Saboteur: A Novel

by J. Travis Phelps

  He simply couldn’t believe his luck. The chief had been irate enough to show up at his apartment with a baseball bat. He was wise enough not to answer the door. Small town police force--a complete rumor mill. In a town like Richmond, cops didn’t really have to follow the law anyway, especially not with each other. Dickson would have certainly used the bat too, at least until he took it away from him. It would have been ugly. Instead Dickson’s nephew, a deputy, had called him in on a Sunday, told him he was, ‘the best damn detective he had ever seen and that he was awfully sorry to see him go, but that Richmond just wasn’t big enough for Carl Dickson and the man who had slept with his beloved niece Caroline.’ Never mind that Caroline was probably even now moving on to the next deputy that caught her fancy, or Quarterback or whoever. Still, it had been his fault, in as much as a man can be faulted for falling victim to horny southern girls’ charms when he’s five shots into a bottle of Jack Daniels. She had done the pouring and was twenty-five for God’s sake, hardly too young for him by much. He could have made a thing of it, refused to leave or quit, but thought it would be better to just move on.

  A change sounded good in fact, and in some ways at least a transfer to San Diego was an upgrade. So he’d made the drive all the way from Richmond to Dallas in one night of nonstop-coffee-drenched driving. It had made him awfully thirsty though. The beer in Dallas had lasted for three whole days plus the one new, though very temporary girlfriend. He’d simply slipped out of the hotel while she slept it off. He’d almost missed his first day on the job and had to drive like the devil himself to make it to San Diego in time.

  He looked up as he pulled into the parking lot of the San Diego Police Department. In the dark the building looked like a fancy hotel with soft green track lights cascading against the ribs of the structure. Inside there were hardly any lights on at this hour. He had arrived during the biggest horse race of the year, and it turned out there wasn’t a single vacant room available anywhere. It wouldn’t be the first time he had slept in his car, but frankly as exhausted as he was he could have slept anywhere. He might have flown, but flight attendants weren’t what they used to be, screaming babies, and even a good stiff drink did nothing to calm him during turbulence. No safer place than the confines of his old banged up El Camino. At least he had a good parking spot. As he turned off his engine he was sure he could hear the sound of the ocean breaking against the seawall only a few blocks away. It was dark still. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour at least, so he stretched himself across the seat carefully, but before he managed to roll over on his back, fell into a dead sleep.

  He awoke to the beeping of his trusted Casio calculator watch, now so old it beeped out of key like a drunk slurring his speech. He loved using the calculator in front of people. It sent a clear signal that he was old school and proud of it. That was true in some respects at least. He peeled his face from the seat leather and grabbed his bag out of the floorboard, then slowly wandered into the station. He headed for the nearest bathroom, where he would have to imitate a quick bath. A few cars were now in the lot, but he was still plenty early enough. The email had stated he was to arrive promptly at 6:30 am and it was now exactly 6:27. Luckily the restroom was just inside the door of the main entrance, so he slipped in unnoticed. He wanted to make a good first impression after all. Minutes later he emerged looking largely unchanged except for a poorly tied tie and an extremely wrinkled shirt. They were nice clothes, but so badly disheveled he looked like someone who had been on one long bender--a member of the Rat Pack perhaps.

  Sullivan was forty now, but his raffish good looks had suffered none. His nickname “Ice Man” had been both an acknowledgement of his detective skills and of his uncanny resemblance to the character from Top Gun. He looked like a young Val Kilmer gratefully and his appearance caused almost everyone not to take him very seriously. This he liked. Being underestimated was always the best position from which to operate and so to become a cop, he had offered to take the most dangerous undercover jobs first. He hadn’t really had much of a choice after the bust of course. He might have seen ten years for the amount of cocaine they had found in his house, his parents’ house actually, and of course their cocaine. They had started him dealing at fourteen and by nineteen he was the go to guy from Richmond all the way to the Tennessee border. He would have ended up dead like both of them too, if not for some instinct of self-preservation, which had caused him to turn himself in. He wanted to make the people responsible for his parents’ death pay for it, so he decided to become the law. In the process, he’d helped the police bring down an entire drug ring, reaching all the way to Juarez. It turned out pretending to be someone else was a skill he had an undeniable gift for; a gift he had been cultivating all his life in fact. He’d always been able to blend in easily because he had spent so much of his youth surrounded by shady people. As a boy, making predictions about how drug addicts were likely to behave was simply a self-defense mechanism; as an undercover cop it had become invaluable. His instincts bordered on the supernatural. Still, because he had continued volunteering for the most dangerous stings with little or no training, everyone had said he’d be dead in a year; there had even been a pool around the office. He was at the top of everyone’s list, but he proved them all wrong and in the process finally got himself clear of the law. He’d spent exactly half his life breaking the law and the other half prosecuting it.

  Thirteen years later to the day of his arrest for cocaine possession he had become Richmond’s most recognizable detective and a minor national celebrity. He had solved the city’s most infamous case, the first and only serial killer the town had ever known, dubbed “The Red Neck Killer” by the media. The brutal murders of four college co-eds had set the town on fire with suspicion and fear for two sweltering summers and for two years long years there hadn’t been a single tangible lead; not until Sullivan had followed one of his famous hunches. The final clue was so unbelievable that he still couldn’t understand why he had chosen to follow it. But that was part of the nature of his gift. He knew what to pay attention to and what to ignore, especially in people. How many times had he watched an interrogation and known instantly who to believe and who not to? So what if he hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about his ‘instincts’ when those media vultures had asked how he had caught the Redneck Killer.

  “Sullivan you make the goddamn lie detector obsolete,” Dickson had disgustingly acknowledged. “I’m just glad you’re on our team,” he’d always said, and then mockingly, “You are on our team, right?” Some men could never forgive a man his past. Now Dickson had pissed all over his future too. Well, he thought, at least the weather was nice.

  Sullivan peered from the hallway of room 717, which opened into the main gallery of the investigation’s unit. It was an old room by west coast standards, full of antique mahogany, with a long corridor of separate interrogation suites set up against the adjacent wall. It looked right out of Dragnet, and had a kind of retro charm that made him feel somehow at home. It was huge though. The biggest police station he’d ever seen. As he surveyed the room he saw to his left row after row of phone operators, all typing furiously while talking into headsets. It could have been a customer service call center in India for all that. He stretched his neck to find the end of the row, but as he did he heard a commanding voice shouting in his direction.

  “You. Blondie! You my new detective or ya’ looking for the beach volleyball courts?”

  Sullivan opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do so the bulldog of a man grabbed him by the arm and lead him toward the interrogation suites. The man’s face was beet red and an unlit cigar dangled precariously from his mouth, which he did not need to remove to shout apparently.

  “Sullivan, right?” the man grunted.

  “Right, that’s me.”

  He had seen angry police sergeants before, but this was ridiculous.

  “Sullivan, I want you to take a look at the verminous collection of wasted potential standing befo
re you.”

  The man pointed to a small group of detectives huddled against the wall, obviously the ones in question. Each was looking shamefacedly toward the ground.

  “These are the best my city has to offer apparently and right now a woman who brutally murdered her husband is in that interrogation room, guilty as the fucking cat that ate the canary and then bashed in its goddamned head in with a hammer, and not one of these geniuses can get a word out of her. I’ve heard you’re some kind of damn prodigy. Your boss recommends you so highly in fact that I’m absolutely certain you must’ve shot a little old lady crossing the street right in the fucking back to get transferred with such a glowing recommendation. Carl Dickson hasn’t had a nice thing to say about anyone since the day I met him. But Sullivan, you’re in luck. I want you to get in that room and prove to me you are worth the goddamn paper your recommendation is printed on and enlighten us all with these super-fucking-natural interrogation powers of yours. And don’t dare come out until she has signed this confession, or you just might end your career as a beat cop writing muthafuckin’ parking tickets in El Cajon. I’m Tackett,” he said pointing a finger in his chest. “She’s in there. Now go!”

  “Don’t forget your pen,” he said, holding it only inches from Sullivan’s face.

  He stood dumfounded for a moment.

  “What are you waiting for a tour of your new goddamned office? This is it kid. Get in there or get back to Richmond or wherever the hell you came from. And knock twice when she signs it or get the hell out of my precinct!”

  He wasn’t sure he could stand there any longer without throwing a punch, so he tiptoed around the sergeant carefully. Tackett was solidly built, but he was an old man and Sullivan never listened to abuse for very long before taking a shot. He slid silently into the interrogation room and heard the door lock forcefully behind him. Goddamn, this place was intense.

  He hadn’t known exactly what to expect at his first day on the job, but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting this. In the corner of the room behind the desk sat a woman with straight black hair pulled back into a headband. She was smoking. She barely looked up when he walked in. The room was spare and even more strangely had no windows or glass. Somehow, someone had clearly forgotten the value of double-sided mirrors. He was truly alone with her then.

  Old school. Wow. Ok, he thought. This is make or break. He could always apply somewhere else. Mall cop, maybe.

  The woman suddenly looked up seeming to notice he wasn’t quite prepared.

  “Boy, they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now aren’t they? Did all the grown-ups go home, honey?”

  The woman was probably in her thirties, late thirties--maybe even forties, but her clothes, jewelry, not to mention attitude were all Beverly Hills. Since he knew absolutely nothing about the case he decided to play right along.

  “Yeah, they did give up actually. My sergeant just sent me in to entertain you until the place closes.”

  The woman drew from a lit cigarette seductively, like something right out of an old black and white movie. It made him crave a smoke badly; he thought he could taste it. As she exhaled she placed her tongue on the tip of her lip before speaking.

  “You must be fresh out of the academy? No wait. There’s something else—ah, you just act young. I see it now. I know a Botox doctor who could fix those crow’s feet. That forehead. You’ve done a lot of worrying in your life. Let’s see I put you at about 42, no wait younger, just 40.”

  “You’re a good guesser,” he said flashing a toothy grin.

  The woman laughed.

  “Would you like to smoke too?”

  “Can you really smoke in here?”

  “I can do whatever I want, wherever I want detective.”

  “Speaking of th--”

  “Nice transition detective,” she said interrupting before he could get a word out. “Look, I have already spoken to all the idiots in charge and there is nothing left for me to share I’m afraid.”

  The woman tilted her head and looked at him with a squint, adjusting the cross around her neck on its chain. She let her hand slide slowly down to her breastbone.

  “Tits like these take you places detective, help you out of all kinds of messes. But there’s something about you. It’s odd. We’ve just met, but I feel--I don’t know how to explain—I feel I can’t lie to you. You’re almost movie star good-looking, do you know that?”

  “Well,” he said chuckling nervously.

  “Are you a real cop,” she said staring directly at him for the first time.

  “Look,” she whispered “they locked that door behind you, I think, and I’m feeling kind of hot in here--bothered really--no windows and we are completely alone. I’m newly single and if I confess will y--”

  The woman started to put her hand inside her black, sheer blouse, almost panting. Sullivan’s face flushed as she started to get up from her chair.

  “Put me on that table,” she said pointing “and I’ll tell you absolutely anything you want to know, detective.”

  She put out her cigarette in an empty cup, which sizzled and now she was practically on top of him, crawling over the tiny desk that separated them. He had no idea what to do. He stumbled backward in his chair, but fell instead, knocking frantically on the door. No one was there. He pounded now as the woman’s hand reached inside his buttoned shirt.

  “I’ll sign anything you want me to, stud,” she purred.

  She was now pushing up against him breasts and all. By the time the door finally flew open, he fell through to the other side directly on his face. All around him was laughter. The bulldog sergeant was giving high fives and people were doubled over in fits, even the detectives, and now the suspect, who was re-buttoning her blouse, reached a hand down to help him up.

  “Name’s Rodriguez. Undercover squad, Prostitution and Narcotics. Sorry man, they made me do it.”

  Sullivan laughed the laugh of a man taken by complete surprise.

  “If you’re half as good a detective as your boss says that will probably be the last time any of us will have anything over on you. We couldn’t pass on the opportunity,” she shrugged, smiling.

  Tackett’s drill sergeant demeanor suddenly evaporated; he sounded like someone’s sweet old uncle as he reached out his hand to shake. Everyone was now lining up to shake hands and do a proper introduction. The last in line was a guy near his age, who looked him over closely, squinting as they shook hands.

  “Okay, Ice Man,” he said imitating the film, “we told you to knock twice. I’m Sheppard. I’ll be seein’ you around,” he said. “Try not to solve all the cases ok, save some for us mere mortals.”

  His reputation had clearly preceded him here. Dickson must have really wanted rid of him after all. Tackett threw an arm around him bear hug style and pointed.

  “The Chief’s office is all the way in the back and don’t let that guy put you to sleep. He comes across dry as a bone, but he’s a barrel of laughs after a couple of shots Jack Daniels.”

  Actually for Sullivan, dry sounded pretty good right about now. The morning had already been stressful enough.

  Rodriguez strolled by and without looking, under her breath whispered, “meant what I said about that movie star thing.”

  He watched her walk away admiringly.

  “And the Botox,” she snickered.

  Maybe San Diego wasn’t going to be so boring after all.

  Chapter 4

  Incursion

  She had never seen such a look of concern on Apollon’s face in all the years she had known him.

  “Please forgive the intrusion, he said, “but it is your husband, he has left this house under very odd circumstances. I fear something dreadful is afoot, madam. He was with his nephew and another man. His face, the second man, stayed most conspicuously hidden; but he looked like a relative, though one I never met. I have been with him for twenty-four years and in that whole time he has never once departed without explaining exactly when he would
return.”

  “I need no convincing,” the woman said throwing on her clothing hurriedly, “my dreams have been full of great terror these last few nights, as if the whole of the heavens is screaming out a warning, but what man listens to a woman?”

  The woman sped down the hallway with Apollon following rapidly behind. He shouted instructions to their messengers, who then scattered with great haste.

  “Apollon, you must tell me everything you saw.”

  “Yes, I observed through the causeway, madam, because there was something suspicious about the early hour of this appointment and that…that other man wouldn’t let his face be seen, not completely. Though, of course his nephew being family, I could not protest out of respect. He sent me for drinks after greeting them, but I delayed so as to see for myself what they wanted. They talked for only five minutes, no more. They seemed in good humors and your husband laughed several times, therefore I felt it safe to do as he asked. But when I returned they had vanished, leaving only this.”

  It was a piece of very old looking parchment.

  “I hope I have not failed him, madam. I pray.”

  “You have always served him well, Apollon, always.”

  The woman held the paper in her hands and they began to shake uncontrollably.

  “But this is his own writing” she gasped.

  “Yes, madam, it is most strange.”

  She handed it back to Apollon. The words written clearly:

  Your murder is planned this very day by those closest to you. I beg you to depart with us immediately. You are safe nowhere else.

  A.

  “Is it a forgery?”