Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  She left room in each cup. She’d replaced the coffee pot, opened the cupboard and removed a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème. With a small smile, she poured a generous amount into each, watching the dark brown liqueur spread throughout the black coffee, changing its color.

  “Mom?”

  “In here,” Gail answered, twisting the top on the Bailey’s and putting it away without hurrying.

  Terri came into the kitchen, her expression drawn. “He’s rambling again,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness and weariness.

  “What’s he talking about?” Gail asked. She pointed at the service tray on the other side of the kitchen.

  Terri followed her motion and retrieved the tray. “Police stuff, mostly. Names I don’t recognize.” She handed Gail the tray. “Some of it’s hard to understand. His voice is so raspy.”

  Gail took the tray and said nothing. She loaded the cups onto it, then added a few macaroons and a paper napkin.

  “He used to have such a deep, powerful voice,” Terri said. She shook her head. “It makes me sad to hear it now.”

  “It’s God’s will,” Gail answered her.

  “Why would God want Dad to have throat cancer?” Terri asked. There was no malice in her voice. For a moment, it almost seemed to Gail that her daughter was eight years old again, standing in the kitchen, helping her make dinner and asking all sorts of difficult questions.

  “I have no idea,” Gail answered.

  Terri smiled at her. “You’re such a rock, Mom. How you deal with this, I don’t know. If anything ever happened to Matt, I’d—“

  “You’d handle it,” Gail said. She returned her daughter’s smile. “There’s really no other choice.”

  Terri’s smile broadened. She leaned over and kissed Gail on the cheek. “I’ve gotta go. The kids are out of school in half an hour and I have to brush up my résumé for an interview tomorrow.”

  “Good luck,” Gail said. “And tell the grandbabies we love them.”

  “I will.” Terri sniffed at the coffee. Her smile turned sly. “Mom…I don’t think Doctor Hallett would approve of Dad drinking booze in his coffee.”

  Gail shrugged. “I really don’t think it matters, dear,” she said. “And besides, he doesn’t usually drink it, anyway.”

  “Usually?”

  Gail raised her eyebrows slightly.

  “Okay,” Terri said. “Mom knows best.” She kissed Gail again and left through the back door.

  Gail lifted the tray and made her way into the bedroom. Cal Ridley sat up in the bed, staring down at a photograph of himself. Ever since the cancer had spread to his brain, she’d witnessed wild fluctuations in his memory and cogency. The moments when he was just her Cal had dwindled and were rare now.

  “Who’s that handsome man you’re looking at?” she asked, setting the tray on the table beside the bed.

  Cal cast her a look that was a mixture of irritation and fear. “It’s me,” he snapped. Then he added, “Isn’t it?”

  She smiled warmly. “Of course it is, dear. That is you. Lieutenant Cal Ridley on the day he graduated the police academy. Almost forty years ago.”

  “Lieutenant,” he mouthed. He stared down at the picture for another long moment, then tossed it aside. “Lies,” he said. “Too many lies.”

  Gail didn’t answer. She knew he’d worked for years in the Narcotics Unit and the Vice Unit. Later, he’d supervised those same units. Drugs and Vice had to be the most distasteful parts of police work, she figured.

  She lifted a cup of coffee and held it out to him. “Cal?”

  He looked over at her, saw the coffee and shook his head gruffly.

  Gail settled into the chair beside the bed. She sipped the coffee herself. The warmth of the liquor spread throughout her stomach.

  “So smart,” Cal said, his voice raspy and broken. “Thought we could bring justice to this world. Our world.”

  “You did,” she said quietly. “You led a noble life, Cal.”

  His eyes snapped to her. There was a wildness in them that frightened her. Not for her own safety, but because of the distance in them. They were eyes that barely recognized her, or maybe not at all. And that foreshadowed what she knew was soon to come.

  “The system is broken, Sandy,” Cal said to her.

  Who is Sandy?

  “You’re the right man for the job, though,” he said. “You and Brian make four.” Then he laughed and looked away. “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Except all of you are Death.”

  Gail didn’t reply. The doctor told her that his words would meander and seem nonsensical at times, almost as if his mind was dreaming while awake. He warned her that Cal might slip into speaking gibberish before the end. She could try to engage him, but he told her not to expect too much.

  “Are you thinking about God, Cal?” she asked him.

  He looked at her again. Recognition and warmth came into his eyes. “Ah, Gail. Did you just say God?”

  “I did.”

  He smiled gently. “You know that I only went to church all those years because that’s where you were, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know,” she said.

  He reached out to her. She took his hand.

  “I just thought maybe you might be coming to God,” she added.

  His smile turned slightly cynical. “Me and God have an understanding,” he said. “And it doesn’t involve any last minute reprieves.”

  “You’re a good man, Cal,” Gail said. “And God forgives us all.”

  Cal squeezed her hand gently before releasing it. “Not those who play at being God,” he rasped.

  Gail didn’t know how to reply. She sipped her coffee.

  Cal stared out the window. “All the mistakes of a broken system. I tried to fix them. With my tools. My Horsemen. Hank. Bill. Sandy. And Brian.” Tears formed in his eyes. “Brian was such a young pup. I shouldn’t have brought him in. And then Sandy—“

  He broke off, his Adam ’s apple bobbing as he wept silently.

  Gail put down her coffee. She took his hands, covering them with her own.

  “I gave them all those cases,” Cal rasped. “All those sonsabitches that slipped through.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “And they did what had to be done,” he said. “They brought justice to bear.”

  “It’s okay, Cal,” she whispered. “It’s all right, dear.”

  Cal didn’t seem to hear her, yet he lowered his voice to a croaking whisper. “But there’s no justice in the world,” he said.

  No, Gail thought. There isn’t.

  ONE

  Ten years later

  “It isn’t right,” Detective Randall Cooper muttered to absolutely no one. “It’s not fuckin’ right.”

  He stood in the back of the near empty courtroom as the judge droned on about the reasons for his whacked out decision. The words he spoke didn’t matter to Cooper. What did matter was the result.

  Jeff Odoms was going free.

  Cooper shook his head, as if doing so would change the reality in front of him.

  Jeff Odoms, the man who kidnapped two fifteen year old Japanese foreign exchange students from Riverfront Park, was going free.

  The man who tortured them in his basement for three days with a riding crop and bared electrical wires from a lamp cord was going free.

  The man who forced those poor girls to do things with each other that they had probably not even imagined doing with boys their own age was going free.

  Cooper only half-listened as the judge spoke about the many flaws in the search warrant (the warrant he had written, goddamnit, and he knew how to write a search warrant). Phrases such as “lack of particularity” clanged in Cooper’s ears.

  Sure, he had rushed the warrant a little. Who wouldn’t? Two girls were missing. They’d been missing for three days. Was he supposed to sit at his desk and tippy-tap type until every ‘i’ was dotted and every ‘t’ was crossed? He didn’t become a cop to be a clerk. He became a cop to catch bad guy
s and save lives. Not like that panty-waist judge up there.

  And yeah, maybe his informant didn’t have the cleanest record around. There were a few convictions for what the judge was calling “crimes of integrity.” Joey Bitts was a thief. What’d you expect his record to look like? He sure as hell came through with good info on this one, didn’t he? Just because he lied in the past, we have to throw out his statement?

  “This is bullshit,” Cooper muttered, wanting to scream at the judge.

  He had good evidence on this case. He had the girls’ statements, certified by a court interpreter. He had a witness who described the van the kidnapper used to snatch the girls and Odoms owned the exact same van. Once he got into the house, he found the electrical cord. He found the riding crop. Hell, he even found the videotape that Odoms made over the three days. The sick sonofabitch is on the tape sixteen different times!

  You had it, he thought. Right up until one crack of the gavel from Judge Kravinski up there. Now it’s all gone.

  “In summary,” Judge Kravinski said, his tone neutral, “the probable cause to obtain the warrant was insufficient due to the informant’s failure to qualify as to veracity under the Aguilar/Spinelli doctrine.”

  Aguilar/Spinelli up your idiot ass, Cooper thought.

  “Even absent that,” the judge continued, “the warrant itself did not accurately describe the residence to be searched nor the items to be seized.”

  Cooper seethed. How am I supposed to know what I’m going to find until I get in there?

  “The initial questioning of the defendant by Detective Cooper was done in violation of Miranda,” Judge Kravinski said, glancing toward Cooper at that point, “and frankly, I have concerns that more than just the defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights were violated during that interrogation.”

  Cooper returned the judge’s stare, his jaw taut. Did he expect that someone like Odoms was just going to say, “Oh yes, detective, I did kidnap and torture those girls you found in the basement” or something like that? No, Cooper knew. Sometimes scum like Odoms had to be persuaded. Just a little.

  “Without a doubt,” the judge continued, “his Sixth Amendment rights were violated or at least delayed, since the detective’s own testimony reveals that the defendant was not provided with an attorney immediately upon request.”

  Cooper shook his head again. He was supposed to serve up a defense attorney to this maggot as soon as he asked for one? Like a fuckin’ cheeseburger?

  “These are not, as the State has tried to argue, ‘harmless errors.’” He glanced over at the prosecutor, who stood stone-faced, staring straight ahead. “Taking all of this into consideration,” the judge continued, “I have no choice other than to suppress all physical and testimonial evidence obtained in this case, with the exception of the independent observation by the patrol officers in this case that a van matching the general description of the kidnapper’s van was parked in the defendant’s driveway.”

  For a brief moment, Cooper allowed himself to hope this might turn the tide. If the judge thought the van was enough for PC, then they could claim inevitable discovery and –

  Judge Kravinksi adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “However, since this fact alone does not establish probable cause, I must reject the State’s argument of inevitable discovery.”

  Cooper scowled. Figures.

  The judge reached for his gavel. “All charges against the defendant are dismissed. He is released from custody.” He dipped his gavel downward, rapping it delicately.

  Cooper didn’t wait to see Odoms turn to his scumbag defense attorney and smile. He couldn’t stand the prospect of seeing the sick bastard’s expression of self-satisfaction. Nor did he want to endure the accusing glare of the prosecutor on this one, either. That officious prick had already notified his sergeant about this case, calling Cooper “a buffoon with a badge.”

  No, he wasn’t going to hang around for any of those pleasantries. Instead, he turned and barreled out the door of the courtroom and headed down the hall. He strode to the stairs and headed down them, stepping as lightly as his girth allowed. It seemed like he’d put on five or six pounds every year since he hit his twenty year mark. That put him at two-forty-five and twenty-nine years on the job. You don’t spend that much time on the job without learning a few important lessons.

  Like, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

  Cooper reached the ground floor, his breath coming in little gasps. A sheen of sweat covered his head and neck, cooled by the air conditioning and his lumbering motion. Underneath his shirt, the sweat felt stickier and he caught a whiff of the sour scent of his armpits. He’d have to go up to the locker room and clean up before he headed back to the squad room. If his sergeant was going to rip him a new one, he might as well be daisy fresh for that dance.

  But first he had a phone call to make. And it wasn’t one he could make from the department phone at his desk.

  There was something else Cooper had learned over the years. Something only a few cops knew.

  Something special.

  Something about justice.

  TWO

  Sandy Banks strolled down the sidewalk with an easy stride. Although he kept his head erect and took note of everything in his peripheral vision, he did so more out of habit than any concern. It wasn’t that danger didn’t exist. He was just used to it. He’d walked too many battlefields and too many rough streets to be afraid of what might happen. He’d also learned there was enough that did happen to fill anyone’s fear basket.

  He glanced at his watch. Two-thirty-six. That was good. He tried to vary what time of day he came here every week when it was his turn. That was another habit and Sandy figured it was a good one.

  He approached the post office at a steady gait. The crowd was heavy with late lunch traffic, but he’d always found this branch to be a busy one. Perhaps that was why Cal chose it, all those years ago. Hide in plain sight, in the midst of a crowd. Always a smart tactic.

  When he entered through the front doors, Sandy’s gaze swept through the interior. His mind clicked through what he saw, looking for anomalies. Any that he saw were negligible, just the rough edges of life. Nothing suspicious. Just men and women going about their business.

  Sandy walked straight to the private mailboxes. He pulled his key from his jacket pocket and inserted it into the lock. Without pausing, he turned the key and opened the box.

  There was a file curled up inside.

  A momentary whisper of apprehension fluttered in his stomach. An image of cops in bad suits leaping out from behind the counter and around corners, pointing guns and yelling at him flashed through his mind.

  He shook it off. If that was ever going to happen, it would have been in the early years. Now, the operation ran like clockwork.

  Sandy reached up and pulled the manila envelope from the box, then snapped the metal door shut. Without hesitation, he turned and walked from the post office. Half a block away was a pay phone. He dropped a quarter in and dialed a number from memory. It rang three times, then picked up.

  “Hello, this is Brian,” the recording went. “Leave a message.”

  Sandy waited for the tone, then said, “This is the National Firefighter’s Fund, collecting for fallen firefighters. We were hoping you’d like to donate. We’ll try back another time. Thanks.”

  He hung up. He knew the message itself didn’t matter. The sound of his voice was enough. Brian would know it was his turn to monitor the mailbox.

  Back in his car, Sandy sat in the driver’s seat. The weight of the envelope had a comfortable feel to it. He knew what to expect when he tore the edge open and slid the contents out. The first thing that would tumble out would be a thick stack of cash. Ten grand. Not enough to get rich, but enough to keep on.

  More importantly, there’d be a file, thick with information about a very bad man. There’d be enough there to show Sandy what the bad man did and how he got away with it. And there’d be enough to find this bad m
an, whoever he was.

  Sandy held off on opening the package. Instead, he slid his key into the ignition and started the car. There would be time enough for reading and planning and for killing soon enough.

  THREE

  “What are we going to do?”

  Her voice irritated him a little, but only because she interrupted the relaxing quiet of the motel room.

  “We’ve already talked about this,” he said simply.

  She shifted her leg, draping it over his. “I know, I know. But I want to be sure.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “You don’t worry enough.”

  He smiled in the pale afternoon light that seeped through the curtains. “Opposites attract, I guess.”

  “I guess,” she agreed.

  She fell silent. He knew that she was waiting for him to fill the silence, just as he knew that she’d stay silent until he did. Any attempt to change the subject would be greeted with that silence, or at best, one or two word replies.

  Her patience was greater than his, so he gave in.

  “We go for it,” he said. “What else are we going to do?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “All right. I agree.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re set to deliver the file?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Then we just sit back and let things unfold.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  “How long does it usually take?”

  She shrugged. “A couple of weeks, maybe. Sometimes less.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why are you asking me if you already know?”

  He squeezed her buttock with his hand, then gave it a light slap. “Why are you asking me when we both already know?”

  “Nervous, I guess. This one’s different.”

  “Not to the Horsemen.”

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not.” Then she asked, “What about the Odoms case?”

  “I dropped it off yesterday.”