I Kill Rich People: New Edition Released 11/27/14

by Mike Bogin

  Al dialed 911.

  “Sir, do you know how long she has been this way?” the paramedic repeated, bringing Al out of a daze.

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know. I-- I got home twenty minutes ago. She might have been sitting there since 2:30.”

  He had her arm outstretched to read his mother’s pulse. The paramedic noticed the tattooed numbers along the inside of her forearm. He hesitated a beat. Eighty-eight bpm.

  “Sir, are you the responsible family member?”

  Al nodded. “She’s my mother.”

  “Has she any allergies that you know of?” The paramedics, everything, was moving so fast. “Is she allergic to any medications that you know of?”

  “No. No allergies.”

  “What medications is she taking?”

  He should have known the answers. Where was her purse? The doctor’s information, her insurance, the purse.

  One of the paramedics reached behind Trudy’s thin neck to cradle her head, placing the other arm below her middle back. The second squatted in front of the couch, placing his arms around her calves. They nodded to each other in sync, lifting her like a gray-haired, shriveled child and turning her lengthwise on the couch as if she weighed nothing at all. The gurney screeched as it sprang to waist height. A blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around her upper arm, with one paramedic pumping the bulb while the second pushed toward the elevator.

  “Where are you taking her?” Al asked.

  “Lenox Hill. East 77th.”

  “Not Mt. Sinai?”

  “Lenox Hill is the appropriate facility. We’re going to take good care of this lady.”

  “Can I ride with her?”

  “Yes.”

  * * * * *

  In the stark waiting hall, Al took out his phone. It felt sacrilegious to be working, but working was much better than waiting helplessly. No bars. He had accepted that there was a wall between him and the room where they were working on Trudy, but going down the hall to the outside doors forty yards beyond looked like an endless journey. He could not bring himself to go out to find a signal.

  When he did get himself to stand and began walking toward the doors, he had a drunken uncertainty in his steps, feeling as if he was using legs he had borrowed from a stranger.

  A return call from Turner’s number. Voicemail. Al listened: “Don’t ever leave eight voicemails on my personal line. Hell, any line. ONE. Call back in the next forty-five minutes to get me.” That had been two hours ago.

  When he dialed, Al phoned Owen Cullen. He could hear those boys in the background: red-headed fireplug and the baseball player.

  “Hello, Owen. It’s Al. You have a nice family,” Al affirmed. Don’t burden Owen Cullen with your problems, he told himself. You love someone, and they die.

  At nine-thirty, a second CT scan showed that the Activase had cleared the artery, normalizing blood flow to Trudy’s brain. She was sleeping.

  “Go home for now,” the nurse told him at 1 a.m. “Get some sleep.”

  There was nothing he could think to do about the DNA. He spent until 3 a.m. looking at bicycles online. The array of choices and options were astonishing, even for bicycles suitable for little boys.

  The second event in her brain happened at 5:45 a.m. When Al returned at 7 a.m., Trudy, his kvetching, ever-present, boundless dynamo of a mother, a woman even Hitler couldn’t kill… she was gone.

  * * * * *

  Owen had to approach the FBI on his own. Time was ticking; the DNA analysis would be completed inside two more days. He wanted to be there for Al, to help with the funeral arrangements or whatever else Al needed, but he had no idea what that might be. It was Al who told Owen to see Turner.

  Turner, with his pressed suit and perfect posture, kept cutting Owen off before he could get the point across. He kept looking at the temporary ID clipped to Owen’s shirt pocket. Al Hurwitz wasn’t authorized to issue it. It had Turner’s own signature. How did Owen have it?

  “Hear me out,” Owen urged. “Please. We have a sniper. High-probability military-trained. Size thirteen shoes or close. DIA and Army Intelligence had to have narrowed down a short list weeks ago, but we’re not getting raw data or search results. Right after the Mamaroneck attack, Mamaroneck PD—a smart department for a small town—spotted fresh tire depressions only

  sixty feet from Bigfoot’s position. He was on a late-model Harley-Davidson motorcycle.”

  “Bigfoot?” Turner interrupted.

  “Right, ‘Bigfoot,’” Owen continued, without bothering to

  offer an explanation. “The Harley-Davidson was parked on dirt only a few feet from the sprinkler system. Perfect impression in the sopped ground. Nearly new tires, ones that come stock with only a handful of motorcycles. If anyone with the military personnel data cross-checks that data against motorcycle registrations, that might identify the shooter. If we had the actual personnel data from DOD, we could cross-reference that against vehicle titles and potentially get a name right there!

  Al initiated a registration review for Harley-Davidsons straight from the car as we drove back from Mamaroneck,” Owen added. “It should all be in the case file.

  We’re also checking for financing information, in case he bought through Armed Forces Bank or PenFed Credit Union or any other banks and credit unions serving military personnel,” Owen continued. “Al initiated checking for insurance through USAA, too. But that isn’t consolidated information; insurance coverage isn’t logged into a unified, accessible database. We need to run credit reports on every owner to find out where they got financing, which means looking at every loan amount and lending date within six weeks of title issuance.”

  Turner responded with an annoyed tone. “I have no access to military personnel data, so there is nothing to cross-check. DOD never opens its database to third-parties. Waste of time to try.”

  “There is more,” Owen insisted. “He crashed the motorcycle. There was a 911 report of a single-vehicle motorcycle down on Cove Road, less than fifteen minutes and

  two miles from the scene of the shootings. There was blood found at the site of the crash.”

  “Then have Mamaroneck PD send it to the Bureau and have a Bureau Lab expedite a rush on it,” Turner ordered, sounding annoyed at having to state the obvious to an outsider from NYPD.

  “Mamaroneck PD doesn’t have it.”

  “Then if it’s in to our lab techs, I’ll have them push this to the top of their priorities and we’ll have results by tomorrow, assuming they are already underway.”

  “FBI doesn’t have it,” Owen informed him. “We are chasing crumbs while somebody is going to have a whole brunch buffet once that DNA comes back. Either NSA, DIA, or another agency has the blood samples and DNA results will be back to them by tonight or tomorrow, at the latest.

  That data needs to be shared out. They washed the street with bleach so nobody else could get it! Al says that twenty percent of the resources of this office, your office, are being devoted to Bigfoot. I’m supposed to tell you to step up and push back. We’re all supposed to be working for one goal, one Department of Homeland Security. Make noise.”

  “Nullifying the threat is the significant issue,” replied Turner. “This office is on point with that effort. The entity within Homeland Security that closes the investigation has no significance whatsoever.”

  Special Agent Matthew Turner was no bridge, Owen realized. Turner was another roadblock.

  “Excuse me? Within another day they will have DNA and an ID. Doesn’t that interest you?”

  How, Owen wondered, could a man run the most important regional office in the nation and never seem to hear a word? Turner functioned endlessly in closed mode. This man was put in charge while Al reported to him because he wasn’t built to do twenty pull-ups. Insani
ty. Then again, Owen needed look no further than Christiana Dansk to understand the paradigm. Dansk was another beautiful networker.

  “Bring me proof that the shooter is or was an American soldier and then I can make calls,” Turner told him. “I don’t know NYPD protocols, but around here, Detective, we don’t just lob accusations at other agencies. Show me proof or this discussion is over.”

  * * * * *

  Owen fared even worse with Dansk.

  “Five more people are dead and you go out of town on vacation? Now you walk in here making demands? I don’t think so!

  You think that NSA has DNA samples on the shooter. And how is that? Because of an undocumented traffic accident that might be a false report? Because a street was cleaned?” she snarled.

  “Take a word of advice. You get yourself some hard evidence before you start with your conspiracies. Until you have that, get with the program. Go out and protect New Yorkers. Lieutenant, serious police business is going on here. We are in the middle of a major systems implementation. I run this Division on systems and methods. If you find that boring, don’t deliver rogue hypotheses, bring me transfer papers.

  I’m not going to stir the pot by throwing out empty accusations to federal agencies, and that’s final.

  This entire Division is devoting its resources to being in place to respond instantly. This is a game-changer. The next time this guy attacks, we’re going to be there.”

  While she attacked him, Owen watched Dansk’s face closely. Her blink rate. The way her eyes shifted down and left. Getting shut down at the FBI went with the territory, but being sent out to chase down Jersey gun stores and size thirteen shoes and then having Dansk ignore a well-reasoned chain of indications was too much.

  “There’s something here that I’m not getting,” Owen growled. He was surprised at his own words, but he didn’t regret saying them. Insubordination felt right.

  “Every meeting we’ve had for four years has been all about budget, about the ‘focus on resources’ initiative,” he continued. “Suddenly, you’ve got the funding for new faces, unlimited mileage, even more custodial staffing for The Bunker. Where does all that come from?”

  Dansk looked through the glass surrounding her office to the busy movement outside, detectives and admins working on deployments, plotting out logistics, optimizing personnel. When she turned back to Owen, the intensity in her eyes left no doubt as to what she was capable of.

  “Cullen, you don’t like the way this division is run, transfer! Right now, leave my office.”

  * * * * *

  Owen expected Tremaine to support him, but Tremaine couldn’t see Owen’s position at all. “Man, you don’t accuse the Commander of playing politics! You think it, but you never say shit like that. Brother, you be fucking up. I’m just telling it like it is.”

  In a booth at The Coffee Pot, Owen went down the list of new data that he had hoped to bring into their case. “Callie was the one who located the websites,” he told Tremaine.

  Tremaine nodded slowly. The Mamaroneck shootings, the footprint, tire tracks, the accident. It all added up.

  “She’s sharp,” Tremaine acknowledged. “Callie would make a good cop.”

  “Yeah right,” Owen scoffed. “Better than Dansk, that’s for sure. Except for one thing. Callie hates the Department.”

  “She doesn’t hate the Department,” Tremaine disagreed. “She hates competing with the Department. She hates how you can’t wait to get up for work in the morning.”

  “So I’m doing something bad because I love the job?”

  Tremaine shook his head. “Just listen. Listen for what Callie wants, man. Hell, you’re a detective! Put the focus into her like you do on the job and she won’t have to compete with the whole New York City Police Department.”

  “Did she put you up to this? Right in the middle of the biggest case we’ve ever had?”

  “O, I love you, man, but you are so damned stupid. No, she didn’t put me up to anything! You have a beautiful woman. Do you tell her so? Did you ever snatch her away for a romantic weekend? Take her somewhere with no kids and concentrate just on making your woman feel like a queen? Do you ever even take her out to dinner?

  Do you ever cook a special dinner for her, bring out some nice pinot noir and light some candles?

  You think she wants to listen to you talk about your day, every single time you come home? Man, hide your Glock, ’cause that shit has got to be way past getting old.”

  “First Dansk, now Callie. What the fuck, Tee? Why take their side? What about me?”

  “Why do you need to view this as taking sides? Listen up, Owen, you thick-headed Irish bollocks. Relationships are living things that need air and nutrients and they need attention more than anything else. Relationships aren’t boxes that you check off one time and move onto other stuff. Hell, I ain’t saying there isn’t reason, but it gets me some, too, how you are all of the sudden so cozy with Al Hurtwitz.”

  “So you want me to put on a Barry White album for you too?”

  “There you go,” Tremaine griped. “You could say something nice, but no.”

  “Can we get back to the case now? By tomorrow, NSA or somebody is going to have ID’d our shooter. Tee, they won’t share results with NYPD. Washing the street with bleach? Come on…somebody is holding this close to the vest.

  After the BS they pulled at Barrow & Taylor and now the DNA from Mamaroneck, look at the evidence and you still think we’re all on the same side?”

  Tremaine dropped his head and shook it no. “Owen, you’re frustrated. I get that. But this is just a case. We’ll have other cases, hundreds of them. But family and friends don’t come along every day.”

  “Tee, I love you,” Owen deadpanned. “There, I said it. Now can we get back to work?”

  “It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.”

  “Fuck!” Owen snapped. “OK. I hear you. But the DNA results will come out tomorrow. Tomorrow! And Dansk won’t do a thing!”

  “Don’t go all conspiracy and shit here, O,” Tremaine told him. “They’re just playing for their team, like we all are playing for ours.”

  “Is that what we are?” Owen questioned. “Teams? Like this is a game?

  It’s no game, Tee. People are dying while these guys restrict data and steal evidence! That’s not a game, that’s felony obstruction of justice.”

  “O, I got you covered,” Tee assured. “This is my city, too. Anything happens, we’re going to know it.”

  * * * * *

  Al listened to Owen’s proposal over the telephone. Every time Owen spoke, Al thought about telling him about Trudy, about the little tiny woman who never backed down. “After Hitler, what’s another bully?” she said. “Nothing, that’s what!” But Owen wasn’t Eamonn, he reminded himself. Eamonn was dead, too.

  * * * * *

  Tremaine listened more than talked. This was the first time he had met the others; it was surreal, like being cheated on, to see first-hand that his partner had a whole separate thing going on. Owen sat himself shoulder-to-shoulder with the old FBI guy. The whole thing was weird.

  Eduardo Gonzalez appeared wearing army khakis and cap. His hair was cut to combat length, non-existent on the sides and a prickly quarter-inch across the top beneath the cap. Owen made introductions then brought everyone up to speed on Mamaroneck, the motorcycle accident, DNA evidence. The briefing would have been incomplete without speaking directly about the dysfunctional state of their so-called Inter-Agency Task Force.

  “I’ve checked with Mamaroneck’s City Management and Street Maintenance,” Owen told them. “They did not do the clean-up.

  Based upon the street-cleaning and bleach that Al and I saw and smelled there ourselves, it makes no sense to have done that clean-up for any reason other than to make it
impossible for other agencies to gather samples. We have to believe that the accident on Cove Road that was reported to 911 was our guy coming off his motorcycle. The tire treads found near the shooter’s position indicate that he was riding a Harley-Davidson. The street-cleaning and the bleaching would only have been done to cover up blood evidence.

  We can’t get anything at all out of the Defense Department,” Owen continued. “They have to know about Bigfoot, but that is a one-way street. NSA won’t even acknowledge collecting evidence on Cove Road. Nobody will press, not Turner at FBI, not Dansk in Intel Division.” They were up to their asses in politics.

  The emerging pattern left Owen obviously disgusted. “Somebody, probably NSA, sent a team, collected evidence, and they can have an expedited DNA profile as early as late today.” He could picture them all having to wait until they read about the closed case in the newspapers. “With an identity, they’ll be checking every credit card purchase, every car registration, every utilities account, and every known address. NSA will be kicking down doors and closing the circle until he is caught or he is dead and we’ll get shut out cold.”

  “I’m not confident in the NSA or in your conclusions, Lieutenant,” Gonzalez explained. “That isn’t going to be easy. Knowing an identity is a big step, but unless he is desperate, he won’t use a credit card or an ATM, or return to any place where he can be identified. Identifying this shooter is still a long way from stopping him. Our guy collects his casings. He does his homework ahead of every shot. He’ll know he left blood behind him. DOD has DNA records for every soldier, so if he’s one of ours he’ll expect that his blood sample will identify him.”