Internal Affair

by Marie Ferrarella

  He’d done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong.

  That still didn’t ameliorate the uneasy feeling that insisted on dancing through him. He’d been summoned to appear before John Halliday, the head of IA.

  Now.

  A summons usually meant that he was either under investigation or required to give testimony about someone who was. Anticipation introduced a foul taste into his mouth. Either scenario was not one he remotely welcomed.

  Although Internal Affairs was a necessary evil, like everyone else, Patrick thought of the people who worked for IA as belonging to the rat squad. They were people whose sole function was to ferret out the bad in everyone. A few well-placed chosen words could turn almost anything into a suspicious act.

  And now those words would concern him.

  Maybe this was about Ramirez, he thought. Could be someone higher up had gotten wind of the same thing he had about his late partner and was now doing some digging into the man’s dealings. Which probably meant that he was also a suspect. Just as he figured Foster might be mixed up in all this. Only difference being that he assumed someone was innocent until he found evidence to the contrary. IA worked in the reverse. You were guilty until proved innocent.

  It was a little like the KGB, Patrick thought as he stopped before Halliday’s door. He paused before knocking. Damn, but he hated this. Any way he sliced it, he was about to walk into an unpleasant experience.

  He hadn’t even told Maggi where he was going. The less involved she was in this, the better.

  There he went again, he upbraided himself, wanting to protect her. He was going to have to do something about that.

  And while he was at it, he was going to have to do something about the way all his days seemed to wind up at her apartment. In her bed. And he was going to have to do something about the way he could think of nothing else but taking her into his arms and making love with her.

  Patrick shook his head. He felt as if his own will had been stolen and someone else’s had wantonly been substituted. He didn’t know whether to laugh and enjoy it while it lasted or run for the hills. Because he wanted it to last forever.

  He still hadn’t spent an entire night with her and there was still a part of himself he was holding back. But his hold was slipping. Eventually, he knew he’d lose his grip on it altogether. And give all of himself to her.

  Patrick knocked and waited.

  A deep voice on the other side of the door instructed a genial “Come in.”

  Braced and ready for anything, Patrick turned the knob and walked in.

  And discovered that he wasn’t really braced at all. Or ready for anything. Especially not for what he saw. Not for Maggi sitting there in the room.

  “Leave her out of this,” he snapped, forgoing any attempt at a perfunctory greeting. “Whatever you think you have on me, she has nothing to do with any of it. She hasn’t even been my partner for very long.”

  “No, just long enough,” Halliday responded. “Take a seat, Detective.”

  Patrick drew himself up even straighter, giving redwoods a run for their money. “I prefer to stand.”

  Halliday’s eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t a request. Sit, Detective Cavanaugh,” he ordered. “You’re making me nervous.”

  Reining in the very strong desire to grab Maggi’s hand and just walk out of the office, Patrick sat down on the other chair. He kept his gaze fixed on the man who’d called him in. He hated the fact that Maggi was being dragged into this because of him.

  Steepling his fingers, Halliday leaned back in his chair as he kept his eyes on his subject.

  “I’ve heard some very good things about you, Cavanaugh. And some bad. It’s up to me to figure out which are true, which aren’t. I can’t do that kind of thing without help.” He paused significantly, letting the words sink in.

  Patrick’s eyes shifted to Maggi, trying to read her expression. She looked uneasy. What had gone down here? What had Halliday made her do? He would swear on his life that she wouldn’t lie, wouldn’t implicate him in anything just to save her own career.

  So what was she doing here?

  “What am I being accused of?” Patrick demanded abruptly.

  In contrast, Halliday’s voice was calm, soothing. “All in due time, Detective.”

  He wasn’t about to wait while Halliday played games to amuse himself. “I’ve got a right to know now.”

  Halliday merely smiled. “Most people sitting in that chair would be asking for legal counsel and to have their representative called in by now.”

  “I don’t need a representative. I haven’t done anything wrong,” he growled through clenched teeth.

  “You’re not pure as the driven snow, Cavanaugh.” The smile on Halliday’s lips was unreadable. “I know you’ve bent your share of rules.” He glanced down at the neatly typed report on his desk, the one signed by Mary Margaret McKenna. “But there’s no evidence to prove that you’re guilty of what you were initially accused of.”

  Patrick was losing patience fast. With little to no provocation, he’d leap over the desk and shake the answers out of Halliday.

  “What?” Patrick demanded. “Just what the hell am I accused of? And by who?”

  “It was an anonymous call, stating that you were responsible for Ramirez’s death. And that you were up to your neck in dirty tricks. Scamming, bribery, collecting protection money from the locals. The man called you a dirty cop on the take and said that when Ramirez found out and was going to blow the whistle on you, you forced Dugan to kill him and make it look like an accident.”

  Patrick clutched at the armrests, all but breaking them off. “That’s a lie.”

  Halliday moved his chair slightly to face Maggi. “That’s what Detective McKenna tells me.”

  So that was it, they were grilling Maggi, trying to make her turn against him. Talk about misjudging characters. “Leave her out of this.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Halliday informed him, his voice mild. “I was the one who sent her into this. To investigate you,” he added when Cavanaugh continued to stare at him darkly. He indicated the report on his desk. “She’s cleared you.”

  But Patrick’s brain had stopped processing information, halted by Halliday’s first remark. “You did what?”

  “Bottom line is that you’re cleared, Cavanaugh. You could run for president and withstand media micro-scrutiny based on the report McKenna turned in to me.”

  Patrick’s eyes pinned Maggi to the wall. “You’re with him?”

  The accusation pierced her like two arrows.

  “She’s part of IA,” Halliday told him. “Undercover, actually. Having her here while I talk to you flies in the face of protocol, but it was at her own insistence.” He glanced at Maggi. Halliday deemed himself to be a fair judge of people. “I imagine she was hoping to smooth things out.”

  Patrick rose to his feet, his expression stony. Ignoring Maggi, he addressed Halliday. “Am I free to go now?”

  Halliday flipped Patrick’s file closed. “Yes.” But as Patrick began to leave, he added, “And Cavanaugh, leave the internal investigation to us. We’ll be looking into Ramirez’s connections and ties,” he told him pointedly, “not you.”

  “Whatever you say,” Patrick replied curtly.

  Turning on his heel, he walked out of the room.

  In the space of ten minutes, Patrick’s entire universe had been turned completely upside down. The woman who had somehow managed to slip into his world through the cracks and become closer to him than he’d ever allowed anyone else to get, had been part of the rat squad all along, sent in to spy on him.

  Spy on him. The words echoed inside his brain, mocking him.

  Damn, so much for trusting his own instincts. He was worse than some wet-behind-the-ears recruit, he thought in utter self-disgust.

  The clicking sound of heels hurrying along the vinyl flooring registered on the perimeter of his mind.

  “Patrick, wait.”

  Patrick
just kept walking down the hall as if he hadn’t heard her. Maggi stepped up her pace until she managed to overtake him just shy of the elevator. She moved in front of him, preventing him access to the buttons.

  “I said wait.”

  With both hands on her shoulders, he moved her roughly aside, then punched the Down button. He’d never felt so explosive, so angry.

  “Your report’s filed, Mary Margaret,” he spit. “You don’t have to hang around me anymore.”

  The best thing was to walk away, to let him cool off. But the look of contempt in his eyes sliced her open from end to end. She had to make him understand.

  “Patrick, please—” she caught hold of his arm “—let me explain.”

  He shrugged her off, curbing the impulse to shake her, to demand why she’d made him feel so much when all she was doing was spying on him. He knew it was unreasonable, but so were his emotions.

  “Explain what?” he asked coldly. “There’s nothing to explain. You were sent in to spy on me. You spied, it’s over.”

  The last two words slammed into her. Never mind that she’d known they were coming, that she’d been trying to prepare herself for them all along. She didn’t want it to be over. Not like this.

  “Patrick, I had a job to do—”

  “And you did it.” His tone cut her off at the knees. “Very commendable.” He turned from the elevator. The anger in his eyes took her breath away. “Tell me, did you get time and a half for sleeping with me? Or was that just a new part of the job description?”

  He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d spent months orchestrating his words. She felt the sting of tears and pushed them back. “Don’t be like that—”

  “Oh? And how would you like me to be?”

  Incensed, he grabbed Maggi by the arm and pulled her into an alcove, aiming for some semblance of privacy in this goldfish bowl he’d found himself in.

  “You lied to me,” he accused. “You burrowed your hooks into me and pumped me for information any way you could.” And then he told her the real source of his pain. The real source of the betrayal he felt. “I opened myself up to you the way I never had to anyone else before.” Disgusted, he thrust her away from him, shaking his head as he mocked himself. “Damn it, I bought the whole puppet show, didn’t I? The decorations, the Christmas tree, the toy drive—nice touch, by the way,” he said sarcastically. “Did you find out that my mother, sister and I had to stay at a St. Agnes Shelter one year, was that what motivated you?” When he thought about how he’d felt, standing there in her living room, listening to her…his stomach just turned.

  “No, I do collect toys for kids. All of that was real, is real,” she insisted. “I didn’t pretend to be anything I wasn’t.” She didn’t want him to think that had been to manipulate him. Most of all, whether or not they were ever together again, she didn’t want him to hate her.

  Sheer contempt for her and her kind blazed in his eyes. “Except that what you were was part of the rat squad.”

  He knew better. He knew how the system worked. It was in place so that they could police themselves and keep them all clean, keep the public from doing the job for them.

  “I couldn’t tell you that. It was my job to clear you.”

  Did she think he was some kind of mental incompetent? They all knew how IA operated. “It was your job to find dirt that would stick.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Damn straight you didn’t, because there isn’t any.”

  She felt herself getting angry in self-defense. “Evidence can always be manipulated, Cavanaugh, you know that.”

  “So if I didn’t perform satisfactorily, you would have turned me in?”

  Maggi threw her hands up in frustration. “That’s not what I’m saying. Patrick, be reasonable.”

  “I am being reasonable.” He glanced at his watch and then strode back to the elevator. When she attempted to block him, he growled, “Now get the hell out of my way.”

  Something was up. She could tell by the look on his face. “Where are you going?”

  The elevator doors opened again. The car hadn’t gone anywhere in the interim. Much like them, Patrick thought, anger eating away at him. “That’s no longer any business of yours, is it?”

  A sense of panic began to set in. What was he going to do? “I’m still your partner.”

  He got into the elevator and pressed the Close button. The look in his eyes forbade her to follow him in.

  “Wrong. Again.”

  The elevator doors shut, underscoring the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Chapter 20

  “Foster, you in here?”

  Patrick’s voice echoed back to him from within the confines of the empty warehouse he’d just entered. Filled with rusting metal rows that extended upward of two stories, the building had once held a profusion of boxed toys. Now it stood abandoned, as barren as the bankrupt toy store chain that had once required its contents.

  He strained his eyes to see. Ramirez’s old partner had called to tell him that he had some information for him but that Foster would only meet him here. The man feared reprisals. It was here or nowhere. Patrick had had no choice but to agree.

  A movement on the left caught his attention. Foster, slight for his uniform, stepped out of the shadows. His sandy-colored hair looked darker in the poor light coming through barred windows with years of dirt and grime on them.

  “Yeah, I’m here.” Foster beckoned him away from the entrance. “Come on in.”

  Patrick left the door behind him standing open. He scanned the area as he approached. There was no sound except for Foster’s breathing. Was the other man nervous? Did he feel threatened?

  Was this just another wild-goose chase? Questions crowded Patrick’s mind.

  “Don’t you think this is a little dramatic?” he asked. “A coffeehouse or diner would have been better.” Foster’s body was a symphony of motion. He was nervous, Patrick thought.

  “I told you, I didn’t want anyone overhearing us.”

  Patrick drew the only conclusion he could. “So there is something you want to tell me. Why didn’t you say something when I questioned you the last time?”

  “Couldn’t.” Foster became steadily more agitated as he talked. “Things’ve changed. But you can’t say this came from me.”

  They were both aware of how the system worked. Guarantees couldn’t be made. “I’ll protect you for as long as I can, Foster, but I can’t make any promises, you know that.”

  Foster struggled with what he knew he had to do. With what he didn’t want to do. “Then maybe there’s nothing to say.”

  No way was he going to let Foster out of here without the other man telling him what he knew. “Yes, there is. You wouldn’t have gone in for this cheap movie effect if there wasn’t.”

  For a second, the cornered-rabbit expression was gone. Foster looked around the dust-laden building. Nostalgia came over his thin features.

  “My dad used to be the foreman here. Brought me around to play when I was a kid.”

  Patrick curbed his impatience. The man was stalling. Why? “In a warehouse?”

  “He was a single dad and this was cheaper than having someone look after me after school. This place used to be where Melbourne Toys kept their inventory.” Foster pointed toward shelves in the rear of the building. “That’s where they kept the boxes with the action figures. I’d wait until no one was looking then work open the side of a box. A toy here, a toy there, nobody noticed.”

  The nostalgia gave way to a shrug. “Maybe it started here, I dunno. Thinking that it was all right to take something as long as nobody noticed. As long as you took from someone rich instead of the average guy in the street.” Foster looked at Patrick, a defensive tone entering his voice. He was no longer talking about toys and petty theft. “We never took anything from the mom-and-pop places, only the ones who could afford it.”

  Was it just the two men, or did this involve more people? He had a hunch, h
e knew. But he needed more than just a hunch. Patrick tried to siphon the information from the other man carefully. “By took, you mean what?”

  Foster sneered. “Don’t play dumb, Cavanaugh. Money. What else would I be talking about? The owners paid us, we took care of them. Any tickets, any violations, they didn’t get written up.”

  Patrick didn’t have to be a genius to know how the operation worked. “And if they didn’t pay, the violations were written up and fined even if they didn’t exist.”

  “Something like that.”

  Time to push. “How many of you were there?” Fear entered Foster’s eyes. “Ramirez’s account was pretty healthy,” Patrick said.

  “Enough.” As he spoke, Foster began to move around, to pace. “Eddie wasn’t part of it, not the way you think. He stumbled onto what was going on and got paid to keep his mouth shut. When he didn’t want to keep it that way any longer, things happened.” Foster shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry. He was a good guy.”

  Patrick could almost believe Foster regretted what had happened. But it was too late for regrets. “Who had him killed? How far up does this go?”

  Foster shook his head. “Sorry, privileged information. On both counts.”

  “You’re going to have to come clean.” He wasn’t going to allow the man to get away, not after this. One bad cop gave them all a bad name.

  Foster’s eyes became steely. “No, the only thing I have to do is this.”

  Patrick mentally cursed himself. His anger at McKenna’s deceit had clouded his judgment, dulled that sixth sense of his that always warned him when something was about to go wrong. Or maybe it had just gotten impaired after totally going haywire because of Maggi.

  It was the only explanation for why he didn’t see it coming. Why he didn’t see that he was walking into a trap.

  Patrick found himself looking down the business end of the gun in Foster’s hand.

  Foster thought he could read what was going on in Cavanaugh’s mind. “No, it’s not regulation issue. It belongs to a dead man. Nobody’s going to be able to trace this.” His eyes narrowed slightly, but his voice wavered as he said, “Or find you.”