The young officer knocked on Mike's door. When both detectives looked up, he held out a file. "This is from Sgt. Parker," he said as he handed the file to Steve.
"Thanks, son," Mike said with a nod as he took the file from Steve and opened it. As the younger man watched, Mike flipped quickly through the papers, found the one he was looking for and slid a second opened file over next to it. His eyes darted back and forth from one to the other then he smiled slightly and sat back. "Bingo."
Smiling slightly as well, but with his brow furrowed in bewilderment, Steve shrugged a question. "Are you going to fill me in?" he asked with a chuckle. He nodded towards the newly arrived file. "That looks old."
Mike chortled. "I'll say. About 25 years. Let me buy you a coffee and I'll tell you a story," he said as he got to his feet and headed to the office door.
Coffee cups in hand, the two detectives settled back into their chairs, Steve sitting back with his legs crossed. Mike pulled out the lower desk drawer and put his left foot on it, leaning back and cradling his mug in both hands.
"I'd only been on the force for about ten months, I think –"
"So we're talking back in the days when you were still driving Model T's and everyone had a handlebar mustache?" Steve teased with a laugh.
Sighing heavily, and trying not to smile, Mike shook his head in bemused exasperation. "Keep it up, smarty, and I will have you back on patrol," Mike shot back, then the smile disappeared and he continued. "Anyway, my partner Bob Brewer and I – this was before Gus – we were walking a day beat in the Tenderloin. This black-and-white shot past us and we could hear it squeal to a stop a couple of blocks away.
"By the time we got there, the two patrolmen had gone into a house and had these two perps down on the floor in different rooms – they'd broken up this fight, there were no guns or knives or anything like that involved. It was pretty routine. Bob goes into the living room where one of our boys has one of the perps down on the floor cuffing him and I head into the kitchen to help the other one.
"I'd just gone through the door when all of a sudden our guy goes…ballistic… on this kid on the floor. I don't know what the kid said to him, but suddenly this guy starting pounding the hell out of the kid before I had time to react. I jumped on him and tried to pull him back - I had to have had a good twenty, thirty pounds on the guy - but it took everything I had to wrestle him off."
Mike, who had been staring into space, remembering, looked toward his partner. "The kid on the floor, I thought he was dead at first, he was bleeding from his nose, his ears, his mouth … it was brutal." Mike swallowed hard, the still visible bruises and abrasions on his partners face breathing new life into his memories. "And the cop, he was struggling against me, trying to get back at him." Mike shook his head. "I'd never seen anything like it. He, ah, he finally settled down to the point where I felt it safe to let him go. I had no idea who he was, I'd never met him before. His nametag said Garrity, and I found out later he'd been two years ahead of me at the Academy. Bob didn't know him either.
"So, everything settles down and I'm going to go call for an ambulance for the kid, and this Garrity comes up to me and he says 'I'm sorry about all that but you're gonna back me up on this, right, tell the brass the kid attacked me and I had to defend myself, right?' … I couldn't believe what I was hearing. But he wasn't asking me, he was threatening, I could hear it in his voice. I was the rookie, I was on probation, and I better do as he said or I would be the one on the hook, so to speak."
Mike paused, taking a sip from his now almost cold coffee. Steve's frown had deepened. "What did you do?" he asked quietly.
Mike waited several seconds before answering. "The 'code of silence' was pretty strong back then, there had been a lot of bad press that the department had been facing because of allegations of corruption and abuse. But this guy scared me, Steve. So I did the only thing I thought was right – I went to my captain, who took it upstairs. Garrity was called in, we were both interrogated, they investigated… and he was fired. He wasn't charged with assault or attempted murder, which personally I think he should have been. I think they just wanted to sort of sweep it all under the carpet."
"So this Garrity, did he threaten you?"
Mike looked up and shook his head. "No, nothing like that. He just disappeared. I heard through the grapevine that he had a rough go of it – he was newly married with a young kid and another on the way. He took to the bottle I heard, but nobody that I talked to thought he'd been given the shaft. Everyone seemed to agree that he was a loose cannon and he should never have been allowed to join the force in the first place." Mike snorted mirthlessly. "There wasn't much 'psychological testing' back then, let me tell ya."
"Hunh. So, ah, what makes you think that has anything to do with what's going on right now?"
Mike took his foot off the drawer and sat forward, putting the coffee cup on the table. He picked up the older file folder and turned it around, putting it back down in front of Steve, who had leaned forward as well. Mike pointed towards the paper on the right side of the file.
Steve read the hand-written application form for one Patrick Kean Garrity, his next of kin, address and other personal information. It seemed normal and nothing jumped out to catch his attention. He looked up at his partner.
With a slight smile, Mike picked up the second file and turned it around as well, dropping it back onto the desk. Then he sat back and waited.
On the right side of that file was the Personal Information form for Andrew Alan Madsen. On the second page were the names of his parents, his father Patrick Kean and his mother, Maureen Madsen.
Steve leaned back, meeting Mike's eyes. "Sonofabitch. He uses his mother's last name, and his father's last name is nowhere to be found." As Mike started to nod slowly, he continued, "Has he always been 'Madsen' I wonder, or did he change it just before he joined the force?" Mike shrugged.
They sat quietly for several long seconds, the implications running through their minds.
"We, ah, we still have a lot of work to do on this," Steve ventured slowly. "Was this all a set-up, or did Madsen just take advantage of an opportunity? What's his connection to Abbott? Was McKinley part of this or just an unwitting dupe? Did Madsen do everything alone?" He looked sharply at Mike. "Do you know if Garrity is still alive?"
"Hmm, good question. I have no idea, but I can find out quick enough." He reached for the phone then stopped. "How do you think we should handle this? By ourselves? Or do you think we should bring Norm and Dan into the loop?"
Steve smiled slowly, grateful that Mike was asking him for advice about something that had become so critically important to both of them. "Well, as Rudy would say, 'let's get our ducks in a row'. We've got to be a hundred percent correct on this before we start pulling people in for questioning, and," he chuckled, "we're both on sick leave, remember? They've got to do the stuff we can't, legally, do right now - and besides, I think they deserve it."
Mike laughed then nodded, grinning. "Good. I do too." He picked up the phone and started dialing.
# # # # #
Haseejian sat back and sighed heavily. "Wow," he said in awe, and glanced at Healey, who was looking just as stunned.
Mike, in his chair, and Steve, perched on the corner of the desk, were looking at both sergeants in anticipation. "So," Mike said eventually, "what do you think?"
"To be perfectly honest," Haseejian began slowly, "this makes me extremely happy." He gestured at the files and grinned. "Now I know our paranoia actually had a basis in fact and we weren't losing our cop instincts. Thank god."
Healey nodded in agreement. "This is the best news we've had in days. We obviously still have a lot of work to do, but this has got to be it. That bastard Madsen; he was with us the entire time at the scene, he worked it with us. Hell, he was even wiping blood…" he paused and looked at Mike almost apologetically, "your blood, Mike, off his hands when we got there."
Mike shook his head, almost smiling. "Well, be that as it may, Dan, you're right. We do have a lot of work to do, or rather, you and Norm have a lot of work to do. Steve and I can do all the digging but until we've off the DL, you two are going to have to do all the interrogations and the paperwork. And we've got to make sure that this stays amongst the four of us, and Rudy, of course. Madsen can't know we're looking at him for this. So," he clapped his hands in a gesture that had all become so familiar with, "let's make ourselves a list of things we have to get done in the next day or so. Steve?"
His partner turned to him with a happy smile, which quickly disappeared when he saw Mike's grin and a pad and pen being slid across the desk towards him.
# # # # #
Feeling better than they had in days, the partners stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine and headed across the parking lot towards the Porsche. As Mike fished the car key out of his pocket, he crossed around to the driver's side door and put the key in the lock. He slid into the seat and was just reaching across to unlock the passenger side door when a black-and-white pulled up behind the Porsche and stopped.
"Lieutenant, Inspector," came a voice from inside the patrol car, and Steve turned automatically. He froze, suddenly bizarrely glad that his jaw was wired shut. Patrolman Madsen leaned out the passenger side window, grinning. "It's great to see you two. How are you both doing?"