Piekarski knelt beside the man, feeling for a pulse. She looked up and shook her head.
They followed the blood trail further into the bar. At the back of the room, in the last booth, a foot protruded. It was clad in a brown dress shoe.
Vic pointed to the booth and cocked his head. Erin and Piekarski nodded. Erin gripped Rolf’s leash tightly, ready to release him if necessary. The K-9, sensing her tension, was stiffly attentive.
Vic stepped sideways, pistol leveled. “Suspect down,” he said quietly, but didn’t move his gun away. For all they knew, the man might be faking.
He wasn’t. Erin saw a slender, olive-skinned man slumped in the booth. A short-barreled automatic rifle lay on the table in front of him, one hand resting on the grip, but the fingers were limp. The front of his windbreaker was slick with blood. He’d been hit twice, low in his center mass.
Erin took hold of the rifle by the front grip and pulled it out of the man’s unresisting grip. Then she took his pulse. Nothing.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Good shooting by our boy Milton,” Vic said.
“Erin,” Piekarski said. She was looking at the dead man’s face and clothes.
“I know,” she said. It wasn’t the same man who’d shot Newton. They had multiple gunmen on the loose.
Chapter 13
“We’ve got to get Burke in protective custody right now,” Erin said.
Vic nodded. To no one’s surprise, they’d identified one of the dead guys at the bar as Pat Maginty. They’d have to wait for Levine’s report to know exactly how many times he’d been shot, but that was an academic question. He’d been hit repeatedly from behind, pretty much the same way Newton had gone down. Erin thought again about what her dad said about coincidence.
“I can call Logan,” Piekarski suggested. “He can pick up Burke.”
“Do it,” Erin said.
While Piekarski called her sergeant, Erin and Vic helped the Patrol guys secure the scene. Milton’s 10-13 had brought down all the available officers in the area, and the bar was swimming with blue uniforms. Milton himself was en route to the hospital, along with his partner. Both were likely to survive, thanks to Milton’s quick first aid work.
While they waited for Webb, the detectives took initial statements from some of the bystanders. They’d already guessed most of what had happened. Maginty had been drinking Guinness at the bar. The gunman had walked in, taken a quick look around, walked up behind the Irishman, whipped out his rifle, and blasted him. Milton and his partner had been monitoring Maginty from just up the street. They’d gotten new instructions, passed from Webb through Dispatch, to move in on Maginty and keep him safe. Unfortunately, they’d only just pulled up to the bar when Maginty was killed. The gunman was on his way out, still holding the rifle, when he saw the cops. Both sides had jumped to the correct conclusion and they’d traded fire at very close range. Then the gunman had tumbled through the door, picked himself up, and dragged his bleeding body to the back, where he’d died.
“I’ve lost count of how many bodies have dropped on this damn case,” Vic muttered.
“Fourteen,” Erin said absently.
“Jesus. What do we do now?”
“Bring in Burke, like we’re doing.” Erin shook her head. “Lean on him, hard. Once he learns what’s happened to his buddies, maybe he’ll figure we’re his best chance for survival.”
Vic smiled sourly. “He can’t give us much. By my count, he’s just about out of accomplices.”
“There’s still the girl,” Erin said.
“And the Colombian hit squad,” Vic added. “That’s what this is, right? Like those Russian bastards who tried to take me out in Brighton Beach last year. There’s at least two of them, we’ve gotta figure on more. You know anything about how Colombian cartels operate?”
“Not really. I never worked Narcotics.”
“Hey, maybe Piekarski knows,” Vic said. “She’s a Narc.” He looked around, taking a minute to locate her. She was off the phone, so he waved her over.
“I talked to Logan,” she reported. “He’s got Burke.”
“He still alive?” Vic asked.
“He was thirty seconds ago.”
“That’s no guarantee,” he said grimly. “I got a twenty says there’s a Colombian gunning for him as we speak.”
“No way could they have locations on all these guys this fast,” Piekarski objected. “Hell, the only reason we were able to scoop Burke up this quick is that our people were already watching him.”
“Yeah,” Erin said quietly. “They were.”
Piekarski blinked. “You think there’s a leak in the Department. You really think someone’s feeding info to the cartel.”
“You got a better idea?” Vic asked.
“I wish I did.”
“It’s got to be someone with access to our case info,” Erin said. “That probably means someone in Major Crimes.”
“Or Dispatch,” Vic said. “They’d know where we sent our surveillance teams. I mean, we weren’t doing this in secret or anything.”
“Could be someone in Patrol,” Piekarski added. “Or, hell, SNEU. There’ve got to be dozens of people who could’ve accessed this information. This is a big operation. Shit, it could even be Feds. FBI and Homeland Security are both involved.”
“Homeland Security,” Erin echoed. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Vic asked.
“Agent Johnson. He was going to talk to Rojas at the hospital. What if he cut a deal, offered Rojas a chance at revenge?”
“He wouldn’t sell out these guys,” Vic said. “No way. That’d be murder for hire. Not even a Fed would pull that shit.”
“Well, someone did,” Erin said. “I think we need to talk to him.”
“Not right away,” Vic said. “We’ve got another crime scene to process. Those poor chumps at CSU are in for a long night. I bet they’re not even close to done with the Newton hit, and then they’ve got to come down here.”
“Sounds like you guys need to be about three places at once,” Piekarski said. “Where do you need me?”
Erin was the ranking detective on scene, she realized uncomfortably. The other two were looking to her. She
