by P J Parrish
“What?”
She looked at him warily.
“What happened?”
“Brian,” she said. “Something happened to him and I couldn’t leave him.”
He could see something in her face, pain, guilt maybe, and he knew she had to be referring to the incident that Gibralter’s department had covered up, the event that Doug Delp had been unable to unearth. He waited, tense. A part of him, the man who had been deceived, didn’t want to hear one more damn word about Brian Gibralter. But the other part of him, the cop part, needed to know.
He sat down next to her. “What happened?”
She pulled in a breath, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.
Louis went to get her a Kleenex. He sat down again, waiting. “What happened?” he repeated.
She was unable to meet his eyes. “I didn’t find out until weeks later. He wouldn’t tell me. He had been to a doctor, someone the department made him see. I think the doctor was the one who told him to tell me.”
Louis waited. The wind picked up outside, sending a low whistle through the windowpanes.
“He was on patrol alone because his partner was out sick. It was March. I remember because it was very cold for March.” Her voice dropped to a soft monotone. “He turned into an alley, thinking he had seen something suspicious. They had been watching the neighborhood because there was a lot of gang violence. He should’ve called for help but he didn’t.”
Louis suddenly knew where this was going. What he didn’t know was how bad it would be.
“They...a gang...they jumped him. He was alone and they jumped him. They took his gun.”
Louis shook his head.
“Then...” She squeezed her eyes shut. “They held his gun on him and made him undress. They stripped him. It was so cold that night. But they left him there, naked.”
It took her almost a full minute before she was able to speak. “They handcuffed him to a fire escape in the alley and beat him. Then they spray painted...things, words, things all over his body.”
She took a breath and the rest rushed out in one long sigh. “He was there for hours before another unit came by and found him.”
“What happened to the kids?” Louis asked.
“Kids?” She seemed bewildered. “The gang?” He didn’t want them prosecuted because then he would have had to tell the whole department what had happened. The cop who picked him up and one or two others, including his captain, were the only ones who knew.”
Louis remembered what Delp had told him, the drug bust for the gang members that came out of nowhere.
She had stopped crying. She was just sitting there, staring vacantly at some point over Louis’s shoulder, as if she didn’t even know he was there anymore. When she focused back on his face, there was a naked look in her eyes, as if what she had just told him was about her, not her husband.
For several minutes they just sat. He listened to the wind pound the glass and the crackling of the fire. Her soft voice interrupted the silence.
“We came here about a year later. He didn’t even tell me about the ad in Police Chief magazine. He just told me we were going, that he could start over, build his kind of department.”
Louis leaned back on the sofa, closing his eyes.
“I thought things would change,” she said softly, “but they didn’t. I didn’t fit in here either.”
He knew she was talking about being black, or half-black half-Asian. Loon Lake wasn’t like some backwater boonie in the South but it was undeniably white. White in its racial makeup and white-bread in its small-town mind-set. He had come to feel like an outsider in the short time he had been here. He could only guess how a lonely woman like Jean Gibralter could survive.
He moved to hold her, to comfort her the way she had him, but he stopped. There was no future for them. He knew that now, even if he hadn’t been so sure an hour ago. His anger toward her had dissipated but he knew he wasn’t beyond judging. Even after this ugly mess was over if she decided to leave her husband, he was not sure he could give his heart to her again. He wasn’t sure he could trust her again.
“I think I’d better go,” she said, rising.
She went quickly to the door, putting on her coat. He rose and watched as she pulled on her gloves. She looked up.
“I’m sorry, Louis. I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said.
The door opened, a flurry of snow blew in and she was gone.
CHAPTER 33
Louis swung the Mustang around a turn and up the hill. The bald tires spun on the snowy road but finally caught hold. The car moved slowly up through the pines.
A small sign marked the entrance to the driveway -- LITTLE EDEN -- and the pines parted to reveal a clearing with a large log cabin in the center.
Louis pulled up in front and cut the engine. He frowned, seeing the smoke curling from the chimney and the shiny white Ford Bronco parked at the side. He picked up the raid file from the passenger seat and searched for the owner’s name. Eden, David and Glenda. Damn, they were here now? He hadn’t counted on having to deal with anyone.
He had decided to come to the cabin only that morning, not telling anyone at the station. It had been an impulse, partly to get Zoe out of his head, but mainly because he was hoping to find something to back up his suspicions before he went to Steele. But as his eyes traveled over the cabin he knew he had no idea what he was looking for.
The front door opened and a man stood behind the storm door, staring at the Mustang. Louis got out and started up the shoveled walk. The man didn’t seem to relax any seeing Louis’s uniform.
“Mr. Eden?” Louis asked.
He cracked open the door. “Yes?”
Louis held out a hand. “Officer Kincaid, Loon Lake police.”
The man shook his hand tepidly. He was about fifty, balding, beefy, and swathed in a red sweater with reindeers prancing across his chest. He had the buffed-pink look of a successful middle-aged man, buttressed by his wealth and unaccustomed to such sordid things as visits from cops. Louis remembered reading the Edens were from Dearborn, the man a management type with Ford. He wondered why he hadn’t sold the cabin after the raid.
“I’m sorry to bother you this morning, Mr. Eden,” Louis said. “I didn’t know anyone would be here.”
“We don’t come much anymore,” Eden said, “just over the holidays.”
A woman’s face appeared behind him. “What is it, David?” she asked.
“Nothing, Glenda. Go back inside.”
She gave Louis a blank look and retreated. “What do you want, officer?” Eden asked.
Louis took off his sunglasses, remembering something his lieutenant back in Ann Arbor had told him, that nobody liked talking to a cop in sunglasses. He realized he disliked it when Jesse wore his.
“I would like to look around,” Louis said.
“What is this about?”
“Just a routine follow-up, sir.”
“It was five years ago,” Eden said.
“I know, sir. We’re closing the case officially. I just need to take some notes.”
“Is this really necessary? I don’t want my family upset.”
“I don’t need to come inside, Mr. Eden, or talk to anyone. This will only take a minute, I promise.”
David Eden hesitated then gave a curt nod.
“Thank you, sir.”
Louis could feel the man’s eyes on him as he went back to the Mustang. Finally he heard the door close.
Louis gathered up the raid file and stood back to look at “Little Eden.” The property was large, enough so that no other cabins were visible. The woods in front had been cleared to provide an impressive view of Loon Lake below. The cabin itself was a new prefab structure, the kind built from blueprints bought from the back of a home-decorating magazine, and it had the contrived rustic charm of a Disney World exhibit. It was secluded and private, a perfect place for a gang to hole up, even if it didn’t look like the kind of place where two kids would
die.
Louis dug through the file, finding the diagram that detailed the positions of the bodies and the officers. It gave no sense of what the place really looked like. But it was always like this. The dry starkness of reports and diagrams never prepared you for the physical reality of a crime scene. That’s why he had always liked to see the places where things happened, like Pryce’s house. Maybe it was just vibrations, intuition, like Jesse had said. Whatever it was, it always helped clear his thinking.
He reached back into the car and picked up a second folder, which held the extra crime scene and autopsy photographs. Tucking both under his arm, he set off around the side of the cabin and into the backyard.
The back was cleared about sixty feet from the cabin to where the heavy woods began. There was an aluminum Sears shed off in a far corner and a large woodpile, but nothing else on the lot. Louis turned to face the cabin. He was facing due east and had to bring up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
The back of the cabin was plain compared to the front, with two windows on the first floor and a sliding glass door that opened onto a snow-heaped deck. There were three windows on the second floor and a large satellite dish on the roof.
Louis fished Gibralter’s report from the file. He needed to refresh his memory on the sequence of events.
Pryce had been the first on the scene, calling for backup after the kids refused his order to come out. Gibralter, Jesse, Ollie and Lovejoy had arrived soon after. Even after tear gas was fired into the cabin, the kids refused to come out. At this point Gibralter was in front with Pryce, Jesse in the back, with Lovejoy and Ollie positioned on either side of the cabin.
According to the report, Johnny Lacey ran out the back door, took off toward the woods and was tackled by Jesse about twenty yards from the cabin. “Officer Harrison’s shotgun discharged, hitting suspect in the left front facial area. Suspect died at the scene.”
Louis turned and looked at the woods. He could almost picture the way it went down. He could see Johnny Lacey bolting out the back. He could see Jesse chasing him, the way he had chased Duane Lacey in the snowy field outside Jo-Jo’s. He could see Jesse losing it, the way he had with the hippie. He could see Jesse going into a rage and bludgeoning Johnny’s head.
What had happened after that? Was it Ollie or Lovejoy who had pulled Jesse off Johnny Lacey? And who had been the one to pick up the shotgun and blast off Johnny’s face to cover up the beating?
Louis let out a deep breath. Jesse, Gibralter, Lovejoy, Ollie...he tried to picture them standing over the body. He tried to imagine one of them pulling the trigger of the shotgun. He could almost hear the echo of the shot in the trees and smell the powder burn in the clean air. But he couldn’t see who had done it.
He lowered his head. He didn’t want to see any of this.
When he looked up, his eyes picked up a flash in an upstairs window. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes. Someone was standing there. He pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on.
It was a teenage girl, about fourteen. She was wearing a red sweatshirt and a bunch of silver bangle bracelets that she twisted nervously as she watched him. He guessed she was the Edens’s kid and wondered briefly if she knew about the deaths at her vacation home.
Louis stared at her. Angela and Cole. Had they seen what happened in the backyard?
He went back to Gibralter’s report. Cole had been found hiding in an upstairs closet, armed with a shotgun. He could have seen something and then hid. But Angela had appeared at the back door after Johnny was killed.
At this time, suspect #3 exited the premises through the rear door, armed with a small-caliber handgun. She positioned herself on the deck and announced she intended to shoot the officers unless they allowed her to leave the scene. Officers Wickshaw and Lovejoy ordered the suspect to drop her weapon. Suspect refused. Suspect then raised her weapon and fired at officers. Officer Wickshaw discharged his weapon, fatally wounding suspect in chest.
Louis shook his head. It didn’t make sense. Angela Lacey had no prior record involving guns; none of the kids was on drugs, according to toxicology reports. Why did she overreact? Why didn’t she just surrender?
He knew there was no point in reading the other reports, they were duplicates of Gibralter’s. But maybe there was something different in Pryce’s. He fished it out, scanning it:
I heard Officer Harrison request assistance in a foot pursuit. I heard a female screaming and a shotgun discharged. I offered assistance, but was directed to remain in my position. At exactly 16:35, I heard a handgun discharged. Exactly five seconds later, I heard a second shot.
Because Pryce had been ordered to stay out front, his perspective was limited, but he had heard Angela scream. Louis looked back at the Eden girl in the window upstairs. He couldn’t prove it but he was certain now that Gibralter had lied about Angela in his report. She had been standing at the door when her brother was killed and she had fired that gun because she was afraid they would kill her too.
Why had they let her get out of the cabin in the first place? And why hadn’t they shot to wound not kill? He stared at the sliding glass door, trying to imagine Angela standing there, pointing the gun. He tried to imagine what was running through her head.
Nothing. No feelings, no vibrations. It had been five years, and the trail was cold. It wasn’t like the Pryce house. No one spoke to him here. No one was alive.
Reluctantly, he opened the raid file again, looking for something, anything, that would trigger his brain. He stopped on the photograph of Angela’s body. He held it up, comparing it to the cabin itself. The photo showed Angela slumped near the right side of the sliding glass door. He could tell her exact position because part of an electrical box was visible in the upper corner of the photograph. Nothing...
He pulled out a second photograph, this one the close-up of Angela’s hand. He stared at the odd, scythe-shaped bruise across the back of her hand. What the hell had caused it?
Something made him look up.
It was the girl at the window. She was still standing there, watching him, twisting her silver bracelets.
Bracelets...
His hand crept back under his parka to the small of his back. He pulled out his handcuffs.
He stared at them for a moment then his eyes went back to the cabin, scanning the back and finally finding what he was looking for. The conduit snaked up, out of the electrical box, just a few feet from the sliding glass door.
They had handcuffed her. She could not have fired the gun. They had handcuffed her to the conduit.
Something in his memory stirred and he quickly pulled out Pryce’s report. It hadn’t registered a moment ago but he knew the way Pryce’s mercurial mind worked, knew the kind of details it recorded. He drew in a breath. There it was.
At exactly 16:35, I heard a handgun discharged. Exactly five seconds later, I heard a second shot.
Pryce heard two shots in five seconds. Not one shot and what should have been the instantaneous return fire of an officer acting in self-defense. But five full seconds. That was the way Pryce’s mind worked, not in “approximately” or “about” but “exactly.” If Thomas Pryce said five seconds, it was the truth.
Five seconds...
Nothing in the normal duration of everyday life. But it was everything in the split-second time span of a crime.
Five seconds...
Just long enough for someone to react, to plan, to create a new reality.
Louis stared at the electrical conduit, seeing Angela Lacey, seeing everything, with a horrible clarity. Closing the folder, he went up onto the deck. There was a gap between the cabin and the conduit large enough to slip a cuff through.
Angela was about five feet tall, which meant they had to raise her arm over her head to cuff her. The bruise on her wrist, he knew now, would not have been made from the cuff alone. It was caused by an extreme restriction of blood flow.
Louis stared at the conduit. He could see her now. He could see her,
hanging there by one arm, the weight of her body pulling her down, constricting her wrist against the metal cuff. Weight...dead weight.
Angela Lacey had appeared at the back door, just as the reports said. She saw Jesse beat her brother and saw them blow off his face. They used the cuffs to control her while they dealt with Jesse’s mess. She never had a gun.
Someone, one of the four, shot her. It was Ollie, if the report was to be believed. She fell, still chained to the conduit. Five seconds later, a second gun was fired. It was a “throw-down,” one of the oldest tricks in the book. They had fired it into the air to simulate returned fire then they planted it in Angela’s hand to make it look as though she shot first.
They had erased her, just as they had erased the evidence of her brother’s bludgeoned face.
Louis pulled in a deep breath. There was no way to prove any of it. It was still just a theory, and he could be wrong, his imagination running wild. Ollie and Lovejoy couldn’t talk; they were dead. Gibralter would never admit to anything. And Jesse...
Louis felt his stomach turn. Ollie and Lovejoy were conspirators, each guilty in his own way. But Jesse was the catalyst, the reason it happened. He had let his rage take over and then had let Gibralter cover it up.
Clutching the folders, Louis stepped off the deck. He looked up at the window. The girl was gone.
As he stared at the cabin, a wave of sadness came over him, surprising him as it flowed in to mix with the other emotions. He was angry at them; he felt betrayed by them. They were cops and they were monsters.
But now what? What could he do about it? Go to Steele and tell what he knew? No, what he suspected? All he really had were pieces and gut instinct. He couldn’t go to Steele with that.
He went quickly back to the Mustang, got in and started the car. He needed some hard evidence. He needed to get the throw-down.