CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jimmy met with homicide detective Romero at the Queens North Homicide Bureau. He was there to pick up some bullet casings in the hope of getting them analyzed by the FBI. But he was fighting the urge to ask about another homicide case that Romero had mentioned, involving a robbery victim wearing only one tennis shoe. Finally, he decided to ask Romero about it and to inform him about the tennis shoe that was found outside the house in Williamsburg. The case information was relevant to both detectives, and it's doubtful it would look suspicious.

"Okay," Jimmy said after signing the chain of custody papers for the shell casings. "Now, I've got something else for ya. Not sure if this is going to complicate things in the short-term, but it might help you clear another case when we wrap up this drug-dealer case."

"Oh boy," Romero said with a chuckle. "Now, I'm afraid to ask."

"Last night you were talking about a vic in an alley with just one shoe. Did the shoe look like this?"

Jimmy handed him a photograph that Eva had taken of the lone shoe sitting on the sidewalk underneath a broken window. Romero took the photograph, glanced at it, and then pulled open his desk drawer to retrieve a file folder. He thumbed through some paperwork and photographs until he found what he was looking for. He picked up the photograph from Jimmy and compared it to one he had pulled from the file.

"Shit," Romero said with a grin. "You mind going out and grabbing a lottery ticket, too? Might be my lucky day, after all. If it's not identical to what he's wearing in my picture, then it's pretty damn close. Where did you find it?"

"You're going to love this. That picture is just outside the house where we started all of this mess with the original three bodies."

"Are you shitting me," Romero asked in surprise. He turned to face his computer monitor and started furiously typing on the keyboard. Then he turned the monitor toward Jimmy and said, "Just about a half-mile from the point where that shoe is to the point where we found him. The red line is not the exact path he took, we might never know what that was. But, according to the map software, that red line is the shortest distance between those two points while on foot."

Jimmy just stood there staring at the screen. He couldn't believe it. Here was victim number four from the original scene. Finally, he said, "Lamar Tate. No wonder nobody could find him."

"Well, looks like all of this just got a little more interesting, Jimmy. I haven't gotten all the way through your notes. But I think it's safe to say that the most likely scenario here is that, whatever happened in that house, this guy made it out and tried to run back over here."

"It makes sense," Jimmy said. "He's from Queens. He's scared, maybe running for his life. He heads toward something familiar, wants to get back on his own turf."

"And the whole mess gets scarier now," Romero said. "It's possible that him being shot in that alley was pure coincidence. But I'm betting somebody from that house chased him down and finished things right there in the alley."

Jimmy picked up a few more photographs from the file and began studying them. "Yeah, it's possible this dumpster was his first stopping point. The body position, and the brains on the wall behind him, suggest that he was kneeling down and peeking around the corner of the dumpster when he took the bullets."

"Looking at your pictures, again," Romero said. "I think Eva was on to something with the window thing."

Jimmy looked up from the photograph that he was holding.

Romero arranged a mix of the photographs on his desk and said, "Look at what we know now…"

"What we think we know," Jimmy corrected him.

"Huh? Yeah, whatever. Look at the window, the shoe, the shortest distance to the alley, and the vic's final moment alive. He came through that window, lost his shoe, took off running for home, and somebody eventually got his ass in the alley. Now, it's not a straight line, nor is there any great line of sight. So, whoever plugged him knew exactly where he was when he peeked around that dumpster. Somebody chased his ass down."

"Huh," Jimmy exclaimed. "What is this kid, twenty, twenty-one years old? Maybe he weighs in at a hundred-and-fifty pounds. He's just jumped out of a window, bad people are chasing him, adrenaline is pumping…"

"And nobody runs like a street kid in New York," Romero observed.

"Exactly," Jimmy confirmed. "At this point, the kid probably could have outrun a bullet. So, whoever was on him is in pretty good shape."

"Don't look at me," Romero said. "These days, I get tired just running my mouth."

"Yeah," Jimmy agreed. "I'm not far behind ya. But think about this. While that doesn't give us a suspect, it can surely help us narrow down some things if we have a list of suspects."

"Something else, here," Romero said. "This guy has blood all over him, most of it not his. See all this blood on the front of him? That's an explosive spray pattern, but it ain't his. That's been another problem of mine. But now that I have people that I can compare it to, I'll have the lab run it and see if it matches anyone at your house over there."

"There's obviously more than one suspect involved here," Jimmy said. "But until now, we never considered the possibility of another victim. Or that one of the suspects could try out for the Olympics. Now, based on the shoe, and probably the blood spatter, I'm thinking that your alley case is actually part of my triple-homicide. So, that should help improve your clearance rate, eh?"

"Oh, that's funny, Jimmy," Romero said. "If you think there's any chance you're not taking my case out that door with you today, then you've got more denial than the Vatican during Lent."

"We can't just leave him in some fucking alley," Roman shouted. "He's one of us. He deserves way better than that."

"Think about what he would say if he had a vote," Hodges said softly. "His thoughts were always about us, he always put us ahead of himself. I will always love him for that. But if he were here, if he had something to say about this, he would want to protect us. He would tell us to plan it out to protect the squad."

"I know that," Roman fired back. "But what the fuck is going to protect me from having to remember this shit? How in the fuck do I leave my brother in an alley somewhere? How the fuck do I not remember that?"

"You don't remember it like that," Hodges gently said. "You remember that he was the type of guy that he was, that he would prefer being left like that if it protected you. You remember that he was your brother and that he would be seriously angry if you put your emotions out in front of your career."

"It's just not that fucking easy," Roman said.

"It's not supposed to be," Hodges told him. "If it were, there would be something seriously wrong with you. Nothing is easy about anything we do. But we have to do what's best overall. Gil died for this fucking cause of ours. It's up to us to make sure this cause keeps going. It's up to us to make sure that he didn't give his life for nothing."

"But he did die for nothing," Roman spit out. "Last night was bullshit. We never should have been there. We all said it, and we all knew it. Where the fuck is Ortiz, anyway?"

"It is what it is, brother," Hodges said. "We all had a chance to bail on the plan, but we went with it, anyway. So, now we have to deal with the results. Right now, that means that we have to think about Gil and what he would have wanted. It's a grim task, but we have to deal with it soon. The longer we wait, the more risk we create."

"What about him," Roman asked, nodding towards Ortiz's empty desk.

"He's out creating an alibi for himself. We'll need to do the same. If we all have the same alibi, somebody is going to wonder what the odds are that three of us were out together without our fourth guy."

"Fine. I get the alibi thing. But what's the point of putting Gil in a random alley somewhere? Why don't we take him out to sea and sink his body? Then nobody knows anything."

"Because," Hodges explained. "If he just comes up missing, then it will become a huge problem. That will have people looking at all of our histories in a way that we don't want. If it appears like a homicide, then we are the last ones they will look at, just because we're cops."

"Then what's up with the whole alley idea," Roman asked.

"Misdirection. They are going to know with one glance that he was not killed in whatever alley that he's found in. That will make it obvious that someone killed him and dumped him. The anger created from that alone will keep them busy looking at all sorts of angles that don't involve us."

"You really think they'll figure out all that," Roman asked?

"Oh yeah, they will," Hodges said. "He's a fellow officer, so the investigation is going to be rigorous. That's why we need to give them some answers to begin with. It gives them something to chase. And then, if they run out of clues to pursue, they'll eventually shelf the case with the bits of information that they know."

"And, how's that better than a burial at sea?"

"Because this is going to piss off a lot of people. If they have no answers, they will not stop searching until they get some. But this way they know what happened, they just don't know how or why. In time, they can learn to live with that. We see shit that doesn't make sense everyday."

"And, you're sure all this is going to work," Roman asked.

"Shit, I'm not sure of anything," Hodges replied. "But I do know that people generally see what they want to see. The politicians are going to want this to go away quickly, it's an election year. Next, you can't do the fucking job if all you can think about is how dangerous it can get. That is why the case will eventually go cold. Sooner or later, we have to let it go so that we can still do our jobs."

"Jesus," Roman said in disbelief. "You take a class on this shit or something?"

"Nope," Hodges replied. "But I don't drink much, I live alone, and I think too damn much."

"I'll tell ya what you need," Roman said. "You need a fucking hobby or a dog or something."

"I've got a hobby," Hodges said. "I collect reasons to get out of bed every morning. When those start running out, I'll be really fucked."

Jimmy met up with Marcus at the FBI's NYC office in Manhattan. He dropped off the shell casings, updated Marcus on what he had come up with so far, and asked him to get printed data for the fingerprints, if possible. He wanted to compare the prints on these shell casings from the alley murder to the shell casings found at the scene in front of Jimmy's apartment.

Then he headed back to the Homicide Bureau to check in and update the lieutenant on what he had learned so far. That's when he got a very strange phone call from homicide detective George Romero in Queens.

"Jimmy, I heard something through the grapevine that might interest you," Romero said.

"What's up," Jimmy asked.

"Last night, over in Jamaica, there was an attempted home invasion. But things didn't go exactly as planned for the suspects."

"Okay," Jimmy said. "Why does that interest me?"

"Because," Romero explained. "There were four guys, dressed in all black, with high-power weapons. They attempted to enter the front and rear doors simultaneously, and they left two breaching bars behind."

"No shit, anything else left behind," Jimmy asked hopefully. "Maybe a picture ID with a current home address? C'mon, George, tell me they left something behind that I can use."

"Sorry," Romero said. "Nothing useful. They found some blood, but they couldn't check the DNA because the blood trail ran through a bunch of grass that is treated with some chemical. No fingerprints anywhere. The breaching bars are DIY jobs that somebody created in their basement or garage or whatever, so no tracing those. There were shots fired from both sides, but nobody inside the house was hit."

"Was this another dealer," Jimmy asked. "In that neighborhood?"

"It sure was," Romero said. "The 103rd precinct got a call last night about shots fired in the area. They sent a patrol unit over to check the area. Patrol finds the house, assesses the scene as a crime, and radios it in. Next, they try to check on the well-being of the house occupants, but nobody will answer the door. So, ESU surrounds the place, the occupants realize if they don't come out then ESU is coming in. Turns out the place is loaded with drugs, cash, weapons, and all the trimmings."

"No wonder they didn't want to come out," Jimmy observed.

"Exactly," Romero said. "They didn't call us, and they didn't want us there. But, God bless nosy neighbors. The front door was blocked by a huge three-thousand pound floor safe. Plus, the rear entrance had a giant steel sally port built into it with two steel doors. The suspects were able to breach the outside door, but the hallway of the sally port was so narrow that they couldn't get the leverage to pry open the second door. It's a well-thought-out design."

"So far, you're right, it doesn't sound like there's much there that I can use for my case. But I would like to make a note of it in my file, just in case something comes up later. Can you send me the contact details for this? Even better, who is doing the follow-through on this? I can reach out to them myself."

"Major Case picked this one up since it was technically a home invasion. They're currently sparring with our narcotics guys over the contents of the house. But somebody in Major Case will be handling the stuff you're interested in."

"Great," Jimmy said. "Hopefully they are doing follow-up with hospitals for gunshot wounds. I'll give it a day or two and reach out. If they aren't doing it, then I'll start calling hospitals myself, cause I really am curious if this is our guys."

"Might be them," Romero said. "Certainly sounds right. But, who knows? People kick doors in every day, so…"

"Yeah," Jimmy agreed. "But this is still worth following up on, just in case it is the guys I'm looking for. A four-man crew would certainly explain a lot. Thanks for the heads-up, George."

"Where are we," Ortiz asked.

"Gil's body is in an alley over in Harlem," Hodges said. "Then we took the van over to Brooklyn and set it on fire in Flatbush. The van will never come back to us. It won't take long before Gil is found. But, last night was a mess, and there's no telling if he left any DNA behind. So, now it's time to wait and see."

"Well," Ortiz said. "We probably need to chill out with our off-duty activities for a little while. No use making any more waves than we already have."

"How in the fuck are you so cool about all this," Roman asked Ortiz. "That shit last night cost him his life, and you're all like, fuck it, let's just go back to being cops."

"I'm cool right now because I have to be," Ortiz said. "It doesn't mean I'm alright with it. But I can't afford to be angry right now. Nobody even knows he's missing except for us. And I can't say anything for a day or two because I have to look like I'm trying to cover for him. That's why I'm so cool about all of this. I have to be."

"I don't have to be shit," Roman said. "I'm pissed, and I'm feeling the loss no matter what in the hell you say."

"Rome, he's right," Hodges said. "When he puts out a report about Gil not showing up for work for two days, not calling in, etc., they are going to send people to talk to us. Or, if they identify him before he reports it, then they are going to come ask questions. Either way, we all have to be cool until we get the news from them that he's gone, bro."

"What about the Rabbi," Roman asked. "Do we need to tell him? Are we going to need him for help with this shit now?"

"No, fuck no," Ortiz said. "He's a politician. He's already tried to distance himself from us. God only knows how he's going to react when he finds out that Gil is dead. No matter what comes up, we don't tell him shit. Nothing good can come from any reaction that he has."