Small, lean, whippy, slightly unkempt, hard as nails. Two of
them were older than the third. The young one was wearing a
beard. He was tan, like he was just back from somewhere hot.
They were all pacing in my outer office. My sergeant with the
baby son was there with them. I guessed she was pulling a
swing shift. She was looking at them like they might have been
alternating spells of pacing with spells of hitting on her. She
looked very civilized, in comparison to them. Almost genteel. I
ushered them all into my inner office and closed the door and
sat down at my desk and left them standing in front of it.
‘Is it true about Carbone?’ one of the older two said.
‘He was killed,’ I said. ‘Don’t know who, don’t know why.’
‘When?’
‘Last night, nine or ten o’clock.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
‘This is a closed post.’
I nodded. ‘The perp wasn’t a member of the general public.’
‘We heard he was messed up good.’
‘Pretty good.’
‘When are you going to know who it was?’
‘Soon, I hope.’
‘You got leads?’
‘Nothing specific.’
‘When you know, are we going to know too?’
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‘You want to?’ ‘You bet your ass.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why,’ the guy said.
I nodded. Gay or straight, Carbone was a member of the
world’s most fearsome gang. His buddies were going to stand up for him. I felt a little envious for a second. If I got offed in the
woods late one night, I doubted if three tough guys would go
straight to someone’s office, eight in the morning, champing at
the bit, ready for revenge. Then I looked at the three of them
again and thought, this particular perp could be in a shitload of
trouble. All I’d have to do is drop a name.
‘I need to ask you some cop questions,’ I said. I asked them
all the usual stuff. Did Carbone have any enemies? Had there
been any disputes? Threats? Fights? The three guys all shook
their heads and answered every question in the negative.
‘.aything else?’ I asked. ‘Anything that put him at risk?’
‘Like what?’ one of the older two asked back, quietly.
‘Like anything,’ I said. It was as far as I wanted to go.
‘No,’ they all said.
‘Got any theories?’ I asked.
‘Look at the Rangers,’ the young one said. ‘Find someone
who failed Delta training, and thinks he still has a point to
prove.’
Then they left, and I sat there chewing on their final
comment. A Ranger with a point to prove? I doubted it. Not
plausible. Delta sergeants don’t go out in the woods with people
they don’t know and get hit on the back of the head. They train
long and hard to make such eventualities very unlikely, even
impossible. If a Ranger had picked a fight with Carbone, it
would have been the Ranger we found at the base of the tree. If
two Rangers had gone out there with him, we’d have found
two Rangers dead. Or at the very least we would have found
defensive injuries on Carbone himself. He wouldn’t have gone
down easily.
So he went out there with someone he knew and trusted. I
pictured him at ease, maybe chatting, maybe smiling like he
had done in the bar in town. Maybe leading the way somewhere,
his back to his attacker, suspecting nothing. Then I
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pictured a tyre iron or a crowbar being fumbled out from under
a coat, swinging, hitting with a crunching impact. Then again.
And again. It had taken three hard blows to put him down.
Three surprise blows. And a guy like Carbone doesn’t get
surprised very often.
My phone rang. I picked it up. It was Colonel Willard, the
asshole in Garber’s office, up in Rock Creek.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘In my office,’ I said. ‘How else would I be answering my
phone?’
‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything,
don’t call anyone. Those are my direct orders. Just sit there
quietly and wait.’
‘For what?’
‘I’m on my way down.’
He clicked off. I put the phone back in its cradle.