“Have a seat, Tanner.”
Clint did as instructed. He couldn’t read Racer at all and decided not to try. His conscience was clean. He’d not crossed the line anywhere that he could remember, so there was no reason to get worked up about this summons.
“Today is your first day back to work after the weekend.” It was a statement, not a question.
Clint nodded, wondering if he was going to be read his police officer bill of rights.
“I guess you managed to irritate someone on your days off.”
“Sir?”
“Grant Holloway filed a complaint, claiming you harassed him the day before yesterday.”
Clint almost laughed but caught himself. Racer was deadly serious.
“I only wanted to ask him a question. Never even got to. He kicked me out of his office. That was the extent.”
“He’s pressing me to charge you with conduct unbecoming. That’s a fireable offense.”
“Pressing? Am I being charged with something? I was off duty and I did nothing wrong.”
Racer stood, walked around the desk, leaned his hip on the corner, and glared down at Clint. “Leah Radcliff is gone. A jury convicted her. Case closed. Drop it unless you want to find yourself looking for another job.”
Clint refused to be intimidated. “Is that a threat?”
“A warning. Stay away from Holloway and anything to do with the Leah Radcliff case. That’s an order. If you disobey my lawful order, you’ll be facing insubordination. Understood?”
Clint nodded.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’re dismissed.”
Clint got up and turned to leave, knowing that arguing with Racer was not in his best interest.
“You don’t want to be on my bad side,” Racer said to his back.
CHAPTER 15
Leah learned two things pretty quickly.
First, prison was all routine. They had meals, recreation time, and three head counts at the same times every day, lights out at ten, lights on at five.
And second, the prison was really just a collection of cliques. Some were along racial lines, others on sentence lines, and others were people who knew each other out of prison and reconnected in prison. Nora was in a religious clique. Leah figured that for the rest of her life she would have bad luck. Being stuck with Nora, a prayer-believing Christian like Tanner, was just that, bad luck. She even called herself Nora because of the Bible.
“People in the Bible had their names changed after important life-changing events. Jacob became Israel; Sarai became Sarah; Abram became Abraham. When I found God in here, I decided to become Nora, a new person. Leonora is my past.”
Leah thought that was a bit extreme, but Nora wasn’t a threat, so she decided to try to make the best of them being cellmates.
Being around Nora reminded her of Tanner. She’d told him in no uncertain terms to stay out of her life, and she doubted she’d ever see him again. More bad luck that she’d alienate the only guy who seemed to be on her side.
After a week in general population, she felt a little better than she had in segregation. True, her thoughts were more distracted now because she always had to be on guard against an attack. Pat, the woman with the tattooed neck, seemed to always be watching her. Leah was a long way from getting her balance back. Inside she ached. She stayed close to Nora, ignoring the prayers and the God talk, knowing that there was safety in numbers in this place.
She’d been in jail for a little over a month before her father’s first visit. It had taken that long for him to be approved. When the day came that she could see him, Leah thought her heart would burst.
“Oh, sweet pea, you look so thin.” He hugged her, and Leah fought the tears. She had lost fifteen pounds. “You’re skin and bones.”
They sat at their assigned places at a table in the visiting area, the noise of families reuniting all around them.
“Sorry, Dad. The food isn’t great here,” she said, though she really had no opinion about the food. Her world right now was flat and gray, the food and everything in it. Though at the moment, her dad was three-dimensional and in color.
“They put you in general population. Is that going okay?” His forehead crinkled with worry, and it pierced Leah to see how he’d aged five years in a month.
“Yeah. My cellmate is Leonora Lyons. Remember her?”
His eyebrows went up. “The basketball player?”
Leah nodded.
He smiled and the tension fell away from his face. “That is answered prayer. She’s someone you can relate to.”
He kept a grip on her hand and began to tell her what was happening at home. Prayer was a big part of what he had to say, and Leah barely listened, still amazed that anyone, especially her father, believed in prayer.
“Praying for a new attorney . . .”
“We’ll file an appeal as soon . . .”
“Got a big group at church . . . every Sunday . . .”
Leah simply savored the sound of his voice, like a bandage on an open wound, and the feel of his calloused hands on hers. Eventually he fell silent.
“Talk to me, Leah, please.”
She looked up and saw the tears in his eyes, and something broke inside. The wound ruptured and the bandage fell away. Grabbing her gut, she leaned forward, head hitting the table.
“Oh, Dad, I feel so empty inside,” she moaned. “It’s as if someone carved the middle out of me with a jagged spoon. I can’t believe Brad is dead.”
Though she thought she’d cried all the tears possible, more fell. She felt her dad’s hand on her back. He began to pray, but she hadn’t the strength to tell him to stop. By the time she composed herself, the tone sounded that indicated their time was almost up. She wiped her face with her sleeves.
“I’ll be okay, Dad. Sorry—”
Voice sharp, he said, “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He reached into a bag he’d brought with him. Leah had noticed it but said nothing.
He laid a notebook and a Bible on the table. “I got permission to give these to you.”
She started to protest but stopped. He was all she had.
“Take it,” he said. “Maybe you don’t want to read it right now, but you never know how you’ll feel in a few days or a week. There’s also a notepad if you feel like writing or drawing.”
Too tired to fight, she nodded and picked up the items.
He wiped his eyes with his palms. “I’ll be back next week. I love you, sweet pea. Never forget that.”
“It’s always harder after family visits,” Nora said when Leah was slow to get up for mealtime.
Leah sat up with her feet on the floor, head in her hands. “How do you do it?”
“My family is all in Seattle. I don’t see them much.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She looked up. “How do you act so normal, so content here in this place?”
“What do you want me to do, mope? The only thing I have control over is my attitude. I got to be here. I ain’t gonna cry about it.”
“You killed three people! How do you live with that?” Leah asked the question partly to get a rise out of Nora. She didn’t believe the woman had successfully put her crime behind her.
But Nora was unfazed. “Since you asked . . . when I first got here, I was a lot like you. Drowning in self-pity and wanting an easy way out. But my first cellmate recommended I drop a kyte for the chaplain. I did and it changed my life. I’m sorry for my crime, wish it had never happened. But I can’t take it back. All I can do is move forward and live a better life. My faith helps me do that.”
“You weren’t a Christian before you got arrested?”
“I thought I was. But I was drunk or high so much of the time, I thought I was a lot of things. Chaplain Darrel helped me get my head on straight. He can do the same for you.”
Leah shook her head. The door opened; it was mealtime. “He’ll just tell me to trust God and pray. I don�
��t believe in either of those things.”
“Suit yourself. You can do hard time if you want. I think you’ll find it exhausting in the long run.”
CHAPTER 16
Clint went into service seething after his talk with Racer. Something was wrong with everything: Grant Holloway, Terry Racer, Leah’s conviction. He had to calm down or he’d make a mistake.
His computer beeped with a message. It was from Sapp and Henderson. They asked to meet at a Dutch Bros. Coffee shop. Clint agreed and soon arrived at the location. Dutch Bros. was a drive-through and Clint didn’t see them in line. In a second, he spotted the other patrol car at the far end of the lot with Sapp and Henderson standing by the trunk, drinking coffee.
Clint was not in the mood for coffee, so he pulled up next to them and got out of the car.
Instantly he forgot his problem when he saw Vicki’s face. She was upset about something.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Big mess,” Sapp said as he opened the trunk. He pulled out an evidence bag with a dead rat inside. “Vicki found this in her mailbox this afternoon.”
“What?” Clint felt a new flash of white-hot anger.
“It’s not just this. I’ve been getting nasty, hateful phone calls, and my tires were slashed. It’s because I testified for Radcliff, I’m sure, but . . .” Her voice trailed off and she looked at Sapp.
“I testified as well, and nothing has happened to me,” Sapp said. “What about you?”
“Nothing unprovoked.” He told them about his chat with Chambers.
“Maybe you should leave it alone,” Sapp said. “The jury spoke.”
“Something’s not right. You were there that day.”
Sapp just shrugged.
Clint turned to Vicki. “You have the least time on; maybe that’s why you’re being targeted. Someone wants you to quit.”
“Well, I’m not going to. I like this job.”
“Good for you. Go to the POA. This is something the union should know about. Harassment in any form is wrong.”
Henderson shook her head. “I’m already being called a rat. I don’t want to add whiner to the mix. I just wondered if it was happening to you. I got my answer.”
Clint saw determination in the young officer’s face. “Okay. But let me know if anything else happens.”
“We will,” Sapp said. “You do the same.”
Clint left the meeting, mind whirring about the injustice that was piling up. Leah wronged and now another woman, Henderson, feeling unjustified wrath. What on earth was happening?
Later in his shift, since the radio was quiet, he decided to make another stop. His first training officer had retired three years ago, and he lived in Clint’s beat. Clint took a chance he’d be home and available. When he turned the corner, he was rewarded by the sight of Parker out mowing his lawn.
The older man looked up and smiled when Clint pulled to the curb. Then he turned the mower off.
“Out here mowing your own lawn?” Clint chided. “Don’t you have grandkids for that?”
Parker smiled and mopped his brow. “They don’t do it the way I like it.”
Clint laughed. Parker was OCD—that was for sure. It was good to be trained by him. He was a stickler for crossing t’s and dotting i’s.
“To what do I owe the honor?” Parker walked to where Clint stood next to his patrol car. They shook hands.
“Oh, this and that. I had a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
Parker listened while Clint gave him the highlights about Leah, about Holloway, and about Racer and the complaint. Parker let Clint finish before he said anything.
“Hum” was all he said at first, but Clint waited.
“I remember Radcliff. I thought she had a lot going for her. I was sorry to see her hook up with Draper.” He folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “You know you’re dealing with the Hangmen, don’t you?”
“The Hangmen?” Clint was genuinely perplexed. “That sounds like something a group of cops in the 1890s would call themselves. Back when law enforcement was less civilized.”
“That’s probably where they got the name.”
“They? Cops in Table Rock?”
“Yep.”
“Why would a group of cops call themselves the Hangmen? Are they trying to dispense justice in a frontier sort of way?”
Parker chuckled. “You still don’t gossip, huh? That’s generally a cop’s second pastime.”
“I never saw the point in it.”
“Maybe it’s just as well. Racer, Draper, Patterson in homicide, and a few others, they consider themselves the official gatekeepers, or Hangmen, of the PD.”
“Gatekeepers?”
“They decide who gets what special assignments, plum transfers, who stays, who goes, who gets in trouble, who doesn’t, who hangs, and who doesn’t.” He shrugged. “It’s a good old boys club.”
A light went on. “I have heard about it; I just didn’t believe it. We have a command structure—”
Parker snorted. “The brass are politicians at heart. Politicians often don’t want to make the hard decisions. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the Hangmen step in.”
Clint looked hard at his old partner and mentor. “Wait, you condone this nonsense?”
Parker held up a hand. “It’s not that black-and-white. Yeah, they’re egotistical jerks. But every once in a while, they step in for the greater good. You remember that gal they hired a few years back, the one who looked as if a stiff breeze would knock her over? Had no business in a uniform with a gun, but she knew someone.”
Clint thought for a minute. Vaguely he did remember a woman who’d failed just about every field training parameter.
“She bombed out of field training, right?”
Parker shook his head. “She did, but they weren’t going to fire her.”
“If she graduated the academy—”
“She was a protected class, a woman, and they eased every test they could to get her out of the academy, to help her graduate. She was a hazard in the field. It was only a matter of time before she got herself or someone else hurt. The Hangmen solved the problem.”
“How?”
“I don’t know the specifics, but she quit.”
“You’re okay with that?”
“Look, should it work that way? No. I’m not against gals, worked with lots who were qualified. Police work is dangerous enough for cops who pass everything with flying colors. That poor trooper from last year is a case in point. The brass wasn’t doing that girl any favors bending rules to keep her in order to satisfy a quota. It was all politics. Would you rather she stayed on the job and got herself or someone else killed because she wasn’t up to the task?”
“No, but—”
“I remember: you’re a Boy Scout. You’re right—it shouldn’t work that way, but it does. Until the brass gets tough enough to buck politics and do the right thing for officer safety, groups like the Hangmen are going to operate below the radar.”
Clint struggled to keep his tone level. This was wrong in so many ways. “Suppose they don’t just cull officer safety problems? Suppose they start acting in their own self-interest?”
Parker nodded. “That is a problem. Brad Draper was heavy-handed in the field and at times a liar. The fact that he was never investigated is the answer to that question. He was dangerous, but he was a Hangman.”
The conversation with Parker bothered Clint. He kept praying for an answer and heard nothing.
After work he got together with his friend Jack, a Jackson County deputy sheriff.
“Am I that naive?” Clint asked after telling Jack about the conversation.
“Nah, you just concentrate on the job at hand. A lot of people don’t.” He hiked a shoulder. “I’ll admit sometimes I like to stand around on slow nights and tell stories with other cops, listen to gossip, talk about arrests. I’ve heard rumors about the Hangmen for years.”
“You never said anything.”
“It was innuendo. I know you don’t take much stock in that.”
“Innuendo, but you believe they exist.”
“I guess I do.” Jack paused and played with his coffee. “I don’t believe they affect the sheriff’s department yet.”
“Yet?”
“Well, this is 975.” Jack lowered his voice, using a code that meant confidential information. “You know Duke Gill?”
Clint nodded.
“He was tight with Draper. I think he’s one.”
“Noncops are Hangmen?”
“If they serve a purpose. The rumor is the Hangmen aren’t only about street-level police work. Gill works for Harden Draper, so the Hangmen have reach in business. He concerns me because he’s related by marriage to Grady Blanchard. Some of us think they might try to spread the club to the sheriff’s department. But we have a contingency plan—that’s all I’ll say.”
Clint sat back and sighed. “Wow. How many officers in my department do you think are involved in, uh . . . ? How many guys are Hangmen?”
“Hard to say. I’d bet it’s a small number. I heard they all have tattoos of an old-fashioned gallows somewhere on them. Don’t worry, bud; you’re not surrounded by people who make their own rules and get people fired or not.”
“But to have the power to get anyone to quit or get fired . . . you’d think a lot of people would have to be involved.”
Jack tilted his head. “Just the right people with clout. It will be interesting to see if the Hangmen last without Draper. He had a lot of juice because his family is so politically connected, the head of the snake, so to speak.”
Clint considered this. “What about Leah? Did the Hangmen have the juice to influence her trial?”
“That’s a tough one. She certainly didn’t make them her fans by killing Draper. A lot of us in the sheriff’s department didn’t think that self-defense was so far-fetched. Gossip on the grapevine is sixty-forty Leah acted in self-defense. But DA Birch is tight with the Drapers. I was surprised he didn’t recuse himself.”
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