CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

THE PRECINCT WAS in a state of utter chaos with officers swarming left, right and centre, voices raised in a tumult of bitter recriminations. O’Shea could understand that: they’d lost one of their own. What was meant to be the peaceful dispersal of a civilian protest had turned violent, and now they were looking for an outlet for their emotion. They were looking for someone to blame.

They found it when O’Shea and Ramos walked into the lobby. A wave of deathly silence passed over the gathered throng. Uniforms plainclothes alike turned to look at them, then looked away again, revulsion on their faces. She could feel the animosity, the prickle of eyes on her; her cheeks reddening.

By now they must have heard about what Ramos had done, how the two of them had apprehended the killer and handed him over to the sergeant. The lives Ramos had saved. None of that mattered. The rallies had only started in the wake of the Judges’ arrival, and—no matter that Governor Adams had been the one to incite them—she and Ramos had been the ones charged to put an end to them. And now a police officer was dead. Of course they were blaming the Judges.

O’Shea was grateful for her helmet. She didn’t have to let them see how they got to her. She walked past them, Ramos at her side, dripping rainwater all over the worn carpet tiles as she made a beeline directly for Captain Flores’s office.

He was standing by the window with his back to them as they entered. His shoulders were hunched; she guessed his hands were bunched into fists. There was a tension in the room—Flores clearly blamed them for what had happened too.

“Captain Flores,” said Ramos. “We’ve apprehended the shooter. One of your sergeants has him in custody now. We… thought you’d want to carry out a full interrogation.”

“Oh, so now you don’t shoot criminals on the spot? Is that it?” said Flores, turning around to face them. He was trembling with barely contained rage. “I suppose it suited you to let this one live, now that Hartigan’s down there in the morgue?”

“Hartigan!” said O’Shea. “He’s the one who was shot?”

“You didn’t know?” snarled Flores. He shook his head. “He’d been with this force since leaving school. He was a good detective, and a good man.”

“He was,” said O’Shea.

“He defended you, you know?” said Flores. His tone was incredulous. “When the others were complaining about being forced to tidy up your mess. He told them you were a good officer, that you would have made a good cop.” He stared at her for a moment, and then glanced at Ramos, making it clear what he thought of the other Judge. “And now he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” said O’Shea.

“Not as sorry as I am,” said Flores. “We’ve lost one of our best. And for what? A bloody protest rally?” He turned away again, hanging his head.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Ramos, “but we still have a missing person to find. I presume no more leads have come to light?” His tone was respectful, but firm.

Flores swung around, glowered at him. “Ask Pennhouser. See where that gets you.” He paused. “We don’t need your kind here. We were doing perfectly well until you showed up. Dead suspects, missing victims, and now a dead cop. I hope you and your Chief Fargo are happy.” The words dripped venom.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Ramos, “but the law has no time for sentiment or recrimination, and neither do I.” He turned and strode from the office.

Flores stared after him, then turned to O’Shea. “Your partner sure has a way with people.”

“Doesn’t he just?” she said.

 

 

SHE FOUND RAMOS by Hartigan’s desk, surrounded by officers. Pennhouser was hurling abuse at him, blaming Ramos for his partner’s death. It was unjust, but the only thing she could do about it was to prove them wrong through actions. Words were what had started this—the rhetoric of a desperate governor trying to cling on to power—but action was what would end it. They needed to finish the job and find Carrera.

Ramos stood passively, allowing the words to wash over him, but O’Shea didn’t think for a minute he was unmoved by the tirade, or by what had happened. Hartigan was hardly a friend—he’d barely tolerated them—but they had come to a kind of easy understanding with him, an alliance of sorts, based on a shared goal.

Now, with Hartigan gone, that alliance was falling apart. Pennhouser had liked them, and while she still refused to blame him for it, his grief and his need to blame someone had blinded him to the urgency of their task.

Regardless of what had happened, they still had to find Carrera.

O’Shea pushed her way through the circle of gathered detectives until she was standing beside Ramos. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, “but Judge Ramos is right. We still have a job to do. There’s a man out there, and we need to find him.”

Pennhouser stopped, muttering something beneath his breath, and the crowd slowly dispersed.

“Any developments?” she asked Pennhouser, as he dropped heavily into his chair. He looked tired.

He glanced up, his expression narrowing. “I thought you were supposed to be looking for leads while we dealt with your other mess?”

“Just answer the bloody question, Pennhouser,” she snapped.

He maintained his glower for a moment, and then relented with a sigh. “Just this.” He picked up a brown paper file from his desk and flung it across at them. It landed on Hartigan’s desk, printouts spilling out across the mess.

“And this is?”

“Reece’s autopsy report,” said Pennhouser. “Surprise, surprise—cause of death was a shot to the chest.” He glared at Ramos, who studiously ignored him.

She picked up the file, shuffling the papers back into place. The first page was a short summary, highlighting cause of death, along with the contents of Reece’s stomach, a chemical breakdown showing he’d recently used black market antidepressants and a list of medical conditions, foremost amongst them his state of malnutrition. Having seen the state of his apartment, none of this surprised her. The man had been scraping an existence from nothing and he’d evidently been sourcing cheap bootleg drugs, attempting to self-medicate. She wondered if they might have played a role in his final mental state.

She flicked through the pages, leafing past several grisly photographs of the man’s corpse. Each of them was annotated with statistics, none of which made any particular sense to her. Next was a photograph of Reece’s clothes—the makeshift Judge’s uniform—and it was here that things got interesting. The report suggested that the legs of the boiler suit were steeped in raw sewage. No wonder he’d smelled so bad. She held the file open for Ramos. “Here. Look at this.”

Ramos shrugged. “I guess they were old work overalls, from his time as a maintenance engineer?”

O’Shea shook her head. “No. Think back to the market. They were still wet.”

“Suggesting he’d been down in the tunnels before Pennhouser and Hartigan had cornered him at the market,” said Ramos.

Pennhouser got to his feet. “That does kinda make sense.”

“Think about it. Reece knew those service tunnels better than anyone. He’d spent his life down there in that under city,” said O’Shea. “It stands to reason that he’d use them to get around, to keep his head low.”

“And the drainage pipes lead straight out into the Hudson,” said Pennhouser. “That’s how he could have disposed of the bodies.” He sighed. “We’ve been looking in the wrong place all along. He wasn’t hiding in the city, he was hiding beneath it.”

“More than that,” said O’Shea. “It’s probably where he was holding his victims.”

“Carrera,” said Ramos. “He could still be down there.”

“Then we have to go after him,” said O’Shea. “We can use the maps from Reece’s lock-up, try to narrow down the area to search.”

“But the storm,” said Pennhouser. “Those tunnels will be flooded. The storm drains run through there, back out to the river.”

“All the more reason to move quickly,” said O’Shea. “If Carrera is down there, he doesn’t have long left.”

“If it isn’t already too late,” said Ramos.

“There’s only one way to find out,” said O’Shea. She held the file out to Pennhouser. “Have an ambulance crew on standby, just in case.”

Pennhouser frowned. “Hold on just a minute. I’m coming with you. We’ll put a team together. The more of us down there, the better.”

O’Shea shook her head. “The more of us down there, the more risk that someone’s going to get killed. There’s been enough death today. Ramos and I have got this.”

Pennhouser looked for a moment as if he were about to object, and then took the file, gave a curt nod, and walked towards Flores’s office.