And Grant You Peace (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 4)

by Kate Flora

  "Someone who doesn't really live there?"

  "Just what I was thinking. Where does he live, then?"

  "What about that woman who picked him up? Rihanna Daud? Maybe he lives with her."

  "We haven't talked to her, have we? Maybe she can answer that part of the puzzle. Or maybe she can tell us what was up between Osman and the Imam and his people. And whether that's what got him attacked."

  Kyle shook his head. "Always on the list of things we never get to. She hasn't shown up at the hospital to visit him."

  "Hiding?" Burgess said. "There's some connection there. She came to the hospital to pick him up and later he was found in the trunk of her car. But we do have an address." He pulled the report template up on his screen. It was the same address as the empty apartment.

  "What do fishing boats, mosques, and motorcycle gangs have in common?"

  "Beats me, Joe. I'm about ready to start lighting candles to the gods of insight."

  "Boats and motorcycles both move things. So do box trucks. But where does the mosque come in?"

  "Storage? Distribution point?" Kyle suggested. "Like a warehouse that no one would ever look in?" Kyle popped out of his chair. "Want to take a ride?"

  Burgess's desk was piled a foot deep with papers and messages that needed his attention, and he still had more reports to write. But like Kyle, he needed to get out on the street and see if he could make something happen.

  He shoved some papers into his briefcase and grabbed his coat. "Just let me give Stan a call, see if he wants to do the autopsy tomorrow. Then yes, I would love to take a ride."

  Chapter 27

  "Where to?" Burgess asked, as they walked through the garage. But he knew where they were going. They were looking for Rihanna Daud. Back to the empty apartment to look at the mail. To look for clues. And maybe they'd just drive around and look for Osman's gray van.

  When they were out of the cement chill and into the darkness of a spring night, they both rolled down their windows and let the cool air blow in.

  "Think we're losing our edges?" Kyle said.

  "Young guy like you, Ter? I doubt it. It's the distraction factor."

  "You mean trying to have a life?"

  Burgess didn't need to answer.

  They drove through city streets as familiar to them as their own bodies: houses, blocks, alleys, and businesses that had stories to tell. Usually stories of violence. They passed people whose stories they knew. The language of the street. We'll be hearing from this guy before the night is over. There's the woman who's a walking magnet for domestic violence.

  They passed a man with a gait like a bowlegged sailor, weaving along the sidewalk in a state of extreme intoxication. A danger to himself and others. Someone else, they might have called patrol and had him taken into protective custody, but not this guy. They knew just where he had gotten his limp. He'd shot at a cop and the cop had returned fire. The rat bastard had sued the department, claiming excessive force, and the spineless city had caved, sending the message: go ahead and shoot at our cops. If you don't die, you might get rich. He didn't look like he was enjoying his ill-gotten gains. He looked like he'd pissed it all away.

  That kid there, no more than seven or eight, out on the street by himself this late at night, shivering in a thin sweatshirt? A member of Future Criminals of America. Families, their dysfunction, or the lack of families, doomed so many of these kids. One of the reasons he and Kyle had to fight their desire to wrap their own families in cotton wool, like objects in a precious collection, box them up and keep them safe from the world.

  Burgess pointed to a young man on the sidewalk up ahead, an arrogant roll in his walk that spoke of studied indifference. Dylan, who could imitate that walk perfectly, called it the ghetto strut. The boy's hand in his bulging hoodie pocket broadcast "handgun."

  "That fellow look familiar to you?"

  "Should he?"

  Burgess remembered that Kyle hadn't been with them when they called on the Imam after the fire. He'd been out looking for his informant. "He's the Imam's youngest son—or grandson."

  "Jesus," Kyle said, as Burgess pulled to the curb and cut the engine. "Not good."

  They watched Ali Ibrahim hitch up his precarious FUBU jeans with his free hand and disappear into a convenience store.

  Burgess called dispatch, reporting a 1090, a robbery in progress and asked that they approach without sirens. Then he and Kyle slipped out of the truck and headed toward the store, automatically checking their guns and shifting them into low ready as they moved into place on either side of the door; from there they could see inside but were mostly blocked by the posters and displays of sodas, beer, and windshield washer piled high against the glass.

  Cops could tell the owners a million times, don't obscure the view from the street, but the owners put marketing ahead of safety every time.

  Young Ali Ibrahim had a cube of beer on the counter, and was engaged in an argument with the clerk behind the counter, an argument he seemed to be winning because of the gun he held in his hand. The clerk was African-American, a tired, middle-aged man who looked seriously pissed off.

  Ideally, they would have observed the robbery, then nabbed Ali as he stepped out the door encumbered by his stolen beer. But the gun, and the look on the clerk's face, told them that the situation could go south very quickly. The look, and the clerk's body language, said he was itching to reach down under the counter and grab whatever weapon he had stashed there.

  People who worked in convenience stores had a hard and often dangerous job. Lately, they'd been getting pretty darned sick of being held up by their new African neighbors, even, in some cases, where the clerks were Somali or Sudanese immigrants themselves. The robbers seemed to think the clerks ought to give it up to a fellow countryman. And this was along with all the other folks who considered convenience stores their own personal banks—those with an itch to scratch, an Oxycontin habit to feed, or an empty wallet and an unquenchable craving for beer. The clerks seemed to think this was something of an imposition.

  Ali hadn't seen Kyle the other night, so Burgess signaled for him to go in first, then moved up right behind him, so he could pile in as backup before Ali recognized him and while Ali was distracted.

  All these places had back doors, but usually those doors were locked, making this the only likely entrance and exit.

  Burgess braced himself to move quickly as Kyle raised his gun to ready position, following suit with his own gun, feeling years of experience taking over as he went into tunnel vision.

  Then they went through the door, spreading out to create a funnel on Ali. Burgess flying past Kyle, the two of them moving in unison, putting enough space between them so that Ali couldn't keep an eye on both of them.

  "Police," Kyle yelled. "Drop the gun! Drop the goddamned gun!"

  Ali turned toward Kyle, his gun turning with him.

  God, Burgess thought, as he stared at the boy's baby face. Armed and thuggish as he was, Ali Ibrahim was just a kid. They were about to kill a kid, because kid or no kid, you didn't let someone fire a gun at you. Not if you wanted to go home to your family at the end of the day.

  He knew Kyle was thinking the same thing. That this whole case was about kids, and now one of them was just asking them to shoot him. Stupid goddamned gangsta wannabe kid just didn't understand. You draw on a cop and you take the consequences. The consequences were aim at center mass and don't stop shooting until they go down and stay down.

  He felt Kyle, eight feet away, thinking the same thing, because no cop in an armed confrontation took his eyes off the shooter, off the gun.

  This was going down, and it was going to be a shitstorm.

  He watched the boy turn toward them, kept his eyes on the gun.

  "Just put it down, dammit, just put it down and nothing bad has to happen," Kyle said.

  It was all a matter of judgment. Of trying to keep breathing and hope that while he and Kyle were in that tunnel they would make the right decisions.
Hoping no one else came through the door. And all of it going down in seconds.

  Seconds that could feel like an eternity. That was tunnel vision. The world faded away. Time slowed down. Watching the kid. The gun. Knowing where the clerk and Kyle were without really looking at either one of them. The edges of his tunnel bright with walls of junk food.

  Don't get yourself shot.

  Don't get anyone else shot.

  Put it down, put it down, lower the gun so we don't have to kill you. Don't make us kill you. The thought was so loud in his head it felt like he'd yelled it.

  They moved forward like they were on the same track, their guns coming up together, aiming together, their fingers on the trigger hesitating before squeezing together.

  They had every right to fire. To kill this kid before he killed them. Never mind the barrage of publicity that would follow. The family of another freaking armed asshole who draws on the cops shrieking police brutality and their poor innocent boy lost.

  He and Kyle had one rule here—go home alive. That was what this moment was all about.

  He felt his finger closing on the trigger and the moment, that touch point, before the explosion.

  Ali finished turning toward them. Squeezed the trigger. Not an aimed shot. A wild shot.

  Kyle ducked, and several bags of chips on a shelf above his head gave up their lives.

  There was a moment, when smoke and gunpowder hung in the air. When their fingers were still on the triggers of their own guns, and when any review panel in the whole damned world would have found returning fire justified. When they hesitated, and waited, not dead yet, waiting, against all the rules of survival, to see what that stupid wannabe gangsta child would do. Because he was just a stupid, stupid, dangerously stupid kid.

  The boy did the right thing. He dropped his gun on the floor and held out trembling hands in a gesture of submission, tears and terror in his voice. "Don't shoot. Don't shoot. Please. Don't. Don't shoot me. Don't shoot me!"

  Burgess and Kyle rushed him, Burgess already reaching for his cuffs, as the clerk brought a baseball bat up from behind the counter and whacked Ali in the arm. His right arm, his gun arm, a good, solid strike that left the boy screaming.

  The clerk swung the bat back, readying for another strike, lost in his own tunnel vision.

  Burgess got between them. "Okay. Okay. That's enough!" he said. "Enough. We've got this."

  Ali Ibrahim, sullen, angry teen and courageous robber of the unarmed, the little prince of fuck-you attitude, the boy who had just risked four lives for some beer, folded up in a blubbering heap on the floor, cradling his injured arm.

  Kyle was on the radio to dispatch, knowing the whole city was converging on them, saying, "Slow it down, we've got the suspect in custody," and requesting an evidence tech to the scene, when two patrol cars flew into the lot, sirens off, as instructed, but with their light bars flashing.

  Next time, Burgess thought, he'd be clearer that he'd meant an unannounced approach.

  They could have handed Ali over to patrol, left them to take the clerk's statement, wait for the tech to come and collect the gun and cartridge casing, and continued on their merry way, but driving the poor injured boy over to the hospital themselves seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

  Burgess searched him carefully and cuffed him with tender consideration for his injured arm, then filled the officers in on what had happened. "You'll want to find that cartridge casing. Document those chips he shot up. We'll take the boy over to Emergency," he said, "and then to the jail for booking."

  Through it all, the clerk stood by, slapping the baseball bat into the palm of his hand, his breath ragged, coming down from the near-death adrenaline rush they'd all just experienced.

  Burgess took him aside and pulled the bat away. "You did a great job just now," he said, "keeping it together. I know how much you wanted to grab your bat and how hard it was not to. If you had, we might be dealing with a homicide right now, instead of a couple bags of dead chips."

  The man's face was gray. His eyes jumpy. He swayed a little unsteadily.

  "Is there someplace you could sit down?"

  He looked over at Kyle. Nodded at Ali, still sitting on the floor. Still blubbering. A stupid, dangerous kid who'd just rubbed a man's nose in his own mortality. He was eager to interview the kid. He needed to take some time for the victim.

  "I need a minute, Ter," he said. "Keep an eye on him, okay?"

  Kyle nodded and moved closer to Ali.

  "In the back there's a..." The clerk's words staggered to a stop. He put a hand to his chest. "Oh my God. Oh my God."

  Burgess took his arm and led him to the back of the store. Now that he wasn't holding the bat, the man was shaking. "I've got kids at home. Just trying to make a living, and that... that piece of crap kid... He would have killed me for some beer?"

  Burgess didn't think it would be much comfort to the man to share his supposition that the kid had probably never fired a gun in his life. Plenty of kids got their hands on guns for the first time and killed people with them.

  He settled the man in a chair and got him a bottle of water. There was a desk, and a phone, and taped to the phone, contact information for the manager.

  "This your boss?" he asked.

  The man nodded.

  "I'm going to call him. Tell him what happened. Say we're sending you home. Is that all right?"

  Most of these places didn't pay their help well. Treated them worse. He didn't want the man to stay because he was worried about his paycheck. But the man nodded. He wanted to be out of here. Home with his family. Someplace that felt safer than this.

  Burgess nodded toward the front of the store. "You got surveillance cameras?"

  "Yeah."

  "They work?"

  He saw the faintest flicker of a smile. Far too often places had security cameras for show but they didn't work.

  "Yeah." A hesitation. "Since the last robbery."

  "Good. Then I'll have our tech collect the tape. Our little friend out there, Ali Ibrahim, sure picked the wrong night, the wrong clerk, and the wrong store for his venture into crime. You see him around here before?"

  "A few times. Rolling in with a couple of his homies." The man had braced himself with his hands on his knees, like if he didn't, he might topple right off the chair.

  Rolling caught it just right. That swaggering attitude, hampered by the crotches of their pants somewhere between their knees, made them move like sailors recently ashore.

  "Detective Sergeant Joe Burgess," Burgess said.

  "Royce," the man said. "Royce Rawlins."

  Rawlins looked down at the floor, and then raised troubled eyes to Burgess. "I'm in the system. That's why I've got the baseball bat and not a gun. Just as stupid when I was young as that kid out there. I did my time. Learned my lesson. Married a good woman and I've got two great kids. But it never leaves me, you know. I doubt I'll ever be able to get me a decent-paying job. I just wish—"

  He studied the floor again. Battered. Dirty. A metaphor for something. "Wish we could tell them kids this. How wanting to be a stupid gangster can ruin your life. I don't know nothin' about that kid out there, but what he's just done... not only to me, but to himself. It's just pure stupid."

  He pushed himself straighter. "I keep prayin', Detective, that maybe my own kids can learn from my lesson." He shook his head, a big, graying head with a deeply furrowed forehead. "So damned hard to raise kids these days. Raise 'em right."

  It was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  "I'll call your boss," Burgess said, lifting the phone. "Then you go home to your family."

  Chapter 28

  Ali Ibrahim was still snuffling when they took him by the elbows, raised him up, and led him out to the Explorer. Burgess got one of his handkerchiefs from the stash he kept in the console, and passed it back to Ali.

  "Wipe your face," he said.

  "I got nothin' to say to you."

  "
We'll see," Burgess said. "Now wipe your face. I don't want your baby snot all over my car. Terry, you want to tell Mr. Ibrahim about his Miranda rights?"

  "I do," Kyle said.

  He used his formal voice, the one that came on when he wanted to let a bad guy know that the cops had him. He even did it the formal, TV way. He produced the battered card from his wallet and read it to the sulking boy.

  Then, before he started the engine, Burgess looked at Kyle and they both got out of the truck, leaving their prisoner behind. "Stay," Burgess commanded. "Try to get out and we'll shoot you."

  When they were out of earshot, Kyle braced himself against the side of a building and bent over, like someone who had just run a long, hard race.

  "Sweet Jesus," he said. "That was a close one."

  Burgess had the same roiling sensation in his gut and his hands were far from steady. "You can say that again. We didn't have that idiot child to deal with, I'd suggest we find ourselves a nice dark bar and knock back a few."

  "In the fullness of time," Kyle intoned. "That is an excellent way to settle the nerves."

  Or go off the deep end, something Burgess feared and Kyle had done.

  Burgess stared at the wall, at the cracking, chipped paint, a yellowing white the color of old eyes. At his hand, spread out like a starfish, and said what they were both thinking. "I hope we haven't just made a terrible mistake. What if the little bastard gets out, turns around, and shoots someone else? Shoots a cop? What if some liberal judge takes a look at that baby face and forgets that three people went through a devastating experience and came within a hair's breadth of losing their lives to that boy's selfish indifference?"

  "Not our call," Kyle reminded him. "We just pick the cotton. At least there's video. That always makes it harder to do just a slap on the wrist. And maybe that gun has been used in another crime?"

  We just pick the cotton. Too true. The cops did their job, brought in the bad guys and made the best case they could. Then it was up to the injustice system, one that in Maine was sometimes laughably liberal. As were the gun laws. It did not make their job any easier that the bad guys could outgun them with automatic weapons and armor-piercing bullets.