Page 28 of Outsider

Gina continues. “Eddie Cysco had no knowledge of that couple. No connection whatsoever. He didn’t know them. Had never been to their residence. The unit needed probable cause for that warrant, so they used him.”

Gripping the side of the table with her uninjured hand, she sinks back into the chair, seeming to work through the possibilities. “They knew he was my snitch. In terms of that bogus warrant and his connection to me, he was a loose end. They didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, so they killed him.”

“Tell me about Cysco,” Tomasetti says.

“He was a lowlife.” Gina makes the statement without malice. “He was a small-time dealer. A junkie. Estranged from his family.” Eyes burning with conviction, she looks at Tomasetti. “No one’s going to ask questions when someone like that turns up dead.”

“Why did they turn on you when, evidently, you were content to take the cash and keep your mouth shut,” he asks.

“After the Garner fiasco, I made the mistake of letting them know I wanted out. They stopped trusting me. At some point they decided I was a liability.”

His mouth twists. “Because you had a sudden attack of conscience?”

She glares at him, saying nothing.

“You said you had an audio recording,” I say.

Reaching into her jeans pocket, she pulls out a smartphone. The screen is cracked, but it doesn’t look too damaged to function. She swipes through several pages, taps a button, and holds the phone out to me.

I take it, tap the play icon. The video is little more than a collage of monochrome shadows. The audio is scratchy and faint. A female voice.

“What the hell happened to Louis and Sandra Garner?” Gina’s voice. Angry. Distraught.

“You pull a gun on a cop, you get shot.” Male voice. Familiar. “That’s the way it works.”

“I heard that’s not how it went down.”

“No one gives a damn what you heard. Those fuckers were armed. We confiscated four ounces of heroin. It was a good bust. We did what we had to do.”

“People are asking questions about that warrant.”

“It’ll die down.”

Something unintelligible and then, “People are asking questions about you, too, Gina.”

“You mean Bertrand?”

“I mean everyone. They’re saying you can’t be trusted. Is that true? Do I need to be worried about you?”

The sound of her laugh has an unpleasant edge. “Maybe I ought to be worried about you.”

Rustling in the background sounds and then, “Keep it up and you’ll go the way of the Garners. You got that?”

The clip ends abruptly. I play it again, turn up the volume, run it a third time, trying to make out the garbled words, but no luck.

“That could be interpreted a number of ways,” I say.

“Bullshit,” she hisses. “I mentioned Bertrand and he responded. You recognize the voice?”

I nod. “Nick Galloway.”

“In case you’re not reading between the lines, he threatened me.”

Tomasetti pulls out his cell. “I’m sending you my number. See if you can forward that recording to me,” he says.

“What about my guarantee?”

“There isn’t one.” He clocks her with a hostile look. “Send it. Now.”