Page 82 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

“Dear Theo, thank you for helping me get the most of my final days. You’re a great listener, and the time we spent together made me realize that the missions I carried out for our government, and my subsequent career as a private contractor, are a story worth telling. And you’re the only one I trust to do it. I hope this helps. Your partner in crime, Martin.”

Theo reached back into the envelope, pulled something out, and stared at it. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he handed me the final gift from Martin Sheffield.

It was a flash drive. A tiny message was taped to it.

It said,this is not a can opener .

CHAPTER 55

We droveto the precinct in total silence. Theo needed space, and we gave it to him.

Cates was waiting for us in thethird-floorconference room. I plugged the flash drive into a laptop, and the icon popped on the screen. I clicked on it to view the contents. Only two files. A video four minutes andtwenty-fiveseconds long, and a second, shorter video, only two minutes andfifty-twoseconds. It didn’t bode well. I’d been hoping for more. Volumes more.

I hit play.

The image of Martin Sheffield’s room at the Golden Grove appeared on the screen. A small writing desk was in the foreground.

“Okay, we’re rolling,” Sheffield said as he entered the frame and sat down behind the desk. He was wearing an olive drabT-shirtwith the letters “SFMF” stenciled on it. I hit the pause button.

“Do you know what that stands for?” I asked.

Theo smiled. “Yeah. He was a marine. It stands forsemper fi, motherfucker .He wore it a lot.”

I hit play.

Sheffield looked straight at the camera and started talking. “Hey, Theo. Look at me, making a fucking movie. I don’t know what I’m doing, but it beats sitting in the dayroom watching TV with the rest of the drooling zombies.”

There was a yellow pad on the desk. He picked it up and studied it. “Can’t do this without a cheat sheet. That’s the thing about dementia. It creeps up on you. In the beginning, it was the little things. I chalked it up to brain farts. But then there would be gaps of time I couldn’t account for. I started leavingPost-Itnotes all over the damn place. Reminders on my phone. I knew it was only going to get worse, so I checked into this rat trap so I wouldn’t leave the oven on and burn the house down.

“And then you came along and said you could tell my story. Those talks we had every day—man, I lived for them. And I never told you this, but when you weren’t here, I started documenting everything on paper. Back then I was in what they call ‘mild decline,’ so as soon as I woke up in the morning, I’d write shit down. Funny thing—I couldn’t remember what I had for dinner the night before, but I could summon up every vivid detail about killing the head of a cybersecurity firm in Dubai a dozen years ago.

“I cranked out almost a hundred pages, and I mailed them to an old cohort of mine and told him to send it to you once I’m gone. It may take a while before you get it, because he’ll forward it through four or five people around the world, so nothing comes back to him.”

He checked his yellow pad. “I think I should tell you a little about Mother,” he said. “I know I haven’t told you much about her, but if you’re going to do this movie, you should know that without Mother, there would be no Sorority.”

Theo shot Kylie and me a look. Mother’s critical role was news to him.

Sheffield went on. “Twenty years ago, when they pulled the plug on our unit, I didn’t know how I was going to cobble together a living. Uncle Sam paid us off, but there was no lump sum. All we got were monthly checks. Chump change when you think about what we did for our country. Fuck you very much for your service, marine. Plus, we had to sign a contract. If any one of us opened our mouth, all of us would wind up in federal prison. They assigned us a JAG lawyer out of Quantico to handle the paperwork. I can still remember the first thing that lawyer said when the six of us were all behind closed doors: ‘You fellas could make a shitload of money doing this on your own.’ That was the golden goose that made us millionaires. That JAG lawyer became Mother.

“Mother put the organization together. First thing she did was help us create new identities. We were civilians now, so she set us all up withlow-visibilityjobs. Me at the pharmaceutical company, Emily in the funeral home, but Carol was so damn good at what he did that he turned his humdrum job into aworld-classcareer.

“That kind of notoriety isn’t exactly an asset for someone in our line of work, but Mother turned it to ouradvantage. She realized that with his credentials, Carol could travel anywhere in the world. And with all those equipment cases, he could have smuggled a howitzer into Buckingham Palace.”

He stopped to check his notes. “Vancouver,” he said, reading from the pad. “What the fuck happened in Vancouver?”

His face went blank. I could see the fear in his eyes as he felt his mind slip away. And the desperation as he realized he couldn’t retrieve it. He stood up sharply, flipping the desk over.

“Give me a fucking minute,” he bellowed as he walked off camera.

The video ended abruptly.

I looked over at Theo. His arms were folded tightly across his chest. “How you doing?” I said.

He shrugged.

“You okay to sit through the next one?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve seen him lose it before. It’s just not how I want to remember him.”

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