Read Online Bang by Ruby McNally - Free Book Online Page B

“Nah,” he says. “Forgot my phone.” He turns away and heads back up the long skinny hallway toward the bullpen, past the kitchen and the roll room and the row of computer monitors he and Mari and the other patrol cops use for paperwork, then out the other side to the corral of offices. He stops in front of Joe Bushur’s door.
    â€œHave a sec?” he asks, when Joe answers his rap with It’s open!
    Joe glances up from the mess of files in front of him, looking harassed. He and Robyn Birk are the only two detectives at GB and their caseload is always double the maximum the regs suggest. When he sees Jack, his face changes. “Hey, Ford. Yeah, come on in.”
    Jackson does, closing the door behind him. Joe has a look on his face like he knows what’s coming, but Jack asks anyway. “You caught my case, right? You and Birk?”
    â€œI mean, after Internal finished with it, yeah.” Joe frowns. “We have no new leads though, man, if that’s what you’re wondering. I would have told you.”
    Jack shoves his hands inside his pockets. “I know. I just want to look at the file.”
    Joe’s eyebrows jump. “Why? It’s just forensics on the slugs and a bunch of pictures of blood.”
    Jackson shrugs. He’s been putting off this encounter every day since he got back. Now, thinking about Leo and getting reinstated and all the ways his jumpy-ass broken body might fail his Sergeant—or anyone else—he needs to get it done. “Just to look.”
    Joe sighs. He leans down and yanks open his file drawer, flipping through until he gets to the right folder. He drops it in front of Jackson with a thunk. “You have five minutes. Don’t mess that shit up.”
    Jack takes the file to one of the unused interview rooms. It feels light in his hands, insubstantial. Not like a case that’s anywhere near being solved. His name is written on the tab in block letters, JACKSON FORD . Someone added a PRIORITY sticker and drew three stars next to it. Jack wonders if it was Joe or Birk.
    He flips the file open and sure enough, there are the pictures Joe mentioned, sticky pools of blood gleaming under the flash, evidence markers littered across the cement floor. There are a couple stills of the bullets too, the clean ones retrieved from the garage floor and the mangled bent ones the docs pulled out during surgery. Jackson flips past those and a description of his wounds until he finds what he’s looking for.
    De la Espada: I don’t know, white, brown hair? I didn’t see the guy’s face, he had a mask on until the very end. I just—I wasn’t looking.
    Mari’s statement.
    It’s by far the longest document in the whole file, question after question as Piper and then the detectives tried to extract everything Mari knew or could have known. Which, Jackson notes, skimming the statement, wasn’t much. And he knew that, he’d been told by the IAB detective who finally took his own statement, but it’s different to see it written out.
    De la Espada: That’s right, I ran up the south staircase when I heard the gunshots. Three shots, all in a row.
    De la Espada: Yes, Officer Ford was on the ground when I arrived on the scene.
    De la Espada: No, I didn’t—I didn’t pursue.
    Jackson slams the folder shut.
    He heads home that night with a sixer of beer and the intention to clean his place and not think about anything at all. He’s still in the same condo he’s lived in since he and Mari were rookies, two bedrooms and a mortgage he started paying back when everybody else was still blowing through their take-home on nachos and pitchers of beer. Even then he liked the idea of having a place that was his, no landlord to answer to or rent hikes to worry about. He likes things that are permanent, Jack does. He always has.
    He’s wiping down his kitchen counters when his phone rings in his pocket,