SK01 - Waist Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  “Steffie here is famous,” Stone went on. “Did you know that?”

  Matsuda shook his head, turning a pencil slowly in his fingers. The sheet on the notepad in front of him remained blank.

  “No?” Stone asked. “Well, let me educate you on a little River City police history. See, Steffie is actually famous for two reasons. Long about eleven years ago or so, we had us a pretty nasty serial robber. They called him Scarface on account of the long scar that ran here.” He drew his finger from above his brow down to his chin. “Scarface hit eighteen, maybe twenty convenience stores at gunpoint. He even shot at a cop one night after one of the robberies. Then he killed one of the clerks, some half-retarded kid. After that, the brass got serious on his ass and set up a task force to catch him.”

  Stone leaned back and adjusted his tie. I stared at him flatly.

  “You know that plaque out in the lobby, Richie?” he asked. “The one near the Front Desk?”

  “The one that says ‘Fallen Heroes’ on it?” Matsuda’s voice had no accent. And though he seemed to know his lines, he wasn’t a great actor.

  “Yep, that’s the one,” Stone said. “On that plaque is the name of one Police Officer First Class Karl Francis Winter. He was a friend of mine and this robber, this Scarface piece of shit, shot him dead one night on a traffic stop.”

  I clenched my jaw.

  “Young Steffie here watched Winter die, didn’t you?” Stone’s voice had grown hard.

  I was there, I thought. I held Winter’s hand and watched the blood spread out from beneath him, black in the moonlight, resembling a pair of dark wings on the asphalt.

  “You just sat that there like a dipshit rookie and watched the life bleed right out of him,” Stone said.

  I didn’t answer. The doctors all said that Scarface’s bullet had nicked Winter’s aorta. They said he’d have probably died even if he’d fallen straight onto an operating table after being shot, with a host of emergency room doctors already scrubbed and prepped for surgery.

  Even so, Stone’s words hit home.

  “Scarface didn’t quit there, Richie,” Stone said, but he continued to look at me. “No, he was a heroin addict and we found out later that he was supporting at least two whores and their habits, too. So out he went again. Only the next time he came out of a store, our hero, this man right here, had the dumb luck to roll right up on the whole thing in progress.”

  Matsuda sniffed, feigned contempt on his face.

  “What were you pulling into the Circle K for, Steffie?”Stone asked, sneering. “There to get some Bubble Yum? Or maybe a dirty magazine?”

  Coffee, I whispered inside my head. All I wanted was a cup of coffee.

  Stone glanced over at Matsuda. “They had themselves a little gunfight. ‘Shootout at the Circle K,’ they called it. Scarface got hit in the exchange, but Steffie couldn’t quite finish the job. Thomas Chisolm had to, didn’t he?”

  My stomach burned. He was leaving a lot out, like the part about Isaiah Morris and his flunkie ambushing me from behind, but I didn’t bother correcting him.

  “Chisolm?” Matsuda asked. “He was my last FTO before I got out on my own.”

  “There was a real cop,” Stone said, turning back to me. “Tom Chisolm. He sure carried your water, didn’t he?”

  I winced and rubbed my knee, trying to ignore the rising bile in my gut.

  “You were the toast of the department there for a year or so, weren’t you?” he asked, shaking his head while he spoke. “A little hero in our midst.”

  “I wasn’t a hero,” I said. “I just did what I had to do—“

  “No,” he interrupted, “You’re right. I guess you weren’t a hero, after all. I think Amy Dugger would agree with that. She’d be about sixteen or seventeen right now, wouldn’t she? A perfect age for your newfound career. If she were alive, that is.”

  Newfound career? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Stone turned to Matsuda. “I suppose you don’t know the Amy Dugger story, either.”

  Matsuda shook his head, sticking to the script.

  Stone gave me a look. “Rookies,” he sighed. “Take ‘em out of the uniform and put ‘em in the dick’s office and they act like rookies again.”

  I didn’t respond.

  Stone continued. “Amy Dugger was a little six-year-old girl that went missing one fine spring day in…what was it, Steffie? Ninety-five? Ninety-six?”

  I shrugged.

  “It was ninety-five,” Stone said. “I’m sure of it. Anyway, she was snatched up off the street by what turned out to be her own grandma. It was some messed up situation where the mom and the grandma were fighting each other and fighting over the kid. One or the other of the bitches was crazier than forty bastards, if I remember right. But the grandma was definitely a suspect. Not the prime suspect, not at first, but she definitely needed a talking to.”

  Stone leaned in toward me. “And who else should they send, if not the hero from the Circle K?”

  I ground my teeth, willing myself to remain still.

  “Such a hero,” Stone muttered, then looked at Matsuda. “What do they teach in the Academy, Richie? Huh? If a suspect gives you permission to search, what do you always do?”

  Matsuda responded immediately. “You always search.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the assholes give us permission all the time when they’re holding something. They think we won’t really search or we won’t find it.”

  Stone nodded in agreement. “That’s right. But when Stef went to see Grandma and she gave him permission to search her house for little Amy Dugger, do you think he did?”

  “No,” Matsuda said. “I don’t think he did.”

  “Right again,” Stone said. “He didn’t. Even though Officer Jack Willow, who was a youngster at the time with less than a year on the street, argued and pleaded with him to do the search. But Steffie wouldn’t. No, he was a hero and heroes know best, don’t they?”

  Stone fell silent and his sarcasm hung in the air. My jaw was clenched and I forced myself to relax it. I couldn’t let him get under my skin. That’s what this whole charade was about. He was enjoying himself, that much was certain, but the point of the whole thing was to get me off balance. Then he could attack me on whatever it was they were charging me with right now.

  “The thing is,” Stone continued, “we eventually got around to figuring it was the grandma and her stupid pedophile husband who had kidnapped Amy. And rather than give her back to her mom, especially after what the husband had done, they killed her. They killed that little six-year-old girl. Can you believe that?”

  Matsuda shook his head. “Terrible.”

  “Oh, it gets worse,” Stone said. “The husband eventually copped to the whole thing. The kidnapping and how Grandma killed little Amy. He wouldn’t confess to the sex stuff, but DNA on her body took care of that. He told us everything else, though. He sat right there in a chair just like that one Steffie’s in and he spilled his guts. And you know what he said?”

  “What?” Matsuda asked, on cue.

  “He said that when our hero, Officer Golden Boy here, came to their house to question the grandma and she offered to let him search the house which he refused to do, that little Amy Dugger was alive and well in the upstairs bedroom.” He paused a moment, then repeated, “Alive and well.”

  My stomach burned, but I said nothing.

  Stone shook his head. “That little girl died because of him,” he said, looking at me while he said it. “He could’ve saved her, but instead he just let her die.”

  My jaw clenched again. My hands balled into fists.

  Matsuda whistled. “What a screw up.”

  60

  We sat there, all three of us, in silence. I could hear the distant tap of feet outside in the Investigation Division, along with the occasional rattle and clang of a desk drawer or a file cabinet. The sound of Stone’s breathing was the loudest thing in the room, after the sound of my own hear
tbeat raging in my ears.

  The silence was a tense one. It was a challenge, too. Stone was challenging me to say something, to defend my actions a decade ago. He wanted me to say that Karl Winter’s death was not my fault. He wanted me to say that Amy Dugger didn’t die because I let her. He was counting on it.

  There was no way I was going to give it to him.

  Matsuda twirled his pencil absently. Stone gave me a hard stare. I reflected it back to him and waited.

  Five minutes might have passed that way. Matsuda looked dutifully straight ahead, twirling his blue pencil while Stone and I stared at each other. I was patient, knowing it would be him that would have to break first. He had a job to do. He was on overtime and that was the way of it. I had all the time in the world and I’d already spent over two hours waiting on him.

  Finally, he sighed and flipped open the folder he’d brought with him.

  “How do you go from hero cop to pornographer?” he asked, without looking up at me.

  “Pornographer?”

  “How the mighty have fallen,” Matsuda said, staring absently at his pencil.

  Stone chuckled, but it was a fake chuckle, part of the act that they’d put together before coming into the room to work me.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Jack,” I said, “but you’re wrong.”

  Stone looked up at me. “Jack? Jack? Oh, so we’re pals now, huh? Is that it? You can call me Jack? Maybe we’ll go out for coffee after?”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, “how long are you going to be an asshole before you start talking with me for real?”

  “Now I’m an asshole?” He pointed to his chest and looked over at Matsuda. “I’m an asshole?”

  Matsuda continued to spin his pencil slowly in his fingers and shrugged.

  Stone leaned forward and jabbed his finger at me. “Maybe I am an asshole. Some people around here think so. But I’ll tell you what I’m not. I’m not a sack of shit who lets people die. And I don’t make kiddie porn and sell it on the Internet, either. I’m not that kind of asshole.”

  I thought about asking for a lawyer right then, but pushed the thought away. I wasn’t guilty. I didn’t need an attorney.

  “No,” I answered him, “You’re just a garden variety, arrogant asshole who doesn’t listen to anyone.”

  Stone’s eyebrows shot up and he glanced over at Matsuda. “You hear that, Richie?” He shook his head. “Boy, back in the day, when a maggot said something like that to you…” He drove his fist into his palm. “Pow!”

  Hearing him call me a maggot, a term I’d used myself to refer to all kinds of crooks, hit harder than anything else so far. Worse than being slammed on the ground, worse than being cuffed and stuffed in a car, worse than waiting in the interrogation room, even worse than having Amy Dugger’s memory shoved in my face by something other than my own conscience. It was the ultimate exclusionary term. You’re on the outside, he was saying when he used that word. Former cop or not, now you’re on the outside looking in.

  “If you want to kick my ass before we talk, get it over with,” I told Stone in a low voice, trying to break his rhythm. “But from what I hear, you hit like a little girl.”

  Stone didn’t bite. His voice was cold when he replied, “Like the one you killed?”

  Matsuda finally stepped in. I don’t know if it was on cue or not, but he was smooth about it. “Now, let’s not get out of hand here. You’re right, Mr. Korpuvah—”

  “Kopriva,” I said automatically, then realized he’d made the error on purpose to get me talking to him.

  Matsuda smiled. “Of course. Sorry. But you are right. We need to talk.”

  “Let’s do it, then. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

  “First, since you are in a police station, I need to read you something.” He pulled a card out of his shirt pocket and started to recite. “I am Richard Matsuda, a police detective. You have the right to remain silent. You have the—”

  I interrupted him. “I’m aware of my rights.”

  “—right to an attorney. If you—”

  “I understand my rights and I waive them,” I said, raising my voice to override his. “Give me the card and I’ll sign it.”

  Matsuda glanced at Stone, who shrugged and motioned toward me with his head. Matsuda set the card in front of me. Stone slid a pen across the empty table.

  I scrawled my name, then pushed the card and the pen back to Matsuda. “Ask your questions.”

  Matsuda handed the card to Stone, who put it in the case folder. The folder was thin now, but if it were like most cases, it would get thicker and thicker before the end of the case.

  “When exactly did you become involved in the pornography business, Mr. Kopriva?” Matsuda asked. “The legitimate elements, I mean.”

  “I’m not involved and I never have been,” I said. I couldn’t believe they were lumping me in with LeMond and Jackson.

  Matsuda gave me a look of disbelief. “I’m not talking about the kiddie stuff that Jackson had going on. I’m sure you didn’t know about that. I’m just wondering about your involvement in the legitimate business dealings.”

  “I’m not in business with Jackson or anybody,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you deaf?”

  Matsuda frowned. “Funny, because it looks a lot like you’re involved. Deeply involved.”

  “I’m not.”

  Matsuda looked over at Stone. “Maybe you’re right, Jack.”

  “Maybe,” Stone said.

  Matsuda looked back to me. “Jack here told me he guessed you were involved in this stuff clear up to your waist. Just mired in it.”

  Waist deep in the big muddy, I thought.

  Matsuda continued. “I told him no way. I figured you got involved in a little bit of porn business, all legal and stuff, just to make a little bank. No way would a former cop be involved in kiddie porn. Especially not after what happened with little Amy Dugger.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m not involved.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought,” Matsuda said. “But then you sit there and tell us you don’t have anything at all to do with this porn operation, not even the legitimate side of the house. We all know that’s a lie. So then I have to wonder if you’re lying about the kiddie porn angle, too. That maybe Jack’s right after all.”

  I gave Matsuda a long stare, tired of all this interrogative gamesmanship. “It’s been ten years since I wore a badge,” I told him, “but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid or have forgotten enough that you can play me. Drop the crap and ask your questions.”

  Matsuda wasn’t fazed. “I’m trying to ask you questions, but you aren’t telling me the truth.”

  “The truth is, I have nothing to do with this porn asshole. I was—”

  “Nothing to do with him?” Matsuda interrupted. “You were taken into custody outside of Roger Jackson’s house. Inside his house, down in the basement, is a little film studio where you guys make your videos. Also down there is his computer where those videos get uploaded onto the Internet to a pay site called ‘Barely Legal Beaver.’ You had a sixteen-year-old girl in your car. That girl appears on the website and on a DVD found in Roger Jackson’s basement.”

  “That’s Kris Sinderling,” I said, “and I’ve been—“

  “We know what you’ve been doing,” Stone said, breaking his short silence. He reached into the folder and pulled out the three pictures of Kris that I had taken from Jackson’s basement, along with the picture of Yvette.

  “Those aren’t mine,” I said. I knew what I meant, but I cringed when the words came out, knowing how they sounded to both cops.

  “I’m sure they’re not,” Stone said. “You’re just holding them for a friend, right?”

  “You were holding a gun, too,” Matsuda said. “With no concealed weapons permit.”

  I swallowed. This was getting worse by the second.

  “You wanna hear a theory, Steffie?” Stone asked. �
��I’ll tell you a theory. You and Mr. Jackson are partnered up in this little porno operation. He does the filming, the editing and the computer work and you bring him the girls. And if they won’t come willingly, well then that’s what the gun is for, right?”

  “Your theory sucks,” I told him.

  “It fits,” Stone said, with a shrug. “It’s enough to charge you and toss you into County with all the other maggots. How’d that be?”

  “I am not in business with Jackson!” I shouted. “I was hired—“

  “Your fingerprints are all over his fucking basement!” Stone yelled back at me.

  I stopped right there. Stone was bluffing. There was no way they had lifted and processed my prints so quickly. But it didn’t matter. Stone wasn’t going to listen to me and he wouldn’t let Matsuda really listen, either.

  “I want a lawyer,” I said to Matsuda.

  Matsuda pressed his lips together in frustration, but said nothing.

  I turned to Stone. “And you can go straight to hell.”

  61

  I thought they might just book me straight into jail. In fact, I was pretty much petrified that they would. Stone was right about that. But he didn’t leave me any choice but to lawyer up. He wasn’t going to listen.

  When they left me in the interrogation room for another forty minutes, waiting for a lawyer, I was surprised. Maybe Stone thought he’d let me stew and then come and make another pass at me, even though it violated the hell out of my Constitutional rights. Stone was the kind of guy that viewed those rights as an obstacle, something that criminals hid behind. It never occurred to him that they were in place to protect people like me from cops like him.

  I was glad my back was to the door. Every time I heard the scuffle of feet stop at the observation window in the door, the hair on the back of my neck bristled. The word was definitely out that I'd been brought in.

  When the door opened, I sat still. Then I caught her fragrance and I knew who it was before I ever saw her.

  “Stef,” she whispered and sat down. “What the hell is going on?”