Shock and Awe

by Hervey Copeland

  “I’m trying to locate Mr. Matthew Brunner,” El Juez said. He had pulled out a small notepad and pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed them on the table. “I believe he is an employee of yours. Is that correct?”

  Cory raised his eyebrows. “Eh, yeah that is correct.” Then he lifted his hand and shook it, finger pointing up toward the ceiling. “I mean, he used to be. He resigned yesterday.”

  El Juez pursed his lips and studied the other man carefully.

  “He did? Why?”

  “He told me he was relocating to Seattle. Apparently he got a job with a local dojo up there.”

  Cory took a deep breath and started running his fingers through his hair.

  “The thing is detective, that business has been slow lately at our dojo here in Phoenix. At the moment we’re just barely staying afloat. And I guess the money we could offer Matt just wasn’t enough for him to stick around. I can’t really say I blame him to be quite honest. Your number one priority should always be yourself.”

  He shot El Juez a coy grin, and El Juez grinned right back at him.

  “Anyway, I think he was having financial difficulties, although he never came straight out and told me so. But that was the impression I was getting. I guess he just wanted to find some greener pastures.”

  El Juez nodded. If the guy was having financial difficulties, it would explain why he had decided to accept the hit on Senor Rodriguez. And skipping town afterward made a lot of sense under those circumstances. It was yet another indication that this was the man they were looking for.

  “Do you have the address for the dojo in Seattle?”

  “No, but I can get it for you if you like.” Cory leaned forward and was about to get up, but El Juez indicated for him to remain seated.

  “Thank you. That would be great. But I have a few more questions that I need to ask first.”

  Cory nodded and leaned back in his chair again.

  “So why are you trying to locate Matt? Has he done something wrong?”

  El Juez twisted his lips and exhaled slowly. Then he picked up the pen from the table and started fiddling with it.

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that information, sir,” he said after a brief pause. “All I can say is that we need to ask him a few questions in relation to an ongoing investigation.”

  Cory nodded, ostensibly satisfied with the explanation.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have the contact details of Mr. Brunner’s closest family members here in Phoenix?”

  Cory shook his head.

  “No, I don’t. His only family member as far as I’m aware is his mother, and she passed away about a month and a half ago.”

  “How about close friends?”

  Cory lifted his hand and let it run through his hair again. Then he turned his head and looked over at the wall on his right hand side, as if he needed to give the question some serious thought.

  “You know, I don’t think he has that many friends Mr. Mendez. To tell you the truth, he’s a pretty private guy. I’ve known him for almost four years, but during that time, I’ve never socialized with him. It has always been a strict employer-employee relationship.”

  He let his hand fall down to his side and looked back at El Juez again.

  “The only friend of his that I’m aware of is James Matthews. I’ve seen him a handful of times at the dojo. But other than that, I wouldn’t know.”

  El Juez shifted his position in the chair and gripped the pen in his hand a little tighter.

  “And you wouldn’t by any chance happen to have an address for Mr. Matthews?” The pen was hovering just above the notepad, ready to start scribbling down the information.

  Cory shook his head.

  “No, I don’t. But I know that he lives somewhere in South Phoenix, and I know where he works.”

  Cory excused himself and left the room, and when he returned half a minute later he was carrying a small black diary. He sat down in the chair again, placed the book on the table and gave it a light tap.

  “I knew I wrote it down,” he said, as he opened the book, turned it around and pushed it across the table so El Juez could have a look at it.

  El Juez scanned the page, which contained about twenty different names, found the one he was after and quickly jotted it down on his notepad along with the name and address of the warehouse where James Matthews was working.

  “Can you think of any other people that Mr. Brunner could have contacted?” he asked as Cory pulled the diary back toward him again.

  Cory shook his head.

  “No, like I mentioned, James is the only one I know of. But he might know of someone else.”

  El Juez closed the notepad and placed it and the pen back in the inside pocket of his jacket. The name and the address could be the jackpot that would lead him straight to the target, and which would allow him to finish the job. But if it wasn’t, and if it turned out to be a dead end, he would be back at square one again.

  He let out an inaudible sigh. Everything had been going great until the journalist had showed up. His presence had thrown everything into disarray. In fact El Juez was convinced that the target would have shown up eventually if he had been able to stay in the house. The cardboard boxes in the garage, along with the admission from his ex-employer that he was about to leave town was a clear indication that the guy would have returned and picked up his belongings before leaving Phoenix. Dammit! He had been so close, only to have the opportunity snatched away from him at the last second.

  He wondered if the target would approach the house if he saw police officers outside and guessed that he probably wouldn’t. If the guy was a contract killer, and he had just managed to get out of police custody a few hours earlier, he would stay well clear of that place.

  El Juez figured that the guy’s first priority would be to disappear before the police changed their minds and re-arrested him. But if against all odds, he decided to get in touch with them, detective Ryan would give him a call and notify him immediately.

  Would the target try to contact Mr. Morrison? El Juez didn’t think so. Not if the guy was truthful about the two of them not socializing. There could possibly also be some bad blood between them after the target handed in his resignation. That would make Mr. Morrison the last person he decided to pay a visit if he got into trouble, and provided he was still here in Phoenix.

  El Juez pushed his chair away from the table, stood up and put out his hand.

  “Thank you very much for your time Mr. Morrison. You’ve been most helpful.”

  “No problem detective, just happy to help out.” Cory leaned across the table and shook El Juez’s hand, and noticed that his handshake was extremely soft, almost to the point of being feminine.

  They walked over to the entrance door and El Juez stepped outside.

  “If you hear from Mr. Brunner, or if he decides to pay you a visit, make sure to contact the police straight away.”

  “Somehow I don’t think he will, but of course I’ll let you guys know if he does.”

  El Juez gave him a quick nod and began walking back to his car.

  The first thing he did after getting inside was to enter the address of the electrical warehouse where his target’s friend was working on the car’s GPS.

  If he was lucky, he might just be able to get the information he needed to help him locate the target. The hunt was on, and he felt a slight exhilaration spread out across his body. The ideal situation would have been to find the target straight away and execute him. But he had to admit that hunting targets like wild prey was exciting too. And it was always a challenge he looked forward to.

  He put his hand on the key, started the engine and reversed out of the parking space and followed the instructions on the GPS.

  10

  Detective John Morrell was fuming. What he wanted to do most of all was to drive his fist through the wall and scream. Or even better, get that slimy defense lawyer Osborne down here, throw his sorry ass u
p against the wall and slam his fist in the guy’s face and watch him go down for the count. Anything short of that was insufficient to ease the rage that was currently coursing around inside his body.

  It was the murder that was the source of it. And in particular the fact that it could have been prevented if they had refused to release the son of a bitch who committed it last night. If they had, the young journalist who was currently lying splayed out on the couch would still be alive.

  “According to Jackson, the guy has been dead for at least four hours,” detective Valdez said as he walked over to Morrell. He had a deadpan expression on his face, and by all appearances, the murder didn’t seem to affect him nearly as much as it did to Morrell.

  Morrell nodded and took another puff of the Marlboro he had lit half a minute earlier. They were standing next to the shed in the backyard, a little green metal structure tucked up against the fence separating the property from the neighbor's on the right hand side.

  “That means that the murder took place around six o’clock this morning.”

  Valdez nodded and removed a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and lit it.

  “Yeah, give or take, which means less than five hours after we let the asshole go.” He took a deep drag from the white cancer stick and sent a fine gray mist skywards. “Just wait until the media gets a hold of this. They’ll fucking crucify us.”

  The thought had occurred to Morrell too, and he knew that they would go after them particularly hard this time, given that the victim was one of their own. Morrell couldn’t help thinking that it was a tad hypocritical, given that the same media in opinion pieces and letters from the editors would lambaste the police and the courts for being too tough on the people who committed the crimes. It just proved that you couldn’t win no matter what you did. Morrell sighed, and took another drag from the cigarette.

  There were already a handful of reporters and photographers gathered outside the cordon in front of the house. Crime scenes had that effect. The media were like flies homing in on a piece of cow dung. Always buzzing around, trying to get a piece of the action.

  He pushed aside the unpleasant image, and began reflecting on the crime that had been committed inside the house a few hours earlier.

  It had been an extremely brutal murder. The victim had been killed point blank range while sitting on the couch. The forensic officer in charge, Randy Jackson had located two bullet holes in the victim’s chest region, which meant that the victim had most likely died instantly and been spared the suffering associated with a slow death.

  What Morrell didn’t know yet was whether the victim had stepped inside the house voluntarily, or whether he had been forced to enter while having a gun pointed at his head. Apart from the bullet holes, there didn’t appear to be any other injuries that would tend to suggest that a struggle had taken place. Nor were there any signs that one had occurred inside the house. Everything was very neat and tidy.

  The only thing they had been able to establish thus far was that the journalist had been aware that Brunner had been brought in as a suspect in the shooting of Rodriguez. And that it was in this capacity that he had visited the property. He had been after a comment from Brunner. It was one of the first things the victim’s colleague, who had contacted the police, had told them after they had discovered the body.

  Morrell had no idea why Brunner had done it. But one working theory was that he had become upset when he found out that the media was on to him. And that he hadn’t been particularly keen to get his name and picture plastered all over the news. It seemed like a plausible explanation, even though there were some major holes in it. Because if Brunner had done it to avoid media attention, it had backfired spectacularly, considering that the murder would guarantee that his identity would be made public.

  Valdez had suggested that the victim might have had some more information that linked Brunner to the hit on Rodriguez, but the guy’s colleague had dismissed this outright. And even if that had been the case, it should have been obvious to the victim that it would have been a massive mistake to confront Brunner with this information on his own. Surely the guy couldn’t have been that stupid?

  No, if new compromising evidence had emerged, the victim would have handed it over to the police, just like he had passed on the original tip that had led to Brunner’s initial arrest.

  So what on earth could the motive be then? Rage over having been linked to the shooting? Had Brunner simply lost his cool and accidentally killed him? Morrell had no idea, but he knew he would get to the bottom of things one way or the other.

  His thoughts started drifting toward the senselessness of it all. About how avoidable the entire thing should have been. The journalist should have stayed well clear of the house. If he had, then none of this would have happened. And if Brunner had decided to do a runner in an attempt to avoid facing any charges over the Rodriguez murder, they would have been able to track him down eventually and made him face the music.

  The comment that the newspaper had hoped for had not materialized, and now the guy who had been tasked with getting it was dead. In a way, he had been sent straight into the arms of a killer, and the killer had done what killers do. He had executed him. Morrell wondered if the victim’s boss felt any remorse, and if he felt that some stories were important enough to die for?

  He took one last drag of the cigarette and squashed it against the side of the shed. Then he spit on it and put the butt inside a small plastic evidence bag, and placed it in his pocket. There was no need to contaminate the crime scene, despite all the signs indicating that it had been Brunner that had pulled the trigger of the gun that had ended the victim’s life.

  “We’ve alerted all mobile units in the city and instructed them to arrest Brunner on sight if they spot him,” Valdez said. “We’ve also put out a state-wide APB on him. If he doesn’t turn himself in voluntarily, he’ll be apprehended before the end of the day.”

  Morrell nodded.

  “Good. I’d like to see that weasel lawyer of his trying to talk his way out of this one.”

  They went back inside the house again and stopped in front of the blood soaked couch were they had found the victim. The forensic team had finished their examination of the body, and the deceased man had been transported to the morgue where a pathologist would perform a full autopsy.

  There were no doubts as to what had killed the guy, but maybe they could find some physical evidence that would inextricably link their suspect to the killing. There was nothing that Morrell would like more. The slick lawyer could talk until he was blue in the face, but it wouldn’t do any good and they could finally tell him to shove it.

  And they certainly needed some real physical evidence, because they had not been able to locate the murder weapon so far. Nor had any of the neighbors, who were still at home, seen anyone enter or exit the house, which meant that at the moment they only had circumstantial evidence and nothing concrete. Nothing that proved without a shadow of a doubt that Brunner was the killer.

  But there was no doubt in Morrell’s mind, and he was going to do everything in his power to bring the son of a bitch to justice. And he wasn’t going to let him slip off the hook this time. This time Brunner was going down. And when they were done with him, they would make sure that he would never be able to walk around and enjoy breathing in the free air again.

  “Ok, let’s get going,” Morrell said. “Let’s have a talk with some of Mr. Brunner’s acquaintances. Maybe they can shed some light on where he might be holed up at the moment.”

  Valdez nodded.

  “You bet. Let’s roll partner.”

  The next hour turned out to be very strange indeed. After Morrell and Valdez left Brunner’s house, they drove over to his ex-employer’s place. They were hoping that he would be able to assist them in locating Brunner, or at least point them in the right direction.

  And when they arrived at his apartment, he was very surprised to see the two of them. Especially since one of the
ir colleagues had already spent twenty minutes talking to him about his former employee not that long ago.

  He had made them aware of this, and repeated what he had told the first detective. That the only friend Matthew Brunner had, as far as he was aware, was James Matthews. And after having given them James’ contact details, they had bid their farewell and left.

  The first thing Morrell did when they were back inside the unmarked Crown Vic was to contact headquarters and find out if there was a detective Mendez working for the Phoenix Police Department. And none of them had been overly surprised to learn a few minutes later that there wasn’t. Nor were there any records of any detectives having paid Cory Morrison a visit that morning.

  The next big surprise came when they phoned the warehouse where Brunner’s friend was working, only to be told that James Matthews had gone home not that long ago to deal with a personal matter, and that this shouldn’t come as a surprise to them, given that this information had already been passed on to detective Mendez when he had visited the warehouse earlier that morning.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Valdez asked after he had relayed the phone conversation to Morrell. “Who the hell is this Mendez guy, and why is he trying to locate Brunner?”

  “I have no idea, but we’re going to find out.”

  Morrell turned on the blue lights and sped over to the intersection where he did a u-turn. The tires were squealing in protest as the sudden shift in direction threatened to send the big car into a pirouette, but Morrell somehow managed to control it.

  Then he stepped on the accelerator, his heart beating considerably faster than it had half a minute earlier. Matthews’ house was only a ten minute drive away. He hoped they would find Brunner there. And if this Mendez character was with him, they would bring him in for questioning too. And boy would he have some explaining to do.