by Joel Goldman
“Maybe Troy will arrest you instead of me.”
He pulled away from Pete’s Other Place, not bothering to turn on the red ?ashing light mounted in the driver’s corner of the windshield or his siren. We weren’t in that big of a hurry since there was nothing we could do to change what had happened.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“I’ve driven over this place on I-635,” I said, as we approached the rail yard on Kansas Avenue, crossing Eighteenth Street. “The highway is like a bridge over a river of tracks and trains.”
“More like one of the Great Lakes,” Grisnik said. “The yard covers 780 acres. Eighteenth Street is the east end. It goes all the way west to Fifty-fifth. Kansas Avenue is the north end and the old Santa Fe main line makes the southern border. You could put the Chiefs and Royals stadiums out here and have room left over.”
“I didn’t know there was this much train traffic in Kansas City.”
“Over a hundred trains a day. One of the biggest hump yards in the country. They do a lot of refueling and crew changes here, too.”
Once inside the grounds, Grisnik navigated a series of unmarked roads without hesitation, pulling up in front of a row of three windowless one-story buildings made of steel siding with rusted overhead garage doors ?anked by gravel driveways. Treetops marking the edge of the woods loomed over the ?at roofs, faded red and yellow leaves matching the decayed steel.
Three patrol cars, two Crown Vics, and an ambulance were parked in a haphazard row in front of the first building. The uniformed officers were directing what little traffic there was, maintaining a secure perimeter. A detective was interviewing the garbageman, probably for the third or fourth time. The pace was slow, everyone careful to get it right.
“You found this place so easily, you must have been here before,” I said to Grisnik.
“You can thank my old man for that. I grew up following him around down here. These buildings are used to store equipment. He was responsible for the inventory, making sure none of it grew legs and walked off. Burlington Northern spent a fortune upgrading the yard when they took over in ninety-five. Didn’t bother with these. They are fifty years old if they’re a day. My father used to say that the rats wanted to put them on the National Register of Historic Places so they couldn’t be torn down.”
The gravel drive wrapped around to the back of the storage buildings. It was firm enough that my footprints barely made a dent but soft enough to leave tire tracks. We followed the deep wide ruts left by the garbage truck.
I looked for tracks left by Javy’s car. There was a vague imprint that stopped and started, partly obliterated by the garbage truck, the last stretch ending at Javy’s Cadillac. If the killer had driven his own car, I didn’t find any evidence of it. Its tire tracks could have been wiped out by the garbage truck or been so mixed with other tracks as to be unidentifiable.
The crime scene techs greeted Grisnik with a mock deferential bow. They’d had their look. It was our turn.
All four doors to Javy’s car were open. Blood had soaked into the creamy leather of the driver’s headrest, running down the back of the seat. More blood and bits of bone and tissue were splattered across the backseat, proof that the killer had been sitting behind Javy when he pulled the trigger.
It was likely the killer had caught some of the splatter, evidence that would be difficult to get rid of without burning his clothes and hosing himself down. That’s what a careful killer would have done, though it amazed me how many criminals are caught because they are slobs.
There was also blood on the dash and the windshield. The glass was fractured in a spiderweb pattern caused by the impact of the bullet after it exited Javy’s head, more proof that a large-caliber round had been used.
The rail yard location was out of the way and out of sight, indicating that Javy had either come to the scene with his killer or agreed to meet him. And Javy almost certainly knew the killer. Why else would he have made himself so vulnerable? I wondered if Latrell and Javy had crossed paths.
I was also willing to bet that Javy had come alone. If he’d brought backup, there would have been more bodies or, at least, signs of a struggle. That supported my assumption that the killer was someone whom Javy either felt safe with, like the harmless-looking Latrell, or was someone whose invitation to a meeting Javy couldn’t refuse.
The passenger windows were tinted dark. If the garbage-man had wondered why a Cadillac Escalade was parked next to the Dumpster and decided to look inside, he wouldn’t have seen a thing.
The killer could have left the body inside the car, locked the doors, and walked away, perhaps giving him more time to escape or set up an alibi. Instead, he’d thrown Javy in the trash, making a statement and taking an unnecessary chance. Any contact he had with the body increased the chances that he’d leave evidence behind—body hair, fiber, or something else that could be traced back to him.
I wondered whether the killer had left the car doors locked. Even if the garbageman hadn’t discovered the body, the car would eventually have drawn attention. Locking it wouldn’t have delayed for long the discovery of what had happened inside. Still, it was a detail, the kind an organized killer would have remembered.
Like the person who’d committed the drug house murders, this killer was organized, careless, and angry. Maybe it was the same killer or maybe they were just kindred spirits, like separated-at-birth twins.
The area between the back of the storage building and the edge of the woods was a narrow stretch, a good part of which was taken up by the garbage truck. The back end of the truck was open, Javy’s body lying facedown on a bed of garbage, his legs disappearing beneath the sweeper blade that compressed and crushed the trash, his arms cast out from his sides in a casual, indifferent pose.
I’d never seen Javy up close and in person, but I had watched him on surveillance video, heard his soft, high voice on audio, and studied still photographs of him. He was barely five-seven, probably went around one-fifty dressed and wet. It wouldn’t have been hard for Latrell to lift him out of the car and drop him in the trash bin.
Some punks, like Marcellus, got to the top of their personal kingdoms because they were the biggest, strongest, meanest motherfuckers on the block. The ones like Javy, who lacked that physical prowess, made up for it in other ways. They were natural, charismatic leaders who compensated for their diminutive size by being more ruthless and clever than their larger counterparts. From what Colby had told me, that described Javy, though he wasn’t a good enough politician to stop a bullet. None of them ever were.
Grisnik pointed to the forks extending from back of the truck. “Driver picks the Dumpster up, empties the container into the belly of the truck. Sweeper blade probably got hung up on Javy’s legs and jammed.”
“You are some kind of Renaissance cop,” I told him. “A walking encyclopedia on Shawnee Indians, silver smelters, mining, railroads, Mexican immigration, and now the care and feeding of garbage trucks.”
“Listen, Bureau Boy,” Grisnik said. “You stay in one place doing one job long enough, there isn’t much you don’t see. You keep your ears and eyes open, read a book once in a while, and there isn’t much you can’t learn. Some of our best street bums have been ground up in these things after checking into a Dumpster they could of sworn was the Four Seasons.”
I leaned in to get a closer look at the body. The back of Javy’s head was ?attened, caved in by the impact of the bullet. The back of Jalise Williams’s head had looked the same way when I saw her body crouched in the closet. Grisnik shined a ?ashlight on Javy’s skull.
“He never looked so good,” Grisnik said.
“You knew him?” I asked.
“By sight, sound, and smell. We were pretty sure he was good for at least three murders, probably more if you count the ones he’d ordered done, but it was always the same old story. No one saw anything. No one knew anything. No one cared and even if they did, still no one saw or knew anything.”
There was a door on the backside
of the building. I tried the handle. It was locked. The dirt around the handle and the door jamb was undisturbed. There were no scrape marks on the threshold and no footprints leading to or from the door. The murderer hadn’t come through the shed to meet Javy.
I walked around to the far side of the truck and stared into the woods. It was a mix of thick ground cover, vines, wild thorn bushes, saplings, and mature trees. A few empty beer bottles and fast-food wrappers were scattered along the edge of the brush. I could make out a faint, hard-packed trail crossing roughly parallel to where I was standing, a good ten feet back in the woods.
The grass along where I was standing hadn’t been disturbed. None of the tree branches were broken and no clothing remnants had been snagged on the thorns.
“How far back do these woods go?” I asked Grisnik.
He was talking to another detective, his hand on his colleague’s back. “Hang on a second,” he said to me.
I walked along the edge of the woods to the west, keeping my eye on the trail. It bent toward the gravel drive running behind the storage sheds in a gradual arc, coming out across from the third storage building, about a hundred paces from the Dumpster where Javy’s body had been found. The grass there was beaten down, nearly dead. Plastic rings from emptied six-packs, cigarette butts, and a wrinkled condom marked the end of the trail. Grisnik caught up to me.
“What did you want to know?” he asked me.
“I asked how far back these woods go.”
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure.”
“You mean there’s something you don’t know about your town and your people?”
“I’m a lot of things, Jack. But I’m not a Boy Scout. Never had much use for the great outdoors. Always stayed out of the woods.”
“The killer could have walked through the woods and met Javy.”
“Already thought of that. The crime scene techs did a sweep of the immediate vicinity. They’re expanding the perimeter. So far, they haven’t found anything.”
“I think I’ll take a stroll,” I said and started down the path.
“Leave some bread crumbs so you don’t get lost,” Grisnik said. “I’m going to talk to the driver of the garbage truck.”
I followed the path back to where I could see the Dumpster, the garbage truck, and the storage shed. I crouched close to the ground, not finding any sign that someone had stepped off the trail, though I was no more adept at following a trail in the woods than was Grisnik. The sound of an angry and familiar voice brought me to my feet.
“Jack! Where the hell are you?” Troy Clark materialized at the front of the garbage truck, hands on hips, scanning the woods, locking on to my position. “Get your ass over here!”
I’ve always prided myself on being a team player, following orders as well as giving them, respecting the rules and chains of command. Structure and discipline are both necessary features of the FBI and I had incorporated them in to my life. None of which meant that I was going to get my ass anywhere for Troy Clark. I pretended he was my future former wife and, therefore, pretended I didn’t hear him as I retraced my route. He matched me stride for stride and was waiting when I emerged from the woods.
“What are you doing here?” Troy demanded.
“I’m taking a walk in the woods. What are you doing here?”
Troy screwed his face into a threat. I’d seen him use that face with suspects, sometimes with a gun pressed into their neck for emphasis. That he would try the look with me left me more amused than moved.
“Grisnik says you’re with him. What were you doing? Hiding from me?”
“I’ve got no reason to hide from you.”
“You’re on leave. Medical leave. This isn’t your case. Stay out of it.”
“It’s not your case, either. It’s Grisnik’s. He invited me to come along. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“We were—you were, for Christ’s sake—investigating Javy Ordonez. Colby Hudson was babysitting him. That makes it our case.”
“I’m not your audience. Grisnik will fight you over this one. Then someone at Justice will have to get involved and the killer will be a long way down the road before you and Grisnik stop pissing at each other. Why not make nice and work the case together?”
Grisnik, accompanied by a crime scene tech, joined us before Troy could answer. The tech was sweating and smiling, holding a plastic evidence bag, a .45 caliber pistol hanging in the bottom.
“Tell him,” Grisnik said to the tech.
The tech held the bag up like he’d just won first prize at the state fair. “We found it under another Dumpster about a quarter of a mile from here.”
Chapter Thirty
“Grisnik,” Troy said, “this case falls under the FBI’s jurisdiction.”
“I don’t think so,” Grisnik said, taking the plastic bag from the tech. “I let you get away with that on the drug house murders. But Javy Ordonez was a suspect in the shooting of Tony Phillips. Phillips’s mother, Oleta, is missing. I’m handling both of those cases. The murder of Ordonez may be connected.”
“We had Ordonez under surveillance. One of our undercover people was on him. That makes it our case.”
“Your investigation, what was it for? Drugs?”
“Yeah, drugs. What’s your point?” Troy asked.
“Cause Javy’s drug-dealing days are done. He’s nothing but a corpse now. Can’t help you one damn bit with your case. It’s my job to catch his killer. I find out anything that you boys may want to know, I’ll be sure and tell you.”
More cars arrived. Doors opened and were slammed closed. Troy smiled and waited. Ammara Iverson came around the corner of the storage shed accompanied by Josh Ziegler, the U.S. Attorney, trailed by two of his junior lawyers.
Ziegler was born to the role, tall, with a square chin that matched his squared shoulders, dark blond hair, and ice blue eyes. He was appointed by the previous administration and was so good at his job that the current president kept him on even though they belonged to different political parties. Unlike a lot of U.S. Attorneys, he tried cases, leaving the job of managing the bureaucracy to his deputies. He guarded his turf like a Doberman in a junkyard.
“Troy,” he said, without acknowledging Grisnik, “what’s the story?”
“You’re familiar with our ongoing investigation into drug trafficking in the greater metropolitan area.”
“Of course I am. You’re keeping me busy trying cases.”
“Javy Ordonez was one of our prime targets. We’ve devoted considerable assets to making a case against him, including putting one of our undercover agents next to him. That’s his Escalade, where he was shot to death, and that’s the Dumpster where the killer dumped his body.”
“Who found the body?”
“Driver of that garbage truck,” Troy said, waving his hand at the truck, “when he unloaded the Dumpster.”
Ziegler listened with his hands on his hips, his eyes boring in on Troy as if he were the only person within a hundred miles, the two of them having a private chat.
“Who was first on the scene?” he asked.
I’d seen this dance routine many times. In fact, I’d choreographed a few of them myself with Troy as my understudy. Troy knew that Grisnik would fight to hold on to this case. He’d already briefed Ziegler and the two of them were preparing to shuf?e off to Buffalo with the case before Grisnik could gain any traction. Troy had been a good pupil. I should have been proud.
“KCKPD,” Troy said. “Did a good job like they always do. They’ve filled us in on the preliminaries. We’re ready to run with it. Detective Grisnik here runs Robbery and Homicide. I believe he has a question about jurisdiction.”
Ziegler turned his “ladies and gentlemen of the jury” smile on Grisnik and stuck his hand out. Grisnik hesitated but gave in, clasping hands for an instant before letting go.
“I don’t blame you for wanting the case, Detective. It’s why we get out of bed in the morning. Thanks for the good work
your people did. We depend on them to get things under control in cases like this. It’s the kind of cooperation the director likes to hear about.”
“You be sure and tell him next time you see him,” Grisnik said. “But this is about murder, not drugs. Javy was a dealer, but he’s the victim, not the perp, and he’s not the one that’s going to be arrested and convicted. His killer is going to win that prize. No federal laws are in play. This is my case.”
I half expected Grisnik to also tell Ziegler it was his town and his people, but he left that out. They stood a foot apart, waiting for the other to blink. Grisnik held his ground, subtly tightening his grip on the plastic bag containing the gun.
“Detective,” Ziegler said, with the patience of a priest forgiving the wayward, “We know that Ordonez was engaged in interstate drug trafficking. Obviously, something went wrong in a deal or somebody got jealous or angry over territory or money. Whatever it was, there’s no doubt that this case is about drugs, drugs that crossed state lines, and that makes it a federal case. Murder isn’t the end of our case, it’s just the latest development in our ongoing investigation. I talked to your D.A. on my way over here. He agrees with me. You can give him a call if you like.”
Ziegler retrieved his cell phone from his jacket pocket, holding it in the palm of his outstretched hand. “Go ahead, Detective. It’s number five on my speed dial if you can’t remember the number.”
Grisnik’s eyes burned, his shoulders ?aring back as he unconsciously stuck out his chest. I knew the pose. It was the re?ex when your own people slipped the knife between your shoulder blades. It’s hard to tell which is worse—the shock, the pain, or the humiliation. To his credit, Grisnik didn’t buckle, didn’t let his shoulders sag in surrender, or otherwise acknowledge the bitterness of defeat.
“You’ll want this,” he said to Ziegler, handing him the plastic bag. “I’ll have my people deliver a set of reports and all the forensics. You need anything else, give me a call.”