Just Cause

by Carolyn Arnold

  “Didn’t realize you were into the Russians like that,” Terry said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Shut up.”

  “Watch out, man, that bulldog has teeth.”

  She glared at Matthews, but she found when her eyes met with the green of his, her heart palpitated.

  “SO HOW DID YOU KNOW he was coming after me anyway?” Madison asked. Both she and Terry were sitting at their desks working on the inevitable paperwork.

  “I told you.”

  “You had a gut feeling?” She laughed.

  “It was just the look on your face when you got back from seeing Dimitre, and the way you hugged yourself when you saw Constantine’s picture. You were afraid.”

  “Me? Afraid? No.” She hoped she sounded convincing. “Dimitre’s transfer came through, so he’ll have to start working on his relationships from scratch.”

  “You know it won’t stop him for good.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll have a target on your back until you die.”

  “Wow, thanks, for laying it out there for me, Terry.”

  “So, there would be no sense in my getting another partner.”

  “Another partner?” She noticed the seriousness in his eyes. She knew that days ago he had been debating it. She wasn’t naïve.

  “I didn’t put in the request.” He held up a few sheets of paper, which he ripped into several pieces before tossing them into the recycle container beneath his desk.

  “You’d miss me too much anyhow.”

  “Damn right.”

  “I do have a question for you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “How did Matthews end up coming along? You know, to save my ass?”

  “You’re kidding, right? When he found out, he wasn’t taking no for an answer. I think he has a thing for you.”

  A good-looking man, with piercing eyes, built like an athlete, but there was one huge problem.

  “Isn’t he married?”

  “He’s not.”

  “Well, we haven’t spent a lot of time chit-chatting in the last five years, but I know he is.”

  “Was. His divorce just went through.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  Terry shrugged his shoulders. “He told me on the way to your place.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What? I swear to you.”

  She shook her head and smiled. As she did, she remembered that at the bar he’d said he didn’t want to go home and drink alone. How could she have missed that? Now, she wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or scared.

  -

  Chapter 59

  ANSWERS BRING CLOSURE, and finally, after years, Madison had that. The murder of Bryan Lexan was no longer a cold case, but a closed one. The hollow-point bullets turned out to be a very specific brand of ammunition and not widely used. These were recovered from Constantine’s apartment, along with the sniper rifle, but not the gun used to kill Lexan. The gun he had in Madison’s apartment matched the one used to kill Douglas’s maid, Sonia Pike. DNA taken from the sniper perch was a match to Constantine.

  And, the good news was Constantine was pulling through from his injuries and would have to account for his wrongdoing. He’d be facing multiple sentences of twenty-five-to-life. The case against him would be open and shut.

  It was Monday and she was ready to get this week started, and to do so, Madison had decided she was going to tell Terry her suspicions about the chief. She also wanted to come clean about her past and tell him the real reason putting the Russians behind bars was personal. She’d asked him to take a break at Starbucks with her.

  “You think the chief is bought?”

  “I do. And here’s why. It goes back to the Lexan case. The blood found in Calin’s apartment, the man who had made the call to Lexan’s fiancée, had a DNA contributor besides Calin. The sample got lost. Samples don’t just go missing, especially with Cynthia in charge. Someone higher up messed with it. My name to the newspaper—I know he was the unnamed source. He was trying to get rid of me. Instead, it backfired. It made me popular for whatever reason.” She waved a hand. She remembered her sister’s call from the other day and she wondered when King was going to publish her article.

  Her cell phone rang and she looked at the caller ID. It was Chelsea. She didn’t have time right now. She’d call her back. She selected ignore and filtered her to voice mail.

  Madison continued. “And the assassination? The time and date for the prelim were kept under wraps.”

  “That can get out sometimes, but you think he provided that information to Dimitre?” Terry held his cup in his hands, but since she had started laying out her proof, he hadn’t taken another sip.

  “Or directly to the killer?”

  “You think he’s in direct contact?”

  “Quite possible.”

  “Suppose it is, but some hard proof would be nice.”

  “My first tipoff that something was up, of course, it’s even easier to see looking back, but the media shouldn’t have been at the courthouse that day. Someone tipped them off too. I believe that was the chief also.”

  Her phone rang again. She didn’t bother looking at the ID and sent the caller to voice mail.

  “I hope that you will help me with getting hard proof.” She watched her tone of voice; she didn’t want to scare him.

  “You want me to help you get the chief put in prison?”

  “Sure, why not?” She phrased it as a question, but she was serious. There was only one reason the chief held such hatred for her—he was paid to hate her, and to look the other way. Only he hadn’t counted on the fact she would never look the other way, and that made her his enemy.

  This brought her to the second thing she wanted to discuss with Terry. “You know how you thought my thing with the Russians was personal? Well, it is.” She took a deep, staggered breath. “My grandfather used to be a cop. He was shot down when he was out for dinner with my grandmother. They were celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary and his upcoming retirement. He died there, on the floor of a restaurant, while my grandmother watched on, helpless. The boy who shot him was only fifteen.” Her voice cracked.

  Terry nodded like he understood, but there was a lot more to the story.

  “He shot my grandfather because he was responsible for getting the boy’s father convicted of fraud charges. But that’s the base charge. The rest included money laundering and falsifying of tax documents. He worked for the Russian Mafia.”

  Terry let go of his cup. “I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, well this is why it’s so personal to me, getting them all behind bars and being a cop. When I heard his story and dug into it, I was determined to find justice for his murder the best way I could.”

  “How old were you when he was killed?”

  “I wasn’t even born yet. My mom, she was twelve. They had her later in their life.” Madison offered the explanation to account for her mother’s age and a thirty-year marriage. “It’s a lot of the reason why our relationship is rough. She lost her dad right when a girl needs her father the most—or at least that’s how she puts it. It’s why she’d rather me do anything else, other than be a cop.”

  “She doesn’t want to lose you too.”

  “I hold the mafia responsible for my grandfather’s death. If it hadn’t been for them, then the rest of this wouldn’t have unfolded. At the time, Dimitre’s older brother ran things. His name was Vlad, but he died years ago. It’s rumored that Dimitre had something to do with it, but, as always, there is no proof.”

  “He killed his own brother to take over?”

  “Well, it’s rumored like I said. The kid, Jimmy Bates, served his full twenty-five year prison sentence.”

  “Because of you.”

  “No, because he deserved it.”
r />   “But he was just a kid, acting out in defense of his father.”

  “He took my grandfather from me, from my mother, my grandmother. He needed to pay for that.”

  Terry held eye contact with her and spun his cup. “It makes sense why this entire thing is so personal to you.”

  “I want them shut down. I know it’s a tall order. More will rise, but I am going to dedicate my life to their termination as best I can.” She paused and watched the story sink into her partner’s mind.

  He glanced up from his cup to her. “All right.” His lips twitched as the beginning of a smile manifested and then gave birth. “Just don’t scare me like that again.” He referred to how this all began, and wagged a pointed finger at her, imitating the chief.

  She laughed. “I promise.” Her cell rang and she put it to voice mail again. “What is it with my phone right now?”

  When she put it away, Terry’s face was serious. “I have to tell you, I knew all of this.”

  “You knew all of this? You just said that you had no idea.”

  He sunk into his chair. “I had no idea until this morning’s paper.”

  “Why ask all these questions like you had no—this morning’s paper?” Her heart beat rapidly. “What? Today? Nice of King to give me a heads-up. God, that’s why—” She pulled out her phone.

  Missed calls from her sister, mother, Cynthia, and Howard Buckley—the prison warden?

  She dialed through to her voice mail. She didn’t have the heart to listen to her sister or mother right now and forwarded to Cynthia’s message. She listened to it and the last one.

  Seconds later, she hung up and filled Terry in. She had a hard time swallowing her excitement. “First of all, the anthropologists who had the remains from the ravine were able to reconstruct the faces of the victims. They’ve confirmed that one was definitely Calin, as we suspected. The other three were men who’d crossed Dimitre and it’s suspected that they didn’t make good on their gambling debts. The bones confirmed that gunshots were the cause of death for all of the men. The bullet striations from the fragments collected at the scene matched to Barnes’s gun. He’ll never see life outside of a prison again.”

  “And the other message?”

  “It was from Howard Buckley, the prison warden. He wants to talk to me about Dimitre. Says he has news I’ll want to hear.”

  MADISON ARRANGED TO MEET WITH Howard Buckley at a deli located downtown. Terry offered to go with her but she told him if Buckley was planning to come clean about something, it was best they didn’t scare him into silence.

  She found Buckley sitting in a corner booth, with an untouched corned beef sandwich in front of him.

  “So, I’m here, what do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Well, you told me to call if I thought of anything.”

  “I did.” Madison wasn’t going to press the man to talk, she was even toeing the line with appearing uninterested in what he had to say.

  “What I tell you is off the record.” He dipped a corner of the sandwich into mustard but made no move to eat it. “I mean it, if you say I said it, I will deny it with my dying breath. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “You were asking about Dimitre’s visitors and if I knew who would come and see him. Well, I know someone he’d talk to.”

  She remained quiet. Saying the wrong thing was worse than saying nothing at all.

  “This here is a powerful man, do you understand, Detective? He will kill my family, me. Heck, not that I care if he kills me if they’re gone.” He smashed the bread into the yellow sauce and then wiped his fingers on a napkin. “See, this man is also powerful, the one that spoke to him.”

  She was dying to know, and typically would be pushing until it bubbled out of the man, but she had to muster restraint. “I understand.”

  “I shouldn’t say anything, but I want a clean conscience, you know? That’s all I want. I want my family and me to be alive too, of course, but a clean—”

  “I will not tell a soul. You have my word.” Enough build-up had been laid. She needed to know what he knew. Now.

  “The Chief of Police,” he blurted out.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected to hear, the identity of another member of the Russian Mafia, or something that wasn’t near as monumental maybe. “Patrick McAlexandar came in to see him?”

  Buckley shook his head and took a bite of his sandwich then washed it down with a swig of water. “Like I said, he talked to Dimitre.” Buckley’s eyes went to his plate.

  Call it a hunch, but Madison had a feeling that whatever Buckley had to say would betray someone else. “Whatever you say is between us, remember?”

  “All right, Jacob, Dimitre’s guard—Dimitre would always bum his cell for his communication, you know, to the outside world.”

  “And he’s sure it was Chief McAlexandar?”

  “As sure as Christmas is December twenty-fifth every year.” He leaned across the table. “Said he knew the voice sounded familiar, but when the chief made some press statement the other day, he knew for certain.”

  Press statement? Madison didn’t know anything about it—not that she followed everything the man did.

  “And Jacob told you this?”

  “Yes, I swear to you on a stack of Bibles.”

  “And what about this other visitor? You mentioned that Dimitre had one these days.”

  Buckley’s face paled and he shook his head. “I won’t tell you about him. He will kill me if he finds out I’ve squealed.”

  “A huge man with blond hair by chance?”

  Buckley never answered, but went back to picking at his sandwich. There was something in the glint of his eyes, though. Constantine had been the visitor.

  Her phone rang.

  “Off the record. Remember,” Buckley said.

  “You have my word.” She slid out of the booth and answered her cell. “Detective Knight.”

  “This is Terry. Get back to the station right away.”

  -

  Chapter 60

  MADISON FOUND TERRY AT HIS DESK. “I’ve got news for you.”

  “It’s going to have to wait. Our Russian friend—”

  “The one who will be spending a lifetime in—”

  Terry shook his head. “He’s disappeared.”

  “What do you mean disappeared?”

  “He managed to slip the officers watching over him and get out of his hospital room.” He stood and let her have his chair.

  She dropped into it. “You’ve got to be fu—” she glanced up at him, “effing kidding me.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “What are we going to do now? There will be no justice for Douglas, Pike, or Norton. Or Lexan. Where it all started.”

  “Or Sergey and Anatolli.”

  Was it bad that she didn’t feel as sorry for them, that somehow Karma had interjected and dealt a hand that they had to so many others?

  “Detective Knight? Grant? Come into conference room three.” Sergeant Winston waved them over and turned around, leading them down the hall.

  This was the largest of the conference rooms and could hold a couple hundred people. Inside, the rest of the department was gathered. They must have missed the memo.

  Winston gestured for them to take a seat. He stood at the front of the room. “After three years as Chief of Police, Patrick McAlexandar has stepped down. You’re all here today to meet the new acting chief—”

  Whispers filled the room.

  “Please.”

  The room fell silent.

  Madison glanced at Terry. Had McAlexandar stepped down because of her? She didn’t know. What she did know was that only the guilty back down, or move on, but there was that feeling, deep inside, that told her she hadn’t seen the last of the man.

&nb
sp; Her attention went back to the podium, her thoughts on a new chief. Likely it was going to be another power-hungry man who held no respect for a woman in the police force. He would look down on her, thinking she was capable of nothing more than bringing him coffee.

  The conference room door opened and a woman in a pressed pantsuit went toward Winston. Her long, straight brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Bangs framed her face and provided an air of mystery to her. She had small, pointed facial features, and her makeup was applied modestly—a pale pink lipstick and muted browns for eye shadow.

  “Please welcome Andrea Fletcher.”

  Fletcher took up position beside Winston, who stepped back for her to take the floor.

  “As you just heard, I’m your acting chief. Men, they can’t have all the fun. I think it’s time to shake things up.” Her eyes searched the room, and when they settled on Madison, it felt as though the woman had found her target.

  AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT, they were invited to a nearby hall to celebrate. Champagne was brought in and the police staff became limited to the non-drinkers and the beat cops.

  “So, you think the chief knew you were on to him?” Terry asked Madison.

  She knew he knew. She had called him out and he retreated, but Terry didn’t need to know everything. She simply nodded, but when she saw Cynthia across the room, she excused herself.

  “That was quite the surprise,” Cynthia said.

  Madison angled her head left, then right.

  “You know something, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but that’s not why I’m here. Last night was the night. What did you decide?”

  Cynthia went quiet. There was an energy coming from her Madison had a hard time reading.

  “You know when you said you’d be there for me no matter what—whatever I decide?”

  “Yes.” If Cynthia’s heart was broken, Madison would support her and help her see that she had made the right decision.

  “Well, I hope you can stomach taffeta because I want you to be my maid of honor.” Cynthia’s face went from hardened lines to a full-blown smile.