Chapter 4: Picking Up the Pieces.
The SWAT team had invaded my home at two in the morning. By 2:30, the neighbors were awake, and it looked like my station house was having a block party on my street. The SWAT van the team had arrived in was parked around the corner, so the entire intersection would be blocked off until the scene was processed. Ten patrol cars were used just to secure the area. CSU was already there in record time, and they weren’t happy that Mariel, Jeremy, and I had already walked all over the crime scene, since it was mostly on our staircase.
CSU took photos of me and Mariel, then confiscated our sleepwear. They collected rug fibers from the front of Mariel’s night shirt to prove that she had been on the floor (As she said, “I didn’t even get to shoot someone, but I still need to sacrifice my clothing? Not fair.”). They took my clothing since I had blood spatter on it. We were already informed that parts of the carpet on our staircase would be taken away because of the burns from the flash bang. We were processed before the rest of the crime scene, and we needed to get dressed for the day.
Jeremy hadn’t been involved, except in making the 911 call and another call to the station. He was already asleep on the couch. After being threatened at knife point by a serial killer, and kidnapped by a cult with its own Voodoo man, this was relatively boring. I was half afraid that when puberty hit my son, he was going to turn into a thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie. I could see a lot of ER visits in our future.
My Captain was there not long after CSU finished with us. My Lieutenant barely beat him to it. Both were in full dress uniforms, as though they were showing up to a full-court press conference, or to a funeral. I didn’t relish either prospect. They sat at the opposite end of the table while Mariel sat at the other. She had been making coffee since the coast was clear. They were all disposable cups, purchased after one of the last CSU guys broke a cup the last time the house had been a crime scene.
Then Alex Packard showed up. My partner burst in through the front door barely dressed. He wore loafers with no socks. His gray slacks were buckled, the fly only half up. The buttons on his shirt were misaligned, but he’d given up on the top two buttons, so it didn’t matter. His bright yellow tie was draped over his neck, untied. What was left of his hair stuck up at all sorts of odd angles.
“Tommy! Don’t say a thing!” Alex called. “I’m your PBA rep, and I insist—”
I held up a hand. He stopped raving for a moment as he stopped at the dining room table. He grabbed the edge, and panted heavily. “Sorry. I ran. A lot. Gotta never do that again.”
I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. “Now that you’re here, we can start.”
Alex started to object. “Tommy—”
I lifted a tablet from the seat next to me. It was normally Jeremy’s, which is why the case was black with an Alex Ross rendering of The Shadow on the back. I tapped into the house WiFi, then turned it around to my superiors and my partner.
Mariel left to go to the kitchen. She’d been here for the next part.
It was a full audio-video of the entire attack. The cameras on the front porch, the stairs, and the upper hallway caught every last moment. Not once did anyone hear the word “Police!” or “Freeze!” The only verbal communication was between Mariel and me. Everything between the officers was communicated purely in hand gestures.
When the recording was over, both of my superiors looked pissed off. They said nothing, and I didn’t blame them. Officially, Internal Affairs should be the one to talk to me right now, not them.
Right now, they were in an awkward position. Both of my superiors were facing a nightmare scenario and doing the math on which was worse.
1: Headline, “THOMAS NOLAN MURDERS SIX COPS.” This is the headline that wins a cold shoulder from everyone in the department and even future backup to “arrive too late” to a full shootout.
2: Headline, “SWAT TEAM TRIES TO KILL SAINTLY COP.” This headline gets every cop in the department to buy me beers for getting them before they got me. Meanwhile, this also puts every cop in the city under a magnifying glass, especially the department out of which SWAT operated.
3: Headline, “COP ON COP VIOLENCE: EVERYONE WINS.” This makes for a police department that closes ranks and acts amazingly cranky to the entire population.
This didn’t even count what “Hizzonor” the Mayor, Ricardo Hoynes, would do.
Hoynes was already against cops in general, and me in particular. Given that his Deputy Mayor for Social Justice Programs was a zombie-raising Voodoo Bokor who had tried to murder me a few months back, I could count on hearing a few tasteful sound bites from the mayor during this entire ordeal.
Whether or not Deputy Mayor Bokor Baracus (yes, this particular demonic presence was that subtle) was just using the Mayor to further a Satanic agenda, or if the Mayor was the greater darkness, was unknown. Even my ability to smell evil was useless around City Hall—there was so much evil in the air, it was impossible to get directionality on its source. Alex dismissed it as being the usual scent of politicians. I wasn’t so certain. The only bright side of being the target of a Mayor Hoynes character assassination would be that everyone who hated him (i.e.: every cop in the city) would buy me drinks until the press died down or until Hoynes found a new target.
So my Captain and LT had a lot to think about.
“Let’s have a conversation about who just tried to assassinate you,” my LT said, taking the lead. “The patrol guys outside already ran the SWAT truck and the IDs inside. The team lying dead on your stairs are out of the Bronx. They’ve had a high casualty count, but then, they’re SWAT, so that’s expected.”
I frowned. “The Bronx? I’m happy I can even find the Bronx. I’m just as happy to forget that the Bronx even exists. If I want to go to the mainland, I go through Staten Island.”
Everyone smiled, except for the Captain.
“What’s the joke?” he asked.
I maintained strict control over my face. There was always at least one person who never got the joke. “I mean except for the Bronx, the entire city is on an island.”
“...Oh. Right.”
Mariel came back from the kitchen with a mug of coffee so large, I could put my fist in it. She slid it in front of Alex. He muttered, “Bless you,” and took a healthy drag from it.
I held up my hands to refocus us back on the matter that brought everyone into my living room. “Back to the primary topic: Why try to kill me? I don’t even know these people. Better yet, I don’t even know any of their friends, relatives, or passing acquaintances.”
Alex jabbed in my direction with the mug. “But they know you. You’ve been in the news a lot. Curran? The Women’s Health Corps? The death cult? The Mayor?”
Thankfully, Alex had phrased everything in terms that wouldn’t get the three of us thrown into a padded cell. What he really meant was Curran, that serial kill possessed by a demon, and that Moloch-Worshiping cultists who brought home sacrifices from their abortion clinic day jobs and ... okay, in the case of Mayor Hoynes, everyone knew that the man hated my guts. Hoynes probably hated me even more since I had leaked some especially damaging insults about his constituents that he boasted about to Alex and me... and to our body cameras. Seriously, for a politician, he wasn’t that smart. I wish there were a good reason that he had been elected Mayor, but he was merely a supposed libertarian who ran on the Democrat ticket.
But in response to Alex’s questions, I rolled my eyes. “That was months ago. Why didn’t they come after me back then? I wasn’t exactly in hiding. Hell, I had reporters stalking Mariel and Jeremy for months. I’d think a few SWAT guys could come and find me. The shooter at the church this morning? He and his friends could have been random EDPs from the internet who hated my guts. But them and a SWAT team?”
Alex frowned, shrugged, and drank deeply from the coffee mug. “Well, I don’t have any better idea. How about you, L.T.?”
My Lieutenant held his hands up like he was being threatened with an armed weapon. “Don’t look at me.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I’d gotten nearly five hours of sleep, but the adrenaline letdown was getting to me. “We may have to table this for tomorrow. Maybe someone can look into the SWAT team, and maybe we can piece together what their problem was? Preferably before one of their friends on the force takes issue with how they tried to kill me, and I got them first? I think—”
My train of thought was derailed by a phone call. I hesitated for a moment. The ring tone was the “Imperial March” by John Williams—Darth Vader’s tune. It was the ringtone for “D,” the self-proclaimed “gangster” Daniel David DiLeo. I knew he was a criminal, but I’d never seen him do anything. So I’d never had to arrest him. And he wasn’t evil, I would have smelled it on him. Crime was his business, not “thug life”—his and his associates’ business uniforms were black leather jackets, black button-down shirts, button-down collars with the top button undone.
As D himself would put it, “You can’t think you’re gangster if you can’t pull up your damn pants.”
There were a few scattered black jeans, and they wore their pants belted around their waists.
The short version was that D was a work acquaintance. Very much like the cartoon with Sam the sheepdog and Ralph the coyote, who punch in and punch out of the sheep meadow at either end of the Warner Brothers cartoon. Only D and I were far more cordial when we were both on the clock.
I had listed D as a confidential informant, so I didn’t hesitate long before answering the phone. I held it up and explained to the others at the table, “This is my CI, Mister DiLeo. I presume he knows something... I can’t think of another reason for him to call.”
Everyone shrugged and nodded.
I picked up. “Hey, D. How are you doing?”
“Don’t you hey me, Detective. Someone just tried to whack me because of you.”
I blinked. I had rarely heard D raise his voice. It was even rarer for D to yell in my general direction. But given what he just said, I understood. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“Yeah, I’ll happily elaborate,” D roared. “I nearly got shot by the damn gang squad. The gang squad. I am a white collar criminal, man. The freaking gang unit? Just because I’m black. This is insulting. I should’ve known you’d be a pain in the ass.”
I frowned. “Explain what this has to do with me?”
“Don’t you pay attention to what happens in your own station? There’s a hit out on you on the Dark Web. It’s $10 million for your head. They don’t even want you alive. It’s dead all the way.”