Deadly Assets (Badge of Honor 12)

But that won’t establish who pulled the trigger.

These guns get bought and sold and traded over and over—especially after a crime.

He squatted beside Jamal.

Hell, Pookie or someone else may have set this bastard up just by giving him the gun.

Only thing we know for sure: Jamal’s a junkie, and high as a kite, and figuring out the truth is going to be a bitch.

“You’re under arrest,” McCrory said loudly, and pulled a playing card–sized paper and a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket.

He held the card so that Jamal could see it.

“‘You have the right to remain silent . . .’” McCrory began, reading from the card despite being able to recite every word of the Miranda Rights from memory.

When McCrory finished not thirty seconds later, he turned Hayward and put his knee in his back, unlocked the right handcuff, and waved the card and pen in front of his face.

“Sign this,” McCrory said.

“I ain’t signing nothing.”

“Just sign the damn card.”

“Why?”

“It acknowledges that I read you your Miranda Rights. That’s all. But it’s okay, I guess you enjoy lying in this nasty snow. Figure anyone’s dumped one of those piss buckets on it lately?”

After a moment Michael Hayward sighed, grabbed the pen, then scribbled some semblance of his name across the card.

Kennedy knelt beside Hayward as McCrory clicked the right handcuff back on Hayward’s wrist.

“Jesus, you stink,” Kennedy said, grabbing Hayward’s left bicep. He looked at McCrory, who had grabbed his other arm. “On two . . . a one and a . . .”

They yanked Hayward from the ground and marched him to the back door of the Chevy.

McCrory, scanning the neighborhood as he slipped his pistol into its holster, then squatted and retrieved his knit cap from the sidewalk.

Kennedy watched him carefully brush snow from it, then hold it close to his nose and gently sniff.

Kennedy laughed loudly.

McCrory met his eyes as he tugged the cap on his head, smirked, and said, “Fuck you, partner.”

V

[ ONE ]

Owen Roberts International Airport

George Town, Grand Cayman Islands

Saturday, December 15, 2:35 P.M.

A smiling H. Rapp Badde Jr.—wearing sunglasses of Italian design, a white silk shirt, tan linen shorts, and brown leather sandals—had just stepped down to the sunbaked tarmac from the glistening white Gulfstream IV jet aircraft when he heard his Go To Hell cell phone start ringing.

He grimaced as he pulled it from an outer pocket of his leather backpack.

Badde carried two cell phones, one a smartphone that had what he considered his general use number and the other a more basic folding phone with his closely held private number. The latter he shared with only his small circle of legal and political advisers, and so when it rang, it was not unusual that something was about to go to hell.