Mystery: The Best of 2001

by Jon L. Breen

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “It’s your story. Start at the start, go to the end. I’m not going to interrupt you or ask any questions.” Too often, questioning improved the quality of the story. Kincaid wanted it to be all Tillis.

  “Fine, whatever.” Tillis looked annoyed.

  Kincaid set a pad in front of himself and adjusted the volume on the recorder. His notes would mostly be diagrams, converting the officer’s words to actions. He’d note inconsistencies between approved procedures and the report with brief questions. Later, he’d read the transcript and compare his thought processes as he moved through the story with what Tillis had to say, looking first for plausible differences and then for the lies.

  “I saw the guy sitting in the car. He looked like he could have been sleeping, or hurt, or dead. I didn’t know what. The place was deserted, man. I didn’t have no backup. I didn’t know what I was walking into, so I pulled out my piece and I came up alongside the car, and, you know, I tapped on the window with the barrel, just, like, to startle him, to see if he woke up, and, bam, the thing went off. You know how the piece is, man, it went off. I didn’t even pull the trigger. Shit, man, you gotta believe me, I did not mean to kill that guy. It was an accident.”

  Tillis was leaning forward in his chair, palms open as a sign of his transparency. His eyes had been fixed on Kincaid’s blank face the whole time he spoke.

  “How long have you been on the force, Officer?”

  “Four years.”

  “All in the second?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the last time you were qualified in weapons procedure?”

  Tillis looked away. “I don’t remember.”

  “Were you notified, were you scheduled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you shoot?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “Two.”

  “Did you qualify?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember what the proper procedure is for the use of a firearm as a door knocker?”

  “No.”

  “No? There is none. It’s a gun. How many times have you done this, Officer? Knock, knock, open up—whoops, guess I shot you. Didn’t mean to. Sorry.”

  “None. It’s never happened before.”

  “Lucky you. Where’s your piece, Officer?”

  “Homicide took it at the scene.”

  “Let’s go back to the start. I’m a little fuzzy there. You said the place was deserted. What were you doing there?”

  “I saw this guy’s car there, by itself, so I went down to check it out. You know, maybe it was kids doing the nasty. I’d roust ’em, move ’em out of there. It ain’t a good neighborhood.”

  “Where was the car again?”

  “Parked at the end of the road.”

  “Right. So you went down there.” Kincaid looked at his notes. “From where?”

  “From the street, man. I was driving by. I just picked up some food at Mickey D’s.”

  “Were you on duty, Officer?”

  “No.”

  “A little bit slower this time. You see the car from the street. Then what?”

  “I pulled down the road till I got to the car.”

  “You see anything in the car?”

  “No, it was dark. So I pulled up alongside. I got out and walked towards it. That’s when I see the guy.”

  “And the gun goes off. Then what?”

  “Then what? I freak out, man. I reach in the door, the window’s all gone, open it up, and he falls out into my arms. I mean, he’s dead. I know that right away. Half of his head is gone. I just lost it, man.” Tillis looked down and shook his head.

  “Lost it how?”

  He shrugged. Kincaid leaned forward. “I need your words, Officer Tillis; you lost it how?”

  Kincaid turned up the volume on the recorder to catch Tillis’s whispered reply. “I just dropped him, right there in the dirt. I jumped back, my heart was pounding. His head had flopped over and all I saw was this big hole, and blood, and bones, and all this soft gooey shit, so I dropped him and he fell in the dirt. And I’m thinking, I shot this guy, I killed him, and I can’t even pick him up out of the dirt. He shouldn’t be lying there like that. It wasn’t right, but I just couldn’t pick him up. I couldn’t. I just went around the car and got my radio and called it in.”

  “You ever shot anyone before, Officer Tillis?”

  “No. I’ve never discharged my weapon in the line of duty.”

  “Has the department psychologist spoken to you yet?”

  “No. I’m supposed to see him tomorrow.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know. What good is talking about it? It’s done. I did it. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

  “You’d be surprised. Talking about things can make a big difference. Killing a man, that’s a heavy load to carry alone. Especially an accident. I think that’s even tougher than murder. Murder, you get what you want. An accident, jeez, what a waste. But, hey, I’m no psychologist.”

  Kincaid reviewed his notes and leaned back in his chair. “Listen, why don’t we wrap it up right now. I’ll get this typed up and the team will review it. If I have any more questions, you’ll be at home, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Sergeant Max Kincaid. Interview terminated at one fifty-one P.M.”

  Tillis pushed away from the desk. He stood up and shook his head with sadness as he said, “You gotta believe me. I’m telling the truth. I didn’t mean to kill that guy.”

  Kincaid nodded. “I believe you, Officer Tillis.”

  Alone, he buzzed the front desk. “I have an interview tape that needs to be transcribed. How do I get that done?”

  “That’s part of my job, Sergeant. Is there anything else you need?”

  “Yeah, get me Officer Tillis’s personnel file—and who’s handling this investigation out of Homicide?”

  “Uh, that would be Detective Seymour.”

  “Seymour? Don’t think I know him.”

  “Probably not, sir.”

  “When will the report be sent over?”

  “Detective Seymour will be bringing it over this afternoon.”

  Kincaid left the building and walked around the corner to a sandwich shop and ate a “U-Boat” for lunch: bratwurst, sauerkraut, and mustard on a roll; side of German potato salad. Tillis’s file was on his desk when he returned. Pulling the window shade up, he rested his heels on the window ledge while he read. A knock on his door turned him around and upright.

  “Come in.”

  A tall, broad-shouldered woman with short, spiky blond hair opened the door. She wore a camel pantsuit over a black turtleneck. Her eyes were a pale blue-gray. Like ice water.

  “Sergeant Kincaid? I’m Detective Seymour. Angela Seymour.”

  They shook hands and Seymour slipped into a chair.

  “How much of your investigation have you completed?” Kincaid asked.

  “Crime scene and forensics. We’re doing a background on the victim and we took a statement from Tillis at the scene. How about you?”

  “Formal statement. I’ve been reading his personnel file. How do you see it?”

  “Forensics and crime scene match his story. There was residue on the window fragments. That’s where the shot came from. The clerk at Mickey D’s said he’d just picked up some food. His tire tracks and footprints match the story. He pulled up alongside the car, walked around, shot him, opened the door, the body fell out, he walked back and called it in, that sort of thing. The tape of the call seems consistent. You know, ‘I shot him. I shot him. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean it.’ He was real shook up. The timing was right. The guy was still warm when we got there.”

  “How about the gun? Street-ready?”

  “Yeah. The magazine was full, so there was one in the chamber.”

  “This guy is a field manual for screw-ups. You couldn’t handle thi
s situation in a more incompetent fashion. He sees this car at the end of the road. Off-duty, he goes down without calling anyone; parks alongside, not in the rear; doesn’t ask the guy to step out of the vehicle; uses his gun as a door knocker. I’ve been looking at his record. No history of use-of-force complaints, no history of improper discharge, no distinctions of any kind. Officer Tillis is a very thin, very pale blue line. I’m going to check his record at the academy. See what kind of training they were doing when he went through. He’s never requalified since he got out. I don’t know if his negligence is more his fault or ours.”

  “He learned the right way. We were in the same class. But if they didn’t require him to requalify, he wouldn’t do it. Delbert did enough to get by, nothing more. On one hand this surprises me, and on the other it doesn’t. I don’t see Delbert letting his Big Mac get cold to check out a stack of corpses, much less a parked car. That reminds me, what did he say about seeing the car?”

  Kincaid flipped back through his notes. “He saw the car from the street. He was driving by after he picked up the food.”

  “Never happened.” Seymour grew animated. Kincaid knew that feeling when the first lie raised its head above the smooth surface of a case. Something to chase, to hunt back to its lair, see if it had family. Seymour began to talk with her hands, and Kincaid noted that she had rings on all of her fingers.

  “I drove by the alley and missed it when we responded to the call. You can’t see anything from the street.”

  “How very curious. Then what brought Officer Tillis to that dark and lonely place? What was the victim’s name?”

  “Ronnie Lewis.”

  “What do we know about him?”

  “Nothing yet, but we’re working on it.”

  Kincaid checked his watch. He had to be at the range by four. “Listen, I’ve got to go, uh, let me give you my card.” He pulled out his wallet, took out a card, flipped it over, and wrote on the back. “This is my home number and my number here. Call me if you find out anything. I’ll do the same.” He handed her the card.

  She reached into her jacket and pulled out a card case and gave him hers. As she was leaving, she turned back. “I’ve just got to ask. How did you ever manage to write that on the watch commander’s forehead?” She was referring to the final incident that sent him across the river. He had written “750,” the code for dereliction of duty, on the watch commander’s forehead. Something he didn’t notice until, perplexed by the stares and snickers from everyone he met at the station house, he went into the locker room and saw it in the mirror.

  “I’ll never tell. Who knows, I may be called on to do it again.”

  “Well, it was appreciated by some of us. The guy was a complete asshole. The rumors of how you did it got pretty extreme.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll tell me about them someday.”

  “Only if you tell me the truth.”

  Kincaid drank two large cups of coffee before heading over to the range. He was crashing. One hour of sleep and his biological clock was busted. He hoped that the coffee would just keep him alert, not shaky, when he shot. The drive over reminded him of one benefit of midnights. Empty streets. At three A.M. you were fifteen minutes from anywhere. At three P.M. you were fifteen minutes from the next intersection. Rust and caffeine notwithstanding, Kincaid qualified easily. At his best, he had shot a rapid-fire perfect with his weak hand and unmarked targets.

  Kincaid made it back to his apartment by six, knocked down a couple of gin and tonics as sedatives, reheated a pizza, and wondered how long it would take to train his body to sleep at night. After dinner he took out his Ruger .44 magnum and worked on one of his teaching exercises: field-stripping and reassembling a sidearm with his eyes closed. He could do it with a dozen different weapons. He could do it with one model while lecturing about another. If he’d known his way around his wife’s body like that, he might still be married. Or at least on speaking terms.

  Morning came and Kincaid went to his office. He wasn’t expected to start his examiner’s duties until the following Monday. In the meantime, he wanted to get as far into this case as he could. Tillis’s file revealed that he was a native son. This had been one of the biggest problems with the recruitment push of five years ago. Local roots and no background checks meant that a lot of thugs got guns and badges, and those thugs had long histories with many of the local drug crews. Far too often, it was those loyalties that ruled—not the oath, the paycheck, the brotherhood of blue. No officer had, as yet, murdered another to further a criminal enterprise, but police had served as security for drug couriers, killing rivals and warning of raids.

  Kincaid read on. Tillis lived nowhere near the scene of the shooting, nor was it in his district. God knows there were other Mickey D’s in this town. What brought him to that location? Kincaid knew that things would get much more interesting if Tillis and Lewis knew each other. From that fact you could breed a motive, and negligence would be murder.

  At ten, his phone rang. It was Seymour.

  “You wanted to know about Lewis. Three priors. Nothing heavy.”

  “Tillis arrest him?”

  “No. I looked at Lewis’s entire jacket. Tillis isn’t mentioned anywhere. He wasn’t second officer, or station clerk. He didn’t handle crime scene, forensics, property, or records. Nothing.”

  “What are the dates on those arrests?”

  “Ten February this year, six July ninety-six, and twenty-three October ninety-one.”

  “What were the home addresses for Lewis on those arrests?”

  “Same as now: Sixty-one East Markham Terrace.”

  “Nowhere near where he was shot. Anything from the M.E.? Drugs in his system? Recent sexual activity?”

  “Nothing. You think Tillis was cruising and Lewis threatened to out him? Or Lewis propositioned him and he panicked?”

  “No idea. I’m just curious about what brought those two guys to that place at that time. I’ll settle for God’s will if I have to, but it’s never my first choice.”

  “I’ll keep looking into Lewis. Maybe Tillis gave him a ticket. We’re pulling his driving record. What are you doing?”

  “I’ll check into Tillis’s background a little more, see if I can put them together, even if it’s a fifth-grade study hall. Listen, could you fax over a copy of Tillis’s statement at the crime scene and his call in to dispatch.”

  “Sure. Let me know what you find out.”

  “Will do. Oh, by the way, he was strapped to a seat.”

  “Who was?”

  “The watch commander.”

  “No.” Seymour was both puzzled and impressed.

  “Yes.”

  There was a knock at his door. Kincaid said, “Come in.”

  The receptionist came in, a squat black woman with short, tightly curled hair, parted on one side.

  “Here’s that transcript you wanted, sir.” She handed him a stack of papers and the tape.

  Reaching out, he said, “Thank you. I should have introduced myself earlier. I’m Sergeant Kincaid, and you are . . . ?”

  “Shondell Witherspoon.” Deep dimples split her cheeks each time she spoke.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Witherspoon. When Detective Seymour’s fax arrives, I want to see it right away, and I need the department psychologist’s phone number.”

  “That would be Dr. Rice. He’s at extension two-one-oh-one at headquarters.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kincaid dialed the number as Witherspoon pulled the door closed.

  “Support Services.”

  “Dr. Rice, please.”

  “Dr. Rice is on vacation. Can anyone else help you?”

  “This is Sergeant Kincaid at Weapons-Use Review.

  Who’s handling post-incident debriefings while Rice is away?”

  “No one, Sergeant. The other staff positions haven’t been filled. Dr. Rice will be back next week. Is there anyone in particular you’re interested in?”

  “Officer Tillis. When is
he scheduled to be seen?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t called this office and didn’t respond to my calls. I was just typing up an A71 notice for him to appear. He has ten days, then he’s put on leave.”

  “Ask Dr. Rice to call me when he’s returned.”

  “Will do.”

  Kincaid opened Tillis’s personnel folder and looked at his assignments over the last four years—especially the dates of Lewis’s arrests in ’96 and ’01. He called Tillis’s station house. While he was waiting to get through, he opened the desk drawers to see if he had a lockbox for his interview tapes.

  “This is Sergeant Kincaid. Get me the duty clerk, please.”

  “This is Binyon, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m checking assignments. How far back do your records go?”

  “Not very far, Sergeant. We used to keep them here before the computer center opened downtown. They were kept up in the attic, but we had the pipes burst last fall, you know, that record cold spell back in October. Anyway, everything got soaked and it all kind of turned into big bricks of paper mâché. All the pages got glued together so we sent them to the incinerator.”

  “Thanks.” Kincaid was switched over to procurement. Tillis had never requested money for a confidential informant, so he hadn’t been using Lewis that way.

  There were no paper records connecting them or ruling out a connection. Kincaid was still wondering where he was going to store his tapes when he saw a possible solution to his problem.

  It took Kincaid the rest of the afternoon to put Lewis and Tillis together, and it was late in the day when he returned to the office to get Detective Seymour’s fax. Kincaid read Tillis’s statement and the transcript of his radio call. They were a match with what he’d said in the interview. Kincaid was glad he hadn’t relied on Seymour’s memory. Two lies and a damaging truth. A motive was gestating. Buoyed by that thought, he called the morgue.

  “Medical Examiner’s office.”

  “This is Sergeant Kincaid. You’ve got a body there, Ronnie Lewis, shot by an officer. Anyone come by to look at his belongings?”

  “No. Homicide’s in no hurry. They know who did this one.”