"Always such a tough guy," Donoschik sighed. "You know what I don't understand about you? You used to be one of us. When you shot that little nigglet after he killed Joe Hector, after you took a round to the knee, you were like some kind of hero. Then you got mixed up with that maniac Ajax and all his horseshit and somehow you went wrong. Became a bad badge. What the hell happened to you? Don't you realize that if you'd just keep your mouth shut and go along with the program, you could be the next Lieutenant? Hell, you could even be the next Chief. Even after all this, you could come back. Just take your lumps, keep your head down, and pretty soon all will be forgiven."
When Frank didn't respond, Donoschik holstered the Taser and said, "I'll be back with that warrant. Act like a gentleman and we'll go easy on you."
Frank watched him get into his unmarked car and drive off, not realizing that Dawn was standing at the front door watching him. "How long do we have before he comes back with the search warrant?" she said.
"Forever," Frank said. "Search warrants can only be issued for criminal investigations. Unless they're going to charge me with a crime, they're just wasting their time. This is what happens when you give people who write traffic tickets for a living the responsibility of doing actual police work."
"You're in real trouble this time, aren't you."
"Yep," Frank said. "But I came this far, so I can't turn back now."
"Can you do me one favor? Can you please call Marcus?"
"Why?"
"Just tell him what's going on so there's someone else aware of what's happening. Someone who knows the law just in case things go sideways on you."
"Sideways?" Frank said. "Since when do you speak police?"
"I've been married to a cop long enough to pick it up. When you're out there bustin' skells, I'm getting twenty-fives with all the local moms before going ten-nineteen to make dinner."
"I think my head just exploded," Frank laughed.
"So you'll call Marcus, and not just say you will?"
"I'll do it right now."
Dawn leaned up and kissed him on the lips, "I'm proud of you. I always have been."
She turned and walked back up the steps to the porch, looking back slightly to make sure Frank was looking at her backside.
He was.
Marcus laughed when Frank told him about the department's threat to get a search warrant. "I wish some dumbass judge would sign that search warrant. Shit, Frank. How many zeros would you want in your check?"
Frank rubbed his head and squeezed his temples to try and stop the pressure building up beneath his skull. "Am I insane here, or do these maniacs have no idea what they're doing?"
"It's typical, man. They're so used to people saluting them and jumping when they say, they forget they have to play by the rules. I just hope they fire you."
"Gee, thanks," Frank said.
"I'm serious. These townships fire people left and right without any good reason and then get their asses handed to them in court. It's fun."
"For you maybe, but not if I'm the one not bringing in any money and paying some attorney fifty thousand dollars to get my job back."
"Frank, I'm hurt you would think that," Marcus said. "For an old friend like you, I wouldn't charge more than forty-five thousand. Forty-eight, tops."
Frank laughed and shook his head, "I can't believe this is happening. This is not the way I expected to end my police career."
"Let me ask you a question. Do you really want to go back and work for those people?"
"No," Frank said. "I might not be sure about a lot of things, but I don't want to work for them."
"Do you really give a shit about being a cop anymore?"
The questions rang deep within Frank like a division bell.
He thought of his father, how he'd come home on meal breaks when Frank was a kid, always sharply-dressed in his uniform and set his enormous police radio on the counter near enough to hear what calls came out. How he'd listen to all his father's funny stories about the other cops and pranks they pulled just to keep themselves amused during the long, droning hours.
That was a different time, Frank thought. A different world.
He thought about the last time he'd seen Vic alive, standing at the edge of the woods, tears streaming down his face as he stared into an oblivion that could not be escaped. Frank had pleaded with him, “Just get away from it then, Vic. Quit. Go find something that makes you happy. I’ll help you look.”
“And do what? Stock shelves? Ring a register? The only thing I’m qualified to do is make a seventy-five-year-old feel good enough about raping a child that he confesses to it. My whole life is a sick joke, Frank, and I’m done. I’m just done.”
And that was it. His mentor cracked and surrendered to darkness. "I'm just done," the last words he ever spoke to Frank.
I'm not, Frank thought. I might be finished doing police work but I'm not done. "I just want to take care of my family and live a decent life," Frank finally said.
"Ok. I can work with that. I have a client who was arrested for possession with intent to distribute narcotics. This is a good kid who has a scholarship to Arcadia next year, but the arresting cop is making his first drug bust and he's got stars in his eyes. If you look the reports over and help me shoot holes in the case, and testify as an expert, I'll hook you up with my good friend Doctor Lassoff."
"You want me to testify against another cop?"
"As an expert witness, Frank. Experts to it all the time. They have to in order to maintain neutrality. It's a lucrative thing and with a few of the right connections, you'll be making money hand over fist."
"But still not as much as I make now," Frank said. "I've got a mortgage and car payments and everything else to cover. I can't quit the PD."
"That's where Doctor Lassoff comes in. You won't have to."
"How do you figure?"
"Did you ever have someone look at your knee?" Marcus said. "I mean really, really look at it after you got shot?"
"Just the workman's comp doctors who cleared me to go back to work."
Marcus chuckled, "Son, you say the word and we'll bend those bastards over and make them squeal."
"I'll need to think about it," Frank said. He hung up the phone as a set of headlights turned from the street onto his driveway, heading toward his house. Frank jumped off the couch and peeked through the curtains, his heart pounding as his mind raced through the scenario. They'll put me in handcuffs to secure me while they search, Frank thought. They're going to handcuff me in front of Dawn and the kids and keep an officer standing over me the entire time. Rage made his hands shake and they did not stop even as he realized it was just one car coming toward his house, and it was much too small to be a SWAT truck.
He opened the front door as Reynaldo Francisco parked his personal car and got out. "Hey, Frank. You okay?"
Frank nodded, trying to calm himself. "I half thought you were Donoschik coming back with a search warrant. He threatened to do that."
"He tried," Reynaldo said. "Spent all day trying to convince the DA's office to approve one, but they wouldn't. Junior kept running around threatening to come up here with four officers and just take the phone. Chief Tovarich was ready to pull his hair out, he was so mad."
Frank smiled at that and began to relax. "Anything else happen today?"
"Your office is trashed. There's a big box down there with all the things from your desk and your pictures in it. I tried to grab it for you but the Deputy Superintendent told me you had to come get it."
"None of it's that important," Frank said.
"Junior took over every open investigation in our department. His first instructions were to close out as many as possible. Ones with pending arrests were immediately forwarded to Manor Farms CID so they file charges."
"He's fudging the numbers," Frank said. "Trying to have an immediate effect on our clearance rate."
"And there's a ticket quota. Not anything official, of course, but we're adopting the Manor Fa
rms 'standard traffic enforcement performance' of thirty tickets per month. Anybody who doesn't get that many is subject to discipline."
Frank sighed and clapped his hand on Reynaldo's shoulder, "You're still young, buddy. Do yourself a favor. Keep your head down, do what they tell you, and start applying to other departments as soon as you can."
"That's what I thought at first too," Reynaldo said. "But then I wondered, what would Frank do?"
Frank looked at him with strange amusement and said, "He'd pop off at the mouth and almost get fired is what he'd do. Don't do what Frank would do, Reynaldo. That's not even a good idea when Frank does it."
"Ah, maybe if you do it in a way people know about," Reynaldo said. "But not if you're careful. And sneaky."
Frank watched Reynaldo go to the trunk of his car and remove his black patrol bag, stuffed with latex gloves, a ticket book, a box of pens, and a manila envelope. The younger officer removed the manila envelope and handed it to Frank, smiling broadly. "What did you do, Rey-Rey?"
"I acted like a S.J.N.E.P.O.A.D. should act, sir."
Frank opened up the envelope and saw all of the reports from the Burgorff's investigation into Freddie Phelps. There were all of the reports from Jessie Pincher's death investigation and the subsequent interview with Paul Moses. Driver's license photos and criminal history reports of all the actors involved. "You stole the Burgorff's case?" Frank said.
"No, no. Not steal it. I saved it."
Frank handed it back toward Reynaldo and said, "You stole this fucking thing. Go put it back. Let Deputy Superdipshit close it out and forget it, bud. It's a dead issue."
Reynaldo slapped the envelope angrily out of his way, "No, it is not a dead issue! There is a bad man doing bad things to children and the only people who can do something about it is me and you. We both took an oath to protect and serve, and I'm not letting some asshole come into my police department and stop us from doing it."
Frank sighed and lowered his head, "Someday, you are going to realize that you can stop guys like Phelps, and the next guy after him, and the next guy after him, but there's always someone else. It never ends. It's like standing on the beach at the edge of the water trying to fight the waves. At some point, it's just not worth it, Rey-Rey and you have to live your life."
"Maybe for you, but for me, I have to try to stop him," Reynaldo said. "And I don't know how to do it, but if you show me, this one last time, I will not disappoint you. After that, you can go be a construction worker. For this last case, you must still be a detective."
"If they find out what we're doing, it's your ass. You know that," Frank said.
"They won't find out."
"All right," Frank said. He tucked the manila envelope under his arm and said, "Let me think about how we can do this and I'll be in touch."
"Thank you, boss," Reynaldo said. He headed back for his car and was about to get in when Frank called out to him again.
"Do you know what you told me the first day we met?"
"At the interview?"
"Yeah. You said you would rather lose your career doing the right thing than keep it by being a coward. It was the reason I wanted you on our department. I knew you were real police even back then."
"But now I'm even better because I learned from the best," Reynaldo said, smiling brightly.
Frank rolled his eyes, "Well then we're both fucked."
Chapter Seven
Chief Tovarich folded his hands on his desk and quietly assessed the officer sitting in front of him. The clock on the wall above the door read 1112 hours. "You haven't had the opportunity to accustom yourself to some of the new rules and regulations here so I am trying to be understanding of your seeming disrespect. When you are told to be somewhere at eleven hundred hours, that does not mean ten after."
Junior looked up from the notepad in his lap where he'd been scribbling notes about the meeting and said, "Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Maybe I should have been more specific, Chief."
The boy had spent half the meeting with his eyes glued to Aprille Macariah's tits and Chief Tovarich half-wondered that there wasn't a puddle of drool under his seat.
Aprille tried to ignore the buzzing in her head and focus on the two men in front of her. She could feel cold drops of sweat sliding from her armpits down her sides. "I apologize," she strained to say. "I have not been feeling good, but I did my best to get here."
The Chief nodded as he waited for his son to write down her answer. Once Junior's pen stopped moving, he said, "I am not unreasonable. With me you will soon find out that so long as you meet my expectations, you will not have any trouble."
"That's what I've always heard," she said, wondering if something so completely untrue would register across her face when she said it.
Chief Tovarich's face brightened, "Really? Good." He waved for Junior to put the notepad and pen in front of Aprille and said, "One of the first things I'm implementing is a Uniformed Officers Standards Act. Write down any passwords you have."
Aprille scribbled down her computer password that logged her into the work computers and slid the notepad back toward the Chief.
He glanced down at the page and said, "Thanks, but we already have that one. I meant your passwords to any social media you use."
"I don't−"
"Tread carefully," Tovarich said angrily. He yanked his upper left desk drawer open and slammed a file down on his desk, "I know for a fact you've accessed your Facebook account on these computers on multiple occasions. That will be a primary offense in this new act, so I suggest you not try and lie to me about not having one."
Aprille tried to swallow. The pounding in her head was getting worse. "I don't know it off the top of my head. And anyway, if it wasn't against the rules when I did it, how can I be in trouble for it now?"
"It's more of a voluntary thing to make sure you are in compliance," the Deputy Superintendent added.
Chief Tovarich closed his eyes and tried to breathe.
"Well I'm not volunteering," Aprille said. She turned toward Chief Tovarich, "Is it true you shut down our detective division?" Aprille said.
Junior snorted slightly as he lowered his head to keep writing, "If you call that a division."
"The CID unit from Manor Farms will be handling investigations for both agencies. It's called streamlining, Officer Macariah. In the past three years this department has lost four senior members to either retirement or death and now Frank O'Ryan has decided to abandon ship as well. The remaining personnel are going to be reorganized to conduct patrol operations."
"You know that doesn't include me, right?"
"Come again?"
"I'm assigned to the FBI Narcotics Task Force under Special Agent Dolos. I'm cross-sworn as a federal officer. I'm practically an FBI agent."
Chief Tovarich looked at the Deputy Superintendent briefly, who shook his head. "That's under review right now. What's most important to me is getting this house in order. After that's accomplished we can begin to explore other opportunities."
"You don’t understand," Aprille said. "It's an extremely prestigious thing for this entire department. Do you know how much money we've seized? Do you have any idea the major cases I've helped them put together?"
"Be that as it may, your duties in this police department are to patrol, young lady. The FBI will just have to find some way to carry on without you."
"This is bullshit," Aprille snarled. "I'm going to make one phone call and you're going to have judges and US attorneys calling you to tell you what bullshit this is."
Chief Tovarich shrugged and said, "My number is listed. You're dismissed."
She fled the office before the tears could erupt from her eyes. She raced down the hallway toward the parking lot and smashed the door open, grabbing her phone off her hip and was about to call the first number on her favorites list, when she decided it might be better just to call his office line. Lately she'd just been getting voicemail on his cellphone. "Pick up, goddamn it," she muttered, wa
iting for Dez's phone to ring.
From his Center City office, Dez stood by the window overlooking I-95 and held his cellphone close to his face, "So you haven't found anything out?"
"Not a thing. Nobody even asked me what I was doing there," Skip Fitzpatrick said into the phone.
"And not a word from Ondrey."
"Did you expect one? He's probably afraid to talk on the phone."
"That doesn't stop him from coming to see one of us. He could send an email for Christ's sake. Something."
"He's just spooked, I bet," Fitzpatrick said.
"God damn it. It has to be us," Dez said. "If it was a big enough IAD job that involved the twenty-ninth district, one of us would have caught wind of it."
"Well if it was us, why hasn't anyone stepped in to stop our operations? Think about it, Dez. What if we went out and hurt somebody while they were supposed to be investigating us? They'd be negligent. But so far, nobody's said anything about the Task Force. For all we've been told, we can keep running ops until the cows come home. I say we keep things going and maybe ease up on the extra-curricular shit, you know what I mean?"
Dez nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. "I think he's taking this rabbit thing a little bit too far."
"You're the one who asked him to come on board," Fitzpatrick said. "You knew his background. I tried to warn you."
"Spare me the God damn lectures, okay?" Dez said. The phone on Dez's desk rang and he said, "I'll call you tomorrow. I'm gonna take that in case it's Ondrey." He ended the call with Fitzpatrick and picked up the receiver on his desk, "Agent Dolos, FBI Philadelphia, can I help you?"
A woman's voice screamed into his phone, "This fucking cocksucker is pulling me off the task force!"
"Slow down and stop yelling. Who is he and what is he doing?"
"The new Chief. He's pulling me off the team and sticking me back in uniform."
"Oh. Shit," Dez said quietly. "That's not good."
She could hear him shuffling papers on his desk and moving things around, keeping his hands active to prevent having to say anything. "Well?" Aprille barked. "Aren't you going to step in for me?"
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