Chapter 4

"You know, Sarge, I realize I'm the new kid on the block, but I can investigate a murder on my own."

Kay gave one of her typical small smiles. "When I took the sergeants exam last year, I didn't think I'd be doing as much desk work. I have to help Gee with the paperwork, I have keep on top of where all the other detectives are, I have to coordinate with the DAs half the time. All that means, I barely get out on the street half the time of any other detective."

Worden considered this. "Hasn't hurt your clearance rate any."

This got a more genuine smile from Howard. "Quality always wins out over quantity."

"Is that your subtle way of offering to be the primary on this one?'

The smile turned more sardonic. "You picked up the phone, you take the murder. "

Worden knew the real reason she was grinning. Harbor police had fished a floater out of the river. Every indication was that the body had been there for at least a few days. He was privately hoping this turned out to be some kind of suicide, because of it wasn't, he was going to be spending days just trying to ID the victim, never mind solving the murder.

Great. I've been here little more than a month and I'm already thinking like a seasoned veteran. "Still doesn't explain why you wanted to come out and help on what's likely to be a stone whodunit."

Kay grew serious. "You noticed how when the call came out, no one was particularly eager to ride with you?" After Craig nodded, she went on: "You know who Steve Crosetti was?'

Now was not the time to tell the sergeant Roger Gaffney's opinion of the man. "I know he worked Homicide and I know that he killed himself two years ago."

"Munch was the secondary on this case. He doesn't talk about it except to make jokes, but finding that bloated corpse that Steve became, it shook him to his core. It shook all of us. He avoids these kinds of calls whenever he can get away with it. As his superior, I don't approve. As one of Steve's fellow detectives, I don't blame him one bit."

Now Craig felt a bit ashamed about hoping that the floater had died by their own hand. "We're here."

The body had been found on the outskirts of the Patapsco river, near the same docks which had been the lifeblood of Baltimore for decades.

"Officer Rogers, please tell me we have some good news," he said as the uniform walked up to meet him.

"Depends on your definition of good, Detective." Rogers told him. "Victim is a Latino female, wallet still on the body. ID is an Angela Nunez."

"Well, now that we know who she is, do we have any idea how Miss Nunez came to deserve our attention?"

"That's gonna be a different story." Rogers told her. "Scheiner says based on decomp, she's been in the drink for at least two days, maybe three."

Sure enough, there was the M.E. who'd been supervising over dead bodies since the Eisenhower administration, looking over the late Miss Nunez. Worden and Howard were still twenty feet away, but the smell of rot was evident even from there. Worden reached for his handkerchief.

"Things like this make me glad I never learned how to swim," the crotchety coroner told them as they approached Nunez's body.

"There isn't any chance that our vic simply decided to take the polar bear challenge?" When Howard and Rogers looked at him strangely, Craig shrugged. "All right, I've been hanging around Munch a little too long."

"I'll have to get her on the table to know for sure, but my best guess is that this is wrongful death." Scheiner told them. He turned to the officers nearby. "Roll her."

Angela Nunez was now on her stomach, and even though he was still knew at this, Craig could see that there was a fair amount of congealed blood around the torso, along with a fairly large hole around the stomach. "That, my young friend, is an exit wound. I'll have to get her under the microscope, but my guess is, she took a shotgun at close range."

"There isn't any chance she floated down from Delaware or DC, is there?' Worden asked as he looked down at the body.

"What do I look like? Jacques Cousteau?" Scheiner's level of irritation barely changed a note. "And don't look for any help matching the bullets. They've either washed out, or they went clean through."

"Any good news, Scheiner?" Howard asked as she knelt beside Craig.

"Yeah. I had a great bran muffin this morning." Scheiner was, if anything more unfiltered than Munch could be.

Craig give a huge side. He could already see the name going up in red. "All right. Let's canvas, see if anybody heard or saw anything." Not that he expected to find anything. This was a literal dump job, and they were going to have to do a lot of OT just to find out where she had died.

"I'll check in with missing persons, see if anybody reported Miss Nunez." Howard got to her feet.

"You're just leaving me to handle this?" Craig said incredulously.

"You're the one who said he wanted to stand on his own two feet."

Isabel Nunez was twenty-four years old, and unfortunately for Craig, she lived in Baltimore. No husband, no kids. Her mother, Carla had reported her missing when she hadn't come home the night before.

"Did you have a good relationship with your daughter?" Worden asked her about ten minutes after Carla had had enough time to deal with the fact that her only child was dead. Of course, they never really dealt with it, but by now, they had to give the illusion of it.

"Of course I did." Carla asked, appalled.

"How long had she been gone before you reported her missing?" Howard asked.

"Half a day, maybe. It wasn't unusual for her to stay out all night with her friends. We would argue..." She trailed off. "We argued about her staying out so late."

"Who were some of the friends she stayed out with?"

"You don't really think... No, they couldn't have."

"Probably not," Craig assured her, "but if we're to find Angela's killer, any information that you or they give could be helpful."

She hesitated. 'There was this boy. He was three or four years younger than her. Very dark hair, always seemed to be looking right past you. Whenever I invited him in to see us, he never said anything." Carla paused again. "He frightened me a little. Sounds almost laughable."

"Do you remember this young man's name?" Worden asked.

"Luis. Luis Salmanaca. " Something about this name rang a bell with Craig, but he couldn't figure out what.

"How exactly did Angela know Luis?" Kay asked.

"She said that she met him at the Learning Annex at community college." Apparently, Angela had had to drop out of college in her sophomore year to take care of her family. She had spend as much of her time between her job as an au pair for some families and trying to get her degree in literature.

That was what her mother seemed to think anyway. But there was an element that was floating below the surface that Worden didn't want to press yet. Even though Angela Nunez had been born in Baltimore, her mother had emigrated to America from Colombia in the 1970s. And though the drug market in Baltimore was mostly African-American, the various cartels had been making a slow but steady impression on the drug market.

"Do you happen to know how we could find this Luis?"

"He worked at one of those coffee shops. Panera, I think."

The sinking feeling that Craig had been having about this case ever since he got here multiplied tenfold when he found out more about Luis Salmanaca. He didn't have a criminal record - at least not in Baltimore. That didn't, however, qualify him for sainthood. A little research on Interpol revealed that the Salmanaca name had been notorious in the South American drug cartels stretching back nearly twenty-five years. They had made quite an impression in the U.S, too, though most of their impression was in the American Southwest.

"So now, its looking like the Colombians are reaching out into Baltimore," Howard told Gee a few hours later.

"Any evidence that our victim was part of this drug ring?' Giardello asked.

"At our request, Scheiner did a more advanced toxicology report," Worden told them. "There were trace amounts of cocaine in Isabel Nunez's blood at the time of her death."

"Well, ain't that just dandy," Meldrick said. "We got enough of a headache with the damn heroin market in Charm City, now the damn Colombians are starting to make inroads.'

"Globalization, Meldrick," Munch told him. "Baltimore is finally becoming a player on the world stage."

"Yeah, I think rather have the O's make the playoffs."

Worden let this byplay roll off him. Besides, he knew Meldrick was still smarting from their latest escapade involving Luther Mahoney. Somehow, the slippery sonofabitch had managed to skate from a conspiracy charge three days earlier. "In any case, its looking like Angela Nunez got involved with the wrong people," Worden looked at the notes he'd taken. "Apparently, a few months ago, she really was serious about trying to earn enough money to get back into college. One of her friends introduced to somebody who said that she could make a lot of money if she would make some deliveries."

"Let me guess: said packages included the delivery of cocaine." Munch told him. "And after a few weeks, maybe even a month, she started sampling the packages."

"Could be, Munchkin, just as likely she decided to cut out the middleman and start selling the packages herself." Lewis replied. "Either way, we get the end result, she ends up full of holes at the bottom of the Patapsco."

"Your concern for this girl's wellbeing is touching," Worden told them.

"I realize you've barely been here more than a month," Munch reminded him, "but I've been averaging two similar murders a month for at least fourteen years. Now, the particulars may change - and I'll admit its a little different to have a Latina be the victim instead of an African-American - but it really doesn't matter. Drug murders are essentially the same; only the details matter."

"Y-you know, John, one of the things I-I didn't miss when I was in my hospital bed," Pembleton, who had been remarkably quiet through all this, finally chose to speak up. "Your sardonic w-wit."

There was a moment of silence at this. In all the months Frank had been sitting at his desk, he had never joked about his own mental failings since coming back from the stroke. He must truly have been feeling better being out on the street.

"Angela Nunez was murdered. Now, I agree with you on the point the details don't matter. But that's it. She may have been a junkie near the end, but she deserves to have her death avenged as much as anybody else on that board."

There was the almighty Pembleton. Even Worden couldn't help but be a little impressed by that. "That's exactly what I've been talking about," he told the others. "I am going to find who killed Isabel, and truthfully, Frank, I could use the help. Want to help me bring in this Luis Salmanaca?"

"Oh, G-God no." Frank told him. "I j-just got my weapon back, and you want me to help you bring in a Colombian kid with a shotgun? N-not your best move. Besides, I still have to finish the paperwork on the Clifton triple."

"Bayliss is the primary on that case," Howard reminded him.

"H-he's testifying in the Radcliff trial," Pembleton told her. "Said now, that I was back on the job, I had to do the minor things that I'd been a-avoiding."

"Fine, I guess we're on our own." Craig turned to Howard. "I've got the last known address for Luis. Let's see if we can shake his tree."

Maybe Craig would've been a little more cynical had he been on the job longer. But the Salmanaca interview shook him a lot more than it should have.

Salmanaca was a little more than a teenager, but he seemed like someone who was more of the Starkweather mode than anybody else. From the moment he and Kay had knocked on his door to the second hour of their interrogation of him, the kid had barely said six words., and only once had he bothered to string more than two together. For the most part, all he did was stare straight ahead.

This would've been unsettling enough. But this wasn't the vacant stare of an idiot or an addict. There was something much colder in it. Somehow, this seventeen-year old boy seemed to be taken not just the measure of Craig or Kay or even the Homicide unit, but rather the whole Baltimore PD, and found it lacking. Something not even worthy of his time to engage with.

By the end of the first ten minutes, Craig knew that they were busting their head against the wall. They hadn't been able to get a warrant to search the Salmanaca residence, and the kid clearly wasn't stupid enough to leave either a shotgun or coke in plain view. And it was very clear that nothing was going to get this guy to confess. Fuck, they couldn't even get him to open his mouth.

Finally, after nearly ninety minutes and no real reaction from Salmanaca, Craig finally left the Box, and went back into the observation room. There, Gee and Pembleton were waiting.

"If you've come to tell me I've got nothing, I figured that part out an hour ago," he told them grimly. "If you've got any sage words of wisdom, though..."

"Be a waste of time." Pembleton told him. "He's not going to give us a damn thing."

"So I'm barking up the wrong tree here?"

'I didn't say that. Kid's definitely responsible."

Worden looked at Salmanaca through the glass, where he was still staring dead ahead. "What about Rule No.4?" Bayliss had told him that a few weeks ago - a guilty man, when left alone in the interrogation room, will go to sleep.

"Every rule has its exception," Frank told him. "What you're looking at is that rarest of breeds. The stone cold killer. Someone who could shoot his girlfriend over the breakfast table, then go to the couch, turn on his TV, and watch the Ravens game without even a hesitation."

"So how do we get him?" Worden asked.

"We don't." Giardello told him grimly. "We have no evidence, no witnesses, no proof at all that Salmanaca was even there when Angela Nunez died. We have no choice but to cut him loose."

Craig wasn't sure he was hearing right. "This guy's a Colombian national. The moment he leaves the station, there's nothing that's going to stop him from hopping the next plane to Bogotá."

"I don't like this any more than you, Detective, but the fact of the matter is, we have nothing to hold him on." Giardello looked as disgusted as Craig felt. "You can hold him another ten hours without charging him, but without any real evidence, we can't even do a thorough search of his residence."

Worden turned his attention back to Salmanaca. "You know, part of me wants to just walk in there, cuff him to the table, and leave one hell of an ass-whupping on him. And if it were twenty years ago, I'd probably do just that."

"What's stopping you now?" Gee asked.

"Because I think that bastard wants me to do just that." Then Craig admitted something else. "Wouldn't make me feel better, either. That wouldn't make him talk. This man just doesn't care."

Craig had never been much of a drinker, and even admitting this case was going to be in red for a very long time, he still didn't feel like drowning his sorrows; But considering that Munch and Lewis had invited him out to the Waterfront for the first time since joining the unit, he decided he might as well jump at the opportunity.

"You know, when we invited you down here, the presumption was that you would get hammered," Munch told him. "We don't earn a living by having our customers nurse a single beer for an hour."

"Part of the reason that people come to bars is to contemplate the state of the world," Craig said, absent-mindedly. "Give me credit for that much at least."

Munch looked at him. "No one's denying that it was a shitty case," he told him. "But you've seen how we deal with it. Pembleton and Bayliss, they'll brood about it. Frank will go home to his wife, Tim'll talk about leaving Homicide for a few hours, then they'll go back to work. Cops like me and Meldrick, we'll work here at the Waterfront at night, watch alcoholics drown their sorrows, move on to the next dead body."

"That's your sage advice. Find a way to deal with it, then come back to work the next day?" Craig shook his head. "You know, for a Jewish guy, you're a shitty rabbi."

"I've never been much of a mentor. I'm not sure I like doing it now." Munch poured a small beer. "At least your guy didn't have the stones to gloat when it was all over. Luther Mahoney came in and tried to buy a drink for the house."

"Somehow, I don't think the Salmanaca family is the gloating type." Craig finished his beer. "My guess is, he's going to go underground for awhile. At least, that's what I'm hoping he ends up doing."

"This is Charm City. Things never go the way they planned." Munch told him.

"What I'm afraid he'll do is try and figure out who fingered him for killing Angela Nunez in the first place. Then, if he figures it out, the trail will eventually lead back to her mother." Craig shook his head. "Either way, there's no way this guy's finished killing. Not by a long shot."

"Maybe you'll get another chance at him then," Munch told him. "God knows, we've certainly gotten more shots at Luther."

"I want to believe that. I do." Worden shook his head. "And I know that I'm a rookie and you've got no reason to take me seriously. But I just got this gut feeling. This is as close as we got to Luis. We'll never find him again. One way or the other."

Munch looked at him. "That's way too philosophical for eleven-twenty on a Wednesday."

"Isn't drunken logic part of running a bar?"

"You're nowhere near drunk enough to be considering that."

"Well, then maybe I should just have another beer."

January 1997

The holidays tended to be a depressing time, but that generally led to more people killing themselves rather than offing their neighbors. Regardless, the last month hadn't exactly been much of a thrill from any perspective.

By far, the most depressing news had come when Ed Danvers fiancee, Meryl Hanson had been shot in a robbery where she had been trying on her wedding gown. Pembleton had caught the case as primary, and he'd managed to bring in a suspect, Julius Cummings. But despite his best efforts, he had not been able to get Cummings to confess, and the next day, the suspect had hung himself in his cell. Whether it had been because he was guilty or because he felt trapped was a question that would never be answered, and the end result was the same - there would be no justice for her or Danvers, who had been on sabbatical since then, according to Howard.

There had been no murders on New Year's Eve, but a bomb of a different sort had gone off. Brodie had apparently been making a documentary on the Homicide Unit for the past year, and he had shown it to everybody on the rare night when the phones didn't ring. Because he had appeared in it the least of all the detectives, Worden had to admit that it had been stylish, well shot, and extremely well filmed. But he knew just from looking at it that Gaffney would have a hard time with it, and that had nothing to do with the fact that he had finally been identified as the 'Lunch Bandit'. Without any formal consent, Brodie had sold it to PBS, and now the entire unit had been pissed at him, though no doubt some of their memories had faded when the phones started ringing right at 12:01 AM.

The only thing that seemed certain was the fact that he was now working with Munch. Despite the continual kvetching that seemed to perpetually come from him, Munch was a better detective than anyone seemed to give him credit for being. He'd even started to consider the endless anecdotes that the man seemed to have up his sleeve, as endearing.

"Horace Vines, age twenty." Dr. Cox told them as the two of them walked up to their next crime scene. Well, crime scene was a bit of an exaggeration. Vines was lying in an alley with a bullet in his head.

"So our only witness, Miss Valencia," Worden was telling Munch, "she says that she was feeding her cat when she saw this car pull up to the side of the road, and throw the body of young Mr. Vines out into the alley and then tear ass out, going at least ninety."

"Could she identify the car?" Munch asked.

"It was two a.m. Best she could say was that it was a dark blue sedan. It was moving so fast, she couldn't identify anybody in the car."

"Wonderful. When we find this blue sedan, we can pull it over for speeding as well as second degree murder." Munch signed. "Well, given the fact that the very late Mr. Vines has pretty obvious track marks on his wrist, this is clearly yet another in a series of drug-related murders. Perhaps I'll call it my 'Red Period' after the color that has been pervaded under my name for the last couple of months."

"I'll admit, that is one way of looking at it." Craig told Munch. "But then again, you might yet see some good luck. While I was canvassing the rest of the neighborhood, hoping against hope that lightning might strike twice, I did find something even better."

"Killer threw his wallet out of the car?"

"You could say that." Craig pointed toward the traffic stop. "One of the newly installed traffic cams. If the car really was going as fast as Miss Valencia says it was, then we have a definite lead."

"I've never been so grateful that Big Brother is watching." Munch said.

"You've got to get off this anti-authority kick, Munch." Worden told them. "You're murder police. Technically, you are Big Brother."

Technology in the Baltimore P.D. was second rate at best, but there was a fair amount of evidence that at least there was some effort to improve it. The traffic cam that had been monitoring the intersection seemed to be working perfectly, and after about twenty minutes of viewing tapes on Brodie's machine, they caught the sedan they were looking for. At 2:11 A.M., a blue Toyota Corolla was seen pulling to a stop, then tearing out at roughly seventy-four miles per hour.

The traffic cam caught the car, and the license plate.

The owner was a Horatio Lloyd, forty-three, no criminal record. It was hard to picture this man being the one behind the wheel, much less the murder.

When Munch and Worden visited him, eight hours into their investigation, he was a little shocked to see cops. "You send this many detectives after a stolen car?"

A sinking feeling began to form in Worden's stomach. "Mr. Lloyd, do you have any children?"

"No," Lloyd told them. "Never married, haven't had a girlfriend in three years. Just ain't got the time."

So much for that particular angle. Somehow, telling this man that his car had been tied to a drug-related shooting didn't lend itself easily to Craig.

"Mr. Lloyd, when did you report your car stolen?" Munch asked.

"About three days ago," Lloyd told them earnestly. "I went down to auto, filed a report, they said that they'd get back to me, but I ain't getting my hopes up to ever seeing it again. Though honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to steal a car that shitty."

It was a fair point. Even from the grainy video, it was clear that this particular Toyota needed a paint job, and had smoke pouring from the exhaust. It had been remarkable that the driver had managed to get it past forty without it collapsing.

"Where did you keep it?" Craig asked.

"I kept it in my guest mansion. Where the fuck do you think I kept it? On the damn street." Lloyd was getting prickly for some reason. "Oh, I know this city's gone to hell in a handbasket, but I kept it there for nine years, and nobody did a thing to it. Guess I finally drew the short straw."

"Can you think of anybody who'd want to steal your car? Anybody who maybe expressed an interest in it over the past couple of weeks?" Munch knew he was grasping at straws, but he was desperate for a lead.

Lloyd sighed. "Only person who even looked at it twice was my nephew Roger. 'Bout a week ago, he offered to have it fixed."

"Why'd you turn him down?"

"You're not supposed to say this about your kin, but that boy's always been trouble. My brother's a good man, but there's just nothing he can do. Every other week Roger's always disappeared for a few days, never telling anybody what he's been doing, always showing up with a new girlfriend or something. He offered to fix my car, I ask him where the hell he'd get the money."

Now was the time to ask the question. "Does your nephew use drugs?"

Lloyd drew back. "I'm not about to say something that'll get Roger locked up. I may not trust the kid, but Sammy does." He paused. "But off the record. Wouldn't stun me."

Roger Lloyd did have a sheet. Most of it was low-level stuff, even for Baltimore - possession, possession with intent to distribute. But apparently, he had a history of running with some pretty disreputable crowds - not as bad as the Mahoney organization, but bad enough.

Finding him, just to ask him questions, was another task and a half. He wasn't at his address, or at his fathers. So Munch and Craig went down to talk to Terri Stivers, their narcotics detectives who seemed to have a better grasp of how the shady underbelly of Baltimore worked, at least as far as Meldrick was concerned.

Stivers had heard of Roger Lloyd, but only in connection with a couple of other minor players in this town. "He used to run with Drac Forunato before he took on in the head," she told them. "Ever since then, he's been acting as a runner for a couple of the lower level players with Prop Joe."

"He the type that would be involved in this kind of killing?" Munch asked.

"I gotta tell you, Roger Lloyd always seemed to be the kind of guy who was going to catch a bullet before he put one in somebody else." Stivers told them. "Guy had more balls than he had sense."

"So you think if he was involved in Horace Vines' murder, he'd be telling everybody and his mother?' Craig asked.

"Based on everything you've been telling me, Vines was just another one of these guys who got into deep with the wrong crowd," Stivers admitted. "Half a dozen of these guys get aced every night. The only reason this case has a chance of going black is because they were stupid enough to dump the body in an alley rather than a crackhouse."

"But for a guy like Roger Lloyd, this is probably the biggest thing he's ever been a part of," Craig said thoughtfully. "Only question is, who would he tell?"

"Better question is, where would we find him?" Munch reminded them both.

"All I can tell you is that he usually works at the Druitt Hill Towers," Stivers told him. "Check them out first, see if you can get a glimpse of him."

There weren't a lot of towers any more in Druitt Hill, being part of the endless urban renewal Baltimore kept promising, but never actually delivering on.

And Tower was always something of a misnomer, as far as Craig was concerned. 'Tower' always seemed to summon up the image of some kind of edifice - a castle or the World Trade Center or that large image that seemed to be at the center of Stephen King's fiction. The Druitt Hill Towers had always been decrepit, and ever since heroin had become a part of Baltimore, seemed to be just a synonym for slum. One was reluctant to use that word, though, because it could so accurately describe what most of West Baltimore had become by now.

Musing about wordplay was more up Munch's alley. Craig supposed that he was doing that because it was more satisfying than considering the effort of finding Roger Lloyd. Corner boys were less likely to talk to cops than anybody else. And even when they made the concession that they were interesting more in dead bodies than they were packages and vials, they were just as likely to remain deaf, dumb and blind.

After nearly ninety minutes of asking and not getting answers, even Worden's enthusiasm for the chase had begun to flag. Then they ran into this wide-eyed man who was looking towards the lights, not high but definitely on the way. On an impulse, they talked to him.

"You're looking for Roger?" the dazed man said, in a pleasant enough tone. "He was here a couple of hours ago scoring. Said he'd come to a lot of money yesterday, and he wanted to go celebrate."

"How'd he get the money?" Craig asked.

"He said he did some big job yesterday. Ship finally came in."

"Where'd he go to celebrate?" Munch asked.

"Highland Town. Near Albert's." Albert's was a seedy bar - well, most bars in that area were seedy.

"Let's hope we can find the bastard." Munch said, as they called it in.

They did - not quite as they planned though.

As was the case so many when Homicide needed help, Munch had called for a radio car to go to the scene, try and get a bead on their suspect. The radio car answered and, in a rarity for the city of Baltimore, actually beat Munch and Worden there by ten full minutes. By the time they were on the scene, it was all over.

Westby, who had always been a competent patrolman, spotted their Lloyd coming out of the bars, shouting and pretty clearly wasted. Then he started waving a nine millimeter around. Westby got out of the car, drew his weapon, and told Lloyd to put the gun down and his hands in the air.

Lloyd started laughing, and fired a shot in the side of the bar. Westby identified himself as a police officer again, and Lloyd shot over his head. Westby then returned fire, and put a bullet in him.

Westby was considerably shaken up by the time Craig got to him, even though it was pretty clear than even the assholes at IAD would have a hard time writing this up as anything bit a clean shooting. There had actually been two witnesses to see him - a bullet had whizzed past him as well - Westby was more than willing to own up to the shooting, and the fact that both he and Lloyd were African-American made it unlikely that there would be problems in the press.

Still, Craig had been more than willing to stand up for him, and said he would be more than willing to be primary, something that most detectives didn't sign up for.

"Look at what the late Mr. Lloyd was using as his weapon of choice," Munch told them. "Nine mm, just like the one that killed Horace Vines."

"Gee'll be so thrilled." Craig said sadly. "He loves it when murders solve themselves."

Munch clearly caught the tone. "If you want, I'll make the condolence call to Roger's father," he said slowly.

"We still got a little while before we have to handle that part of it." Craig told them. "Besides, we want to make sure we get this right."

Westby appeared pretty shaken up, which was understandable. "I told him to surrender. Three times. He wouldn't put the gun down."

"It'll work out, Paul," Craig said softly. "You do know I have to ask for your gun."

Westby still seemed in a trance as he handed it over. "Call the Lieutenant. Tell him we have a police involved shooting. Gently."

For the first time in a week, Worden thought of Gaffney. The captain probably wouldn't have thought twice about rolling Westby over the coals if it suited his purposes. Not because he gave a shit about Roger Lloyd, or even because he cared about the optics. No, he'd be concerned that this made his department look bad. That was who Gaffney was.

Then he considered Al Giardello. He'd known the Lieutenant for three months, or an eighth of the time he'd known Roger Gaffney, and yet it had been obvious within the first week that Giardello was far better, not simply as a superior, but as a human being. How the hell had he been passed over, not once but twice for Barnfather's former position? He didn't understand the politics of the job at all.

Suddenly, he came to a personal decision. Gaffney may have gotten him his job, but he sure as hell wasn't worthy of his allegiance. Craig decided from now on he'd try to prove that he may have gotten this job under false pretenses, but he sure as shit was going to keep it. That started with making sure officers like Westby got protected first.

Craig would have no idea how much shit he was going to end up taking until months later, and even then, he would realize he couldn't have done it any other way.