by Aiden Bates
Ozzy frowned and set his coffee cup down. "Wait. That's not a cold case. That's a very hot case, and one that should be closed considering that we have four dirtbags in custody." One of the dirtbags had a broken jaw too, courtesy of the handsome and charming Pete Nolan, Photographer.
That card was still right there on Ozzy's desk, all but burning a hole on it.
"You're right. The bank robbery isn't a cold case. The bullet, though, comes from a gun that was used in a homicide twenty years ago." Oliver's eyes lit up.
"Twenty years ago?" Ozzy shook his head. "If that kid is nineteen years old I'll eat my own shoe."
"Why do you think we're down here?" Devlin rested his fingertips on Ozzy's desk. "That cold case is the murder of a state trooper. Trooper Timothy Harbaugh, to be specific. There's no way that Jeff Balsalmo killed a state trooper three months before he was even conceived. We deal in the real world, here, not in science fiction. Your job is to figure out the connection, and hopefully to solve the case." He bent down and grabbed a box off of the ground.
Ozzy accepted it. "No pressure though." He winked at Devlin. His boss knew him well. The pressure would be no problem for Ozzy; it was his bread and butter. "Let's do this."
"I'll leave you to it." Devlin tapped the top of the box and headed back to his office. Oliver handed him the forensic report, cast a longing look at Nenci's seat, and followed suit.
Ozzy opened the box. There, on the top of the box, was a folder containing the case summary as it stood when the case had been left cold. There wasn't a lot of information or evidence to be seen, even though every stone that they could think of had been overturned when Harbaugh had been murdered.
Tim Harbaugh had been middle aged, a family man. He'd been out on patrol one night, doing his bit to keep the state's highways a little bit safer, when he'd been shot in the head during a routine traffic violation. The bullet had entered his brain through the back of the head, much as the bullet that had ended George Bergeron's eighty-four years this week.
That was interesting. The killer, who could not possibly be the same person, had used the same weapon to kill two apparently unconnected men in uniform in the same way.
It was also interesting that a trooper, who was a trained professional, had been shot in the back of the head. There were minimal signs of a struggle. Dogs on the scene hadn't picked up anything, so the killer had escaped in his own car. No one had bragged to anyone else, or at least to anyone else who spoke about it, about killing a Statie. There was no indication about the race, height, or gender of the killer.
Ozzy pulled out a notebook. There were no witnesses to the crime. There had been no real suspects. Harbaugh's line of work brought him into contact with a lot of people, but there hadn't been anyone who seemed to stand out as bearing an exceptional grudge against him. If he'd put someone away for a serious crime, Ozzy could see it, but they didn't tend to get a murderous vendetta over a speeding ticket.
The typical procedure was to make binders for everything, every witness and every suspect. In this case, there was no one to make binders for.
He tapped his fingertips on the desk and blew a raspberry. There had to be something that he could do. Harbaugh hadn't shot himself in the back of the head and sent his own ghost to pass the gun to some kid.
Maybe he needed to start at the end and work back to the beginning. The end, of course, was Jeff Balsalmo and the bank robbery. Ozzy started up a to-do list. He needed to speak to the detectives investigating the robbery and murder. He would need to talk to the suspects, of course. And he would need to look into George Bergeron's life, to see if there had been some way that their lives had interjected.
He stared at the card from Pete Nolan, Photographer. Photographers were good witnesses, as a general rule. They noticed things. He picked up the phone and called before he could lose his nerve. "Nolan Photography, this is Pete." The voice that came back was clear and strong.
"Pete, hi, this is Ozzy. Er, Detective Morris, from the other day." Damn it, Ozzy was smoother than that. How could he mess up so badly as to sound like a thirteen-year-old asking someone to a dance for the first time?
"Detective Morris. Hi, how are you?" Pete sounded both relieved and nervous at the same time. "Is everything okay?"
"Me? I'm fine." Ozzy chuckled. "How are you and the baby? I wasn't so gentle when I pushed you out of the way."
"We're fine. Docs said she's perfect in every way. I'll have a bruise for a little while, but better that than the other option, you know?" Pete huffed out a little laugh. "How can I help you today, Detective?"
"Ozzy, please." Pete's voice did things to Ozzy that Ozzy didn't even have words for. "Listen, something's come up about… ah, about what happened the other day. We think that the robbery might be linked to another crime, and I was wondering if you might be willing to go over what happened again in some more detail."
Pete blew out a long stream of air. "I mean, I've already gone over what happened with some detectives, and some guys from the FBI, but yeah. I could do that. I work out of my house in Sudbury. I don't have any appointments until tomorrow. If you wanted to come out here today, that would be okay."
"I could be out there around one. Just email me the address." Ozzy wondered if Devlin would be all that disappointed if he went out and rolled around in the snow or something before he went, just to cool himself down.
"I'll do that. I'll see you at one."
"See you then." Ozzy hung up and took a few deep breaths. Then he called the FBI agents investigating the robbery, and the Department of Corrections to make an appointment to speak to all of the prisoners.
The Feds were surprised by the connection to the cold case, but they were cooperative. "Any help that we can give, it's yours," they promised. Ozzy had every intention of taking them up on it.
He did a little bit more digging into Balsalmo's background while he killed time waiting for one o'clock. Balsalmo was a career criminal already, at only nineteen. He'd spent more of his young life in various forms of prison than he had breathing free air, and by the time he was fifteen he was pulling down adult time. Usually Ozzy wasn't a big fan of juveniles doing adult time, but in this case he figured it was justified. There were charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery… the list went on and on.
Something had driven him to that, but Ozzy couldn't be distracted by that now.
He couldn't find much about George Bergeron either. He found a military service record that indicated that the old man had served in Korea, and some old employment records from some of the mills in the area. George was survived by children, grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He would be buried beside his wife, who had been lost to cancer five years before.
According to Agent Newsome, Bergeron had only taken the job to keep himself busy and get out of the house after the death of his wife.
That depressing note impelled Ozzy to get out of the office and head up to Sudbury. February wasn't exactly the happiest month in New England anyway; thinking about Bergeron's fate wasn't exactly going to thrill him.
Pete lived in a nice, good-sized Dutch colonial near the middle of Sudbury with what was probably a decent chunk of property once the snow melted. "I guess photography pays better than I thought it did," Ozzy muttered to himself. He followed the driveway up to the shoveled walk and rang the doorbell.
Pete opened the door. He looked a lot better when he wasn't wrapped up in a coat and trying to cover his mouth and nose. Golden blond hair framed a heart-shaped face, in which huge, dark brown eyes stared out at the world. "Hey," he greeted. "Left the assault rifle in the car, I see."
Ozzy laughed. "Yeah. Well, you know, I'm kind of hoping that it's not going to be necessary out here in the Sudbury tundra."
"You never know. I didn't think I'd need it at Framingham Bank either but here we are." He let Ozzy into the house, which was lovingly decorated. "Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?"
"Coffee would be great." He followed Pete into
a beautiful gray and white kitchen, where it turned out that coffee had already been made. "So. The reason I'm here is that the gun that the ringleader used is the same gun that was used in a cop's murder twenty years ago."
"And you're a cold case detective." Pete grinned. "I get it."
"You're a smart cookie. So the cops who were speaking to you before, they were looking to prove a case now. I'm looking for clues that might link anything that happened yesterday to what happened twenty years ago."
Pete shook his head. "Yeah, I mean, I'll try. You'll know better than I would about how useful it'll be."
"I guess my first question is, how into the robbery did they seem to be?" Ozzy leaned forward and wrapped his hands around his coffee mug."
"I'd say they expected to make a clean getaway. I saw how pissed they were that the clerk tripped the alarm." He shook his head. "They killed her too."
"She survived, actually. It's going to be touch and go for a while, but if she's lucky she'll make it." Ozzy squirmed. The poor woman would have problems for the rest of her life, even in a best-case scenario, but at least she was alive. "What about the killing?"
Pete shuddered. "Jeff had one of his underlings choose the victim. He lingered by me for a while, but ultimately chose the security guard."
"Oh." Ozzy closed his eyes. "Oh my God. Pete, I am so sorry."
Pete bowed his head. "It felt very unreal. I don't think it mattered to Jeff which one he picked. He said I'd be next. He told the underling to make it count. But I don't think he bore the security guard any specific ill will. He wasn't a good guy in a bad situation. He was a cold man, who didn't care about anyone."
Ozzy put a hand over Pete's. "They're going to pay, Pete. They're going to jail. They're not getting out for a very long time, and they're not going to be able to get near you ever again. I can promise you that."
Pete gave him a shy little smile, and Ozzy pulled his hand back. He'd crossed a line, and he knew it. Pete almost certainly had someone else protecting him. He didn't need Ozzy's help.
Never Too Late Book 2 Coming Soon!
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Buried Passions
(Never Too Late Book 1)
Aiden Bates
© 2016
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).