Page 71 of Crosshairs

Of course, I immediately went to the night Gus Querva was shot. The super stood over my shoulder.

I scrolled through the video taken by the cameras in the lobby until I saw Trilling enter.

The super pointed and said, “There, there—you see him?”

I nodded. The time stamp said 6:05 p.m. He would’ve just been coming from the office. Then I fast-forwarded through the lobby cameras. And I kept fast-forwarding, looking to see when he appeared again. I didn’t see him until 7:05 the next morning.

The super said, “You can’t really tell much from that.”

“Let me see if I can find him on the other cameras.” And that’s what I did. I raced through the cameras in the stairwell and in the hallway by Trilling’s apartment. He never came out of his apartment.

I turned to the super and said, “How long do you keep these videos?”

“All saved on the cloud. They always keep them for at least one year.”

I convinced him to let me burn a copy of the single day onto a DVD. I explained that it could be a good training tool about what to look for on surveillance videos.

The super slapped me on the back as I was leaving. He said, “You seem like you would be a good partner to Rob. He’s a good boy. I worry about the way people treat police. I worry about Rob.”

All I could say was “I worry about him too.”

CHAPTER 88

IT WAS STILL midmorning when I left Trilling’s apartment. The phone rang and I saw it was Harry Grissom. I didn’t know what bad news was waiting for me, so I hesitated to answer. That’s a terrible place for your mind to be, especially if you’re a cop working on a major case.

Harry didn’t even bother with the greeting. All he said was “I just got an official notice of suspension on Trilling.”

“Shit. I guess it means they intend to go after Trilling hard.”

“It says that personnel interviewed him yesterday. Did the admin and read him his work rights. That sort of shit.”

“What time yesterday? I was with him in the morning and Wu couldn’t find him later.”

There was a pause and I knew Harry was studying the document on his computer screen. Finally Harry said, “Looks like it started at 10:15, until 11:05.”

“What time did the antifa guy get shot?”

“God damn, I must be getting old. Shooting happened at 10:50. Get over to personnel and figure this out.”

“On my way.”

It felt like only a few minutes later I was walking through the doors of the NYPD personnel department at One Police Plaza. I heard someone call from the other room and found Sharone Baxter-Tate sitting behind a wide, cluttered desk.

She had a brilliant smile and ushered me to the seat in front of her desk. I explained that I wanted to talk to her about Rob Trilling.

“Seems like a nice young man. Sorry to see he was suspended. I never see the reason. I just have to inform them of their rights and what they can and can’t do while suspended. I’m guessing he had some kind of a personal issue. Maybe he drank too much?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Moonlighting without permission?”

“Nope.” I really hadn’t come here to answer her questions. Before she could ask another, I said, “I just want to verify when Trilling was here and how you keep track of the time when you’re interviewing someone.”

Sharone said, “I talked to him in the morning.”

“Can you be more specific?”

She reached into her desk and pulled out a worker’s rights form. “See, there is a space for the start and ending times of the interviews. I look at that clock right behind you and write down whatever it says. Yesterday I started the interview with Officer Trilling at exactly 10:15 and ended at 11:05. I didn’t round up or round down. He was right on time for his meeting, and I noticed we finished our chat at 11:05.”

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