Shakedown

Chapter Six

Police cars, lights?ashing, had formed a barricade at each end of Marcellus’s block by the time I arrived. Overhead, a helicopter swept the neighborhood with a spotlight. The SWAT team had taken up position on either side of the crack house. I?ashed my badge at a KCK police sergeant who let me through the line. Every house except Marcellus’s was lit up, people watching from covered porches, some standing in the rain. Troy Clark emerged from the shadows on one side of the house.

“What do we got?” I asked him.

Troy had grown up in Quindaro and?irted with gangs until his grandmother set him straight, telling him he was too strong and too smart to die young for some fool weaker and dumber than he was. In his late thirties, pushing six feet and chiseled, he was tough, stubborn, and ambitious, a combination that could make you dead or make you famous.

Troy wasn’t afraid of death, and he didn’t care about being famous. What he cared about was my job, the SAC’s job, and the director’s job, all of which he made clear he intended to have before he was through. He didn’t hesitate to second-guess me and was right more often than I cared to admit. I didn’t like him, but I respected him even though his stubborn streak occasionally blossomed into an outbreak of hysterical blindness.

“Door was open. I had a look inside. Three dead. I’m guessing it’s Marcellus and the Winston brothers.”

“Anybody else?”

“Don’t know yet. We haven’t gone in.”

“You think the shooter is still in there?”

“No way to tell from out here.”

I looked up and down the block. “Why is his house the only one without power?”

“It’s got power. There’s a utility box on the side of the house. We were going to turn the power off, go in with night vision in case the shooter decided to stick around. No reason to make us easy targets. But somebody had already turned the power off.”

I nodded, understanding the tactical dilemma. “The shooter cut the power and killed them in the dark. Probably wore night-vision goggles, too. Means he can see you as easily as you can see him. If he stuck around.”

“I think the shooter knew.” Troy said.

“Knew what?”

“About the surveillance camera in the ceiling fan.”

“Based on what?” I asked.

“It fits. Gives him a reason to cut the power.”

“Maybe. Go see if anyone else is home. But go easy. No good guys die tonight.”

I didn’t want to discuss Troy’s theory until I knew more about what had happened, especially if Troy was right. There was only one way the killer could have known about the camera in the ceiling fan. He had to have a source inside my investigation or, worse, he had to be someone on my team.

Flushing out a bad agent was one of the hardest things to do, especially in the middle of a case that was taking every waking hour. Besides, the odds were heavily against the leak coming from my squad or anyone else at the Bureau. Not that they were all saints. It just rarely happened.

I had begun making a list of plausible theories on my way to the scene, ignoring the pressure rising in my chest and throat. I knew that it would continue to build until the shaking started, releasing the tension like opening a relief valve. I pulled over a block from the scene, cut the engine, and let it happen, my eyes closed, bracing myself against the steering wheel as if I’d been punched in the gut.

The shakes tapered off and I started the car, focusing again on the gunshots I’d heard. The obvious explanation was that the shootings were drug related, that the killer worked for a competitor, or unhappy business partner, of Marcellus Pearson-maybe even the supplier I was after.

That option faded as I considered Troy’s suggestion of a leak. I ran through mental pictures of my agents, unable to imagine any of them selling out. Troy pulled double duty, working the SWAT team and my squad. All I had to do was look at him. There was no artifice, just dedication, even if it was more to his career than to the squad. Jim Day, Lani Hay-wood, and Ammara Iverson were so loyal they almost apologized for taking their paychecks.

Colby Hudson, my daughter’s boyfriend, was the last member of the team, the only one I hadn’t recruited for the squad. He was the lone holdover from the team my predecessor had assembled. All agents rotated through different assignments-organized crime, antiterror, and the rest. Colby had managed to stay on the drug squad, making a career working undercover. His newest best friend was Javy Ordonez, Marcellus’s number-one competitor for control of the neighborhood crack market. Colby looked the part, hair long and face scruffy. I trusted him with everything except my daughter.

One of Marcellus’s corner kids named Tony Phillips had been shot in a drive-by a few days ago. Maybe one of Javy’s people had done it. Maybe tonight’s shootings were the next round in a gang war. I needed to talk with Colby, who was the one member of my squad who wouldn’t be at the crime scene. Wearing a jacket with FBI printed on the back was not the secret of success for an undercover agent.

I found no weaknesses, no reason for suspicion, in my team. If there was a leak, it had to have come from outside the Bureau. That would be even harder to track down.

I silently recited the list of possible sources, including the cops who had tipped Marcellus about my phony search warrant, the utility company, the federal judge who issued the surveillance order, the judge’s law clerk who did the research that convinced the judge he could issue the order, and the judge’s secretary who typed it. I could round them all up and make them take polygraph tests-if I lived in another country and if I wanted to waste my time.

The lights came on in the house. Troy found me again.

“All clear. Two more dead in the upstairs bedroom. Jalise Williams and her boy.”

“Keyshon.”

“They were hiding in the closet. She was shielding the boy with her body. The killer shot right through her, killed both of them.”

I was supposed to care about all the victims equally, caring the most about catching their killer, but I couldn’t. Marcellus and the Winston brothers were garbage waiting to be thrown out. That didn’t mean they deserved to be murdered or that they didn’t count or that I would be any less determined to find out who was guilty of their murders. It meant that I wouldn’t mourn them the way I did Jalise and Keyshon.

Jalise’s story was sadly familiar: broken home, sexually abused as a kid. She had dropped out of school and hooked up with Marcellus, her version of Rescue Me. Wendy had me to watch her back. Jalise had Marcellus to drag her down. There weren’t many retired crack dealers. I had watched the surveillance tapes enough to know she stayed out of his business. That didn’t make her innocent, but it put her in an outer circle where people had a right to expect an occasional break.

Keyshon was different, deserved better. He hadn’t made any of his parents’ bad choices, but their decisions cost him his life. I knew what that was like. I lost my son when he was six years old. Both boys could have been saved but for the mistakes their parents made.

Joy started drinking the day we buried Kevin. I let it go, blaming me, not her, hoping she’d come out of it, unable to ease her pain or mine. We hadn’t forgiven ourselves or reconciled, settling instead for a silently shared burden.

Both Jalise and I had failed to save our sons. That Jalise wouldn’t suffer the way my wife and I had was no consolation. I would hear their voices, mothers and sons, long after I caught Keyshon’s killer.

I asked Troy, “If the killer was after Marcellus, why kill the woman and the boy? The house is dark. They’re hiding in the closet. Odds are they didn’t see the killer and couldn’t identify him.”

“Maybe she was the target,” Troy said.

“What do you mean?”

“The shooter had to assume that Marcellus and the Winstons were armed and a threat to him. Makes sense that he put them down. But he put three rounds point-blank into a woman and child hiding in a closet who couldn’t have hurt him if they’d have tried.”

“Jalise Williams was nineteen. She wasn’t involved in Marcellus’s business. Who’d want to kill her?”

“Maybe she had something going on the side. Maybe the killer didn’t figure Marcellus would be home and took Jalise and the boy out to punish him for something.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s the best you can do?”

Troy shrugged. “Why kill her and the kid? You got me. All I know is that’s why we get the big money-to figure out crazy shit like this.”

The helicopter started another circle, rotors thumping, its searchlight spraying the dark. My squad and what seemed like half the Kansas City, KS, police department stood in loose clusters in the street waiting for orders.

“Get out of that?ak jacket and start a door-to-door canvass.”

“Jack, it’s a quintuple murder. KCKPD will claim jurisdiction.”

“Tell them we’ve got it because of our ongoing drug investigation. Don’t hurt their feelings, but make sure they know this is our case.”

I waited until the crime scene investigators gave me the all clear, then walked up the steps, stood on the porch, imagining the killer standing there less than an hour earlier and wondering what went through someone’s mind in the instant before he slaughtered five people. If Marcellus had been the target and the rest merely collateral damage, I could picture a cool, methodical professional. Check his weapon, take a deep breath, get it over with, and get out, no survivors, no loose ends. If Jalise had been the target, I saw someone filled with rage, the kind of fury that propelled the killer to empty his weapon into a defenseless woman trying to save her child. I could imagine what the killer thought and felt but not what he looked like. I had learned a long time ago not to trust the face.

I stared through the open front door, preferring to study the scene while the rest of my squad started with the neighbors. I knew that the good people outnumbered the bad on these streets, but that didn’t mean they trusted the cops enough to tell us what they’d seen.

Even if someone came forward, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Eyewitnesses were among the least reliable sources of evidence about a crime. People never experience an event the same way. Fear, anger and excitement distort recollection as much as differences in eyesight and hearing. Psychological factors load eyewitness testimony with bias and unreliability.

For me, that was the beauty of the crime scene. It didn’t have a face that hid the truth. It had no hidden agenda. It hadn’t just had a fight at home or too many drinks after work. It didn’t want to be interviewed on Court TV and it wasn’t trying to cover up. It wasn’t afraid of the cops, it wasn’t out to screw us over, and it wasn’t smarter than us. It was what it was and it never lied.