The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club #17)(23)

CHAPTER 32


MY HEAD WAS still swimming with images from the Pier 45 murder scene when I arrived at my desk the morning after.

I envisioned the sparse crowd on the pier; the deceased, Laura Russell, in her blood; her crying teenage daughter. I thought about the sketchy secondhand report that the shooter was white, and had worn a nice coat. And of course, I was still stuck on the rude dismissal by Sergeant Garth Stevens.

Conklin hadn’t yet punched in, so I headed for the break room and found that Sergeant Paul Chi and his partner, Cappy McNeil, had appropriated the table. I’ve worked with these two homicide pros since back in the far-distant day, when Jacobi and I were partners.

Chi is precise, diligent, a man Jacobi refers to as “human ground-penetrating radar.” I remember Jacobi toasting Chi when he was promoted to sergeant, saying, “Chi can see around corners and beyond time.”

Cappy is a different kind of cop—a career detective who, in twenty years on the force, has solved case after case without ever getting ruffled or into a jam.

I thought Chi and McNeil could give me some advice about the murder of Laura Russell. They made room for me at the table, and we sat together with a box of pastries between us. When I had laid it all out, including the intel from my confidential informant and my personal experience with Stevens and Moran, I asked, “Do either of you know these guys?”

“I know Stevens,” Cappy said, tucking into a honey bun. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatcha got?”

He chewed slowly, swallowed, and finally said, “This is just between you, me, Chi, and Honey Bun, and I’m about to take Ms. Bun down.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Between bites the wise Cappy McNeil told me that Stevens was a dedicated drinker—no surprise, since he and my father had been fellow barflies. Cappy added that Moran had been violent with two different girlfriends, or so he’d been told.

“He didn’t introduce his gun into the fights, but he knocked those women around pretty bad. If he was a pro ballplayer, he’da been suspended for at least a year.”

I pushed for more.

“Any known misbehavior on the job?”

Chi said, “This is all gossip, you understand, Boxer?”

“I understand. What’s the gossip?”

“When Stevens was in Narcotics, there was talk that he may have gotten payoffs from a big-time dealer. Well, I only heard about it after some evidence against that guy went missing.”

“Come on. He’s that dirty?”

“The talk never became an investigation,” said Cappy. “Stevens’s boss, Lieutenant Chris Levant, liked him then and likes him to this day. Their wives are friends. So Stevens was moved to Central Station’s investigative team and later partnered up with Moran. The two them became the hub of Levant’s Homicide detail.”

Cappy continued, “They did close out that case of a teenage girl who went missing in Polk Gulch. Found her body in a storage locker, and they collared the perp, who was then convicted. So whatever else, they do a good job.”

I told Chi and McNeil what my CI had said: that a string of homeless people had been shot, with no arrests.

“She said about three, and that was before the last two.”

“You sure about that? You checked out the database?” Chi asked me.

“I did. But I don’t have names. I’m not even sure if the victims had IDs. If the cases weren’t worked up, they could have easily been filed as ‘identity unknown,’ case to be solved after the second coming.”

The bull pen was starting to get noisy. The night shift was checking out, and the day shift was drifting into the break room, calling back and forth, laughing, filling up their mugs and grabbing sugared breakfast treats.

Chi hunched over the table and said, “Say there’s something to this, Boxer. What would be the point of Stevens lying down on the job?”

I shrugged. “I hoped you’d tell me.”

“Careful,” said Cappy. “Like I said, Levant is Stevens’s godfather. He has weight with the mayor.”

I mimed zipping my lip.

Chi grabbed hold of my arm.

“Trust your gut.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

I was rinsing out my mug when Conklin came through the doorway. He pulled a cup off the drain board and joked around with Chi and Cappy about not getting any sleep last night.

“Your girlfriend pretty glad to see you, sonny?” said Cappy.

I rolled my eyes and left them to the boy talk.

At my desk I booted up my computer and started going through my e-mail. I was thinking of telling Brady that I was disturbed about how poorly the murder scene had been handled. But I vividly remembered that he’d told me to step back. He was the boss, and he wasn’t subtle. I knew I should listen to him.

All I had to go on was Millie Cushing’s bug in my ear and a strong feeling that Stevens and Moran, key players in Lieutenant Levant’s obsolete Homicide fiefdom, weren’t right.

Hunches are valuable in this line of work. As Paul Chi had said, I had to trust my gut.





CHAPTER 33


JUDGE RATHBURN WAS on the phone when Yuki and Art arrived, but waved them into his chambers and offered them chairs in the seating area at the far end of the room.