Exceptional Merit (2 page)

It was also a long time since he had seen what was often so mundane to a police officer, yet so devastating to the family involved.  That part of the investigation, he certainly did not miss.  Keegan glanced up at the house where the car was parked, presumably the judge's home.  In a second floor window of the Colonial home, he saw a middle-aged woman in a pink bathrobe, weeping uncontrollably.  It didn't take all of Keegan's vast skills as a detective to figure out who the woman was.  He could remember the countless widows and mothers he had tried to comfort by guaranteeing justice for their dead spouses or children.  Such justice could never be achieved.  The murderer could spend the rest of his life in prison but the family of the victim would suffer for the rest of their own lives.

Lt. Vito took a cigar out of the case he had in the breast pocket of his shirt.  He bit the end, spit a piece out, and lit up.  He held the cigar case out to Keegan.  Keegan declined.  “Are you trying to tell me you don't know any of the details?”  Vito looked at him with skepticism.

“Not really,” Keegan answered.  He forced a cough, hoping to give Vito the hint that the cigar smoke offended him.

Undaunted by Keegan's
coughing; Vito continued to draw on his cigar, letting large puffs of smoke escape into the air.  He began filling Keegan in on the details of the homicide.

“It was after midnight when the judge parked the car in the driveway of his house,” explained Vito.  “There were no eyewitnesses that we know of, but some of the neighbors said they heard about five or six gunshots.”

Keegan turned his attention back to the crime scene as Lt. Vito filled him in on the details.  The judge's lifeless body was carefully removed from the Lincoln so the officers could search the body.  Keegan watched as the uniformed officer assigned to the job put plastic gloves on to conduct the search.  All the glory on this job belonged to the bosses and the detectives, but when it came down to it, all the dirty work was always done by the average street cop. 
They were the real heroes of this job
.  Patrol was the backbone on the department.  He watched as the officer removed a. 38 caliber revolver from the deceased judge’s ankle holster.  Keegan became angry. 

“Goddamn it!”  He sighed.  “I never understood why anyone would wear an ankle holster, if you need to get to your gun, you can't reach the fucking thing.  It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I wouldn't get too worked up over it, Jimmy.  He never even had a chance to go for his gun, no matter where it was.  I'm pretty sure Judge Boden never saw it coming.”

Keegan's face went flush.  He suddenly felt nauseous.

“Judge Samuel Boden?”  He asked the question, but really didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Yeah, that's right.  Oh…you knew him, didn’t you?”  Vito made the connection.

He did.  Keegan stared blankly at the dead judge's face, unable to recognize the man he had spent a week testifying in front of.  He reflected how he and his men had made the headlines after the arrest of three Middle-Eastern radicals who had planned to bomb the Brooklyn Federal Court house in retaliation for the arrests and convictions of their fellow countrymen in connection with the World Trade Center bombing the previous year.  He thought of how well the trial had gone and what excellent police work his men had done. They’d seized over three hundred pounds of explosives and won the convictions of the three men.  The jury had convicted on all counts after only two days of jury deliberations.  Keegan then realized that it was later today that the three men were to be sentenced.  Each, were presumably to receive life sentences, handed down by Judge Boden himself.

Keegan had admired Judge Boden during the trial.  He was a real law and order man whose own morals were not swayed by the death threats he had received during the trial. 
Why did he refuse to let me give him round the clock protection, like I’d offered?
  Keegan grew angry.  In his mind, he remembered Boden standing behind the bench in his black robe, a sharp contrast to his snowy white hair.  He looked down at the slain judge, unable to tell that his hair had once been white—let alone recognize any feature about his now disfigured face. 

“Yeah, I knew him.  He was a good man,” Keegan said, his solemn voice barely audible.

“I'm sorry, Jimmy,” Vito said softly.  It was the only thing that came to Vito's mind to say before he continued.  “Anyway, it was only about five minutes later when one of the guys on patrol grabbed the perp.”

“Are you telling me there's been a collar in the case!?”

Keegan greeted this notion with mixed emotions.  He was happy an arrest had been made so quickly, but also disappointed he would not be the one to bring this animal to justice.  Keegan, like many other detectives was proud and confident about the job he did.  He enjoyed being a detective and was quite good at it.  He had led the six-seven detective squad in arrests and in clearance rate for each of his six years assigned there.  As the
whip
of the Brooklyn South Homicide Squad, he motivated his men and in many cases did the footwork with them, closing out homicides at a rate the department had never seen before.  He continued to be a rising star in the department.  He had certainly closed out his fair share of high profile cases.  But this one had the potential to be the highest profile case to date, next to the courthouse bombing, of course. 
Oh well, at least we got the scumbag
, he thought, trying to convince himself he was happy that he didn't have to work the case.

The two men arrived at the Northern Boulevard stationhouse shortly after five a.m.  Lt. Vito led the way up the stairs to the interrogation room, where a precinct detective was interviewing the suspect along with a member from the F.B.I.'s Eastern District office.  Also seated quietly in the squad room, was a young police officer, who didn't appear to be much more than twenty years old. 
He must be the arresting officer
, decided Keegan.

The interrogation room in this precinct was generally the same as it was in every stationhouse throughout the city.  It was a ten by twelve foot room with large cinderblock styled bricks painted a dull yellow.  The walls were filthy from years of neglect.  There was even some dried blood on the wall.  A reminder that police work can sometimes be violent.  The room was windowless except for the one way mirror that is used by victims to view police line ups.  A large wooden desk was near the wall where an iron bar used to handcuff prisoners to, was fastened into the wall.  Opposite the desk
were two chairs, used by the detectives when they interrogated a suspect.  There were some boxes containing cold cases piled in the corner.

“How's it going, Bob?” Keegan asked the F.B.I.'s Eastern District Supervisor, Robert Wolf.  Wolf had been interrogating the suspect for the last hour without much success.  Wolf—a medium sized man with a neatly groomed beard and piercing blue eyes—carried the reputation of a real professional, as well as that of the Bureau's most skilled interrogator.  Wolf had been working counter terrorism for well over a decade.

“Not bad, Jim, and you?” replied Wolf as the two men shook hands.

  “It seems we’re seeing way too much of each other lately, doesn't it?”

“Let's go Richie,” interjected Lt. Vito, dismissing his detective from the room.  “I think the big boys are going to handle this one.”

Keegan had detected the sarcasm in Vito's voice but politely responded, “Thanks for all your help, Sal.”

In truth, he knew that Vito hadn't actually done anything to be thanked for, other than his obligated hospitality.  Keegan watched as they exited the interrogation room and silently thanked God he was getting away from Vito's raunchy cigar.  Keegan locked eyes with the animal who had murdered a man Keegan greatly admired.  He was seated on a bench against the wall and handcuffed to the bar on the wall.  His eyes brushed over the man.  He was short, with a very thin build.  He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds.  His caramel colored skin implied he was from somewhere in the Middle-East.  The man’s dark eyes stared back at Keegan, unimpressed.  They showed neither remorse for what he had done, nor intimidation in light of his current situation.  If they showed anything at all, it was disdain.  The two men walked out of the interrogation room leaving the man handcuffed to the wall.  “
Did he give anything up, Bob?”

Robert Wolf just shook his head.  “Nope, his only statement is that his name is Taroq al-Azir, and that he assassinated Judge Boden as a political statement protesting the United States' politics in the Middle-East.  He also said it was in protest of the unfair and illegal convictions his brothers in Jihad received for standing up for what they believe in.”

“Standing up for what they believe in?”  Keegan shook his head in disbelief.  “Bombing innocent people in the World Trade Center?  Attempting to bomb the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels?   Plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse?  These fuckers are crazy!  Do we know anything else about him?”

“Unfortunately
, not very much.  He was born in Syria and has been in the U.S. about two years.  He won't tell us who gave the order, who he works for, or anything other than that one statement.  I ran it up the chain of command.  They decided not to pursue it on the federal level but instead to prosecute as a state case.  They felt the murder itself did not constitute an act of terrorism but instead a retaliatory act.”

Wolf looked at his long time friend and colleague and took a deep breath.  “Make no mistakes, Jim, this guy is a professional terrorist.  I highly doubt he will say anything useful to the investigation.  With that being said, since our office declined, it’s your case.  Would you like to take a shot at interrogating him?”

“No thanks.  If you can't break him, there is no way I can.  I'd just like to interview the arresting officer and take his statement and close this one out.”

Joe Esposito was a burly young cop, twenty-two years old.  His clean shaven face and his olive skin complemented his handsome looks.  He had light brown eyes.  They were soft and forgiving eyes.  He was very quiet and polite, a trait Keegan felt would disappear after a few more years on the job.  Keegan had seen many young officers like Esposito.  After a few years of dealing with hardened criminals and witnessing many gruesome and heinous crimes, they always became a little hard.  It wasn't their choice, Keegan understood.  It was a matter of survival and a way to deal with the harsh realities of the job.  “Why don't you tell me how you came upon this collar?”

Esposito began to explain.  “Well, sir, Tony and I had just turned out for the midnight tour.  We just got a cup of coffee and we were sitting by the Long Island Rail Road's Douglaston Station drinking the coffee when we heard a bunch of shots.  Honestly, Tony said they were gunshots. I’d never heard gunshots before except at the pistol range,” Esposito sheepishly admitted.

Keegan understood.  Being so young on the job in what was probably one of the quietest precincts in the city; one wouldn’t hear gun shots too often. “That's all right.  Go on.”

“It was only about a minute later when we saw the Buick come flying away from where we’d heard the shots.  The car had its headlights off and Tony said to me, ‘This is the guy that just let those rounds go, kid.’  He told me if we wanted to get this guy I'd better step on it, and if I didn't care about it to let…”  Esposito then caught himself, remembering he was talking to a supervisor and not wanting to get his partner in trouble he edited his story slightly.  “I mean, he said I'd better get moving before this guy got away.  We followed the car along Douglaston Parkway until it stopped in a vacant parking lot.  We got out of our RMP and began to approach his car.   He got out of his car with a gun in his hand.  I thought I was going to get killed.  I reached for my own gun and  remember Tony yelling to me to take cover, but before I could, the man put the gun to his own head and yelled, ‘In the name of Allah.’  Then, I heard the click of a gun’s hammer falling on an empty chamber.  We tackled him and without any resistance, I placed him in handcuffs.  When I looked at the gun I saw it was a .44 caliber snub nose revolver with all five chambers containing spent shells.”

Keegan nodded, showing his approval.  “You did one hell of a job, Esposito.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Esposito, I tell you what.  I’m personally going to write you up for a Commendation.  I see you don't have any medals.  A Commendation is a pretty high medal.  Not bad for your first one.  Send me a copy of all of the paperwork and your information (and your partner’s, too) in department mail when you get the chance.”

Esposito looked satisfied.  Cops liked medals.  It was a way of bragging to other cops without having to say a word.  Cops were always impressed when they spotted another cop with a nice rack of medals.  Keegan would probably be considered a highly decorated officer, as he had been cited with over fifty medals in his eighteen-year career, not to mention the medal he and his men would be receiving for the thwarted courthouse bombings.  Keegan reflected on the night's events over the forty-minute drive back to his East Northport home.  Something Robert Wolf had said kept haunting him as he pondered it. 
What exactly was a professional terrorist?
  It's a contradiction of terms, he thought. 
There is no such thing.  Can you imagine if it were a job or something, a professional terrorist?

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