Riley almost blurted, “Why not?”
Instead, she said cautiously, “Kelsey, you captured him. You brought him to justice. He was spending his life in prison because of you. You might be the whole reason he got out.”
Kelsey didn’t say anything for a moment. She was eyeing the pistol in Riley’s holster.
“What weapon do you carry, dear?” she asked.
“A forty-caliber Glock,” Riley said.
“Nice!” Kelsey said. “May I have a look at it?”
Riley handed Kelsey her weapon. Kelsey took out the magazine and examined the gun. She handled it with the appreciation of a connoisseur.
“Glocks came along a little too late for me to use in the field,” she said. “I like them, though. The polymer frame has a good feel to it – very light, excellent balance. I love the sighting arrangement.”
She put the magazine back in and handed the gun back to Riley. Then she walked over to a desk. She took out a semiautomatic pistol of her own.
“I took Shane Hatcher down with this baby,” she said, smiling. She handed the gun to Riley, then sat back down. “Smith and Wesson Model 459. I wounded and disarmed him. My partner wanted to kill him on the spot – revenge for the cop he’d killed. Well, I wouldn’t have it. I told him if he did kill Hatcher, there’d be more than one corpse to bury.”
Kelsey blushed a little.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’d rather that story didn’t get around. Please don’t tell anybody.”
Riley handed the weapon back to her.
“Anyway, I could tell that I met with Hatcher’s approval,” Kelsey said. “You know, he had a strict code, even as a gangbanger. He knew that I was just doing my job. I think he respected that. And he was grateful, too. Anyway, he’s never shown any interest in me. I even wrote him a few letters, but he never wrote back. He probably doesn’t even remember my name. No, I’m all but positive he doesn’t want to kill me.”
Kelsey peered at Riley with interest.
“But Riley – is it OK for me to call you Riley? – you told me on the phone that you’d actually visited him, that you’d gotten to know him. He must be quite fascinating.”
Riley thought she actually detected a note of envy in the woman’s voice.
Kelsey rose from her chair.
“But listen to me babble, while you’ve got a bad guy to catch! And who knows what he might be up to, even as we speak. I’ve got some information that might help. Come on, I’ll show you everything I’ve got.”
She led Riley and Bill through a hallway to a basement door. Riley’s nerves quickened.
Why does it have to be in a basement? she thought.
Riley had harbored a slight but irrational phobia about basements for some time now – vestiges of PTSD from having been held captive in Peterson’s damp crawlspace, and even more recently from having taken out a different killer in a pitch-dark basement.
But as they followed Kelsey down the stairs, Riley saw nothing sinister. The basement was finished as a comfortable rec room. In one corner was a well-lighted office area with a desk covered with manila folders, a bulletin board with old photographs and newspaper clippings, and a couple of filing drawers.
“Here it is – everything you could want to know about ‘Shane the Chain’ and his career and downfall,” Kelsey said. “Help yourself. Ask if you need help making sense out of it all.”
Riley and Bill started looking through folders. Riley was surprised and thrilled. It was a fascinating, even daunting body of information and a lot of it had never been scanned for the FBI database. The folder she was looking through was crammed with seemingly unimportant items, including restaurant napkins with handwritten notes and sketches pertaining to the case.
She opened another folder that held photocopied reports and other documents. Riley was a bit amused to realize that Kelsey surely wasn’t supposed to have copied or kept them. The originals had surely long since been shredded after being scanned.
As Bill and Riley pored over the material, Kelsey remarked, “I guess you’re wondering why I just won’t let this case go. Sometimes I wonder myself.”
She thought for a moment.
“Shane Hatcher was my one brush with real evil,” she said. “During my first fourteen years with the Bureau, I was pretty much window dressing here in the Syracuse office – the token woman. But I worked this case from the ground up, talking to gangbangers in the street, taking charge of the team. Nobody thought I could bring Hatcher down. In fact, nobody was sure that anybody could bring him down. But I did.”
Now Riley was looking through a folder of poor-quality photos that the Bureau probably hadn’t bothered to scan. Kelsey had obviously known better than to throw them away.
One showed a cop sitting in a café talking to a gangbanger. Riley immediately recognized the young man as Shane Hatcher. It took her a moment to recognize the cop.
“That’s the officer that Hatcher killed, isn’t it?” Riley said.
Kelsey nodded.
“Officer Lucien Wayles,” she said. “I took that photograph myself.”
“What’s he doing talking with Hatcher?”
Kelsey smiled knowingly.
“Well, now, that’s rather interesting,” she said. “I suppose you’ve heard that Officer Wayles was an upstanding, decorated policeman. That’s what the local cops still want everybody to think. Actually, he was corrupt to the very bone. In this picture, he was meeting with Hatcher hoping to make a deal with him – a cut of the drug profits for not interfering with Hatcher’s territory. Hatcher said no. That’s when Wayles decided to do Hatcher in.”
Kelsey pulled out a photograph of Wayles’s mangled body.
“As you probably know, that didn’t work out too well for Officer Wayles,” she said.
Riley felt a tingle of understanding. This was exactly the treasure trove of material she’d yearned for. It brought her much, much closer to the mind of the youthful Shane Hatcher.
As she looked at the photo of Hatcher and the cop, Riley probed the young man’s mind. She imagined Hatcher’s thoughts and feelings at the moment the picture was taken. She also remembered something that Kelsey had just said.
“You know, he had a strict code, even as a gangbanger.”
From her own conversations with Hatcher, Riley knew that it was still true today. And now, looking at the photo, Riley could feel Hatcher’s visceral disgust at Wayles’s proposal.
It offended him, Riley thought. It felt like an insult.
Small wonder that Hatcher had made such a gruesome example of Wayles. According to Hatcher’s twisted code, it was the moral thing to do.
Thumbing through more photos, Riley found a mugshot of another gangbanger.
“Who’s this?” Riley asked.
“Smokey Moran,” Kelsey said. “Shane the Chain’s most trusted lieutenant – until I busted him for selling drugs. He faced a long prison sentence, so I had no trouble getting him to turn state’s evidence against Hatcher in return for some leniency. That’s how I finally nailed Hatcher.”
Riley’s skin prickled as she handled the picture.
“What became of Moran?” she asked.
Kelsey shook her head with disapproval.
“He’s still out there,” she said. “I often wish I hadn’t made that deal. For years and years now, he’s been quietly running all kinds of gang activities. The younger gangbangers look up to him and admire him. He’s smart and elusive. The local cops and the Bureau have never been able to bring him to justice.”
That prickling feeling grew. Riley found herself in Hatcher’s mind, brooding in prison for decades over Moran’s betrayal. In Hatcher’s moral universe, such a man didn’t deserve to live. And justice was long overdue.
“Do you have his current address?” Riley asked Kelsey.
“No, but I’m sure the field office does. Why?”
Riley took a deep breath.
“Because Shane is going there to kill him.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Riley knew that Smokey Moran was in great danger. But the truth was, Riley’s heart didn’t exactly go out to the vicious career thug.
Shane Hatcher was what really mattered.
Her assignment was to put Hatcher back in prison. If they caught him before he killed Moran for the old betrayal, fine. She and Bill would drive to Moran’s address without giving him any advance warning. They would call the local field office to have backup meet them there.
It was about a half hour drive from Kelsey Sprigge’s home in middle-class Searcy to the much more sinister gang neighborhoods of Syracuse. The sky was overcast, but no snow was falling, and traffic moved normally along the well-cleared roads.
As Bill drove, Riley accessed the FBI database and did some quick research on her cell phone. She saw that the local gang situation was dire. Gangs had grouped and regrouped in this area since the early 1980s. Back in the era of Shane the Chain, they had been mostly locals. Since then national gangs had moved in, bringing with them heightened levels of violence.
The drugs that fueled this violence with their profits had gotten weirder and much more dangerous. They now included cigarettes soaked in embalming fluid and paranoia-inducing crystals called “bath salts.” Who knew what even deadlier substances would turn up next?
As Bill parked in front of the rundown apartment building where Moran lived, Riley saw two men wearing FBI jackets get out of another car – Agents McGill and Newton, who had met them at the airport. She could tell from their bulkiness that they were wearing Kevlar vests under the jackets. Both were carrying Remington sniper rifles.
“Moran’s place is on the third floor,” Riley said.
When the group of agents moved in through the building’s front door, they encountered several gangbanger types standing around in the cold and shabby foyer. They just stood there with their hands shoved into their hoodie pockets and appeared to pay little attention to the armed squad.
Moran’s bodyguards?
She didn’t think they were likely to try to stop her little army of agents, although they might signal Moran that someone was on the way up.
McGill and Newton appeared to know the young guys. The agents patted them down quickly.
“We’re here to see Smokey Moran,” Riley said.
None of the young men said a word. They just stared at the agents with strange, empty expressions. It struck Riley as odd behavior.
“Out,” said Newton, and the guys nodded in compliance and filed out the front door.
With Riley in the lead, the agents stormed up three flights of stairs. The local agents led the way, checking each hallway carefully. On the third floor, they stopped outside Moran’s apartment.
Riley knocked sharply on the door. When no one answered, she called out.
“Smokey Moran, this is FBI Agent Riley Paige. My colleagues and I need to have a word with you. We don’t mean you any harm. We’re not here to arrest you.”
Again came no answer.
“We have reason to believe that your life is in danger,” Riley shouted.
Still no answer.
Riley turned the doorknob. To her surprise, it wasn’t locked, and the door swung open.
The agents stepped into a neatly kept, nondescript apartment with virtually no decor. There was also no TV, no electronic devices, certainly no sign of a computer. Riley realized that Moran managed to wield tremendous influence in the criminal underworld solely by giving face-to-face orders. By never going online or even using a phone, he stayed under law enforcement’s radar.
Definitely a shrewd customer, Riley thought. Sometimes the old-fashioned way works best.
But he was nowhere in sight. The two local agents quickly checked all the rooms and closets. Nobody was in the apartment.
They all made their way back down the stairs. When they reached the foyer, McGill and Newton lifted their rifles, ready for action. The young gangbangers awaited them at the base of the stairs.
Riley looked them over. She realized they’d obviously been under orders to let Riley and her colleagues search the empty apartment. Now it seemed that they had something to say.
“Smokey said he thought you’d come,” one of the gangbangers said.
“He told us to give you a message,” another said.
“He said to look for him over at the old Bushnell Warehouse on Dolliver Street,” a third said.
Then, without another word, the young men stepped aside, leaving the agents plenty of room to leave.
“Was he alone?” Riley asked.
“Was when he left here,” one of the young men replied.
A sort of solemn foreboding hung in the air. Riley didn’t know what to make of it.
McGill and Newton kept their eyes on the young guys as the agents exited. When they got outside, Newton said, “I know where that warehouse is.”
“I do too,” McGill said. “It’s just a few blocks from here. It’s abandoned and up for sale, and there’s been talk of turning it into classy apartments. But I don’t like the sound of this. That place is perfect for an ambush.”
He got on his phone and requested more backup to meet them there.
“We’ll have to be careful,” Riley said. “Lead the way.”
Bill drove, following the local SUV. Both cars parked in front of a decrepit four-story brick building with a crumbling facade and broken windows. As they did, another FBI vehicle pulled up.
Looking over the building, Riley could see what McGill had meant and why he had wanted more backup. The place was huge and decrepit with three floors of dark and broken windows. Any of those windows could easily hide a shooter with a rifle.
All of the local team was armed with long guns, but she and Bill had only pistols. They might be sitting ducks in a firefight.
Still, an ambush didn’t make sense to her. After shrewdly evading arrest for some three decades, why would a guy as bright as Smokey Moran do something reckless like gun down FBI agents?
Riley called the other agents on her radio.
“You guys still wearing Kevlar?” she asked.
“Yeah,” came the reply.
“Good. Stay put in your car until I tell you to come out.”
Bill had already reached into the back of their well-stocked SUV, where he had found two Kevlar vests. He and Riley quickly slipped into them. Then Riley found a megaphone.
She rolled down the window and called out to the building.
“Smokey Moran, we’re FBI. We got your message. We came to see you. We don’t mean you any harm. Come out of the building with your hands up and let’s talk.”
She waited for a full minute. Nothing happened.
Riley got on the radio again to Newton and McGill.
“Agent Jeffreys and I are getting out of our vehicle. When we’re out, you get out too – with your weapons drawn. We’ll all meet at the front door. Keep your eyes high. If you see any movement anywhere in the building, take immediate cover.”
Riley and Bill got out of the SUV, and Newton and McGill got out of their car. Three more heavily armed FBI agents got out of the newly arrived vehicle and joined them.
The agents moved cautiously toward the building, eyeing the windows with their guns ready. Finally they reached the relative safety of the enormous front doorway.
“What’s the plan?” McGill asked, sounding distinctly nervous.
“To arrest Shane Harris, if he’s in there,” Riley said. “To kill him if necessary. And to find Smokey Moran.”
Bill added, “We’ll have to search the whole building.”
Riley could tell that the local agents didn’t much like this plan. She couldn’t blame them.
“McGill,” she said, “start on the ground floor, working your way up. Jeffreys and I will head to the top floor and work our way down. We’ll meet in the middle.”
McGill nodded. Riley could see a flash of relief on his face. They clearly knew that danger was much less likely in the lower part of the building. Bill and Riley would be putting themselves at considerably greater risk.
Newton said, “I’m going up with you.”