Chapter 111
CRUZ AND I reached Justine within minutes of her call. The four-lane roadway was jammed to the sidewalks. Traffic cops were rerouting the rush hour surge, and the two southbound lanes were cordoned off with squad cars.
Cruz and I abandoned our car and walked through the cordon. I counted eight cruisers, twenty uniforms, and assorted other cops surrounding Nora Cronin, who had her small foot on the neck of a man who was lying facedown on the ground. Cronin was reading him his rights.
Justine stood a couple of yards away, wearing an expression I’d have to call rapt. She barely glanced at Cruz and me, kept her eyes on Cronin as the lieutenant grabbed the guy up off the ground and got him to his feet.
“I want to call my lawyer,” said the guy with the glasses.
“Call all the lawyers you want, asshole,” Nora said.
Four cops piled on and threw the guy across the hood of a squad car and cuffed him behind his back. The guy looked benign and, more than that, unworried.
I said to Justine, “That’s Crocker?”
She looked up at me, said, “Yeah, that’s him. Did he kill anyone? I don’t know. Maybe someone will get us that warrant now so we can collect his freakin’ DNA.”
News choppers materialized overhead. A BMW, a Ford sedan, and a TV satellite van came up the street.
Chief Michael Fescoe got out of the Ford. I couldn’t believe he was here already.
DA Bobby Petino got out of the BMW.
The two of them converged, talked briefly, then came over to where Cruz and I stood with Justine.
“What happened to you?” Bobby said to Justine.
She looked down, saw blood streaks from her elbow to her wrist. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s Crocker’s.”
Her face flamed—but why?
She turned away from Bobby as Fescoe said to me, “The one Cruz assaulted. Eamon Fitzhugh. What happened to him?”
I said, “In brief, we learned that he and Crocker were going to commit a murder tonight. Nothing we could verify. We tailed Fitzhugh, caught him getting into something hinky with a fifteen-year-old in the parking lot at Ralph’s.”
“He’s at the hospital, dislocated shoulder and contusions, shouting about police brutality,” Fescoe said.
Cruz said, “He was going to kill that girl—”
“So you say,” Fescoe interjected.
“So I say,” said Cruz. “All I did was tackle him with conviction. He’s a bantamweight.”
Fescoe’s eyes were wild with anger when he looked at me. “Jack, this is crap. You’ve got unnamed sources. Putting guys in the hospital. Arrests without cause. I want you in my office in half an hour. Bring Cruz and Smith. If this disaster isn’t explained to my satisfaction, I will be pulling your license.”
As he walked off, I asked Justine, “You say that blood is Crocker’s?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
There was shattered glass all over the seat of the Sienna. Before the uniform could tell me not to, I put on a latex glove, picked up a few shards with blood on them, and folded the pieces into another glove. I handed the impromptu evidence bag to Justine along with the keys to my car.
“Get this to the lab, pronto. I’ll meet you in Fescoe’s office. Should be fun.”
Justine didn’t exactly smile, but her look softened. “Thanks, Jack.”