by G. K. Parks
“Yes,” his eyes lit up, “a police jacket. It was blue with an emblem on the sleeve.”
“Good.” I nodded at him encouragingly. “What else? Focus on the parts you remember.”
“His jacket was open, and he wore a baseball cap.” He frowned in contemplation. “Dark pants, no,” he shut his eyes, “jeans with tennis shoes. They were white and silver and squeaked on the floor.” Not particularly helpful, but at least he was engaging more than one of his senses. “There was a badge around his neck.” He looked startled.
“What is it?”
“Four,” he paused, “seven, one.” Sam’s stare was intense. “Two nine four seven one.”
“Are you positive?”
“It was the first five digits of my ex-girlfriend’s phone number. I forgot about it.” He looked sheepish. “I’ve had Dawn stuck in my head this whole time, and I thought it was just because of the near-death experience.”
After concluding my visit and wishing him the heartfelt sentiment that he makes a full recovery as quickly as possible, I was whisked back to the FBI offices to help track down our three new leads. It was about damn time.
* * *
We worked through the evening, checking records on the two former detectives Sam recognized from the bar. After re-watching the surveillance footage for the umpteenth time, Webster spotted them sitting at the bar early in the evening and leaving with two young ladies. Cooper was bringing them in for questioning in the morning. Hopefully, between now and then, facial recognition would find a match to the two young women in case our ex-detectives needed to have their stories corroborated.
The detective’s badge, which I partially recalled in my dreamlike state and Sam completely remembered by happenstance, led to a dead end. We had all five digits, but they belonged to no one. It made zero sense. I tried rearranging the numbers, but this tactic led to too many possibilities. How can we have a badge number which doesn’t exist?
“Try running it through the databases,” Mark suggested as I slammed my palm on the desk and contemplated doing the same to my skull. “Maybe it’s from a different city. Some of the emblems look the same, and neither you nor Harrigan got a good look.”
“Fine.” I entered the information into the search box and waited for results. Given the sheer number of law enforcement agencies in the country, from small towns to big cities, this was going to take awhile.
“Are you sure Harrigan’s not full of shit?” Mark asked from his desk. The two of us moved upstairs to the OIO offices since Cooper sent his team home for the night to recharge their batteries in preparation for the morning’s interviews. I was still trying to make up for each of my numerous screw-ups, and Mark was multitasking other cases that had piled up on his desk.
“He’s not full of shit.” I sighed and went to get a cup of coffee. It tasted like mud and was about as thick.
“What kind of coincidence is it that the badge number matches his girlfriend’s phone number? You remember what I taught you about coincidences?” His tone was accusatory and smug. He was still punishing me for this entire mess.
“They don’t exist,” I repeated his constant mantra from when he was my supervisor. “But explain how I remembered three of the same numbers.”
“Maybe he’s wrong about the last few digits. His mind could have filled in familiar details. You said he didn’t remember much of what happened, and you had to coax the memories out of him.”
“I’ll figure it out,” I growled and turned back to the computer screen.
On a sheet of paper, I listed other possibilities as my search continued to run in the background. I began the arduous task of cross-referencing my new compilations with the local precinct’s database. At some point, Mark must have said good night because when I looked up, he was gone. The entire floor was empty, except for a couple of unlucky agents covering the night shift. Settling further into my chair, I stared at the computer screen, waiting for something to ping.
* * *
“Parker?” I lifted my head off the desk, but my neck was stuck at a forty-five degree angle. “Have you been here all night?” Director Kendall was standing in front of the desk.
“Sir.” I carefully straightened up. “Working on a lead.”
“Your dedication is admirable, but don’t let me catch you sleeping on the job again.” He winked and continued to his office. I wasn’t used to the Director being quite so chummy, and honestly, I didn’t know how to respond to it. Rolling my neck carefully and listening to the pops and cracks of my vertebrae, I noticed the blinking message on the computer monitor. One match found.
Printing out the results, I stopped at the ladies locker room and splashed some water on my face, wiped off the remnants of yesterday’s makeup, and pulled my hair into a tight bun. Good as new. Hurrying upstairs, I found everyone assembled in the conference room from hell.
“We got a hit on the badge,” I offered without being asked. “It was reported missing over a decade ago. Captain Stephens might be interested to know his old partner’s shield was recently used in the commission of a crime.”
“Where’s his partner now?” Cooper asked, fully alert. “Maybe we found our guy.”
“Records indicate he died, a victim of a hit and run. When his body was discovered, he was without identification. According to the report, that’s when his badge went missing.”
“Shit,” Mark cursed. “Who found the body?”
“A couple of street kids. Stephens happened to catch the call and identified Detective Roberto Ramirez’s body on scene.”
“Hell of a way to get the news,” Darli intoned sadly.
“Okay, focus people.” Cooper was reining us in. “Sullivan and Webster go talk to the men we brought in this morning. Darli, watch from the booth and verify every single word they say. Jablonsky, give Moretti a call and have him break the news to the Cap and pass it along to IAD. Everyone clear?” There was a round of ayes as the room emptied out.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Go home.” Cooper was all business. “You were here all night. I tried sending you home yesterday, but you couldn’t follow orders. Don’t make me tell you again.”
“But, sir,” I began.
“Agent,” he said the word sharply, “go home.” I trudged slowly to the door, unhappy with my orders. Cooper should realize I wouldn’t be able to get any rest when things were finally happening, and we had real, tangible leads. Before I made it out of the room, he added, “Nicely done.”
Twenty-six
I called a cab to take me home. Luckily, it was late enough in the morning to avoid rush hour traffic since all the commuters were already at work. Letting myself into my apartment, I was in the middle of an internal struggle to decide if I should eat, take a power nap, or indulge in a nice hot shower. Before any of these wonderful ideas could win out over the others, my phone rang.
“Parker,” I answered before the first ring even finished.
“Ms. Parker, please hold for Mr. Guillot,” the Martin Technologies assistant said before the piped in sound of elevator music filled my ears. Martin’s office was violating the Geneva Convention’s sanction against torture. Eventually, the infernal sound was replaced by Luc’s French accent.
“Mademoiselle,” he practically cooed, “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last two days.”
“Sorry, I’ve had other obligations.” Didn’t Guillot hear about my wanted status and arrest?
“That is the nature of having a consultant and not a full-time security analyst employed by the company,” he sounded annoyed. “As we discussed last time, the finer points are collating, and another meeting to discuss uniform protocols and procedures is on the books for a week from this Monday.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Miss Parker,” his voice went business formal, dropping the French colloquialisms, “there are important plans you need to approve, procedures in need of revision, and a final equipment check.”
“What’s the deadline?”
“Please complete them before the meeting. They need to be on my desk by that Monday morning, at the very latest.”
“Very good.” I wasn’t sure where my current reinstatement was going to lead by tomorrow, let alone in a week and a half, so I asked for the information to be sent via e-mail in order to save myself a trip to the MT building. Guillot agreed and hung up without further comment.
Normally, he was overly friendly, but today, he sounded stressed. Maybe he heard the news of my arrest and was afraid of the ramifications the company might suffer because of it. Chalking it up to an additional oversight, if not a downright blunder on my part, I made myself a quick sandwich, took a five minute shower, and let the idea of a powernap fade into the background of lost dreams.
“Heathcliff, are you still suspended?” I asked when he answered his phone.
“Two more days.” While he didn’t actually sigh, I pictured his shoulders slumped in defeat. “What’s up?”
“They forced me to go home. All-nighters are frowned upon by the federal government. And since we’re both unwanted, do you want to come over and run some scenarios with me? We can be pariahs together.”
“I might be busy,” he replied, indignant.
“Are you busy?”
“No. I’ll be there in an hour. It’s your turn to supply the beers.”
“It’s eleven in the morning.” He wasn’t usually this forward, and I suspected he wasn’t happy being relegated to sitting at home, watching daytime television.
“And neither of us is working today, so there’s no reason not to imbibe.”
When Heathcliff arrived, I dutifully went to the fridge, removed a beer, and handed it to him. He looked at it as if to say ‘didn’t I bring these over’ but refrained from saying as much. The beers he bought were at Martin’s, but I happened to have a six pack of the same brand in my fridge. He placed it, unopened, on the table and took a seat. After I filled him in on the now identified badge number, we began conducting our own thorough investigation into Ramirez’s hit and run. Heathcliff brought his laptop today, so we were making progress twice as fast.
“It must have been tough on the Cap,” he said out of the blue. Meeting his eyes, I knew where his mind had gone. After his partner committed suicide, he found her body, wrists slit, in the bathtub. “The driver responsible for Ramirez’s death was never found. There were no leads on the vehicle. Surveillance wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today. Back then, the DOT didn’t have traffic cams on every street corner.”
“How long did the investigation continue?”
“It doesn’t say. Captain Stephens was promoted from detective to a command position a month later.”
“And there were no hits on the badge until now with the shooting at Infinity?” Getting the ping in the database should have provided usable intel, not chasing more ghosts down dead ends.
“I’m running a search on police impersonation reports, but unless someone got a badge number, I don’t think it’ll lead anywhere,” he admitted.
By four, I was dragging, but Heathcliff was still going strong as he read through ten year old police records, making notations, and coming up with a list of people to question. My contribution was less obvious, seeing as how I was stretched out on the couch, struggling to hold my eyes open and failing miserably. My phone beeped, signifying an incoming e-mail, and I got off the couch and went to the desktop computer.
“Now what’s going on?” he asked, not bothering to look up from his notepad.
“Corporate security review,” I replied, printing copies of the attached documents. After skimming them quickly, stapling together the forms, and sticking them into a blank manila envelope for later consideration, I turned to his half-filled legal pad. “Are you working on the next great American novel?”
“You ask for my help, and then you bust my balls for working. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to properly communicate with others?” Giving him a petulant look, I waited for him to expound on his current discoveries. “Okay,” he closed the window on the screen, scribbled a final thought onto his sheet of paper, and flipped to the beginning, “Ramirez’s murder was never solved. No leads in the case, and nothing to indicate whatever became of his badge. So says the official report.”
“Unofficially?”
“Hard to say what really happened. At the time of his death, the deceased detective and Captain Stephens were working for the gangs unit. Vice and narcotics also had a large-scale joint investigation in the works. Girls, drugs, and guns.”
“Sounds like it all ties back to gangs. Maybe even our organized crime friends.” Heathcliff touched the side of his nose and smirked in response.
“A few small arrests were made. No one big was pinched, and no one from Vincenzo’s family was brought in which seems strange since Ramirez was killed on Vito’s turf.”
“You don’t think the hit and run was accidental?”
“I don’t know. Could be bad luck, bad timing, and purely a coincidence, but I found the names of both current and former responding officers. I’ve run through their files, and the majority of them were busted seven years ago by internal affairs for being on the take.”
“How long has this been going on?” The knowledge of such corruption floored me.
“This is the first I’ve heard about it. Whenever IA cleaned house the first time, no one heard a word. The guys were all given early retirement, some portion of their pensions, and disappeared into the shadows.”
“Politics,” I fumed. “Do you want to give Thompson a call and see if he and Moretti have made any progress? Maybe we should update them.” He flipped through the pages again and then picked up the phone.
“I’ll have Thompson see what he can dig up. Maybe he can have a chat with the Captain and gain some insight into Ramirez’s death.”
* * *
By that evening, my apartment could have been its own precinct with the number of police personnel standing around my counter. O’Connell, Thompson, and Heathcliff were hunkered around the notepad, spit-balling ideas. I was on the phone with Mark, filling him in on our progress and listening as he told me the proper uses for a day off. When everyone was up to speed, I took a spot next to Heathcliff so I could read over his shoulder as he concluded the rundown.
“What’d Moretti say?” I asked Thompson. I missed the earlier conversation thanks to Mark.
“He’s scheduled a meeting with the Captain for tomorrow morning. Hopefully, we won’t be kicked down the ladder to traffic because of this.”
“Thompson and I will talk with the IA investigators tomorrow and see if they can provide further insight into what really occurred with the dearly departed Detective Ramirez,” O’Connell added. “You wanna take a run at the retirees?”
“Might as well,” Heathcliff agreed. “I’m suspended, so at least we’ll have some common ground.” The three detectives all turned to face me.
“Mo, Larry, Curly,” my eyes darted from one to the other, “did you practice that little routine to music?” I got three pairs of confused looks. “Fine,” I blew out a breath, “I gave Mark an update over the phone, and tomorrow, I’ll bring all of it to Cooper and let him decide what he wants to do with it. They are working a few angles based on Sam Harrigan’s eyewitness account. There were two former detectives at the bar that night who might be involved.”
“Did you ever hear anything else from the enemy you climbed in bed with?” Heathcliff asked, much to my chagrin.
“Vito sent over the bogus surveillance footage and dropped off the radar afterward. Mark’s trying to keep me on a tight leash.” O’Connell and Heathcliff exchanged a meaningful look. “I’m behaving, all right? Jeez.”
“Maybe we should send some units to ruffle his feathers,” Thompson suggested. “If the investigation leads us there anyway, then there’s no harm in rattling his chain.”
Shrugging, I went to the fridge and retrieved the remaining beers, passing
them around the counter. “Here’s to some actual progress.” I raised my bottle.
Heathcliff leaned in close and added, “Told you to buy beer.”
Twenty-seven
Sam’s insight resulted in a dead end. Sullivan, Webster, and Darli had all taken a crack at the former detectives, who were now running their own pizza place, but they were clean. They just happened to be out looking for some tail on a Saturday night.
The police department’s internal affairs division sent a liaison to help fill in the blanks concerning the resurfaced badge. Why they didn’t provide the Bureau with a go-between earlier made no sense, but my guess was the proper paperwork wasn’t filed correctly to make it happen sooner. Each day I reported to HQ was another day my disdain for bureaucracy grew exponentially.
O’Connell phoned and said Moretti was dropping by to personally give us the lowdown on Detective Ramirez. With the IAD liaison, Lt. Moretti, and too many outdated police files to count, it was just another long day at the office. The hours dragged as each file, suspect, and piece of information was analyzed. Throughout the day, calls were made to and from the boys in major crimes, each of whom had some new tidbit to add either exonerating a suspect or moving them higher on our list of potential dirty cops.
When Heathcliff called, it was to my cell phone. Immediately, my brain started flashing neon lights as the warning bells blared. Excusing myself from the room, I went into the hallway and down the corridor.
“I have news.” He jumped straight to the point. “Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“All right, here’s the thing, the guys I spoke to all have the same story to tell. They were following orders when they responded to Ramirez’s crime scene. The reports they filed were altered and re-filed. It all came down the line from their commanding officer.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Lt. Benjamin Rapier, but he’s dead. Died five years ago from liver cancer,” he said quietly. “I’m standing in front of his tombstone right now. I considered digging him up to make sure he was there but thought that might be overkill. What do you think?”