Code Four

by Colin Conway

  “Maybe so, but it’s broken for me.”

  Thomas leaned forward, peering at him closely. “Do you really think that, Ray?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wow.” Thomas sat back. “Well, I don’t know what to say. Wait, I suppose I do. Outside of representing your employment interests, let me provide you with my final services as your union representative, okay?”

  Zielinski shook his head. Worthless. The man is worthless.

  “Most of your IA bullshit was pretty minor,” Thomas said. “Letter of reprimand stuff, maybe a day or two suspension. Even failing to report that collision wouldn’t have gotten you fired. But when you forced your way into Barden’s house and assaulted him? That’s a first-degree burglary, whether the prosecutor elects to charge you or not. That alone was enough for Baumgartner to fire you, DOJ or not. But then you barge into Sanita’s apartment and arrest the guy? Don’t you know when to quit?”

  Zielinski glared at him but said nothing.

  “Sorry,” Thomas said sarcastically. “Asked and answered. But let’s be clear: when you went into Barden’s apartment that first time, flashing your badge, you didn’t just commit burglary. You did it under the color of authority. That’s a civil rights violation. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but here it is anyway. The only reason the prosecutor passed on charging you is because she knows DOJ is going to hit you federally. You’re going to be charged with a civil rights violation, so it isn’t worth the time and expense for the DA to move on this.”

  Zielinski’s mouth fell open. He struggled to process what Thomas was telling him. Federal charges? How could that be?

  “You didn’t do yourself any favors with your interview when DOJ was here, either,” Thomas told him.

  An image of Danielle Watson flashed in his mind. “Is she the one charging me?” he asked mechanically.

  “No, but I’m sure she passed on her findings.”

  “Dale, I don’t…how can this be happening?”

  Thomas pressed his lips together. “You did this to yourself, Ray. You need to own it.”

  Zielinski felt his eyes grow hot with tears. He clenched his jaw. “I’m a good guy,” he said hoarsely. “What about Garrett? What about what I did there?”

  “Wardell Clint arrested Tyler Garrett,” Thomas said evenly.

  “I was there,” Zielinski insisted. “I fought with him in that alley, I—”

  “Ray, none of that matters. What matters is what else you did, and now you have to answer for it. I suggest you find yourself a good attorney and prepare your case.”

  Zielinski shook his head in disbelief. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I couldn’t say. Your attorney—”

  “Jesus, Dale, just give me an idea!” Zielinski shouted. Several patrons glanced over, some surprised, others irritated.

  Thomas wasn’t moved by the outburst. “I think you should expect to do some time.”

  “Time?”

  “Incarceration,” Thomas specified.

  “Oh, Christ,” Zielinski muttered. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.” Thomas spoke in a flat voice, not sympathetic at all. “I think you’re going to find yourself behind bars, Ray. Your best hope now is that it’s at the jail and not prison.”

  Zielinski shook his head at the thought. “No. That…that can’t be.”

  The two men sat without speaking for a short time. The hum of conversation and the clatter of the baristas working filled Zielinski’s ears, and he focused on that. The rest was too big, too foreign for him to consider. It didn’t seem possible to him. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way.

  Finally, Thomas broke the silence. “I’ve done all I can for you, Ray. Good luck.”

  Thomas waited a second for a response. When there wasn’t one, he got up and walked away, leaving Zielinski alone at the table, trying to make sense of the wreckage of his life.

  Chapter 58

  Édelie Durand folded the shirt and placed it on the couch.

  She was folding her second load of laundry. The third and final load was in the dryer now.

  There were plenty of chores for her to catch up on. She’d let many things fall behind over the past year. When Roland’s illness progressively got worse, they quit doing house projects. In home ownership, maintenance items quickly add up when ignored.

  House projects weren’t the only thing that got ignored. Relationships with friends. Church activities. The list was long.

  Durand grabbed a T-shirt and folded it. She carefully laid it onto the pile.

  But the distractions couldn’t all be attributed to taking care of Roland. In the first part of the year, there were work trips to Tulsa, Shreveport, Cincinnati, and Spokane. All of them were for different reasons and of various lengths, but it was the final one—Spokane—that she resented. That wasn’t true, she decided.

  She resented them all. It was Spokane she hated.

  Durand grabbed a pair of Roland’s pants. She deftly folded them and put them on the edge of the couch.

  When news broke about Tyler Garrett’s arrest, her team walked out of the airport. The department’s travel agency was closed by that time of day, so Durand rented a new car. She called the hotel and got three rooms for another few days. She wasn’t sure how long they would be.

  At the department, they couldn’t even get close to Garrett. He was taken directly to jail and booked for the murder of four gang members. Afterward, she and her team attempted to put together the pieces of what had occurred, but no one was happy to see them arrive back at the department.

  Chief Baumgartner wouldn’t interact with them while the biggest incident in his career was occurring. Therefore, he assigned Captain Hatcher to provide assistance.

  Hatcher herself seemed overwhelmed by the fallout surrounding Garrett’s arrest so she tasked Sergeant Kelly Ragland with watching over the DOJ team until she had a handle on things.

  Unfortunately for the captain, she didn’t understand that was like throwing Brer Rabbit into the Briar Patch. Without Union President Dale Thomas around, Ragland turned into the biggest leaker since Deep Throat.

  Initially, they found a quiet spot in the chaplain’s office, but once Ragland got going, Danielle Watson realized it was best to get him away from the department. She suggested a walk across the street to O’Donnell’s Irish Pub. Ragland seemed absolutely thrilled by the idea, especially since the Justice Department was buying.

  “You know what I heard?” Ragland asked. “He tried to kill himself.”

  “Garrett?” Esteban Curado asked.

  “That’s right,” Ragland said after a sip of beer. “But that crazy bastard Clint saved him from doing it.”

  “Lucky for Garrett,” Curado said.

  Ragland smacked the table. “He still blew his own ear off, though. Creased his face good, too.”

  “You saw it?” Watson asked.

  “No, but I heard about it. It’s supposed to be nasty.”

  The bit about the ear ended up not being true, but most of Ragland’s scuttlebutt proved valuable.

  “And Ray Zielinski,” Ragland said after another hoist of his beer. “I never thought much of the man, but he sure came through when it really mattered.”

  Curado leaned forward. “Yeah? How was that?”

  “He was Clint’s ace in the hole,” the sergeant said with a laugh. “He’s actually the guy who found Garrett. Can you believe that? Got himself into a real donnybrook with Garrett in an alley somewhere. That guy,” Ragland said with a shake of his head, “I’m gonna have to apologize the next time I see him.”

  Watson cocked her head. “Isn’t Zielinski suspended?”

  Ragland thought about it for a moment. Then he shook his head and laughed. “That stupid son of a bitch doesn’t know how to stay out of trouble, does he?”

  Durand folded another pair of Roland’s pants and stacked them with the others.

  When the doorbell rang, she walked reluctantly to the do
or. She opened it to find two white men in jeans and T-shirts politely smiling at her. The older man took off his baseball hat and clutched it to his chest. He smacked his younger counterpart in the arm and that man quickly removed his hat, too.

  “We’re here for the bed,” the older man reluctantly said.

  Durand pulled the door fully open. “It’s over there.”

  In the middle of the room sat an adjustable bed. It had been stripped of its sheets. Months ago, the couch and chairs had been pushed to the outside walls to make room for it.

  The two men hurried in. Before they began, they both glanced sheepishly at her.

  She didn’t envy their work. When they delivered a bed, they were the harbingers of death. When they later retrieved it, they were like ghouls, whisking away the final memories of a loved one.

  It took them twenty minutes to disassemble the bed and carry it out. When they were finished, the older man came back and said, “We’re finished.”

  Durand nodded at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said then hurried back to their truck.

  She shut the door and returned to her folding.

  Roland had died before she made it home. Even if she would have left when originally scheduled, she would never have seen him again.

  She hated Spokane for that. Had they run their department in an honorable fashion, she and her team would never have been sent out there. She would never have heard of Chief Baumgartner, Captain Farrell, or Tyler Garrett. Those men had robbed her of the final moments of her husband’s life.

  The report her team drafted was damning. The offenses they listed were overwhelming: officers committing murders, officers dealing drugs, officers committing crimes under the color of authority. On top of that, a clandestine investigation was led by a well-respected captain. It didn’t take much to get the Justice Department to authorize a consent decree investigation.

  Durand wanted to be a part of the returning team, but her supervisor declined her request. It was obvious she could no longer be unbiased.

  Instead, the department authorized her family leave to grieve the loss of her husband.

  What good was this extra time now? She should have taken time before Roland was gone, but he told her to continue working. It was true that she didn’t argue hard enough to stay at home with him. No one wants to see the love of their life wither away before them.

  Instead, she pretended to be strong while he slowly died alone.

  She gently folded another pair of Roland’s pants. When the dryer beeped, she would collect that last and final load. Later in the afternoon, the Salvation Army was coming by to pick up his clothes.

  Durand pushed the stacked clothes aside to clear a spot for her to sit on the couch that was pressed against the far wall. The pants and shirts teetered briefly before she caught them and repositioned them. Then she dropped onto the sofa.

  Staring into the emptiness of the room left behind by the missing bed, she didn’t feel like crying. She didn’t feel like yelling, either. In fact, she didn’t feel like much of anything.

  Édelie Durand leaned her head against the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling.

  Chapter 59

  Clint arrived at the homicide scene before Jody did. By the time she pulled up in the evidence truck, he’d already done his walk around the outer perimeter, sketching the external layout. He waited for her before proceeding into the inner perimeter, as per protocol. The man inside was reportedly seated at his dining room table, a plate of food in front of him and a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Jody parked, greeted him, and retrieved her camera. As she waddled ahead of him, rapidly snapping pictures with her customary ease, he commented, “Any day now, huh?”

  She grunted, looking through the lens and pressing the button. “Not soon enough. Pregnancy sucks, Wardell. I’m telling you.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No, you can’t. You have no idea. If men had to do this, the species would die out.”

  He didn’t argue, partially because she was nine months pregnant, and partially because he thought she might have a salient point.

  They worked their way inside the crime scene until they finally reached the dining room. The fading odor of steak and potatoes still hung in the air. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, but Clint had to admit it was better than what they would have encountered if the body had sat at that dinner table for a few days before they received the call. In this case, the call came from the man’s own wife. She hadn’t confessed exactly, but her comments had been vague enough that Clint already knew what his first line of investigation would be. He’d already ordered her detained and her hands bagged so that a gunshot residue test could be conducted.

  The man sat at the head of the small table. His body was mostly upright in the chair, leaning straight backward. His head dangled over the back of the chair as if he were staring up at the ceiling. Brain matter and blood hung from the shattered remains of the back of his skull and pooled on the floor beneath him. More blood spatter adorned the wall behind him. Jody took a multitude of shots of that while Clint examined the victim without touching him.

  “Can you get a shot of this?” he asked her.

  “Just a sec.” She took another round of pictures of the blood spatter, then returned to his side. “I already got the overall and a close-up.”

  “Can you take an extreme of the entrance wound? You see that scoring?”

  Jody nodded. “Contact wound?”

  “I believe so.” Whoever had shot this man had put the end of the barrel to his forehead and pulled the trigger. The burning powder and the heat from the barrel created a black, burnt circle around the outside of the entrance wound.

  Jody took several shots, then continued her sweep of the room.

  “Hey guys,” came a voice from the doorway.

  Clint looked up to see Marty Hill. He gave him a terse nod and went back to visually scanning the victim.

  “Hey, Marty,” Jody said. “You on this?”

  “Lieutenant Flowers sent me to help. Where are we at?”

  “He’s dead,” Clint said.

  Jody and Marty exchanged a look.

  “I’m going to get some overalls of the other rooms in the house,” Jody said. “I’ll be back in five.”

  “All right,” Hill said.

  Clint didn’t reply. He knew it was likely he and Marty would never be on friendly terms again, and he accepted that. Bringing Tyler Garrett to justice had meant everything to him, and he had accomplished his goal. He’d accrued evidence, done surveillance, broken rules, and found a way to tie it all up in a neat bow that the prosecutors were able to use at trial, which was expedited by all parties. Clint knew why the prosecutor wanted to speed things up—that always worked to their advantage. But why Garrett and his lawyers pushed for a speedy trial was a mystery to him, unless it was as simple as them believing they would win.

  They didn’t.

  Clint sat at trial each day next to the prosecutor and heard one damning piece of evidence after another presented against Garrett. Then he got up on the witness stand and testified, putting the nails in the man’s coffin. Usually, when Clint testified, he followed the protocol of looking at the prosecuting attorney while the question was being asked and turning to the jury to answer it. It was a simple tactic, and it helped overcome the naturally stilted delivery in his testimony.

  But at Garrett’s trial, Clint listened to the question while looking at Garrett. He answered the question while looking at Garrett. And he waited for the next question still looking at Garrett. He looked the man in the eyes, just as he had in that zombie house living room. He looked past the ugly injury that creased his face, and past the posturing expression he wore for the jury. He peered into what he could only think of as the man’s soul, and all he saw there was darkness.

  When the jury came back with a conviction, Garrett had the poor form to look surprised, and then affronted. For hi
s part, Clint felt a sense of satisfaction miles beyond any other case he’d ever worked. Garrett had dirtied the badge, and Clint had brought him down. It had been two years of difficult work, and a great amount of risk. He’d suffered losses, and Marty Hill’s friendship was a casualty, but in the end, it was worth it.

  He’d do it again.

  It might mean for cold relations with many of his colleagues for the rest of his career, but he could still be professional and work a case with anyone Lieutenant Flowers assigned.

  Hill moved a little closer to where Clint stood. “Hey, Wardell?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Can we talk for a second?”

  Clint looked up. “About what?”

  Hill hesitated, seeming to gather his thoughts. When he spoke, he did so with a sincere tone. “First, I have to say that I’m still a little pissed about what happened, if I’m being honest. But I’ve been thinking about it and reading all the reports. The more I do both, the more I think I understand why you did what you did.”

  Clint stared at him. “All right.”

  “I’m not saying it was cool. You should have brought me into the loop.” Hill frowned. “But I realize you didn’t do what you did to be malicious or to screw up my case. I understand what you were working toward.”

  “Okay.”

  Hill chewed on the inside of his mouth. “I don’t know if you’re sorry for doing what you did—”

  “I’m not.”

  “—but I’m sorry for blowing up at you. What I called you was shitty, and it’s not what I really think of you.”

  “All right.”

  Hill stared at him, expectantly. When Clint didn’t speak, Hill asked, “Is there anything you want to say to me about this situation?”

  Clint considered the question. He realized Hill was trying to mend fences, and he was mildly surprised at his own reaction at the effort. For most of his life, he hadn’t cared what anyone thought of him. He focused on the task at hand. But he realized that there were a few people whose opinion he actually did care about. He supposed that made them friends.