Killer's choice by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural, 87th Precinct (Imaginary place)
ISBN: 9780749080280
Publisher: London : Allison & Busby, 2009.
Published: 2009-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Lieutenant Peter Byrnes sat at the dinner table with his wife Harriet and his son Larry. He was a compact man, Byrnes, with a compact bullet head. He had tiny blue eyes set in a seamed and weathered face which was divided by a craggy nose. His upper lip was a little weak, but his lower lip was strong and pouting, and he owned a chin like a cleft boulder. His head sat snugly on his short, thick neck, as if he were ready to pull it in at a moment's notice. His hands were thick hands belonging to an honest man who had worked hard all his life.

He sat at the table emanating silence, and Harriet watched him. The only sound in the room was the sound of eighteen-year-old Larry wolfing his food.

'All right,' Harriet said at last. 'What is it?'

'I like Steve Carella,' Byrnes said. 'I mean it. I like that boy. By Christ, when we almost lost him last Christmas…'

'Did he do something wrong?' Harriet asked.

'No, he didn't do anything wrong,' Byrnes said, shaking his head. 'No, it isn't him. I'm just saying I like him, and I like his wife. I look at that girl as if she's my own daughter. I swear it. A man who runs a squad isn't supposed to have favourites, but I like that boy. He's a damned fine boy.'

Larry Byrnes said nothing. He ate with the complete abandon of a hungry adolescent. It had not been so long ago that Larry Byrnes's hunger had not been for the normal adolescent pleasures. He had not forgotten that Steve Carella had been shot trying to solve a narcotics case in which he'd been involved. That was all behind them now, a part of the Byrnes existence they no longer discussed, but he had not forgotten. He knew why his father's favourite cop was Steve Carella. His own favourite cop, since last Christmas, was a detective-lieutenant named Peter Byrnes. So he listened to his father attentively, but he none the less managed to gobble his food with total adolescent oblivion.

'I like Steve, too,' Harriet said. 'What happened?'

'He almost got killed today,' Byrnes said.

'What!'

'Yes, yes. Four bullets that missed him by maybe half an inch.'

'Steve? How?'

'Hawes,' Byrnes said. 'Cotton Hawes. They had to send him to me. Of all the precincts in the city, they had to pick mine. They take him out of a precinct which is a finishing school for young girls, and they send him to the 87th. The 87th! Of all the precincts! What did I do to deserve him? What did I do to deserve a man who knocks on a murderer's door and announces that the police are there?'

'Is that what he did?' Harriet asked, astonished.

'That's what he did.'

'What happened?'

'The guy opened fire. Almost ripped Steve's head off. Hawes got himself beat to a pulp. What am I gonna do with him? Put him on tracing lost bicycles? I need all the cops I can get. Havilland may have been a terrible guy personally, but he wasn't a bad cop.

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