No Mercy (32 page)

“What are you saying, Dad?” Paul asked.

“You know exactly what I am saying,” the elder Powers said.

“I love her, Dad. She is everything to me.”

“Yet,” his father replied, “you become suspicious over a message she leaves for me.”

“Dad,” Paul said.

But he was interrupted by his father, who said, “I think you better take a long, hard look at what you two have been through the past two years. I think it's time you decide what you really want out of life. There is more I need to say to you, but I don't want to disrespect Rachelle by speaking while her head is on your bed. I'm going to check in on Bud.”

Paul shook his head. “Thanks for cheering me up, Dad.”

“Any time, Son,” his father replied. “I love you, Son, and I'm glad you're all right,” he said as he exited.

As Anthony Powers walked toward Bud Johnson's room he wasn't sure if he should be upset with himself for giving tough love to his son after being shot, or be upset that he was so concerned about Rachelle. He wanted her for his son, yet he grew to love her and was concerned about her if she chose a life with him. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as he entered Bud Johnson's room.

The two hours went by fast, and Gina called Lynagh to inform him he had an hour to get to the precinct. Cronin had gone over all of Paul Powers's charts and notes and was tapping his fingers waiting for ADA John Ashley to call him back. It was another ten minutes before Gina walked in with an email sent to her with all the information that Cronin had asked for. Everyone had learned a long time ago not to send Cronin emails. Even in 2015 he hated using the computer. Only if he absolutely had to would he type a note, but he was usually a few steps behind when it came to technology. As Gina walked out, the detective lieutenant placed the information flat on his desk, side by side with Powers's charts. His fingers touched each set of papers as his eyes went back and forth from Ashley's note to the lined chart from the thoughts of Detective Powers. As he looked, the call from his source at Verizon returned Gina's call.

Detective O'Malley drove to St. James, and once he got to Cherry Street took a right on Maplewood. He drove to the blue-and-white house and parked in front of it. There he sat with his pumpkin seeds and watched for about an hour.

Officer Lynagh made it to the precinct and Cronin told him he would fill him in on the way to St. James. Detective O'Malley, who had been watching, decided it was time to approach the blue-and-white house. He left his vehicle, walked up to the door, and before he knocked, he sent Gina a text where he was. As he pushed the doorbell Gina contacted Detective Cronin, informing him of O'Malley's text.

“Damn it!” he yelled. “Step on it! No siren, just lights!” he yelled. Cronin answered back on the radio, “If you don't hear from me in twenty minutes, send backup automatically.” Lynagh weaved in and out of traffic and stuck his arm out a few times warning other drivers to let him get through.

O'Malley was standing on the step when the door opened. Standing there was FBI Agent Robert Sherman. He was O'Connor's partner during Deborah Lance's kidnapping. The detective flashed his badge and asked the FBI agent if he could come in. Agent Sherman waved his hand with a smile as O'Malley walked into the foyer of the house.

“What can I do for you, Detective?”

O'Malley took out his bag of pumpkin seeds and led himself to the living room, which annoyed Sherman.

“Have you seen your ex-partner lately?” O'Malley asked.

Sherman was even more annoyed. “Why would I see him? He was responsible for lives being lost, including cops'. That's long behind me.”

O'Malley continued to look around and placed his pumpkin seed bag down to pick up some photos from the mantel over the fireplace. “I read through the files of the last case. There seems to be a connection to everyone from the Face of fear case to the case we are working on, except for you.”

“Detective,” the Agent replied, “I've moved on. I was promoted after the case just like Cronin and his team, God rest his soul.” O'Malley was amused by Sherman's comment about Cronin being dead.

“I guess you haven't got the memo yet,” O'Malley replied. He had always wanted to use that line ever since he saw the movie
The Dark Knight
, and now he was thrilled he was able to.

“Excuse me?” Sherman asked. In the next room there were two men listening with guns drawn, waiting for the signal from Sherman to remove O'Malley's body once he was killed.

“Oh, nothing,” O'Malley answered with a smile. “I just wanted to come by and meet you since your name kept coming up in the files from Face of Fear. If you can think of anything, please call me. I appreciate your time.” The detective's experience felt a bad energy coming from Sherman and wanted to be lighthearted to get out of there alive. The two men hid before O'Malley came to the foyer. One was in the bathroom and one up the stairs.

When O'Malley reached his car he started to drive down the block, but when he got five houses down he turned his vehicle around and parked on the opposite side of the street just to see if anything happened in the next five minutes. He picked up his radio for Cronin, but he saw the detective lieutenant and Lynagh get out of their vehicle in the same exact spot where he had just left.

“What in the living hell?” O'Malley said to himself out loud. He watched as Cronin moved to the front door and Lynagh went behind the house. O'Malley was confused, but he wanted to stick around and see how this played out.

Cronin knocked on the door as Sherman's men went back to the bathroom and upstairs. “Look,” Sherman said as he opened the door, “there is nothing else . . .” He could not finish his sentence when he saw it was Detective Lieutenant Cronin. His jaw dropped as he stared at him.

“What's wrong?” Cronin said. “You look like you've just seen a ghost.”

Sherman continued to be startled as Cronin spoke again. “Thank you for inviting me in,” he said as he stepped through the door.

Sherman shut the door and looked at him.

“It's been all over the papers that you are dead. What type of game are you playing now?”

“Why?” Cronin asked as he stepped down into the living room. He scanned the room to give Lynagh time to enter from the back. He saw O'Malley's bag of pumpkin seeds on the mantel and started wondering if he was even alive. Had O'Malley not called in his location, he would have suspected him of being involved with Sherman.

“Everything in life is a game. Most just don't want to admit it,” Cronin said.

Sherman walked into the living room and sat down in his lounge chair.

“Please sit,” the agent said.

“No thanks,” Cronin replied.

“What can I do for you?” Sherman asked.

Dave, a bouncer from the City nightclub pulled out his weapon and added a silencer to it. He left the bathroom and approached the end of the wall to prepare to shoot Detective Lieutenant Cronin. He was within five feet when he felt the barrel of Lynagh's 9mm in the back of his neck. He froze as he heard Lynagh's whisper: “Give me a reason, any reason, and I will shoot your Adam's apple across the room.”

Dave Lander didn't move, including holding on to his gun.

“Now,” Lynagh said, “we are going to listen and see what Agent Sherman here has to say about what the hell is going on.” He grabbed the silencer away from him.

Cronin walked over to Sherman before speaking. “What have you been doing with yourself since you lost your partner to jail?”

“I was promoted to another division,” the agent replied. “Doing what?” Cronin asked. The tone of his voice did not make it sound like a question.

“White Collar Division,” Sherman answered.

Cronin nodded his head as he replied, “So you're dealing with a lot of insurance fraud.”

“What's up, Detective Cronin?” Sherman asked with an annoyed tone.

“Well,” Cronin replied as he walked over to the fireplace to look at the photos on the mantel.

“Do you like pumpkin seeds?”

Sherman shook his head as he opened the drawer of his end table and pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds. “No,” he answered as he held up the bag.

Cronin picked up the bag of pumpkin seeds and held it up to the Agent.

“Somebody does.”

“Your cop, O'Malley, was just here asking questions about Face of Fear,” he replied.

“I wonder why,” Cronin said.

“Why don't you ask him?” the agent replied. “Listen, I know how you operate, Detective. I don't have time for games. Just tell me what you want to know.”

“You're right, by the way, I just love that word games,” Cronin answered, “but then again, if you knew how I operated then you would have known I played dead when you had Caulfield attach a bomb to my car. You would have also figured out I wasn't dead. The thing is this, as much as you wanted the insurance money from the closing of the nightclub, you couldn't control Simpson. He was so bent on revenge toward me he became the loose cannon in all of this. You have Jake Wiley aka Jerry Wakefern kill a good cop; you bribe Caulfield over to the dark side with money and the Tangretti girl too. You didn't count on him getting sliced up in the back of a car. Tell me, how did you manage to keep O'Connor quiet through all this? The guard Roberts, maybe?”

“Are you finished?” Sherman replied. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Let me be clear,” Cronin spoke quickly. “I received a phone call from Detective Power's father who played me a message that Rachelle Robinson left for him. Somehow, that message ended up on Powers voice mail machine, So, what do I do? I call my sources at Verizon to see how that could possibly happen without a court order or subpoena. Gee, I thought, someone other than me, thinks they are better at playing games, and you know how that pisses me off. I got a hold of my people over there, and low and behold you have your own sources and relationships over there in this grey world of law we live in. You made a mistake Agent Sherman. And, that's not all. You work for the White Collar Division, yes. Yet it's your group working on the insurance investigations of the three clubs. You manage to save two of them, but it is the Decades nightclub that would be collecting millions from the loss of business. The K-9s found the area where money was hidden behind a wall in Branca's office. You guys were in such a hurry you left some bills behind and did a lousy job putting the wall back together. I'm mad at myself that even though I was able to end Face of Fear, I still made mistakes. One, I didn't pursue Linda Tangretti more, and two, when I realized O'Connor found out about the letter written by Phil Smith, it had to have come from you even though you denied it at the mansion that night. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but I told you in the hospital when Deborah Lance was brought in to keep it to yourself. You didn't, you told O'Connor, he opened his mouth, and yet he took the fall even while you were calling the shots. I made a mistake, and you took advantage of it by wanting even more instead of just going away. Did I miss anything other than the $5 million life insurance policy you took out on yourself two years ago?”

The detective lieutenant looked down on the floor and was wondering where he could buy some time for backup to arrive. “I bet when you were a kid they called you Bobby.”

“So what?” the agent replied.

“Well,” Cronin replied, “Bobby Sherman was a teen idol. ‘Easy Come, Easy Go.' You must have been teased a bit.”

Sherman wasn't amused as he stared down the detective, who spoke again.

“You let Simpson think he was running the show, just like you did with O'Connor with Face of Fear, and all you did was use them to get what you wanted.”

“Look in the mirror!” Sherman yelled. “Look in the fucking mirror! I am no different than you!”

David Biggs was at the top of the stairway with Lynagh in his sights. The back of his head would be gone in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3. As his finger touched the trigger to squeeze, he heard movement on the carpet as he slanted his head enough to see out of the corner of his eye. The figure wearing dark clothes and the blood-splattered Ghost Face mask ran toward him as he let out a yelp. The knife went through his chest as he tried to grab the mask. There was no resistance, but Biggs fell to the floor. The masked killer picked up his rifle and dropped it down the stairs and ran back toward the back bedroom window.

The noise startled Lynagh, as Lander made an attempt to wrestle the gun away. Cronin started to go to the foyer as Sherman pulled out his gun.

“The only place you're going is hell. The old saying of when you need things done right you have to do it yourself rings true.”

“You think you're going to get away with killing me?” Cronin asked. He looked at his watch. “In five minutes there will be backup here.” The stare-down continued as Lynagh and Lander wrestled for the gun.

“You don't have five minutes,” Sherman said. A shot rang out as Sherman fell over. Cronin looked over to see Detective O'Malley run to the other side of the wall opening and kick Lander in the head, allowing Lynagh to regain control of his weapon.

Cronin walked over to Sherman's lifeless body, kneeled down, and spoke.

“For the time being, at least I can look in the mirror, and like I said, easy come, easy go.” O'Malley came back to the living room as they heard police cars outside.

“Why did you come back?” Cronin asked.

O'Malley let out a sigh of relief before he answered.

“Lucky for you, I forgot my pumpkin seeds,” he smiled as Cronin nodded a thank-you. Cronin stood up as O'Malley spoke again. “I could have been with him and Caulfield. You took a chance.”

“I know,” Cronin answered. “It was a risk I was going to take. Besides now think of all the notoriety you are going to have. Plus I had informed Ashley to have you shot if I didn't come out alive.” He smiled at O'Malley to let him know he was kidding, but O'Malley wasn't sure.

“What do you mean about notoriety?” O'Malley asked.

Cronin checked on Lynagh in the foyer before turning to O'Malley and saying, “The first time you shoot someone with your gun in your long career, you save the life of Detective Lieutenant Cronin. Now that's something you will be remembered for.” He winked at Lynagh.