Irish Eyes Read Online Free PDF

and bagged. We’ll try to get an I.V. line started en route. Our ETA is five minutes.”
    I turned around. They had Bucky on the stretcher, a mask strapped over his face, a brace wrapped around his neck.
    “Either of you know his name?”
    “Bucky,” I said. “Bucky Deavers. He’s a homicide detective.”
    She nodded soberly. “Thought I recognized him.”
    “How is he? Will he make it?”
    She didn’t answer my question. She bent over, put her lips close to his ear. “Hey there, Bucky. Hang on now. Let’s get you to Grady.”
    They wheeled the stretcher toward the door.
    “I want to go with you,” I said.
    “Not right now,” Durrence said. “We need to get a statement from you.”
    “I told you what I saw,” I said, my voice shrill. “Nothing. I heard just two pops. That was it.”
    “All right,” Durrence said. He flashed a quick smile showing small, even white teeth. “Come on now. Calm down. You can go see your friend later. The detectives are on their way. They’ll want to talk to you, then you can go to the hospital.”
    “Look,” I said. “I’m a P.I. An ex-cop. I used to work with Detective Deavers on the robbery squad. Let me just go to the hospital. We can talk there. All right?”
    It would not be all right and I knew that. The two cops who’d gone into the stockroom came back into the store. One was talking quietly on his radio. There were more sirens. Cops kept coming into the store. It was the signal sixty-three. Officer down. The one radio call no cop ever wanted to hear. It would bring every cop in a twenty-mile radius converging on the Budget Bottle Shop in a few short minutes.
    The bell on the front door jingled. Two more men walked in. One white, one black. The black one wore starched blue jeans, a sport shirt, and a blue windbreaker with the letters “APD” stenciled on the front in eighteen-inch yellow letters. The white one wore a conservative business suit and a dark green ankle-length raincoat. He had a snap-brim fedora with a little feather in the hatband. The hat man frowned when he saw me.
    “Who let her in here?” he barked.
    Durrence looked surprised. “She’s a witness, Major.”
    Lloyd Mackey pushed the fedora to the back of his head. He had mild blue eyes and a blond walrus mustache starting to go gray. “Aw, gawddamn, Garrity. What the hell happened? Who shot Deavers?”
    Before I could answer, the Hispanic cop ran from the stockroom, visibly excited. “Detective Washington,” he called to the black cop. “We got a weapon back here. A twenty-two. Saturday night special. We found it beside a pile of empty beer cartons in the alley. You wanna take a look?”
    Mackey nodded and the two men went with him into the back room.
    The clerk, Deecie, was still trying to shush little Faheem. “Look here,” she called out. “Is it all right if I take him in the back, fix him some formula?”
    “Come on,” Washington said. “You can show us where everything’s at back here.”
    “Shit.”
    I turned around. Mackey was kneeling down, looking at the broken beer bottles and the puddle of blood. The place was a mess, discarded rubber gloves, bloody gauze pads, bits of plastic and paper packaging from the supplies the paramedics had used. He looked up at me. “How bad?”
    Major Lloyd Mackey was Bucky’s boss, commander of the crimes against persons division. I’d never worked under him, but his men liked him. We’d tangled a few times in the past, but I’d always taken his animosity toward me as a professional necessity. I was a P.I.; he was a cop. If I got in his way, he’d give me a kick in the ass. It was understood. It was his job.
    “Two bullets, right above the ear,” I said. “Not so much blood, really. He was still breathing when they took him to Grady. He talked to me. Knew who I was. That’s good, right?”
    “Yeah, good.” Mackey stood up, took a handkerchief, and wiped off his hands. He walked around the store. It was small, cluttered. Shelves