31

Lauren’s basement office didn’t have a mess table to spread the file out, like in the Cold Case office, so they had to improvise. Combine that with a very enthusiastic and known-paper-chewing West Highland Terrier and it was a hectic first few minutes of set up.

Lauren wrestled the card table out of the back storage closet while Reese carried two folding chairs with one arm and Watson with the other, who was licking Reese’s face like it was a bacon ice cream cone.

“Should I put him in his crate?” Watson wriggled around in his arms to get at the unlicked side of his face.

“No, he’ll just bark and cry until we let him out.” Lauren arranged the chairs and deposited the folder onto the brown padded surface. She retrieved a couple of pens from a cup holder on her computer desk. Sitting down, she realized she hadn’t used this table or these chairs since she and the girls used to play games of scat on Friday nights. They’d both been in grammar school then. Lauren ran one hand over the cracked faux leather top. How many nights had she and the girls spent laughing and drinking soda over that table?

“You’re spoiling him.” Reese let Watson down. He promptly ran over and tried to crawl onto Lauren’s lap. She held him off with one hand.

“There’s a rawhide bone over on the shelf. Go grab it.”

Reese pulled the knotted bone off the shelf and tossed it to Watson. Catching it easily, he settled at Lauren’s feet and began to gnaw on it. “Why do you have bones hidden around your house for my dog?” he asked, putting his hands on his hips like Lauren’s mom used to do when she got caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“I got him a couple of treats and toys when I was at the store.” She feigned innocence. “What’s so bad about that?”

“It’s going to break his heart when we leave,” Reese reminded her, taking his seat at the card table.

Lauren ignored that comment; they could argue about custody another time. She pulled the elastic off the fat file folder. For larger files, the Homicide squad used extra-large accordion folders that could expand to about seven inches before they had to add another. This one was stuffed to maximum capacity, a lot of room taken up by the crime scene photos. Slipping those out first, Lauren put them aside. She then divided the paperwork into witness statements, police activity reports, and physical evidence articles. Smattered about the file were handwritten notes, messages, and phone numbers. Those she separated into their own pile and pushed them to the corner. They’d get to those last.

“I’ll go over the crime scene reports, the integrity sheet, and 911 print outs,” Reese said, gathering up those particular documents.

Lauren reached across the table to her computer desk, grabbed a legal pad, and passed it over to him. “I’ll start with the evidence reports.” Plucking her readers off the top of her head, she put them on, adjusting them until she could read the fine print on the old paperwork. “That gun had to be collected by someone.”

Spending the next hour poring over the paperwork, Reese and Riley managed to fill three pages of notes each. Every so often Lauren would say, “Paper,” and Reese would tear a sheet from the back of the pad and hand it to her without looking up. The only sound in the room was the scratching of their pens and the chewing of Watson, who had turned one end of his bone into mush.

“Son of a bitch,” Reese said, holding up a two-page crime scene integrity report. It was the job of the first officer on the scene to record every single person who came into the crime scene, at what time, and what their assignment was. “Right here on page one, it says the first Homicide car to show up was Richard Schultz and his partner, Walter Lindhydt. Four minutes later Vince Schultz and his car partner in 3-South One get logged in.” He flipped the page. “Here, twenty minutes later, baby brother Samuel Schultz is logged onto the scene as walking the beat that night.”

That made sense. They still made cops walk the beat in Buffalo, only now they parked their patrol car and walked in the entertainment districts, like Canalside or Chippewa Street. Back then, another car crew would dump you off, usually a lone rookie, and pick you up when your watch was over. You were supposed to learn the neighborhood, check the businesses, and get to know the usual suspects.

“Do you see Charlie Daley’s name on there anywhere?”

Reese ran a finger down along the column on the second page. “It looks like three Narcotics cars came to the scene to help out. Yeah, he’s there, but he doesn’t show up until after all three of the Schultz brothers. A lot of cars came over; must have been a cold, boring night in February.”

He handed the integrity sheet to Lauren. She scanned it with a practiced eye. “All those cops coming to the scene, now it makes sense why no one saw the shooter running away.”

Reese finished her thought. “Sam Schultz probably scooted down one of the side streets and doubled back.”

Sifting through the crime scene photos, Lauren noticed a picture of the gun sticking out from beneath a beat-up four-door sedan. When the car had been parked, the heat from the engine caused the snow under it to melt, leaving a dry patch on the pavement. “At least we got lucky, and he didn’t toss the gun in a snow bank.”

Reese’s brow furrowed as he looked at the picture. “That’s a five-shot revolver. It’s not city-issue.”

“The second gun old-timers used to carry,” Lauren told him. “Now you have to qualify with every weapon you carry and make sure it’s on your C-Form down at the range. Back then, guys would take a gun off a guy, stick it in an ankle holster, and it became their backup gun.”

“Could you even imagine doing that today?” Reese asked.

Lauren examined the rest of the scene photos. The young victim looked like a broken doll, crumpled face-down on the icy sidewalk. Cop cars ringed the scene, crime scene tape stretched from light pole to light pole. Officers milled around the perimeter, jacket collars turned up against the cold.

Someone had stapled the victim’s school ID card to the inside edge of the file flap. Gabriel Mohamed, date of birth January 5th, 1974. He had just turned eighteen. From under the yellowing laminated plastic, a handsome dark-skinned young man grinned up at her. The card proclaimed he was in the 10th grade at Hutch Technical High School on South Elmwood Avenue. Heat crept across Lauren’s cheeks as anger flooded over her. His mother had escaped famine and poverty in Somalia just to have her son gunned down on the sidewalk for stealing change out of a car.

“The good old days definitely had their dark side.” She tried to push the disgust for what the three brothers had done to the side for now. She needed to be clinical and precise, not emotional. For Gabriel’s sake. “One of Sam’s brothers probably gave that gun to him. Told Sam that was how things were done.” Putting the photo back in its pile, Lauren picked up another piece of paper, dangling it in front of Reese. “We have a problem, though. The gun was put into evidence at the Erie County Lab that night. It was test-fired and sent back to Property. There it sat until 2006, when a cold case DNA initiative from the state gave out grants to test evidence from old homicide cases. The gun was tested, and DNA was recovered from the trigger area, the grip, and the barrel.”

“That’s good news,” Reese said. “Where’s the problem?”

“The lab sent the results to the detective in charge of the case: Ricky Schultz.” She slid the DNA report across the card table. “What do you want to bet if we go down to the Evidence unit, Ricky checked that gun out and it never came back?”

Engrossed with the data on the DNA report, Reese didn’t look up. “Doesn’t matter. The actual samples are on file at the lab. All we need is Sam Schultz’s DNA and they can still match it.”

“I’m sure he’s just going to open up his mouth and let me swab him.” Lauren sat back in her chair, which creaked in protest.

“Then we’ll have to get creative. If Rita won’t go in front of a judge for a search warrant, we’ll have to get an abandoned sample.” Reese’s green eyes flashed as they met hers, thinking of how they could swipe one of Sam’s used Tim Hortons coffee cups or a discarded toothpick. “We’re going to get these guys, Riley. We’re going to get Sam for murdering that kid, Ricky for covering it up, and Vince for stabbing you.”

“If my memory is correct, I was a detective working on the Sex Offense Squad when Ricky retired. I remember not being able to go to his retirement party because I had a call out on a rape. I was at the hospital, holding this woman’s hand thinking I needed to put a transfer in.”

“I could never handle Sex Offense cases,” Reese admitted. “Too hard.”

She nodded. “It was, especially with two daughters at home. It wears you down. But I learned a lot. I just remember feeling guilty that I was mad at missing a party when this poor girl was so horribly abused. I knew I needed to leave the squad before I lost my mind.”

“You did.” Knowing when it was time to put the witty banter aside, he told her, “You never stop fighting for the victims. You taught me that.”

“It’s funny the way you remember things. I should have no idea when Ricky retired. But it’s etched in my brain because it’s attached to that poor woman’s suffering. And now it’s attached to Gabriel Mohamed.” She put her pen and paper on the table.

The images of Joe Wheeler and Gabriel Mohamed, both lifeless, left for dead on the street, mixed in her mind. Bending forward, she pinched the bridge of her nose, taking as deep a breath as she could manage.

Reese laid a hand on Lauren’s shoulder, gripping it. “You okay?”

“All these years these guys have been covering up this murder. They’re still covering it up.” She touched her hand to her side where her scars were throbbing. “And Sam has the audacity to run for Erie County District Attorney. It’s a sick joke, really.”

Picking up the crime scene photos and talking while he examined them, Reese tried to get her to refocus. “The Schultz brothers have always stuck together, right? Daddy was the old police commissioner. I bet they thought they could do no wrong.”

Pushing away from the table, Lauren stood up. “I’m making myself a drink. Do you want one?”

“I’ll have a whiskey on the rocks. The good stuff. Not the girly crap you drink with Dayla.” Reese continued to leaf through the paperwork spread out in front of him. “Too sweet.” Watson dropped his bone and stood up with her, tail wagging a mile a minute.

Lauren marched up the basement steps into her kitchen with Watson at her heels. A dozen thoughts rolled through her mind at once. Vince Schultz had stabbed her and stomped her. To get his hands on the Gabriel Mohamed file. Because his little brother had shot Gabriel. And his older brother, Ricky, covered it up. Reaching into the top shelf over her stove, she produced a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey. Reese might have assumed she drank “girly” drinks—and she did, on occasion—but at times when her head was about to explode, she always pulled out the Jameson.

She put ice into two plastic tumblers and let the whiskey slosh over the cubes liberally. Stopping to give Watson one of his squeaky toys—a little rubber chicken wearing a bow tie—Lauren made her way back down the basement steps.

Reese was sitting straight up in his chair, holding a single photo, clamped between his finger and thumb.

“What’s that one?” she asked, careful to put the sweating tumbler on the desk next to him and not on the table with the fragile papers.

“This, my friend, is a picture of the scene, from Wadsworth, facing east on Allen Street. Examine closely the unmarked car in the upper-left corner. Sure looks to me like Ricky Schultz is sitting in the backseat talking to Sam Schultz, who doesn’t appear to be very happy.”

Snatching the picture out of his hand so fast it made her spill a couple drops of whiskey on her Berber carpeting, she squinted at the picture. Sure enough, there was a young Ricky Schultz in his winter detective gear sitting in the backseat of a Lumina talking to Sam Schultz. Sam, whose mouth was set in a hard line, looked like he was intently trying to absorb whatever his brother was telling him. “Ricky knew right from the beginning. That night. At the scene. And all of this”—she waved her hands over the piles of paperwork—“was just to cover up for his little brother.”

Reese took a hard slug from his plastic cup. “I’ll have to get the original property sheet for the gun tomorrow. If Ricky did sign out the evidence, that signature is the nail in Sam’s coffin.”

“He’ll have sent Vince to get it. He’s not dumb. He’s been on top of this thing for over twenty-five years.”

“Vince is a patrol guy. He’d need a detective to sign for it. I wonder if anyone has tried. It might raise a few red flags if a patrol officer came out of the blue wanting an original property sheet for a case he didn’t work on.” Reese tipped the cup back so that the ice came rattling forward against his teeth.

“It would be interesting to see who tried to get it for him, though.” She swirled the ice cubes around in her glass. Reese set down his empty cup. “I should have brought the whole bottle.”

“You aren’t supposed to be drinking anyway.” Reese deftly swiped the drink out of her hand, taking a sip before Lauren could protest. “Go to bed. You look like hell. I’ll go and check on the property sheet tomorrow and make sure the samples are at the lab.”

“Nope. I’m coming with you. We can’t trust anyone with this.”

“You’re supposed to be off duty with your injuries. Recovering, you know?” Reese drained the whiskey from her stolen tumbler. “But I’m not going to argue. Not tonight.”

“Good.” Scooping Watson in her arms and ignoring the pain in her side, Lauren headed back up the stairs.

“Where is that whiskey bottle anyway?” Reese called after her.

“Above the stove.”

“Think Dayla is awake?”

Lauren turned and looked at him standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Yes. But don’t even think of calling her. You’ll wake her husband.”

“Does Dayla really have a husband? I mean, I’ve never actually seen the guy.”

“Yes, Dayla has a husband. The plastic surgeon with all the billboards on the thruway? He works a lot, kind of like cops are supposed to.”

Reese snapped his fingers in recognition. “Now that you mention it, she does look a little more perky now than she did this time last year. Maybe you should pay him a visit. Get him to do something about that twelve-year-old boy’s body you’re walking around in.”

She wanted to throw something back at him about getting his own breast-reduction surgery, but she was too tired to start down that road. “Go to bed. We’ve got work to do in the morning.”

She thought she heard him mumble something about being a party pooper. She ignored it. This party is just getting started, Lauren thought as she made her way to the staircase to the second floor. And I’m the one who’s doing the conspiring now.