“Solved?” The chief looked at him, astounded. “Lieutenant, two men got away!”
“I know,” Crawford said, unfazed. “The driver and the lookout. And I say we rattle every Soviet tree in River City and club the shit out of every Russian that falls out until we find them. But it looks like we already have the shooters. And that’s the core of the case.”
The chief sat and contemplated for a moment. He’d never been a cop nor an investigator, a fact he reminded himself of whenever he thought he might know better than someone who was both. Still, Crawford’s attitude irked him, even if the man was right.
He turned to Renee. “What do we know about these two dead suspects?”
Renee held a stack of paperwork in her hand, but she spoke without referencing it. “The one with the shotgun is Ivan Cherny. He appears to be criminal muscle, based on his arrest record. Most recently, he spent a couple nights in jail after assaulting his wife and then fighting with Officer MacLeod.”
“This is the guy who broke the officer’s leg?”
“Ankle,” Renee corrected. “Yes.”
“And he’s out two days later?”
“Welcome to our criminal justice system,” Crawford interjected. “We bust ’em, the judges let them bail out if they promise to do their homework, feed the dog, and not stay up too late.”
The chief scowled. He knew that jail was largely catch and release, but for assaulting an officer? He shook his head in disgust, then waved for Renee to continue.
“The man in the back seat was different,” she told him. “His name was Sergey Markov.”
The chief squinted at her. The name sounded familiar to him. “Wasn’t that one of the Russians the FBI was looking at?”
Renee nodded. “He was the suspected head, according to the FBI database that I had temporary access to.”
“Do they still think so?”
“I don’t know. When I came in this morning, my access had been revoked.”
“Revoked?”
She nodded.
“At oh-dark-thirty in the morning on a Saturday?”
She nodded again.
That little prick, the chief fumed. The one time having some FBI help might be worth the aggravation of dealing with people like Payne and they revoked her access?
“That sounds like something Payne would do,” Crawford said. “He was at the warehouse crime scene earlier, yelling at Chisolm for screwing up a federal investigation. He even threatened federal charges.”
The chief waved away the comment. He’d take care of Payne later. There was a newspaper reporter in DC who could whisper in the right ears for him, and the guy still owed him a favor from his days at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. And his old division commander worked at the Pentagon now, too. Payne would get his. Right now, though, the chief had some decisions to make.
“What do you think, Renee?” he asked. “Was Sergey the boss?”
She nodded. “Based on everything I could see, yes.”
“So why the hell is he doing the shooting?”
Renee paused for a moment. Then she said, “Well, sir, the witness they killed, Oleg Tretiak, was pretty much a traitor in their eyes. And being the bookkeeper for the operation, he was in a position to do a lot of damage. Eliminating him was obviously a top priority. And if the boss is the one who pulls the trigger and everyone in the organization knows it…”
The chief nodded. “Got it. Lead from the front.”
“Exactly,” Renee answered. “And send a message to the Russian community that you don’t turn state’s witness.”
“And that the boss is one mean son of a bitch,” Crawford added.
The chief considered. “A risky thing to do,” he said, “but I guess Sergey Markov believed the Romans were right.”
“Romans, sir?”
He met Renee’s questioning gaze. “Kill one, terrify a thousand.”
She nodded.
The chief sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, his mind clicking through information. He thought through several actions, anticipating the different dominos that would fall as a result. He considered the political angle, the community reaction, and the morale of the police officers.
Finally he leaned forward again.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He pointed at Reott. “I want your patrol officers to work the neighborhoods where the Russians congregate. If anyone so much as spits on the sidewalk or tosses a cigarette butt, arrest them.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to Crawford. “Work every single case with a Russian suspect that comes into the investigative office. I don’t care if it’s a felony or not. Hammer anybody with a last name that ends in ‘-ov.’ See if you can get any of them to give up information on this shooting. If someone is willing, you can deal away any charges you need to except for serious crimes against persons.”
He looked at the collected group. “We are going to, as the lieutenant put it, shake a tree and club whatever falls out. But”-he raised a finger-“we do so carefully. We are looking for information, not vengeance. And understand this-we are only going to be able to apply this pressure for so long. After a while, the ACLU will raise a hue and cry. Then the feds will start looking at us. Those idiots probably already think we screwed up their case instead of them getting one of our officers killed. Even so, the last thing I want to deal with is the Department of Justice slapping a consent decree on our agency. Understood?”
Captain Reott and Lieutenant Crawford nodded.
The chief took a deep breath and let it out. “Then that is all, gentlemen.” He glanced at Renee and realized he had just excluded her. “And thank you, Renee.”
Renee gave him a tight smile. “You’re welcome, Chief.”
He watched the three of them file out of his office. Reott closed the door behind them. The chief leaned back in his chair and walked through the dominos that would fall now that he’d issued his orders.
He knew that the troops would rejoice at his orders and carry them out with vigor. He’d get a large boost of respect from them as a result. They’d remember how he turned them loose after their brother officer was killed. Sergeants would allow vehicle pursuits to continue a little longer if there was a Russian behind the wheel of the fleeing vehicle. Any call involving a Russian suspect would get answered. Some officers might find their pound of flesh, if any of the suspects were foolish enough to resist arrest or fight outright. He knew all of that as surely as he knew his own name.
Then, once the furor over the slain officer died down, the pendulum would swing. Activists and liberals would start decrying the “genocide” being perpetrated against the Russian immigrants. Cries of ethnic profiling-an accusation that was one step away from ethnic cleansing on the more radical agendas-would start to drown out the cries of cop-killer. It was sad, but he knew it was the way things would go.
He’d have to walk the fine line, reining in the troops before things got out of hand. He’d seen the riots in different cities throughout the years and there was one thing he knew for certain-any time that happened, the chief of police was the first to go. So he’d have to be careful and know when to throw on the brakes.
But in the meantime, he was going to kick some Commie ass. If only for a little while.
THIRTEEN
Monday, July 21st
1007 hours
Val sat in his coffee shop, sipping a Turkish coffee. The harsh black brew helped wake him up, but he didn’t need it to clear his mind. Everything that he’d hoped and planned for was happening. It didn’t go exactly as he’d laid it out, but that mattered little.
Sergey was gone. Now he was the boss.
At least the police were cooperating. Already he could see the emphasis that they were putting on his people. Last night they had raided Marina’s home-soon he would call it his home-and searched the entire place. For what, Val had no clue. They had Sergey, the one they thought murdered the police officer, didn’t they? Hadn’t they found him in the Mercedes, the murder weapon still clutched in his hand?