Fatal Reckoning (Fatal #14)(37)

“You didn’t see the other car?” Even her voice felt shaky.

“No, it was gone by the time I ran back.”

“And you told all of this to Conklin?”

“Yep. He’s the deputy chief now, right?”

“Yeah, he is.” She looked at Freddie, who was wide-eyed and equally shocked.

Freddie got to work on his phone, produced the webpage that featured photographs of the department’s top leadership and handed the phone to her.

“Are you sure it was Conklin?” She handed Freddie’s phone to Frank.

While she and Freddie held their collective breath, Frank took a close look at the officers. The leadership team was more or less the same as it had been then, with one notable exception. Skip Holland was no longer the deputy chief. When he was medically retired, Conklin had moved up to deputy chief and Malone had taken Conklin’s place as detective captain.

“That’s him there.” Davis pointed to Conklin. “He’s the one I talked to that day. I figured I’d hear something from the detectives looking into the case, but I never did.”

Sam felt as if an earthquake had struck, tilting the ground beneath her and leaving her breathless. During the recent investigation into the drive-by shootings, they’d discovered that Conklin had kept secret the fact that a retired MPD officer and a close friend of his had been missing for more than two weeks. Sam had uncovered that detail, which had led to Conklin’s suspension. And now this… “You’ve been very helpful.”

“I wish I could tell you more. After that day, I followed the stories about Deputy Chief Holland, and I was sad to hear he’d passed away.”

Sam fought back the rage and disbelief. “I believe that what you did that day saved his life. It made it possible for him to marry the woman he loved, to meet two more of his grandchildren and to see me happily married. What you did made a huge difference to his entire family, and we owe you a long-overdue thank-you.”

He shrugged off her thanks. “I did what anyone would’ve done in that situation. It’s unbelievable to me that someone could randomly shoot a guy who’s out there protecting all of us. It’s madness.”

“Yes, it certainly is.” Sam took down his phone number and left him with their business cards in case he thought of anything else.

Outside, Sam sucked in badly needed deep breaths.

Freddie spoke first. “Oh my God. What the hell?”

Shock reverberated through every cell in her body. This couldn’t be happening. All this time…

“What do we do?”

“I’m going straight to the chief with this.”

“Sam… Let me go with you. You shouldn’t be driving right now.”

That was when she realized her hands were shaking violently. “Yeah. Okay.”

They got into her car, with Freddie at the wheel. He did a U-turn and headed for HQ while Sam put through a call to Farnsworth’s cell phone, using a number she’d had for years but had rarely used in all the years she’d worked for him.

“Sam?”

“I need to see you right now. Are you still at the office?”

“I was just getting ready to leave.”

“Meet me in the morgue parking lot. Ten minutes.”

“Sam—”

She closed the phone because she couldn’t say another word until her uncle Joe was standing in front of her, telling her what to do with this bombshell she’d been handed. Another thing her father had told her on day one—If you learn something your superior officers should know, no matter what it is, tell them immediately. Don’t sit on it for even five minutes, or you’re part of the problem.

She’d taken that advice to heart when she’d stumbled upon the fact that Conklin hadn’t told anyone that retired Captain Kenneth Wallack had gone missing two weeks before Sam talked to his wife as part of the drive-by investigation. And now this… What else did the deputy chief know about his predecessor’s shooting? Her dad had counted Conklin among his closest friends. That he could’ve had this information for all this time… She couldn’t wrap her head around it.

To his credit, Freddie didn’t say another word on the ride back to HQ, through rush-hour traffic that made the trip ten minutes longer than she’d predicted. Outside the door to the morgue, the chief waited for her, leaning against his department-issued SUV.

Freddie pulled Sam’s car into the spot next to the chief. “You want me to come?”

“Yeah.”

She got out of the car and forced herself to move on legs that felt wooden. Her stomach ached, and she feared she might vomit in front of the chief.

“What’s wrong?”

“We followed a tip-line lead to a man named Frank Davis, who lives in Adams Morgan. He was on G Street the day of the shooting, saw the cop car pull over another car, heard the gunshot, called 911, ran back and rendered aid. And even though he reported all of this to Conklin, it’s the first I’ve heard of any of it. I’ve never heard the guy’s name before today.”

“How do you know he reported it to Conklin?” Farnsworth’s shock was apparent in the set of his jaw and the rigidness of his posture.

“He said he reported it all that day to Conklin. To be certain, we showed him the top brass on the website, and he picked out Conklin.” It took everything she had not to lose her shit completely. She wanted to scream and rage and punch something. “All this time… What else does he know?”