Morales's wife cried out and even the redheaded cop, so cool a moment ago, gasped in horror.
Morales, not daring to move much, craned his neck further around so he could see Coelho and the boy. Javier was slipping through the big man's arms to the ground.
The pistol fell from Coelho's grip and he looked down at a blossoming red wound in his own chest.
"I...I..."
The gunshot, Morales noted, hadn't come from the agent's Glock. The gun had merely jerked as Coelho had reacted. No, it had been Javier who'd fired. He looked at the b
oy, who was holding a very small pistol in his hand. On the ground was his pencil box, unzipped. Pencils had fallen out, a pencil sharpener, too. And so had another magazine of ammunition for the weapon.
A present from his father...
The redheaded officer walked slowly to the boy and whispered something Morales could not hear. Javier nodded and handed her the gun, while a dozen other cops got to Coelho, pulled him down and secured his weapon. A medic appeared a moment later and began administering first aid.
Officers descended on Connie and Morales, cuffing and frisking. They began reading Miranda rights. Detective Sachs joined them a moment later and began reciting a laundry list of what they were being arrested for.
The litany went on for some time.
The answer to uncovering Morales's deception, fronting that he and his wife were the Abbotts, derived, Rhyme regretted admitting, not so much from finely parsed evidence but from a good old-fashioned street detective's deduction.
Rhyme was at his computer, writing up the report on the case for the NYPD, the FBI and the ATFE, who would be running the joint prosecution against Morales, his wife, Constance, Raphael Ortiz and the wounded, but very much alive, Stan Coelho, as well as assorted associates in the 128 Lords.
Rhyme's deduction had been this: When Sachs had called Javier to ask if he'd been with his father at the armory when the transfer took place yesterday morning, the woman purporting to be Sally Abbott, the temporary foster parent, had helped clarify the location of the armory; the boy wasn't sure what Sachs was referring to.
But in describing the armory to Javier, she referred to McDonald's--which was across the street from the back entrance of the armory, a small service portal, not the main doorways on the opposite side of the building a block away. Why would that entrance be first in her thoughts to describe the place?
The implication was that she'd known Echi Rinaldo used that door to get inside.
It wasn't conclusive proof that Sally Abbott knew about the delivery. But it raised in Rhyme's mind the possibility that he--and therefore his wife--were not who they seemed to be. Sachs got pictures of the Abbotts from the foster family licensing organization and confirmed that they were not the people she'd left the boy with.
They immediately sent a tactical and surveillance team to the town house--just in time to see the couple, along with several other men and the boy, fleeing over the roof.
Rhyme and Sachs reasoned that it was likely they were taking the boy to lead them to the arms stash and so the surveillance officers followed, while a tactical team secured the town house...and made the unfortunate but not unexpected discovery of the Abbotts' bodies, in the basement.
When they'd arrived at the church--probably the site of the weapons, or some lead to send them to the stash, Sachs joined the team for the takedown, ready to move in the minute the boy appeared in danger, even if they didn't find the weapons. But, as it turned out, Javier didn't need as much protection as they'd thought. (Sachs grimaced at the thought that she had missed the LCP .380 pocket gun he'd carried in his pencil box--though, true, he'd been in the company of police at his father's murder scene and then with Child Protective Services personnel; she assumed he'd been properly searched.)
The ATF now had possession of the weapons--five hundred of some of the most sophisticated submachine guns on earth. Street value of three-quarters of a million. And the Mexican police had seized a large factory in Chihuahua, "Juarez-Trenton Exhaust Systems," which produced not a single emissions control device but had quite the sophisticated operation, from computer design to stringent quality control. Several trucking company officials were also in custody. More arrests were expected.
As Rhyme put the finishing touches on his report, he was interrupted. A figure appeared in the doorway. "Damn, you were gonna come watch but you missed it."
Rhyme grumbled, "I missed it."
"You didn't see it?"
"No, like I said. I missed it. What exactly?"
"A goal! 'Nother one. A header..." He pointed to Rhyme. "Yo, Mr. Rhyme, you could hit headers! Don't need your legs for that!"
Indisputable, Rhyme reflected, looking over at the boy.
Javier and Thom had been in the music room across the hall, presently playing the soccer game--on, no less, Rhyme's biggest and most expensive high-def monitor, wheeled from lab to den for the purpose of lowly amusement.
"It was unfair," called Thom Reston, representing Brazil. "We're down three-nil." Javier was Mexico.
"What's unfair?" Rhyme called to his unseen aide.
"Well, he's younger. He's more agile."