Chapter 6

The next two months followed a deceptively normal routine, both for Craig and for the Homicide Unit at large. Oh sure, the dead bodies continued to fall, but there were no serial killers, and no other red balls.

Kellerman returned to the squad a couple of days after the Haybert murdered was cleared. There were rumors that he had to spend a night in jail because of some barroom brawl, but Meldrick assured him it was nonsense. Lewis went on vacation for a week, and Kellerman partnered with Bayliss on a series of bombings, then once with Munch, on a case that was very personal for him. Apparently the victim, Helen Rosenthal, had been a childhood friend of John's, and it had shaken the sarcastic detective more than usual. Craig knew better than to press Munch on it, within the next couple of days they were back working murders again.

Something had shifted in Bayliss' and Pembleton's relationship as well. Frank remained as intensely private as ever, but something was shaking the man. Eventually, he learned through secondhand gossip that he and Mary, who had married for ten years, had taken their infant daughter, and moved out. This shook Craig. Frank had been the only detective in this entire squadroom who had a stable, loving family. If Mary had been willing to stick with him through the stroke and his long recovery, only to leave him now - it was very unsettling. He was pretty sure that was the reason Bayliss had started working with him again, though there was still something very shaky about their new partnership.

But domestic squabbles aside, the squad was moving back to business at a fairly regular clip. So when things were about to change radically, not just for Craig, but for everybody in the Homicide Unit, he was almost completely unprepared. Admittedly, so was everybody else, and it would only become clearer who much things were disrupted in retrospect.

It started, indirectly, when he and Munch went out to a motel to investigate the death of a Nigerian national in a beatup motel. It seemed like a nothing death - the man clearly caught the man by surprise, but it wasn't clearly a homicide. Indeed, a couple of hours, Cox told them the fact had died from a massive drug overdose - just not the typical one. He had been carrying sixty-eight ounces of heroine in his belly, and the condom had burst, causing him to die. What made this of interest to the FBI, Narcotics, and critically, Lewis and Kellerman, was that this shipment had been destined for Luther Mahoney.

Considering the number of bodies that had been dropped by Luther over the past year - their shift alone was carrying nine open cases - it was small wonder that Giardello had demanded that he and the squad be called in on the task for. Craig and Munch had caught three of them over the past six months, and Worden would've been delighted to be included, but someone had to do the paperwork for the other murders.

Then Munch had gotten a call from an old case of Stan Bolander, a man named Punchy DeLeon, who said that he was willing to hand John closed murder. Munch, who had asked Craig to handle the paperwork for the autopsy, one what he thought would be a losing proposition, left him behind.

Then things started to get complicated. Apparently, the victim had been buried in the parking lot at Pimloco, Section C. Munch then had to persuade Howard and Gee to dig up the parking lot. One problem, there was no dead body. Munch then tried to find out about the victim, Jimmy 'The Shirt' Pugliese, who apparently had disappeared ten years ago. Then Munch managed to track down Pugliese's girlfriend, and found a very alive Pugliese. It was the kind of thing that only seemed to happen to Munch.

While this was going on, the taskforce had decided to replace the dope shipment with baking soda, and see if they could shake Mahoney's tree. They did. Badly. Of course, that now met that there were a lot of angry dealers and dope fiends on the streets of Baltimore tonight. Frankly, Craig was amazed they didn't have a shitload of angry murders that day.

Munch was then ranted about the last twenty-four hours - understandably so. Howard had just told him to let the crime go, when Pugliese's girlfriend turned up and told Munch that a man had come with a gun and kidnapped Pugliese. Munch and Howard had rushed out to Pimloco, where Craig had a pretty good idea what they would find in the newly repaved parking lot.

So the squadroom was pretty much empty two hours later. Pembleton had taken a call on another murder, and when he had asked where Bayliss was, he was nowhere to be found. Howard and Munch were digging up the parking lot, and Worden was practically the only one to man the phones.

Then Gee walked into the squadroom. He looked worried. "Worden!" he barked. "I need you to go out Wycliffe Apartments."

"What's up, Lieutenant?" Worden asked.

"Luther Mahoney is dead."

Craig did his best to keep his face neutral, but he could feel the color drain out of it. "What happened?"

"Looks like an officer involved shooting." Giardello looked around. "Is everybody else on call?"

Bayliss was not his responsibility. "Yes, sir." No other way to broach the question. "Who did it?"

"That's why I'm sending you." Giardello must have sensed the worry. "Mahoney was a big fish in the community, even if he was a drug kingpin. I need this to be airtight. Be thorough."

This was the first case he was going to be working alone. And talk about a hell of a way to cut your teeth - he was dealing with the biggest drug kingpin in Baltimore.

He looked at Giardello for a moment, then walked out of the squadroom.

There were at least a dozen other uniform vehicles there by the time he got to Wycliffe. It made a certain amount of sense - considering the magnitude of the murder and who the victim was, there were probably at least half a dozen people from narcotics, trying to figure out how to dissect and hopefully dismantle the Mahoney empire.

However, his detective instincts were already honed that something was amiss by the time he got inside. Stivers, Lewis and Kellerman were all there, and suddenly he got a very sinking feeling in his stomach. Kellerman was smoking a cigarette, even though he'd supposedly quit the habit six months earlier. Lewis seemed remarkably calm. Stivers, on the other hand, looked horribly shaken - even more so than a detective who had seen her quarry get killed.

Cox was standing over the body, and she seemed to be looking a little more perplexed than usual. Not for the first time, Craig found himself wondering about the rumor that she and Kellerman were sleeping together.

He walked over to the three detectives. "So, you're the one who drew the short straw." Kellerman sounded a lot colder than the detective Craig had shared a squad with for more than six months.

"It's an officer involved shooting, Mike," Worden said slowly. "You know the drill."

"Of course I do. I called it in." He looked around. "Just you?"

"Just me." Craig looked around. "Alright, let's get this over with what exactly happened."

"Mahoney drew a gun on my partner, so I lit him up. Simple as that."

Under other circumstances, Worden might have been willing to let it go. He'd seen similar things happen at QRT, and hell, he'd investigated a couple of police involved shootings since he'd come to Homicide. He had no reason to doubt Mike's word. But it was the utter detachment in Kellerman's voice that truly bothered him. It was the same tone that he'd heard in the voices of quite a few stone killers. To hear it coming from Mike, shook him deeply.

"Mike, can I have your weapon, please?" he said slowly.

Kellerman nodded, pulled his gun from his holster, and handed it to him, butt first.

Craig decided to deal with the question that was prominent on his mind. "What the fuck happened, guys? Last I heard the three of you were out at Druitt Hill Park, about to grab up Mahoney and his crew. How the fuck does that go in just three hours to Luther Mahoney ending up dead?"

For the first time, Kellerman's cold expression faltered a bit. Lewis and Stivers looked at the floor. "Antonio Brookdale set up a meeting with Mahoney and his suppliers at three o'clock," Stivers told him. "We couldn't maintain line of sight, so we held back from a nearby building. We were maintaining surveillance, and than Luther just - went nuts."

"Nuts? He killed Brookdale and accidentally killed some poor woman who picked the wrong day to take her son to the park," Meldrick sounded angrier than he'd ever heard him. "We chased Mahoney back to his apartment to grab him up before he went on the run."

Meldrick looked him dead in the eye. Stivers gaze went back to the floor. There was more to this than they were letting on. The question was, how much did Craig care?

Be thorough. Now he was hearing Gee's voice in his head. Better his than Gaffney's, though. "I bet the three of you are tired of hanging around here," he said slowly.

"It stinks of Luther's cologne," Kellerman said. Again that coldness. Craig reminded himself that while everybody in the squadroom hated Luther Mahoney, Mike in particular had cause to loathe him.

"Why don't you guys drive back to the squadroom? Let me finish walking through the crime scene and everything else. Soon as I'm done, I'll get back to the three of you." Worden told them.

"All things considered, I'd rather get this handled now," Meldrick told him.

"I think I saw Dawn Daniels out there. You guys are going to have IID up your asses soon enough; you really want to spend the next hour dodging the press as well?" Craig told him. "Besides, it'll give you a chance to finish up the paperwork on the Brookdale murder."

"Sure thing," Meldrick told him. As the three of them walked out of the apartment, Worden couldn't help but notice that Mike and Meldrick, two of the most laidback detectives he'd known, were now having a hard time looking each other in the eye.

He walked over to Cox. "I'm not expected you to uncover anything wild in the autopsy," he told her. "Nevertheless, I'd be grateful if you could be as thorough as possible."

"Sure thing, Worden." The perplexed look on Juliana's face was gone; she was all business now.

He looked for a familiar face, and found Officer Deutsch. He told him to rush Kellerman's weapon to ballistics.

"What would Frank Pembleton do?" he whispered to himself. He looked around the apartment. There was a wall safe hanging open, and a bag full of cash nearby. He was guessing that Luther had been planning to get out of the country the minute the meeting with Brookdale had gone south. He walked over to it.

He then turned to the other officers who had been dismantling the apartment. "There anything in this apartment that can link Mahoney to his cartel?" he asked.

"We're still going through it, but there doesn't seem to be much here," one of the patrolmen told him. "We've got a team sweeping the youth center, but we don't think he was stupid enough to hide it there."

"What about electronics?" Worden asked. "Computers, cell phones..." he trailed off. "Security cameras."

Luther Mahoney was a brilliant man. There was no way he wouldn't have some kind of electronic surveillance in his apartment. "Where the fuck is Brodie?" he demanded.

"He was showing the footage from Druitt Hill to the FBI."

Great. The one time he might actually be useful, and he's helping the Feds. "Start looking for cameras." he told the patrolmen. "Anything that looks like some kind of camera or VCR, I want you bring it down to Homicide. Under no circumstances is anybody but the people in this room to know about it."

"Not even Homicide?"

"No." Craig told them. "Not yet."

The next six hours were emotionally and physically exhausting for Worden.

The ballistics report told the obvious; Kellerman's gun had fired the bullet that Cox pulled out of Mahoney. Cox also verified the obvious that Mahoney had died from a gunshot wound to the chest. What was also clear was that prior to being shot, Mahoney had taken a hell of a beating. There were bruises on his chest, arms and legs. It was reminiscent of the kind of beatdown suspects had gotten in the bad old days before they had been arrested.

Considering all the dead bodies that Mahoney had sent the unit in the course of running his operation combined with all the headaches they had gone to try him to all of them, Craig wasn't weeping any tears about that. What made less sense was, according to Kellerman's story, how the hell Luther had managed to get a hold of Meldrick's gun, thus causing Kellerman to shoot him in defense of others. It just didn't add up.

He'd been staring at some of the medical reports for the last five minutes, when Pembleton walked in the room. "How's the Raines case going?" he asked.

"It's a stone-cold whodunit. No witnesses, no suspects, no leads." Pembleton said as he sat down. "If you want to talk about something else, you should p-probably choose a better lead in."

Craig sighed. "We found one of those nanny-cams in the main room of Mahoney's apartment," he told Pembleton.

"Anything you can use?"

Craig shook his head. "It's 21st century technology. There's some kind of encryption involved. Brodie says the Colts have a better chance of moving to back to Baltimore than us getting anything usable off it."

"So there's nothing but the physical evidence and the witnesses. What do Lewis and Kellerman have to say about it?"

"I haven't talked to them yet." Before Pembleton could fix him with an icy stare, he said: "IID's already been grilling them the last two hours. I figured I'd give them a little while before putting them through the grinder again."

"Very patient of you." There was the Pembleton disapproval again.

"You like working alone?"

Frank was used to abrupt changes in subject. "I-I've come to find that a partner slows me down."

"You always were a loner. Meldrick, Munch, Howard, they've had to work alone because of other factors, and they always bitched about it. I can sure see what they mean." He picked up the case file. "First case I work alone at Homicide, and its this. Now, I have to interview detectives that I've shared a squad with for six months, and ask them about the death of a man, who, let's be honest, deserved to catch a bullet, and was probably destined to at some point." He sighed and put the case file down. "I am one lucky son of a bitch."

"A murder's a murder like any other. Doesn't matter who the victim is. What matters is whether it was clean or not."

Craig realized that Pembleton was the wrong guy to be talking to about this. Around the time he had joined the force, there had been a police involved shooting of a local bad boy named C.C. Cox. An officer named Hellregel had claimed that he had been chasing Cox, that he had slipped, accidentally discharged his weapon, and that the bullet had killed Cox. It had become clear very quickly that Hellreigel hadn't killed him, and Pembleton, who had been the primary, had ordered an investigation of more than a dozen plainclothes officer, trying to break the alibi, over the strong objections of Lt. Giardello. Eventually, he had arrested Lt. Tyron of the Eastern District, and even though he had been cleared of all charges, it had been a major reason why Pembleton was never going rise very high beyond Detective. Which was probably how Frank liked it.

Craig took a deep breath. "Well, I've dicked around long enough. Time to get started." He got up. "Do me a favor, Frank. Keep this conversation to yourself."

He decided to start with Meldrick. He knew that by now the three of them had had more then enough time to get their stories straight. Nevertheless, he tried to go with a soft Q & A, make them think that everything was a routine. Which meant that under no circumstances was he going near the box.

So he went to the break room. Lewis seemed nervous, but then Meldrick could easily get jumpy, and given the situation, an innocent man would be uneasy.

"How'd the vultures treat you?" Craig began.

"IID? They could prove the sun was cold if they thought it would put another cop in a jackpot situation," Meldrick told him. "God knows they've caused enough headaches for me in the past."

"Any officer involved shooting, they act like their balls are bigger then yours." Craig sat down on the other side of the table. "And considering who the victim is this time, you can hardly blame them for being more assholic than usual."

Meldrick chuckled a little.

"How many murders did you and Kellerman catch that were tied to Luther over the past year?"

"Counting the last two he took with him, twelve."

Craig whistled. "I haven't even investigated that many as primary."

"Well, you're young yet."

"Bad enough all those bodies dropping. But you couldn't tie one of those killings to him. He slipped out of your grasp three times since I joined the unit." Craig told him.

"He was one arrogant son of a bitch."

"I'll say. After you couldn't tie him to Reggie Copeland's murder, he actually had the titanium testicles to go to the Waterfront and buy you a drink." Craig shook his head. "All those cops, he was lucky to get out alive."

"It took all my self-respect just to show him the door."

"Is that why you beat him down?" Craig's tone of voice didn't change a bit.

Neither did Meldrick's expression, but he could definitely see that he was about to go into deep waters. "What are you talking about?"

"I have the autopsy report right here. There were all kinds of bruises and cuts all over Mahoney's body before he got killed." Craig knew he had to proceed carefully. "I know that the age of beating down a suspect went out of Baltimore with the age of billy clubs and jackboots, but I also know that in certain cases, exceptions should be made. And considering all the poison that Luther dealt and all the bodies he dropped, he had one coming." Craig smiled grimly. "Personally, I'd have been disappointed if he hadn't gotten one before he got booked."

Meldrick looked him dead in the eye. "It was the dumbest thing I've ever done. We had the bastard. He'd shot Antonio Brookdale in cold blood, and we had four witnesses who'd be willing to testify to it. All I had to do was being him in. But the slippery bastard had come in three times for questioning and gotten away. I couldn't just let it go this time."

"So you tuned him up. Big deal." Worden told him. "That much at least he had coming. But you get the suspect get a hold of your gun. One who had personally killed two people less than an hour earlier. What the fuck, Meldrick?"

Lewis shook his head for a few moments. "I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have. It's all on me."

He was on the verge of the truth. One more push, and Meldrick would give it up. It wouldn't even have to be that hard. And then, Worden made a mistake. He thought about the bodies and the wreckage that Luther Mahoney had left in his wake over the past three years. And he lay that against all the good Detective Meldrick Lewis had done as a murder police for the last five years. There was no moral equivalence here. A mistake that Meldrick had made for an instant shouldn't cancel out all the good that he had done in the past and could do in the future.

So he stopped sounding friendly, and acted professionally. "Would you like to amend your statement?"

Meldrick stiffened. And the moment had passed. "I let Luther get my gun. Kellerman and Stivers came in. Luther raised the gun to my head. Mikey did what he had to do. And that's all I have to say in the matter."

It didn't matter. Worden had what he had needed. And he knew exactly where he had to go to get the truth.

He went to Narcotics, where he figured Stivers would've gone, ostensibly to help start the dismantling of Mahoney's empire, but more likely to get as much physical and emotional distance from the investigation.

Worden may have been new to Homicide, but he could tell that Terri looked even worse than she had at the crime scene. On site, he had made the judgment that Stivers was going to be the weak link. He didn't know what Lewis or Kellerman had said to her in the last twenty-four hours, but he was willing be it hadn't done anything to make her feel any better.

"Hey, Terri." Craig said as casually as he could manage. "I'm a little surprised to see you here."

"Daniels told me to go back to stay at my desk until this was handled, so that's where I am." Stivers' affect was flat, but she sounded even more worn down than before.

"You want to take a walk with me?"

"Do I have a choice?"

This was unsettling. He'd expected at least some give with her, but she sounded like she was ready to roll over without much pushing. "This isn't a big deal yet, Terri. If it was, you'd have come to our house, not me to you. Anyway, given all the shit that's gone down the last couple of days, I figured you could use a break."

Stivers' didn't argue, or maybe she just wasn't capable of arguing. "Where do you want to go?"

"How bout to Jimmy's? I could go for some scrapple right about now."

"I'm not really hungry."

She wasn't going to need that much of a push. But he'd better be more careful than he had been with Meldrick. "Let's just get out of the squadroom. Away from the prying eyes."

"So, Daniels must be thrilled."

"Oh sure. Three bodies cooling at the morgue, half the city's dope fiends at each others throats, yeah they're really thrilled with me."

Craig was beginning to sound a little baffled. "You just took down the biggest kingpin in East Baltimore. I figure that's going to be good for at least a citation."

"Why? For having a man half of East Baltimore thought was a saint end up in a body bag?"

"The other half knew that he was a drug dealer. This is the kind of thing that the bosses love to celebrate. A victory in the war on drugs."

"Victory?" Terri gave a cynical laugh that Craig would have expected more from Munch than anyone else. "Sure. They'll be dope on the table. We'll be able to pick a couple of suppliers, maybe a couple of the lower level dealers. Then there will be a lot more shooting and deaths, as someone new, better supplied, with more tact ends up filling the void left by the late, lamented Luther. Just you wait. By June, at the latest, this shit'll start all over again. SSDD."

"And I thought the folks at Homicide were pessimistic." Craig couldn't help but say.

"When I got into Narcotics four years ago, I honestly I was going to make a difference. Stop the OD's, stop the killings. You know, there was a Detective Silva, the year I started working. Said that within three months, I'd either burn out or be as cynical as he was. He told me that this wasn't a war, it was a pea shoot. And that the other side had claimed victory decades ago, we just didn't want to acknowledge it."

"Then why are you still here?" Craig asked. "You could've transferred out instead of getting Mahoney's pager number."

Stivers shook her head. "I don't know. Shit, maybe I will switch departments. Hell, working sex crimes is looking good to be right now. I am just so goddamn tired of running up the down escalator."

All of this sounded valid. Craig had known more than a few detective who'd gotten tired of the whole push-and-pull of the drug war that was drowning Baltimore. He just didn't figure it would come this soon after what should have been, by anybody's standards a major victory. She'd been positively ebullient when she, Lewis and Kellerman had headed for the stakeout in Druitt Hill Park yesterday morning. Right now, she sounded like she was one step away from eating her gun.

"You know, I'm beginning to think this can wait. Why don't you go home, catch a few hours sleep, and we'll pick this up tomorrow?"

Terri shook her head. "Daniels sent me home last night. I tossed and turned for four hours. I didn't sleep a wink." She looked around. "Honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to sleep again."

His instincts had been right. Stivers was this close to breaking like an egg. Craig knew that if he pushed her, he could probably get the truth out of her right now. "You know, I am still a rookie detective. But I have learned a few things. And Terri, you're one step away from Lady Macbeth right now."

Terri raised an eyebrow. "I guess I have been hanging around Munch a little too long. The point is, I'm betting if you just told the truth about what happened in Luther's apartment, you'd be able to sleep just fine."

Stivers considered this for a minute. "Maybe. Course, when I wake up tomorrow morning, I might be facing more considerable problems. Like whether or not I still have a job. Or if I'm facing some kind of charges myself."

"For what? It's only been a day since Kellerman shot Luther. My guess is half the paperwork hasn't even been filed." Worden shook his head. "Hell, even those pencil pushers at IID are still probably figuring out what they want to leave out to make you look bad."

"They probably wouldn't have to try that hard."

"Kellerman killed Luther Mahoney. Not you. Not Lewis. And hell, maybe it is a clean shooting, like everybody says. But the only way we're going to work this out is if I get a straight answer to what happened. Just tell me."

Stivers was definitely a lot rawer than Meldrick had been. "How do I know you'll do the right thing?" she asked.

"Can't be any worse than where you are right now."

Stivers didn't need that long to tell Craig what had really gone down in Luther's apartment. And suddenly, he was very glad that he was working alone. He knew that if Pembleton had even a wisp of what had happened, the cuffs would be going around Kellerman's wrists even as he spoke.

Worden, however, wasn't nearly so sure. He was pretty sure that had he been in a similar situation, he wouldn't have put a bullet in Luther's chest. But everybody in the Baltimore PD had a good reason to loathe Luther Mahoney, and he couldn't say that he wouldn't have at least considered it. That someone who hadn't been put through more shit than this than Kellerman or Lewis, he didn't blame him.

Now, the question was, what the fuck was he going to do about it?

So he decided to do what he had been avoiding, and have a conversation with Kellerman.

"Hey Mike," Craig said, going by Kellerman's desk, "I'm ready to talk to you."

Kellerman didn't seem any more interested than he had been in the past twenty-four hours ago. "Fine, let's talk."

Craig looked around. "let's go somewhere private."

"The Waterfront?" Was he serious?

"How bout the roof?"

"I thought you quit smoking," Craig said, as soon as he had made certain the two of them were alone up there.

Kellerman actually looked a little sheepish for the first time in a bit. "I just couldn't take the tension any more. You're not going to lecture me, are you?"

"Actually, I was going to ask if I could bum one. This seems to be a pretty good time to resume old habits." Worden told him.

Kellerman didn't object, and even gave him a light. "I didn't know you smoked either."

"I quit when I joined Homicide." Craig admitted. "But I often find they're useful getting through unpleasant conversations. And I've got a pretty good feeling this one is going to suck."

Kellerman didn't run or ask for his PBA lawyer. Craig decided to take this for a good sign.

"You know, I don't ever got around to telling you what a shitty deals you got from the Feds." Craig said as he took a drag.

"Yeah, I know."

"I'm serious, Mike. They call you a dirty cop, drag your name through the muck for four months, then let you go without so much as an apology." Craig shook his head. "There's no nice way to say it, you got fucked by the system."

Kellerman actually looked remorseful for the first time all day. "I finally started to work my way through it, but it wasn't a lot of fun. Besides, its not like you had any reason to know better."

"How long had it been since you got no-billed?" Craig asked.

"Three months, six days." Mike told him.

"So I can understand why you wouldn't exactly be eager to go through this kind of shit again." Craig said casually. "Especially for a shitstain like Luther Mahoney."

"He was the scum of the earth," Kellerman was back to being ice cold again.

"He was. No question. And I'm not exactly going to throw myself on his coffin when he gets buried." Craig told them. "But I can't exactly just go through the motions like this is any other murder."

"I guess you've talked to Meldrick and Stivers." Kellerman took out a cigarette of his own.

"I have," Worden said, just as noncommittally. "And I think I know as well as you do what they had to say."

"Which was?"

"Something that passes muster in a police report. Neither of them gave you up, but they left out just enough, so that someone with really prowess, could nail your ass to the wall."

Kellerman still seemed remarkably calm, considering his future was hanging before his eyes. "You didn't answer my question."

"You are so lucky Pembleton or Bayliss isn't investigating this case. As much as they respect you, they'd have you in the box by now, recommending you call your PBA lawyer." Worden shook his head. "Me, I see things differently."

"And how do you see it?"

"There is no way in hell Danvers or anybody in the DA's office would want to put this case before a grand jury." Craig admitted. "Considering who Luther Mahoney was, I can't see any of them wanting to try and stick a charge on you for this. It would just put up a level of ugliness that this department and this city does not need. Nine times out of ten, fuck, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, there's no way they'd indict. And on the off-chance that it did, I can't see a single jury in the world voting to convict. But given all the shit you've already been through the past year, I could understand why you might not want to put faith in the system."

Kellerman considered this for a very long time. "Just what are you trying to say?"

"Strictly between you and me, and I will deny it if ever pressed by anybody else, I understand why you did what you did." Worden told him. "The question is, are you willing to stand by it?"

Kellerman looked carefully around. "What about Stivers? And Terri? If I face charges, they might end up as much as jackpot as me. I'm willing to put my ass on the line. Are you willing to put theirs?"

Craig had been thinking about trying to use his chits with Gaffney to try and make sure Lewis and Stivers came out the other side. Then he figured that the Captain would have no problem sacrificing them or Kellerman to make sure the department looked good. This was the dirt that Gaffney had probably sent him to Homicide to dig up. And now, it was up to him to decide what to do with the shovel.

'I see your point," he told him. "Here's mine. I think you're a good cop who keeps getting dealt a shit hand. Which probably means you've been having a lot of trouble trusting people. I want you to trust me, Mike. Trust me that I'm going to do the right thing."

Kellerman gave a bitter smile. "That is kind of why we're here."

Three hours later, Worden knocked on Gee's door. "I've completed my investigation into Mahoney's shooting."

"And what is your conclusion?" Gee asked neutrally.

"In trying to arrest Luther Mahoney, Lewis got carried away, and used excessive force while trying to apprehend him. While do so, Mahoney got a hold of Lewis's gun, when Kellerman and Stivers arrived on the scene. Luther pointed his gun as Lewis, and Mike shot him." Worden took a deep breath. "It is my belief that Kellerman acted in defense of others. It is my recommendation that no charges be filed against Detective Kellerman."

The Lieutenant considered this for a few moments. "You'd be willing to testify to this before an internal board if it was necessary?"

'If I had to. But given what Kellerman has already been through with the Feds and Internal, I'd be grateful if there was anything you could do to preclude this." Worden told him. "I realize that Lewis overreacted when he encountered Mahoney, but considering his record at Homicide, I'd be willing to go before the disciplinary board about this." He shrugged. "It might not be the worst idea for all of them to undergo some psychological counseling. I know from my time at QRT that this can really shake a person up."

He handed him the file. "I'll do what I can." Giardello told him.

"If that's all, I'd like to get back in the rotation." Craig prepared to leave the office.

"Detective Worden." Giardello said. "I wanted to thank you for being so thorough in your investigation. I know that police-involved shootings are probably the worst part of the job for almost every detective here. You handled it very well." He stepped out from behind his desk. "I realize I may not have been the most friendly person to you, but you've more than proven yourself these past months, and I'm glad you're part of my unit."

For once Craig took in Giardello's praise without a corresponding amount of guilt. He thought it came from doing the right thing for once.

He didn't realize he had put himself in more than one person's bombsight by this decision, and by the time he did, he admitted that he couldn't have proceeded any other way.