Page 79 of Paranoia

I grabbed the first responding uniformed officer. He had a first aid kit with him and was able to put a bandage on Celeste Cantor’s shoulder wound, which seemed to help stem the flow of blood, then he took over in trying to keep her worse side wound in check until EMTs arrived. Then I went to Trilling and told him we were going after Doyle.

Dennis Wu said, “I’ll come with you guys.”

I said, “I appreciate the attitude. I really do. But you need to direct things here, Wu. There’ll be a ton of cops and paramedics rolling in here with a lot of questions.”

Wu just nodded and immediately turned to help a woman who had suffered some sort of cut across her face.

I brought up the phone app for the tracker we’d sewn into the hem of the shirt I had given Doyle. It took a second to catch the signal. Trilling followed me out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk.

I turned to Trilling and said, “Looks like he’s a couple of blocks over that way.” I pointed to the southwest. We jogged in the direction the tracker sent us. “Now he’s staying in one place. He might be hiding behind a dumpster.” I turned to look at Trilling. I wanted him to know how serious I was. “We take this one as carefully as possible. He may not have a gun, but he’s still really dangerous. He might be setting up some kind of ambush for us. Or at least anyone who might be following him.”

I couldn’t help but notice that while I was panting a little bit during our jog, Trilling was not. He followed what I was saying and nodded.

We turned a corner and were immediately met by a crowd of young people. A haze of pot smoke covered the corner.

I slid to a stop and asked the first young man I saw, “Did you see a guy in a blue shirt run past here?” I didn’t want to depend on unproven technology completely. Eyewitnesses were still pretty important.

The twentysomething man said, “Sure, man. He gave us some weed.” He held a giant joint right in front of my face.

I turned and started to jog again, mumbling, “Jackass.”

A girl in the group grabbed Trilling by his arm. She said in sort of a loud voice, “Hey, good-looking.”

Trilling tried to squirm away. I slowed down to see if he needed help.

Then the girl leaned in and said in a quieter voice, “He ran down that way. Don’t say anything to my friends.”

Trilling nodded and broke into a run as soon as she let go of his arm.

The signal from the tracker showed that we were getting very close. I said to Trilling, “He’s right around the corner.”

We both pulled out our duty weapons, and Trilling broke off to the other side of the alley. I took a quick peek around the corner and saw that it was a wide alley with dumpsters on both sides. I used the building’s wall as cover.

Across the alley from me, Trilling was carefully doing the same thing. The app on my phone told me Doyle was within fifty feet. I came around the corner, now using a dumpster to cover me.

I froze when I saw a man standing in the middle of the alley. He was talking to someone sitting on a small crate. The man was animated as he spoke to the other person. He wore an old Members Only jacket.

I stepped from behind the dumpster and said, “Police! Don’tmove!”

The man in the alley immediately raised his hands.

I couldn’t completely see the other person. I said, “Step all the way into the alley. Let me see your hands.” My heart was pounding in my chest. The other man stepped into the alley next to his friend. He wasn’t Kevin Doyle either.

I holstered my pistol and motioned for the men to lower their hands. As I eased closer, I realized that under his jacket, the man wore the white T-shirt I had given Doyle.

I looked down at my tracking app on the phone. It confirmed my suspicions. I asked the man where he’d gotten the shirt. I had him open his jacket so I could see it better. There was a bullet hole in the chest that had hit the Kevlar patch. Two more holeswere lower on the shirt. Both had passed through the fabric. Each was rimmed with a bloodstain.

“A dude gave it to me just a few minutes ago.” He pointed in the direction Doyle had fled.

I already knew it was too late to chase him.

CHAPTER 119

I HEARD THE first media report about Celeste Cantor’s arrest before I even got home that night. Every publication and TV station associated with the city was leaning in on this story. I didn’t blame them—it was a big deal. But I noticed the pieces on the story had more gusto than usual. The media love to bring up police misbehavior almost as much as they like to ignore great police work.

It is something cops had to come to terms with a long time ago. Especially me.

I wondered if Harry Grissom’s travel companion, Lois Frang, regretted not being in the city for this. She was a reporter for theBrooklyn Democratand had proven to me on our last big case that she was a very good journalist. One I trusted and didn’t mind talking to. She also tended to tell the entire story, not just the sensationalized talking points most news organizations put out.

---