BY THE time I sit up, my legs out in front of me, the roof of the building next door to Prince Valentine’s apartment is littered with uniformed officers. Carla has holstered her weapon and walks over to me. “We need to get you to an emergency room,” she says.
I shake my head. I’m fine. I put three bullets into Prince’s chest; he put one in my ribs. I was wearing a bulletproof vest; he wasn’t. I’m alive; he’s dead.
“Anything hurt?” she asks.
“Only when I breathe.” An old joke, but I’m not kidding. Ribs aren’t broken, though, just a little sore. I also hit my head pretty hard on the fall and got a good ringer to show for it.
The aftershock is just now hitting me, the adrenaline rush, as I consider in hindsight what happened so fast at the time.
Starting with the beginning: if we’d surprised him, rammed the door without notice, Prince Valentine would probably still be alive.
Soscia appears on the roof, the last of our four-person team. He wipes his sleeve against his forehead. It’s only then I become aware of the intense heat, the sun on my face.
He comes over, stops, appraises me, nods his head. “Welcome back to the force, Detective Harney.”
“You took the stairs, I see.”
“Don’t want to overextend myself,” he says. “Doctor said to cut down on roof jumping.”
Sosh was the last one through Prince’s door—his weapon wasn’t drawn because he used the battering ram—and the last one in secures the apartment. Not that Sosh would have been able to clear that alleyway space between the two buildings anyway. If he’d tried, we’d have two officers down, one of them on the pavement of the alley.
Sosh squats down, looks me in the eyes, cups a hand around my neck. I swear I catch some mist in his eyes. The guy’s a teddy bear at heart.
“You did good here, Billy. Real good.”
I’m not sure that’s true. “If we surprised him, like you said—”
“You don’t know what woulda happened.” An emphatic shake of the head. “Guy could’ve had the gun on him. Probably did. We surprise, he starts blasting at us inside the tiny apartment. Instead, you gave him time to run. Shit, the guy was probably hopped up anyway after the shooting drew so much attention.”
“Assuming he was the shooter,” I say.
Sosh winks at me. “Guess what we found in a false floor in his closet?”
“Tell me.”
“Heroin,” he says. “About fifty bags.”
I nod. Not what I was hoping for. “That could be why he ran.”
“Maybe,” says Sosh, holding back a grin. “Or maybe he ran because of the SIG pistol and suppressor we found under his mattress.”