Time Frame: 7th season

 The sun was just rising over the harbor as the first shift of Baltimore homicide detectives staggered towards the looming headquarters building. The first few rays of light hit an unusual mass lying not too far from the parking entry- half off the tugboat parked in the water. A uniformed officer first walked over to inspect it, and soon is waving his hands and calling out.

 “Detective Lewis! Detective Stivers! Detective Munch! Over here!” The three walked a little faster, shaking off their morning trance as they approach and the form more closely resembles a human body.

 Detective Stivers sent the uniform off to start this investigation through official channels.

 Lewis tilts his head, saying, “You know from this angle, it kinda resembles...”

 Stivers adds, “It has the same lame-ass jacket.”

 “Even though I thought there couldn’t be less of him, these are indeed the earthly remains of Paul Falsone.” The other two stared at John Munch but did not refute his claim.

***
 Word spread fast through the building. Tim Bayliss caught the query of a passing officer as he walked in.

 “Any progress on Falsone?”

 “What?” he asked in his best clueless fashion.

 “You find who pushed Detective Falsone off the roof?” Before Tim could find out more, the officer had walked on.

 He entered the squad room to find everyone with the look of redball in their eyes. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked as he sat down at his desk.

 Shepard, always keyed to the pulse of the department, clued him in. “Seems that someone had enough of Falsone and dropped him five stories onto the pavement.”

 “No kidding?”

 “None,” answered John Munch who passed by the desk without stopping and seated himself in his own chair. “I saw it myself. He never was a pretty sight, and now he’s even less so.”

 “Who do you think had the balls to off Scrappy Doo?”

 “Who didn’t is what I have to find out,” said Lewis as he walked into the room.

 “You’re the primary?” asked Tim.

 “That’s what I get for being blessed with this athletic quickness. First on the scene, first in the hearts of the brass.”

 “That is something I do not envy you for.”

 There was a crash of thunder and Gee entered the room. “Lewis. In my office. Now.”

His face had the usual look of the wrath of God, but once Meidrick closed the door, he broke out into laughter. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to but, thank the Lord, 1 thought I’d have to kill the little punk myself.”

 “By making that statement, I may have to add you to my list of suspects, sir.”

 Gee sobered instantaneously. “If you must, Lewis, but you will find I have an excellent alibi.”

 “Good, because let me say in all honesty I am not feeling particularly motivated to solve this one.”

 “I’m afraid you’re going to have to make a good show of it. The rumblers upstairs are already demanding results. I think in any other circumstances the reaction would not be so heavy, but having him die on police property makes us look suspicious.”

 “I understand sir. I’ll be on my way to interview witnesses now.”

 “Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

 He walked back out into the crowd. “Stivers, you’re secondary.”

 “Why me?”

 “Because I’m pretty sure you couldn’t have done it.”

 “That’s a sexist remark, Lewis,” said Shepard, flouncing her hair and sticking out her lip.

 “Yeah, whatever.” He picked up his hat and left.

 “Where are we going?” asked Stivers.

 “To see Griscom. I know he’ll appreciate this.”

 True enough, there was a grin three miles wide on the wild haired ME’s face. “Lewis, how did you know it was my birthday?”

 “Lucky guess. Did I get you what you wanted?”

 “Close enough, friend. Close enough.”

 “So what can you tell me?” Lewis decided for his sake to try and figure this all out.

 “Simple enough. He fell. He went splat.”

 “That’s your medical opinion?”

 “I can use the long words if you like, but what I’m trying to say is that I can’t tell you one way or another if he was pushed or if he fell. That part’s up to you.”

 “Can you say how long he’s been like this”

 “Flat and lifeless? About thirty years. Dead? Between three and eight hours.”

 “Thanks.”

 “No. Thank you. Let me know how it turns out.” Griscom waved at the door like some morbid Beverly Hillbilly.

 “Now do we move onto suspects?” Stivers asked.

 “We know he was at the Waterfront last night. I was there, you were there, and so was Munch, Bayliss, Gharty, Ballard, Mike Giardello, and Kellerman. He got into it with almost everyone there before we had enough of him jumping on the pool table and singing Richard Marx songs. Everyone else filed out after that so we have no real proof of who he was with or why he felt a need to return to headquarters that night. So we go back and ask everyone where they went after they left the bar.”

 Tim Bayliss stretched his long legs out alongside the table. “You left the Waterfront before I did. Remember?”

 “No need to get all defensive, I just have to question everyone to see if they remember anything.”

 “I remember him arguing with you about the cheese twists. I remember Ballard arguing with him about something. I remember Gharty getting in his face. I really remember Munch defending Gharty during that one, and I remember Kellerman walking in and whispering something to him.”

 Lewis looked up at the wall. “This isn’t going to be easy, damn it. I don’t like questioning bunkies.”

 “Falsone was getting on everyone’s nerves last night. No one was immune.”

 “Funny. I don’t remember him getting on your face.”

 “I practice the route of nonviolence and calm.” Bayliss smiled, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

 “Gotcha. So did you catch anything suspicious?”

 “If I did, would you think I would tell you about it?”

 “One can dream,” he said to himself as Tim left.

 Laura Ballard walked in, wiping her eyes. “Hey, Lewis.”

 “You okay?’

 “Oh yeah, Gharty just put too much pepper on his sub and I got some up my nose.” “I thought it might have been because of Falsone.”

 She looked up at him strangely. “Falsone? Why?”

 Lewis got uncomfortable. “Because he’s dead and you two... “

 “Oh that. Can you believe I was that hard up for a date? I was one step down from a Saturday night hon there.”

 Lewis got really uncomfortable “So what happened last night?”

 “Oh, Paul was supposed to meet me at the Waterfront, then we were going to go to the movies, but he wanted to stay there with ‘the guys’. So we sat there and he decided to piss off everyone in the bar. You know all about that.”

 “What then?”

 “Stu needed a ride home and we left. Paul tried to be nice when I was leaving but it was
too late.”

 “You can’t think of anything else that could help me out some?”

 “No, but I’ll send Stu in and see if he noticed something.”

 Gharty slowly walked into the room with his usual bewildered expression, as if he was constantly looking for the pair of eyeglasses perched on top of his head.

 “Lewis. This is bad. Do you have any leads yet?”

 “If I did, I’d be on them. So here I am, asking questions that get no answers. Hell, I don’t even know if I want any answers.”

 “A lot of pressure on you to close this one, huh?”

 “You could say that. A cop dead on police property. The press usually has to make midnight sacrifices of dead goats to get a
story like this.”

 “So you’re going to push until you get the truth?” Gharty asked, maybe a touch nervously.

 Lewis caught that and looked at him closer. Did he know something?

 “Do you know something?”

 “Me? No. I was just saying Falsone was one of us; no matter what he was like or who he must have had incriminating pictures
of to get the job. We all should work to find out what happened.”

  “Then how ‘bout we start by going over last night. You and Falsone got into an argument. Who started that?”

 “Now I don’t know if I would call it an argument,” said the older man. “I was talking about a detective I knew when I just joined the force, and how he seemed to pick the suspects out of thin air but he was always right. Falsone said that kind of thing was not indicative- that’s the word he used, too- of the older generation of police work. He said the new detectives coming in had more intelligence and natural instinct and understanding of the criminal mind so there the only real progress was being made just now.”

 He stopped and concentrated on something at the end of his tie. Lewis waited for him to regain the stream of consciousness.

 Meldrick Lewis was not a patient man. “Then what?”

 “Huh?” Gharty looked up suddenly and glanced around the room as if to re-associate himself with his surroundings.

 “Oh, yes. So I was all ready to tell him just where he could stick his opinion, when John Munch of all people slid over and
started on him with one of those rants, starting with the beginnings of modern forensic pathology in 1876, and going off in thirteen different directions from there. I’m surprised you didn’t catch any of that.”

 “I did hear something about McDonnell’s advances in blood spatter theory, but we were understaffed in the kitchen and I was busting my ass all night.”

“He pretty much took over the conversation, so I wasn’t too involved after that. Ballard offered me a ride home, and I accepted. It was like an alternate universe in there and I didn’t want to know what happened next.”

 Lewis shook his head in either understanding or despair.

 “Sorry I couldn’t help anymore, Lewis, but you know how it is. I just didn’t see anything.” “I know, I know man. That’s alright.” He waved Gharty out of the room.

 Munch was out on a case, so Lewis sat back in the chair and ran over the events again. Any glimmer of connectivity would have been welcome, but he saw none.

 The door opened. “Want some company?” asked Kay Howard.

 “What I want is a lead, but I’ll take what I can get.”

 “Falsone? I heard. The man did unnatural things to my aspirin bottle. I had to throw it right out. I still have the headache.”

 “So you don’t want to be any help? Missing persons couldn’t have dulled your investigative skills.”

 “I never said that. His death needs to be solved as much as anyone else’s. Tell me what you know and I’ll see what I can do.”

 “So far no one’s telling me anything I don’t already know. Everyone it seems had sort of argument with Falsone last night, but they’re not taking it any more seriously than any other time he pulled something like this.”

Kay nodded, “And everything they’ve told you matches up with what you remember?”

 “Pretty much. I wasn’t by the bar the whole night but I did catch most of the action, I think.”

 “And there was nothing out of the ordinary? Just a regular night at the bar?”

 “Oh wait, yeah. Kellerman of all people walked in. Didn’t say a word to me of course, but he walked right up to Falsone and whispered something in his ear. Falsone looked up but Mikey was already on his way back out the door. I meant to ask him about that later, but then some chicken wings caught fire in the kitchen and I had to go put it out.”

 “Wait. You’re telling me Kellerman just walked into the Waterfront, said something to Falsone and left? How did Falsone react?” Kay leaned forward and tried to catch his eye.

 “He looked a little surprised. Not angry. At least from what I could see.”

 “We might have something there. I’m going to go follow that lead, see what Kellerman was up to.”

 “Yeah...” Lewis said sadly. “You gotta track down every possibility.”

 There was a single knock at the door then John Munch appeared in the frame. “Sergeant. Gaining any new insight in this most baffling case?”

 “I have no idea how this all came down, Munchkin.” She stood up. “Now I’ll let you two go over events and I’ll see what I can find out about that for you, Lewis.”

 Munch held the door open for her and once she was gone he walked over to the table. “So nothing, so far?” he asked Lewis.

 “Not a drop,” was the answer. “I knew this was going to be tough but I thought I might find something...” he trailed off in exhaustion.

 “The traditional silence in respect to internal matters is well-known, documented, and often exaggerated by people outside the brotherhood in blue.”

 “So how about you tell me something I don’t know already to bust this case wide open?”

 Munch sighed and leaned back in his rickety metal chair. “I wish I could, but I don’t think anything I could say would do this investigation any amount of good.”

 “Well, let me be the judge of that.”

 “Let’s see. I was behind the bar, dispensing the drinks, joining in the vanous conversations and being an all-around perfect host when at some point Falsone starts shooting his mouth of about he was one of the new generation of supercops to Gharty who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow and so was in no position to refute any of these claims by our fellow officer.”

 “So you decided to step in yourself?”

 “When have I ever backed down from a battle of wits? Granted this was more of a shadow boxing run than an actual skirmish, over in seconds...”

 “I get the point.”

 “See, I told you, nothing out of the ordinary there.”

 “Hey, Munch, did you see Mikey walk in?”

 “Kellerman? Your vilified ex-partner? I think I’d notice if! saw his cocky blonde head come through the door. He was there?”

 “Just for a minute.”

 “I must have been in the back or something. I would have liked to have seen that,” said Munch with a ‘well whadda ya know’ look on his face.

 “Thanks anyway, man,” said Lewis with a sigh.

 Four down, one to go, and the case wasn’t getting any clearer. Oh well, a little overtime never hurt anyone. At least not when they were sitting nice and safe in the office.

 “Hey there, Mike. This won’t take too long,” said Lewis as the other man entered the box.

 The young Giardello looked warily at the table and glanced at the windows, their view blocked from the outside with closed blinds.

 “It’s been a long day,” said Lewis. “1 sure will be glad when it’s over. Of course, knowing these kind of cases, who the hell knows when that will be?”

 “I’m not really Mike Giardello,” he blurted out suddenly as he sat down in the chair.

 Lewis looked over, interested but not surprised. “That so?”

 “My real name is Helmut Whitman. The real Mike Giardello is working undercover in Las Vegas. We at the FBI had a suspicion that the man claiming to be Paul Falsone was actually a hitman named Luis “Papa Smurf’ Miguel. I was sent here to discover the truth, so I claimed to be Gee’s son to get into the everyday workings of the department.”

 “That was the best idea you Bureau guys could come up with?”

 “Looking back, it doesn’t seem to have worked very well, but at the time we were convinced it was a good plan.”

 “So you were here as someone else to get proof Falsone was someone else.” Lewis asked.

 “Basically. Your government at work. You can’t tell me you weren’t suspicious about him?”

 “I wondered how we got such jamokes into the Homicide rotation but I figured it was just bad luck.”

 “No one else picked up on it either and it did make my job more difficult, but in the end I had managed to discover evidence which proved it undoubtedly that he was in fact Papa Smurf Miguel.”

 “Really? What sort of evidence?”

 “I’m not at liberty to say, but I had begun to coordinate efforts to arrest him when I
became entangled in an even bigger plot.”

 “And what would this plot involve?” Lewis kept circling the room like a goldfish. “Munch was right after all and the Future Farmers of America were in on the Kennedy assassination?”

 “Can I trust you?”

 “Sure,” answered Lewis. “You can trust me as much as any man here.” Mike looked up in horror. “I don’t know...”

 “Look, if this has got nothing to do with Falsone, then I don’t have to hear it.”

 “This part of my story cannot go beyond this room. I must believe you will never tell a soul. You’ll understand why.”

 “Sure. Cross my heart.”

 “Is there anyone behind the mirror?”

 “No. This is just a casual discussion amongst colleagues.” He had no idea, but it wouldn’t hurt to play along.

 “All right,” Mike Giardello leaned forward and Lewis sat down a the other side of the table. “The murder of Falsone was all set up by the other detectives in the department.”

 “Yeah. Pull the other one.” Lewis never really liked him, and this did not look like it was going to be the place to start.

 “I’m serious. It all began the other night while you and Shepard were out on the Agnew case and Falsone was out somewhere else. Munch started discussing Murder on the Orient Express.”

 “Which one was that?”

 “It’s a story by Agatha Christie where everyone on a train conspires to kill a man.” “So you were planning to get Falsone on a train?”

 “The train is not important. What’s important is that everyone jumped on the idea and thought of a way to give it practical application.”

 “Ahh,” said Lewis, but not really getting it. “Now who is everyone?”

 “Bayliss, Gharty, Ballard, and Munch, at first. But Kay Howard and Mike Kellerman pitched in some key elements.”

 “That so?”

 “Yes, the way the plan was, we needed a lot of involvement and everyone was quite willing to help out. So we made sure he would be at the Waterfront.”

 “If everyone knew about this plan why didn’t you cut me in on the action?”

 “We had to leave some out to make it look authentic. So it ended up being you and Shepard and we were hoping you’d catch it so it would at least look like someone was capable of solving it.”

 “Thanks for that much.”

 “Anyway, everyone had to make sure he would be at the Waterfront. Ballard agreed to meet him there for a drink. Bayliss acted as if he’d tell him something later. Once he got there, we made sure he was getting as drunk as possible, but we didn’t foresee he would become even more of an ass. So even though we were trying to stay on his good side, to keep him off guard, a couple arguments did break out.”

 “I know about those,” Lewis replied.

 “Then we can skip ahead. Munch left first to scout the location. Then Ballard and Gharty followed. After about an hour, it was my turn to go. I went up to the roof and stayed by the door. Bayliss made sure he would be closing up alone, and Falsone would take the bait.”

 Lewis sat down across the table to hear the rest of the story.

 “He did, of course. You should have seen him walk onto that roof, slicking his hair back. It took him a full thirty seconds before he noticed all of them. He said something like, ‘hey guys, what’s going on’, but no one answered.”

 “That’s a high fence up there, how did you manage?”

 “Careful planning. Ballard and I watched as the men picked him up and flung him over. He didn’t put up too much of a fight. Once it was done, they all looked at me with the same zombie stares. I thought I was going to be next.”

 “But you weren’t.” Lewis still was unsure about this.

 “No. They tell me that as the new guy, I would have to take the fall for this. They said it as if it happened all the time. That scared me enough to agree.”

 “So you’re saying you didn’t actually kill him but you’re taking the rap?” asked Lewis.

 “We all did it. I was picked to confess, so I confess. Can I have a pen or something to write it all down?”

 “Are you sure you want to do this?” He was no Frank Pembleton, and it was hard for Lewis to consider turning down a signed confession, but it still didn’t feel right. All of them? It was a sick feeling in his stomach. These people he knew for years carefully plotting and planning and pinning this on someone believed to be Gee’s son of all people.

 “I have to,” said Mike Giardello, looking directly at him. “I know what they can do.”

 Lewis handed over his pen, and Mike began to write. “You can’t believe how good it feels to let this out.”

 “You aren’t very good at keeping secrets, are you?” asked Lewis.

 “Terrible. No one in my family even spoke to me near Christmas.”

 “And they let you be a federal agent?”

 “They were in a hiring lull.”

 “Still, big difference between saying there’s no Santa Claus, and confessing to first degree
murder.”

 “Between this department and the Bureau each trying to put their own spin on things, I’m sure I won’t have to serve too much time.”

 “I don’t know about that. People around here always seem to get what’s coming them.”

 With a shake of his head, Lewis walked out of the room. “Keep an eye on him,” he said to whomever was standing closest to the box as he called the State’s Attorneys office, paper in hand. “I think I have a confession in the death of Paul Falsone.”

 “Let me guess, you’re happy to see Falsone gone, too.” he said to Ed Danvers as soon as the attorney stepped out of his car.

 “No, I kinda liked having him around. It took all the short jokes off of me for a while, but in all honesty I don’t think we can make a case out of the confession. No matter what Mike says, the FBI is going to come in here and start raising hell, and I don’t want to be within ten feet of the Feds.”

 The two men opened the door of the interrogation room and found it empty. Lewis turned and walked right back out.

 “Okay. Who let my suspect walk out?”

 “Who? Do you mean Mike Giardello?” asked Shepard. “You didn’t tell me ne was a suspect. He just waved and left out the side door.”

 Lewis looked at Danvers who simply shook his head in resigned acceptance.

“Get someone over to his house. Now.”

 Shepard was already on the phone and nodded. They took their time entering into the lieutenant’s office to relay to Al Giardello his supposed son was a fugitive murder suspect.

 “Any idea where he could have gone?” Danvers asked him.

 “No. I’m beginning to have my doubts about him being my son after all. After being away for so many years, having him around and not calling himself Al Jr. just aroused my suspicions. Do you think that any son of mine would act the way he did?”

 “I had wondered.”

 Munch knocked on the door with the update. “We went to his house; Bayliss almost slipped his disc again tripping over the bad linoleum in the kitchen. The place had been cleared out and his car is gone as well.”

 Gee sat back in his chair “It looks as if this case is just going to have to stay in red under your name, Lewis. The boys upstairs will just have to work around it. Danvers?”

 “I won’t file any formal charges, and I think it would be best to wait. If we don’t find him, we don’t find him.”

 “Gotcha.” Lewis walked back into the squad room, looked into the smiling faces of his usually serious colleagues, and hoped he was on their good sides.

END