“We need a bus to 110 East 11th,” he said. “Multiple GSW.”
Erin flashed her shield to the standing officer. “O’Reilly,” she said. “Major Crimes. What’ve we got?”
“Looks like a drive-by,” he said. “Me and my partner was halfway down the block when we heard it. Shooter was already gone. Poor bastard probably never even knew what hit him.”
Erin looked down. There, his blood outlining the channels in the concrete, lay Liam McIntyre. His eyes were wide open, staring at the sky, but he wasn’t seeing anything in this world. A glance told Erin everything she needed to know. It didn’t matter how fast the ambulance got there. He was already dead.
Chapter 6
Erin stood on Eleventh Street, her Glock in one hand, Rolf’s leash in the other, trying to think. The adrenaline pumping through her veins didn’t make it easier. Liam had been nervous during their abortive meeting. Had he known he was being targeted? That didn’t make sense. Liam was the kind of guy who’d go to ground if he thought he was being hunted. He wouldn’t stick his nose out of his hole.
Maybe it was a coincidence, an unrelated attack. Drug dealers ran a constant risk of being murdered by competitors. But Erin didn’t believe in coincidence. Her father liked to say, “Coincidence is like winning the lottery. How many people you know who’ve won the lottery?”
At the moment, Erin had a more pressing concern. She needed to figure out what she was going to say to the Homicide detectives when they got there. If she even wanted to be there at all. Ian might’ve had the right idea. He and Carlyle were long gone by now.
Great, just great. She was thinking like a mobster. But she had to decide, and fast. For now, she was just an NYPD detective who’d happened to be in the vicinity of a gangland shooting. She didn’t want her connection to the Irish Mob being talked about in another precinct. Next thing she knew, her relationship with Carlyle would come out, and then…
She didn’t know what would happen then. Nothing good. But if the Homicide boys in Little Italy were any good at all, they’d trace Liam’s movements prior to his death. They’d interview the bartender, who’d definitely remember the police officer and K-9. Then it would come back on Erin regardless.
So there wasn’t really a choice. Besides, Sean O’Reilly hadn’t raised his daughter to run and hide. And while she was biting bullets, she might as well get a whole mouthful. She called Webb.
“You talk to your guy?” he asked.
“Sort of.”
There was a pause.
“You’re going to have to explain that,” he said. “Obviously.”
“I met my CI,” she explained. “But he got spooked and ran off.”
“That actually sounds promising. Maybe this guy knows something. You think he’ll crack if you lean on him a little?”
“That’s the thing, sir. He didn’t get far.” She took a deep breath. “He’s dead.”
There was another pause. When Webb’s voice came back on the line, he sounded enormously weary.
“Please tell me you didn’t shoot him.”
“What? No! But someone sure as hell did. Automatic fire, submachine-gun I think.”
“Are you hit? Any other casualties?”
“No and no. I only heard it, I didn’t see it happen. I’m at the scene with two uniforms, waiting on Homicide. I’ll probably be tied up here for a while.”
She heard the sigh over the phone line. “It is what it is,” he replied. “Thanks for the heads-up. So now we have eleven bodies.”
“That we know of.”
“Thank you for that encouraging thought, O’Reilly. You think it’s connected?”
“I don’t see how it couldn’t be.”
“Same shooters as yesterday?”
“I only heard one gun. Couldn’t say who did the shooting. They were gone by the time I got outside.”
“Okay. Give my name to the Homicide boys when they show up, so we can coordinate who’s going to work this one. It’ll probably land on us, given the situation. But get back here as quick as you can. This one sounds like a misdemeanor.”
Erin knew what he meant. Vic had used the same term to describe the Mafia guys. “Misdemeanor homicides” were what police called murders where the victims were criminals. They didn’t tend to be the highest priority to solve, since they didn’t directly endanger the public. If the firebombing hadn’t killed civilians as well, the NYPD might not be bringing out its big guns to solve it.
“Copy that,” she said. “O’Reilly out.”
Erin didn’t need to worry, as it turned out. The Homicide detectives, a couple of guys named Lawton and Crawford, only asked her a few perfunctory questions. She told them Liam was an informant, that he’d tipped her off to a competitor’s drug deal a while ago, and she’d been meeting hoping to get some info on another case.
“He have anything for you?” Lawton asked.
“Nope,” she said. “He got pissed off and left.”
And that was it. Erin could see they’d already made up their minds about Liam. The story they were telling themselves was that he’d been on the bad side of some other drug dealer and gotten himself whacked. Open and shut. Not that they knew which dealer had killed him, but she figured they’d try to work that out later.
Erin left the scene feeling that Liam had gotten the sort of death he deserved. It didn’t make her feel any better. She knew the shooting was linked to the restaurant massacre, but she didn’t know how. All she knew for certain was that a potential lead had been cut off.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she was loading Rolf into her car. She saw an unknown number.
“O’Reilly,” she said noncommittally.
“Are you well, darling?”
“Oh,
