'I want to know what was happening with Lionel—'
Davis looked at him, and Gideon could hear him sigh. 'You're off duty, Gideon.'
Gideon crutched up to the desk. 'I have a right to know what's going on with that case.'
Davis shook his head. 'What the hell gives you that idea?'
'My brother—'
'This is a police department—not some freelance detective agency. Go home. Rest.'
'All I want is—'
'All I want is a double-digit drop in the homicide rate and an adequately funded department. Who gets what they want? Get some rest and let this be.'
Gideon stood there, debating whether to push the issue or not. He looked at Davis and decided not. The phrase 'public relations disaster' went through his mind as he thought of the incident on the Metro. Shooting someone to ribbons on the platform of what was supposed to be the safest subway system in the nation could not be helping the PR situation.
He hobbled back out of the Captain's office and crutched over to one of the desks. Behind it sat Tamon Gardener, a homicide detective he knew from the academy.
Gardener was doing his best not to look directly at Gideon. He managed to avoid eye contact until Gideon had crutched up to directly in front of his desk.
'I'm sorry, man,' he said. 'We aren't supposed to talk to you about any police business.'
'Christ, why—' Gideon was about to repeat himself, he had a right to know what was going on. He had a right because it was his case, his brother. He wasn't about to let some political bureaucracy in the department shut him out of the investigation.
However, it was obvious from Gardener's expression that word had come down from on high in the department. It would be pointless to voice his frustration.
Instead, he decided to try a little finesse. 'Look, all I need is one thing for my report—'
'Look, I shouldn't even be talking to you.'
'I just need the case number for the Metro shoot-out.' Gardener looked up at him as if trying to decide if he'd be breaking any standing orders by giving Gideon that information.
This has got the whole damn department tied up in knots, Gideon thought.
Gardener scribbled on a pad. 'Look, steer clear of this until things calm down. IA's breathing down the neck of anyone who touches this case.'
'I'll put in a good word for you with Magness,' Gideon said. He pocketed the slip of paper while balancing on his crutches.
'Don't do me any favors.'
When Gideon got home, he crutched his way upstairs and turned on his computer. The old machine took a while to warm up. It gave Gideon a chance to find himself a comfortable position in his chair. It took him a little longer to get oriented, moving the mouse with the wrong hand.
Eventually he called up the department. The computer dialed, and soon he was hearing the whine of a carrier.
He hadn't used his account in the DCPD database since he'd been gunned down. He'd spent all his time on his own private account. He was hoping that all the folks who wanted him on vacation had overlooked his mainframe account. He logged in and waited.
In a few seconds the screen flashed a prompt at him. He was in.
He fished out his copy of the Case ID for Lionel's shooting. It took him about ten minutes, typing with the wrong hand, to enter the fifteen digit ID number and get Lionel's file up. The computer thought about it for a few minutes, then the screen showed the first page of Lionel's file.
Kareem Rashad Williams had quite a rap sheet tagged onto his ass. Gideon didn't care much about that, he knew most of it anyway. He paged into the active case file on the Metro shoot-out.
The autopsy records were on file. The cause of death was no surprise; what did surprise Gideon was the fact that the toxicology scan showed enough PCP in Lionel's system to send the Mormon Tabernacle Choir into orbit. That was enough of a surprise for Gideon to back up to the guy's rap sheet.
Dealing heroin, dealing coke, dealing speed. No Angel Dust. Not much in itself, but that combined with the odd fact that Lionel had decided to go flying right before he was supposed to meet with a cop that had no reason to like him made the whole thing seem somewhat fishy.
Back to the autopsy.
The cause of death was no big surprise. A bullet had severed his spinal column. The neck wound had finished him off.
It was the ballistics that really made Gideon wonder. The police, collectively, had fired twelve shots. Lionel was hit by five shots. Seven bullets were dug out of the walls of the Metro station. That meant that at least one bullet had passed through Lionel and had lodged in the wall. That was possible, only two- slugs were dug out of Lionel's body.
What bothered Gideon was the fact that all the bullets, except the fatal shot, could be tied to a specific police gun. The one in Lionel's neck had fragmented explosively, as if someone was firing hollow points. More disturbing, the neck shot had hit him in the front, in his throat. From Gideon's memory, that meant that the shot had come from in front of Lionel, from behind where Gideon had been standing.
But the only thing behind Gideon at that point was a mass of panicked civilians.
But someone had shot first, starting that firefight, and it wasn't Lionel. There had been another shooter on the platform. There was little sign that anyone was investigating that, and—at this point—Gideon doubted he would be welcomed if he brought it to the department's attention.
Shit.
He spent the rest of the evening getting himself acquainted with Lionel, the guy who was responsible for Rafe's death.
Gideon only stopped his computer research to hobble downstairs and watch the television. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Three-thirty PM, the press conference announcing the Senate investigation into the Daedalus incident.
By three he was sitting on his couch in the living room, his foot propped up on the table in front of him. On his lap was a copy of the opening statement that Mayor Harris' speech writer had drafted for him.
On the screen, Senator Daniel Tenroyan, Republican from Maine, was talking to reporters. He looked like an
English professor, standing in front of a podium as if giving a lecture to a bored classroom. '. . . the first hearings will be held on April second, and should last for two weeks. Because of some sensitive testimony we'll be hearing about the Daedalus computer, these hearings will be in closed session—'
Gideon sat up, spilling Mayor Harris' statement from his lap. He wasn't the only one that Tenroyan had caught by surprise. The entire press corps had erupted in a flurry of overlapping questions. For a moment Tenroyan was stuck, unable to be heard over the reporters' questions, his stillness highlighted by camera flashes.
The anchorman cut in, saying, 'There you have it. There will be a House-Senate investigation of the shooting of two law enforcement officers by the Secret Service, but the hearings will be in closed session. That means that there'll be no press coverage of the hearings themselves. There's no word yet on whether there'll be any offers of immunity in exchange for testimony . . .'
'I don't believe it,' Gideon muttered. He looked down at the canned speech—an emotional plea for the financial salvation of the D.C. police department.
The statement was pretty much irrelevant now. It was one thing when an opening statement was in public view on CNN, it was another when only a few Congressmen and Senators would hear it—the people responsible for perpetuating the problem in the first place.
They had to know something was wrong here. There was something more than a simple fuckup that had gotten his brother killed. But the people who were supposedly investigating were turning away from it. First the DA and the grand jury avoiding the subject, and now Congress wanting to hide the whole process from prying eyes— bargaining with immunity at the same time.
'Fucking politics,' Gideon muttered.
Gideon knew what it was. Some bastard stood to be embarrassed, someone powerful enough to put the
