by Lonni Lees
“Why would you think I was involved in any way?”
“Hmmm, let me see,” he said. “The detective working the case gets all chummy with every heathen connected to the gallery and the crime. Then she gets…let’s say extra chummy with a character named Rocco La Crosse. La Crosse, mind you. You put the family name La Crosse into the mix and you’ve got Tucson money and Tucson power and Tucson clout. And a La Crosse who is very close to the murder suspect. Can you see how things are starting to add up here?”
“You have a point, but you know me well enough to know I’d never intentionally do anything to jeopardize a case or an investigation in any way. I’m professional and I take my job seriously.”
“I think you stumbled over your heart on this one.”
“Honestly sir, I knew Rocco was contacting his lawyer, but I had no hand in any of it, regardless of how I felt on a personal level.”
“I’ll take your word on it, only because you’ve never failed me in the past. But I really think your emotions have gotten in the way and clouded your vision. Don’t let it happen again.”
Maggie thought a long time before she spoke.
“Thanks,” she began. “You’re the last person I want to disappoint. Or cross. You’ve known me since day one. As a young rookie I saw the world in black and white. There were the bad guys and there were the good guys. I wanted to nail the bad guys and give them what they deserved. That was my sole motivation and it’s served me well. But lately…”
“Lately what?”
“I’m seeing lots of gray areas out there. Not everything is cut and dried, black and white, like I thought. Not even killers.”
“Meaning?”
“Sure, most murderers are just plain evil and it’s a pleasure to nail them and bring them to justice. I’ve never doubted for a minute that it was my calling. But recently I’ve seen reasons behind some murders that change the way I feel. There are circumstances, although not totally justified, that at least make it understandable. There’s people in that gray area. Lots of people. Barbara Atwell is one of them. I probably shouldn’t say it out loud, but there’s some garbage out there that might just deserve to die. It changes the way I see things, but I’m a cop first and you can count on me to do what’s expected. Regardless.
“Don’t ever lose sight of that, Reardon. Not for a minute. Those gray areas are up to judge or jury. Not you.”
“Yes sir.”
“Then we’re done here. Now get to work. You’ve got a case to solve.”
CHAPTER TEN
Doing the Crazy Cha-Cha
The two cops stood still as statues on the hot pavement of The Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum parking lot. Aaron Iverson was looking skyward and could smell the scent of rain that filled the pregnant clouds as they gathered and drifted over the distant mountains and toward the city of Tucson. Jerry Montana was focused on the tow drivers as they hitched the old green Chevy to the back of their truck with a heavy chain then drove away. But his thoughts were elsewhere. The last person he’d expected to hear from this morning was Detective Reardon. After the earful he’d given the Captain she should have been history. When he alluded to it, her response was curt and evasive. She knew what he was talking about so why was she still there? Were they going to let her wind up this case before they fired her? Why hadn’t he been put in charge by now? Their first mistake was handing her a man’s job that should’ve gone to a seasoned cop. It should have gone to him. They’d gotten it all backwards since day one and his resentment was growing like a flesh-eating bacteria and multiplying twice as fast.
But he’d finally gotten her. He just had to wait for the Captain to stop dragging his feet and act on it. About time that little trouble maker got her comeuppance. It had been worth the wait. And he’d caught her. She hadn’t left that guys house until this morning. He’d seen her come and he’d seen her leave and he knew darn well it was someone she should have distanced herself from. She broke the rules. She was history. The respect he deserved was within reach now and it wouldn’t be long before they’d all be calling him Detective Montana.
“Time to get to work,” said Aaron, clapping his hands together and making Jerry nearly jump out of his skin. “Time to give the grounds one more scour.”
“A thousand scrub brushes wouldn’t make any difference. We’ve combed through every dirty inch of this place like rats in a garbage dump and there’s nothing. I’m the one in charge here kid and I say screw it.”
“But Maggie said…”
“You take your orders from me. Get in the car. We’re going for a drive.”
Jerry’s mood was more foul than usual. Aaron could feel the hostility oozing from the cop’s pours as they headed for the car. It made him uncomfortable and apprehensive, but this was the cop assigned to show him the ropes. Silently, he slid into the shotgun seat as Jerry got in behind the wheel and started the engine. He burned rubber as they sped across the parking lot and headed down the hill.
Aaron remained silent, white-knuckling it as the car sped towards the flats below, taking the dangerous curves like a roller coaster that had jumped its track and was in free fall. The man in charge of training him definitely had bugs gnawing at him, and Aaron just wanted to swat them and make them go away before they ended up flying off a cliff and into the saguaros. Jerry might not care if they ended up airborne but Aaron could think of a hundred better scenarios for the cause of his own demise.
Jerry didn’t ease up on the gas pedal until they were nearing Silverbell Road, where he finally slowed down and stopped at the traffic signal. The light changed and they continued east toward the freeway. Jerry looked over to his right and spotted three young men standing outside a gas station, lost in conversation.
“Look,” he said to Aaron, pointing in their direction. “They look like illegals, don’t they?”
Aaron looked at the three of them, trying his best to make heads or tails of the comment. Jerry was acting crazier than a hungry Norsky at a lutefisk festival. There was no way, in Aaron’s mind, that justified the accusation. They could just as easily be from families that had lived here since before Arizona became a state, yet Jerry had said it with such conviction that Aaron thought he might have seen neon signs around their necks. It made no sense. To him they were just three guys minding their own business and he wouldn’t have given them a second glance.
“They look okay to me,” he said.
“Then you’ve got a lot to learn. They’re monsters. They fill their backpacks with drugs and crime and graffiti to poison our landscape. They’re vermin. Nothing but rodents gnawing and gnawing and gnawing…”
It felt as if the bugs that had been eating away at Jerry had jumped ship and were now creeping along Aaron’s flesh.
“Jeez Louise, Jerry. Isn’t that a bit harsh?”
“You don’t know what I know. Nobody does!”
“Yup, you betcha,” he said, trying to appease him. “You’re right Jerry. I’ve still got a lot to learn.”
Things were going haywire right before Aaron’s eyes and Jerry’s radar was definitely malfunctioning. Minnesota was looking better and better to him with each passing second. He’d expected to run into some big city trouble, that’s one of the reasons he’d come, but not trouble from a fellow cop. He had to diffuse this guy. He was definitely certifiable and increasingly out of control. Aaron spotted a coffee shop ahead and to their left.
“What do you say we stop for a cup of coffee?” he suggested, trying to distract him. The guy needed to calm down. And fast. “I could really use one. And maybe some pie to boot.”
“Minny-sota apple pie? I’m not your mama and I ain’t here to pamper you, Iverson. You should’ve stayed in the boonies where you belong.”
Jerry jerked the wheel to the left and into oncoming traffic, nearly causing an accident as brakes squealed and a line of oncoming cars veered out of the way to a
void a collision. He wasn’t headed for the coffee shop, he was headed back in the direction of the gas station.
He was looking for trouble and he was determined to find it, no matter how irrational.
“We’re gonna check those guys out,” he said. “Watch and maybe you’ll learn something.”
“It’s probably nothing. C’mon, just let it be. Let’s get that cup of coffee first, okay? Then we can see if they’re still hanging around afterwards.”
“Shut up, you stupid hayseed!”
Did this guy have even one likeable bone in his entire body?
They crossed traffic again as Jerry jumped the center line and into the gas station. He screeched to a halt and killed the engine. The three young men looked over, then casually turned their attention back to their conversation. One of them leaned against the building as the second one leisurely sucked his soda through a giant straw poked into an even larger paper cup. The third one laughed at something the first man had said.
Then all three of them broke into laughter.
“Did you see that?” Jerry asked.
“See what?”
“That guy laughed at us. No respect, no respect at all.”
“I…”
“I think there’s a drug deal going down, that’s what I think. I can tell from here they’re up to no good. Didn’t the holy god of Hicksville give you eyes? If you can’t spot trouble you’ll never be a good cop. It’s right in front of you. Can’t you see it? You blind or something?”
“But…” Before Aaron could finish his sentence Jerry had bolted out of the car, his hand resting on his holster as he strutted arrogantly in the direction of the three young men. Aaron exited the car and hurried to catch up to him. The young men looked over, puzzled, as the two cops approached them, one of them strutting like Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral as the other tried to mask a look of utter panic.
“What are you up to?” Jerry demanded.
“We’re just hanging out,” one of them replied.
“Looks like more to me.”
“We’re not looking for trouble,” said another, worry washing over his face.
“C’mon Jerry, let’s just go,” said Aaron, pulling on his sleeve. “This is a waste of time.”
“Getting scum off the streets isn’t a waste of time.”
“They haven’t done anything.”
“If they haven’t, then they were just about to. Weren’t you boys?”
All three of them took a step backwards and exchanged glances.
“We’re not doing anything but talking, just talking.”
“You’re loitering. Bet I’d find something if I searched you.”
As his anger swelled, Jerry’s voice climbed from bass to tenor to soprano and was quickly heading towards a high-pitched falsetto.
“You have no probable cause here, Jerry. Just cool it.”
“You’re out of your league and you don’t know shit,” he said, then gave one of them a shove that sent him reeling backwards. His friends caught him before he lost his balance.
“He’s right,” said the one he had shoved. “We’re not doing anything but standing here minding our own business. Like he said, just cool it.”
“Cool it? Cool it? How about you say cool it sir? You’d better start showing some respect.”
A customer exited the store, glanced in their direction, then walked over to his car and left.
“Come on Jerry. Let’s just go.”
“We’ll go when I’m good and ready to go and not a minute sooner. Don’t you even think about telling me what to do! I’m not through with them yet. They’re hiding something and I’m going to find out what it is.”
Jerry was coming unglued and sounding more paranoid with each passing second.
“You want to search us, go ahead,” one of them said softly, gesturing with his palms upward. “We’ve got nothing to hide. Nothing.”
Montana’s starting to scare the bejeebers out of these guys, Aaron thought. He could see it in their faces. They were trying to cooperate, to calm things down just as much as he was. Everybody was scared. Everybody except Montana, who was still itching for a confrontation and looking for any excuse to let loose.
But the young men continued to cooperate, which only served to amp up his level of frustration until he looked like he was going to burst and unleash all that bottled up hatred no matter what they did or didn’t do. And God help the guy who was standing nearest to him when he blew.
“I’ll search you when and if I damn well feel like it,” he said. “I’m in charge here, not you punks. And not you either, Aaron ‘you betcha’ Iverson. That’s what I call you behind your back, you know. You bloody betcha I do.”
Things were starting to look like lose/lose all the way around.
One of them looked over at Aaron, a pleading expression on his face. Aaron wasn’t sure what to do. He just wanted Montana to calm down and stop the craziness. Can you pull your gun on a fellow cop? How would he explain that? Would he even live to explain it? The way Montana was acting he was just as apt to take his poison out on him as the poor guys who were standing there shaking in their boots.
The sound of a ding-ding momentarily distracted Jerry Montana as a car pulled up to a pump and a middle aged woman got out. A flimsy straw hat covered her graying hair and she fished through her shoulder bag, took out her wallet and opened it. She pulled out a credit card and was posed to slide it into the slot and lift the hose. She looked over to where they were gathered and thought better of it. She got back into her car, restarted it and eased herself back into the traffic.
“Jerry. Jerry!” But Jerry wasn’t listening, he was too busy giving the stink eye to the youths. Two of them turned away nervously as the third averted his glare and reached into his pocket.
“It’s a gun!” Jerry yelled. “He’s pulling a gun!”
The sunlight shimmered against metal as the man pulled the object from his pocket and raised it.
“Jerry, no!” Aaron yelled. “It’s not a gun, it’s a…”
The sound of gunfire muffled Aaron’s words as him arm flew out and deflected Jerry’s aim.
“It’s a cell phone!” he finished. Jerry’s gun fell to the ground at the same instant the young man fell against his friend, then melted down to the pavement.
There was blood.
“It was a friggin’ cell phone for God’s sake, what were you thinking?”
“He had a gun, I saw it, he drew a gun. He was aiming it at me, you saw it. You saw it. I was justified.” A frozen Jerry just stood there mumbling his mantra as Aaron rushed over to where the young man lay, his two friends crouched over him.
“Awe geez,” he said, looking at the guy. “Give me your t-shirt,” he said to one of them. “Hurry!”
The man pulled off his t-shirt and handed it to the young cop, who grabbed it and pushed it against the shoulder wound to stave the bleeding. The other two rose and stood there, in shock, trying to make some sense out of what just went down.
“We weren’t doin’ nothing man, nothing.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I know,” was all Aaron Iverson could think to say. “I know, I’m sorry.”
He looked over his shoulder and glared at Jerry Montana, who stood there doing nothing.
“Get on the radio!” he yelled to him. “Call for backup and call for an ambulance. Move!”
Montana’s attention was focused on a place far away, a memory from a distant past. He snapped back at the sound of Aaron’s voice and looked at the mayhem in front of him. How had it come to this, he wondered.
“There was a gun,” he said, almost to himself, “I saw it.”
“Go radio for help. Now!”
Jerry Montana turned, picked up his gun where it lay on the ground and walked slowly to the car. He was mumbling to himself as he opene
d the door and slid into the seat. He looked through the windshield at the small crowd gathering next to the building.
“We need backup out here,” he said to the voice at the other end. “And we need an ambulance.”
He watched the young cop leaning over and pressing his weight against the man’s wound. At least the guy knew first aid if nothing else, he thought. But he ought to let the damn wetback bleed out. Serve him right. Serve them all right.
“I got them, Esperanza,” he whispered to the shadow that haunted his mind. She was young and she was beautiful, just as he remembered her. “I finally got them.”
Jerry looked again at the chaos as the rookie knelt above the bleeding youth. He glimpsed a shadow in the rear view mirror. The face that looked back at him wasn’t his own. It was no longer the handsome young man who had lost the woman he loved. Instead the face was old and tired and wore a mask of exaggerated hatred and anger. It startled him when he realized who it was. Had his search for the monsters responsible for her murder turned him into a monster himself? Would Esperanza recognize him or would she recoil at what he had become? How could love create hatred, turn beauty into ugliness? When did it happen? He turned his face from the stranger in the mirror.
He’d had a moment of clarity and he didn’t like what he saw.
The radio static called his name.
“Back up,” he repeated. “An ambulance…and you’d better bring a body bag.” And then as an afterthought he added: “And tell the Captain he can blame that damn Detective Maggie Reardon for this. It’s all her fault.”
He repeated the location, disconnected and watched the blur of activity through his windshield as if it were nothing more than a movie on a theater screen. He’d payed full price for the ticket and all he got in return was a second-rate movie with a “b-list” cast of players and a lame script. He deserved better than that. He’d earned it. He should have been the star. The hero.
“Is Jimmy gonna be okay?” one of the men asked Aaron.
“He’ll be fine. It’s only his shoulder, he’ll be fine. Help is on the way.”