Page 53 of Crosshairs

After another stretch of silence, Dennis Wu said, “Officer Trilling, do you have an alibi for the night Gus Querva was shot? Or any of the shootings?” Wu only waited through a little silence before he added, “Just so we can be sure you’re not the …” He paused for a moment. “What’s the media call him? The Longshot Killer.”

Trilling finally spoke. “Why don’t you ask my partner? I told him where I was.”

Wu looked down at his notes and said, “Yes, you said you were home asleep. A single guy alone in his apartment. That’s a tough one to verify.”

I saw a definite change in Trilling’s demeanor. He was no longer uneasy. He was angry. He had a slight twitch in his left eye and a vein in his left temple pulsed. I leaned forward slightly in my chair to get my feet under me in case things turned crazy.

Trilling glared at Dennis Wu. My anxiety level started torise. I knew Trilling was remarkably quick and well trained. I let my hands drop to the arms of the chair, ready to jump.

Wu must have realized the changes as well. He shifted his tone completely. He took a friendlier approach and assured Trilling again he was not under arrest. Wu said, “I’m just trying to give you a chance to tell your side of the story. It’s a good time to do it. No media, no crowds, just us.”

Trilling spoke through gritted teeth. “I already told you my side. I was home asleep.”

“So you expect us to believe that a dedicated guy like you, who’s done nothing but serve his country and community, wasn’t bothered by all the praise a guy like Gus Querva was getting from the media?”

Trilling sat stone-faced.

Dennis said, “Praise of a guy like that doesn’t help the mission, does it? The mission is to serve and protect. What better way to protect than by eliminating a predator?”

Trilling started to answer. Then he stopped himself. He calmly said, “I need to speak to an attorney.” His right hand dropped and rested behind him.

I tensed, worried that he was going for his pistol. When he moved his hand, I realized he had taken his pistol and holster off his belt. He stood up and tossed it onto Harry’s desk. Then Trilling plucked the ID badge from his inside jacket pocket and pulled his police credentials from inside the jacket. They all hit the desk next to the pistol.

Trilling paused like he was waiting for someone to tell him he couldn’t leave. When no one said anything, he turned on his heel and marched out of the office, through the squad bay, and out the door.

Dennis Wu looked at me and said, “I think that’s all we need. He’s good for the shootings.”

I stared at the sergeant.

Wu ignored me. And continued. “As of this moment, Officer Trilling is suspended, is an official suspect in the sniper case, and you’re going to make the charges stick.”

“You can’t be serious. All he did was ask for his attorney.”

“He asked for an attorney because he had no more weak excuses. What are you upset about? You did a great job.” Wu saw I wasn’t happy with the situation. He said, “I had orders to convey to you that the brass wants this cleared up immediately. Command staff said you were the right guy to do the investigation quickly and efficiently.”

“You can tell the brass that it’s going to take a little while to clear this up. I’ve got a lot of background to do. No one wants to charge the wrong person with this crime.”

Dennis Wu smiled. “You put together the homicide case, and I’ll take care of the Internal Affairs aspects. But make no mistake, I’m going to tell command staff we have our man.”

“AndI’mgoing to conduct an unbiased homicide investigation.”

The Internal Affairs sergeant said, “That’s good. Use that line with the media after you arrest that redneck prick.”

CHAPTER 64

I WASTED NO time after Dennis Wu’s interview of Rob Trilling. I didn’t sit at my desk and pout. I didn’t try to convince myself that Trilling was guilty or innocent. I looked at what I knew so far and what I needed to find out. There was a mountain of information I had to decipher. And I needed to do it right away. The NYPD might be telling me to keep it quiet, but I knew how things worked: eventually someone was going to make a comment that got into the media. That meant I only had a limited amount of time.

I used a contact at the FBI to gain access to any reports Rob Trilling wrote while he was working on the task force. I didn’t go through the ASAC, Robert Lincoln. I may have hinted to my contact that Lincoln had approved it, but I didn’t have the energy or the time to put up with that condescending jerk right now. I explained it had to do with a performance evaluation.

So I was sequestered in a room on the first floor of the New York field office with a stack of reports on the table in front of me. If I wanted copies made of any reports, the FBI was going to make a log of what I copied. They even had someone sit in the room with me while I went through the reports. They didn’t seem to trust anyone.

Trilling had been busy during his brief time at the FBI. He was out looking for fugitives every day, even on the weekend a couple of times. And it looked like he usually got who he was looking for. I saw the name Lou Pershing and remembered that he was an associate of the asshole William Hackford we’d arrested at the Bronx warehouse. The guy hadn’t yet weaseled out of federal custody yet, mainly because of the amount of heroin found in the warehouse. Like Trilling had said, it was almost as if no one cared about the human trafficking violations, though Hackford had been charged with that as well.

I was looking through a surveillance report from a couple of months ago on a house in Queens. The resident at the house was the mother of a fugitive the FBI had been looking for. I saw the address and felt an icy shot through my system.

I quickly pulled out my phone and brought up a map program. The house he’d been surveilling was only two blocks away from the house of the sniper’s first victim, Marie Ballard. It could be a coincidence, but it made me uneasy.

Now I raced through report after report, focusing mainly on the addresses. Trilling had been in Staten Island and Midtown Manhattan. Neither of the surveillances was that close to the shootings, but they did show Trilling had been in the area.