I rubbed the side of my nose with my finger and turned toward the hallway. “Well, let’s put a lock on the place until the assistant ME and Tyler get through with it.”
Billy followed me out without saying a word.
The usual morning banter was lacking in the squad room a few hours later. The greetings were muted, questions about one another’s progress went unasked. I sat in my room, looking out the interoffice window, and watched my professional family coping with a combination of grief and anger. The newspaper had run the story with banner headlines, as expected, and while Katz had stuck to the facts as he knew them, keeping as neutral a voice as possible, the effect simulated the turning on of a bright, hot spotlight, aimed at people who had already been feeling the heat for too long. I was worried about the department’s ability to bear the load for much longer, and I wondered what form the first sign of their collapse might take.
On the other hand, their muffled demeanor would make my bit of planned theater that much easier to enact and would lend credibility to their reaction.
I went to my door and waved them into my office, an unusual but not unprecedented event. I wanted to be sure that what I was about to say would be picked up by the bug. There were just four of them: Tyler, Martens, DeFlorio, and Pierre Lavoie. Ron was under doctor’s orders to remain at home with his leg elevated and wrapped in ice packs.
“I got some news last night that might brighten your day a bit. I talked to a snitch who swears he’s got a witness to the Jardine burial.”
“Where’s he been hiding?” DeFlorio interrupted. “I thought I’d turned over every rock in this town.”
“Well, you missed this one. From what I heard, this guy may well have what we’re after. He’s not going to be an easy witness, though. He only wants to meet with me, alone, and only late tonight.”
“Where?” Sammie asked.
“I don’t know yet. I’m supposed to get a call later today-I guess so we can’t seal the area off.”
“Why’s he so nervous?”
“It seems we’ve been trying to put a roof over his head, courtesy of the state, for some time now. He’s also scared shitless that the same guy who came after Jardine and Milly may come after him.”
DeFlorio was shaking his head. “So why talk to us? Why not just lay low?”
“Because keeping out of our sights was getting difficult enough without worrying about getting his tail shot off. I think he’s looking for a deal-he’ll finger the bad guy if we drop what we’ve got against him. That way, he gets to walk around in plain sight again.”
“Can we figure out who it is by going over our fugitive warrants?”
“We could try, but he may be wanted under some other paperwork. Besides, we’d still be guessing. For all I know, the guy’s full of it and we’re just getting our chains yanked. I think we should wait for the call, give the meeting location a very loose net, if we have the time, and otherwise just wing it. There’s no indication of anything risky here; it’s just a meet with a snitch.” I stood up and moved to the door, the sheaf of papers I’d worked on the night before in my hand. “Given the events of last night, I’m going to give a pass to this morning’s usual meeting. Let’s just hit the streets and see if we can beat this snitch to the facts.”
I received several odd looks. If anything, an event like John’s death would guarantee a gathering of the minds, not the reverse. The looks got even odder as I handed out the sheets of paper, pausing each time to place my finger to my lips in a sign of silence. Only DeFlorio ignored me. “What’s this?”
Everyone stared at him, since the first line on the pages they were all now holding read, “Watch out-the office is bugged.”
I shook my head, but answered in a nonchalant tone. “Just a copy of the press release on John’s death, in case a reporter ambushes you.”
DeFlorio’s face reddened as he read the first line and the others beneath it. His embarrassment was such I could tell he was about to apologize, so I patted him on the shoulder and gave him a gentle shove out the door.
We reconvened two hours later in the medical director’s office overlooking the truck bay at the Rescue, Inc. ambulance service. I’d chosen it because it was remote, tucked under the high ceiling, and accessible only by a single wooden staircase leading down to the bay, and because it was as unlikely a meeting place for us as I could imagine. The legal occupant of the room had been only too willing to help me out for an hour by taking his paperwork elsewhere. I’d been here once before, to discuss some public awareness event in which the police and fire departments were to put on a show with Rescue, and it was the one place I’d thought of last night that would be well-nigh impossible to bug on short notice, unless one of the people entering it carried the bug in with him.
There was no chitchat from any of them as they filed noisily up the stairs. The note I’d given them had pointed out the need for discretion, both in the office and on any department phones. It had also dictated their times of departure from the Municipal Building to arrive here so that our eavesdropper wouldn’t become suspicious at our all leaving at once. Their silence was a testament to their understanding of how fragile a functioning unit we’d become.
I waited until the last of them had found a seat in the tiny crow’s-nest of an office. I stood by the long, rectangular window looking down onto the trucks below, noticing that the gleaming shininess of all four ambulances didn’t extend to their otherwise invisible flat roofs.
I nodded over to J.P. Tyler, who was holding his AM radio. “You all set?”
He nodded, switched it on, and began to play the antenna around the room, and the people in it, much as he had on the day before. I addressed the stunned expressions before me. “This is only to protect us all. If this bastard could bug my own office, he could sure as hell find a way to slip a bug into one of your pockets, so please bear with me.”
After some twenty minutes, he sat back down and turned off the quietly hissing radio. “Okay.”
I cleared my throat, relieved. “In case you haven’t figured it out by now, tonight’s meeting with a snitch is bogus. I’m hoping that when whoever’s at the other end of the bug in my office hears he’s about to be blown, he’ll try to cover his tracks, just as he did when he killed Milly Crawford.”
“And John Woll?” asked Tyler.
It was a legitimate question, if a bit theatrical. I’d spent all night watching Tyler work, and the State Police Mobile Crime Lab, which I’d insisted should join us. They had all examined the crime scene in detail and hadn’t found anything out of place, except, as the state boys were quick to point out, what Billy’s people had trampled. Hillstrom hadn’t contacted me yet about John’s autopsy, a fact Tyler knew, so I was curious what had prompted his rejoinder.
“John was murdered?” Sammie asked, an incredulous look on her face.
Tyler crossed his arms. “I think so.”
“Based on what?” I asked.
He let out a sigh. “Just before I came over here, I got a visit from Dunn’s investigator. The SA decided-a little late-to let me see John’s fingerprints. They don’t match what I lifted from the curare bottles.”
A general murmuring filled the room.
I raised both my hands. “Okay, hold it. Let’s talk about John a bit. I don’t argue that his death might have been a homicide; the state crime lab is looking into that, and so is Beverly Hillstrom. But I also don’t see where it would have benefited anyone to kill him. On the face of it, he was a prime candidate for suicide, and I think we all ought to admit that’s a strong possibility. None of us likes to think a friend, much less a colleague, could be pushed that far; maybe there’s an element of guilt here. I do know, though, that we can’t let it derail us. It’s just possible, at long last, that we’ve gained an advantage; sure as hell, the attempt to destroy those curare bottles proves we’re giving this guy a hotfoot.”