Chapter 3: Heaven Only Knows
If you ever wonder why there are cops who almost never seem to get the job done, I’ll give you one possible explanation that doesn’t include: “They’re putting in the hours until they collect their pension.” The short version? Paperwork. Dotting every i, crossing every T, eats up more time than is reasonable. It’s why there are a lot of guys who don’t bother with small arrests, like marijuana—if we arrested everyone who did it, we’d spend more time doing paperwork than anything else. Sad, but true.
This means that, even though I hadn’t gone near Hayes before the confrontation in the station house that morning and I had been in plain sight of dozens of witnesses (and the cameras) since he was hauled away, my entire day had been eaten up by a skirmish that took less than five minutes. The cleanup, reports, filings, and all of that took until noon. Then Hayes was found dead. He was apparently dead a few minutes after he had been restrained in his cell.
It took an additional ninety minutes for two men from Internal Affairs to show up, Horowitz and McNally. They were both older men, which was unusual—the majority of IA guys liked getting the heck out of there when they can. It took a special sort of mindset to join the police only to hunt crooked cops. Some liked the power, and liked abusing it when they could get away with it. Some thought it was just something that needed to be done. Some enjoyed it.
In the case of Horowitz and McNally, they were casually known as Statler and Waldorf. Neither looked like the old heckling Muppets who critiqued The Muppet Show, but sometimes cop humor didn’t necessarily have to hook onto anything but a superficial trait.
They broke out a tape recorder, placed it on the table, and hit record. They gave their names, my name, and the name of my PBA representative, who was also in the room. They added that this was part of the investigation into the death of Simon Hayes. It was the first time I had even heard his first name.
“Just to start with,” McNally began, “we went over your file. You’ve never had any previous contact with the victim. Is that correct?”
“Not as a perp or as a victim,” I answered. “Though I would be hard-pressed to call him a victim in this case. He did attack a room full of police officers, several of whom are in the hospital right now.”
Horowitz nodded. “I noted your arrest history. It seems to be all over the place. You even seem to arrest people while you’re not officially on the clock.”
“I just want to do the job. I live in the precinct, and I do my duty. Is that a problem?
McNally shook his head. “No, not at all. But with your speed of promotion, we’d expected a little more emphasis on higher-profile crimes.”
Horowitz caught the ping-pong ball of the conversation and threw it at me. “Looking at your arrest record, ever since you’ve been promoted to homicide, you still bring in the same criminals you were while you were in a blue-and-white.”
“What can I say? I want to do the job at every level. Didn’t think that was a crime.”
McNally shrugged. “It isn’t. But you’re a little strange. You know that? People never complain about you.”
I raised a brow. “I thought that was a good thing.”
“Almost every cop in existence has had a complaint filed against him,” Horowitz answered.
“It’s a perk of the job,” McNally added.
“At least half the time, it’s a complaint that the punks got arrested in the first place,” Horowitz added. “But you don’t seem to even get those jokers. I’d almost suggest you don’t do your job if it weren’t for your arrest record.”
I leaned back and shrugged. “I just talk to them.”
“Talk to them?”
I nodded. “I make conversation. No reason not to. A lot of the guys we arrest aren’t bad guys, just guys who do bad things. No reason not to talk to the parts that are still okay inside.”
Horowitz arched a brow and looked at me like I was an alien. “People who talk like that generally don’t like cops.”
That got me to snicker. “Defense attorneys and Innocence Project idiots talk about the fundamental goodness of mass murderers, and they’ll cry police brutality if the cuffs leave chafe marks. But if someone steals their TV, they’ll demand the death penalty. It’s guys on my end that understand criminals better.” I gestured to my file, at one specific case. “Right there, for example, that Humphreys guy. Found him over his wife’s dead body with the shotgun, crying over her, even though he killed her. Prosecution gave him less time than that Invernizzi guy, since guys who kill their spouse are less likely to do it ever again, even if they get married again. In Humphreys’ case, he was sorry a few seconds after he did it. He was a good guy who did a bad thing but that doesn’t mean we don’t punish him.”
“You deal with a lot of those ‘good people’?” McNally asked.
“Everybody on the job does. It’s just hard to see under the bullshit, when they’re angry or jacked up. Get them calm enough, you can usually talk to them. The wannabe gangbangers south of Jamaica Avenue are harder to deal with, but I’ve come to an understanding with most of them.”
I could see McNally’s eyes light up with the prospect of getting me to confess to taking bribes. “Really?”
“Yeah. We’re basically the old cartoon, with the sheepdog and the coyote? We come to work, we punch in, and we’re antagonists. We punch out, we’re just two guys coming from work. No reason not to treat them like people when they’re not screwing around. We talk from time to time. Usually about the kids, girl troubles.” I gave a sly smile. “Also, I’ve arrested one or two who talk to me like they forget I’m a cop.”
McNally grinned. It was like it was the first thing I said that made me sound like a real cop. “They don’t shut down after that?”
I smiled. How did one explain getting to a point where Mike Taylor could talk to me about his kids, and how he had to sell five pounds of marijuana to cover the latest iPhone for his daughter, then stopped, and we exchange a look akin to “I can’t believe you said that.”
“They know I catch them fair and square. Sometimes, they’ll suddenly decide to become informants to buy a pass. Then we come by, fill out some CI paperwork, jump through some hoops, and we get a bigger fish. Sometimes, I arrest them, and they come along quietly, because they know I have them fair and square.”
Sometimes, that would come with a good-natured smack upside the head, but I didn’t want these two to decide that was police brutality.
“Interesting approach.”
I shrugged. “I thought it was called community policing,” I added. “They know me. I know them, and we all understand each other.”
“And you get nothing from this relationship?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes, I do.”
I admit, I was baiting them this time. Horowitz now looked like the hungry wolf who had a sniff of dinner. “Oh? How so?”
My PBA rep leaned over and reached a hand out to try to stop me from saying anything, but I answered, “They’re always happy to give me a new criminal in the neighborhood. Crimes, dates, times, et cetera.”
McNally: “You’re arresting their competition?”
“Only for crimes they’ve done.”
Horowitz: “Aren’t you fostering the local criminal element instead?”
“I don’t see it that way. I’d rather deal with the devil I know than waste time identifying newcomers. I know my crooks, and they know me.”
McNally’s eyes narrowed. “And what about Hayes, was he one of yours? Or did one of yours know him?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I answered honestly. “I haven’t been out of the station house today. Even if I thought it was a good idea to talk to the guys on the street, I wouldn’t want to text a photograph of Hayes all over the place. Before or after he died.”
Horowitz nodded, either accepting my explanation, or confirming checkmate on the conversation. “Before the incident this morning, you claim that there was a smell in the station? And that the smell led you to Hayes?”
I nodded. “Yes,” I added for the recorder. “Either it came from Hayes or something around him. Something may have died in the desk he was next to, or behind him. Hayes was covered in blood when he was arrested. We have our options.”
“And you haven’t smelled it afterwards? Even when Hayes was rolled out in a bag?”
I shook my head. “If it didn’t come from Hayes himself, I presume that something had been thrown out in the general cleanup. That’s what we’ve been doing all day.”
McNally and Horowitz looked at each other, nodded, and rose. “Thank you, Detective Nolan, that will be all, I think,” McNally said.
“You’re probably clear. I don’t think we’ll have any more questions for you.”
I cocked my head. That was sudden. “Why all the goodwill?”
Horowitz smiled as he flipped folders closed. “As you said, we punched in, we’re antagonists. We’re punching out on this one. Your collar from this morning, Mister Young, talked to us before we talked to you. He vouched for you.”
I blinked, confused. Anthony? Vouched for me? “How so?”
McNally answered this time, as he packed his case. “He told us that Hayes attacked him during the fracas, and you saved him. The way he talked you up, you were Captain America and Superman rolled into one.”
My eyebrows arched. I hadn’t even considered that. “I’ll stay with Clark Kent, thanks.”
Horowitz looked to his partner. “Modest, too.”
I shrugged. “Humility means being honest about yourself. I did no more than what anyone else in the room would have. And did. I didn’t even stop him.”
“I know,” McNally replied. “But we’re not all that concerned over it. We’ll find out what drugs he was on after the toxicology comes back from the autopsy. We saw the body. He was anemic, malnourished, and scrawny—no way on God’s Earth he was able to take on half the police station without a lot of help. We’ll find out what chemicals, and we’ll have a nice day. He has no family, and no one in the entire world to care whether he lives or dies.”
I nodded. “Was that your analysis of the video?”
The two men from IA exchanged a look, and the bottom dropped out from my stomach. “What’s the matter?”
Horowitz shrugged. “It’s not important, but the cameras were on the fritz during the fight. Sometimes, it blinked out entirely; sometimes, it stayed on, but Hayes almost looked like he was flickering in and out of existence. It was strange.”
“No, you think?” I snarked. “What about today wasn’t strange?”