The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3) Brian Shea (good book club books .txt) 📖

him slip his right hand inside his coat to fondle the butt of it every few minutes since they’d arrived four hours ago.

The two guards approached the van, disappearing from view behind its high sides.

“Should we move?” Mainelli asked.

“Give it a second. If this really is a florist and our guy is watching, then we’ll blow our position.”

“It’s not like we’re invisible in the Caprice,” Mainelli said, apparently back to his normal doom-and-gloom meanderings.

The driver of the van got out and walked around to the back. He wore a white jacket with a matching white baseball cap pulled down tight over his head. Barnes raised her binoculars to get a better look. It was a little past 4:00 p.m., but the weak winter sunlight had already begun to shift to night. All she could make out before the deliveryman turned away from view and opened the double rear doors was the pair of silver wire-rimmed glasses he wore.

He bent forward, the white jacket disappearing as he leaned into the back of the van and reappeared a second later holding a rectangular glass vase of green roses.

The deliveryman closed the door, and Barnes caught a glimpse of the smaller of Walsh’s external security team. The florist nodded and approached. Both men then disappeared from view again.

The seconds ticked by like minutes. Barnes’s eyes watered, but she refused to blink as she stared through the binocular’s amplified lenses.

Green roses? Something familiar fluttered on the outer edge of her mind, just out of reach. There was a connection. Then it hit her like a wave. Shit! Green roses…Walsh’s calling card he left on his dead enemies.

“Move!” Barnes unholstered her duty weapon as she stepped out of the car.

Mainelli squinted toward the van and then back at Barnes.

“It’s him!” Her voice was forceful enough to convey the message without being so loud as to alert the perp of their impending approach.

The deliveryman came into view again, still cradling the vase in his left arm. He was holding something in his right hand, but Barnes was too far away to make it out.

The man stood calmly in front of the main entrance to Walsh’s home. Neither of the two security team members were in sight. It dawned on her what he was doing at the door and what he held in his right hand. The keys.

A second later, the man disappeared inside.

Mainelli’s eyes were wide as he scrambled for the unmarked’s radio. The message he relayed to dispatch was a frantic, “Code 99. Mainelli and Barnes need assistance at our location. Dorchester and Harvest. Suspect on scene. I repeat, Code 99!” Mainelli’s voice was uncharacteristically pitchy.

Anybody on the receiving end of that transmission would be racing their way. A Code 99 was BPD’s critical incident designator.

Barnes heard sirens in the distance as she sprinted across the intersection in a beeline for the door. Mainelli did his best to keep up.

She rounded the back of the van and saw the two mobsters. Their bodies lay side by side on the sidewalk near the curb, each with a single gunshot wound in the forehead. A green rose lay on each of their chests.

They were in a dead sprint for the door, weapons at the ready. Barnes grabbed her radio as she moved to the door. “We’ve got two down by a florist van in front. DRT. Hold medics. Send tactical. Active shooter. We’re going in!” Her voice was steady. She slipped the radio back into its holster and prepared to make entry.

The shift had been made in law enforcement many years back with regards to nationwide protocols when it came to active killing events. Whenever police encountered such a threat, regardless of the number of officers on hand, there was no waiting around for backup. There was no waiting for a tactical deployment of SWAT when active killing was taking place. The only option, and one officers were indoctrinated to do, was the completely counterintuitive decision to head toward the sound of gunfire.

Barnes pressed herself against the door and checked the handle. Still open.

“Let’s do this,” Mainelli said.

Barnes yanked open the door and they pushed inside, their Glocks leading the way. The first floor was huge. Not much had changed from her memory of it in the photo spread from the Herald. It was quiet. Too quiet.

The stairwell was redesigned from the original triple decker, but it was still near the foyer entrance. Barnes paused at the bottom of the stairs and listened.

Mainelli cursed under his breath. Walsh's private suite, a massive bedroom and living space with a full-length bar, was on the third floor.

Barnes was preparing to clear the first floor when she heard three loud gunshots from upstairs.

No time to waste, Barnes sprinted up, taking two steps at a time. Mainelli did his best, but was already one floor behind her, spitting and huffing as he went. She couldn't wait for him, could only hope he would catch up. She worried he'd have a heart attack before reaching the third floor.

Seconds later, her shoulders were pressed against the outer wall, near the access door to the hallway leading to Walsh’s suite. She turned the handle and it opened. Barnes pressed her weapon forward, jamming her left hand into the door and pressing it wide. She stepped in. A soft, intricately woven rug runner led the ten feet to the door. The rectangular enclosure was bright white, with a black orb surveillance camera set at eye level on the right-hand side of the door. Beneath it lay a dead man. He had multiple gunshot wounds, several in the chest area and one in the skull that was slightly off-center above the right eye. He had a revolver in his hand. Barnes looked behind her and saw three shots in the wall near the door. At least he got a couple off before going down. Maybe he got lucky and the killer is bleeding out on the other side of the door? Wishful thinking, she knew.

Walsh had