by James Tarr
Boehmer was a bit nonplussed. “Really? Is there a problem with one of our cases? Something to do with the evidence we’ve submitted?”
“Something like that. Something that we need to discuss in person.”
“In person?” Boehmer’s schedule was booked solid for close to two weeks. There was no way he could make time to fly to D.C. “Can you just email me the particulars? You know how busy it gets, and I really can’t take any time away from the office to head out there. At least not for a couple of weeks.” And Stephenson fucking knew that. His request was highly irregular, anyway. There was a proper procedure for these sorts of things. Hell, the FBI had a proper procedure for everything.
“I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes,” Stephenson told him. “Meet me in the parking garage. We can talk over lunch.”
“You’re in Detroit?” What the hell?
“Yes, I flew in this morning. I meant it when I said this was important. Parking garage, ten minutes.” And he hung up.
Boehmer’s head was spinning. He shook it and looked across the car at Stephenson, who had aged very well, and still had all of his hair. Bastard. “You’re really hitting me over the head with a sledgehammer here. Exactly who did you reach out to to find this hotshot hired gun who managed to get himself killed by a stupid private investigator?”
“I didn’t reach out, I reached up,” Stephenson told him. And gave Boehmer a name.
“You can’t reach out—up—and get another name?” Boehmer ran a hand through his thinning hair. What Stephenson was asking wasn’t something in his usual skill set.
“I….” Stephenson stopped, and breathed hard through his nose. “I’d rather not. This is a problem we should be able to solve ourselves without further involving people who really don’t want to know anything more about this. They just want to know that it’s done. You can call him, if you want, just to make sure I’m not crazy or something, but you saw for yourself.”
Anderson’s file was sitting on the console between the two of them. In it Boone had copies of Anderson’s fingerprints as well as full sets of the two men whose prints he matched, Beiers and Gutierrez. He’d even brought along a jeweler’s loupe so his former white collar crime unit co-worker could see for himself that the world as they knew it had changed.
“Yeah,” Boehmer said woodenly. “Ourselves.” He was no fool. He knew what needed to be done for the good of the country, and it didn’t really bother him morally, but…. He shook his head, then looked at the Director of the FBI Lab. “You work with a lot of trained killers in your position? And how are we supposed to pay for something like that, even if we knew somebody? Did this guy of yours who got killed get paid?”
He really didn’t want to think about having to kill Anderson himself. Just walking up to him, and shooting him, or maybe pulling him in on one pretense or another, only to shoot him in some abandoned warehouse or something…..cold blooded premeditated murder took stones he didn’t think he had. He’d bent the rules and a few laws to put people in jail before, but this was a completely different level of danger and illegality he was not comfortable with.
Stephenson shook his head. “I presume so, but that was handled above my head.”
“Well, thanks a lot for dropping this in my fucking lap.”
“I’m not going away, it’s still both our problem.” He looked at Boehmer. After New York Stephenson had been promoted to a supervisory position, and never worked in the field again. Not only had Boehmer worked cases longer, he was the SAC for Detroit—he had to be a little closer to the nitty gritty than Boone was. “You don’t have any ideas?”
“Not right now, but I’ll think of something. I guess I have to.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They were about an hour from their last stop of the day when Joe came over the in-cab radio. “Dispatch to all trucks, dispatch to all trucks, we just heard on the news that they expect a verdict in the Fellatia Washington case tomorrow morning.”
“What did he say?” Aaron said from the captain’s chair in back.
The radio clicked back on, and they could hear laughing in the background. “Felanie Washington. What’d I say? The Felanie Washington case.” They heard more laughing, and someone muffled the mike for a few seconds. “No I didn’t. Did I? Anyway, considering the Detroit Police Department has publicly admitted they have contingency plans for rioting if the officers are found innocent, I want everybody working tomorrow to pay attention. Don’t let yourselves get caught in the middle of anything. You’ve got armored cars, use them. You don’t like the look of something, you’ve got an angry crowd or whatever at a stop, just drive away. Screw the delivery, you can go back another day. Most of you have probably never seen a real riot. Trust me, you don’t want to. Dispatch out.”
Aaron came forward and pressed his face against the mesh. “Fuck, who am I with tomorrow? Am I with you? Are you working tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m your driver.”
He sank back into his chair with a sigh of relief. “Thank God. Well, shit should be interesting, anyway. Should I bring my shotgun?”
“If the shit hits the fan, a rifle’d be a lot more useful.”
Aaron always got there before Dave, and the next morning Dave was amused to see Arlene’s pink Geo Tracker in the lot. Dave parked next to it and went inside.
“What’s up with your ride?” Dave asked him when Aaron showed up pushing the day’s deliveries on the metal cart.
“Just in case the city burns today, that’s the one car we’ve got that I wouldn’t mind so much if it got torched.”
“Ah.”
“You wearing your plates?” Aaron asked him, tapping his own chest. His knuckle made a hard thunk. Soft body armor did a great job of stopping pistol bullets, but rarely did shit when it came to rifles. Most Kevlar vests had pockets in front (and sometimes back) where the wearer could slip in hard armor plates—steel, titanium, and ceramic were the three most common types.
After they loaded up Dave headed out the long chute toward the armored overhead door, and they waited while it clanked up out of the way, sounding like a medieval portcullis. When it was clear he drove straight across the street to the parking lot and stopped next to their cars.
“You want to take bets?” Aaron said to him, as he opened the rear of the Geo.
“On what, the verdict? Or a riot?” Dave popped the rear of the Cherokee and pulled out his rifle case. He stowed it in the cab of the truck along with another nylon shoulder bag.
“Either.” Aaron closed up the Geo and climbed into the rear of the truck carrying a black nylon rifle case with a number of pouches sewn on the outside.
“If the verdict was Not Guilty, and this was Chicago or Los Angeles, then yes, I think we’d have a riot,” Dave said. “Detroit? I don’t think so. I just don’t think the people who live here will get that worked up about it. They had to bus in half those protesters at the courthouse.” As Dave pulled the truck out of the lot they both looked out the windows and watched Reggie pulling a riot shotgun out of his Impala. The sight seemed a little surreal.
They’d just left their fifth stop of the morning when Aaron, from the back, asked, “Why don’t white people riot?”
“What?”
“Nobody worries about white people rioting in this country. The entire city is on edge and thinking there’s going to be blood in the streets if the cops get off. Because the blacks are going to riot.”
“You getting philosophical today?” Dave asked him. “Those riots in London a few years ago. Those were all white people. Or a lot of them.”
“Right. In England. So it’s not a racial thing, if white people in other countries are rioting. But in this country, white people in this country don’t trash whole neighborhoods and burn cops cars. Nobody anywhere has ever said ‘I hope them white-trash burger eatin’ beer drinkin’ redneck motherfuckers don’t smash in my windows and steal all the stuff out of my store.’ It’s not a skin color thing, it’s a cultural thing.”
Dave shrugged. “I think anybody’ll riot, you give them a good enough reason.”
Aaron snorted. “Like winning a Super Bowl?”
“Shit, if the Lions won the Super Bowl, I’d be looking around for the second coming of Christ, ‘cause you know the end has gotta be near. Check the Bible, I’m pretty sure that’s one of the signs of the Apocalypse. That and the Cubs winning the pennant.”
They made two more stops, then Aaron checked his watch. “Eleven thirty,” he observed. “They say when they thought the verdict would come down?”
“You know as much as I do.”
“Did you bring your competition rifle?” he asked Dave.
“No. My competition rifle is a little long for inside the truck, plus it’s got a muzzle brake on it. And I forgot earplugs, so if I fired that thing in here I’d be deaf.” Muzzle brakes vented the expanding gases from a cartridge up and to the sides, to reduce felt recoil in competition guns, so the shooter could make quicker follow-up shots. Modern brake designs were very effective, but made the rifles much louder to fire, as much of the blast was directed almost back toward the person firing the weapon. “This rifle’s a little shorter, and it’s got a military flash hider on it. So if I have to fire it out the gun port I probably will only have partial permanent hearing loss. You bring that rifle I had Doug build up for you?”
“I’ve only got one rifle,” Aaron told him. “How many do you have?”
“Just those two.” Aaron didn’t make any smartass comments about Dave being a spoiled rich suburban white kid, because he knew how Dave had come by his money. “If you need to grab mine, it’s got a red dot scope on it, a small Aimpoint, and the dot’s already turned on. Just put the dot on the target and pull the trigger.”
“The dot’s on? Won’t you burn out the battery?”
Dave laughed. “Batteries last for five years on those things.”
“Five years?” Aaron could hardly believe that. “Turned on?”
“Yeah, why do you think the military likes ‘em so much?”
“What kind of ammo did you bring?”
“My competition stuff.” Aaron gave him a look, and Dave explained. “The most popular kind of rifle ammo in 3-gun competition is the same damn stuff that was developed specifically for the Special Forces in Afghanistan. Black Hills….shit, what does the military call it? Mark 262 Mod something-or-other. Heavy, 77-grain stuff that will knock down targets way the hell out there. It will also do a good job of going through car doors, if it comes to that today.”
“How many magazines did you bring? I’ve only got three twenty-round magazines, and two thirty-rounders.”
“Shit, if I have to pull that thing out of the case I’d be surprised. Even if there are cars on fire everywhere, I’m just planning on driving out of any trouble,” Dave told him. “Tires flat, engine smoking, wheels on fire, whatever. Chauffeur you straight home in this, I have to. Actually, we’ll go to my place. City’s on fire, time to head north. But, just in case, I brought a whole bag of loaded magazines, ten or twelve thirty-rounders. Between the two of us that’s about five hundred rounds. Unless the zombie apocalypse happens while we’re out here we’ll be fine.”
“That would be so cool.” Aaron stared out the windows at the passing scenery. Some areas of Detroit already looked like sets out of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie, all they needed were the zombies shambling around.
“Yeah, for about five minutes. Then it would suck for the rest of your life.”
Twenty minutes later they were at a Comerica bank on the west side of the city, almost in Livonia. Dave kept his head on a swivel as Aaron loaded the dolly at the side door with boxes of coin. The assistant manager of the bank walked into view, maybe coming back from lunch, and gave Dave a wave. Dave couldn’t remember his name exactly, Lloyd or Roy or something like that. He waved back.
The manager walked around the front of the truck as Aaron was bent down facing away from him, and said with a smile, “Stick ‘em up.”
Aaron spun around, pistol already in his hand and coming up, even as Dave’s mouth opened to yell “NO!”, but he knew he was going to be too late. Aaron finished the turn as his Colt came up, pushing out toward the threat, and…..nothing. He paused. The manager’s eyes were saucers, his hands open and in front of him in a defensive gesture.
“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, that was stupid, that was the stupidest thing to say,” he said, his mouth flying a hundred miles an hour. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Oh my God, as I was saying it….”
Aaron stuffed his pistol back into its holster. “The fuck, Roy? You know how close I almost came to shooting you. Holy shit.” Aaron looked a little freaked out himself. “’Stick ‘em up’? Really?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the assistant manager kept saying. “Oh, man. Here, let me get the door for you. Christ, thanks for not shooting me…” his voice faded as the two of them went into the bank.
Dave’s heart was pounding in his chest, and all he’d been was a witness. Aaron had reacted so quickly, Dave hadn’t even had a chance to yell. Saying Stick ‘em up to an armored car guy on the job, talk about stupid. Heart loud in his ears, he went back to idly scanning the parking lot and the few pedestrians, looking for anything out of place. Aaron was back out less than ten minutes later, and Dave hit the switch for the side door.
“Can you believe that shit?” Aaron said as he plopped back into the captain’s chair. “What a dumbass. Fuck.” He looked at his hands. They weren’t steady.
“You okay?” As far as he knew, Aaron had never had to shoot anybody. He’d seen him point his pistol at a few people, justifiably, but that was it.
“My hands are shaking from the adrenaline or something. Hit me on the way out. Man. I heard him, and spun around, and all I was looking for was a weapon. Saw his hands. If he’d had anything in his hands, a cell phone or anything, I think I might have shot him. It wasn’t until I saw his hands were empty that I looked up and saw his face, saw it was Roy. Fuck.”
“I don’t think he’ll make that mistake again,” Dave said. “I think you made him piss his pants. I know it scared the crap out of me.”
“Yeah? Let’s get out of here. I’m hungry.”
Their third stop after lunch was a Kroger grocery store off Greenfield Road, and Aaron had to unload nearly two dozen boxes of coin out of the back door. The store manager insisted on only ordering coin once a month, so their shipment, when it came, was usually large.
“Might as well get this over with,” Aaron said with a groan as he heaved himself out of the chair. “Keep an eye out.”
“Yeah.” The grocery store was one of their busiest stops, and there was always a large amount of foot traffic in and out. Like pretty much every grocery store in the city, the customers were limited to using grocery carts inside the store. Outside the exit doors at a ten-foot radius was a line of concrete-filled steel posts spaced about a foot apart; customers would push their carts up to the posts, then take their bags of groceries out and walk to their cars. This prevented the carts from being stolen or, just as likely, pushed by a senior citizen back to their home, never to be seen again.
There was no place to park where they weren’t in the way, or weren’t being passed on either side by shoppers going in and out of the store, so Dave’s head was constantly moving. The Kroger was in an L-shaped strip mall, right in the corner between a beauty supply store and a dollar store. In the mall parking lot were easily fifty cars—too many to scan every one, and even if Dave did see someone sitting in their car, so what? Lots of people sat in their cars for a while after arriving, listening to the radio or talking on the phone or whatever.
He’d learned over the past few years to ignore the parked cars, as he couldn’t do anything about them. The thing to worry about was anybody who got close to the truck on foot, or any vehicle that stopped nearby. However, there were always vehicles pulling up to the door, in front of or behind or sometimes right next to the damn truck. Because
the shoppers couldn’t push the carts out to their cars they had their spouse pull the car up to the front of the building to load. In short, the location was a nightmare when it came to spotting approaching threats.
Dave saw a guy walking along the front of the beauty supply store toward the Kroger. He looked messed up, drunk or stoned or something, not staggering but definitely not right. As he got about fifty feet away he paused, and watched Aaron for a few seconds. Aaron was still pulling boxes of coin out of the back of the truck.
The guy was stocky and in a dirty shirt and pants. He had a medium tan and looked Chinese, or Hispanic—it was weird how those two ethnicities sometimes looked similar. Nothing in his hands, no weapon, but he definitely was eyeballing Aaron. The man had moved into the possible threat category.
“Aaron,” Dave said cautioningly through the mesh.
“Yeah, I see him,” Aaron said quietly. He set a box of coin down and turned to stare at the guy. The guy just stopped where he was and stared back for a three count, then looked around, like he wasn’t sure where he was.
“Jesus,” Aaron grumbled, and grabbed the next box of coin. He set it on the dolly, then turned to look inside the truck at Dave, who was peering out at him through the steel mesh. “Well?”
“Coming this way slowly now that you’re not looking,” Dave said. There was a little tension in his voice now. Possible threat had now become probable threat.
Aaron turned and stared directly at the man, who was now thirty feet away and had moved off the sidewalk into the traffic lane, but still hadn’t shown a weapon. He was in his mid- to late-twenties and wearing work boots below jeans and a button-down shirt that had seen better days. The man blinked back at Aaron, then started walking along the building straight toward the Kroger, like he’d changed his mind or realized he was walking in the wrong direction. He crossed directly behind the truck, then began angling away from it. Aaron shook his head, stared at the man for another second, then turned to grab the small bag of cash destined for the Kroger safe. As soon as Aaron turned back to the truck the man, who apparently was watching their reflection in the window glass, turned toward the truck and took two steps.