Exacting Justice

by TG Wolff

  Cruz nearly ran a stop sign, distracted by coordinating between the women in his life. He hit his lights, figuring it was safer for everyone. Ten minutes later, he walked into the hospital room where Officer Nicholas Kroc laid on the hospital bed, still and alone. Eyes closed, his face was tipped toward the door. Strong features sat in a face too harsh to be called handsome. The nose had been broken at least once. He had a golf ball-sized knot over one eye.

  Kroc eyes opened. Thick blueish circles curved under the bloodshot brown eyes.

  “Officer Kroc. I’m Detective Jesus De La Cruz. Are you able to talk?”

  Kroc nodded as he tried to sit up. The normally simple motion was a full-body effort, the difficulty of which showed on his face.

  Cruz rushed to his side, helping his fellow officer.

  “I got it,” Kroc said. Using his hands on the thin mattress, he pushed his hips higher on the bed, then used the controller to raise the top of the bed until he was sitting. “Can you hand me my water, Detective?”

  “Call me Cruz.” He followed the gesturing hand to the meal tray and the hefty mug with a bendy straw. He handed it to Kroc then waited patiently while the man sucked it dry. “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Not as bad as I feel. Dehydrated, two dislocated shoulders, and this pretty decoration on my forehead. The rest are bumps and bruises. Nothing I can’t sleep off.”

  “Tell me what happened?”

  “Friday night, we had a buy set up with a new supplier, after hours in an auto mechanic shop. There were five of us. I have no clue what happened. I remember feeling dizzy. The place spun, like I was drunk or something. I guess I passed out. I had to. The next thing I remember is a room. Cement block. Smelled like meat section of the grocery store. Everything was so fucked up. It took me forever to figure out I was hanging upside down.”

  “Upside down?”

  “Yeah. My feet were, like, tied together.” He pulled back the covers to expose thick bandages on his legs at the ankle. “The room was silent, but it wasn’t, you know? I knew I wasn’t alone. I turned, twisted until I could see there was a man next to me. Drew Martin. The guy I went in with. Something scraped on the floor, and I turned the other way. Another guy hung upside down. One had his wrists cut and was bleeding out into a bucket.”

  “Was he alive?”

  “His eyes were open. Like, gravity pulled them open, you know? I heard more scraping behind me, and I felt something grip by back of my shirt. I started shouting that I was Cleveland police. Undercover narcotics. Shit. I don’t remember half of what I said. I was whipping around, trying to get free, then pow. Next time, I woke in the dark. Everything hurt. I was tied up and had a sack over my head. I don’t know how long I was there, but the woman came not long after I woke up.”

  “The suspect, did you get a look at him?”

  Kroc frowned as he thought. “I saw…feet in boots…jeans…white lights…gloved hands. Blue gloves. Apron. It was stained. I never saw above the person’s legs.”

  “You started in a garage. Did you wake up in the garage?”

  “I don’t think so. Once I’m back on my feet, I’ll check it out. I would recognize the wall, it was inches from my face. The cement block was painted grey but marked up, like the paint job was years old.”

  “You were found in an abandoned house a long way from the garage. Even if the room was in the garage, you still were moved. How? Were there cars in the garage? Was one a black van?”

  Kroc lifted his hand to rub it through his hair, the IV tube hanging from his arm. “I don’t remember a van. I was careful to scope out the scene. We didn’t know the people we were meeting. There were two SUVs, one white, one black. There was a silver minivan. Then there was a Cadillac, a Honda and a Buick—all sedans.”

  Cruz was disappointed at the lack of a van, but it was reasonable to expect the suspect would use different vehicles.

  “You said a woman found you? What woman?”

  “A reporter. She came into the room. I stayed very still, not knowing who it was, where I was. I heard a sharp gasp, and then she called nine-one-one. I shouted and tried to get the bag off my head. She was talking to the operator. She pulled the bag off. I was never so happy to see the fucking sun. I was lying in a lump in the corner of a room like a bag of trash.” His voice cracked.

  Cruz gave Kroc the moment he needed. He’d had his own moments facing his mortality, knew how it could choke the life out of you. Kroc blinked a few times, clearing his eyes.

  “What happened to the guys you were with?”

  “No idea,” he said. “Not a clue.”

  “What were they selling?”

  “Anything you wanted. We were buying heroin.”

  “You have names?”

  “Drew Martin, like I said, was with me. We were meeting with Ricky Rinada and his crew. Melvin was his muscle and a little guy called Carson. Didn’t get last names.”

  “Who set the buy up? You?”

  “No. I don’t have those kind of connections, yet. A friend of Drew’s set it up. A guy named Parker.”

  Cruz heart raced. “Christopher Parker?”

  “Yeah. The shit was supposed to be there but never showed. Drew was pissed. Rinada wasn’t happy either.”

  “You know Parker’s wife? Hayley?”

  Kroc shook his head, then push his mug Cruz’s way. “You mind refilling this? Can’t seem to get enough to drink.”

  “You want ice?”

  “Nah. Long as it’s wet, I’m good.”

  He filled the cup in the bathroom. “You know how I can find the woman?”

  “Her card is in my pants pocket. In the closet there.”

  Cruz went to the tall, narrow cabinet that functioned as a closet. In it he found one set of men’s clothing, neatly folded. “You know I have to take these. Evidence.”

  “I know. You find the card?”

  “Yeah, it’s here. Francesca Pelletier. Akron Beacon-Journal. What was she doing up here?”

  “That you’ll have to ask her, Detective.”

  Francesca Pelletier sat on the edge of her corduroy couch. Her elbows were perched on her knees, her hands clasped together.

  “Ms. Pelletier—”

  “Call me Frankie. Everyone calls me Frankie.”

  “Tell me how you happened to find a man tied up in an abandoned house in Cleveland.”

  She leveled misty blue eyes at him. “First, tell me how he is. I hung around the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  Cruz took measure of the woman sitting anxiously for his answer. Francesca Renee Pelletier was twenty-seven, a native of the Cleveland suburb of Highland Heights. She’d worked as a reporter in Indiana and Idaho before coming home to Ohio and the Beacon-Journal. The serious set to her face did not detract from her prettiness. She wore her honey-wheat blonde hair straight, parted down the middle and hanging past her shoulders. In spite of her age, her eyes were sharp, bold, unintimidated. She’d been with cops, around cops often.

  “He is recovering. Do you know who he is?”

  She shook her head. “No. What is his name?”

  Cruz ignored the question. “How did you come to find him?”

  “A call came in to my desk in the newsroom and was forwarded to my email.” She pulled her smart phone from the pocket of her Butler University sweatshirt, thumbed through the screens, then held the device out for Cruz’s inspection.

  Cruz read the message: “3624 West 46th St. Save him.”

  “I didn’t know what to make of it at first. I Googled the address, expecting it to be in the Akron area. But it wasn’t. I stayed at my parents’ house last night, Mother’s Day and all, so I went over to see.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A house with boarded up windows and doors on the first floor. It didn’t look abandoned but like someone was working on it. The front door was plywood and was padlocked shut. The side door was closed but not locked. I got my flashlight and pepper spray from my car. I found
him in the living room. He was so still. I called nine-one-one and he woke up kicking and shouting while I spoke to the operator.”

  “Why did you go inside?”

  Frankie Pelletier held her hands open, palms up. “Curiosity? I’m a reporter. I investigated. Besides, what were my other options? Call the Cleveland police and tell them I received an email to hurry to this address?”

  “You didn’t recognize the man? Or the address?” She shook her head. After an hour of talking with the reporter, Cruz was convinced the suspect had drawn Frankie Pelletier into his warped game.

  “You think he was going to be the next Drug Head? Is he a drug dealer? Why didn’t he follow through…not, uh, that I wish he had. Can’t you at least tell me his name?”

  “You know the drill, Miss Pelletier. His name is not being released at this time.”

  “Frankie, and I’m not the press. Okay, so I am the press but I’m, like, involved. Come on, Detective. If I’m going to have nightmares about him I’d at least like to have a name to scream.”

  She tried for sardonic humor, but more truth came through than Cruz thought she wanted him to see. “Nicholas. And he isn’t a drug dealer.”

  “That’s why he stopped, isn’t it? He didn’t want to hurt an innocent.”

  “Today’s incident is under investigation and no connection has been made to prior drug-related deaths.” Cruz choked back his distaste. She sounded far too sympathetic to the serial killer. “Nobody has the right to play judge, jury and executioner, Miss Pelletier.”

  Her expression sobered as though he’d slapped her. “It’s good to know you know that, Detective.”

  Cruz cut through the crime scene tape and entered the house on West 46th Street. He flipped a light switch, happy to have the glow of bare bulbs illuminating the place. The house smelled of sawdust and paint.

  The floor was thick with construction dust except from the side door to the living room, where a clear path was worn. Foot prints, gurney wheels, and the marks of something heavy being dragged. Kroc was unconscious when he was brought to this house.

  Cruz thoroughly inspected the house for the wall Kroc described. The basement walls were an old white, not gray. The ceiling was just seven feet high, with not enough clearance to hang a grown man upside down.

  No walls on the first or second floor matched Kroc’s description. The garage was wood, the interior unfinished, and a dead end. His cell rang. “Tell me something good, Yablonski?”

  “An old friend of ours accepted my invitation to dropped by.”

  “He lawyer up?”

  “Nope.”

  “On my way.”

  Christopher Parker prowled the small interview room. He’d lost weight since Cruz had first met him. His cheekbones and collar bones now jutted out of his skin. He still walked with a bounce that had a 1970s’ chicka-bow-wow track running through Cruz’s head.

  “Sampling too much of his shit,” Yablonski said.

  “Hard to believe that cute kid came from him.” Cruz handed Yablonski the thick case file. “This could be the break we need. Make sure you—”

  “Not my first rodeo. Watch and learn.” Yablonski smirked as he left the observation room. When he walked into the interview room seconds later, he had his game face on. “Please sit, Mr. Parker.”

  “What the fuck is this? You drag me out of my house and then leave me here for an hour? Say what you gotta say and then I’m walkin’.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Parker,” Yablonski said again without expression.

  Parker strutted across the room, his gaze fixed on Yablonski, then dropped into the metal chair.

  “Friday night. You set up a meeting between Drew Martin and Ricky Rinada.”

  “You can’t prove it.”

  “I can prove it. Now this is going to go a whole lot faster if you stop jerking me around about the easy stuff. You set up a meeting between Drew Martin and Ricky Rinada.”

  “Yeah, so what, I introduced them. Ricky was a friend of Bear McKinley. With Bear gone, Ricky was looking to make new friends. Nothing illegal about that.”

  “Who picked the place?”

  “Ricky.”

  “When did you set the meet up?”

  “What?”

  “When? Day before. Week before, Month before.”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at a fucking calendar.”

  “When, Parker?”

  “I set it up, like, the weekend before. The day and time. I got a text with the place an hour before.”

  Yablonski looked at the mirror, right where Cruz stood.

  Parker draped his thin body over the steel table, a long, lean arm cradled his head. He raised a one finger salute to the mirror.

  “Why didn’t you show?”

  “I wasn’t s’posed to go. Just set it up.”

  “That’s not the way I heard it. You didn’t show. Drew and Kroc went in a man down. Pissed Ricky off too, I heard. Probably figured a setup.”

  Parker lifted his head, hollow eyes bored into Yablonski’s. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about? I didn’t set nobody up. My kid was sick. That’s all.”

  “You tell Drew and Kroc your kid was sick?”

  “Fuck no. Was none of their business. None of yours either.”

  Behind the mirror, Cruz dug in his coat for his phone, absently dialing the number.

  “Does this mean you’re on your way home, Detective?” Hope filled Aurora’s voice.

  He looked at his watch. Nearly 2:00 p.m. “No, baby, it doesn’t. Is everyone still there?”

  “Yes. We throw one hell of a Mother’s Day party. Your sister is a goddess.”

  “I told Mari I would babysit next weekend.”

  “I heard.”

  “Aurora, was Jace Parker in school on Friday?”

  “Jace?” she asked with the confusion that comes with the right name in the wrong place. “Jace Parker? No. He wasn’t. Strep throat, I think. Did something happen to him?”

  “No, baby. His father is spending some time with us. I’m just fact checking. I’ll be home—”

  “Oh no you don’t. Take three minutes and wish your mother a Happy Mother’s Day. Here she is.”

  “Hola, Mama.” While he spared time for his mother and then Aurora’s, Yablonski carried on with Parker.

  “Have you talked to them since Friday? Drew? Kroc? Ricky or the others?”

  “No. I texted Drew, like a hundred times. Figure he’s pissed I ditched. Tried Ricky a few times, too.”

  “Where were you today before noon?”

  “Man. I didn’t get up until one. I was in my fucking bed. What the fuck is going on?”

  “Something went down on Friday, Parker. Drew, Ricky, Carson, Melvin are gone. Kroc was found in a vacant house, tied and beaten, this morning.”

  “Why aren’t you asking Kroc what when down?”

  “We did. He doesn’t remember anything after showing up at the garage. Except you weren’t there.” Yablonski’s tone made the accusation.

  “Like I said, my kid was sick.”

  “And you’re such a good daddy you sat by his bed holding his hand.”

  Parker leapt to his feet. “I’m a good father. We ate ice cream and watched Spider-Man.”

  Yablonski narrowed his eyes. “You shoot up in front of Jace?”

  Parker’s jaw throbbed.

  “Yeah. You’re a candidate for Father of the Year.”

  Parker glared at Yablonski, his gaze sliding to the armed officer at the door and then back to Yablonski. “We done here?”

  “I want their phone numbers. Names and numbers of anyone who knew about Friday night.” Yablonski tore a sheet of paper from a legal pad, slid it across the table with a pen.

  When Parker got to work, Yablonski left the room to meet Cruz. “What do you think?”

  “Hell, if I can tell. I called Aurora and his kid was out of school sick.”

  “Our suspect was keyed into one of those men. Men like that can be paranoid. They
don’t like what they don’t know.”

  “Men like that can be arrogant, too. So full of their own shit, they can’t tell they are drowning in it.” Cruz watched Parker shove the paper at the uniformed officer babysitting him. “What time does the sun set today?”

  “Around seven-thirty. What are you thinking?”

  Cruz had pushed off the reports that needed to be done, racing home instead. Following instinct, he walked into the backyard and found Aurora with her head back, laughing with his sister. She saw him then, and her smile went from beautiful to radiant.

  Rushing past the welcoming embrace of his family, he went straight to her. His mouth covered hers, tasting chocolate on her lips. He nibbled, wanting more.

  Aurora pulled back. “Easy, Tiger. The family.”

  He didn’t want easy. He wanted her, all to himself. The family closed in around him, and so he played the good host, talking to everyone who had come to past the day under his roof. He played the good son, dancing with his mother to a tinny song coming from a Bluetooth speaker.

  When his house was finally empty of guests, he played the good lover. It was the role he savored, coaxing breathy sighs, desperate whimpers, choked screams, explosive orgasms from the woman in his arms.

  “I can’t think,” Aurora said, her eyes dazed. “I think you fucked me stupid.”

  His laughter bounced off the walls. “Best compliment ever.” He dropped his head to the soft wealth of her breast.

  “Zeus,” she said in three syllables, arching into him. “You can’t. I can’t. Not again.”

  He hummed with her nipple between his lips. “I can’t. At least not this soon. But you can. I just have to…”

  Cruz patrolled I-480, making loops that passed the three locations where the highway crossed in and out of the limits of the city of Cleveland. His gaze combed the highway shoulder as the sun touched the horizon.

  “Everything’s quiet.” Yablonski’s voice came over the radio. He ran similar patrol loops on I-90. “People must be on their good behavior.”

  “It is Mother’s Day. Not exactly a drinking holiday.”

  “That would depend on your mother. Mine is sweet as pie. Erin’s? Now that’s a different story.”