The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (6 page)

“Easy,” Gables commanded. “If you attempt to reach for your weapon I will put two bullets into your skull. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Can I stand up? My knees aren't what they once were.”

“Slowly. Your hands always in my sightline.”

“Absolutely.”

Bosch started to get up slowly, turning toward her at the same time. She was pointing a handgun with a suppressor attached to the barrel.

“Easy,” he said. “Just take it easy here.”

“No, you take it easy. I could shoot you where you stand and be within my rights.”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, that's not true. You know I'm a cop.”

“Yeah, a rogue cop. What did you think you were going to find here?”

“Evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Randolph and McIntyre. Maybe others. You killed them.”

“And, what, you thought I'd just keep the evidence around? Hide it in a locker in my home?”

“Something like that. Can I sit down?”

“The chair behind the desk. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Bosch slowly sat down. She was still standing in the doorway. He now had 60 percent of his body shielded by the desk. He had his back to the file cabinets. The light was coming in from behind and above him. He noticed she had now lowered the muzzle to point at his chest. This was good, though from this range he doubted the Kevlar would completely stop a bullet from a nine-millimeter, even with the suppressor slowing it down. He kept his hands up and close to his face.

“So now what?” he asked.

“So now you tell me what you think you've got on me.”

Bosch shook his head as if to say,
Not much
. “You lied. The other day. You didn't mention the McIntyre case. You didn't want us linking the cases through you. The trouble is we already had.”

“And that's it? Are you kidding me?”

“That's it. Till now.”

He nodded at her weapon. It seemed to confirm all hunches.

“So without a real case and the search warrant to go with it, of course you decided to break in here to see what you could find.”

“Not exactly.”

“We have a problem, Detective Bosch.”

“No, you have the problem. You're a killer and I'm onto you. Put the weapon down. You're under arrest.”

She laughed and waggled the gun in her hand.

“You forget one thing. I have the gun.”

“But you won't use it. You don't kill people like me. You kill the abusers, the predators.”

“I could make an exception. You've broken the law by breaking in here. There are no gray areas. Who knows, maybe you came to
plant
evidence here, not find it. Maybe you
are
like them.”

Bosch started lowering his hands to the desktop.

“Be careful, Detective.”

“I'm tired of holding them up. And I know you're not going to shoot me. It's not part of your program.”

“I told you, programs change.”

“How do you pick them?”

She stared at him a long time, then finally answered.

“They pick themselves. They deserve what they get.”

“No judge, no jury. Just you.”

“Don't tell me you haven't wished you could do the same thing.”

“Sure, on occasion. But there are rules. We don't live by them, then where does it all go?”

“Right here, I guess. What am I going to do about you?”

“Nothing. You kill me and you know it's over. You'll be like one of them—the abusers and the predators. Put the gun down.”

She took two steps into the room. The muzzle came up toward his face. Bosch saw that deadly black eye rising in slow motion.

“You're wearing a vest, aren't you?”

He nodded.

“I could see it in your eyes. The fear comes up when the gun comes up.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I'm not afraid. You won't shoot me.”

“I still see fear.”

“Not for me. It's for you. How many have there been?”

She paused, maybe to decide what to tell him, or maybe just to decide what to do. Or maybe she was stuck on his answer about the fear.

“More than you'll ever know. More than anybody will ever know. Look, I'm sorry, you know?”

“About what?”

“About there being only one real way out of this. For me.”

The muzzle steadied, its aim at his eyes.

“Before you pull that trigger, can I show you something?”

“It won't matter.”

“I think it will. It's in my inside jacket pocket.”

She frowned, then made a signal with the gun.

“Show me your wrists. Where's your watch?”

Bosch raised his hands and his jacket sleeves came down, showing his watch on his right wrist. He was left-handed.

“Okay, take out whatever it is you need to show me with your right hand. Slowly, Detective, slowly.”

“You got it.”

Bosch reached in and with great deliberation pulled out the folded document. He handed it across the desk to her.

“Just put it down and then lean away.”

He followed her instructions. She waited for him to move back and then picked up the document. With one hand she unfolded it and took a glance, taking her eyes off Bosch for no more than a millisecond.

“I'm not going to be able to read it. What is it?”

“It's a no-knock search warrant. I have broken no law by being here. I'm not one of them.”

She stared at him for a silent thirty seconds and then finally smirked.

“You have to be kidding me. What judge would sign such a search warrant? You had zero probable cause.”

“I had your lies and your proximity to two murders. And I had Judge Oscar Ortiz—you remember him?”

“Who is he?”

“Back in 1999 he had the McIntyre case. But you took it away from him when you executed McIntyre. Getting him to sign this search warrant wasn't hard once I reminded him about the case.”

Anger worked into her face. The muzzle started to come up again.

“All I have to say is one word,” Bosch said. “A one-syllable word.”

“And what?”

“And you're dead.”

She froze, and slowly her eyes rose from Bosch's face to the windows over the file cabinets.

“You opened the blinds,” she said.

“Yes.”

Bosch studied the two red laser dots that had played on her face since she had entered the room, one high on her forehead, the other on her chin. Bosch knew that the lasers did not account for bullet drop, but the SWAT sharpshooters on the roof of the house across the street did. The chin dot was the heart shot.

Gables seemed frozen, unable to choose whether to live or die.

“There's a lot you could tell us,” he said. “We could learn from you. Why don't you just put the gun down and we can get started.”

He slowly started to lean forward, raising his left hand to take the gun.

“I don't think so,” she said.

She brought the muzzle up but he didn't say the word. He didn't think she'd shoot.

There were three sounds in immediate succession. The breaking of glass as the bullet passed through the window. A sound like an ice cream cone dropping on the sidewalk as the bullet passed through her chest. And then the
thock
of the slug hitting the door frame behind her.

A fine mist of blood started to fill the room.

Gables took a step backward and looked down at her chest as her arms dropped to her sides. The gun made a dull sound when it hit the carpet.

She glanced up at Bosch with a confused look. In a strained voice she asked her last question.

“What was the word?”

She then dropped to the floor.

Staying below the level of the file cabinets, Bosch left the desk and came around to her on the floor. He slid the gun out of reach and looked down at her eyes. He knew there was nothing he could do. The bullet had exploded her heart.

“You bastards!” he yelled. “I didn't say it! I didn't say the word!”

Gables closed her eyes and Bosch thought she was gone.

“We're clear!” he said. “Suspect is ten-seven. Repeat, suspect is ten-seven. Weapons, stand down.”

He started to get up but saw that Gables had opened her eyes.

“Nine,” she whispered, blood coming up on her lips.

Bosch leaned down to her.

“What?”

“I killed nine.”

She nodded and then closed her eyes again. He knew that this time she was gone, but he nodded anyway.

O'NEIL DE NOUX

FROM
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

 

Detective joseph savary counted nineteen people on Felicity Street. Four older men sat on folding chairs outside Ojubi's Barbershop, two women swept the sidewalk beyond the shop, two others hosed off their stoops while chatting with each other, three boys rode around on bicycles, four girls hovered between a parked blue Chevy and a dark green Pontiac, two young men leaned against the outer wall of the laundromat, another two sat on the loading dock of the long-abandoned warehouse and pretended they weren't watching the plainclothesman. Savary tapped down his black sunglasses and gleeked the men on the loading dock. No reaction.

Savary had left his suit coat in his unmarked gray Chevy Impala. He was glad he wore a white shirt today, as the sweat wouldn't show. He loosened his sky-blue tie and rested a hand atop the grip of the nine-millimeter Glock 17 semiautomatic resting in its Kydex holster on his left hip, next to the gold star-and-crescent NOPD badge clipped to his belt. He stood stiffly in front of the boarded-up door of Jeanfreau's Grocery and glanced at his watch. Two
P.M
. exactly. Same time, same day—a Wednesday—as two months ago. On that Wednesday, a lone black male put a bullet into the forehead of Jack Hudson, the owner of Jeanfreau's. Grainy black-and-white video showed a young, thin African-American male in a white T-shirt and low-riding jeans, pulling out a forty-caliber semiautomatic, pointing it at the gray-haired old man. The weapon was tilted on its side, gangster-style, waving in the right hand of the shooter. Jack Hudson, a man who'd bragged he was part Zulu and once shook Martin Luther King's hand, exchanged words with the gunman, touched his chin, and the big pistol went off, snapping Hudson's head back. The shooter went around, had to kick Hudson out of the way to empty the cash register, stuffing cash in his pockets, snatching two candy bars on his way out. Looked like Milky Way bars, maybe Snickers.

Savary fitted his sunglasses back up and stepped over to Ojubi's Barbershop. The four men outside, all over fifty, stopped talking. The barber, in a white smock and black pants, stood and stretched.

“Afternoon,” Savary said.

The barber nodded.

“Back again, huh?” The barber was Willie Ellzey, who lived on Terpsichore Street but stayed with his woman on Eurphrosine, as he'd explained. Savary looked at the only man he hadn't spoken to on his four previous canvasses, twice in the morning, twice in the evening.

“I'm Joe Savary,” he told the skinny man with blue-black skin as dark as Savary's. “I'm working on—”

“Jeanfreau.” The man didn't look up. “We know.”

“What's your name?”

A pair of bloodshot eyes met his and the man said, “Joe Clay. You wanna see my ID?” The voice was harsh, challenging.

“That would be nice.” Savary pulled out his notebook as the man reached around for his wallet, took out his driver's license. Savary copied down the details.

“You come around here often, Mr. Clay?”

Savary got the same answers he'd been getting since he took over the case. No one saw anything or heard anything. No matter that Jack Hudson was a neighbor, had run the neighborhood grocery store since old man Jeanfreau died in 1968. It was as obvious as the nose on the detective's face. A local boy did this, but no one was giving him up to the police. It didn't even matter if Savary was raised three blocks away on Erato Street. The day he started the police academy was the day he'd left the neighborhood—permanently.

He moved to the women. He'd spoken to some of them before, the two young men by the laundromat as well. One was the son of a fireman and was actually civil to Savary, the other barely mumbled responses. The two sitting on the dilapidated warehouse loading dock who pretended they weren't watching Savary would not even look at him as he stepped up.

“Police,” he said to the taller of the two. Both were maybe twenty, both in white T-shirts and those long shorts with the crotch below the knees. “What's your name?”

Nothing.

“Stand up.”

“Say what?”

“Stand up before I yank you up by your ears.”

The taller one stood slowly and Savary, who towered over the man, patted him down.

“Man, you can't just search us,” said the shorter one.

“I'm not searching your friend. I'm patting him down.
Terry versus Ohio
. Look it up. If a police officer has reasonable suspicion that a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, the officer can pat that person down for weapons. For officer safety as well.”

Savary found something. “That a cell phone and a wallet?”

The tall man nodded.

“Take them out. Let's see some ID.”

The smaller one stood and raised his hands. Savary patted him down as well.

“What crime we did?”

Savary nodded to the large sign nailed to the wall of the warehouse which read
POSTED—NO TRESPASSING
.

“I don't write the laws. I just enforce them.” As Savary jotted down their names, addresses, cell-phone numbers before passing their IDs and cell phones back, he asked about Jeanfreau's and received the usual information. Nothing. He called in their names, had both run through the police computer. Both had records, but no felonies and nothing around the neighborhood. “Thank you for your cooperation.”