I couldn’t see Coulter, but I remembered him. No more than five-eight, goatee, hip, always cracking a wiseass joke, very tough. All in all, a small-man complex. He began to tell his story, his side of things, and unfortunately I had no idea what to make of what he was spilling out. According to Coulter, detectives in the Baltimore PD had been involved in large drug payoffs. Even he didn’t know how many, but the number was high. He’d blown the whistle. The next thing he knew, his house was surrounded by cops.

Then Coulter dropped the bomb. “I was getting kickbacks too. Somebody turned me in to Internal Affairs. One of my partners.”

“Why would a partner do that?”

He laughed. “Because I got greedy. I went for a bigger piece of the pie. Thought I had my partners by the short hairs. They didn’t see it that way.”

“How did you have them by the short hairs?”

“I told my partners that I had copies of records—who had been paid what. A couple years’ worth of records.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you?” I asked.

Coulter hesitated. Why was that? Either he did or he didn’t.

“I might,” he finally said. “They sure think I do. So now they’re going to put me down. They were coming for me today. . . . I’m not supposed to leave this house alive.”

I was trying to listen for other voices or sounds in the house while he kept talking. I didn’t hear any. Was anybody else still alive in there? What had Coulter done to his family? How desperate was he?

I looked at Ned Mahoney and shrugged my shoulders. I really wasn’t sure whether Coulter was telling the truth or if he was just a street cop who’d gone loco. Mahoney looked skeptical too. He had a don’t ask me look on his face. I had to go somewhere else for guidance.

“So what do we do now?” I asked Coulter.

He sniffed out a laugh. “I was hoping you’d have an idea. You’re supposed to be the hotshot, right?”

That’s what everybody keeps saying.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

THE SITUATION IN BALTIMORE didn’t get any better during the next several hours. If anything, it got worse. It was impossible to keep the neighbors from wandering out on their porches to watch the standoff in progress. Then the Baltimore PD began to evacuate the Coulters’ neighbors, many of whom were also the Coulters’ friends. A temporary shelter had been set up at the nearby Garrett Heights elementary school. It reminded everyone that there were probably children trapped inside Detective Coulter’s house. His family. Jesus!