“Will do. I’ll tell them you’re studying penguin mating habits. But seriously, Ben—be careful, okay?”
“Careful’s my middle name.”
“I thought Martin was your middle name.”
Don’t remind me. “I’m off to see Ellis Burk again,” I tell her. “We’ve got a date with Alexander Kutuzov’s attorney.”
“That should be fruitful. Lawyers are usually very forthcoming and helpful.”
“I know. I’m going to brush up on my Latin.”
“Okay, well, stare incolumem.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s been a while since high school,” Ashley Brook says. “But I think it means ‘stay alive.’”
Chapter 47
Two hours later, Ellis Burk and I are driving to the law firm of Griffin and Weaver, one of those swinging-dick firms with all kinds of connected lawyers and former politicians who represent major players before courts and legislatures and steamroll the rest of us on a daily basis. But that’s not why Ellis is troubled. He’s been troubled ever since he learned, along with the rest of the world last night, that Jonathan Liu is no longer breathing.
“This is against my better judgment, taking you along,” he says.
“We’re, like, a team,” I say. I mention Castle to him but he doesn’t respond. Most cops I know don’t like cop shows. But team or not, I admit I feel more comfortable in the escort of a DC police detective. Who’s going to shoot at me while I’m hanging with a cop?
Traffic is light today, late morning. The sky is cloudless and the temperatures will hit one hundred today. The dog days of summer. It makes me think of that giant schnauzer waiting for me back at my town house, probably lifting his leg on my walkway as we speak—
I hear a sound that reminds me of thunder, which makes no sense, and before my brain can register anything the glass on the rear window has shattered, and Ellis lets out a wail and his shoulder is spouting blood and he falls forward, his jaw crashing into the steering wheel, and I start to reach for him but a torrent of gunfire tears across the dashboard and then Ellis pounds his foot on the accelerator and we burst forward, heading into the intersection against the light and cars are screeching to a halt and Ellis is shouting but I can’t make out any words. He’s using his left hand to steer and we’re both crouched down and rocking back and forth with the zigzag of the car and then his gun drops onto the seat cushion and he says, “Use it, use…it!” So I pick it up and have no idea how to fire this thing and then the gunfire starts again and glass is shattering everywhere and the body of the car is taking hit after hit whump-whump-whump along the passenger side and—
“Are you okay?” I shout.
“Shoot!” Ellis yells.
—and I lift my head up high enough to see out the window just barely and there’s a black SUV and I see the muzzle of some machine gun and I point my gun and shoot one, two, three times, blasting out my own window, and then the return fire comes, bullets buzzing over my head, and then something warm sprays onto my neck and hands and I turn and see Ellis’s face, or what’s left of it—
—and then we veer sharply to the left and something smacks my face and snaps my head back and all I’m thinking, the only thing I’m thinking before everything goes dark, is Please, not Ellis, please not him, too.
Chapter 48
The paramedic completes her tests on me and announces that I’m going to be okay, whatever that means. I’m seated in the back of an open ambulance in the middle of 12th Street, which has been shut down following the shooting.
“Probably just a concussion from the impact when the air bag deployed, Mr. Casper. You’re lucky.”
Luckier than my friend Ellis Burk.
“You might want to spend a night in the hospital,” she says. “I know these police officers are eager to talk to you, but we can have you put under observation if you’d like—”
“That’s okay,” I say. “They need to talk to me.”
She looks over her shoulder. There are probably a dozen squad cars and some unmarked vehicles as well. “Yeah, it’s bad. Y’know, losing one of their own. That’s a pretty big deal.”
I figured out the pretty-big-deal part all by myself. News vans are lining the police perimeter, and copters are flying overhead. It’s not every day there’s a shoot-out at a populated intersection in the middle of the nation’s capital, at least on this side of town. It’s not every day a cop is murdered.
I close my eyes and try to wish this whole thing away. Ellis was my friend, someone who was trying to help me beyond what his job required. And look what it got him.