NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,63
too drained to go on. We’ll be interviewing her as soon as the doctors allow it.”
“You do that. Do you have anything else to say, Detectives?”
We should have said, “No, sir,” and backed out of the room. But Kylie doesn’t walk away from any confrontation without getting in a few choice words.
“We made a judgment call, sir,” she said. “If it turned out to be wrong—”
“If it turned out to be wrong?” Doyle said, his voice getting edgier, his tone angrier. “Don’t delude yourself, Detective MacDonald. It turned out to be spectacularly wrong. I understand that cops working under pressure can make a bad call. But the rich and powerful people who grease the wheels of this city don’t want to be at the mercy of your average cop. That’s why we created Red. You are supposed to represent the finest of New York’s Finest. But as tomorrow’s newspapers will undoubtedly point out”—he stood up, put his palms on the desk, and leaned into us—“you and your partner did not live up to the hype.”
CHAPTER 55
IT’S NONE OF my business,” Rich Koprowski said, “but the chief of Ds has got some pair of balls blaming the two of you for Veronica Gibbs’s murder. You might have made the call to keep Dodd’s identity under wraps, but everyone up the chain of command—including him—signed off on it.”
“You’re right, Rich,” Kylie said. “It’s none of your business. It’s mine and Zach’s, and we don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine,” Koprowski said. “He’s still a dick because of what he did to me.”
The three of us were in Koprowski’s car driving back to the city.
“He didn’t do anything to you except tell you to drive Jamie Gibbs up to Warwick,” Kylie said.
“I did. I drove him to the edge of town, and then what? Doyle tells me to turn him over to the local cops so they can drive him the last mile to the hospital. What the hell is that about? It made me feel like a goddamn delivery boy.”
“Rich, I hate to break the news to you, but as far as Doyle is concerned, you are a delivery boy. You drove Jamie up, and now you’re driving Zach and me back to New York. We didn’t exactly cover ourselves with glory in this case, and the chief of Ds doesn’t want it to look like the only thing NYPD is capable of is chauffeuring the victim’s husband to her bedside. But if it’s any consolation, we really appreciate the lift.”
She tipped her seat back and closed her eyes. I was aching to talk to Cheryl and dump some of the day’s misery on her, but I didn’t want an audience, so I curled up against the door in the back and drifted off to sleep. The rest of the trip was blessedly silent.
I got home at ten p.m. and called Cheryl as soon as I got in the door.
“Hello,” she said, her voice groggy with sleep.
“Damn, did I wake you up?”
“S’okay … I know you had a tough day … how ya doin’?” she mumbled.
“I’d be a lot better if I were in bed with you.”
“Good idea … bad timing … hostage negotiators’ conference … Rochester … have to be … LaGuardia … five in the morning,” she said, fighting to stay awake.
I’d forgotten all about it.
“Back Saturday … love you.” She hung up.
“Love you too,” I said, too late for her to hear.
No girlfriend, I thought. A perfect ending to a perfectly rotten day.
I reheated some leftover Thai food, opened a cold beer, turned on the TV, and sat down to watch The Shawshank Redemption for the umpteenth time.
I think I’ve figured out why it’s my favorite movie. My job forces me to see the world in black and white. Cops versus crooks. Good guys versus bad guys. But in Shawshank, I root for the prisoners. I hate the warden. The lines are blurrier, and sometimes I take comfort in blurry.
The nap I took in the car threw off my sleep rhythm, and I wasn’t tired enough to go to bed until three a.m. I slept through the alarm and didn’t get to the office till eight thirty.
“Glad you showed up,” Kylie said. “I was afraid you’d miss all the fun.”
“What’s going on?”
“Good news, bad news, and worse news,” she said.
“I usually start with the worst, but I desperately need some good news.”
“The lab ran ballistics on the bullet that killed Veronica Gibbs. It definitely came from the rifle that’s