Page 55 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

The ambulance was only twenty yards from the door, but halfway there he stopped. To rest, I figured. As conditioned as he was, the last hour had to have taken a lot out of him.

He looked to his left and then to his right, slowly taking in the horde of people and equipment that had assembled just for him.

He took a deep breath, tilted his head back, and lifted his face to the sky.

Every cop, every EMS worker, every curious bystander who had gathered for the sideshow stopped what they were doing to take in the tableau of this strikingsilver-hairedfigure as he looked up to enjoy his final moments in the sun.

And then, in a booming voice, Winstanley called out,“Honesta vita, mors honesta.”

Kylie turned to me. “What the fuck is he—”

She never got to finish. The gunshot, every bit as loud, every bit as deadly as the one that killed Warren Hellman, ripped a hole through the old man’s neck, spraying the two cops at his side with blood, flesh, and bone.

Eldon Winstanley had told us he was a dead man. When he lifted his head to shout his final words to the heavens, his last contribution to his comrades in the killing trade was to make sure his executioner didn’t miss.

CHAPTER 37

Winstanley’s life endedthe second the bullet tore through his neck and spinal cord. But his heart, which had a mission to keep him alive, and its own independent electrical system to do the job, refused to quit.

Even as his lifeless body dropped to the ground, the valiant organ kept pumping, and blood spurted in thick red rivulets through the gaping hole in his throat, like a garden hose gone haywire.

The two cops at his side knew there was nothing they could do to save their prisoner, so they scrambled behind an ESU truck and anxiously patted themselves down to make sure none of the blood that covered their uniforms was their own.

It was a moment of madness, but it didn’t last long. ESU Captain Geoghan took command immediately, first ordering the BearCat to block the front entrance to the building, then directing his team to flank out and do a perimeter search of the area where the shot had come from.

There was a small private college across the street from the funeral home. The campus was idyllic, with stately stone buildings set back three hundred yards from Riverdale Avenue, fronted by acres of thick woodland. It was as close to a country setting as you could get in a big city. It was also the perfect spot for the shooter. And if I knew anything about the man whose code name was Carol, he had planned his exit as carefully as he had executed Eldon Winstanley in front of fifty unsuspecting cops.

But Geoghan had responded within seconds of the gunshot, and our killer was on foot. He might not yet have made it out of that dense urban forest. Kylie and I jogged along the avenue until we found a quiet spot where we could monitor the northernmost end of the tree line in the hope that someone would emerge carrying a duffel bag, a set of golf clubs, or a UPS box like the one Elroy Lafontant had seen from his cell at the Tombs.

Fifteen minutes into our vigil, Cates called. “We’ve just been summoned downtown,” she said.

“To be chewed out by our boss,” I said, stating the obvious.

“No. Byhisboss.”

“Themayor?” I said. “She’s sending for usnow, in the middle of an operation?”

“You’re thinking like a cop, Jordan. When you’re a politician, the first thing you do in a shitstorm is make sure there are people standing between you and the fan.”

Cates was right. Cops and politicians are two different breeds. The PC would never dress down his senior people in front of the troops they command. But our elected officials can never have enough scapegoats. And so, less than an hour after Winstanley was murdered, the PC, Cates, Kylie, and I stood in Mayor Sykes’s office and listened to her lay the blame for her latest political nightmare squarely on the shoulders of the New York City Police Department.

Our previous mayor, Stanley Spellman, was bombastic. Fuck up on his watch, and he would tear you a new one at the top of his lungs. Muriel Sykes was more scalpel than sledgehammer.

“I have a press conference in thirty minutes,” she said, her voice calm, her anger restrained. “I plan to make a brief vacuous statement and then take questions. The first one, I am sure, will be, ‘Madam Mayor, how is it possible that two prominent New Yorkers, surrounded by a battalion of cops, can be gunned down on national television in the space offorty-eighthours?’”

My entire body clenched at the words “prominent New Yorkers.” Warren Hellman was a serial predator who destroyed the lives of young women, murdered a hero cop in cold blood, then used his wealth, power, and Hollywood mystique to sway a jury. Eldon Winstanley may have looked respectable on the outside, but beneath the surface, he was acold-bloodedkiller who had come close to claiming my partner and me as his latest victims. He’d been gunned down by one of his own to keep him from cooperating with the police.

I didn’t have to look at my partners in humiliation to know that they all were thinking along the same lines. But Colin Radcliffe stood therestone-faced, and the rest of us followed his lead.

The mayor’s cell phone dinged. She picked it up from her desk. “More good news,” she said, looking at the screen. “Someone on my staff just translated Winstanley’s last words.Honesta vita, mors honesta.It’s Latin for ‘An honorable life. An honorable death.’ That’s right up there with ‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’”

She let the phone clatter to the desk and then glowered at the four of us.

“Look at you. My top cop and the rock stars of my elite unit. I don’t know how this happened, but you’ve got two strikes. One more andyouare out,” she said, pointing at the PC.

She didn’t even bother telling the rest of us where we would wind up. It didn’t matter. It was somewhere betweenwashed-upand hung out to dry. NYPD has an abundance ofdead-endjobs in its elephants’ burial ground for coppers non grata.

“Commissioner,” she said, “it’s too late to ask if this is the hill you want to die on. So let me ask a different question. Is this the team you plan to lead into battle?”

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