Shakedown jd-1

by Joel Goldman

  Latrell had a small desk in one corner, the surface made smaller by the stacks of paper piled on it, each sheet waiting to be put in its designated folder. The monotony of the job was soothing. The precision with which he maintained the perpetual paper?ow comforted him.

  Today Latrell’s work neither soothed nor comforted him. He was tired from being up late the night before after giving Marcellus’s dog to the FBI agent and he had been uneasy all day, fidgeting as if tiny, invisible insects were burrowing into his skin. The itching distracted him, making it difficult to concentrate. He was falling behind and the further behind he fell, the more he itched.

  Then, after lunch, things got worse when everyone in the office gathered at the windows along the north wall. Curious, he joined them, watching as police cars and an ambulance, their emergency lights?ashing, converged at the storage sheds on the northern edge of the yard, their sirens drowned out by the trains’ ceaseless grinding and whistling.

  The phone rang. A secretary answered, listened, and handed the phone to Latrell’s boss, who muttered “shit,” gave the phone back, and bolted for the stairs, bad knees and fifty extra pounds slowing him down.

  Latrell pressed against the glass, wishing he had a better view. He saw the parade of cars stop in front of the storage sheds, saw people miniaturized by the distance pour out and disappear as they went around the sheds to the edge of the woods.

  The entrance to the cave was a short distance from the storage sheds, an easy walk if you knew which trail to follow. The possibility that the cave was their destination in?amed the insects marching across his skin. Though he had camou?aged the entrance with a thick layer of deadfall, someone who knew what to look for might find it. Latrell didn’t realize that he was holding his breath until he felt a hand on his shoulder, the secretary asking him if he was okay. He nodded and returned to his desk, afraid of attracting more attention.

  A while later, the manager returned with four others, two of whom he recognized as the FBI agents who had knocked on his door after he’d put things right with Marcellus. The other agent, the one who had come looking for Marcellus’s dog last night, wasn’t part of the group. Latrell kept his head down, stealing a glance at them. No one looked his way.

  He should have relaxed when his boss didn’t summon him, saying that the agents wanted to ask him some questions, but he didn’t. Instead, the itching got worse until his skin felt electrified. Latrell was clinging to the edges of his world, gathering them tightly around him, but he was losing his grip. Things should have been better after he’d killed Marcellus and the others, but they weren’t.

  Latrell ducked into the bathroom, closed the door to a stall, and sat, taking things apart, putting them back together in his mind, searching for what had gone wrong. Each time, he came back to the FBI agent, Jack Davis, he said his name was. Worried about Marcellus’s dog. Standing outside his house waiting to trick him with that bullshit story about losing his son.

  Latrell pinched his eyes closed, picturing himself in the cave, hidden deep under the surface, touching the special things he kept there, and screaming until his throat was raw. The image put him at ease. Get through the day, he told himself. Then he’d go to the cave and sort things out. Figure out what he had to do and do it. Put things right again.

  The heat in Latrell’s skin slowly cooled to a tingle, then faded. Settled, he returned to his desk, his face a placid mask. The FBI agents were huddled with his boss in the conference room, its interior glass wall giving him a clear view of what they were doing.

  The secretary rapped lightly on the door, a bundle of rolled maps and enlarged aerial photographs under her arm. The manager let her in, directing her to spread the maps and photographs out on the table. The agents crowded around as she unrolled them, Latrell’s boss pointing and nodding in response to the agents’ questions. Twenty minutes later, they rolled up the maps and photographs. Each of the agents shook his boss’s hand and they left, taking the documents with them.

  Later, Latrell asked his boss what was going on. Found a dead body in one of the Dumpsters back by the storage sheds, his boss told him. It’s a rail yard, not a goddamn cemetery, his boss added, annoyed at anything that kept him from making sure the trains ran on time. Latrell should have been relieved, but he wasn’t. He began to itch again.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Ammara Iverson gave me a lift back to my car.

  “That was slick,” I said, as she drove away from the rail yard.

  “You mean the Mutt and Jeff routine Troy and Ziegler did back there?”

  “They were smooth, I’ll give them that. You think Ziegler had really talked to the D.A.?”

  “Ziegler never bluffs. Troy reached out to Ziegler as soon as we found out about Javy Ordonez. I was on the call with him.”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Troy would have done the same thing. Ziegler, too. They’re all in favor of cooperating with the local cops as long as they get to run the show.”

  “I get that. I don’t care about the turf battle. I’m more interested in whether the cases are connected.”

  “Too soon to tell, but that gun the tech found makes things more interesting.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  Ammara took a breath. “Remember, I didn’t tell you any of this. Ballistics says that a.45 caliber was used in the drug house murders. If this gun is a match, we may have our first real break.”

  “The.45 was standard military issue, marines mostly,” I said.

  “They aren’t just for the military,” she said. “Glock and Ruger both make.45s. So do some other manufacturers. They’re great for self-protection. Lots of stopping power.”

  “If the gun they found was military issue, that could give us an angle to look at.”

  “Us,” she said. “Not you.”

  I ignored her comment. “How about our squad? Anybody like the.45?”

  Ammara turned toward me, smiling. “Nope. Everybody likes the.40 caliber, Glocks mostly, same as you.”

  “I’m not just talking about service weapons. What about personal guns?”

  She bit her lower lip, shaking her head. “Troy asked all of us. No one said they had a.45, but I guess that doesn’t prove anything, does it.”

  “Not much.”

  Ammara didn’t argue, changing subjects instead. “You should let go of this case, Jack. Take care of yourself.”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “I’m serious, Jack. You keep showing up like this, Troy will change the locks.”

  “How badly does Troy want to keep me out of the way?”

  “Bad enough. You saw him today.”

  “Doesn’t answer my question. I don’t think it has anything to do with my health. I think that’s a convenient excuse. He wants my squad on a permanent basis. Always has.”

  “I don’t know. Troy has his way of seeing the world. It’s not mine, but he’s running the squad.”

  “Anything else new from your end besides the ballistics?” I asked.

  “A few more dead ends. That kid, Luis Alvarez, the one who supposedly shot Tony Phillips and who the Winston brothers put in intensive care, he didn’t make it. Never woke up.”

  “It’s like they all decided to kill each other. Kind of like a suicide pact.”

  “Only difference,” Ammara said, “people who make a suicide pact kill themselves, not one another.”

  “Has to be a last man standing. Anything else?”

  She shrugged. “We talked to Jalise Williams’s family and friends. No indication she was stepping out on Marcellus or doing anything else to make her a target.”

  “Well, that’s not all bad. We keep eliminating enough possibilities, we’ll be left with the answer, even if it doesn’t make sense now.”

  “Maybe, but this thing with Javy Ordonez has Troy’s balls in a bundle,” Ammara said.

  “Why? Because it doesn’t fit with his theory that we’ve got a bad agent
on our squad? The ballistics report doesn’t, either.”

  “He’s not telling us what he thinks.”

  “First rule-trust no one,” I said.

  “Second rule-eventually you have to trust someone. He can’t do this on his own,” she said.

  “What about the polygraphs? Still on for tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, except he’s not going to ask you to take one.”

  “Why not?”

  “The examiner told him that the results would be meaningless if you start shaking during the test.”

  “Lucky me. So how do you know what the examiner told Troy if Troy isn’t talking to the squad?”

  Ammara smiled, not taking her eyes from the road. “I don’t like being shut out so I pay real close attention to my surroundings. Did you get anything else from Marty Grisnik?”

  “He’s going to call you for the ballistics on the gun used to kill Marcellus and company. He wants to compare it to the ballistics from the Tony Phillips shooting.”

  “They recover the gun in that shooting?”

  “Grisnik didn’t say, but they’ve got the rounds that killed the kid. They can compare those to the rounds we found at Marcellus’s house.”

  “If the same gun was used in all three cases, that would be nice,” Ammara said.

  “Be more than nice. It would be sweet,” I said. “But it wouldn’t make any sense. Why throw the gun away where it was likely to be found after using it to pop Javy? Pretty sloppy.”

  “Wouldn’t have been found if Javy’s body hadn’t jammed up the garbage truck. The gun would have ended up in the landfill along with Javy. More unlucky than sloppy.”

  “There’s another angle. Latrell Kelly,” I said.

  “Mr. Cream Puff?”

  “Yeah. He lived behind Marcellus and he works at the rail yard. See if you can find a connection between him and Javy. You ever been to a joint on Fifth Street in Kansas City, Kansas, called Pete’s Other Place?”

  “You mean that sausage place Colby’s always talking about? He dragged me there once. Not my kind of food. I like to see dogs walking around, not on my plate stuffed inside an intestine.”

  I laughed. “Grisnik took me there for lunch today. I liked the sausage.”

  “You see any dogs?”

  “Not a one. I did run into Colby. He was sitting at the bar,” I said, my voice trailing off.

  “And?” asked Ammara.

  “And what?”

  “And when someone’s voice trails off, Special Agent Davis, it implies they want to tell you something else but they prefer to be asked. That’s and what.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Well, I don’t prefer to be asked, at least not at the moment.”

  We didn’t say anything else until Ammara pulled alongside my car. I got out and then leaned back in the open window.

  “You remember that case last spring, the one where the wife turned the ex-stockbroker husband in for dealing dope?”

  Ammara laughed. “And for cheating on her. I think that’s what killed the deal for him. Man, she wanted his nuts slow roasted.”

  “Guy’s name was Thomas Rice.”

  “Right. The wife’s name was Jill. What about them?”

  “You and Troy handled that case.”

  “We did.”

  “You ever hear from the wife afterward? She ever call?”

  Ammara pursed her lips and squinted her eyes, thinking before she spoke. “Last time I talked to her was when the judge sentenced her husband. What’s this about, Jack?”

  I smiled. “It’s probably nothing, but I’d like to get a look at the file.”

  “Troy would kick your ass out the door.”

  “He doesn’t have a boot big enough, but all the same, I’d rather no one know I was looking at it.”

  She thought for a minute, chewing her lip. “How much of the file you need?”

  “Names and addresses of Rice’s clients before he lost his license. Same for the people he gave up to the U.S. Attorney as part of his plea bargain. Plus any witness statements and all of Rice’s financials.”

  “I can’t take the file out of the building,” Ammara said. “There would be a record of that and a lot of questions for me to answer if Troy finds out I gave it to you.”

  “You could make copies. Bring them out to the house.”

  She looked closely at me, narrowing her eyes, passing judgment. “If I had a dick, I’d say I was about to step on it,” she said.

  “Don’t wear heels.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  I lowered the windows in my car, releasing the heat that had built up since morning. The day caught up to me like jackhammers pounding me from my insides out before I could start the engine. I fought the tremors with stiff arms clamped to the steering wheel, finally letting go, only to be whipped against the seat back, grunting like I’d been kicked. A woman walking through the parking lot stopped in front of my car, staring, hand to her heart, asking “are you okay?” I nodded and waved her off, though I imagined it was hard for her to tell where the shaking stopped and the nodding started. It was for me.

  I’d become a display piece, a street performer, an oddity belonging at the state fair along with the two-headed cow, the bearded lady, and the tattooed man. I wasn’t okay, but that wasn’t her problem. It was mine. I didn’t want her to ask me how I was doing. I wanted her to leave me alone. I wanted to be invisible.

  I’d been off work for two days. Not long enough to take it easy even if I knew how. Not long enough either to know whether it would make a difference. Perhaps when I saw the doctor next week, I would find out whether this was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.

  Ammara, Kate, and Troy were telling me the same thing. Walk away. Let someone else find out who killed those five people. They would say the same thing about Javy Ordonez’s killer. I had no illusions that I was the only one who could solve those cases, though I was certain I was the only one who could protect Wendy.

  Though I’d yet to find any direct threat to her beyond Colby’s probable infidelity, I felt the threat as surely as I did the shakes. It didn’t matter that I might be overreacting because of what had happened to Kevin. Taking any chances with her was unthinkable. I would sacrifice anything, including myself, my job, Colby Hudson, or a guilty verdict against the killer, if it meant saving her.

  I leaned against the headrest, spent. The shakes had stopped. It was as if they were conducting guerrilla warfare against me, attacking from the shadows and escaping before I could fight back.

  There was much I had to do. Talk to Jill Rice and ask her why she was selling her car and house to Colby. Figure out how Colby could afford to buy them even at a discount. Figure out why Tom Rice was so afraid. Find Bodie Grant and ask him whether he was the last man standing. Find the man I thought that I’d seen running away two nights ago. Find Oleta Phillips or what was left of her. Catch the killers. Protect Wendy. Make it all make sense.

  At the moment, I couldn’t do any of it. I was all over the place and I was no place. The shaking was adding ten rounds in the ring to my day. I raised my hands to my unseen opponent. No mas. Picking up the dog and going home was all I could do for now.

  Ruby raced around the house, sniffing in the corners,?ying into the backyard where, to my amazement, she peed and pooped. Pete amp; Macs had me for life. Back in the house, she followed me from room to room, her eyes delirious with devotion.

  The message light on my phone was?ashing red. I punched the play button and listened as Joy told me that since I had forgotten to call the radiologist’s office, she had done it for me, making an appointment at eight the next morning, ending with a reminder: “It’s time for you to learn to take care of yourself, Jack.”

  I replayed the message, deciphering her voice, not the words. Joy wasn’t angry, frustrated, or annoyed that I’d forgotten to call. There was no touch of humor either, no gentle teasing, just sadness, her voice fading away at the end, like she was letting go.


  I had buried our shared pain, stepped around our long silences, and ducked her wounded eyes until I was certain that our love had become another casualty of Kevin’s death. The truth, though, was in her voice.

  Joy still cared, after all that had happened, after all that she had done and I had failed to do. She still cared. That’s why she’d come to the house. That’s why she’d made the doctor appointments. I listened to her message again, hearing, at last, the rest of it. She still cared, but that was no longer enough.

  I retreated to my chair in the den, cross-examining myself in the soft shadow of the lone lamp about what had happened and what might still be possible. I wasn’t good at this. I was better at accepting the harsh reality of death, loss, and guilt, lowering my head and pushing on without looking back or wondering whether a second chance lay beneath the wreckage.

  I closed my eyes and slept, dreaming that I was suspended in midair, Joy and Kate on either side, each extending a hand, one slipping away, the other reaching out, forcing me to choose. In that instant, a spasm shot through me, arching my back and neck, binding me as I shook, pulverizing my dream in a blast of blinding white light. I opened my eyes. Ruby was standing on my chest licking the tears from my cheeks.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Latrell waited until close to midnight before he left home. There was a Wal-Mart two miles from the cave that was open twenty-four hours. No one paid any attention to cars left in that lot. He parked there and walked like he always did, passing through a neighborhood, with few streetlights, of older, modest houses whose residents had long since gone to bed.

  He would have preferred to park at the rail yard and take the path behind the storage sheds, but then he would have had to explain why he left his car parked at the terminal building overnight. His coworkers might start asking questions if they saw him disappear into the woods, especially after a body had been found nearby in the Dumpster.