Chapter 32

Stephanie looked at the people sitting around her table. It was the same group as the last time with the addition of Lester, but there was an extra chair that Tank had pulled to the table. Tank and Ranger had been conferring all morning, and while Stephanie knew the purpose of the meeting was to once again bring forth all their collected information, she hadn't been privy to their conversation. Not that either man would have kept her from them, but she'd been busy with Lester.

They had all the parameters of their merger hammered out. Next week when she went to Trenton, she'd meet with his business manager and they'd sign papers to make it official. She would have a partner.

Next week when she went to Trenton. She could hardly believe it was going to happen. Once she'd made the decision though, it had caused less emotional turmoil than she'd thought possible. Ranger had assured her he would make sure things went smoothly, and while she didn't know exactly how it was going to happen, she knew he would make it happen.

Once again, she was surrounded by old friends and new friends, but there was something different about the atmosphere at the table. Today Althea and Tank seemed almost like an old married couple. They were wonderfully comfortable with one another. It was nice to see. Her daughter was sitting very close to Luke Santos. Their attraction to one another was visible for anyone who looked, but they seemed unaware that they were broadcasting their mutual admiration.

When Cally and Luke had arrived the day before, Stephanie had pulled her daughter aside and asked, "Not meaning to get too deeply into your business, Cally, but will you and Luke be sharing a room?"

"Mother! My gosh!"

"Sorry," Stephanie said. "I guess that's a no. I was just wondering,"

"It's not like that," Cally said, but her mother was pretty sure it was. "I like him and we are dating, sort of, but it's way too early for anything like that. I can't believe you'd suggest it!"

"I didn't suggest anything," Stephanie said. "I just asked because I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put everyone. Luke can sleep with his dad then and you can have your old room. Tank and Althea have a hotel room."

"And Carlos will sleep with you," Cally said.

"Well, we are engaged!" Stephanie held up her hand to show her daughter the ring and just for a moment flashed back to when Cally had done the same thing to her. The day she learned her daughter was going to move to New Jersey. The day that started it all.

"I know that," Cally said, "but you didn't tell me you already had a ring. Let me see…oh, it's beautiful. Mom, I'm so happy for you." They hugged and Cally hauled her suitcase up to her room, and there had been no more discussion about Cally and Luke's developing relationship.

Now looking at the two of them side-by-side across the table from her, she felt a sense of peace wash over her. Going to Trenton was going to be hard, but she'd do it. She'd put the past to bed and come home to a new life with Ranger.

Her eyes traveled to the empty chair next to Cally. "Can we get started?" she asked. "Who's the chair for?"

Tank and Ranger exchanged a look. "Carl Costanza," Ranger said.

"C-carl?" Stephanie stammered. She waited for the hysteria to raise its head, but it didn't come. She had made peace with her future and her past. Good thing because they'd already started to merge.

"Carl knows everything now, Babe," Ranger said. "We need someone inside Trenton PD to help us and he's our man."

"Why do you need someone in the police department, and did he tell people?"

"I don't think he's said anything to anyone," Ranger said. "Are you regretting your decision to go back?"

"No, but …" the doorbell rang interrupting her. "Is that him?"

"Probably," Tank said.

"I'll get it then," she said. She opened the front door to see a man far different from the one she remembered. She stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her.

"Stephanie." He spoke her name with emotion, and she saw the glint of tears in his eyes. Instinctively she wrapped her arms around him.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

She pulled back and looked at him, secretly shocked at how he'd aged. His job was pressure filled, she was sure, and it showed on him. She wondered for a moment if Joe would have looked like this.

"What are you sorry about, Carl?" she asked. "Surely not Joe. That was a long time ago, and I've moved on. I had no choice."

"I'm sorry about Joe, and I'm sorry about what happened to you. Mostly I'm sorry for blowing Ranger off when he came asking for help to find your killer."

"What! Ranger came to you?"

"Not directly. He knew people in the department, Juniak for one. He wanted and got information of the accident. No one suspected foul play, not even Ranger, but when the person that hit you ran, he became a criminal. Ranger wanted to find the person that did it and make sure he'd be held accountable."

"And you blew him off?"

"Gazarra and I could see he wasn't thinking clearly. We went to him and told him he had to trust the police department. That they wouldn't let a cop's death go unpunished. They'd find whoever did it. He accepted what we told him, because there were really no leads and then we sort of lost touch with him for a while. I think Tank was running RangeMan and Ranger sort of disappeared."

He'd gone on one mission after another trying to get himself killed. She knew that, he'd told her, but she didn't tell Carl.

"Carl, I'm coming back to Trenton next week. I'm going to try to reclaim some of my old life. I'm doing it for Cally. You didn't have to come down here to tell me that. And you don't have anything to be sorry for."

"When I heard you were alive, I thought if I'd given it my all I might have uncovered something that could have been useful. I'm sorry I didn't try harder. I'm here to see if I can help with Tank's investigation. I'm not staying. I'll fly back later today. We're supposed to be having a meeting."

"Yeah, everyone is inside waiting, I think," Stephanie said. "Let's go inside and get started."

There was no need for introductions. Everyone knew everyone it seemed. Tank stood at the head of the table and commanded attention without trying. Ranger seemed content to sit quietly and listen, but Stephanie understood the relationship between the two men well enough to know, Tank didn't do anything without Ranger's consent. Whatever they were going to hear, Ranger already knew.

"Let's begin. This is informal, you can interrupt at any time. I'm going to present what we know, followed by what we think. Gregg kept detailed records and Silvio is still looking but we think we have most of what's attainable. There are things we know, from what Gregg documented. Most of what we think has been extrapolated from fact."

"We know that Terry Gilman wanted Joe and his family out of the way permanently. We know that Morelli found out Gilman was seeing Gregg at the same time he was with her, and Gregg wanted Morelli out of the way. Gilman agreed to help him if he'd take out the entire family. We know that he wasn't completely successful, and we know that Gilman had no knowledge of Stephanie and Cally's continued existence."

"How do you know she didn't realize I was alive?" Stephanie asked.

"From what she said after Carlos introduced me as your daughter," Cally said.

"I don't remember any mention of a conversation like that when I took your statement," Carl said.

"Sorry, Detective Costanza," Cally said. "We didn't lie as much as just didn't tell you the whole truth. We were trying to keep my mom safe."

Carl grunted as Stephanie asked, "What did she say?"

"She said Gregg had failed her," Cally said. "She said he failed to kill Carlos and now she found out he'd failed her years ago…she said if she found out my father was still alive, Gregg would wish he was dead."

"And we also have evidence that Gregg was in Trenton at the time of Ranger's attack," Tank continued. "For whatever reason, he was acting as a hit man for Terry, but thankfully, he sucked at it."

"Brian Gregg was no killer," Ranger said. "He hired people like me to do it. He was a desk jockey."

"Carlos, you were an assassin?" Cally had a horrified look on her face.

"No," he told her. "It was never the focus of my mission. There were times though it was kill or be killed. Gregg was in a position like that in the restaurant with Gilman. He knew it. He knew his life depended on taking me out, and yet he could barely bring himself to do it. His hesitation and your quick thinking saved my life, Cally."

"To get back to what we know," Tank said, "we know who, and we know how, and we know Gregg was nervous that Morelli was getting too close. We're not sure why Terry turned against Joe."

"That's why I agreed to come today," Carl said. "I may be able to shed a little light on the why."

"Let's hear it," Tank said.

"It's been a while, but I think my memory is pretty good on the facts," Carl said. He took a deep breath. "Back in the day, Joe was a really good cop. He did some undercover work before he went to Crimes Against Persons. He kept some of those contacts active, and he always seemed to be in the know."

"What do you mean, 'In the know?'" Cally asked. "Do you mean he was working both sides?"

"No. He was just very informed. And he couldn't stay away from Terry Gilman. Gazarra heard about it and came to me with the news that Morelli was cheating on his wife who'd just given birth. Eddie and I called him on it. One night at Pino's we let him have it. We told him he was pond scum to do that to you, Stephanie."

Carl paused in his narrative, and everyone at the table looked at Stephanie. She was looking at Cally. Cally returned her mother's stare with a little smile. "I'm okay, Mom. Are you?"

"Yes. None of this is news to me."

"Well, here is something that might be news," Carl said. "When Gazarra and I talked to him it was just about a week prior to the…accident. He got defensive at first and then he told us that he knew it had to end, that he'd already ended it. He'd told Terry they were through. And he said she didn't take it well at all. There was a task force of some kind at the time, I can't remember exactly what, and I can't find record of it, but I know it existed. Joe spent several days at that time in conference with them. I think he was spilling everything he knew about Gilman."

"Gregg told me that Joe had been involved in something to do with the mob…that it was a crime family that was after us," Stephanie said. "Maybe that was true."

"Maybe," Carl said. "But most likely it was just Terry Gilman who was after you. She wasn't the head of the family then, but she held a position of power. You know, Hell has no fury like a woman scorned. I think she wanted Joe and his family taken care of. He was in a position to hurt her professionally, and he'd pissed her off personally."

"She never did like me," Stephanie said. "The feeling was mutual, but it's hard to believe she hated me enough to kill me and my baby."

"Not so hard to believe if she thought you and Cally were what was making Joe turn away from her," Carl said. "It wasn't just the personal aspect of it. Terry probably thought she could use a connection with a Trenton cop to her advantage, so she was losing out on a couple of different accounts. So she arranged for Gregg to take you out."

"But Gregg didn't do the job correctly," Ranger said. "And instead of telling Gilman he'd screwed up, he decided to use his position to make Cally and Stephanie disappear. It would have been easy for him to do. He had access to everything he'd need to make it happen."

"That's another thing we know," Tank said. "Silvio and I talked late into the night last night. He found documentation that Gregg had made. It was coded but Silvio broke it. It's hard to believe he was unsupervised, but he ran his own department, completely undocumented.

"Nowhere can a record be found of his agency or of his operatives. Everyone worked on a need to know basis. Maybe that's why he kept such detailed records. He used his government clearance and an alternative ID to orchestrate the relocation of Stephanie and Cally. And he successfully kept it from Terry Gilman."

"It makes you wonder…" Ranger said but didn't finish his sentence.

"Yeah, man," Tank said. "I never worked for that agency, but it makes you wonder how many missions were sanctioned and how many were for Gregg's personal gain."

"I need ice cream." The statement was proclaimed forcefully and immediately drew everyone's attention. "I'm serious," Cally said. "I can't take anymore, at least not until I get ice cream."

Tank looked perplexed. "We've got more to discuss, and you want to take a break for ice cream?" Ice cream was apparently far from his mind.

"My head is going to explode," Cally said. "You are all calmly talking about an attempted murder on me and my mom. I can't handle it without ice cream."

"Hang on, Cally," Ranger said. "There's not much more, but some of what's left concerns Ben. You'll want to hear it."

"Oh…" Cally's face paled and Luke's arm came around her, pulling her and her chair closer to him.

"This meeting is entering the realm of what we think, and I'm turning it over to Carl," Tank said.

"Terry Gilman has been trying to sanitize her history in Trenton. She was planning on running in the next mayoral race," Carl said. He smiled at the gasp that came from Stephanie. "She's been actively fund-raising for it recently. Tank and I think she was getting ready to sever her connection to Gregg, and when I say sever, I might mean literally. He probably knew it. He was getting ready to retire and we think he was planning on taking the money and running to his long-suffering wife in Hanoi. But Gilman didn't want to leave any loose ends that might get in the way of her political ambitions. We think Ranger was one of her loose ends. Kind of as a last favor to Gilman, Gregg was coerced into running you down, Ranger. Once again, he screwed up."

"What does this have to do with Ben?" Cally asked.

"I'm getting to that," Carl said. "I'm six months from retirement. The last thing I want to do is jeopardize my pension, so I'm being careful. Several of us have always figured the Grizollis had people in the department. I'm making it my mission to find them. Again, this is what we think. When your husband started making inquiries, someone in the department alerted Gilman and she took care of him."

"It's that simple?" Cally asked. "Someone gets in your way and you just run over them? That's pure evil."

"It's complete disregard for human life," Carl said. "And it's the Grizolli family's motus operandi. They run over them, they throw them off a bridge, or they shoot them and take the body to their own personal crematorium."

"I really need ice cream," Cally said. "Now."