshole Morrison, for not giving him a list of things to cover!

Yet Arndt knew better than anyone just how unqualified he was for the position he was in. Housewives watching
Law & Order
probably had a greater depth of knowledge about crime scenes than he did; it was almost a point of pride for him to have gotten as far as he had,
without
having to know it. Cops of greater ability, the Morrisons of the
force, were as contemptible to him as they were obnoxious. Their kind of street-level work was beneath his ambition; it was fine for them to do, but only as long as they kept their place, and didn’t get in the way of those they were meant to obey.

As a cop himself, he’d volunteered for embassy duty as often as possible, spending his shifts studying the patrol guide and avoiding grunt work at all costs. He’d made detective at a time when the city was in a fiscal crisis, after a lot of cops had been laid off and they didn’t have the money to hire more, and his subsequent promotions had come along as a matter of course. He’d made himself the ideal candidate on paper, spending his indoor shifts studying and getting in close with the higher-ups. Let the other cops deal with the nightmares of work on the street—the people they’d given a break one day, turning around and murdering someone the next; the suicides they’d talk out of taking a bunch of pills, only to have them jump out the window as soon as they were gone—he had other things to think about. “Lead, follow, or get out of the way” had served him better and better the higher up he’d gone; if it was a case he couldn’t handle, he could usually pass it on to someone else before any dirt got on him.

Yet now he was pretty well fucked. He’d made himself too conspicuous in the early phases of the case; and now that it seemed to have blown up into a full-scale serial killer situation, the Commissioner had him locked down for it. Ah well, he’d just have to tap the troops a bit.

His driver pulled up in front of the stationhouse, and Arndt snapped back to reality. Telling his driver to wait in the car, he took a deep breath and headed in.

He walked through the precinct house, happy as always to see his reputation precede him. Normally no one could walk past the front desk without being challenged, but they clearly knew who he was around here. Never mind the fact that no one stood at attention to acknowledge him, he thought with a little umbrage; that would change with his next promotion. He made his way straight for Captain Morrison’s office and walked in without a word or a handshake.

Morrison, who’d already gotten a heads-up from 1PP about what had gone down in the PC’s office, struggled to keep the grin off his face. The Captain had friends everywhere, most with the same disdain for Arndt, and he’d heard the giddy tale of the Chief of Detectives having his head handed to him by the Commissioner over and over. It would mean more work for him in the long run, but it was worth it. Anyway, the work was what he was here for.

He looked patiently at the Chief of Detectives. Arndt cleared his throat.

“Well, Captain,” he said, “you’ve seen these two cases in detail by now; what’s your take? What’s our next move going to be?”

Morrison smiled. “I’m just waiting to follow your lead, Chief,” he said mildly.

“Well, you have the investigations; you’ll have to tell me what you’re going to do with them. I know what
I
would do, but that hardly—”

“And what is that, exactly?” Morrison asked, looking hard at Arndt.

“Captain,” Arndt said in a measured tone, “this is your case. I don’t micromanage, as a rule.”

“I understand, Chief. Let’s just say I really want your input.”

There were a few awkward moments of silence. Morrison was enormously gratified to see a bead of sweat running down Arndt’s temple. It had obviously been a long morning for the Chief of Detectives.

“All right, Chief,” Morrison said, finally breaking the silence. “Here’s what we have going. We’ve established a taskforce, pulling detectives from the SVU Robbery and Gang squads. It’s a full team of detectives we have working on this. We’ve expanded our canvas in both neighborhoods, and I just conferred with the District Attorney regarding a search warrant for the crime scene, just to make sure we don’t lose our evidence in court.”

“What do you mean?” Arndt asked. “Why would we lose it?”

“Well, you know
Mincey v. Arizona.
Or perhaps you’re testing my knowledge of it?” Morrison let the tension hang for a moment, savoring Arndt’s discomfort. “It was that case in the late seventies, when a cop
was killed in a narc raid—they stayed there gathering evidence for a long time, but a lot of it was ruled inadmissible, since the perp lived there and they’d never gotten a search warrant. Since we don’t know who’s involved in our murders, and we’re definitely going to want to search the scenes more thoroughly, I consulted with the DA to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

“All right, good. How have the searches been going?”

“We ended up spending plenty of time at the scene, and took the bedroom carpets out in twelve-by-twelve squares. We think we’ll probably get some decent samples from those—at least we hope so. We have a forensic odontologist working with us, too—with all the bite marks, we’ll probably need him down the road.”

Arndt nodded, obviously happy for the reminder of what a forensic odontologist did. “Of course,” he said absently. “How about the husband from the Sutton Place case—any word on him?”

“Dealing with that as we speak.”

“Who is?”

“Koreski and Hanrahan,” Morrison said, knowing full well Arndt would have no idea whom he meant. “Listen, we all understand how serious this case is, Chief,” he assured the Chief in a patronizing tone. “I can assure you, we’re pulling out all the stops.”

“All right, Captain.” Arndt stood, again feeling sickeningly out of his depth. There had been too many blank spots for him today already; he knew he’d have to regroup himself in order to keep in control of the situation. “If everything’s going smoothly, I’ll be on my way. We’ve all obviously got a lot to do here.”

“Obviously,” said Morrison. He smiled and eased back into his chair. “Hey, speaking of, how was your meeting with the PC earlier? I imagine he had a lot of questions for you, but knowing you, I’m sure you were ready.”

Arndt spun around, his face reddening abruptly. “Just make sure you don’t slip up, Captain,” he hissed. “Mine isn’t the only ass on the line here.”

The Chief of Detectives swung out in a rush, slamming the door on his way and leaving Morrison feeling better than he’d felt all morning.

Back at Sutton Place, Detective Koreski and Sergeant Hanrahan were meeting with the first victim’s husband.

Robert Adams, as it turned out, was a good-looking, very wealthy venture capitalist. He’d been in Venice at the time of his wife’s homicide, but had taken an emergency flight home upon hearing the news. His ten-hour trip had obviously been excruciatingly painful for him.

Despite an evidently high degree of personal control, he was distraught, and could think of nothing that could have led to this. He’d always felt that Victoria and he had a good, if not picture-perfect, marriage: no affairs, no suspicious friends or party acquaintances. His wife, he said, didn’t even really have any girlfriends she spent a lot of time with, to say nothing of boyfriends. He gave the detectives all the information they asked for: telephone records, calendars, photographs of Victoria. Through it all they could see him trying to focus, and failing; he stared into space as Koreski and Hanrahan questioned him, and soon sobs overtook him.

The detectives trod lightly, keeping their compassion for Adams balanced with the job they had to do. There’s no specific way that people, guilty or innocent, act when faced with sudden death, and certainly no right way to grill a grieving spouse; it had to be felt out. Hanrahan and Koreski were both experienced enough to know that it was impossible to rule Adams out as having been involved in his wife’s murder, even given such evident suffering. But it was hard to maintain any suspicion of him. Unless he was an especially gifted actor, he was essentially nonfunctioning; he couldn’t even understand that the clean-up of the scene was a task that he would have to handle. There were, of course, companies that specialized in such things, a list of which detectives always provided; but this was always one of the cruelest realities to deliver to the survivors of homicide victims—the news that on top of everything else, they’d have to deal with cleaning the place up themselves, invariably
produced a feeling of helplessness unlike any other.

Back in the car, Koreski looked idly through the photographs Robert Adams had given them of his wife—vacation photos, holiday photos, photos of dinners and weddings and reunions—and the familiar wave of despair washed over her. So joyful, so full of life and promise. She breathed deep to master it.

9

Since Billy’s death, he’d visited the Memorial a few times, always alone.

He always stayed in the St. Regis, not far from where the Memorial was—it was a beautiful hotel, and he always thought staying in a nice place would soften the pain he felt. It also had a great bar; and when he’d gotten good and drunk, he could walk two blocks to the White House and look out at its grandeur through the trees. He always hoped its beauty would elevate him, free him from his misery for a moment. Yet it seemed the nicer things were, the more morose they made him.

At the Memorial, he invariably did what every one of its visitors did: find the name of the person you’d lost, lay a piece of paper over it, and rub over it with a pencil to take an etching of the name. There were more than nineteen thousand names recorded at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, but the name never took him any time at all to find. It was carved in his mind as deeply as in the wall itself.

Nineteen thousand names. Nineteen thousand, killed in the line of duty. To many it seemed an astronomical figure. Yet he had long since ceased to see it that way. Given the seven hundred thousand working in America’s police departments, was it really so many? And what about the staggering rate of suicide among police officers? That was a number
no wall would be built to commemorate; yet that, he knew well, was hardly less a falling in the line of duty.

He’d foregone a cab to the Memorial this time, and walked along the street towards it. As he approached the bronze lions that guarded the memorial, he noticed a thin white man in a Navy-style pea coat watching him. He realized, with the flash of instinct, that the man was contemplating robbing him, and a flood of rage ran through him. For the first time in his career, he felt the real desire to kill someone.

He knelt down, pretending to tie his shoe, and quietly removed the .38 Colt Detective Special from its ankle holster. He’d gotten the gun when he’d finished at the academy, from a little shop in Hempstead. It wasn’t a sexy gun, but effective. It felt comfortable in his hand—eager for action.

The thin man moved closer. He thought he could already see the knife in the man’s hand. In a moment of sublime purpose he raised the gun, pointed it at the man.
Go ahead,
he said; and it was unclear whether he was speaking to the man, or to himself. The blood pounded in his ears, mingling with the sound of bagpipes, the drone of a helicopter overhead. He felt the throb of violence begging for release.

The man took off running.

Morrison shook awake, the force of the memory coursing through him.

He’d dreamed of this encounter before. It was yet another dark moment to add to the list; yet another mental pursuer he knew he would never outrun. He sighed. At least this time he’d slept.

He rolled out of the dorm around 0700 hours, to find the squad room a scene of quiet industry. Medveded was already up and working at his desk, scouring over crime scene photos and evidence lists. Sergeant Rivera was working on his daily checklist of things to do, as he collated all the paperwork turned in by the detectives the previous night. Despite the morning’s beginnings, Morrison smiled at the monastic atmosphere; it was exactly the kind of peace he enjoyed at the beginning of the day, and it was reassuring to see the task force working so smoothly, even
with Arndt and his cronies overrunning the office.

He unlocked his file cabinet and grabbed the bottle of Jameson. As he was pouring himself his usual hard-day preparatory, Sergeant Simmons came into the office, his face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas.

“Hey, boss,” he said, out of breath. “Can I shut the door? I need to talk to you.”

Morrison nodded, putting the bottle back in the cabinet. “Sure.

What’s up?”

Simmons closed the door. He frowned at the whiskey. “Well, first of all—Bill, are you doing okay?”

Morrison smiled. He and Simmons had known each other a long time, and worked the streets together in some very tough neighborhoods; but behind closed doors was still the only time the sergeant called him by his first name.