Wall of Silence

by Gabrielle Goldsby

“Anything else?”

  “The police had been watching them since an accusation of abuse, but they didn’t have anything.” She paused, and I could sense her confusion through the phone. “For some reason, one morning they opened fire on the place. Some of the women and children were killed.”

  The cell phone felt like it was burning into the side of my head. “Can you do a search on Harrison Canniff?”

  “The autopsy report was inconclusive due to the fact that his body was burned and all of his teeth were missing. His ex-wife made the ID.”

  “No, I know about that part…do you have anything else on him?”

  Her breathing got loud and deep. “Holy shit. You’re not going to believe this. Canniff was there. He was arrested as well, but they couldn’t make the charges stick because the bust wasn’t legal.”

  Now my mind started searching. I felt like I already had my answer, but I needed to follow it to its logical conclusion. It didn’t make sense, it was crazy, but it had to be true. “Can you find anything on the officers involved in the bust? They had to have been disciplined or something.”

  “It was Smitty and his partner. They were there.”

  If I had been in any other condition, I would have been as shocked as she was. But as it was, I felt like I was spent—no emotion, no anger, nothing. Just totally drained. “Do you have a name, an address, or something on Smitty’s old partner?”

  “Shit, I can probably get it, Foster, but I don’t know. That’s not something I have access to. They were down in San Diego. The only reason I can pull this stuff is because someone entered it into the database. I might be able to pull in a few favors, but you know how hard it is to get into an officer’s records unnoticed.”

  Okay, think, Foster. Think. Smitty and his partner were involved. I couldn’t very well waltz up to his old partner. I could try Monica, but I don’t know if she would tell her father.

  “Do you get any hits on Monica or Chief James?”

  “There’s close to five hundred on Chief James.”

  “No time. What about Monica? Take out the ones that look like they have anything to do with Chief James or the fact that she’s his daughter.” With my teeth gritted, I waited.

  “Everything is about that charity she runs, burying those kids.”

  “Okay.” I rubbed hard at my aching forehead and closed my burning eyes tightly. A pulse began to pound in my temple. “Go back to the oldest one and read it to me.”

  I listened intently as she read the article. I was certain it was the same one Riley and I had found back in Albion. I opened my mouth to tell her to go to the next one when something she said made me pause.

  “Citing a near-fatal accident with her own son, she has made it her life’s work—”

  “Wait. Back up. Read that again.” I pressed the phone hard into my ear, concentrating on what I was hearing. Smitty had never mentioned an accident with Eric. “Did Marcus ever talk to you about Smitty?”

  “No, I told you, they didn’t really know each other.” Something in her tone didn’t seem right.

  “Listen to me, I need you to think long and hard about this. Did he ever mention anything having to do with Smitty at all? I need to know what he may have known that I don’t.”

  When Chandra spoke, she was unusually hesitant. There was something she didn’t want to tell me. “Like what?”

  “Why is this so hard for you to understand?” Desperation crept into my voice. “Did Marcus ever say anything about him? Did Smitty’s name come up, or Monica’s, or hell, anything at all to do with either of them?”

  “I can remember us talking about it a little when the article first came out.”

  “What article?”

  “The one I’m reading to you. About Smitty’s wife’s charity. Marcus and I were talking, and I told him I thought it was sort of creepy.”

  I swallowed. “What…what did you think was creepy?”

  “I mean, I understand about civic duties and I think she’s doing a great service, but in her own van? And then how she would bury them and, I don’t know, give them names. Marcus went over to the cemetery. He said all of them had her last name. I know Smith is common, but I mean, she had her own son in the same van she carried those dead babies in.”

  “Can you print the articles out? I need to see them.”

  “I’m not sure I can get away.”

  “Please, you have to. They might…I have to find her.”

  I felt like I was imploding. Nothing seemed to be adding up, but in the back of my mind something was. It was sick and it was dirty, and I had let Riley fall into that tide pool of filth. I had to get her back.

  “It’s okay, Foster.” Her voice was calm, almost as if she was talking me down off a ledge. “I’ll get away, okay? I’ll bring it to you.”

  *

  Chandra agreed to meet me in the parking lot of a KFC about two miles from the theater. She got into the Blazer and handed me the articles.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “No.” I tried not to notice how dead my own voice sounded as I scanned the printed pages. There wasn’t much more to them than what I already knew, but something was telling me that these articles could have been what Marcus keyed in on.

  “Listen, I’m going to follow up on a few things. If you don’t hear from me in four hours, go to one of the detectives in my division. Anyone except Wilson or McClowski. Tell him everything you know. Give him this address and tell him I’m in trouble. Do you understand?”

  “Maybe you should go to him now.”

  “No, I can’t run the risk that they might haul me in before I find her.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find Riley.”

  I watched Chandra drive off, and then got back on the freeway heading toward Monica’s. I pulled a small card out of my back pocket, reached for Riley’s cell, and dialed the number with one hand.

  “Hello?”

  “Sherm?”

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “Foster Everett.”

  “I thought you were going to call me…”

  “Sherm, don’t. I need help, okay? They took Riley.”

  “Who took her? Where are you?”

  “I don’t know who took her. Probably the same people who killed Marcus.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  “I need her back, Sherm. I need her back, no matter what.”

  “I know,” he said. It was no comfort to me that he did know; Marcus was dead.

  “I’m on my way to see my partner’s widow. I think she may know something, but I’m not sure.” To my horror, a sob escaped my throat. I gave Sherm directions to the theater and got him to write down Chandra’s cell phone number. “I’m going to talk to Monica first. I’ll meet you at the theater in about two hours.”

  I didn’t know what I expected Sherm to do, but it helped knowing I wasn’t in this alone.

  I pulled up in front of my partner’s old house and noted with dismay that Monica’s van wasn’t there and that a “For Sale” sign had been placed in the yard. I left the Blazer running as I sprinted to the side of the house and peered through a window. Eric’s room was now empty; even the border of multicolored balloons had been pulled down. I ran to another window that illuminated the hall of the house. The pictures of Monica’s mother were gone, and in their place was a wall of pristine white. There wasn’t even a lighter patch of paint to prove that the pictures had ever been there.

  It took me an unusually long time to get into the house. I couldn’t seem to keep my breathing or my hands steady as I worked at the locks. Once inside, the acrid smell of fresh paint assaulted my nose as I walked from room to room. In the family room I got to my knees, searching for indentations in the carpet where a pool table had sat for all the years I had known Smitty. There were none. It was as if someone had gone through and wiped away every piece of evidence that this house had ever been lived in. I explored Eric’s room, thinking that smal
l children leave prints, dirt evidence of their existence. There was nothing; even the light switches were spotless. This felt so wrong, off kilter somehow, like watching a glass of water that was tipped on its edge but never fell.

  Perhaps it was that very feeling of disorder that made me so alert, because I felt it the instant someone else walked into the house. You know the feeling. You can tell someone is there because the air moves, even though you don’t actually hear anything. My first thought was to pull my gun, open a window, and scurry out. My second thought was that whoever was out there might know where Riley was. I pulled the .38 from my ankle holster and placed it in the deep pocket of my cargo pants. No brute force and no threats. I had to let myself get caught.

  “Well, hello there. I hoped you would stop by.”

  I turned around, already reaching for the guns at my back.

  “Go on, go on and pull the gun,” Dan McClowski said. “I want to have to kill you.”

  Gritting my teeth, I brought my hands up in front of me. I stared down the barrel of the .45 pointed at my head. “Where is she?”

  “Oh, you mean your big friend? Tell me the truth, she helped you in your apartment, didn’t she? We figured it must have been her.”

  When I didn’t answer, McClowski chuckled. His ponytail caught the light, making me vow to pull it straight out of his head after I found Riley.

  “Come on.” He gestured with his gun, indicating I should walk before him.

  I stopped when he told me to, and he quickly removed both 9 mm’s and, just as I’d hoped, didn’t bother to pat me down.

  “Tell me where she is,” I demanded.

  McClowski pushed his gun into the small of my back to edge me forward. “Well, let’s see. I figure right about now she’s getting the shit kicked out of her, but I can’t be sure.”

  We had just reached the living room, and with a final shove to my back, he sent me stumbling forward. My body tensed as a searing pain started at the back of my head, jabbed down my neck, and sent me to my knees.

  “God damn it, man, don’t kill her.” Alvin Wilson slouched into view. “He said bring her ass in alive. He needs that tape.”

  “I’ve earned some payback. This bitch tried to kill me last time.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Just get her up.”

  I heard McClowski holster his weapon. Cursing under his breath, he bent to help me up. As I was dragged to my feet, my hand went to my pocket, but at some point after I had been hit, the .38 had been removed from my pocket. I couldn’t seem to keep my head from hanging down as I tried to catch my breath. I felt the prickly sensation of blood as it rolled over my cheek and then seeped into my mouth—warm, coppery, and somehow comforting. “W…where is she?” I said to give myself time to regroup.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to take you right to her. But first we want the tape.”

  “I don’t have any tape.”

  “Look, we know that drunk stole it. Smitty said you and he were the only ones that had access to the tapes.”

  “I didn’t take anything. I turned in everything we had.”

  “We know how Michael Albert got hold of the tape. We talked to him.” The curl of Wilson’s lip was meant to be a smile. Instead, it just seemed cruel, almost as cruel as the damage done to Michael’s body. “He swore he didn’t have it anymore. We’re starting to think he gave it to you.”

  “You’re crazy. I don’t even know him.”

  “Then how did you know about the house in Barstow?”

  “How did you know about it?” I fired back.

  Wilson smirked. “His girlfriend told us.”

  Damn you, Alicia. “So what makes you think she didn’t tell me the same thing?”

  “Their apartment’s been watched ever since the van was towed.”

  “What van, and what did Michael’s girlfriend tell you?” I’m sure my face gave nothing away, but mentally I winced.

  I realized McClowski knew nothing about Alicia. He was talking about the woman Michael was living with at the time of his disappearance. They must have questioned her about Michael.

  McClowski really laughed this time. “You don’t think we’re going to tell you everything, do you?”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re just guessing. I don’t think you know your ass from a hole in the ground.”

  The next blow barely even bothered me, but I pitched forward anyway and lay as still as I could. I was starting to understand something, but the pain in the back of my head was making it harder for me to connect the dots. I felt a tight hand on my arm.

  “Man, she doesn’t look so good.” The note of worry in McClowski’s voice gave me a small sense of pleasure. Never mind the fact that my life was seeping out of the back of my head.

  “Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t have hit her so hard.”

  “Tell me where Riley is, and I’ll get you the tape,” I said as Wilson roughly hauled me to my feet.

  “The boss has her, and that’s all you need to know.”

  “Who’s your boss?” I already knew the answer. There was only one person powerful enough to have two dirty cops on his payroll. The question was, why all of this? What could be so bad that he’d been having people killed?

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” McClowski spat. “Now tell us —”

  I jammed my fingers into his washed-out gray eyes and clawed for all I was worth. The scream that rent the air would have been satisfying if I hadn’t been so worried about getting shot. I pushed the floundering McClowski hard into Wilson, hoping to make him drop the gun when he hit the wall. He didn’t. He managed to get off a shot that I felt zip past my ear before my fist made contact with his chin. I put both hands around the hot barrel of the gun and pushed it up and away from me. I heard McClowski cursing behind us and knew that if I didn’t get control of the situation immediately, it would be two against one.

  I’d never liked those odds. So I released the gun just long enough to smash my right fist into Wilson’s throat. Heat seared my left hand as he either reflexively, or in an effort to shoot me, pulled the trigger. My eardrums protested as the sound of the second shot echoed through the empty house until there was nothing left but the steady hum of the refrigerator.

  Wilson stared at me blankly as his body slid down the wall, leaving a trail of vivid crimson. The floor stopped him and I watched as the life left his body, his knees up and together like a demure schoolgirl’s. I turned the gun on McClowski.

  “Oh God. Oh God,” he screamed hoarsely. “You killed him.”

  “He killed himself,” I said. “Get up.”

  Four long scratches ran down both of McClowski’s cheeks like demented red sunbeams in a child’s crayon drawing. Snot dribbled from his nose as he stared fixedly at his partner like he’d never seen a dead body before. I pulled the phone out of my back pocket and, without moving my eyes from McClowski, demanded his boss’s phone number. He bit out the number and I dialed it, but before I pushed Send I met his eyes. Something about his reaction bothered me. He didn’t seem like someone who could cut out someone’s tongue, not to mention what they had done to Marcus.

  “Who killed Marcus Vansant?”

  “Wilson did,” he said without hesitation.

  “And Michael Albert?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Why?”

  “The boss just said they had to go.”

  “And what did you do while he was killing them?” I asked.

  “What? Nothing!”

  “You didn’t do anything?”

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t want any part of it. I just kept quiet. He’s crazy. He enjoyed it.”

  McClowski stopped talking then. Maybe he saw something in my eyes that he recognized, because in that moment I felt like I would have enjoyed killing him. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot.

  I held out the phone. “Tell your boss you got me,” I said. “Tell him to meet you back at the theater with Riley and that I won’t tell you where the tape is wit
hout seeing her alive first. If you try anything, you die.”

  McClowski carefully took the phone from my hand as if he was afraid to touch me. I watched calmly for any sign, any reason, any excuse to kill him. He gave me none.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In the police academy, they tell rookies that killing will never come easy, no matter how often you have to pull the trigger. They’re lying. I put the gun against McClowski’s ribs and kept my eyes on the rearview mirror to make sure no one was following us.

  “Pull into that grocery store lot and park.”

  “All right. All right,” he said, as if placating a crazy person.

  “No.” I pressed the gun more firmly into his side as he pulled into a parking space. “Go to the back.” I tensed, waiting for him to protest. I was out of luck.

  He slowly eased out of the parking space and drove toward the back of the store and parked.

  “Good. Now get out.”

  “What are you going to do?” he whined.

  “I said, get out.” I kept the gun pointed at him as he scrambled out of the car.

  “Please, I got a kid and a wife. That’s why I did all this. You know how hard it can be.”

  I ignored his amateur attempt at negotiation. “Give me your cuffs,” I said and he reached in his pocket and handed them to me. “Turn around.”

  He did so and started to cry as I opened the rear of the car. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

  I stared at the back of his head, tempted. “No.” I slammed the butt of my gun into his skull, then grabbed the collar of his white shirt and tried to guide his limp form into the backseat. I checked his pulse before pushing his legs in behind him and closing the door. “Paybacks are a bitch, aren’t they, fuckhead?”

  I got in the driver’s seat and picked up the police radio that now felt foreign to me. Rolling the dice that this woman was too uptight to get involved in corruption, I said, “Patch me in to Captain Gail Simmons.”

  “Please repeat your unit number.”

  “Just patch me in to Captain Simmons, damn it. This is an emergency. Tell her it’s Foster Everett.”