One Clean Shot

by Danielle Girard

  The cop bar. She would have chosen somewhere quieter, but it was Hal’s call. He would be amped up—the adrenaline fading and the fear starting to settle in. She knew how this worked. “Hanlon’s it is.”

  At the bar, Hal ordered a beer on tap and Hailey asked for the same, avoiding eye contact with the familiar faces. By this hour, the sober ones had gone home.

  When they were served, Hal lifted the cold pint glass and took a few long swallows then set it down, nearly empty.

  “You okay?”

  He didn’t answer, lifted his hand for another and when the bartender came back with a full glass, he set down two shots, too. Something amber-colored. Whiskey probably. A couple of officers from Sex Crimes waved from across the bar. In the process, one of them—an old-timer almost at retirement—stumbled and fell back onto his barstool.

  Hal lifted the shot, took a sip, made a face and nodded to hers. “You going to drink that?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  Hal held the shot between two fingers. It looked more like a thimble than a shot glass as he tipped it down his throat. Took a few more sips of his second beer and stood up, threw a twenty on the bar. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Hailey looked at her full glass. She didn’t need a drink. “I’ll drive.”

  He didn’t argue. “You need to get home?”

  Hailey glanced at the clock. Ten thirty. “I’ve got time. I can take you first.”

  “I want to make a stop.”

  She watched him. “Where?”

  “I’ll show you.” In the car, Hal dialed. “I need to see if James Robbins has been released.” When he hung up, he said, “He’s at CJ-nine.” Robbins had gotten medical release from the hospital jail ward and had been transported back to the regular city jail at the Hall. “Let’s go talk to him.”

  “Now?”

  When Hal didn’t answer, she drove them to the station and parked on the street. They entered the jail via the steps where Dwayne Carson had been shot. The new city jail building had tiled blue glass and a sleek, modern design. The architecture would have been better suited to a library or a convention center. No matter how attractive the building, it still housed criminals.

  Hailey watched him from the corner of her eye, but she had no idea what he was thinking. The muscle in his jaw was working and the stiffness of his posture read as anger. But anger at who? At her?

  Hal marched to the desk where they showed their badges, checked their weapons then took the elevator to the fourth floor where a guard led them to James Robbins’s cell. Hal asked to be let in and after the door slid open with a long mechanical hum, he stepped past the thick iron bars.

  The cell emanated a dank chill. Hal stood in the darkness, his expression unreadable. When had that happened? She used to be able to read Hal.

  “You want in, too?” the guard asked.

  The intensity of Hal’s expression made her wish she could stay outside, but she didn’t have a choice. Hal seemed on the verge of lashing out. There was a low buzz as the cell door closed behind.

  Robbins lay on the bottom bunk, one knee up and one leg stretched out, a hand tucked under his head. His prison orange stood out in the darkness and when the door clicked shut, the whites of his eyes flashed at her.

  He sat up slowly, onto his elbows. Hal crossed to him in a single stride.

  When Robbins had both shoes on the ground, Hal smacked him in the jaw.

  “Hal,” Hailey said, but her partner didn’t turn.

  Robbins rocked back, cupping his jaw. “What the hell.”

  “Get up,” Hal ordered, balling his fingers into a tight fist.

  She stepped forward.

  Hal spun back, palm out. “Don’t.” His eyes were narrow, tight. He stank of beer. “I will not hurt him,” he whispered.

  She’d never seen him like this. What was it about Robbins that made him so angry? Or was it her?

  Was his anger directed at her?

  James Robbins licked his lips, pressing himself against the cell wall.

  “He’s scared,” she whispered.

  “Please,” Hal said.

  She stepped away.

  Robbins hovered tighter to the wall. “What’re you doing in here?”

  Hal grabbed his orange prison jersey, yanked it. The fabric ripped.

  Her heart pounded.

  “Get up,” Hal shouted.

  The kid tried to duck out from under the bunk.

  Hal grabbed his shoulder.

  “Hey!” Robbins yelled. “Someone help me!”

  From down the hall, another inmate shouted back, “Shut up, pussy!”

  The guard didn’t appear.

  Robbins backed himself to the bars.

  Hal leaned in so their chests were almost touching. Anger came off him like heat.

  Robbins tried to catch Hailey’s eye. Hal gripped the kid’s jaw. “Look at me. Don’t look at her. You’re talking to me.” Spit flew from his lips.

  “What do you want?” Robbins asked.

  “Tell me why you lied,” Hal demanded.

  Hailey sank against the hard cold bars. She thought of the scrap of paper she’d found in Jim’s office. He was a liar. That made her a liar, too. How would Hal react to that?

  “I ain’t a liar.”

  Hal dropped a fist into the top bunk. The springs yelped.

  Robbins sank to the floor. “Get up,” Hal demanded.

  He covered his face.

  “Get the hell off the floor.” Hal yanked him up.

  “Hal,” Hailey pleaded.

  He let go, raised both hands in the air.

  “Tell us about the shooting,” she said.

  Robbins glanced between them, shook his head. “I didn’t lie.”

  Hal gripped the kid’s elbow and twisted the arm behind his back.

  He pressed Robbins’s face against the bars. She’d only ever seen him like this once before, right about the time that he and Sheila were breaking up. Hal was a mess. Edgy and mean, and for someone his size, it was scary even for those who knew him well.

  Even for her.

  Then one night they’d caught a guy who broke into his girlfriend’s apartment and killed two women. Brutally raped one before killing her then killed the other.

  When Hailey and Hal found the perp, he was high on coke and Grey Goose in his yuppie apartment. Hal let loose.

  He had the guy off his feet and against a wall, suspended by the collar of his expensive French shirt.

  Hailey had talked him down. It was his career at stake, all the good he could do would be lost over one piece of shit. Hal stormed from the scene and she hadn’t seen him until he showed up to work Monday morning.

  He brought her a latte—his silent truce.

  Robbins was nothing like that guy. He was a kid, and maybe an innocent one.

  She put her hand on Hal’s shoulder and he let go of Robbins, moved away.

  Robbins huddled against the bars, giving in to the tremors.

  “I went up to Hunters Point tonight,” Hal said, his voice gravelly, hoarse. “I went to see where you live.”

  The kid’s shoulders tightened towards his chin as though he could block out the sound. “Someone shot at me.”

  Robbins sank to the floor, put his temple to the bars and closed his eyes.

  “You want to tell me what that’s about?” Hal asked.

  Robbins shook his head.

  “Who shot Carson?”

  He didn’t open his eyes. “I did.”

  Hal lunged forward.

  Robbins tensed for the strike as she stepped between them. “We’re trying to help you, for God’s sake. Hal is trying to save you.” He turned his head and opened his eyes, lifted his hand to his ear where his wound had begun to bleed through the bandage.
/>   Shit.

  “You know how many innocent people were up there tonight, while some asshole was shooting at me?” Hal asked, his voice quieter, defeated.

  Hal pushed a picture into Robbins’s face. A girl—about Camilla’s age—smiled at the camera. “How about her?”

  Fear bleached the color from his face. Gone was any last bravado. “No.”

  “Tell me who shot Dwayne Carson and the driver…,” Hal demanded.

  “Sigler,” Hailey said.

  His eyes filled with tears. “Where is she?”

  “He asked you a question,” Hailey said. “Tell us who shot them.”

  Robbins shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know who shot ‘em.”

  “But it wasn’t you?” Hal asked.

  Robbins deflated. “No.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I didn’t kill them. I never killed anybody, I swear.”

  “So why confess?” Hal asked.

  Robbins sobbed. “Because he threatened Tawny. He called the hospital room and told me if I didn’t confess to killing Fish, he’d come after her. Then, same guy calls back and tells me I gotta confess to those others guys too—I never even heard of those guys. What would I want them dead for?” He pulled himself to his feet, clutching the photo to his chest and blinked against the tears.

  “You’re willing to risk going to jail for murder?”

  “I go to jail or they kill Tawny,” Robbins barked. “Which would you choose?”

  “Not all guys would have chosen to protect their sister,” Hal said, backing off.

  Robbins rubbed a hand over his face. “She ain’t got nobody else.”

  “You got any ideas who might’ve shot you?”

  “Only one I can think is the guy Fish was working for. He dealt.”

  “Dealt?” Hailey asked.

  “Guns. Moved them for some guy.”

  “What guy?” Hal said.

  Robbins shook his head. “I just know he’s bad.”

  “How?”

  “Fish was scared of him and he wasn’t scared of most people.” Robbins’s eyes grew wide and round. More tears spilled. He turned to Hal. “He got Tawny?”

  “She’s fine. She and Mrs. Parker went with the U.S. Marshalls. They’re going to safe housing for a while.”

  Robbins wiped his face. “Oh, thank God.”

  Hailey stepped forward, touched his arm. “Robbins, come sit.”

  He walked the three feet to the bed as though it was a marathon and slumped down. The flimsy mattress bowed toward the ground, Robbins sinking into the middle. “Christ, I thought he’d killed her.” He looked up. “How long can she stay there—in the safe place?”

  “As long as she needs to,” Hailey said. She had no idea how long they’d be able to keep her there. She hoped she wasn’t lying. “We’ll work it out,” she said honestly.

  “You know anything else about this guy? The man?” Hal asked.

  Robbins shook his head and after waiting a minute, Hal walked to the door, called for the guard.

  Hailey squatted beside the bed. “You’re safest in here for now, okay?”

  “And you’re sure Tawny’s okay?”

  “I’m sure. But we’ve got to find this man. We’ll be back in the morning to ask some more questions.” Fish must have been part of the same group Carson was. He’d been eliminated just like Carson. Why? Because they’d seen something? Or someone? The driver of Carson’s pick up car, Sigler, and Robbins—they were just collateral damage.

  The guard opened the door.

  “He’s bleeding,” Hailey told the guard. “If it doesn’t stop within the hour, he goes back to the hospital.”

  The guard shrugged.

  Hal stepped forward, scanned his uniform, paused on his name tag. “It’s your job, O’Malley, if something happens to him. You got it?”

  The guard didn’t make eye contact. “Got it.”

  Hailey passed her card through the bars to Robbins. “Call me if you need to.”

  Hal was already halfway down the hall when she caught up.

  His eyes were red and his shoulders hunched, but the anger seemed momentarily to have dissipated. Maybe it was the alcohol, but he reacted like something else going on. Behind the steel doors, the elevator lurched and moaned somewhere below them.

  Hal jabbed his thumb into the button a couple of times then punched the steel door.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “You know what I do sometimes?”

  Hailey said nothing. It wasn’t that sort of question.

  He leaned in closer. “I go down to the file room and pull John’s file.”

  She stumbled away from him. Reached for the wall for support.

  “I reread it every couple of months to see if something new jumps out at me,” he went on. “The way we always did the Silverstein case. And the Delgado one. Martin. Szczygiel. Farr. Remember all of them?”

  His face blurred in front of her face. The air was thick and hot. Hailey willed the elevator doors to open as it groaned from somewhere deep in the bowels of the building.

  Hal reared back, jabbed a thumb into his own chest. “I’ve checked that file out nine times. Harrison’s had it six. King’s checked it out. Marshall. O’Shea. Pretty much everyone in the whole damn department.” He paused. “Almost everyone—because you know who’s never once asked to see that file?”

  The file. Panic clenched her lungs. She’d never thought to pull the file.

  “Never once requested the file to her own husband’s unsolved murder?”

  She went for the stairs. Heard Hal slam the door open behind her as she started to run down the stairs.

  “You!” he thundered. “You have never pulled John’s file. Not one goddamn time.”

  Hailey tripped and caught herself, ran on. He was on her heels. She could not outrun him. What did she tell him? What reason was there? She was grieving. She was caring for her daughters.

  No. He knew her too well.

  She should have pulled that file. She should have scoured every lead, every piece of evidence.

  He grabbed her arm, his fingers searing the skin. “You want to explain that to me?”

  Hailey twisted herself free, turned away, kept running.

  “Do not walk away from me!” he yelled and the echo exploded off the concrete walls.

  Hailey turned back, shaking. “You’re drunk.”

  She flinched at his hard, sharp laugh.

  “The rest of them might think you haven’t pulled it because you’re too grief-stricken—too fragile—but I know Hailey Wyatt.” He jabbed his trigger finger into his chest. “I know you.”

  She shivered.

  “So just answer one question, Wyatt,” he demanded. “One fucking question.”

  She stood firm, her hand on the banister.

  His voice dropped into a whisper. He pressed his hand down on her shoulder.

  “How the hell did John really die?”

  Chapter 17

  The anger burned through Hal like electricity, sparking at the hesitation in her eyes.

  The lies.

  “He was shot,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “By an intruder,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

  “Bullshit.” The pieces fell together in his mind. John Wyatt was not killed by an intruder. Hal pushed past her, slammed up to the front desk and retrieved his service weapon.

  How long had he known it? Months. How long had he kept himself from recognizing the truth? To protect his partner. His friend. Lying to himself and everyone else.

  He was done.

  She could go to hell.

  She followed behind him.

  His car was at the bar
, but he’d find another ride. He was done with Hailey Wyatt and her lies.

  Someone called his name. Sheila jogged toward them. He felt the tightness in his belly.

  Crazy Sheila.

  Crazy, hot Sheila.

  Hailey stopped beside him. The lies between them like angry static.

  Hal focused on his ex-wife.

  She was a beautiful woman. Thinner than she had been when they were married—maybe too thin. The same wide, amber eyes smiled at him. That smooth, perfect skin.

  “Sheila.” Hal motioned to Hailey. “You remember my partner?”

  Sheila nodded but her eyes remained on Hal. “I was hoping I’d catch you.”

  “You caught me all right,” he said. A charge passed between them as she touched his arm. “You can go on home, Wyatt.”

  “You need a ride,” she said quickly. “Back to your car.”

  He met her stare with his own anger.

  “I’ll give him a ride,” Sheila cut in.

  Hailey would hate that. How she would hate him walking away from her. And worse, walking away with Sheila. She could stew in her lies and her deceit. She had it coming. “Yeah. Sheila can take me.”

  Hailey’s eyes narrowed at him, a slight shake of her head.

  Hal ignored all the signs. Knew that she was telling him Sheila was a bad idea.

  He didn’t give a damn what Hailey thought.

  Sheila moved in beside him. “He said you could go.”

  “I’ll make it home, Wyatt,” Hal said, lacing his arm over Sheila’s shoulder.

  Hailey’s heels clacked on the cement as she left. Hal didn’t look back. “I could use a drink,” he said.

  Sheila squeezed his arm in excitement.

  Already Hal felt the slow onslaught of regret.

  No. He’d been shot at, held at gunpoint, lied to.

  Damn it, he deserved a fucking drink.

  They ended up in a hole-in-the-wall bar a few blocks from his apartment. Sheila was playing the game hard. She ordered shots of Patron to remind him of their honeymoon, paid for them with cash so that he wouldn’t remember the credit she’d charged up in his name.

  He let her buy the first three rounds. There was a vague recollection of pulling out his credit card. They walked home. She was first up the stairs, Moved slowly, seductively, she swayed her hips to hypnotize him.