Chapter Nineteen
“What’s wrong?” Malone asked when she reached his office.
“Nothing.” She wasn’t telling him or anyone what Ramsey had said until she had a chance to talk to Gonzo about it.
“Let’s get this done with Conklin. I’ve got far more important things that need my attention.
” Only because she wanted to know who else had known the details of her father’s shooting would she give Conklin even five more minutes of her precious time.
“I had him brought up to interview two.”
“Let’s go.”
Sam wondered how many times she would have to see her former deputy chief in an orange jumpsuit before it would sink in that he’d known who’d shot her father—and why—the whole time Sam had been on a desperate search for answers.
How did he live with himself and the guilt of pretending to be Skip’s friend while hiding the truth?
She decided to ask him that before giving him the chance to speak when she and Malone entered the room where Conklin and his attorney waited for them.
Conklin sat up a little straighter when they came in, but otherwise didn’t react.
Sam stared him down. “I want to know how you can live with yourself. How did you sleep at night for four years sitting on information that would’ve led to justice for a man who’d been your friend for thirty years? How do you live with the guilt of knowing he died without ever getting that closure?”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened with displeasure while his eyes filled with tears.
Too fucking bad if he was uncomfortable. She wanted to know. “Well?”
“It made me sick, all the time, for four years.”
“Well, that’s good, because it makes me sick to know that you pretended to be his friend while withholding information that would’ve brought his shooters to justice.”
“I didn’t have any choice!”
Sam laughed. “Sure, you did. You chose to protect your own ass rather than do the right thing, and now the whole world knows what a fucking coward you are.”
The lawyer cleared his throat. “While I understand the Lieutenant’s frustrations—”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t have the first clue about my frustrations.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Conklin said, slumping with defeat. “I don’t know what else to say besides that.”
Sam remained standing, arms crossed, her expression hard. She would never forgive him for what he’d done. “You called this meeting. What do you want?”
He sat up a little and leaned forward on the table. “You wanted to know about that note you received.”
She remained silent.
“This is a big department, a lot of people… Not everyone was a fan of your father’s, as much as that might hurt you to hear.
Officers start out together, they come up together and some do better than others.
That’s the way it goes. But not everyone understands that, and people’s feelings get hurt when someone gets pushed ahead of them in the ranks. ”
As she listened to him, her mind raced with possibilities. Had they considered everyone who came up in the ranks with her dad? Not only in his academy class, but the ones immediately before and after his.
“Do you have specific information on who else knew or are you speculating?”
“I’m speculating. If someone else in the department knew, that’d be news to me.”
“Anything else?”
“I want to try to make this right.”
“You can’t.”
“Sam, please. Try to understand. They would’ve killed me and my wife. I was backed into a corner.”
“Do you honestly expect me to feel sorry for you? We could’ve protected you both, as you well know.”
“I couldn’t ask her to live like that.”
“So you subjected my dad to four years in hell instead?”
Dunning cleared his throat again. “Deputy Chief Conklin has cooperated with the investigation. His cooperation should be noted to the prosecutors.”
“Is that what you think is going to happen here?” Sam asked, incredulous. “You basically signed my dad’s death certificate by telling Gallagher that he was taking another look at Coyne’s murder. You knew they’d go after him, and you told them anyway.”
“Because if I didn’t and they found out I knew, they’d come for me! What was I supposed to do?”
“Tell someone. Come clean about what you knew before another good cop could be murdered at their hands.”
“I couldn’t.” Conklin dropped his head into his hands, his body shaking with sobs. “I was too afraid of them. I tried to support Skip every way I could after…”
“I suppose you want some sort of reward for being a good friend to him after he was nearly murdered, but sorry to say that being responsible for putting him in that chair to start with makes you the worst ‘friend’ he ever had.” She glanced at Malone. “I think I’ve heard enough.”
Malone glared at Conklin. “Me, too.”
“Will you tell the prosecutors that I cooperated?”
“Fuck you.” Sam turned and walked out of the room, sucking in greedy deep breaths of the fresh air outside the small room.
Aware of Malone following her, she didn’t slow down until she reached her office and ducked inside, needing a minute to get it together before she faced her squad.
They probably thought she was a lunatic, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d given them reason to think that.
Malone came in after her and shut the door. To his credit he said nothing for several minutes, giving her the time she needed to collect herself.
When she felt ready, she looked at the captain. “Imagine that he wants to be rewarded for doing the right thing now.”
“His audacity knows no limits.”
“He did give us a thread though. The others that came up with Dad, not only in your class but above and below.”
“I have a few thoughts on that, but I’d like to discuss it with the chief first.”
Sam shrugged. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.” The adrenaline that had surged during the confrontation with Conklin subsided, leaving her wrung out in the aftermath. “Will this ever stop being shocking?”
“No, never. It’ll never make sense to those of us who try to do the right thing on and off the job.”
“Are there more like him than like us?”
“I can’t allow myself to believe that or the job will stop making sense to me.”
“I worry that it’s already stopped making sense to me.”
“That’s not true. You’re grieving the loss of your dad and the betrayal of a man you and your dad had considered a friend and ally.
That’s a lot to process, but you will wrap your head around it.
Eventually. In the meantime, you continue to do the job, which is exactly what Skip would want you to do. He was so damned proud of you.”
For the first time in days, Sam’s eyes stung with the start of tears that she could not give in to while on the job. She hated people who cried at work and tried to never be that person. But sometimes… Sometimes, it was all too much.
“There’s something else.” She recalled her dad’s advice from her first day on the job—if you know something that your chain of command needs to be made aware of, disclose it immediately. Do not hesitate to report it or you, too, are culpable.
“What?” Malone took on a guarded stance.
“Ramsey said something about Gonzo scoring pills on the street.”
Malone’s eyes went wide for a second. “What’d he say?”
“Something about Gonzo being a bad, bad boy scoring shit on the street and how word is he’s in rehab and not out sick like people were told.”
The captain’s shock was palpable. “Is there any chance he could be telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Sam… Are you kidding me right now?”
“I wish I was.”
Malone’s expression was unreadable as he processed the information. “I have to take this to the chief.”
“I understand. In the meantime, can you do something about Ramsey and his big mouth?”
“I’ll do what I can, but if this gets out…”
He didn’t have to tell her that Gonzo’s career could be ruined right as he seemed to be turning the corner in battling his addiction and the grief that had nearly ruined him after Arnold’s murder. The timing couldn’t be worse.
“Keep me posted.”
“I will.”
Malone left, closing the door behind him.
Sam fired up her computer and looked up the rehab in Baltimore where Gonzo was being treated. She placed a call to the number listed on the website and cycled through an automatic greeting in an effort to reach an actual person. When she finally got through to an operator, ten minutes had gone by.
“I need to leave a message for one of your patients. It’s urgent that I speak with Thomas Gonzales as soon as possible.”
“May I please have your name?”
“Sam Holland with the Metro PD in Washington.”
“You… You’re…”
“Yes, I am. Will you give him the message and ask him to call my cell as soon as possible? Tell him nothing is wrong with his fiancée or son so he won’t panic.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“Thanks.” Sam ended the call before the woman could go on about her being the second lady or ask why she didn’t have Secret Service protection or how she could continue to do her job while her husband was the vice president. She was sick of answering those questions.
She took a minute to check her email, which included one from Hanigan containing Tara’s vetting document. Sam forwarded the email to Green with instructions to review it.
Grabbing her coat, keys and portable radio, she got up to leave the office. “Cruz, let’s go.”
Not bothering to wait for him to get his shit together, she headed for the morgue, needing to get out of the building where she’d been so profoundly disappointed.
Freddie caught up to her. “Where’re we going?”
“To talk to Delany again. And to City Hall.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s dandy.”
“You talked to Conklin? How’d that go?”
“He wants us to put in a good word for him with the prosecutors because he’s trying to help. Now.”
“Seriously? I hope you told him to eff off.”
Sam glanced at her partner, feigning shock. It was a big deal for him to say “damn,” let alone “eff off.”
“Don’t look at me that way! Tell me you told him where to go.”