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in. I wanted them to hear this from us.” 
    “Then let’s do this thing. I think they’re all in there, Chief.”
    Pat walked into the Major Crimes Conference Room. Everyone was in casual clothes except for Bryan Flannery and George McBain.
    “Thanks, guys, for coming in. There’s been an important development in this case, and I wanted to make sure you were fully briefed before something leaks out. I’ll let Sergeant McBain brief you.”
    George McBain walked to the podium at the front of the room. There was a large NYPD patch on the front of it.  He turned on a large flat screen monitor on the wall behind him and started typing on a laptop.
    “Guys, we completed the forensics on the murder of Curtis Gee this afternoon. We recovered two 9 mm slugs from the body. They were good quality and we entered them into NIBIN. We got a hit for a possible match, and we’ve now matched those slugs to a Glock 19 issued to Detective Rodriguez. Tony was involved in a shooting incident before, and we routinely test fired his gun, although he didn’t actually hit anyone.”
    The screen lit up, and George brought up a picture of one slug and then added another picture.
    “The one on the left is the bullet recovered from Curtis Gee’s body. It was in his brain to be exact. The one on the right is from the test shots recovered in the water tank after Tony Rodriguez’s Glock was test fired by ballistics. You can see they’re a perfect match. This is the second slug and is a little more deformed. However, if you look at the striations, they also match. Here is the first shell casing found at the scene. Now, this is the test casing from the tests. They’re also clearly a match. Finally, here is the second recovered shell casing, and it matches. These identifications have been peer reviewed by the senior firearms examiners. There is no doubt that Curtis Gee was murdered with Detective Rodriguez’s Glock 19.”
    “Thank you, George.”
    “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Chief.”
    “Well, we don’t know that it’s bad news yet. For all we know, the bastard that killed Tony stole the Glock and then killed Curtis Gee. I don’t think that this means anything sinister about Tony, but we have to take it wherever the evidence leads us. There’s no doubt that this will complicate the case and undoubtedly bring down some political heat. But I want you guys to know that unless something is proven otherwise, Tony Rodriguez is still the hero cop that we eulogized this afternoon. I have no doubt he’ll remain so. That’s why it’s so important that we keep this development quiet. I know that there’s not a person on this team who would leak anything, but in the morning, this case is going to get ugly. We have to keep it out of the press. I have a plan that may help, but it’ll put me on the line with everyone else here at One PP. I didn’t want any of you to come in for the briefing in the morning and feel like you had been sucker punched by what I’m going to do.”
    “Chief?”
    “Yes, Mike.”
    “Want to give us a clue?”
    “Not really. This’ll require a few players and they’ll not know what’s going on until I reach out to them. Thanks for coming in. Do not discuss this with anyone. Try to get some sleep.”
    Pat walked back to his office and shut the door. He had to wake up some important people. The detectives could be heard mumbling all the way to the elevator.
    “What’s the Chief going to do? This is going to get interesting.”

     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 16
     
    Wednesday, April 7-Day 6
    Chief of Detectives’ Residence
    Borough of Manhattan, New York
    0630 Hours
     
    Pat was up early on Wednesday morning.  He had Dickie pick him up at 0630. 
    “Good morning, Chief.  I hope you had a good night.”
    “Thanks, Dickie, but I’ll have a better night when we solve these murders. This is a cop. We have to solve it.”
    “That’s for sure.” 
    As they drove closer to One PP, Pat spotted a familiar