I STAYED WITH Dad in the ER, drove him home, got him comfortable on the couch with the TV controller, and checked on Hannah. She had a handle on our two little girls, who both seemed unaffected by everything that had happened and were already asleep. Hannah and Beth would stay with us for a few days to help out with Dad. Hannah would take my bed and I’d take the couch. The same place where Ned had slept.
Three hours had passed, making it two o’clock in the morning. Oddly, my pager remained silent. Not a good sign. They should’ve had Gadd all grappled up by now, or the way Coffman would’ve put it, “On a slab.” But if the takedown had gone to guns, they would still be busy with the interviews with the shooting team. Telling me about it would drop way down their priority list. I was worried that I had not heard from Chelsea. She could take care of herself—I’d seen her in action. But Gadd wasn’t your normal violent criminal. I’d never come across a sociopath so devoid of empathy that he’d wind up young boys like tin soldiers and send them into harm’s way. I pushed out the image of Chelsea lying in the gutter somewhere, hurt and alone.
And the fact that I’d been the one to put her on Gadd.
I decided to drive to the violent crimes office. Pulling into the defunct grocery store, I saw the parking lot filled with far too many cars. Something was not right.
When I walked in, I saw thirty or forty cops milling around, waiting for something to break. Drinking coffee, eating cold tacos and stale donuts. All looked haggard and tired from too many hours in the saddle without a break. Gibbs hurried over, took me by the arm, and tried to hurry me out of the office. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here right now. Wicks is on a tirade. Come on. Come back in the morning after he cools off.”
Too late.
Wicks saw me through the windows of his office. He jumped up from his desk. I shrugged out of Gibbs’ grasp. The door to Wicks’ office slammed open. “Johnson, get your black ass in here.”
Gibbs whispered, “Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.” He quickly moved away as if I were nuclear waste.
I entered Wicks’ office. He slammed the door and moved around to the other side of his desk. I had no idea what had made him so angry.
I pulled a chair around to sit.
“No one said take a seat.” He remained standing and stared me down.
I asked, “What happened with Ollie? Did she take you to Gadd?” A rhetorical question to get him talking.
He said nothing and fumed, his lips a straight line, his eyes narrowed. I didn’t like displeasing him. I respected him too much.
“The Caddy wasn’t there,” he said.
“What about Chelsea?” I was more worried about Chelsea.
“You mean Agent Miller? Never saw her, never heard from her.”
“What? Are you sure?” Something had to have happened to her. She should’ve called. I double-checked my pager. She hadn’t tried to get ahold of me. I went to his phone on his desk and paged her.
“Oh, feel free to use my phone, Deputy.”
I punched in Wicks’ desk number for her to return the call and hung up. I watched the phone, waiting for it to ring.
“We jumped out for nothing,” he said. “I mobilized an entire team for nothing.”
I looked from the phone to him. “That can’t be what’s got your back up. You know how those things go. What’s going on?”
“Coffman put in his papers. No two weeks’ notice. No nothing. Gone, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Took vacation time with all this shit going on. He’s never taken a vacation in all the time I’ve known him. This isn’t like him. I wanna know what you said to him.”
It felt like someone let all the air out of me. I sat down. I’d thought I wanted Coffman gone, but now that he was, a vast emptiness opened inside me. The man had been an icon, a mentor at Lynwood station when I was learning how to be a deputy.
“Mister, no one gave you permission to sit.”
I didn’t get up. “You talked to Coffman, then?”
“Of course I talked to Coffman. I told you we’re a team here. He didn’t want to tell me what happened, but I pumped a pint of Chivas Regal into him, and he spilled it, told me you twisted his arm. I want to know what you said to him.”
I shook off the sad emptiness as my ire started to rise. I stood. “It was time for that old man to retire.”
Wicks slapped his desk. “That’s not for you to decide, buddy boy. We’re a team here and I’m the one who runs this team, not you. Now I’ve lost a good man, one I’ll never be able to replace, not one with his experience. Not one I could trust like I could trust him. You don’t find that kind of loyalty every day. I thought I had that kind of loyalty with you and look what that got me. You’ve violated that trust.”
“Did he tell you what happened?”
“He did, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing. There weren’t any witnesses in that house. I probably would’ve done more than butt-stroke that prick. He shot and killed Ned, Bruno. And don’t give me any shit about D’Arcy being handcuffed.”
I said nothing and stared at him.
He said, “What? What? Tell me.”
I continued to stare.
His expression softened. “Ah, shit. Am I missing something here? I’m missing something, aren’t I?”
“That’s not for me to say. But maybe you should have another talk with him before you jump down my throat.”
“Tell me.”
“No, it’s not my place. He needed to go.” I went for the door, opened it.
He said, “You’re going to tell me, maybe not today or even tomorrow, but you’re going to tell me.”
“Don’t think so.” I left, walked over to my desk, and sat down with all the detectives in the room staring at me. I picked up the phone and again paged Chelsea.
Come on, Chels, call me back. Go to a phone and call me back.
I watched the second hand of the clock on the wall sweep around three times. The phone didn’t ring. I paged Ollie and waited some more. I stood and made eye contact with Gibbs. “Where are the op notes on Gadd?”
He brought over a thick four-inch binder and set it on my desk. “Good luck with it. We’ve checked every possible lead, had forty, fifty eyes on it. As of right now, we got nothing. We’re waiting for something to break, anything at all.” He sat in the desk chair facing me. Ned’s desk. I stared at him until he squirmed a little and finally got up and moved.
I sat down and opened the binder.
An hour later Ollie and Chelsea still had not called. Why hadn’t Chelsea called? I couldn’t think of any reason why she’d not answered the page other than the obvious. That she was hurt and couldn’t.
I’d scanned the entire binder, twice. Gibbs had been right; they’d checked every possible lead and then some inconsequential, long, long shots as swell. I closed it, sat back, closed my eyes, tried to relax, tried to think about all that had happened since we first came up on Gadd. And just like that the answer bubbled to the surface.
My eyes shot open.
I grabbed the binder and flipped it to the table of contents. It couldn’t be that easy. It just couldn’t. I ran my finger down to the list of addresses already checked by the detectives and checked it again. I looked up and found Gibbs and half the detectives looking at me. Wicks had caught on to something happening and came out of his office. “What? Whatta you have, Bruno?”
I moved around my desk over to the “out” tray on Ned’s desk and quickly thumbed through all his reports, those recently typed and waiting for Ned to approve and pass along for approval and filing. But that was never going to happen, not by him. I found what I was looking for—typed notes on the bank robbery surveillance, the ones with children on the crews. I moved my finger down until I found the two addresses I wanted.
I ran for the door.
Wicks followed. “Son of a bitch, Bruno, wait up. Gibbs, grab your shit, gear up. Gear up, you guys, let’s roll.”