his apartment.
Looking down over the balcony, he saw that Roy hadn’t gotten into his car yet. He stood under the light from the pole behind him, staring at a car pulling into the lot. As Jack hobbled toward the stairs, he kept checking on Roy and then shifted his attention to the car. A Ford Taurus, dark, two men in the front. He relaxed, recognizing the unmarked police car. HPD had half a dozen just like it for the vice boys.
Knowing they’d check out Roy and hold him for a while, Jack slowed his pace, but didn’t stop. As he reached the staircase, he realized he hadn’t asked what hospital Roy’s wife was in or what had happened to her. Why in hell he’d have to leave his kid behind, especially with him. Jack didn’t know spit about kids, except that they were noisy and they usually smelled bad.
The steps weren’t easy for him, and he had to lean on the railing just the right way. As he lowered his bad leg, he heard two short pops, and he froze, except for his thumb which released the safety on his gun almost of its own accord. The sound was unmistakable. Gunshots through a silencer.
He looked down to see Roy on the ground, a dark stain spreading on his chest. The cop in the passenger seat jumped out of the car and bent over to evaluate his work.
Jack’s every instinct urged him to hurry. To find out what the hell was going on. This was bad. It was bad in a way he could feel all the way to his bones. Cops didn’t shoot like that. Not an unarmed man.
But he couldn’t hurry. The best he could do was take the steps one at a time, forcing the pain to the back of his mind to be remembered in vivid detail later. He watched the cop stand and head back for the car. “Hey! Wait!”
But either the cop didn’t hear him or he didn’t care, because he just kept on going. Even though Jack tried like hell, he couldn’t make out the guy’s features. The way he stood, he was more of a shadow than a man, and then he was back in the car. The driver hit the gas so hard the car lurched forward, tires squealing.
A light went on in the apartment on Jack’s left, and then a woman’s head poked out the door. She looked at him with terror in her eyes.
“Call 911,” he said. “Now.”
Her head snapped back and the door slammed shut, and he could hear the dead bolt click as he finally reached the parking lot. He hoped the woman would do as he asked, but from the way Roy looked, she didn’t have to rush. Jack could see the unnatural attitude of the body, the crooked way Roy’s head lay.
Cursing his luck, he made his way over, and as he moved next to Roy he saw the dark pool of blood blossom around the motionless arms and chest. A man’s life seeping into the filthy asphalt.
Then he saw a movement. One he hadn’t expected. Roy’s head tilted to the left, and Jack saw his eyes open, then close. Jack bent his good leg, holding on to the cane with all his might as he eased down to his knees. It hurt like hell, but Roy was alive. Trying to say something.
“Protect her…” he said, his voice as whispery as a ghost. “Get the money. Don’t…” He stopped, frozen in a seizure, then relaxing nearer to death. “The cops…Don’t…”
The last word was drowned in a sickening gurgle, and Roy was gone. Jack put his hand to Roy’s neck, checking the jugular for a pulse. Nothing. Stone-cold nothing.
Jack looked back at the apartment building. Several lights were on now, although no one had come outside. They all stayed behind their plywood doors, as if that could keep them safe. He heard a distant siren, which, he supposed, was all he had a right to expect.
If he hadn’t been caught so off guard, he never would have let Roy leave his kid behind. He’d never have let Roy leave at all, at least not until he understood what was going on. But he had been caught, and he had taken the kid and let the father go. So while everyone else in the building stayed inside, peeking through parted curtains, he was left with a kid, a body and one hell of a question. Why had the cops gunned down Roy Chandler in cold blood?
It took him a couple of awkward minutes to stand again. By that time, a patrol car, familiar blue, arrived. The car stopped a couple of hundred feet away, so the cops wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. The doors opened and Jack recognized Bill Haggart immediately, just from the way the man stood.
Haggart was an old-timer who’d never managed to pass the sergeant’s exam. He’d gotten Jack out of a scrape or two through the years, and while Jack didn’t consider him the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he was a good cop who understood the street.
“Bored, were you?” Haggart said as he gave Roy’s body a once-over.
“Yeah,” Jack said, wishing like hell he could sit down. “Finished all my crossword puzzles.”
Jack didn’t know the driver of the patrol car well. Fetzer was his name. Paul Fetzer. Young guy, Nordic-looking with his white-blond hair and pale skin. Jack had heard he was a hot dog, looking to get into homicide, but just like everyone else, he needed to do his time. Putting him with Haggart was probably good for both of them.
“What happened?” Paul asked, moving next to Haggart. “You know him?”
“He lives in the building,” Jack said. “I’ve seen him around.”
“You see who did this?” Haggart asked, his voice dramatically sharper now that Paul was listening.
Jack decided right then that he wasn’t going to tell them about the unmarked car. He wasn’t sure why, just a feeling. He’d learned to listen to his gut reactions. At least most of the time. The bullet in his hip was a good reminder of what happened when he didn’t. “I saw a car. It was too dark to make out anything much. It was a sedan, late model. They used a silencer. I heard two shots.”
“They?” Paul repeated. “There was more than one?”
Jack nodded. “Driver and passenger. Both males. I couldn’t see if they were Caucasians. The light hit the car wrong, and all I got were shadows. I couldn’t run after them to get the license plate.”
“Pardon me for being blunt,” Haggart said, “but you look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. The ambulance should be here any second. Maybe you should let the paramedics take a look at you.”
“I’m fine. You might as well call them off. Get someone from the medical examiner’s office down here.”
“Did you touch anything?” Paul asked as he moved closer to Roy and crouched down. He pulled out his flashlight, and focused the beam on Roy’s chest. It looked to Jack like it had been a large-caliber weapon. There was a hell of a lot of damage.
“I touched his neck for a pulse,” Jack said. “That’s it.”
“How’d you happen to see this?” Haggart asked.
“Insomnia,” Jack answered, not lying exactly. Just not telling the whole story.
“Out for a walk at this time of night?”
He shook his head. “I heard something. I came outside, saw the car, heard the shots. By the time I made it down the stairs, Roy here was dead and the car was long gone.”
“Roy what?”
