Relic: The Morelville Mysteries - Book 1

by Anne Hagan

  “It’s Dana. I’m just checking in with you to see if everything is okay.”

  Still a little dazed at what I had lying on the desk in front of me and now equally angry that she was checking up on me, I went off. “I can handle it Agent Rossi! I’m a big girl and an officer of the law. I don’t need your help protecting myself from an idiot that’s gone off halfcocked!”

  “Handle what? Wait a minute… Have you gotten something else from your stalker?”

  Oops! I let my anger get the better of me there! I put my hand over the receiver and took a deep breath.

  Not a patient person, Dana was all over my silence. “You did get something from her, didn’t you?”

  “Sally is my problem and I’ll handle her.” I measured my words and tried to calm down.

  “I’m in Chicago. Our lab here has the envelope you gave me. I should have results back soon. I’ll be back in Ohio within the next day or two to go over them with you so keep the beer cold.”

  She hung up before I could respond. Damn her! I really don’t need these distractions right now. I need to stay focused. I took another deep breath. “Focus!” I said out loud to no one but myself. Then, I stepped out of my office and found Holly sitting at her desk nodding into the phone. She hung up and turned to me.

  “You need to get over to the Shanty in Morelville. They’re reporting a shooting.”

  “That’s a new one! On my way,” I said over my shoulder as I strode out the door.

  On my way to the village, I thought about Sally. She was becoming quite a problem. And then, Dana Rossi’s face clouded my vision. I shook my head to clear all of the unwanted thoughts. I needed to be focused for whatever lay ahead.

  I drew my side arm and walked in cautiously. It wasn’t a big place and there were only a few people inside. I found Mike Cottrell, the local volunteer Fire Chief, standing just inside the door with a loaded shotgun. He was looking a little tired. He usually pulled the night shift on the paid squad in Zanesville. The shots probably woke him and he’d grabbed the gun and went running toward the danger. That was Mike.

  He nodded toward me as I stepped inside. “Sheriff.”

  I nodded back then turned my focus to the center of the room where Travis Stearman and two other men were standing. I’d say my day was starting to look up but the two other gentlemen both had pistols pointed at Stearman.

  I walked over to the group, pointed at Stearman and said, “Just the man I wanted to see.” Then, I looked at both of the other two men and, addressing the group, I asked, “What seems to be the problem here?”

  A young man with gang tattoos I’d never seen was staring daggers at Travis and pointing a 9mm pistol at him. That was a gun the general population around here didn’t carry. Both the gangbanger and Travis were sporting the telltale signs of swelling faces after a couple of thrown punches managed to land.

  Mike’s shotgun was trained on the group of three men. I’d known him a long time. Pulling the trigger is something I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do if any of the three did anything else that was remotely threatening.

  Addressing the heavily tattooed man with his pistol trained firmly on Travis, I said, “Everyone put your weapons down.” I lowered my own service pistol but I didn’t holster it.

  The tattooed gangbanger swung around and shot wildly at me as he teetered off balance from his sudden movement. Instinct made me duck as he started his motion so his shot missed badly. In the commotion, Mike’s shotgun boomed and Travis grabbed his leg as he crumpled to the floor. He’d taken a hit from some scattering buckshot. The tattooed man regained his balance and scrambled for the door as Mike made a quick decision and retrained the shotgun on the second banger. He dropped his gun on the floor and kicked it to Mike.

  I looked toward the owner, Kasey, who was standing frozen, eyes wide behind her service counter and yelled, “Call 911 for a squad and back-up!” Then, over my shoulder to Nick, “Keep Travis here when they get here and try not to shoot anyone else!” I took off after the escaping shooter.

  He had about a 10 second head start but there aren’t a whole lot of places to go in Morelville and he wasn’t getting anywhere fast with his “jailing” pants down around his ass making it difficult for him to run. The big city fashion trend was certainly working in my favor.

  “Stop! Police!” I was closing fast.

  Droopy Drawers hazarded a look over his shoulder and squeezed off a shot. His round grazed my left shoulder as it whistled by. I felt an immediate sting and simultaneously became annoyed about having a good uniform shirt ruined.

  I stopped, took a stance and fired. The gangbanger hit the ground and summersaulted forward a couple of times from his former momentum. I’d caught him good in the right shoulder. No more shooting at me for him! He tried to push himself up with his gun still in his hand but his arm collapsed and he writhed in obvious pain.

  I was on him within a couple seconds of him hitting the ground. I disarmed him quickly and cuffed his hands behind his back while he screamed about his pain and my brutality. I hauled him off the ground and began reciting his rights to him but he likely never heard them as he continued to swear and carry on.

  We walked back to the Shanty, with me propelling him forward from behind. By the time we reached the porch entry, he was losing the will to fight. Inside, Travis was sitting on the floor looking a little pale and holding a dish towel over his bleeding leg. The other man’s weapon was still on the floor beside Mike who still held a shotgun on both of them. Mike kicked it to me.

  I shoved the banger into a booth unceremoniously then flex cuffed Travis and the third man. Mike lowered the shotgun and handed it to Kasey. He glanced over the flesh wound on Travis’s leg then approached the banger in the booth to look at his shoulder. Kasey moved into action. She handed me the shotgun then grabbed towels and headed toward Mike and the gangbanger. I knew both of the wounded would be okay. Neither was bleeding that badly.

  “Kasey stop; Mike can handle it until the squad gets here. Tell me what the hell happened!”

  She took a deep breath and then sank into a chair. “I was tryin’ to get ready for the lunch crowd. I was rolling out some Stromboli dough in the kitchen so I didn’t see everything. Travis came in first and ordered at the counter. He was sitting back there in the corner, facing the door, drinking a Pepsi and waiting for his food. Those other two came in and sat down with him.”

  “Have you seen them in here before?”

  “Nope. Never, but it seemed like he knew them. I went out to see if they wanted anything. They asked for beer but I don’t sell no beer at 11:00 AM. They didn’t want food, so I went back to the kitchen. Next thing I know, they’re yelling at each other. I come up front and went to dial Junior to tell him I had problems over here. That’s when the smaller guy jumped up, yanked a gun out from under his shirt in front and started waving it around. I ducked behind the counter.”

  “I heard them scufflin’ around out here and then a shot went off. Next thing I know, Mike come bursting through the door yelling. They stopped. While he held them in check, I called 911 and now here we all are.” She was still shaking.

  My back-up, Deputy Spence, arrived. I set him about taking a formal statement from Kasey and then I began to search the three men. I seized I.D.’s, money, weapons, bullets and cigarettes. Everything went into evidence bags.

  The heavily tattooed man’s I.D. listed him as DeWayne Dawes. The other unknown man didn’t have I.D. on him. He said his name was Bryant Quinn.

  The squad showed up on the scene. I hustled Stearman and Dawes outside past a small but growing crowd of onlookers and into the bus, leaving the statements from Kasey and Mike up to Spence.

  Both men were triaged at Genesis with non-life threatening injuries. We cooled our heels in small, curtained off ER rooms waiting to see an ER doc to get everyone sewn up. Holly sent over another patrol deputy to help with the babysitting duties. We separated Stearman and Dawes and then I start
ed in questioning Stearman.

  “What was all of that about?”

  Travis shrugged and tried to look like he was playing it cool.

  “Look, Dawes is big time gang and not from around here. That’s bad news for you. What’s worse is, not only did he or his buddy Quinn take a shot at you before I even got there; Dawes took two shots at me. He’s going to jail for that. Do you think he and his gang brothers are going to take that out on the system or on you?”

  Stearman was starting to look worried. I was getting through. “Look, I don’t like outsiders who have no business here coming into my town where they don’t belong and causing trouble.”

  That seemed to strike a nerve and finally he started talking. “They’re sayin’ I owe them money. I don’t owe them nothin’.”

  “Where are they from? Dawes is covered in gang tattoos I haven’t seen around here before and the other guy had a couple of similar ones on him.”

  “Chicago.”

  “They’re coming to the middle of nowhere Ohio from Chicago looking to put a squeeze on you and you don’t know anything? I didn’t just crawl out from under a rock. What are you really into?”

  “I’m in pain. My leg’s hurtin’ bad. When am I gonna see the doc?”

  “It will be your turn soon.” I tried to sound compassionate even though I badly needed information.

  “I’m sorry to be short with you but I really have my hands full. There’s a Secret Service agent in town checking out all the counterfeit bills that keep popping up. He has a pretty tight schedule that has my office hopping. I have too much going on right now so how about we get this all straightened out and then we’ll both be on our way?”

  Travis turned white. His eyes darted about. “The Secret Service in Morelville?”

  “Here in the county, yes. Counterfeiting is a serious, federal offense. They don’t mess around with counterfeiters. Actually, I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Me? Why me?” He looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “Because you’ve been named as someone potentially connected to or associated with the counterfeiters. Now we have gangbangers from Chicago down here looking for you. It doesn’t look very good for you, from where I’m sitting.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with counter…, with fake money. I swear I don’t. I don’t know nothin’ about it. Hell no, I don’t.”

  “Good to know. So you’re telling me that all of the money I took from you back at the Shanty will check out when I give it to the agent to run through their labs?”

  What little remaining color Stearman had in his face drained from it. He began to shake. He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth on the gurney he was sitting on. Finally, he began to speak again.

  “It’s all Quinn and Dawes, Sheriff, I swear.” He was whispering but it was pretty quiet in the ER in the middle of the day on a weekday. A throat cleared a couple of curtained rooms down. Travis looked nervously in that direction.

  Now that he was talking, I didn’t want to risk him getting spooked into believing the Chicago gang had more power over him than the Secret Service.

  “You just hold tight over there Mr. Dawes. You’re up next.”

  I continued to question Travis Stearman but he didn’t offer up any more information than that he had gotten all of the counterfeit money he was passing from the gang bangers. I switched places with the patrol deputy watching Dawes and started in on him.

  “You took two shots at me today. Minimum, that’s assaulting a police officer. Ohio usually likes to go for attempted murder. Either way, you’re going up for a long time. It might help you out to be cooperative right now. I get that the money comes from you. Where do you get it?”

  Dawes just stared at me or, rather, he stared through me. He kept his mouth shut. He was a nut for Agent Webb to crack.

  When the doctor showed up to work on Dawes, I went back to the waiting area and called Webb to fill him in. Since I could confirm Stearman’s connection to the counterfeit money, I had something of value to pass along to him. I didn’t have a lot of info but we were inching closer to the source of the funny money.

  Chapter 8 - Dana

  I was back in the Field Office early after my night of little sleep. I followed up with the U.S. Marshall’s Service on the extraction plan for Antoine “Freestyle” Robinson. I left him a basic message about getting in touch with me. When he called, I’d give him the info he needed to arrange a pick up by the Marshall’s. He’d be taken care of and out of my hands.

  I called down to the lab. So far they only had a partial print from the envelope I’d gotten from Mel. They were running it through AFIS. No hits yet. I was stuck in a waiting game there.

  Next on my list was research on the murder at Stateville Correctional Center. It wasn’t hard to find info on the incident and the prisoner that was killed. It was a bit harder getting the prison to open up the visitor log and let me know who’d been in to see “Vincent” the next day. And, to make it just that much more difficult, Vincent himself was proving even more elusive.

  Once one Vincent Harris had been released from Stateville, he made exactly one visit to his parole officer; the next day. He hadn’t been seen by his P.O. since and he had vacated the halfway house he was supposed to have been staying in. If he was still alive, he was off the radar. His visitors the day before the rec yard murder were going to be my only hope of getting a lead to get to Relic and the shipment that was creeping up on us quickly.

  While I waited for a copy of the visitor log to be emailed to me, I looked up his previously known addresses and I searched several databases for his next of kin. I managed to unearth a few living relatives with what I hoped were their current residences.

  Restless, and it still being barely 8:00 AM, I ventured down to the lab to plead my case for a little urgency on Mel’s stalker case. It turns out, I didn’t have to beg or plead at all. AFIS had gotten a quick hit on the partial. The tech informed me it was my lucky day. I wasn’t so sure when I pulled the perps rap sheet a while later.

  Tracking down Vincent, my only decent lead to Relic, was difficult. I hit the pavement after my visit to the lab and knocked on the doors of what known family of his that I could find but, since his prison release, most had claimed they either hadn’t seen him or they didn’t know he was out. Some were completely indifferent. They just didn’t care about the whereabouts of the man.

  I was in a bad mood when I rolled back into the field office but, once I booted up my computer and I saw that the visitor logs for Stateville had been emailed to me, a little hope glimmered. Finding Vincent might be a lost cause but figuring out who delivered the hit order to him from Relic could be the key to cracking the whole investigation wide open.

  The log, unfortunately, didn’t look very helpful. Vincent had, had only two visitors that day. Neither were members of his gang who might have been carrying a hit order. One visitor was actually his mother. I’d already spoken with her. She’d claimed no knowledge of his current living arrangements and repeatedly said she was praying for his safety. If she was acting, she was convincing. My gut feeling was that her statements to me were genuine. She loved, missed and feared for her son and she did not seem to be putting on an act about any of that.

  Vincent’s other visitor the morning of the prison hit had been an attorney. I’d made the rookie mistake of not looking up his case. The man may have been his attorney of record or he may have been there on a different pre-text. I buckled down and tackled the state’s case file against Mr. Harris.

  Harris’s attorney of record on the case that sent him up to Stateville had been a court appointed public defender. Surprisingly, the gang didn’t spring for a high dollar attorney for him which told me a lot about his level in the hierarchy of the gang. He was an expendable foot soldier.

  Harris had plea bargained for a lesser sentence and skipped having a trial altogether. His vi
sitor the day of the murder wasn’t the attorney from his original case. It had been a local Chicago area criminal defense attorney in private practice, Jonathan Joseph. I looked him up but didn’t glean a lot other than some case file numbers. I hadn’t personally heard of him and none of the cases I found seemed very high profile. I asked a couple of people around the field office, but since no one in the department really got involved in courtroom work, I got nowhere.

  I called the law offices of Jonathan Joseph, Esq. figuring I might as well just try and get in to see the man. An answering service picked up and informed me that Mr. Joseph was in court. I left a message for him to call me back without referencing anything about the case I was working on. My hope was that a call from “Agent Rossi”, no other I.D. given, might generate enough curiosity to at least get a return call.

  It was late in the day. I didn’t know how long Joseph would be in “court” or when he checked his messages. I tried his number again after 6PM central time. This time, I got voicemail. I left a message with my contact info and a request for a meeting. It was all I could do.

  There really wasn’t anything else I could do in Chicago until I could connect with the attorney. Even then, if a face to face was necessary, a teammate in the field office could do it. I picked up my belongings, left the building and took a series of trains to Midway. I intended to get back to Cleveland tonight, come hell or high water.

  Chapter 9 – Motocross & Madness

  Mel

  Two Saturday’s a month, from spring through fall, I tried to take the day off. There were capable officers under me who could handle most issues. Personally, I was usually just a phone call and a few minutes away if I really was needed. I hoped I wouldn’t be needed today and, especially, tonight.

  Saturday evenings were special. Beth, my 14-year-old niece, was into quad racing and after a full and successful season of that last year, this season, she was attempting to go from four wheelers down to two by crossing over into motocross. There was a motocross event at the county fairgrounds late this afternoon that was open entry, rain or shine. There would be a female class if they could get enough participants. Beth was raring to go and Kris and I were both excited for her. It would be a great sanctioned event to give her a real feel for the two wheeled sport and a look ahead to the summer season.