The conference room was near to overflowing. No one could remember when so many people had been requested to show up at Bryant Street for a 'meeting' of this kind. Some had been urged to attend on the pretext of being brought up to date on the investigation, while the others had been ordered. It was an eclectic mix of law enforcement and civilians, and a true cross-section of the city.

The main players sat around the long elliptical table, others in chairs against the walls. When the last of the invitees had arrived and the door was closed, Olsen stood at the head of the table and addressed the room.

"Good morning, everybody. I'm Captain Rudy Olsen, and I have asked you all here today so that you are all brought up to date on the continuing investigation into the murders of Charles Washington Pettet and Patrick Kean Garrity. I know that each and every one of you are involved in either or both of these cases, in one way or another, and we believe that our detectives," he nodded quickly over his shoulder at the men behind him, "are very near to bringing both these investigations to a close."

He looked around the room, seeming to make a decision on the spot. "I was going to have everyone make introductions, but it seems to me that that wouldn't be beneficial right now. What I will suggest is that, once my detectives have finished presenting their findings, if anyone has any questions or comments, that you identify yourself and your connection with these cases. Is everyone agreed?"

Everyone nodded, some exchanging looks with the persons next to them, and Olsen nodded as well. "Good. Thank you. I will take this opportunity to just quickly introduce Assistant District Attorney Gerry O'Brien, who is here as a courtesy. ADA O'Brien will not be asking any questions or making any comments; he is here strictly as an observer."

O'Brien nodded to the room from his chair in the far corner of the room by the door.

"All right," said Olsen, taking a step back, "that being said, I will now turn things over to Sergeant Norm Haseejian. Norm."

Clearing his throat slightly, the Armenian detective stepped forward. "Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and thank you all for coming. Over the next hour or so, my colleagues and I will fill you in on the progress we have made so far in our investigations into the murder of Charles Washington Pettet and Patrick Kean Garrity. During that time, once we have, for lack of a better word, 'closed out' a portion of the investigation, anyone whose involvement is restricted to that particular aspect of our inquiry will be free to go. So most of you won't be here all day," he said with a chuckle and was rewarded with a lot of relieved sighs and nods around the room.

Haseejian glanced back at Tanner and Lessing. "Gentlemen, shall we begin?"

# # # # #

Healey had both hands wrapped around his coffee cup, and he was staring into it with a ferocious intensity. He sighed loudly. "God, I wish I could be there." A hand reached across the table and settled gently on his forearm, and he looked up into sympathetic blue eyes.

"I know how you feel, Dan, but believe me, you're better off here," Mike said with a smile.

A coffee cup hit the table with a loud thud, and Steve dropped into the other chair. "We all want to be there, Dan," he said, "but I can't imagine how frustrating this must be for you. My god, the work you put in on this."

Healey's head came up and he looked at his younger colleague with appreciation, and a little shock. "Hey, you got the packing out! You sound like you again!"

Mike chuckled and Steve grinned. "Yep, they took it out Friday. I'm actually starting to feel human again."

"But he still looks like Rocky Raccoon," Mike added with a laugh and both pairs of younger eyes snapped in his direction.

"Ah, how do you know Rocky Raccoon?" Healey asked with amused awe, glancing at Steve with surprise.

Looking suitably affronted, Mike eyed them both. "I've lived with a daughter for the past twenty years or so. I would've had to have been a hermit not to hear her play the White album over and over. I'm not a Neanderthal, you know?" he finished with a whine and the others laughed.

Steve looked at Healey. "He never ceases to amaze – Ow!" he started but was cut off by swat to the back of the head. Chuckling, he glared at his partner and rubbed his head. "Hey, the nose, remember the nose…"

The laughter died as their thoughts turned once more to the events going on at Bryant Street. After a few minutes of silence, Healey looked up at his boss. "Mike, I want to apologize again –" he started, but the older man cut him off.

"Dan, I already told you. I understand, so don't worry about it. Believe it or not, I've been known to bend a rule or two in my time –"

"He still does," Steve threw in sotto voce.

"- so I know where you're coming from," Mike finished as he threw his partner a visual barb. Steve ducked the swat he knew would be coming, chuckling. "Besides, it's not going to last – not with the work you've done on this case. I can guarantee you that not only will you be back on the streets before you know it, but Rudy'll actually apologize to you."

"Ho-ho," Steve chuckled sarcastically, "that's a huge promise, my man – Rudy apologizing?"

Mike looked at his partner with faux disdain. "Ye of little faith."

Healey looked from one partner to the other and grinned.

# # # # #

Olsen glanced up at the clock on the wall as he closed the door and turned back to the room. 2:14. He crossed to the head of the table once more and addressed those still in the room.

"Well," he said pleasantly, "our numbers have been drastically reduced."

Throughout the morning, the detectives had concentrated on the full disclosure of the facts surrounding the Pettet killing, laying out the timeline, explaining how, high on PCP and in full-fledged paranoia, Pettet had ambushed Lieutenant Stone and Inspector Keller, seriously injuring both of them, before he had been shot and killed in self defence, then how Patrolman Madsen had staged the scene to make it look like an 'excessive force' case.

Pettet's parents, who were in attendance, listened in rapt attention, then asked to speak. Mr. Pettet apologized for his son's behaviour, and asked that their wishes for a complete recovery of both injured officers was passed along. After being assured that both were well on the mend, Olsen offered the possibility that in the near future, all parties could be brought together. Pleased that their son's death had been treated in a professional and compassionate manner, the Pettets, still grieving but now beginning to accept the reality of the situation, were allowed to leave.

Patrolman McKinley and the four ambulance attendants from the Pettet scene were also released, as were the neighbours who had been interviewed and the officers who had arrived at the scene after the fact.

Now the only people in the room were those directly concerned with the Garrity murder: Sergeant Don Shepherd and members of the Garrity family – wife Maureen Madsen, her brothers John and Colin Madsen, her son Conor and John's daughter Aileen.

The Madsen's, still smarting about the revelations laid out that morning against Andrew Madsen, were glaring at the detectives as Olsen once more turned the proceedings over to Haseejian.

As Norm approached the head of the table, his heart began to pound and he took a deep breath to steady his nerves. This was what they had been working towards. He began by laying out the events of the night of Mike's shooting and the arrest of Patrick Garrity.

# # # # #

Healey glanced at his watch again, then at the phone near his elbow, and back at his watch. Steve, sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, looked up and chuckled. "Dan, you're gonna have to relax and you're gonna give yourself a heart attack. Why don't you take a page out of Mike's book and lie down for a nap?"

"At this point I don't think I'll ever sleep again," Healey said with a dry chuckle, looking at his colleague with a grateful smile. "They should be tackling the Garrity killing right now – so Norm is moving in for the kill. God, I wish I knew what was going on."

"Look, Dan, you are one hundred percent sure of this, aren't you?"

Healey nodded. "Yeah."

"So are Mike and I. You did it, you got to the bottom of it and you're gonna clear your name and put the killer behind bars – what more can you ask, right?"

"To be there to see the looks on their faces?" Healey asked facetiously. "I know Norm'll do a good job – he's a hell of a cop. Its just…"

"I know," Steve smiled sympathetically. "It's just not the same, is it?" He sobered, putting the paper down and leaning forward. "I haven't had the chance to thank you guys for being there for me that night. I don't think I've ever been so scared…"

Healey snorted mirthlessly. "You? When I saw Mike go down, I just kept thinking, we should have been there, we could have stopped it if we had been there sooner. We failed him."

The silence lengthened. "We didn't though, did we?" Steve asked quietly into the hush. "We've still got him."

"Yep, we do," Healey smiled affectionately.

Steve glanced at his own watch. "Hey, the sun is over the yardarm, what say you and I have a beer. I have a feeling this day is gonna get a lot longer."

# # # # #

"So the question is, of course, who was it that had access to the cell where Garrity was being held, and why would that person want to kill him? On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason – we had Garrity dead to rights. He surrendered at the scene and three people saw him pull the trigger, his prints were all over the gun. There was no point to his murder, even from a vengeful cop who wanted to make him pay for almost taking the life of one of the most respected and beloved members of the force.

"So we decided to open up the possibilities – was it personal in another way, as in 'family personal'?" Haseejian took a moment to take one of the files from Tanner and spread some sheets out on the table. "You see, one of the things that bothered us from the very beginning," he paused and looked up, "was you, Sergeant Shepherd. Whoever it was that beat Patrick Garrity to death, he either had to be known to you or had some contact with you in another way," he shrugged, "maybe a monetary way?

"So we had a look at your finances, Sergeant, and surprisingly, there was nothing in your bank account that suggested that you took a monetary bribe, and we couldn't find any traces of another bank account somewhere else. Of course, you could have a Swiss account, but we don't think that's a real possibility," he finished with a smirk that called Shepherd's intelligence into question. Even Olsen swallowed a chuckle and O'Brien's eyes widened in appreciation.

"So, if it wasn't monetary, then what? Professional? So we went through your personnel file and, lo and behold, you and Garrity never even seem to have met – not at the Academy, not on the streets, you didn't even work in the same divisions over the years. So, once again, nothing there.

"That, of course, left personal life. But going through both your files and Garrity's, nothing revealed itself." He looked up again and smiled coldly. "But we have a colleague - who actually couldn't be here today because, for some reason, the powers that be seem to think he had something to do with Patrick Garrity's death - who wouldn't give up. He's a damn good detective. And you know what he found?"

Haseejian took a file from Lessing and took out some more sheets, laying them overtop of the others. "He went to the Hall of Records and he went back through their files, and, hey, look what he found." Haseejian spread his arms in a welcoming gesture. As the others began to get up, he waved them back down with a chuckle, "No, no, no, you just stay there, I'll explain all this then I'll pass the papers around so you can see for yourself."

He turned his attention to the police officer at the table. "Sergeant Shepherd, your grandmother on your father's side, her name was O'Hallahan, wasn't it?"

Shepherd, his face suddenly closed and wary, nodded slowly.

"Yeah, that's what it says here. Brigitte O'Hallahan." Haseejian picked up a sheet of paper. "Oh, look at this." He turned his riveting gaze on Maureen Madsen. "We seem to have your family tree as well, Mrs. Madsen – by the way, why didn't you take your husband's name? We'll get to that later." He looked back at the paper in his hand. "Brigitte O'Hallahan is your maternal grandmother. Well, what a coincidence," he said with jovial sarcasm. "Now that would be the same Brigitte O'Hallahan, wouldn't it? My my, small world…"

Putting the paper down, he looked up again. "So, that means that Don here is your second cousin, is it? I can never figure that out, cousins, second cousins, 'once removed'…?" He smiled vacuously, shrugging, then his eyes turned cold. "Bottom line, you're related, you're kin. All of you," he lifted his stare to include the entire Madsen clan sitting at the table opposite him.

"But, we didn't stop there." With a quick smile at Lessing and Tanner over his left shoulder, Haseejian continued. "We went way back once more and, hey, look at what we found." He slipped two more pages from the folder and dropped them onto the table. "We found two complaints – both over twenty years old – filed against Patrick Kean Garrity by his wife, Maureen Madsen, for domestic violence." He eyes softened slightly and he said quietly, "He beat you, didn't he? After he was fired from the department, he took to the bottle and he started to beat you. That's why you began to use your maiden name again and why you went to court to have your sons last name changed from Garrity to Madsen. You knew you couldn't divorce him - your upbringing and your church wouldn't allow it. So you did the next best thing, you deprived him of the legacy of having his name survive with his sons."

Haseejian put the file down and stood quietly for several moments. When he spoke again his voice was soft and understanding, his eyes riveted on Maureen Madsen. "You managed to live with him for all those years, didn't you? You managed to sublimate your hated towards him into love for your sons. But then it happened again, didn't it? Your son Andy stumbled on the opportunity to destroy the man who he believed had derailed his own father's career so many years ago, the father he idolized. But he got caught and his father wanted revenge and it all spiraled out of control.

"You'd had enough, didn't you? You couldn't let this man continue to destroy your life and your family. So you did the only thing you could think to do." He let the words sink in for a few seconds then, smiling benignly again, he opened another folder and took out more papers. "You couldn't do it alone, but you had family. So, once we figured that out, then we had to find out where all of you were at that particular time. Don, we knew where you were," he offered with a chuckle as he glanced at the now stony-faced sergeant, "so let's concentrate on the rest of you. Let's see, Aileen, you're off the hook," he looked up and smiled at the young woman, "and so are you, Maureen, just because, well, let's face it, neither of you could beat Patrick to death, drunk or not drunk."

He tossed two sheets of paper down on the table then looked up again, grinning smugly. "So that leaves you three. Let's see, John, you were at work and a lot of people vouched for you, so you're in the clear. Conor, your alibi holds up too, you were also at work and even more people vouched for you. Lucky boy."

As Haseejian looked slowly towards Colin, who started to shift uneasily in his seat, Lessing and Tanner stood up and walked towards the middle-aged man sitting between his brother and sister at the oblong table. "Colin Michael Madsen, you are under arrest for the murder of Patrick Kean Garrity."