Searching for Answers about the Shooting

My mind is racing. How is the West Bay Cartel back? And why now. It doesn’t make sense. Something must have happened. I can hear on the other side of the Sergeant’s bed, her daughter asking the unimportant question that we both know we’re not going to be answering. “Who or what is a double-u bee cee?” asks Vic.

I ignore the young woman, looking at the Sergeant. “We have anything more workable?” I ask a far more important question.

She shakes her head. “Lex was with me when this happened. He got the brunt of it, they won’t tell me any more details yet.” We both know what that means. Either, he’s dead, or something went wrong and he’s still in surgery. Either way is less than ideal for him being willing to testify.

“Just back, or do we know for sure this is them?” I continue to press my wounded boss for details. I need all I can if I’m going to solve this and get an arrest in a couple days.

She winces as she sits up. Her daughter looks worried. The sergeant answers me straightforwardly, understanding why I’m asking. “Back for certain, moving again as well. This is just rumors and assumptions though, nothing certain. What about you?”

“WBC explains the Partitional,” I begin entirely unhelpfully. Then, I do add into the conversation the bit of relevant information I found. “Do you remember a Detective O’Loughlan, retired about a year and change ago? I don’t have any record of exchange, but I wasn’t as locked in back when I was a beat and able to be fired. Is he connected to WBC?”

“Not that I know of,” she says, “He was involved in some of the raids after they collapsed, though. If he’s been bought out, that’d explain why he’s not hitting the bars in the last few months.”

Something else would too, I can’t help but think. It’s rare for an organization to entrust something this vital to someone they don’t have a prior relationship with. But killing an old enemy and using their credentials is all but commonplace these days. Mostly in inter-corporate espionage nonsense, but I don’t see how it wouldn’t work here as well. Vic looks confused. “What does he mean back when he was able to be fired? How do you become unable to be fired?”

I open my mouth to answer facetiously, then think better of it. Not supposed to flirt either. Don’t particularly want to tell the truth. I close my mouth as I think up a better line to get me out of this discussion. Fortunately for me, I don’t need to as her mom speaks up for me instead. Or, against me as it were. “Don’t listen to Chance when he talks. He doesn’t mean to lie all the time, I think he just can’t help it.”

I shake my head. “Back to the point. Any idea where they might be holed up?”

She shakes her head right back, replying. “No. But Lex mentioned he had the info on his laptop stashed nearby. We were at the cafe on fifteen and Jackson, middle street level. With the shots and the witnesses, they might not have had time to search. Might not have even realized they’d have to.”

“Alright,” Officer McMichaels says, “Let’s go.” Sergeant McMichaels looks worried about this gungho-ness.

I cut the younger one off. “No, you’re staying here.” She looks to object, so I phrase it diplomatically, in a way that makes her feel helpful. “This Lex was probably the target but in case it’s the sarge, we need someone we can trust here, to keep your mother safe. Got it?”

“Fine,” she says.

I look at my boss’s relieved look on her face, and I add, “Go get yourself some coffee, it’s going to be a long night.”

Vic sighs, nodding and heading out. I look at my boss. “Anything else?”

“We need to prevent the war, we don’t need the arrest. Save him, okay?” she says. Then adds, “Also, make sure Marty’s sticking on Keighlee like Velcro.”

I nod, understanding her meaning. This is how we work. Sometimes. I solve problems, and generally I try my best to do so within the timeframes and confines of the law. But that’s just one of my priorities. And quite frankly this week, after what they did, that’s fairly low on my list of priorities. “We’ll see,” I joke, trying and failing to lighten the mood, “He may insist he’s retiring tonight.”

The boss chuckles. “We both know he’s not retiring until he finds a new babysitter for you,” she jokes back as her daughter returns to the room holding a pair of coffee cups. She offers one to me, but I decline. I’ve got too much to do to worry about a cup of coffee. If the adrenaline starts to fade, I have more effective chemical means to keep me awake left over from that package a couple days ago.

I look to Vic and say, “Stay alert,” then turning to my boss, I add, “Stay in bed.”

She rolls her eyes. “And who put you in charge?” she jokes.

I decide joking about her getting shot in front of her very worried daughter might not be the best play, so instead I jokingly reply, “The devil, back when I sold my soul for a sandwich.”

“Really?” Vic says, mostly confused.

As I turn to leave, I look back over my shoulder and smirk, adding, “It was a really good sandwich.” And I walk my bike back to the elevator. As I do, I swipe to call up Marty.

It rings a few times before he picks up. “I heard the news,” he says before I can speak, “I’m just wrapping things up here, then I’ll be at the hospital.”

“No you won’t,” I shoot back.

Indignant, he replies, “You’re not my boss, and my boss needs me.”

“Our boss needs you to stick to Keighlee like, well, she said velcro, I’m saying glue.”

“What if someone comes to finish the job?” he presses.

I sigh, the elevator doors opening up for me. I climb onto the Bullette and start to ride out. “We’ve got an officer with her. You know, the one she’s related to.”

Mary sighs. “Fine. What’s new?”

“Got a lead and a lead on more leads,” I say unhelpfully. “Just stick to the victim’s wife. That said, I might need you and her to head out to grab breakfast without the little’uns, depending on how things go on my end.”

Marty’s voice becomes more serious. He knows what that means. I might need him to do something questionable. “Will she be good with it?”

“Depending on how things fall out, she might know before you do,” I say, “But she’ll be fine with it either way, as long as she knows it’s coming from me. She may want to kill me sometimes, but she knows me.”

Marty lightens the mood. “Those two things do often go hand in hand.”

I chuckle. “Talk to you again later. She never leaves your sight, got it.”

Marty replies with a simple, “Until morning,” then hangs up.

I know he will stick to Keighlee, though he probably didn’t take my words as literally as I meant them. I see three ways the rest of this night could take me. Don’t find the laptop, and I go about tracking down the badge, and likely corpse, of detective O’Loughlan. That’ll involve doing something slightly illegal, that I can’t really afford to do. Might have to ask for some help there. Option two, I find the laptop but scouting the specific area has solid evidence of crimes, then I can get the warrant and have our people black vans and helicopters the place. Or the third option, where I find the laptop, but the area doesn’t have any evidence. And that’s when I might need Marty as overwatch while I prevent a gang war by orchestrating a slight gang massacre instead. Three options. Hopefully it’s the second, because the other options involve a lot more work for me. I can pawn the second’s paperwork off on the Tac Unit.

I pull up to the parking lot behind the cafe that the Sergeant had been shot in. There’s crime scene tape and plenty of uniforms around the building. Unless the WBC is paying off a lot of people, they didn’t get the chance to search the place. And, unless they recently robbed a bank without me hearing about it, they don’t have the funds. The uniforms let me pass without any trouble. They recognize the BlackBullette. Or me. Parking the bike in a space, I think for a moment. I can see Sgt. McMichaels’s car parked in the lot. That’s how she got here, after all. But why this cafe. It’s not particularly public, nor private, nor famous, nor cheap. In fact, there is almost nothing notable about it. That means this Lex character is probably local to it. So he’s not hiding it in the parking lot. Bathroom would be the next obvious place, but if he’s hiding it, he’s concerned about the meet being compromised. He couldn’t be sure that whatever hit them didn’t do it quietly enough to get a cursory search in at least. Which means it’s close enough that they could get to it easily, but far enough that someone who didn’t know where it was wouldn’t find it before the cops arrived.

I begin to walk around the block towards the front of the building. I’m Lex. I’m an informant trying to get my old buddy some scary intel. I know I’m not going to be followed, because I know what to look out for. So I stash the intel on the way to the meet. In case they’re followed, or someone heard it was happening. Stash it far enough away that it isn’t going to be easily found by searching around the area. But I also need to know if someone finds it. Which means, wherever the meet actually happened, I need eyes on the hiding spot. So where was he sitting?

I reach the front. Detective Stone is there, and he sees me. “Are you going to try to take this one off our hands’, too?” he asks, still upset.

I shake my hands. “Can’t,” I reply, “Sarge.”

He nods, his look turning from irritated to apologetic in an instant. “Right, sorry. Forgot. What’s up?”

“I need to know what happened,” I begin, “In case this is because of our case. I don’t want to be next, you know?”

Stone smiles and nods. “Okay. Based on the testimony and the spray pattern, she wasn’t the target. It was the guy she was having coffee with. An Aleksei Maksimov. Had a pretty rough rap sheet. Any idea why she was meeting him here?” As he speaks, he gestures at the wall near a particular table, spattered with blood.

The boss said he took most of the brunt of the attack. That means he was the one closer to the window, facing inward. But that doesn’t make sense. I walk and look over from his side, replying to Detective Stone, “Can’t say for sure. She said she was meeting with some old friends from years back.” I see a mirror that perfectly reflects the roof of the gym across the street. Accessible, close but obvious if someone were to be there, out of the way enough people wouldn’t look there about a meeting here. “She is conscious, so once you finish up here, you can go talk to her for more details.”

As much as I love to make fun of Stephen, he’s a solid detective. He sighs. “So it might actually have something to do with your case.” He knows that meeting an old friend while on a case is almost always code for meeting a CI. That’s why I prefer meals and bathroom breaks. Much less obvious what I’m up to.

“Don’t want to bias your case,” I reply. “But you’re sure she’s safe?” I want him to think he knows why I’m here.

He shakes his head. “No idea. But she didn’t seem to be the primary target.”

I let out a sigh of feigned relief and head back around to the Bullette. Taking it, I drive around the block into an alley across the way, keeping the lights off. Then I slip the best I can onto the gym roof without a sound. Time to find myself a laptop.