Warpath

by Ryan Sayles

  “You’re reputation bars against that, Mr. Buckner. I have full faith you’ll solve this—”

  “So tell me, Mr. Petticoat, I have just one question.”

  “Is it, where do I sign?”

  “No. How do you expect me to get anywhere further than Gillispie did back when the crime was still hot? Why even bother now?”

  He rubs his face. His hands shake. “Mr. Buckner, that’s two questions.”

  “Don’t correct me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just so...so damn tired. Like I said I’m having an operation next week—”

  “Like I said—” Bored with this game now. “—cut the shit.”

  He huffs long and exhausted. His eyes dart about. I note his pupils, even in this dim light, are pinpoints. A tell.

  “You’ll succeed where the police failed because I...I have information I—” He looks down and balls a fist. Holds it to his mouth. He mumbles something like forgive me Sheila as his eyes quake with guilt.

  Very small, as if the utterance of these words is enough to tear silk: “I have information I did not give them.”

  The room is still. Even the ghosts I have made throughout my life who cling to me now stop their haunting and lean in closer.

  “What information?” I ask.

  “The rapist’s girlfriend. I know who she is.”

  2

  “You held back that kind of information?”

  “Yes. Don’t think it doesn’t eat me up inside.”

  I study him for a second and guess what? I don’t see him eaten at all. Something that egregious would leave all kinds of gnawing marks. Chunks torn out and still bloody after all these years. But strangely, he looks calm, like he’s a few steps into a choreographed rant now. A tell. “Why?”

  He inhales in a very practiced manner. “The way it came about...it’s a long story.”

  “Did you have it at the time?”

  He covers his mouth. He says too loudly, “No.” Tells. This is getting thick.

  “Well, Mr. Petticoat. Maybe I can help you,” I say, easing back my chair.

  A brilliant, relief-soaked smile. “I knew it! I knew it! I’ve got the best man in this line of work on my side now and—”

  I stand. Slide the packet of bills into my suit coat pocket. Forty-four Magnum in hand. I don’t point it at him. Not yet.

  “Get out,” I say, as unwavering as if he were a bar fly I’d picked up and brought her home just to discover she has a boner. In both situations, I don’t play these games.

  “Now, Mr. Buckner.” Instead of leaving he slinks down into the small chair I have for guests and crosses a leg rather effeminately. He draws his head down between his shoulders as if he’s a turtle getting ready for decapitation.

  One hand to the side of his face and he says, “Mr. Buckner there is no reason why we can’t—”

  “I suggest you go to the police. Tell them about this girlfriend and they can connect the dots from there.”

  I cock the hammer back on the revolver and his face freezes into wide eyes and granite. “But, Mr. Petticoat, you’re so full of shit that I’m done listening. So, get out.”

  He holds his hands out to me, palms up. He won’t make eye contact. He very slowly reaches into the pocket of his jacket and withdraws another packet of money. A flick of his wrist and it lands with a thud onto my desk.

  “So the last ten grand had run out of listening time. Okay. Sure,” he says, lowering his hands slowly like he was underwater. “Just let me buy some more time. Okay? Okay?”

  Twenty grand?

  Twenty grand.

  “Fine.” The .44 goes away. I sit down, take the packet of bills and flutter them with my thumb, looking to make sure each one has ol’ Benjamin on it. Satisfied, the packet goes inside my jacket next to the other one.

  “The girlfriend. Why me instead of the police. Your real intentions. Get this over with.”

  “Right, right,” he says, wiping away more sweat. “The girlfriend’s name is Carla Gabler. Well, I should say ex-girlfriend. And let me clarify: I did not have the information at the time. My buddy, he got it later.”

  Double-back. A tell.

  “What buddy?”

  “Dan Martins. He was a parole officer with the city. Gabler, she was at Happenstance prison up north. You know, the women’s prison? Anyway, she was in for robbing houses I think, and when she got out, Dan was her PO.”

  He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Actually, Dan says he had been making house calls with her as well.”

  Parole officer shitting where he eats. Sounds like a quality guy.

  “Dan said one night during some pillow talk, she was recounting her life. Telling him about the boyfriend she used to date who got her in trouble. She went with him and they robbed a house and they got busted. That’s how she got imprisoned. She said his name, but Dan never told me. Then she said something about him robbing my house. I guess he had just gotten out as well, I don’t know.”

  Petticoat’s face is forlorn. His fists bunch up, his shoulders tighten. “Carla Gabler.”

  “Dan didn’t say anything because he didn’t make the connection? Or was he too shitty to mention how he got the info because he didn’t want to lose his job?” I ask, light a smoke.

  “Dan never said.” Petticoat’s voice is flat as ash. “But I know Dan. I know that guy. He just didn’t want to lose his job.”

  “When did he tell you?”

  “Right after his retirement party.” Petticoat’s eyes sternly examine the floor in front of him. “Last month.”

  I write down the names.

  Deep breath, then he says, “My real intensions.” He laughs, hollow. Like a smoker who should have quit long ago but still lights a cancer stick around his oxygen tank. Petticoat’s merriment sounds like old paper being torn.

  “Another buddy of mine sent me to you. Hank Madison. He said you were the kind of guy who could walk into maximum security in the prison and those felons would step back. He said you’ve been off the force long enough for the new policemen to not know who you are, but for some reason, criminals who started yesterday do know you. Like you’re a chapter in their How to Commit Crimes handbook. The “Don’t Fuck With This Guy” chapter. Hank said you’ve earned that reputation.”

  Hank Madison is an old friend of mine from the force. He and I were never so close that we exchanged Christmas presents, I’ve never met his wife, but we are cool. It’s been a long time. I make a note to buy Madison a round. Nothing warms my heart like people telling other people I am the baddest motherfucker of all-time.

  “I figure a reputation like that gets earned with a solid punch here and there. So sure, I figured once you got your hands on the rapist you’d pop him one for me. But I’m not hiring you to kill him. I’m not. I just...want him.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “And why you rather than the police? Well, for starters they have already failed me once. Second, you’re a dedicated asset. If I drop cash in front of a Saint Ansgar detective and say ‘make this your only case,’ it’s a bribe. A defense lawyer can use that to get the rapist off. But, if I do that to you, it’s a fee. And, as I’ve said, I have an operation coming up in eight days.”

  Here’s the twist among the rest of his questionable story.

  “Heart problems. The cardiac surgeon says if I get the surgery, my chances of survival are thirty-five to forty percent. If I do not, I’ll be dead within six months. Bottom line. Don’t get me wrong; I think the university hospital is great an all—especially for cardiac stuff—but c’mon.”

  He holds both hands palms up, adjusting them in the air like they are weight scales. “Die on a table in a hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses and medicine while I’m under anesthesia, or die at home, doped up on morphine, having severe heart arrhythmias and needing a defibrillator hooked up to me all the time?”

  He puts his hands down. Looks right at me, more direct that any other time this evening. “I’m sure a man of your ilk
wants to die in a glorious battle with swords and cannon fire and all that jazz, but a man like me, who has money-making deals on the table right now, he wants to die a long time from now, Mr. Buckner. A long time.”

  “Sure.”

  “So, I want you as opposed to PD because I need this case reopened and solved in eight days. I want to know the man who raped my wife and destroyed everything I ever had has been caught before I wager sixty to sixty-five percent odds I’ll never wake up.”

  He leans in. Like a multi-million dollar real estate transaction with the final word hanging out in space, waiting to be said, he gets a confident look that I imagine he has as he shakes hands and walks away that much richer.

  “Mr. Buckner, do we have a deal?”

  “You said twenty grand more just to take the case?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you just want someone delivered?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said there’s a good chance you might be dead in eight days?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure, we have a deal,” I say. “Why the hell not?”

  3

  Evening, Sunday

  The two biggest factors that solve cold cases are DNA and new testimony from witnesses.

  Sometimes a witness will see the entire crime unfold before his eyes and be too afraid to ever speak up. The police might identify said witness as what he is: the most important thing to solve the crime. But the witness doesn’t want to get involved. So he shuts up. And the perp walks.

  Then, years later, the perp dies or gets incarcerated. Gets shot during another crime, becomes a victim himself, gets locked up on another charge and will never get out. Then, the witness grows a pair and comes forward with his story. And the perp gets prosecuted on an old crime.

  That solves cold cases.

  DNA. Same thing. It was developed in the early ’80s in England and used as a profiling technique. The process filtered across the rest of the world and eventually found its way into the United States’ court system where it has damned many guilty parties and exonerated those few people in prison who weren’t lying when they said they were innocent.

  Petticoat left his copy of the case report he was given by Detective Gillispie all those years ago. The bulk of it is the offense report where Gillispie spells out in very finite detail the events of the night. There are also statements from the Petticoats themselves, reproductions of crime scene photographs, what the rape kit found, et cetera.

  The best bet is to call in a favor at the PD and have the rapist’s DNA sampled from the original evidence stilled being stored in records and sent to an independent lab where they can test it against all the DNA on file with the Department of Corrections. Hopefully our rapist was imprisoned for something, anything, and the guy can get tagged with this as well. The problem will be the timeframe. I know a lab that works very fast for the right dollar amount, but I’ll need to push a lot at the PD to get the paperwork through and approved in time.

  Then of course, there’s the other problem. Petticoat is lying about something.

  There is ample proof that what he said happened did actually happen. He has the lofty position in life to legitimately pay me the sums he has shelled out. I can understand the fear, the revenge. I’m widowed as well but I can’t readily find cancer and beat it to death. Petticoat has it easier than that.

  There’s something up his sleeve. Before this is over with I’ll have him take his shirt off. At gun point, if need be.

  I call Howard Michigan.

  Howard, what passed for a training officer on the PD back when I started, he’s been a private eye for years now. Numerous alimony payments dictate he do something. Howard mostly follows around the wives of rich men and reports back, or he staples missing person flyers up and down the streets on light posts and billboards.

  Howard is horrible at almost everything he does except making things harder on himself. The man excels at two other things: smoking unfiltered cigarettes and falling in love with women who will one day divorce him in very ugly terms. But, on the other hand he knows just about everybody. He’s the guy that knows a guy who can do or get just about whatever it is you need.

  He answers on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Howard, Richard.”

  “Hey! Richard. You gotta come by some time. I got my hands on some good scotch. Good scotch.”

  “Sure.” Sounds like he’s working his way through it right now. “You know Clarence Petticoat?”

  “Petticoat?” Groans while he searches his dusty memory. “The real estate guy? Or the black dwarf who used to work at that retirement home and went to prison for thieving from the old biddies who would die in their sleep?”

  “Black dwarf? What are you talking about? Clarence Petticoat, the real estate guy. You’ve done work for him.”

  “Oh, right, right. Never mind about the dwarf guy. That might have been a movie I seen.”

  “Are you sober?”

  “I can be. What’s the gig?”

  “No gig. I wanted to ask you about this guy. He hired me to find the man who raped his wife back in ’92.”

  “No gig? Fine. I’m drunk. Petticoat’s wife was raped? How bad?”

  That’s no shit. In Howard’s mind there is a sliding scale of sexual assault. On the low end there is the woman who had consensual sex with someone and later decided her palette was indeed too discerning for her experience with such a panty-sniffer to be anything but rape. On the high end there is Petticoat’s wife; the woman blindsided by a “true” rapist, battered, hospitalized, et cetera.

  “Aggravated rape, aggravated battery. During an aggravated burglary. Later she killed herself.”

  “Okay. So it was rape rape.”

  “Yes, Howard.”

  “Funny. He never mentioned it.”

  “Do all the clients who hire you to do a background check on the pool boy before they leave them at home with the trophy wife tell you about aggravated felonies? The police called it a rape rape. Petticoat gave me the case file,” I say, flipping through the pages, looking at nothing in particular. “Gillispie worked it. Poorly, I might add.”

  “Gillispie, Gillispie...” Howard trails off and I can hear the ice in a glass clinking around as he takes a swallow from whatever is going to cause his hangover in the morning. “I remember a guy named Gillispie who died in a high-speed car chase.”

  “Not him. You’re thinking of Ginsbee. Sam Ginsbee. I’m talking about Thomas Gillispie. Property crimes.”

  “Oh. Oh! The dead queen. Why did they send a burglary dick to work a rape?”

  “I don’t know, Howard. Who fucking cares? What can you tell me about Petticoat?”

  “White guy. Successful. Tall. Very pretty.”

  On a side note, if I were Petticoat, it would drive me nuts that heterosexual men describe me as pretty. I also despise talking to Howard when he’s drunk, which is more and more these days. He thinks his drunken, sophomoric humor stops even the most stiff-legged individual in his tracks and sends him into fits of roaring laughter. It’s amusing enough when I don’t need something. When I do, I can barely stop myself from slugging him in the solar plexus to get him to vomit up all that expensive booze. I immediately start thinking of ways to put the hurt to him.

  I crush out my smoke as hard as I want to smash Howard. “Are you going to get your head out of your ass and answer my question or do I need to call you tomorrow morning at seven a.m.?”

  He gives me a ha that sounds more like a raspy huff: “You know I don’t wake up until one p.m. or so, Richard. I won’t answer.”

  “You know I’ll let it ring until you get up to disconnect the line.”

  “You know I’ll just do that tonight before I go to bed.”

  “You know you’ll forget as soon as we hang up.”

  “You know—damn it, Richard. Don’t call that early. I get the worst fucking migraine when I wake up hung over that early.”

  “Answer my question then.”r />
  “Yes!” he shouts, superbly annoyed. “Yes, I remember Gillispie!”

  “That’s not the question.”

  “Yes, it was!”

  “I asked—” A tone chirps in my ear. Graham Clevenger beeps in. “I’ve got to go, Howard. I’m calling you tomorrow at seven. No. Make that five.”

  “Richard! You fu—”

  I click over.

  Howard Michigan was the first generation of hard-drinking, hard-fighting cop on the force. I was the second. The difference between Howard and I is that Howard was a terrible cop and I was good. When I was labeled as unfit for service, excused and “allowed to medically retire,” I had been partnered with the third generation of cop. Graham Clevenger. He didn’t drink hard. He fought hard, but never “went overboard” like Howard and I were always accused of. Graham was simply a professional. We are not partners anymore, nor have we been for some time. But if I were to consider the words best friend, or really, only friend, Graham Clevenger gets the title.

  “Evening, Graham. Thanks for getting me off the phone with Howard Michigan.”

  “Sure, Richard,” he says. Sounds tired. I’m rubbing my eyes from the frustration with my old trainer. Now I have to get up early to call him and send his entire day into a flaming tailspin just out of spite.

  I ask, “Ever heard of a guy named Clarence Petticoat? Real estate monster here in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s backed the money truck up to my front door so I’ll find a rapist from the early ’90s. I might need your help getting some DNA out of the records unit. Do you mind?”

  “I’ll be off work for a few days,” he is slow to say. “I’ll actually be needing your assistance...”

  “Off work? Why? Painting your house?”

  “No.”

  I do a double take at the clock. Almost 2300 hours. Clevenger doesn’t call this late for shits and giggles.

  “Graham, what’s wrong?” I ask, instinctively shrugging on my jacket.

  “I need you to meet me at 3917 Bending Boulevard. North end of the city. Now.”