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“Sure. I’ll talk to you then.” Dragging the phone from my ear and killing our call, I glance up and realize we’re in line, with a half-dozen people waiting ahead of me, but every single one of them looks back at me with mouths open and eyes wide.
“You announced Felix Malone and dead bodies in the same sentence,” Harrison murmurs, disguising it with a faux cough. “Loudly.”
“Sorry!” I wave the crowd off and snag my badge from the depths of my briefcase. “Chief Medical Examiner. Mr. Malone has done nothing wrong.”
“Great,” Harrison snickers. “That fixed it.”
ARCHER
“You take the lead, Officer Clay.” I gesture toward Raymone Terrabone’s cracked and split front door. The aging wood and the flimsy handle partially dangling from its screws. Then I grin when the young officer’s eyes grow wide. “You found the connection, so now you get to follow it up. Terrabone publicly threatened our vics. He has a working relationship with players in the drugs and weapons community, so that places him fairly high on our list of maybes.”
“You don’t want to run this interview?” He gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing with nerves. “Mercer and Wright are your cases.”
“You gotta toughen up sometime, kid.” Fletch stands on Clay’s other side, brings his fist up, and bangs it against the door. “Now’s as good a time as any, don’t you think?”
“I mean…”
“Go away!” A deep, bellowing roar comes from the other side of the door. Raymone, probably. But it’s not until the rack of a shotgun echoes through that I grab Clay’s collar and yank him around until our backs hit the wall.
“Raymone Terrabone?” I snag my weapon and bring it up while on the other side of the walkway, Fletch does the same. “You need to come out here right now.”
“I don’t have to do shit!” He lets off a booming round,loud enough to make me jump. Powerful enough to blow a head-sized hole through the front door. “This is my home and I have a right to defend it!”
“The fuck you do.” I shove away from the wall and turn, lifting my leg and chambering my foot, then I slam my boot down on the rickety handle and bust the door wide open. But I’m no idiot, so I let my momentum swing me across to Fletch’s side, my back hitting stucco until I’m shielded again. “You shot at a police officer, Terrabone! So now I’m gonna have to arrest you. Set your weapon down and come out here with your hands up.”
“I didn’t do nothing!” He racks his long gun again and lets off a round that sends buckshot straight through the doorway and out to spray our cruiser with pellets that embed in the side.Minka’s gonna kill me when she finds out. “I know those other cops are dead now! I saw them on the news. But it’s got nothing to do with me!”
“I find it difficult to believe your innocence when you’re shooting at more cops, Dipshit.” I look at Clay and lift my chin. “Call it in. We need additional units over here now.”
“You don’t need additional anything! Cos I didn’t do shit all!” Terrabone drops his weapon, the loud clatter of heavy steel on the floor ricochets out to meet my ears. Then he screams, like a psycho fucking banshee, and sprints through his house the way rhinos ran through Alan Parrish’s home in Jumanji. Thundering footsteps and a screeching wail. He pumps his arms and comes closer, closer, closer. So I swing out, hammer-hand style, across the opening of the door and collect the poor fucker by the throat as he throws all his weight into the side of my fist.
His feet lift off the ground, sailing into the air, while his head goes backward, slamming to the floor with a crunch that hurts my teeth. But Clay tosses himself on Terrabone’s two-hundred and fifty pounds, flipping him and clapping cuffs onto his wrists in under a second.
I know. Because a second after that, I realize the prick is wearing his tighty-whities, grippy white socks, and nothing else.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Clay recites, sitting on the mound of Terrabone’s ass and panting to catch his breath. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you.”
“You have the right to put some pants on.” Grumbling, Fletch steps around and studies my hand when I flex it. “Broken?”
“Nah.” I open my fingers wide, then close them again, and say nothing when pain rolls up into my shoulder injury. Because fuck, it still hurts a little bit. “Probably gonna be slapped for that when these reports are written up for Lieutenant Fabian.”
Clay climbs off Terrabone and struggles to pull the mountainous man to his knees. “I saw reasonable force and a perp who was armed and firing. You stupid ass,” he growls at Terrabone. “Put your damn feet underneath you. If I let go, you’re gonna fall flat on your face.”
“What do you mean he has an alibi?” I stalk the length of the observation room, while on the other side of the glass, Terrabone sits in a dull gray sweatpants and hoodie set we keep on hand for perps who come in with too few clothes. “He was shooting at us, Fletch!”
“I never said he was smart, nor that he’s innocent ofallcrimes. But he was in a holding cell during Mercer’s murder,andWright’s too. He was intoxicated, belligerent, and primed for a fight every time officers came near, so they caged him up and gave him space to detox. He was released several hoursafterthe second murder. This alibi is as solid as they come.”
“So his bullshit today was just for fun?”
He folds his arms and stares into the interview room at a crying Terrabone. “I mean… he shouted his innocence. He was technically telling the truth; we just didn’t believe him.”
“Probably shouldn’t shoot at cops then.” I exhale a heady breath and shake my head. “We’ll book him for his shit today. Let a judge deal with him. But we have to get back to our war room and cross his name off. Guess he’s not our guy.”
“Guess not.” Frustrated, he drops his arms and turns from the glass. “Back to the drawing board.”
Minka sends her rock text at two o’clock, my time, which is five for her. So I step out of the squad room in search of a little privacy, and instead of texting her back, I choose to hear her voice instead.
Hitting dial, I move toward the smaller war room and step across thethreshold, closing the door at my back, but I open the blinds and pull up a seat so I can watch the goings on of the homicide division bullpen.
