Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

“I don’t think we can conclude that at all.”

“Oh, I think we can,” McAllister snarled, levying his self-righteous tone at Covington. “I’ve already talked to the waitress and the manager on duty at the diner where the incident took place, and I have the sworn statements of two of Marshal Jones’s colleagues.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll have a signed affidavit from Norris Cochran’s partner, who will claim that the incident did not occur how the marshal remembers it at all.”

“That’s fine. If you take away all the conflicting testimony, then we’re left with what the waitress saw and what the manager saw, and those eyewitness accounts will corroborate what my marshal has gone on the record as stating.”

We were all quiet.

“What is it that your office is looking for here?”

“Are you admitting fault?”

“I’m asking a question.”

“For starters the detective will be suspended for no less than a month without pay and—”

“Not without pay,” I interrupted, and both men turned to me. “He has kids.”

“And how in the world would you know that?” McAllister asked.

“He’s my old partner from when I was on the force.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Covington almost crowed. “I imagine that old partners have a lot of reasons to beat the hell out of each other.”

McAllister scoffed. “It doesn’t matter. Again I have testimony, as well as tonight’s incident, that shows a pattern of animosity from your department toward our office. I will have this conversation in the forum of your choosing, but know that all of them will be public.”

“Your stance is that tonight’s incident has to do with some sort of animosity between the marshals’ office and Chicago PD?”

“Are you saying it’s not?”

There was no right answer. Whatever Covington said, he was fucked.

McAllister waited, looking bored.

“You mentioning public anything sounds like a threat.”

“No, but again, it’s obvious that your officers are in the habit of physically attacking marshals, as evidenced by yesterday’s confrontation and tonight’s show of force. These facts can’t possibly be in dispute.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Covington insisted. “You can’t in any way paint the entire department with the same brush.”

“Oh no? Because I think the climate we find ourselves in presently lends itself to one of absolute mistrust of your department. I’ll bet you if you took a poll of a thousand random Chicagoans, that across the board, they would rather be taken into custody by a federal marshal than a Chicago policeman.”

“I think that’s shortsighted of you and a rash statement to make.”

“Perhaps. Shall we test it?”

Silence for the second time.

“I’ll talk to Cochran’s captain,” Covington finally muttered.

McAllister’s smirk was douchey, but it took a big man not to gloat, and I didn’t think he had it in him to not lord it over Covington. Once we were in the hall, while holding his phone, he told me he was already sending Kage an e-mail for them to talk. It made sense that McAllister was chomping at the bit to report his probable success. Everybody wanted to be on the Chief Deputy US Marshal’s good list. McAllister was no exception.

Back in the room, Ian asked how it went, and so I told him in the same detail I told McAllister, exactly what crap Cochran had pulled on me. Ian came to the same conclusion I had when I was done.

“So Cochran thinks this gun is in our evidence locker?”

“Yeah.”

“I was just in there earlier,” Ching told me. “I transferred the last of the guns out for processing. They’re all on their way to Quantico.”

“No, I know there was nothing in there,” I said, fidgeting in my chair, tired of sitting, tired of the same topic, and mostly just wanting to leave. “This is Kage we’re talking about. If there’s a more by-the-book guy, I’ve yet to meet him.”

“Oh thank God, here we go,” Ian murmured, sitting up in his chair as we all saw our boss point at all the people in the room—except the alderman, who got a handshake—before hurling open the door.

In real life, Sam Kage was not eight feet tall. I knew that. Logically I knew. It just felt like it whenever he came into a room. I knew men who were bigger: Becker, for instance, and Kowalski, but Kage was scarier. Not because of the hard, heavy muscle he carried on his frame, but because he was a protector. He truly cared about what was his, and that included all of us. We were his men, and because of that, if you questioned us, you were questioning him.

You really didn’t want to do that.

From the expressions of dread on the faces of the people still in the other room—except the alderman’s, who appeared a bit smug at the moment—the others looked wholly traumatized. It made sense. Kage intimidated everyone, and I saw the collective breath the people in the room took when he left. Not only was he scary, but he had the power to back it up. When Kage reached out to his boss and he in turn reached out to his, there would be a whole new storm of shit falling on the Chicago PD.