Gage looked at Spike, who nodded. That’s what Burch was trying to communicate with his raised hand as he was wheeled into surgery. Graham. Tell Graham. For the first time Gage felt Burch’s dread that those words and that gesture would be his last-and no one would ever understand.
“Male or female?” Gage asked.
“Male. I’m sure about that.”
“Race?”
“White. Maybe Hispanic, but light-skinned.”
Spike obtained their telephone number, then he and Gage headed back into the crowd.
“I’m still thinking the guy was a helluva good shot,” Spike said. “Two trigger pulls and two hits. Side-by- side.”
“At least we know he’s left-handed.” Gage stopped and turned toward Spike. He held up his left hand, forefinger extended and bent. “I think they saw the shooter’s trigger finger.”
Spike grunted as he dropped into the driver’s seat of his car an hour later, then glanced over at Gage. “We’re just going through the motions. The guy who shot Jack is gone. Long gone. And the partial description we’ve got is all we’re ever going to get. And I know you’re thinking the same thing. I saw you checking out the street-lights, figuring how the shadows fell. There’s no way Jack could’ve seen the shooter.”
“We don’t know that yet. He was moving. The shooter was moving.”
“I know what you’re trying to do, Graham, but neither one of us has ever been good at wishful thinking.”
Gage watched Spike’s pupils flit side to side, as if he was torn by an inner conflict that extended beyond the morning’s frustrations. “What’s going on?”
Spike took in a long breath and exhaled. “Since I took your spot in homicide, I’ve been doing the same thing every day-gunshots, autopsies, and chingasas on dope. Most of my life doing the same damn thing.”
“But you’re the best-”
“Bullshit. There’s no best in police work, just degrees of failure. And I’ve had twenty-nine-point-nine-nine- nine years of it.”
Spike fell silent for a moment, then he sighed and looked at Gage. “You got out when you’d seen all there was to see around here. Your world is London, Hong Kong, Moscow. Me, I spent the whole time trapped in a few square miles, a place that looks like a crushed potato. And it’s like I’ve just been watching the same damn movie over and over and over, and the ending never gets any better.”
Gage crossed his arms over his chest, then settled a little in his seat. “You know why I really left? More than anything?”
“I thought you wanted to go to grad school, read some philosophy books, ponder the deep thoughts.”
“There were things I wanted to think through, and Cal was a good place to do it, but that wasn’t the real reason. I just never fit in. Most people in the department were there to prove something, get over something, or hide from something behind the badge.”
“What about me?”
“You were the exception. You were trying to save the world. Every day coming into the squad room, big smile on your face.”
“And you?”
“I didn’t have your optimism.”
“Well, I didn’t save much of it.”
Gage glanced toward four uniformed cops standing together by a patrol car, sipping coffee, ignoring the milling crowd. “More than your share, and more than any cop I ever knew.”
Spike’s eyes went vacant, then he nodded. “Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“What you said just before you resigned. You said it was like we were all in different departments together.” Spike smiled to himself, then rotated his thumb toward Gage. “You know what we used to call you behind your back?”
“I never had a nickname.”
“You just didn’t know it because nobody had the guts to say it to your face. We called you Buddha. Like when you got your detective’s badge, the other guys beaming like the teacher gave them a gold star, you looking like somebody handed you a glass of water.”
Gage shrugged.
“But that wasn’t the truth.” Spike looked out at the intersection where Burch was shot down. “No cop ever felt the tragedy in a homicide scene more than you. You just didn’t show it. While the rest of us hid behind callousness and gallows humor-or even just the mechanics of how the thing happened-you’d immerse yourself in it, imagining what happened as if you’d been the guy lying inside the chalk marks.”
Spike fell silent, then shook his head. “I don’t know how you did it. If I’d tried to do it your way all these years, I’d have blown my brains out by now.”
CHAPTER 13
T hat wasn’t so bad, was it, Scoob?” Zink asked as he walked Matson toward the elevator from the Magistrate’s Court on the sixteenth floor of the Federal Building. U.S. Marshals guarded the door while Matson uttered the single word that ratified his transformation from citizen into convict. The only witnesses were Peterson, Zink, Hackett, the magistrate, the clerk, and the stenographer. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the hearing never happened.
For Matson, it really was bad. So bad Matson felt himself splitting in two. Or maybe three or four. He remembered looking around the courtroom, his eyes flinching at the light, his stomach turning. At the same time, he felt a nauseating hollowness, as if his mind was a shriveled nut inside a shell bouncing down a hillside.
Walking away, rerunning the scene in his mind, it hit him. It was just a goddamn play. Everybody knew their parts, played them like they’d read the same lines a thousand times before. There was Peterson. Huge, dominating. Zink. A rodent waiting to gather up the scraps. The magistrate. Just a judge’s helper. A guy who wasn’t smart enough or didn’t kiss enough political ass to get appointed district court judge. The magistrate would do what Peterson told him to do. And Matson would do what Hackett told him to do.
Hackett. How much money did I pay that shyster? Matson asked himself as Zink led him down the hallway. Whose side was he really on? What did he tell me?
“When the magistrate asks whether you were threatened into entering the plea, answer no, got it?”
“But they were gonna throw away the fucking key if I didn’t.”
“So what? If you say yes, there’s no deal.”
What’s all this about the truth? It’s all about lying at the right time, just like business. These people are hypocrites.
Matson noticed that he was now in the elevator, descending, just him and Zink. Hackett had abandoned him at the courtroom door.
Matson knew it was his voice that answered, “Guilty,” but his mind, cowering in an internal crevice, hadn’t pushed the word out. Hackett simply trained him to say, “Guilty, Your Honor,” and he did.
How did I get into this mess? Matson asked himself as he and Zink got off the elevator on the thirteenth floor. I shouldn’t have listened to Hackett. He’s a punk. Fucking snitch lawyer. I could’ve beat this case. What’ve they really got? Nothing. That’s what Granger said.
Zink stuck a security badge on Matson’s suit jacket, then walked him through the armored entrance into the FBI office. A few steps inside, Matson saw a wooden door, a sign taped to it bearing the single word “SatTek.”
“This is where we’ll be working,” Zink said, directing Matson inside.
Matson took a step across the threshold. Instantly all of his parts snapped together.
To his left was a poster board covered with photos. His. Burch’s. Granger’s. Fitzhugh’s. They know about Fitzhugh. Next to that a world map. Red-headed pins impaling San Francisco, Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City, London, Guernsey. They know about Guernsey. To his right were flowcharts taped to the wall. Money. Accounts. Companies. Straight ahead were file boxes. SEC. SatTek. The China company. The Vietnam company. Cobalt Partners. Damn,
