Page 51 of Crosshairs

Harry leveled his eyes at me. He said, “If you had this much on someone you didn’t know, would they be considered a good suspect?”

“Yes.”

“You like this kid.”

“It’s kind of tough to call a war hero a ‘kid,’ but yes, he seems like a good person.”

“And you don’t want him to be the killer.”

“No.”

“Tough shit. You’re a homicide detective. You go where the evidence and witnesses lead you.” Harry picked up his phone. Then he looked at me and said, “Stand by. Whatever we do, we’re going to need your input.”

CHAPTER 62

THE BAD NEWS from headquarters arrived in the form of Detective Sergeant Dennis Wu. The Internal Affairs sergeant had been on the force about ten years and no one would ever think he was a veteran cop. He wore glasses that made him look like a banker or stockbroker, his usual Brooks Brothers dark suit, and a colorful tie chosen to distract people he was interviewing.

He strolled over to my desk, smiling. “Hey, Bennett, how’s it going? I mean, besides your gigantic fuckup?” He let out a laugh and then mumbled, “Classic.”

I let him go into Harry’s office, confident my lieutenant wouldn’t put up with much bullshit. After two minutes alone with the IA sergeant, Harry called me into the office.

When I stepped through the door, Dennis Wu said, “Let’s see if I can fix this mess with a good interview.”

Harry said, “We don’t know if it’s a mess yet. We’re still trying to figure things out,Sergeant.”

I smiled. The way Harry had emphasized “Sergeant” was a chance to remind the IA investigator how the rank structure worked.

Dennis said, “From what I’ve seen, it looks like he’s good for it.” He glanced around Harry’s office, then out to the squad bay. “I thought off-site offices would be nicer than this.”

I said, “I thought an IA sergeant would be more professional. Maybe if you’d spent more than a few months in patrol you’d have a better understanding of how things work.”

Dennis Wu took off his glasses and nodded. “Is that a shot at me for being moved from patrol to translate a Mandarin wire for the FBI? Clever. So what? I only did a month in the bag. I did five years at the FBI, a few years in general investigations, and I’ve been in IA for three years. I think I have a pretty good handle on how things work around here.”

“What about having concern for a fellow cop?”

“I do worry about cops. And the very few bad cops we have give usalla bad name. So why don’t we cut the shit and start to focus on the case.”

He was right, so I nodded in agreement.

Wu asked, “Did you put the .308 casing from the FBI into evidence?”

“I did, and it is going to the lab for every possible test the Ballistic Information Network can do on it.”

“NIBIN?”

“Yes, we’ve entered the casing into the national ATF database. It’ll only be useful if a casing from the same gun was used in another crime. Most shootings with rifles are AK rip-offs or .223s. The local drug dealer doesn’t have a .308 lying around.”

“And no one ever collected an empty casing from any of the scenes we could use for comparison?”

“There were none.”

Wu looked annoyed, like someone had dropped the ball. “And this is not a caliber Officer Trilling has fired in the normal course of his job for at least seven months, is that correct?”

I nodded. Then I started to say, “He’s a good—”

Wu held up his hand to cut me off. “I don’t deal in good or bad. Can Officer Trilling shoot a rifle well?”

“Yes.”

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