The representative from the CDC sounded like he had just run the entire flight of stairs in the Empire State Building as he was talking. "We're widening the perimeter another two blocks."

Jesus Christ, Rita thought.

"So it's bad, whatever it is."

Rita could hear traffic noise, as well as sirens and a lot of voices; voices directing people, voices directing traffic, voices bitching about lack of supplies, or coordination, or just New York in general.

Fuck you, you tourist, Rita almost said into her phone, go back to DC and take that pile of toxic shit with you.

"I can't go into details on the phone," the man's breathless voice said, "your chain of command can fill you in. They got the text, they notified us."

Rita shook her head. "Thanks, I'll get with them."

Of course the NYPD got the info. Of course nobody fucking told me. Of course I had to hear it from the CDC guy who sounded like he was about to die from a massive coronary.

"John, I need whoever is liaising with the CDC on the phone right now," Rita called out her office door.

It was only thirty seconds later that her desk phone rang.

"This is Lieutenant Rita Ortiz from the 15th squad. What the fuck is going on with that fucking WMD in my precinct, and why did I have to hear about it from some asshole from the CDC?"

Rita counted five seconds of silence.

"Excuse me?"

fuck

"Who is this?" Rita asked.

"This is the NYPD Clergy Liaison Office. I'm Rabbi Shiff."

I am so fucking going to hell.

"Rabbi, I am so sorry, I have the wrong number," Rita said before hanging up the phone.

"JOHN!"


"Weaponized what?" Connie asked.

"Curare. You know, the stuff they use in the Southern Hemisphere to put on darts before shooting them at you with blowguns?"

"You mean Jersey?"

Rita could not help but laugh. "Further south."

"How did someone identify what was in two of those canisters before the feds did?"

It was an excellent question, and one being asked by a handful of agencies.

"I don't know, and I don't have the manpower to find out," Rita said, "my squad room's empty, and unless I call in someone from night shift it's going to stay that way. I'd have to call the bureau and ask for help."

Connie McDowell chose that moment to remind Rita what both of them already knew. "But you hate calling the bureau and asking for help."

"You know, I keep telling people you're not just a dumb blonde with unnaturally perky tits, but they just don't seem to listen. Probably because they're too busy thinking about your tits."

"Oh, fuck you and the caballo you rode in on," Connie replied, "you've got a pretty good set of tits on you yourself."

"Thanks partner. It's nice of you to say."

"So what are you going to do?"

Rita knew the answer to that question already, she just didn't like where it lead. "I need to get Joe and Ray off that fucking task force and onto this shit show of a case."

"So do it. The Chief of D's isn't going to bitch. OK, he's not going to bitch much; not with how serious this is getting."

"And I need to know what those assholes that were working on that thing are telling the feds. If any of them are talking, that is."

Not to mention the six men connected with the flight crew murders.

"I can help with that. I'll ask Teddy."

"Shit, I totally forgot he's with DHS now. All I remember of him is that he tried to put my pants on while I was still wearing them," Rita replied as she thought about Connie's cousin Teddy, who Connie had convinced Rita was a good guy, and worth at least one date. Rita was forced to assume afterwards that Connie had meant good guy to mean as horny as three men put together.

"Are you ever gonna let me live that down?"

"I think we both know the answer to that question is no."

"I'll ask him."

"Thanks. I'm going to call Joe and Ray back to the squad, and then buy some earplugs."

"Buy a ten pack. You're gonna need them.


The temperature had finally come down, and if the forecast could be believed they were in for a stretch of days when it would not get into the nineties; a blessing after the week of temperatures that, while it would not completely melt a brass doorknob, would certainly make it mushy.

Rita was standing under the vinyl canopy that had only recently stood a couple blocks further north. Unlike the last time she had visited the command post, she was no longer the only representative from the 15th squad, but it was the voice emanating from the earpiece on her phone that had Rita's mostly undivided attention.

"Ahora eres comandante de brigada. Deberías estar segura en tu despacho, no de pie al lado de lo que sea esa cosa," Guadalupe Ortiz said to her daughter.

"Es mi brigada, mamá, y mi responsabilidad," Rita replied to the woman that still looked more like Rita's sister than her mother.

It had been a minor thing according to Aric. Lupe Ortiz called it una pequeña magia afterwards, when the after affects of Aric's healing had left her hair darker, and her skin smoother and fuller, and her friends inquiring if she had had work done. A small magic indeed, that Aric had started but Guadalupe Ortiz herself had completed.

"I can remind her body what it means to be healthy," Aric had said to Rita beforehand, "what her body does after that is up to her, and not entirely predictable."

"Whatever her body does afterwards, it won't be as bad as cancer, will it?" Rita had asked.

Rita had never told he mother about Aric, not everything at least. The two had met many times, and it had not taken long for Lupe to fall victim to that beautiful face that was attached to an equally beautiful body. It was after either his second of third visit that Lupe demanded to be given at least an hour's notice of any future visit so that she could make herself presentable.

"Mamá, es mi novio, no el tuyo. No tienes que arreglarte para sus visitas," Rita had said.

"Si fuera mi yerno no me arreglaría," Lupe Ortiz had replied.

It was probably the first, but certainly not the last time that her mother had hinted that Rita and Aric should get married.

Rita's heart had been pounding in her chest, her hands gripping each other so tightly that all her knuckles were white, while she was asking Aric for help. And as her eyes went to her mother where she lay on the bed that had been her home for the better part of a week, one of a long series of weeks of pain and labored breathing, she could feel the calmness begin to settle over her, and her heart rate slow, and her hands relax as her connection to Aric came alive, and his voice echoed in her mind.

No. So far, everyone who I have helped has done well.

Please help her, Rita had said simply in that way they spoke to each other that required no uttered words.

In the end it had been Rita's mother who decided. Aric was adamant that it be her choice.

Madre, puedo ayudarte si me dejas, he had said to her as he connected to both mother and daughter.

No tengas miedo, mamá, Rita added as her mother's eyes grew large at the shock of hearing both their voices in her mind, deja que él te ayude.

Her mother had slept afterwards. Rita could not remember exactly when she noticed that evening that her mother's breathing had grown quiet; so quiet that Rita went quickly to her bedside, afraid to find her like Detective Rita Ortiz had found so many women: cold, and forever stilled. When she thought back to that day, Rita could almost convince herself that she had already begun to notice the change in her mother, as the years fell away from her and she regained some of the youth and health that life steals from everyone.

"Él es un ángel que Dios nos ha enviado," Lupe had said to her daughter exactly a week later as she looked at herself in the full length mirror, when the affects had taken firm hold, and could no longer be hidden by sunglasses or a large hat.

"No es un ángel, mamá, es solo un hombre. Él mismo te lo dirá si le preguntas."

But Rita herself had argued with Aric when he claimed to be just a man, so when Lupe also objected to that phrase Rita had just wrapped her arms around her very healthy mother, and let her tears flow.

"No todo es tu responsabilidad. Deja algo para que otros lo hagan," the healthy woman was saying to Rita now.

Joe Slovak and Ray Quinn stood by patiently and waited for Rita to finish her phone conversation.

"My mom's worried about me standing this close to that thing," She explained to the pair.

"I'm right there with her, boss," Ray said.

"You said you had news?"

"Someone made three separate calls to 911 that got routed to the 8-4 about heavy traffic. One was the night that we got the fire alarm from that warehouse, two were yesterday."

"Heavy traffic."

"Trucks."

"I'll get Special Operations on it right away," Rita said sarcastically, "there's probably a medal in it for one of you."

"They get a lot of calls from her. She's a well known crank, and they blew her off. But the driveway up to her house is covered with Ring cameras, and she has footage of the road as it passes in front of her driveway," Joe said, "It's probably nothing, but the timing is right."

Rita had to admit that they were right, the timing was almost perfect. "How did you come across this?"

"By reviewing all the 911 calls that came in right after the fire alarm went off."

"How many were there?"

"Don't ask," Ray said, "this only got our attention because of the number of them, all from the same location, all about heavy truck traffic."

"You're asking for camera footage, right?"

"No, cause this is only our first day on the job." Ray said with a smirk.

"I remember your first day on the job, so unless you want me to remind you about it you can lose the attitude."

"We're going over there now to ask if she'll cooperate, or if we need to get a court order."

"She'll cooperate. She wouldn't have called 911 otherwise."

A white van with U.S. Government plates pulled up to the command post, which Ray and Joe took as their cue to leave.


Rita hated to admit it, even to herself, but she was very happy to get back to her office, and the relative safety of her desk. But that relative safety had lasted less than five minutes, and was broken by a call that, due to the complete absence of any other detectives in her squad room, Rita was forced to take herself. Back when Anti-crime had still been a city wide thing Rita could have gotten help from them. But while the unit, which was disbanded in 2020 after racial justice protests had just been resurrected, the 15th precinct had yet to get their allotment of officers.

"John, I'm out on a call. Tell Sergeant Shannon I need a couple of uniforms who have their heads at least partially out of their asses to meet me," Rita said as she wrote a copy of the address on John Irvin's notepad.

"Can I use those exact words?"

"Only if you walk downstairs and tell him in person," Rita replied as she grabbed a radio from the charger and proceeded down the stairs.

"I think I'll just call him then!" John's voice said as it followed her down the stairs.


Officer Sheila Gideon and Officer Raul Espinoza's heads appeared to be completely free of any encumbrance when Rita met them in the alley off east 13th street.

"What have we got?" She asked as she snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves. She was happy, and somewhat impressed, to notice that both officers, neither of whom could have hit 30 yet, were also wearing gloves as well as shoe covers.

"Dump job, single gunshot to the chest," Sheila Gideon said, "looks like it went right through his heart."

"How'd the job come in?" Rita asked as she slowly approached the body, taking extra care where she placed her feet.

"Homeless guy, living in that cardboard box," Raul Espinoza said, "woke up after sleeping off last night's bottle. Found the guy and flagged down a sector car."

Rita looked past the dead man to the cardboard box and all the junk in and around it and the dirty man sitting in front of it.

Rita's eyes returned to the dead man.

"Who turned out his pockets?"

Sheila Gideon's eyes went towards the cardboard box, and her chin tilted up slightly at the man sitting there.

"So he wakes up, finds a dead guy a hundred feet from his crib, goes through his pockets, and then flags down a sector car."

"Sums it up," Sheila said.

Rita walked closer to the body as her eyes scanned the area. She asked the question even though she was sure she didn't need to.

"Why'd you call it a dump job?"

"Not enough blood at the scene. He takes one in the pump and drops, he should be laying in a gallon of it."

"He was shot somewhere else and then moved," Raul said, the index finder of his right hand traveling to three different nearby points, "tire tracks, a partial shoe print, and a bloody piece of industrial plastic."

Rita looked at the shoe print. Dried blood, but with fibers from something like carpet embedded in it.

"So he gets popped somewhere else, they wrap him up, drive him here, take him out, put him down, unwrap him, and leave the plastic behind."

"We think so," Sheila said as she handed Rita an evidence bag that contained a wallet, a key fob for some type of Audi, and a tube of lip balm.

"No phone?" Rita asked as she opened the wallet to find some sort of key card with an RFID chip at one end and the number 4 printed near the other end, and a Connecticut driver's license for Daniel Rasmussen.

Daniel Rasussmen, you're a long way from home.

"Couldn't find one," Raul said.

It took Rita only a moment to confirm what she suspected.

"No cash. No credit cards. You tossed the homeless guy yet?"

"No, you rolled up just as we were about to."

"OK, go ahead," Rita said before a thought occurred to her, "either of you interested in working temporary assignment?"


"I need bodies, and you have plenty," Rita was saying to Sergeant Mike Shannon as he stood at her desk, "you'd rather me get people who don't know the precinct from the Bureau?"

"No, I'd rather you asked me first and let me pick the bodies," he said. They had know each other for more years than either could count. He had been an officer when Rita had been a second grade, both of them in this very building.

"You did pick them. I asked you for two people, you gave me two people. I let them run the crime scene and they did well. The Chief of D's gave it the green light. Turns out the Bureau is short handed too with all these caped idiots dropping skels in out laps."

"I'm already down two men, and now I'm down two more. That's all I'm saying."

"At these latest two didn't damage two bicycles that cost $1000 each," Rita said as an offhand way of reminding Mike Shannon of the two officers that wrecked their vehicles while on bike patrol.

"When do I get them back?" he answered as he avoided the verbal jab from the officer commanding the 15th precinct detective squad.

"I'll get back to you," she answered as her cell phone rang, and Joe Slovak's name appeared on the screen.

"We're on our way back. You're gonna want to see this," he said.

Rita was silent for a few seconds as she held the phone to her ear, her eyes still fixed on the man wearing sergeant's stripes in front of her.

Maybe I should ask him for more bodies.