The Squad Room

by John Cutter

  Arndt didn’t wait for him to sit down.

  “Captain, can you tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing here?” he shouted. “I thought your team was supposed to be surveilling our suspects 24-7. Now we have another murder—what are your guys doing up there, sleeping in their cars?”

  “Chief, we’re not sure yet whether—”

  “Exactly—not sure! Not sure who’s behind this murder; not sure where our suspects from the previous murders might be; not sure what his men are doing; not sure of anything we need to be sure of, it seems! Can you tell me why someone so completely clueless ought to be running a squad in the first place, Captain?”

  A knock on the door saved Morrison the indignity of answering. The squad Principal Administrative Assistant, Tamika Edwards, poked her head in.

  “What is it?” Arndt barked at her.

  “The Commissioner’s on the phone for Captain Morrison,” she said.

  “Put him through—I’ll talk to him,” Arndt snapped. He picked up the phone. “Hello, Commissioner, Chief Arndt here. Yes. Yes, I understand, but—all right, of course. Yes, Commissioner, I’ll take care of it. No problem. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He hung up and glared at Morrison.

  “This isn’t over,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  He stormed out. A few minutes later, Tamika knocked again. Morrison picked up the phone wearily.

  “Hello, Commissioner. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right,” Harrington told him. “But look, Bill, we need this—we need it really badly. Have we gotten anywhere on the two guys in Boston?”

  “Yeah, we just got possible DNA and some fingerprints delivered to the lab this morning.”

  “That’s good. How much time do you need to confirm a match?”

  “Well, based on the severity of the case, and if everything goes right, and if they put us ahead of everything else—”

  “All right, Bill, I get it. How long?”

  “Four days, generally.”

  “I’ll give you three,” Harrington said. “And before you ask, that’s how long I’ll be able to keep Arndt in check. After that, I won’t be able to hold him back. Understand?”

  Morrison felt a chill go down his spine. The PC was putting his own neck in the noose in place of his. If another serial homicide turned up in the next three days, whatever happened to Morrison, the media would do Harrington ten times worse. Morrison thanked his lucky stars again for giving him such a standup man for a Commissioner.

  “Thank you, Commissioner,” he managed. “I won’t let you down.”

  “I know you won’t, Bill. Talk soon.”

  Morrison emerged to a squad meeting already in progress. Everyone was there with the exception of McNamara and his team. McNamara was on conference, listening in from the field. The room went silent as Morrison joined them.

  “Don’t stop on my account—let’s keep this going,” he said as he sat.

  Sergeant Simmons spoke up. “Okay, where were we? Right—we now have some possible DNA from our suspects, as well as fingerprints, so right now we need to make sure they jump to the top of the list for testing.”

  “We at least have results from the previous three murders,” Rivera said. “The lab has confirmed they’re all from the same suspects.”

  “I think we all knew that from experience, wouldn’t you say?” Morrison said. “I’m not sold on the fourth yet, but I’ll call the Medical Examiner about that. For now, we know it’s the same two guys—let’s hope they’re our two. McNamara—?”

  “I’m sorry, Cap,” McNamara said. “I know it’s my fault, but we can’t lock these guys in last night. They’re here now, but the trip to Manhattan doesn’t take that long, and we just can’t say for one hundred percent that they were here all last night.”

  “It’s all right, Pat, I get it. Surveillance is a tricky business. Just stay with them for now, right?”

  “Definitely, Cap. With the two extra bodies, we’ve got them blanketed.”

  “Good. That’ll be all, Sergeant,” Morrison said. When McNamara had hung up, he turned to the rest of the group. “Now listen, everyone: we have a three-day reprieve from the PC. Get that? Three days. After that, we will all be pretty well fucked—and I include myself and the PC at the top of that list. It’s like in baseball: if the team’s having a losing season, the managers are the first heads on the block. So I want all the stops pulled out. Favors, prayers, acts of God—everything. We need to get everything lined up and ready to move the minute we get the results back. If you don’t know what that means for you, ask Rivera or myself. Andre, get on the horn to the DA’s office—we already briefed Stan Rosenthal in the homicide bureau. Make sure the DA has everything we’ve got, and tell him we’re just waiting on the lab.”

  “Yessir, will do.”

  Galipoli, apparently fed up with the proceedings thus far, spoke up loudly from the back.

  “What the fuck were these guys in Boston doing, anyway?” he raged. “Why couldn’t they just stay on these fucking guys the way they should have?”

  “It’s a complicated situation, Galipoli,” Simmons said, trying to calm him down. “There were a lot of exits to the dorm, and—”

  “No, that’s bullshit,” Galipoli said. “We’re having to pick up the slack for them, and it’s bullshit! They’re there for surveillance; they dropped the ball. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Morrison said. “If you want to have that as a private conversation, go ahead, but this isn’t an encounter group. We’re solution-finders here, not finger-pointers, Detective. I know you’re new to the squad business, so you need to understand how this works: it isn’t a one-man show. We’re a team, and we leave the criticism to people outside this squad—believe me, there are plenty of them.”

  “But all they were supposed to do was—” Galipoli started.

  “Enough, I said!” Morrison shouted. “Galipoli, you can see me after this meeting’s done. Everyone else, you know what you have to do. Get to it!”

  The task force dispersed to their separate tasks. Galipoli followed Morrison sullenly into the Captain’s office, and closed the door after them. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could begin Morrison had unhooked a framed document from the wall and handed it to him.

  “Read that,” Morrison said.

  Galipoli looked at it. It was a rather famous quote from Theodore Roosevelt, the so-called “Man in the Arena” passage:

  “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

  After a few minutes Detective Galipoli looked up from the quote at Morrison. His expression was inscrutable—an angry, confused blank.

  “What is this supposed to mean?” he asked.

  Morrison stared at him, and shook his head. “If I have to tell you what it means, then you’re in the wrong place, Detective.”

  Galipoli tossed the frame on Morrison’s desk in disgust. “I’ve been saying that since I got here,” he said indignantly.

  Morrison leaned forward. “Now, you listen to me, pretty boy,” he said. “You may have other people fooled, but not me. I may be a team player at heart, but I can recognize special, and you aren’t it—at least not in the right way. You know, there’s no one who wants to work with you in this whole department—no one. That’s something special, but these are g
ood people, and it doesn’t speak well of you. And your reputation for heavy-handedness is only part of it. I’ve been watching you, Galipoli, and I’ve seen the way you act while you’re working this case. I don’t know whether it was your time in the service, or what, but I don’t like how you look at those case photos, and other people have noticed it too.”

  “You don’t know me,” Galipoli said. “None of you know shit about me.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” Morrison said. “You’re not present, Galipoli. You stare off into space during meetings, and the first time you open your mouth, it’s to criticize your fellow teammates. I know you have a service record, and I respect that; through everything I’ve tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. But this is a team—more of a family, really—and you need to get with the program.”

  “Thanks, but I already have a family,” Galipoli sneered, “and this team of yours can’t even do their job right. Now you done with me, Captain, or do you have more quotes to show me?”

  “All right, asshole,” Morrison said. “I see you aren’t listening. If this weren’t an all-hands-on-deck situation, hooks or no hooks, you’d be gone; and that’s exactly what’s going to happen, as soon as we get it cleared up. Now get the fuck out of my sight, and try to change my opinion of you.”

  20

  Later, Morrison stopped by at the Medical Examiner’s Office to speak with the head of the DNA laboratory there.

  James Fernandez was a retired FBI agent and scientist who’d come to work in the New York Medical Examiner’s Office about ten years ago. He was one of the best FBI guys Bill had ever worked with over the years—meticulous, patient, and, most importantly, easy to get along with. He’d been a friend of Morrison’s for years now.

  When Morrison walked in, the tension must have been visible on his face. Fernandez welcomed him in with a concerned expression.

  “Bill, are you okay?” he asked, almost immediately once they were inside.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Morrison answered, none too convincingly, “but I need a favor.”

  “Anything you need, you know I’ll do my best.”

  “I know it.” Morrison grimaced. “It’s about the DNA for my case.”

  “Bill, aside from the latest murder, your Crime Scene samples have been ready for several days now,” Fernandez said. “We ran everything through the DNA Databank and CODIS already—no matches. Didn’t your guys tell you that?”

  “Yeah, they did,” Morrison said. “I actually need something else. My guys just dropped off some possible DNA from two suspects up in Boston. Have you seen it yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Well, I need that material tested and run against my previous stuff, and I need answers within the next three days.”

  “Three days?” Fernandez looked away, blowing out a long breath. “Bill, you’re, uh—you’re asking a pretty tough one here.”

  “I know, Jim, I know—and you know I wouldn’t ask you if it didn’t matter. My career depends on this.”

  Fernandez thought a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Bill—okay. No guarantees, but I’m going to really try to pull a rabbit out of my ass on this one for you.”

  “Thanks, Jim. I mean it, I really owe you one.”

  Fernandez laughed. “Well, do you really? You know, Bill, you’re a fucked-up guy, but I remember when my son had his problems, and Amy and I both remember what you did for him. Do you?”

  Morrison did. Some years back their son had come back from Iraq with a lot of demons and a new drinking habit, and had gotten picked up out of state, acting like a lunatic. Morrison, still in the midst of the turmoil surrounding his own son’s death, had called in a favor to keep the guy out of jail, picked him up, and driven him off to the crayon farm himself, with Ricky screaming in the back of the car. Ricky had hated him at the time, but it had been a turning point in his life: now, after a lot of successful therapy, he lived on Staten Island with a family of his own and a very happy life.

  “Well, that’s what friends do,” Morrison said simply.

  “It was a lot more than that, to Amy and me,” Fernandez said. “You were the only one there to show him any compassion, and I’ll always owe you for it. If I have to stay all night every night to get these samples done on time, I will.”

  “Thanks a million, Jimmy. That’s going to be critical for me. Now I just have to get Stan on board.”

  “Rosenthal? Why would he be any trouble?”

  “He wouldn’t; it’s the case. I’m just going to need a little speed on processing it, is all.”

  “Wow, they really have you on the hot seat with this one, huh?”

  “Man, you better believe it.”

  “Well, count on me, Bill. I’ll do my best.”

  On his way out, Morrison dialed up Assistant District Attorney Stan Rosenthal.

  Stan was another old friend, a straight shooter from way back who’d worked on countless cases with Morrison and his team. Morrison knew his help would be as indispensable as Fernandez’s in this situation; he’d need both men’s help to take the case down quickly enough to satisfy the powers that be.

  “Stan Rosenthal, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office—how can I be of service?”

  Morrison smiled. As long as he’d known Stan, the ADA had answered the phone as though he were brand-new to the job.

  “Hey, Stan, Bill Morrison here,” he said.

  “Hey, Bill, good to hear your voice,” Rosenthal said affably. “I was wondering when I’d get this call.”

  “I’m sure you were. Stan, I’ll cut to the chase: I’m in real need of your help.”

  “So it sounds, my friend. I just hung up with Sergeant Rivera a few minutes ago; sounds like we’ve got a real winner here. Let me put it together here: two rich kids from Connecticut are your primary suspects. Your guys have surveillance footage from the area around the homicide, and have two guys who fit their physical description, but it needs to be enhanced to lock them in. On the other hand, we’re sure the car in at least one video is the one registered to one of our suspects. We have matching DNA in the first three cases, but the results for number four aren’t in yet, nor have we confirmed matching DNA from the suspects yet. We’ve had them under surveillance for a few days now, but we aren’t quite sure if they were in Boston during number four, as we didn’t have eyes on them overnight. Am I missing anything?”

  “Only the hard part,” Morrison said. “Okay, what’s that?”

  “I’ve been given a three-day reprieve from the PC to get this done, and after that you’ll be dealing with a new task force commander.”

  “Oh, really?” the ADA said in a low tone. “Well, I guess that explains the call the DA got from your Chief of Detectives earlier today.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Arndt called the big guy upstairs, who in turn called me. Thankfully the DA likes me, so he let me know that Arndt wants your head on a stick, and mine too, if possible, since he knows I’m a friend.”

  “Shit,” Morrison said. “I should’ve expected he’d try to jam us up. So what’d the big guy tell him?”

  “He told him the office of the District Attorney was here to protect the judicial system and wouldn’t impede the investigation or slow the process for anyone.” Rosenthal laughed. “In other words, he politely told him to fuck off.”

  Bill breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that.”

  “Yeah, well, we have enough problems as it is,” Rosenthal said. “Honestly, can the ME’s office have those suspect samples done and compared to the crime scenes in time?”

  “Well, hopefully; I just spoke to Jimmy Fernandez—he’s a good friend—and he said he’d do everything in his power to make it happen.”

  “That’s good news. Calling in your favors today, huh, Bill?”

  “You know it.”

  “How about the fingerprints?”

  “Those are at our lab for processing. We could get that match back even sooner, with any luck.”

>   “All right.” Rosenthal cleared his throat. “Listen, Bill, this case is still going to be tough, without statements from these guys. The forensic evidence is definitely really good, if it turns out to be them—but a statement would seal the deal.”

  “I know. We’re already making plans to snatch them up in Boston as soon as we get anything back.”

  “I figured you would be. Let’s just be sure we do this right, okay? Let me know when things come through from the lab, and if you can get them to make a statement in Boston, I’ll make sure I’m standing by to get arrest warrants done so they can hold them there without any hangup.”

  It was what Morrison had been waiting for. “Stan, you’re the best.” Rosenthal laughed again. “I know I am,” he said, and the two hung up.

  21

  Back at the stationhouse, the clock was ticking.

  This was the worst part of the job: the waiting game. Word from the forensic lab, word from the Medical Examiner’s Office, word from McNamara in Boston—until they heard from one or another of these, virtually nothing could be done but sit there and sweat. Morrison felt like an inmate on death row, waiting for the Governor’s pardon—and equally unsure it would ever come.

  Suddenly, Sergeant Rivera pushed open the door to his office. “Cap, you got Captain Johnson from the lab on the phone for you,” he said in a rush.

  Morrison grabbed the phone. “Send it in,” he said.

  The phone barely had a chance to ring. “Give me some good news, Tom,” Morrison said.

  “What—no good morning, Bill?”

  “Come on, Tom, don’t break my balls; you know I need this.” Captain Johnson laughed. “Sorry, Bill, I know,” he said. “I think you’ll like this, though. We got prints off both your bottles, and they match some of what we recovered from the first three crime scenes.”