Chapter 18

November Twenty-fourth

Maria collected the keys for a cruiser from Dispatch and headed toward the motor pool. She had only gone a few steps when Adam brushed past her with a chilly glare that held so much recrimination it made her flinch. With a sigh, she watched him vanish around a corner. She had made more than a few attempts to apologize, and, by now at least, he should know that she hadn't had any choice. He had refused to hear her out.

She sighed again and continued to the station's motor pool, which, despite the title, was nothing more than an open air parking lot behind the main building. In the middle of the lot, she stopped and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of cheesesteak and Sicilian tomato pie from the corner sandwich shop a few blocks down the street. Two of her favorite things that she would never get to enjoy again.

She had just located her assigned vehicle when a authoritative voice sounded behind her, "Officer Ramirez! May I speak to you for a minute, please?"

Maria turned and waited for the man in the cheap but reasonably well tailored suit to approach. A detective's badge was prominently displayed over the front of his belt. He was young, relatively short and fit. He also had that odd look of uncertainty mixed with arrogance that practically screamed that he had gotten his rank through a program at a community college rather than by earning it in the streets. Around the station, there was a running joke about such programs: "Instant detective, just add one asshole and let simmer for two years."

When he got close, he offered her his hand and said, "I'm Detective Cooper with Internal Affairs. I'm the lead investigator in the matter involving the disappearance of Officers Clay and Newton. I understand that you may have had contact with them shortly before they vanished. May I ask you a few questions?"

When she took his proffered hand, he squeezed a little too hard in a classic display of machismo. She was unable to resist returning the handshake with just a hint of her new strength. Although her act was subtle enough that it was unlikely to elicit real suspicion, she still felt a twinge of pain for the minor violation of the rule against drawing attention to herself. She decided that the pain was worth it when he broke the handshake prematurely and tried to discretely flex and shake his hand behind his back.

She knew what had happened to the subjects of his investigation, of course. Between them, she and Adam had lured more than twenty of the district's steady night shift officers off alone. Of those, Clay and Newton had been the only two who hadn't returned from the dead. The only two from the Fourth District, anyway. As of last night, there were nearly thirty across the twenty-two other districts of the Philadelphia police department.

She pushed down the wave of guilt and remorse that flooded through her, and gave the vague and ambiguous answers to Cooper's questions that Wilson had prepared for just such an occasion.

She could see the frustration in his face as she evaded his questions. He was still new enough to the job to retain the ridiculous notion, inspired by too many prime time police dramas, that any crime could be solved in an hour, even with commercial breaks.

Tucking the card he had left her into her pocket, she started her monotonous warehouse patrol route. Shortly after she began, she called Wilson on her cell phone and gave the prearranged code word to let him know that she needed to talk to him in person. This probably demonstrated excessive paranoia, but, on the other hand, cell phone conversations weren't very difficult to tap.

Wilson - Harris couldn't trouble himself to get involved in such minutia - met her behind the Dockside Refrigerated Warehouse and listened carefully as she reported her conversation with the Detective. His subsequent instructions were brief and to the point. Right from the beginning, Harris had told her that she was to obey Wilson's commands as long as there was no conflict with his own. So, as usual, she had no choice but to obey.