You Can Die Trying Read Online Free PDF Page B

kid’s weak hand around the grips. Geez. I wonder what that means.”
    Gunner paused for a moment, a little surprised. “Hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Poole, but you don’t often hear a cop jump to another’s defense the way you’ve just jumped to Jack McGovern’s.”
    “Heresay is inadmissible, Gunner. You see anybody around here wearing a wire?” Poole spread some butter on his pancakes and then splattered a quart of boysenberry syrup on the front of his shirt wolfing them down. “What do you want me to do? Lie to you? Tell you not to worry, those guys are gonna just spill their guts, all you’ve gotta do is lay on the charm?”
    “I want you to tell me who to talk to first. Never mind all the well-intentioned encouragement to quit before I’ve even gotten started.”
    “Okay. Okay. Square one for me would be McGovern’s watch sergeant. If there’s anybody over there who’d likely be anxious to see the book reopened on him, it’s the man—or woman , as the case may be—he worked for. McGovern was under their command, right? I’d be willing to bet whoever it is took what happened to McGovern very personally.”
    “Fine. His watch sergeant first. And after that?”
    Poole shrugged again. “After that, it’s a toss-up. His last partner, of course. Some of the other officers in his squad. People like that. I don’t have to tell you everything, do I?”
    “What about Internal Affairs?”
    Poole dropped his fork and actually stopped eating. “No. No. Forget Internal Affairs. Those guys are gonna get you nowhere fast, save yourself the heartache.”
    “You don’t think they’d be willing to help?”
    “Help? No. Help is not their thing. Breaking balls, that’s their thing. You want your balls broken, Gunner?”
    “Not if I can help it, no. But I sure as hell can’t see how I’m supposed to find out how McGovern came to shoot Lendell Washington without reviewing the department’s own investigation into the incident. Can you?”
    “I told you. This case is a dead end. Nobody’s gonna talk to you, and least of all the boys in Internal Affairs. With everybody else it’ll just be a matter of choice; with them, it’s gonna be departmental policy. Without a court order, they’re not gonna show you so much as the cabinet they keep the files in, and without a detective’s badge—a real detective’s badge—they’re not gonna say gesundheit when you sneeze. Are you getting the picture here?”
    “What about off the record?”
    “Off the record, on the record—they’re not gonna give a shit what you call it.”
    “Even if the investigation in question has been closed for nearly a year?”
    “It doesn’t make any difference. Once a verdict has been reached, the files are sealed; they don’t reopen them for anybody. Especially not for some black private license whose very mission in life is to prove that their investigation into an officer-involved shooting was a total fuck-up.”
    That was, Gunner had to admit, exactly how they would be likely to view him.
    “Nobody said they fucked up anything,” the investigator said, sweeping yellow egg yoke across his plate with a slice of blackened white toast. “It could be the conclusions they came to were essentially sound, based on the evidence they had to work with at the time.”
    “Which is another way of saying, maybe they overlooked something. Or worse, were misled.”
    “Is it?”
    “I’m sure they’ll appreciate the distinction, being accused of mere stupidity as opposed to utter incompetence. Shit!” He had picked up his coffee again and burned the hell out of his mouth, forgetting that their waitress had just been by to refill his cup.
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah, sure. I’m fine,” Poole said, brushing coffee off his tie with a napkin already smeared with syrup. “Exasperated, but fine.” He looked up to gaze at Gunner evenly. “You’ve got the thickest skull I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying to dent,