Irish Eyes (4 page)

The first paramedic in the door was a woman with frizzy red hair. She pushed a stretcher loaded with what looked like red plastic toolboxes. Right behind her came her partner, a lanky young white kid in his early twenties, yelling into a radio.

“What’s the deal?” the woman demanded, lifting the tool kit off the stretcher. She snapped rubber gloves onto both hands. The kid did the same.

“White male, late thirties, two apparent gunshot wounds anterior to left ear,” Durrence said. “We started CPR.”

“He was talking,” I said eagerly. “Right before the officers got here. I called his name and he looked up at me. He said, ‘What’s up?’”

“Okay, ma’am, you did good,” the woman said gently. “We’ll take over now.”

More cops flooded into the room. There must have been a dozen, then twenty. The paramedics worked over Bucky. The kid inserted a breathing tube in his throat, then attached an ambu-bag to it, pumping it rhythmically. Another mask went over Bucky’s face, which had grown still and pale, and tubes connected him to a portable oxygen tank. His snowy white shirt and shamrock tie were covered with blood. His face was streaked with more blood.

I stood up and walked away, dizzy and nauseous. I huddled in a corner, afraid to watch, unable to look away. Hurry, I whispered. For God’s sake, hurry.

The clerk leaned over the counter in order to get a better view. “Oh no. Oh man. No. Bucky. Ooh. He gonna die?”

I walked over and stood in front of her, blocking her view. My legs were shaking. It was so cold in here. I rubbed my hands over my forearms, trying to get my circulation going. “What’s your name?”

“Deecie,” she whispered. “This is some shit. You know? I ain’t believin’ this shit.”

“Deecie, I’m Callahan. How do you know Bucky?” I asked.

“Why you think he come in here? He works here. Security guard. Me and him is tight. Bucky’s my homey.”

I pointed toward the door. “What was Bucky doing when the shooter came in here?”

“I already tol’ you. He was standin’ there. He wasn’t doing nothin’.”

“Where does the outside door lead?”

“Alley,” she said. “Runs back of the shopping center. And there’s a driveway, goes down to that road behind here. But I don’t be goin’ out there. It’s nasty. Pete, he told me to park my car there, but I told him I ain’t parking in that shit. Be rats and roaches and all kind of scary shit out there. Winos hanging around, wanting money or beer.”

“After the guy ran out, did you hear a car, anything like that?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t studyin’ no car. Faheem was crying and I was crying and I wanted to get out of here, ‘case the dude came back.”

I heard cases snapping shut behind me. “All right,” the woman said. “Let’s roll. Call the hospital.”

The kid got on the radio again. “This is unit two-six. We’re en route with a victim, late thirties, possible gunshot wound to the head. Victim is unresponsive. He has a spontaneous heartbeat of one hundred, blood pressure is one hundred over seventy. He’s been intubated and bagged. We’ll try to get an I.V. line started en route. Our ETA is five minutes.”

I turned around. They had Bucky on the stretcher, a mask strapped over his face, a brace wrapped around his neck.

“Either of you know his name?”

“Bucky,” I said. “Bucky Deavers. He’s a homicide detective.”

She nodded soberly. “Thought I recognized him.”

“How is he? Will he make it?”

She didn’t answer my question. She bent over, put her lips close to his ear. “Hey there, Bucky. Hang on now. Let’s get you to Grady.”

They wheeled the stretcher toward the door.

“I want to go with you,” I said.

“Not right now,” Durrence said. “We need to get a statement from you.”

“I told you what I saw,” I said, my voice shrill. “Nothing. I heard just two pops. That was it.”

“All right,” Durrence said. He flashed a quick smile showing small, even white teeth. “Come on now. Calm down. You can go see your friend later. The detectives are on their way. They’ll want to talk to you, then you can go to the hospital.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m a P.I. An ex-cop. I used to work with Detective Deavers on the robbery squad. Let me just go to the hospital. We can talk there. All right?”

It would not be all right and I knew that. The two cops who’d gone into the stockroom came back into the store. One was talking quietly on his radio. There were more sirens. Cops kept coming into the store. It was the signal sixty-three. Officer down. The one radio call no cop ever wanted to hear. It would bring every cop in a twenty-mile radius converging on the Budget Bottle Shop in a few short minutes.

The bell on the front door jingled. Two more men walked in. One white, one black. The black one wore starched blue jeans, a sport shirt, and a blue windbreaker with the letters “APD” stenciled on the front in eighteen-inch yellow letters. The white one wore a conservative business suit and a dark green ankle-length raincoat. He had a snap-brim fedora with a little feather in the hatband. The hat man frowned when he saw me.

“Who let her in here?” he barked.

Durrence looked surprised. “She’s a witness, Major.”

Lloyd Mackey pushed the fedora to the back of his head. He had mild blue eyes and a blond walrus mustache starting to go gray. “Aw, gawddamn, Garrity. What the hell happened? Who shot Deavers?”

Before I could answer, the Hispanic cop ran from the stockroom, visibly excited. “Detective Washington,” he called to the black cop. “We got a weapon back here. A twenty-two. Saturday night special. We found it beside a pile of empty beer cartons in the alley. You wanna take a look?”

Mackey nodded and the two men went with him into the back room.

The clerk, Deecie, was still trying to shush little Faheem. “Look here,” she called out. “Is it all right if I take him in the back, fix him some formula?”

“Come on,” Washington said. “You can show us where everything’s at back here.”

“Shit.”

I turned around. Mackey was kneeling down, looking at the broken beer bottles and the puddle of blood. The place was a mess, discarded rubber gloves, bloody gauze pads, bits of plastic and paper packaging from the supplies the paramedics had used. He looked up at me. “How bad?”

Major Lloyd Mackey was Bucky’s boss, commander of the crimes against persons division. I’d never worked under him, but his men liked him. We’d tangled a few times in the past, but I’d always taken his animosity toward me as a professional necessity. I was a P.I.; he was a cop. If I got in his way, he’d give me a kick in the ass. It was understood. It was his job.

“Two bullets, right above the ear,” I said. “Not so much blood, really. He was still breathing when they took him to Grady. He talked to me. Knew who I was. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah, good.” Mackey stood up, took a handkerchief, and wiped off his hands. He walked around the store. It was small, cluttered. Shelves lined the walls, each with hand-lettered signs for the major liquor food groups: scotch, whiskey, vodka, gin, wine, and beer. A large cooler for beer and wine stood to the right of the cashier’s cage.

“What were you doing here?” Mackey asked.

“Bucky’s idea,” I said. “We’d been to the Shamrock Society’s St. Patrick’s Day party, over at the Knights of Columbus hall on Buford Highway. I made him leave early, to take me home. He wanted me to meet his new girlfriend.”

“Dugan? She was there?”

“She never showed up. Guess she was still on a case. I got bored. We got kind of pissy with each other after that. On the way home, he just pulled in here, said he’d be right out. I
stayed in the car, locked the doors. I was halfway asleep when I heard the shots.”

“You didn’t see anybody go in or out?”

“No, but like I said, I was leaning back with my eyes closed. There was only one other car in the lot, an old white LeSabre.”

Mackey walked to the door and looked out. Blue and red lights twinkled atop the sea of emergency vehicles in the parking lot. “The LeSabre’s still out there. Probably the girl’s. How about that other car? That yours?”

“No. It’s Bucky’s.”

He shook his head. “Hell. I forgot. The little red sports car. Deavers’s wet dream.”

He stood in front of the counter, looking up at the Plexiglas shield. “Deavers didn’t say why he wanted to stop? Did he mention that he wanted beer or cigarettes or anything?”

I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t want to get Deavers nailed for drunk driving, but on the other hand, the hospital would take blood samples, and the blood samples would turn up alcohol. Besides, what was a DUI charge to a guy with two bullets in his brain?

“No. He just said he’d be right out. I assumed he wanted beer or something. I was ragging him about how he’d already had enough beer at the party. I was afraid he’d get stopped for DUI.”

I was standing beside Mackey, looking at all the handlettered signs on the wall. “No Credit.” “No Two-Party Checks.” “Absolutely No Sales to Minors.” “Do Not Remove Single Beers from Six-Packs.” The house had a lot of rules.

A camera was mounted high on the wall, directly behind the cash register. A little red light flashed below it.

“I hope to God that thing was working,” I said.

“It better be,” Mackey said.

T
raffic on Ponce de Leon Avenue had come to a standstill. Police cruisers blocked all four lanes of the road in front of the shopping center and uniformed officers directed traffic onto side streets. A fire truck rolled up as I walked out of the store with Mackey. More police cruisers were jammed into the parking lot, units from every jurisdiction within a thirty-mile radius of the city. Three Georgia Highway Patrol cruisers were parked on the sidewalk. Uniformed officers stood around, talking on radios, pacing back and forth in front of the closed stores. Yellow crime scene tape was looped all the way around the entire shopping center. A dull thudding noise overhead made me look up. A yellow helicopter hovered over the roof of the liquor store, a searchlight pointed toward the ground.

“Washington’s gonna take you to the office, get a statement from you,” Mackey said. “He’ll give you a ride home if you want.”

I sighed. “I’ve already told you everything I know. As soon as you get what you need, I’m going to the hospital. I want to see how Bucky’s doing.”

He nodded.

Washington plunked a magnetic blue bubble light on the top of his detective’s sedan as we snaked our way around parked cars all the way down Ponce de Leon to City Hall East, just two miles down the street in a huge red-brick building that once housed a regional Sears-Roebuck distribution center.

He was chewing gum, his jaws working like a jackhammer. “You say Deavers was talkin’? Even after he was shot?” He was trying to sound casual. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

“I’m hoping,” I said. “He looked up at me. ‘What’s happening?’ That’s what he asked me. Like we’d just run into each other in a bar or something ‘What’s happening?’ Doesn’t that sound just like Bucky?”

“That’s Deavers,” Washington said, chewing vigorously. “Shot twice in the head, he wants to know what’s happening. Surprised he didn’t crack a joke, maybe take a peek up your skirt.”

He blushed slightly, realizing who he was talking to. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. He was like a little brother to me, you know? We were partners back when I was on the job. Used to run around together.”

Washington pulled the sedan into a fenced-off area in the basement garage of City Hall East and directed me toward a door marked “Police Personnel Only.”

“You ever been in here before?” he asked as we waited for an elevator.

“No. Last time I came to see Bucky, you guys were still over in that crappy task force office off North Avenue.”

“It’s not too bad here,” Washington said. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and we got off. He gestured down a hallway toward where a Mexican-looking woman ran a vacuum cleaner over an acre of blue industrial carpet.

“We got more room, got a couple of interrogation rooms, a conference room, our own coffee lounge. You notice downstairs, we got Gold’s Gym. That’s cool. You work out?”

I had to laugh. “Do I look like I work out?”

He shrugged. “You look all right to me.”

He was being polite. I’d been skinny as a kid, but since I hit
thirty, I’d been waging war against the same twenty-five pounds I’d gained and lost over the past decade.

Washington showed me into a small office that had the sharp chemical smell of new paint and new carpet. I sat in a wooden chair opposite the battered metal desk. Not everything in the office was new.

“You want a Coke or something? Coffee?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Let’s just do this, so I can get over to the hospital.”

He brought a small tape recorder out of a drawer of the desk, along with a yellow legal pad. “Okay. This is Wednesday, March seventeenth, eleven-thirty P.M.,” he started. “I’m interviewing, uh.” He shut the recorder off. “Say your full name for me.”

“Julia Callahan Garrity,” I said, spelling the last name. “I use Callahan professionally.”

He turned the recorder on again and we went over the same list of questions. I gave him the short version of the St. Patrick’s Day party, what Bucky and I talked about, and how he had stopped at the Budget Bottle Shop, saying he was just going to run in for a minute.

“He didn’t mention that he worked there?” Washington asked.

“No,” I said.

“Didn’t say he was picking up a paycheck, or wanted some beer, or to talk to somebody?”

“He just said he had to get something and would be gone a minute.” I gave a protracted sigh to let Washington know my answer wasn’t going to change.

“And you saw no cars coming or going from the parking lot. Saw nobody, is that your statement?”

“It was late, I was tired and mad at Bucky for making me wait,” I said. “I closed my eyes. I was halfway asleep when I heard the shots.”

“Tell me about the shots.”

“Two. Pop. Pop. The sound was very faint. It didn’t even register with me that they might be gunshots. I thought firecrackers. Then the girl came running out of the store, screaming that they’d shot Bucky.”

“‘They’?”