'Did you talk to Elise again? Did you try to call her after that?'
'No.'
'Weren't you worried when she didn't come home Saturday morning?' I asked.
'I had no idea she wasn't at our apartment,' Barbara said. 'I didn't get there myself until Sunday night.'
'You spent the weekend with Cliff Trane?'
She rested her elbows on the table and placed her forehead in her hands. 'Yeah.'
'I don't get it, Barbara. Who are you protecting in this?'
'Cliff's going to be so mad at me,' she said, sliding down in the chair and twirling her hair again. 'He was suspended from school sophomore year. Some girl claimed that she was date-raped by his roommate and that he was an accomplice.'
I didn't know where to take this next and looked over to Mike for help.
'The charges were dropped, Ms. Cooper,' Barbara said. 'But if he's connected to another scandal he'll be thrown out this time.'
'It'll be up to Dickie Draper, from the Brooklyn homicide squad, to figure out how connected your man is,' Mike said. 'In the meantime, you'll be working 24/7 to help the detectives find out who the guy is Elise was supposed to meet.'
'I don't want Mr. Huff to hear this,' Barbara said, lowering her voice. 'I don't know if Kevin or Kiernan even exists, Mr. Chapman.
Like the way she told guys she was a flight attendant? Elise was making things up all the time.
FIFTEEN
The hundreds of gunshots that erupted continuously in the still, muggy air of that August morning sounded more like a war zone than an old park grounds in the Bronx. I waited with Mike at the entrance to the pistol range at Rodman's Neck, the training base run by the NYPD Firearms and Tactics Section, just over the drawbridge that led to the little village of City Island.
Large signs that said RESTRICTED were posted along the roadway that separated this isolated area from Pelham Bay Park, of which it was once a part
There's a first time for everything, Coop,' Mike said, leading me up to a table in front of a low wooden building that looked like an old stable. We both put on padded ear protectors, although they did little to muffle the constant sound of gunfire. 'Settle down. He knew me as well as I knew myself. I didn't like it here. That was evident from the expression on my face and the stiffness of my body.
I was scoping the vast property as we walked through the stall to the place where we would stand for my first lesson firing guns, which I had promised Mike and Mercer I would take after a confrontation with an armed killer.
We were both in jeans and polo shirts already coated with a fine layer of dust from our walk from the parking lot to the area where dozens of cops were lined up side by side, shooting hundreds of rounds of real ammunition as cartridges discharged around us.
'I'd rather be talking to Herb Ackerman. Or checking out Bowery bars.'
'Later for that. You do well in school and I'll take you bar-hopping. Okay, we're starting with a revolver.'
One of the instructors came up behind me and Mike introduced us. He was dressed in the standard uniform of the firearms squad-all khaki, instead of the dark blue that street cops wore, with crossed pistol insignias on the collar. His name was Pete Acosta, and he had a revolver for each of us.
'But you don't even use one of these anymore.'
'I started with this because my old man swore by his. Once upon a time, everybody on the force used a.38. Cops love them 'cause they always fire,' Mike said. 'And for beginners like you, they're usually easier to handle. Now there's too much fancy hardware on the street and these just can't keep up.'
The day after rookie police officers were sworn in, there was a weapons selection event at the academy. It had become increasingly rare for young cops to choose to work with these guns, once thought to be more reliable, though much slower, than semiautomatics.
'Don't look so frightened,' Mike said, prodding me in the back. 'Step out there. No one's going to shoot you.'
He loaded his revolver with six rounds while Pete loaded mine.
To both sides of me, only eight feet apart, were officers firing their guns, maybe a dozen men and women in all. In front of each position was a target, set in the ground about thirty feet away.
The human form, a drawing of a life-sized figure in sharp black outline, was pointing his gun at us. Every cop was blasting away at his chest or head. Most of the rounds were smacking into their paper targets, killing the gun-wielding menace again and again. Some missed high or wide, and you could see the dust kick up on the dry mounds of dirt that formed a perimeter to the rear of the range.
'Go ahead, Alex,' Pete said, smiling at my hesitation. 'Eight million rounds are fired here every year and nobody's ever been hit.'
I looked from side to side at the men practicing around me and raised my arm, lining up the notch on the tip of the revolver through the sight.
'Get the thug,' Pete said.
'What?'
'We call him the thug.'
I pulled back on the trigger and the gun discharged.
'Sweet Jesus,' Mike said. 'Check with the Montauk police, Pete. Somebody might be sitting on his deck, gunshot wound in the middle of his forehead. She sailed that one right out of the ballpark. You check your vision lately, Coop?'
The sound of the constant gunfire unnerved me. I had never heard anything like it. I picked up the revolver and aimed again, or so I thought. The bullet lodged somewhere in the dirt beyond the thug's shoulder. He wouldn't even have needed to duck.
Mike stepped in closer behind me and put his arms over each of mine. 'You see that guy on the target? He's aiming to blow your brains out. Think of it that way.'
He was trying to keep my arms in place after I sighted the chest of the paper figure. 'Pull back.'
I fired once more, into the mound off in the distance, and now the cops on either side of me stopped to watch. Then I tried the last three rounds, but none of them came close.
'You do it.'
Mike stood beside me and pointed the revolver. He let off six rounds, before refilling the gun with a speed loader that Pete handed to him with another six. Every one of them made its mark somewhere on the threatening thug.
'Maybe you'll like the semiautomatic better,' Pete said. 'What do you use, Mike?'
'A Glock 19,' he said, unholstering his gun from his ankle.
Pete walked inside the stable with the revolvers and returned with a different gun for me. 'Try this. It's a Sig-Sauer. A nine millimeter semiautomatic.'
'Too many moving parts for her. This is a broad who can't operate a DVD player, Pete. She may never get it, but Mercer and I are determined to try.'
More men were turning to watch me now-mocking me-as Pete explained the differences between the guns.
'There's one bullet in the chamber,' Pete said, 'and fifteen in the magazine. It requires good isometric tension to use one of these, Alex. There's a lot of jump in the recoil.'
I could guess from firing the revolver what recoil was, but I didn't have a clue about isometric tension.
'Put your right index finger on the trigger,' Pete said.
Mike moved in again to position me. He had put his own gun back in his ankle holster. 'Stand with your legs apart, arms straight out.'
'Why don't you just let Pete do this with me, okay?'
