“He asks me, ‘Edward, you ever get bothered by any of the old cases?’ And I said, ‘Shit, man, why do you think I retired?’ and we had a good laugh about that, but he came right back to it, like he was scratching at poison ivy. And he gets to the point, saying that he’s been thinking more and more about The Job and how he’s having doubts about his purpose. Even said—get this—wondering about how good a cop he was. Can you believe that?
“So he says he’s been sitting up nights chewing on this one case we worked together, saying he was never satisfied we got it right, and the deeper the hole gets dug around him with all the administrative bullshit he has to deal with, the more he feels the itch to do something. Something to prove that he’s still the cop he believed he was. I told him to open the Scotch and watch some Weather Channel, anything to get his mind clear, and he gets pissy with me, saying he thought that I of all people would understand the importance—the duty, he says—of getting it right. I didn’t know what else to say to that except, let’s hear about it then. Charles says he never believed it was a bad drug deal. It didn’t figure for the victim and his priors to be in with that low end of a dealer, or in that part of town. And I said what I said back then, drugs is dangerous business; if they don’t get you, the dealers will. And then I reminded him I always thought if it wasn’t a busted deal it was a Latin gang initiation.” There it was again, thought Nikki. The catch-all explanation for unsolved crimes. “But Charles, he said he was picking up pieces that smelled like a planned killing and a cover-up. He said he was looking for a revenge motive. Either way,” he shrugged, “what are you going to do? You give it your best shot and don’t look back. That’s what I did, anyway. But he wasn’t one to let anything go unfinished.” The steel left him and his lip quivered again. “I dunno, maybe that’s what finished him.”
“The case,” said Nikki. “What was the case that bothered him so much?” But she knew the answer before she asked it.
“The Huddleston kid,” answered Eddie.
FIFTEEN
If Nikki couldn’t have access to the Huddleston file, she would have the next best thing. She asked Eddie Hawthorne to walk her through the case. The ex-detective leaned far back in his plastic chair, and when his head left the shade of the umbrella, the sunlight that hit his hair made the black dye shine purple. His eyes worked back and forth as he searched his memory, and he exhaled loudly, girding himself for this unexpected heavy lifting. “Two thousand four,” he said. “Charles and I were working Homicide out of the Four-one and got the call about a gunshot victim in a car over on Longwood. That zone was pretty much junkie central, you know? Joke among the uniforms was, you hit a perp with your baton and the crack vials come falling out like a pi?ata. Anyway, so Charleston and I roll, figuring this was just another garden variety crack whack.
“We reset that notion pretty quick, though, as soon as we drove up and clocked the M5. The only Beemers in that zip code belonged to dealers and we knew them by heart. So we got ready to check out the vic, figuring on a kid from maybe Rye or Greenwich who saw Scarface one too many times and made the mistake of coming to the big city to bypass his pharmacological middle man. Profile was right, too, when we saw the body. Very early twenties, expensive clothes, Green Day CD still blasting an endless loop on the custom sound system. But then it kicks up a notch when Montrose says he knows this kid. Not personally, but from TV. Wallet and registration both ID him as Eugene Huddleston, Jr., son of the movie star, and then it all starts to tumble in place for us. He’d been all over the news, especially Access and ET, for his drug spiral. Nothing like Charlie Sheen, but enough for me and my partner to paint the picture. And why wouldn’t it make sense?” Eddie wasn’t just being rhetorical. Nikki could see he was seeking her understanding. She gave a mild shrug, enough to acknowledge how it could happen, but mindful, too, that a detective follows evidence and doesn’t lead it, which was probably the same homily that kept her captain awake in hindsight.
“How was he done?” asked Heat.
“Single head shot.”
“How, face? Execution style in back?”