“How big are these lockers?”
“They’re narrow, but they measure close to six feet in height.”
“How big is Ramone?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Atwater said, chuckling. He liked this woman. They spoke the same language. “At the time of his last physical, Frederick Ramone measured five-eleven and weighed in at one hundred and fifty-eight pounds.”
“I see,” Carrie said, standing to walk him to the door. “I understand Jimmy Townsend is a large man.”
“That’s an understatement,” he said. “I don’t think Townsend could fit one leg inside that locker, let alone his whole body. Nick Miller is not a small man either. He may not be as big as Townsend, but his shoulders are extremely broad.”
“And Ramone’s shoulders?”
“Narrow enough to fit inside a locker,” Atwater said, winking as he stepped through the doorway and left.
c h a p t e r
THIRTY-TWO
“It’s over, Townsend.”
When Jimmy Townsend reported for duty Thursday night, Captain Madison was waiting by his locker. Townsend was already dressed in his uniform, having worn it from home. He opened his locker to retrieve his nightstick, but Madison banged the metal door shut with his fist.
Townsend decided to deny everything and remain cool. “What’s over? Are you talking about the Takers? Shit, I thought they were playing good this year.”
Madison leered at him, his lips curling back to expose his gum line. “You broke into Rachel Simmons’s home, pal. You planted surveillance equipment. That’s illegal wiretapping, along with breaking and entry. Internal Affairs has asked for your resignation.”
“Fuck Internal Affairs,” Townsend said. “I’m not resigning. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve never been inside that woman’s house in my life. I’m not even sure where she lives.”
“The crime lab lifted your fingerprints from her door,” Madison growled. “Cut the bullshit, Townsend. We’ve got you cold. The DA’s preparing charges against you.”
“It was a setup,” Townsend said, his facial muscles jumping. “This whole thing has been nothing but one crazy lie after the other. You have to believe me. I didn’t do anything to Rachel Simmons. Before she shot Grant, Rachel and I were friends.”
“Here,” Madison said, shoving a paper into Townsend’s hand. “Hand over your badge and gun. I don’t have time to stand here and listen to this crap.”
Jimmy Townsend read through the termination order with growing panic. He’d been a cop for over ten years. Where was he going to work? How could he support his wife and kids? Crushing the paper in his fist, he pulled out his gun and slapped it into Madison’s open palm. Yanking his badge off his chest, he tossed it in the air. It struck the linoleum floor with a metallic ping.
“I’d suggest you get yourself a good attorney,” Madison said. “You’re going to need one.”
“The police association will provide me with an attorney, right?” Townsend could see the legal fees adding up in his mind.
Captain Madison ignored him, bending down to scoop Townsend’s badge off the floor as he made his way out of the locker room.
Once Jimmy Townsend and Captain Madison had left, Ratso stepped out from behind the row of lockers. He was in the clear. If the brass had intended to fire him, they would have already done so by now. Besides, he told himself, what had he done? He had poured sand down Rachel’s jeans, but no one except Grant and the other men at the watch party could possibly know that. If Internal Affairs questioned the other officers, he was certain they would cover for him. It was one of the things he liked about police work. In many ways, the department was like an extended family. His parents had died many years ago. He had been sixteen at the time, and he and his sisters had been forced to live on the streets in their home town of Peshawar. Realizing they would perish if he didn’t take action, Ratso had stowed away on a tanker to the United States a few months before his seventeenth birthday.
But the United States was not the land of opportunity people thought it was. Foreigners were treated with suspicion, delegated to the most menial tasks. Without specific job skills or proper work papers, Ratso had to work as a laborer for disgustingly low pay. He had picked avocados for five years in the blazing sun alongside illegal immigrants from Mexico, ending each day with an aching back and barely enough money to feed himself, let alone send home to his sisters in Pakistan.
When he had responded to an ad in the newspaper for a phony birth certificate, it had provided him with his first real chance to get ahead. Not only did he get a birth certificate, but for an extra thousand dollars, he was told, he could receive a complete new identity. Using the birth certificate to secure a job in a mini-mart, he had saved assiduously until he had enough money to purchase his new identity. The phony documents had worked perfectly. No one knew he was in the country illegally, that he had never become a citizen. The police department had hired him during an affirmative action campaign, believing he was Hispanic, as his documents showed.
Chris Lowenberg stuck his head in the locker room. “Captain Madison is looking for you,” he said. “He’s out in the squad room.”
“What does he want?” Ratso asked.
“I have no idea, but heads are rolling around here. He just fired Jimmy Townsend. I saw him on his way out. Poor bastard. At least our watch is still intact. You guys don’t even have a sergeant now that Miller has been suspended.”
Ratso remained in the locker room after Lowenberg left. Captain Madison found him there an hour later, crouched in a comer. When they told him they were terminating his employment, Ratso broke down and cried.
“But I saved Grant’s life,” he protested. “How can you fire me?”
Madison looked down at him, wondering how the recruiters had ever hired such a man. Fred Ramone was not qualified to carry a badge and gun. Any fool could tell that. “Based on Rachel’s statement, the DA may bring charges against you for bashing that kid’s head against the pavement during the riot at Majestic Theater,” he said. “But that’s only half of your problems, pal. Internal Affairs has some questions to ask you about the drug money that disappeared from Maple Avenue.”
Ratso stopped sobbing. How could he get the money out of the country now? His plan had been to sit on the cash until his scheduled vacation the following month, then smuggle it into Pakistan in his luggage. If IA filed criminal charges against him, though, he would not be able to use his fictitious documents to get a U.S. passport. “Did Rachel say I took the money? I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand,” the captain said. “All you have to do is hand in your equipment, then get the hell out of my police station.”
“Can’t I come back?” Ratso pleaded, pulling his knees to his chest. “Rachel may take back the things she said about me. If she does, won’t the department reinstate me?”
“Not in this lifetime,” Madison snapped. Tired of wasting time, he reached down and snatched his gun out of the holster, then plucked his badge off his chest “You’ve got thirty minutes, Ramone. Start cleaning out your locker. If you’re here when I come back, I’m going to mop the floor with you.”
Jimmy Townsend stopped at a pay phone once he had left the station. Calling Grant’s room, he asked Carol Hitchcock to meet him in the parking lot of Presbyterian Hospital in an hour. He left the phone booth and returned to his Jeep Cherokee carrying a brown grocery sack. Plunging his hands inside, he pulled out a Twinkie and shoved it into his mouth. Since the problems with Rachel had developed, he had packed on another ten pounds. His uniform shirt was straining, and two buttons had popped off in the past week. Before he had come to work that evening, his wife had replaced the thread holding the buttons in place with elastic.
He slouched down in the seat and glanced around the parking lot. He only binged when no one was around. People became disgusted when they saw an overweight person eating. His weight problem had started as a child. Shoving a Snickers bar in
to his mouth, he remembered the kids heckling him, calling him fatty and Porky Pig. He had shown them, though. He had become a cop.
He ripped into a bag of potato chips, remembering the day he had arrested Freddy Newman, an asshole lowlife who had tormented him during his childhood. The look on Newman’s face when he snapped on the handcuffs had been priceless.
What would Newman say now? And worse, what about his father?
Jimmy Townsend had lived in Oak Grove almost his entire life. When his parents had seen the newspaper article listing him as one of the officers caught up in the corruption scandal, his mother had almost had a heart attack. Townsend had called his father before coming to work, and the man had refused to speak to him.
He shoved a handful of chips into his mouth. Reaching his hand into the sack, he popped the lid on a soda and guzzled it down. Wrappers and food particles were scattered all over the interior of the car. He tossed the empty soda can into the back seat.
When had the nightmare started? He had been riding shotgun with Grant Cummings the previous year. It had been slow that night, and Grant was bored. Spotting an old rusted Plymouth crawling down the street. Grant had turned to him and smiled. “We got us some warrants up ahead, Jimmy boy. Now’s the time to get those arrest stats up.”
“How do you know they’ve got warrants?”
“Look at that piece-of-shit car,” Grant told him. “People who drive old rattletraps like that always have warrants for something. You know, expired registration, bald tires, faulty emissions, parking tickets. If they can’t afford a better car, they can’t afford to pay their fines.”
“We don’t have cause to stop him,” Townsend said. “The car’s not weaving. The plate isn’t expired. The tires look like they have plenty of tread. He may have warrants up the kazoo. Grant, but we can’t pop him if we can’t stop him.”
Grant gunned the engine on the police car and rammed the back of the slow-moving vehicle, shattering both of the taillights. “No taillights,” he snickered.
“Guess we’ll have to give this jerk a citation. Then we’ll run him through the computer and see if we hit the jackpot.”
A small Hispanic male was in the driver’s seat. He appeared to be in his early thirties. As soon as he opened the door to exit the car, Grant seized him by the arm and tossed him to the pavement. “What are you doing in this neighborhood at this hour?” he shouted, kicking the prostrate man with the tip of his boot. “This ain’t no beaner town, buddy.”
The man groaned, but he knew better than to move. He was face down on the asphalt, his hands positioned on the back of his head.
“Where’s your fucking license?” Grant yelled. “Did you think you could drive over here and rob someone? You got a shooter on you?”
The man sat up, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. Townsend thought he was going for a gun. It all happened in a matter of seconds. He whipped out his gun and began firing, the bullets entering the man’s leg and hip. His body jumped a few feet off the ground as the bullets seared into his flesh. Every time he moved, Townsend squeezed off another round.
“That’s enough,” Grant said, grabbing Townsend’s arm. “You don’t want to kill the bastard.”
The man was unconscious, his clothing soaked in blood. They searched him, but there was no gun. “What are we going to do?” Townsend was frantic. He had overreacted, shot an unarmed man. Grant pulled a small revolver out of his boot and wiped it down with a handkerchief. Holding the gun inside the handkerchief, he pressed it into the man’s right hand, then watched as it tumbled to the pavement. “Shit, Jimmy,” he said, “you’re a hero. I’ll bet you’ll get a commendation for shooting this scumbag. Now go call an ambulance before the guy croaks on us.”
Jimmy Townsend surfaced from the past. A woman was staring through the front window of the Jeep, watching as he shoveled a chocolate chip cookie into his mouth. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “What are you looking at?” he shouted, causing the woman to back away. The front of his uniform was covered with crumbs. The cream filling from the Twinkies was smeared across his cheeks. His stomach was so bloated, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. Groaning, he undid his belt and opened his pants.
The man he had shot was Luis Mendoza, a thirty-year-old orderly employed at a nursing home in Simi Valley. Mendoza had never been arrested before, nor did the computer turn up any outstanding warrants. He had seven children. Mendoza was presently in prison, serving a five-year sentence for assaulting a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon.
With the illegal wiretapping and breaking and entering charges hanging over his head, Jimmy Townsend had to believe that Internal Affairs would start looking into his past arrests. The officers assigned to IA were sadistic bastards who loved to dig up dirt. Would they find out the truth about Mendoza? There were other discrepancies, but Mendoza was his greatest fear. The man had done absolutely nothing. When Grant had decided to stop him, he had not even been exceeding the speed limit.
Carol Hitchcock climbed into the passenger seat of Townsend’s Jeep Cherokee at 11:46. Prior to meeting her, he had stopped at a trash can and tossed out all the food wrappers and garbage. He was still too bloated to close his pants. It was dark inside the car, though, and Carol didn’t notice. “Why did you want to see me? Grant needs me now, Jimmy. Why couldn’t we talk inside the hospital?”
“They fired me,” he said. “They’re probably going to fire you, too. Anyone who had anything to do with Grant is history, Carol.”
“That’s insane,” Carol said, her head jerking to one side. “They can’t fire me.”
“I thought the same thing,” Townsend told her. “You’re wrong. Miller said the chief is trying to save his own neck. If he cleans house, terminates all the people Rachel implicated, the City Council might not ask for his resignation.”
Carol took this news in silence. She was preoccupied with her lover’s condition. “You know what they did to Grant today?” she said. “They drilled holes in his head, then put him in this awful contraption that looks like a halo. They’re afraid if he moves his neck, more damage will be done to his spinal cord.”
Townsend tried to look sympathetic. “How is he taking it?”
“He’s in excruciating pain,” she said, her face contorting. “It’s pathetic, Jimmy. He’s like a child. He cries all the time. He rants and raves about Rachel. He panics every time I leave the room, even if it’s only for a few minutes.”
“They’re going to send me to jail,” Townsend said, gripping the steering wheel. “They found my fingerprints inside Rachel’s house. She must have discovered the monitoring devices. Grant wanted to scare her, make her think we were listening in on her calls.” He was almost talking to himself. “I don’t even think I wired the damn things right. It was more like a prank than anything. We never intended to actually monitor her phone.”
Carol remembered the things Rachel had said in the parking lot the other night. “Bugs. That’s what Rachel was trying to tell me. You bugged her house, Jimmy? Please, tell me I’m not hearing this.”
“It wasn’t my idea. Grant told me he wanted to trick Rachel into believing we were monitoring her phone calls,” he said. “I stole some surveillance equipment from the storage room, then set it up inside her house. This was during the time Grant supposedly beat her in the orange grove. They can charge me with wiretapping and breaking and entering. I’m dead, Carol. If they send me to prison, one of the people I’ve put away will kill me.”
Carol was stunned. Even though she had broken out the window at the hardware store, the things Townsend had done were far worse. “Didn’t you realize how serious something like that was? Why did you agree to do it?”
“Grant blackmailed me,” Townsend said. His head dropped to his chest, his chin engulfed in rolls of fat. “He said he would tell them I drugged Rachel’s beer at the beach. When we left that day. Grant took the empty beer can Rachel had been drinking from with him. He said it was to protect us, but I f
ound out the truth later. If I didn’t do what he said. Grant threatened to turn the beer can over to the crime lab, knowing they would be able to find traces of Valium in it along with my fingerprints.”
“What Rachel said really happened?” Carol cried, seizing Townsend’s arm. “Everyone told me it was a lie, that Rachel made that story up. Grant said when he refused to respond to her advances, she wanted to get back at him by saying he tried to rape her.”
“Hey,” Townsend said, jerking his arm away, “what do you want from me?”
“Try the truth, asshole.”
“Grant had the hots for her,” Townsend said, staring out the front window. “He was determined to have her, one way or the other. All the guys knew it. There were other women too. Face it, Carol, Grant was a player. I don’t think he could ever be faithful to one woman. You know how broads were always throwing themselves at him. I guess some of them were too good to turn down.”
Carol slapped him hard across the face. Townsend balled up his fist and slugged her. They wrestled in the front seat of the car, sweating and cursing. “You bastard,” she screamed, pinning him against the driver’s door with her feet. “You lied to me. If I had known the truth about Grant, I wouldn’t have broken the window at the hardware store.”
Carol’s legs were like steel rods. Her feet were pressing into the center of Townsend’s abdomen. Food bubbled back in his throat, and he was certain he was about to vomit. “Let me go,” he moaned. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“You lied to me,” she screamed. “Everyone lied to me.”
A car pulled into the parking space beside them. They stopped fighting, and both turned to look at the driver. Carol got out of the car and slammed the door, stomping back toward the hospital.
Carol could hear Grant screaming from the end of the corridor. “What’s going on?” she asked the officer guarding his room.
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