The Blackwood Files - File One: Family Secrets

by Terri Reid

  After pulling his duffle bag out of the back seat, he locked his car and jogged through the rain to the steel door that led to the 17th District locker rooms. The inside walls were painted institutional beige, and the linoleum was a gray and white. It worked well at hiding the dirt and stains, but walking into the building was always slightly depressing. The air smelled stale, a combination of old take-out and unwashed bodies, and some of the florescent lights above were blinking again.

  “There’s no place like home,” Art said softly with a slightly sarcastic tone.

  “What’re you grumbling about?” a booming voice behind him bellowed. “You complaining again?”

  Art turned around with a smile, looking at the tall, athletic black man following him. “The only thing I have to complain about is my partner,” he teased. “Other than that, this place is like heaven.”

  “Oh, yeah, I hear you,” his partner, Detective Sam Sidney replied. “I got a partner who drives me crazy. Only reason he’s on the force is because his daddy pulled some strings.”

  Art nodded. “I heard about him,” he said as waited until Sam caught up with him and they walked together towards the locker room. “Good looking guy.”

  Sam shook his head. “No, ugly as sin,” he said with a wide grin. “That same daddy must have beat him with an ugly stick when he was little.”

  “No, I think you’ve got that wrong,” Art replied companionably. “He’s the good-looking one, and his partner is the ugly as sin one. Poor fellow. I heard women only agree to go out with him because they believe in charity work.”

  Sam chuckled. “Well, you got that right,” he laughed, and then he looked over at his partner. “So, what’s bugging you?”

  Art stopped in front of his locker and stared at Sam, who was busy unlocking his locker across from him. Sometimes the special connection partners shared could be uncanny. “What do you mean?” he evaded. “I’m fine.”

  “Yeah, right, you’re fine,” Sam said, pulling his shirt over his head revealing a body that was muscled and toned. “Just like you were fine when you found out Marilyn was cheating on you. I know you, O’Reilly. You got something swimming around in that empty head of yours. You upset about what went down at the courthouse today?”

  “You mean Robbins walking?” Art replied as he unlocked the metal door in front of him. “Yeah, I’m not happy about that.”

  “That bitch must have psychic abilities to find that one little error,” Sam complained.

  “She was just doing her job,” Art said, feeling more than a little protective of Brooke.

  Sam turned, surprised. “What did you just say?”

  Art shrugged as he unbuttoned his shirt. “I said she was just doing her job.”

  Sitting down on the bench between them to slip off his shoes, Sam shook his head. “Something going on between you and Callahan?”

  “No,” Art immediately replied, and then paused. “Well, maybe. But it’s not what you think.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “If it has to do with a man and a woman, I know just what to think,” he replied.

  Hanging his shirt in the locker, Art shook his head. “No, that’s not it,” he replied. “And, even though you’ve never been able to manage it, a man and a woman can have a relationship that doesn’t include sex.”

  “And why the hell would you want to get into a relationship like that?” Sam scoffed. “You trying to get in touch with your feminine side?”

  Art hesitated and then looked over to his partner. “Have you ever heard of Bruce Blackwood?” he asked, his voice lowered.

  Sam’s grin disappeared and he met Art’s eyes. “Yeah,” he said, lowering his voice as he slowly looked around the locker room. “And we should definitely talk about this later.”

  Art nodded quickly. “Okay. Later.”

  A half-hour later as they were out on the street in their unmarked police car driving through the streets of Chicago, Sam finally turned to Art.

  “So, you want to tell me what’s up?” he asked.

  “So, you’ve heard of Bruce Blackwood?” Art asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of Blackwood,” Sam replied. “He was kind of a legend in the 12th District where I started as a rookie. The guy was like a genius when it came to solving a mystery.”

  “This morning, when I was getting ready for court, my dad told me that the defense attorney, Callahan, was actually his daughter,” Art said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Sam asked. “That cold-hearted witch is Blackwood’s daughter. What? Did she hate him for dying or something?”

  “Actually, she didn’t know about him,” Art replied.

  Sam’s eyebrows raised. “She didn’t know her daddy was Blackwood?” he asked, and then he stared at Art. “And just how did she find out? And if you answer how I think you’re going to answer, we must just as well decide here and now we’re going to lose every case we bring to court.”

  Art nodded and sighed. “Yeah, I opened my big mouth,” he admitted. “I mean, I thought she knew. What kind of parent doesn’t tell their kid about their real dad?”

  “How she take the news?”

  “Hard. She took it real hard,” Art said.

  “Okay, from now on I testify for us,” Sam said.

  Art shook his head. “You know, that’s what I thought, too. But I happened to meet up with her later, and she wasn’t mad at me. Which was surprising. She was upset with her mom and stepdad for not telling her.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Sam said.

  “A relief, and it got me asking myself questions,” Art admitted.

  “Like what?” Sam asked.

  “Like, why do you think they never solved his murder?” Art asked.

  Sam was quiet for a moment, and then he pulled the car over in front of a small café on Irving Park Road. He picked up the radio. “Dispatch Zone one, this is car 9920. We are requesting a Code 70,” Sam said.

  “9920, Code 70 approved,” the dispatcher replied. “If you’re going for donuts, bring me back a few.”

  Sam chuckled. “You got it, Maria,” he said.

  “What are we doing?” Art asked.

  Sam met his eyes. “You suddenly got hungry,” he said. “And we had to stop for food.”

  Art nodded slowly. “Yeah, I am feeling a little hungry,” he agreed. “Let’s go in.”

  They exited the car and walked toward the café. Upon entering, Sam checked the small room for any other police officers, and when he didn’t see any, he smiled at the waitress. “Hey, Nora, how ‘bout a quiet both in the corner?”

  “You got it, Sam,” she said, sending a flirtatious smile in his direction.

  They slipped into a corner booth and both ordered coffee. When Nora walked away, Sam leaned forward in the booth.

  “So?” Art asked.

  “So, you know those kind of stories you hear when you’re a rookie?” Sam asked, keeping his voice low. “The ones about a secret society within the department?”

  Art shrugged. “Yeah, I heard about that,” he said. “But, you know, I also heard about the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, but I don’t see what this has to do with Blackwood.”

  “The rumor was that Blackwood was investigating something within the department,” Sam explained. “He was getting close, too. And then he died. And no one knows what happened, and no one really cares too much to investigate.”

  Art leaned against the vinyl backing of the booth and shook his head. “This is a joke, right?”

  “No joke, man,” Sam said. “Back when I was in 12th, I was approached to join.”

  “What?” Art exclaimed. “What did you do?”

  “I played dumb and then got my ass transferred as soon as I could,” he replied, and then he met Art’s eyes. “Which is why I’m working with one of the cleanest-cut, straight-laced cops I could find. Ain’t no one gonna approach an O’Reilly about a secret society.”

  “Well, if what you’re saying is true, I can’t ask you to get involved wit
h this investigation,” Art said. “It’s too risky.”

  Sam cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You calling me a coward?”

  “No. No, of course not,” Art said. “But you already made your choice.”

  “O’Reilly, have you always been so thick-headed?” Sam asked. “The choice I made was not to join. Didn’t say nothing about fighting to get rid of it. You say I made my choice. Well, I didn’t have to bring you in here tonight and tell you what I did. Did I?”

  Art shook his head. “No. No you didn’t,” he replied.

  “Then let me tell you, partner,” Sam continued. “If you want to investigate Blackwood’s murder, then I’m right there with you.”

  “There’s no one I’d rather have by my side,” Art said. “When do we start?”

  Sam grinned. “Right after I pick up some donuts for Maria.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam pulled the unmarked vehicle into the parking lot adjacent to the 12th District and drove to the back to find an empty parking spot.

  “I don’t know if we should be doing this,” Art said, his hand on the door release. “At least not without a little planning.”

  Sam turned to him. “Listen, when you got a secret organization like this, you got nervous people, people who are always looking over their shoulder, always waiting for the next shoe to drop,” he said. “If anyone overheard your conversation with Callahan, they’re already moving into action. If you want a chance at his files, we’ve got to get them now. Tonight.”

  Art nodded and pulled on the door release. “This just seems so unreal.”

  “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “And I think it’s going to get even more unreal the closer we get to solving this case.”

  They entered the front lobby of the station, and Sam approached the front desk. A young police officer looked up and smiled. “Well, look what the dog dragged in,” he said with a smile. “What you doing? Slumming in the old neighborhood.”

  Sam smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I never thought I’d see your ugly face again,” he replied. “How you doing, Martinez?”

  “Good, Sam, how ‘bout you?”

  “Same old, same old,” he replied. “But I got this new case that reminds me of something I was working on when I was here. I tried finding it through the computer records. But, it’s not showing up, so I thought I’d spend a little quality time down in the morgue.”

  Martinez grinned. “Where all the dead files go,” he said. “Yeah, we’ve been having issues with the computers.” He looked around to make sure no one else was listening. “That’s what happens when you give the contract to the Mayor’s cousin who don’t know a damn thing about computers.”

  “Bet he made a million bucks on the deal,” Sam sympathized.

  “At least,” Martinez agreed. He leaned over and pressed a button behind his desk that sounded a buzzer. Sam reached over and opened the door.

  “Come on, partner,” he said to Art. “We got some files to sort through.”

  Art nodded to Martinez. “Nothing like the glamourous job of police work.”

  Martinez laughed. “Well, make sure you got your guns handy,” he added. “There’s some rats the size of small dogs down there, and they don’t take prisoners.”

  Sam chuckled. “Thanks, Martinez,” he said. “Hopefully he doesn’t shoot me.”

  They walked down the hall with the sound of Martinez’s laughter following them.

  “Nice guy,” Art said.

  Sam nodded and lowered his voice. “And as soon as we walked away from the desk, he placed a call to his buddies letting them know we were here,” he said. “So we’ve got to get a move on.”

  The fluorescent light bulbs behind yellowing plastic ceiling panels broke up the vast array of pockmarked ceiling tiles in the basement of the 12th District. The walls, industrial gray, absorbed what little illumination there was, leaving the area gloomy and depressing.

  “Welcome to my hometown,” Sam said to Art as they walked past a myriad of old, faded cubicles stored downstairs in case they ever came back in style.

  “Don’t they throw anything away here?” Art asked, emphasizing his words by picking up an old rotary dial phone, black with plastic clear buttons on the base.

  Sam chuckled. “Hey, for the longest time the 12th was run by Depression babies,” he explained. “You don’t throw anything out that you might want to use someday. Which is good news for us because the old files are down here, too.”

  Art glanced around the space, filled with office furniture, ancient computer equipment, and stacks of boxes and shook his head. “I’m guessing that we wouldn’t find Blackwood’s original files on the computer system, even if we looked,” Art said.

  “You guess right,” Sam said. “Now the only difficult part will be locating the boxes.”

  “There’s no order to this?” Art asked.

  Sam snickered. “Oh, yeah, right,” he replied. “They got this whole basement filed up like the Dewey Decimal System. Maybe you could look under 345 for Criminal Law or maybe 813 for Mysteries.”

  “What are you talking about?” Art asked.

  Shrugging, Sam smiled sheepishly. “My mom was a school librarian,” he explained. “I’d help her restack books after school every day. I know that damn system by heart.”

  “You are one weird dude,” Art teased. “How about if I take the north side, and you start on the south side.”

  Sam looked over to the south wall where heavy steel shelves held stacks of boxes piled to the ceiling, and then glanced over to the north where several dozen similar shelving units created a large maze of steel and boxes and nodded. “Yeah, that will suit me just fine,” he said. “You just scream if you meet any spiders or rats in there, hear?”

  “Thanks, Sam,” Art replied. “Thanks a lot.”

  Walking past several stacks of old office desks and a wall of tall, metal file cabinets, Art finally made it to the boxes. The side of each box was clearly marked with the date, the district number and the police officer’s name. He slowly walked towards the inside of the maze, as earlier dates appeared to be stacked towards the ends of the rows. When he finally found one box with a date close to Blackwood’s death, he stopped and looked around. The fluorescent bulbs above him had long since burnt out, and he reasoned, no one could replace it because there was no place for a ladder in their collection of paperwork. The shelves formed a small room, and someone had been kind enough to place a small, rickety card table in the center. With a sigh, he squatted down in front of the first shelving unit and starting rearranging the boxes, pulling the ones in the back forward and then pushing them back where they belonged, trying to read the pertinent data.

  They had worked in silence for about ten minutes, and Art had reached the third set of shelves when he heard a noise behind him. He paused to listen again and heard the rustling of papers. Anticipating a large rodent, Art jumped up, turned around and waited. “Come on, Rizzo, show yourself,” he whispered as he looked around the small enclosure for some kind of weapon, like a broom or shovel, to run the creature off. There was no way he was going to discharge his weapon inside the building. “Where’s a large, hungry cat when you need one?”

  He waited for a few more moments, wondering if he’d be able to taze the creature before it took a bite out of his leg. Then he thought back to the heavy rotary phone on the desk as they entered and nodded. “You wait right here,” he whispered. “I’ll be back with a phone that’s got your name on it.”

  He started to leave the enclosure when he heard the noise again, but this time a cold chill ran up his spine. Turning, he caught his breath when one of the boxes from a shelf at the far corner of the tiny room started to slowly move forward. “That’s one hell of a rat,” he choked as the fifty-plus pound box slid toward the edge of the shelf. Before it could topple off, it stopped moving. Art stared at it for a few more seconds, not quite sure what he wanted to do. But he was too Irish not to check it out. He walked over to it, his Taser in his hand,
and then squatted down to read the markings on the side. Bruce Blackwood, Det.

  Taking an unsteady breath, Art reached a slightly shaking hand out and pulled the box the rest of the way out of the unit. Placing it on the table and pulling off the top, he found dozens of manila folders packed inside. “Okay, Detective, you obviously wanted this found,” he replied softly, vowing never to tease his sister, Mary, about the ghosts she claimed she could see. “Now what?”

  Another box on the shelf moved, and Art jumped back. “Got it,” he said. “There are more.”

  He walked to the edge of the maze and called across the room. “Sam, I think I found them.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Sam called back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sam placed the last box of files on the stack they’d made on the floor. “How did you find these so quickly?” he asked. “They were hidden in the corner.”

  Art shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said with a smile. “So, how are we going to get these out of here without letting anyone know?”

  Sam nodded. “Oh, I got that already figured out,” he said, walking around the corner of the shelves and coming back with an empty, used box.

  “What that?” Art asked.

  Sam pointed to the small print on the side. “Sam Sidney, Det.” “I just emptied the files in my boxes into some others,” he said. “Now all we have to do is switch Blackwood’s files into my boxes, and we’ll be good to go.”

  “Sam, you’re a genius,” Art said. “Let’s get—”

  He froze when he heard a door opening at the other side of the room. Sam turned to him, placed a finger over his mouth and shook his head.

  The stacks of shelves were too high for them to see anyone approaching, but it also hid them from whoever had entered the storage area.

  “Martinez said they were down here,” the man’s voice carried across the room. Art didn’t think it was anyone he knew.