by Chris Culver
I pulled out my phone again and called the dispatcher back.
“This is Detective Sergeant Ash Rashid. Situation’s changed. I’ve got a fire with injuries on North Kenwood Avenue. I need EMS, fire and patrol, and I need it right now.”
The dispatcher told me we already had units en route, but she alerted the fire department as well. They were approximately ten minutes out. Hopefully the neighboring homes wouldn’t go up in that time. I thanked the dispatcher and hung up.
We got off lucky all considered. Gail would have broken bones, and both she and her son would have some very dark memories, but they’d live. The more I thought, the more I could feel something cold spreading inside me. Tomas Quesada claimed to have left Barrio Sureño behind, but he had set me up just the same. That house didn’t ignite on its own, and I refused to believe Danny Navarra just happened to store gasoline on the second floor in case he needed to light it up and run.
I glanced at the Penningtons. They held each other on the lawn, both still crying, but the tears had changed. They had become survivors. They saw something horrible and made it through. Mark, I think, was supposed to make it. The knife in the kitchen was too convenient, his restraints too easy to remove. Gail, on the other hand, someone wanted to die. She made it because I maimed her. I don’t know how many of my colleagues would have done that.
Someone wanted her dead, and he wanted IMPD to watch.
Just a minute or so after I had carried Gail from the house, the first patrol officers arrived. They checked out Gail and Mark, but they left me alone once I flashed them my badge. The fire department took an additional five minutes, and by that time, the house had nearly burned to the foundation. The firemen focused primarily on containing the flames and keeping them from spreading to any of the nearby vegetation or neighboring homes. Mostly, I ignored them, too, and found myself raging inside for the lives very nearly lost today. Captain Bowers came about twenty minutes after the calls went out, just as the ambulances took Mark and Gail to somewhere they could rest in peace. For me, though, there would be no rest until the wicked slept.
Time slipped away from me for a while, and my thoughts became dark as they often do. Eventually, I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder, and I looked up to see Bowers standing in front of me. The fire trucks had left, but the stench of burnt plastic, insulation, and wood hung heavy in the midafternoon air.
“Ash,” said Bowers. “I need you to focus.”
He reached down, so I grabbed his hand and let me pull him up.
“Sorry. My mind went elsewhere.”
He nodded and then gestured toward a squad car about ten feet away. “What do you say we have a conversation in my car?”
I shook my head. “We’re fine out here.”
Mike sighed and then shook his head. “Why does it always have to be like this with you?”
“You really think now’s the time to sit around and talk about our feelings toward each other?”
He reached into his jacket for a pack of cigarettes and then lit up. After taking a long drag, he pointed the burning, red ember toward me. “I’m trying to help you, but it’s real hard to help an asshole.” He took another drag and then exhaled and coughed. “You saved Gail Pennington’s life. I came here to tell you that.”
I relaxed a little. “I’m glad.” He paused, likely waiting for me to say something else, so I squinted at him. “Those cigarettes are going to kill you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know that,” he said. He held his cigarette to his side and looked directly into my eyes. “I don’t need to tell you how ugly this is going to get. The lawyers are already trolling her family. They met the ambulance at the hospital.”
Of course lawyers met it. I had worked hard to get through law school, and I’m proud of myself for it. I’m proud of most of my colleagues, too. People make jokes about lawyers all the time, but the world needs us. At our best, we’re advocates, not just for our clients, but for justice, too. As in all professions, a certain percentage of us fall short of our loftier goals.
“Aside from her name, what do we know about her?” I asked.
“She is a stay-at-home mom from Carmel. Her husband is a cardiologist at the IU Health Center. Mark is her son.”
I blinked, trying to make sense of that. “Why would a doctor’s wife be in a gangbanger’s basement?”
Bowers coughed and then looked off into the distance. A crime scene technician had started taking pictures of the remnants of the house.
“Eleven years ago, she was a 911 dispatcher who took a call about a murder in a soup kitchen.” He paused and then sighed. “She testified in the Santino Ramirez trial.”
I felt something in me, something important, crumble.
“So Michelle and Dante definitely died because they testified against Ramirez,” I said. “They died because they did the right thing.”
“We don’t know that definitively yet,” said Bowers. “We’re still working this case. Speaking of which,” he said, nodding toward the still-smoking rubble of Danny Navarra’s house, “how’d you happen to stumble across this place?”
He said it casually, but the question held more import than his tone reflected. If I answered honestly, he could arrest me for obstruction of justice, a felony. At the same time, I didn’t want to lie to him. Bowers and I hadn’t always gotten along, but I understood him, I think. It had taken me a long time to see it, but unlike a lot of my supervisors, he didn’t play games with his subordinates, he didn’t play politics with his superiors, and he didn’t try to screw people over just to improve his own position within the department. He did what he thought was right, and a guy like that deserved my respect.
“Barrio Sureño killed a friend of mine, and then they came after my family,” I said.
Bowers nodded. “I know that, and I’m very sorry for what happened.”
He hadn’t arrested me for a near admission, so that was a good sign.
“I need to work this case.”
Bowers crossed his arms and looked directly into my eyes. “Why?”
I started to say something about their deaths being an extension of my original investigation into Angel Hererra, but that was a lie. Truthfully, I didn’t have a good answer. My wife reads a lot of crime novels and likes to talk about them with me. The guys in her books, they’d tell Bowers right away why they wanted to work the case. One guy believes homicide work is a mission, a calling rooted deep in who he is. Another guy views it almost as a game, a chance to match wits with an opponent willing to do anything to win. A third guy she reads views himself as a sort of knight in a world shrouded by darkness.
I’m not like those guys. I applied to the police academy after college because the job came with great benefits, it paid well, and I’d have an option for early retirement after twenty years of service. For a guy with a degree in philosophy, I didn’t think I could do better. Once I went through the academy and put on the badge, I started buying into the life. I started to believe that I was called to police work, that it was my mission, and that God had put me on earth to help put things right.
I don’t know anymore. A couple of years ago, Detective Sergeant Michael Davidson from aggravated assault came across a car stuck in the middle of an intersection in the middle of a nasty winter storm. The driver kept spinning his wheels, but he didn’t have traction on the ice. With the storm in full force, visibility must have been a couple dozen feet at best. Davidson pushed the car out of the way, but before he could get back to his cruiser, a snow plow operated by a slightly intoxicated driver came through the intersection at thirty miles an hour. Killed Davidson on the spot. Guy had twenty years on the job, two kids in high school, a wife, a home. As soon as he put his kids through college, he planned to retire. And he died for nothing.
I’d like to think there’s some grandeouse plan for us all, but the older I get, the more I doubt that. We are who we choose to be, and I chose to be a cop. Santino Ramirez chose to murder Angel Hererra. Sergeant Da
vidson chose to help a stranded motorist. I’m going to lose my job in a couple of days—I’m resigned to that fate—but I don’t have to like it. I enjoy being a detective and putting bad guys in prison. I’m going to miss that, but I’m not done until they take my badge from me. Until then, I refuse to stop working.
“I’m really good at this,” I said. “You know that.”
“You are quite good at ruining my day,” said Bowers, nodding without a trace of a smile on his face.
I tilted my head to the side and raised my eyebrows. “I saved two lives. If that ruined yoru day, maybe you should reconsider your priorities.”
“Maybe, but Paul Murphy’s very good at his job, too, and this is his case.”
“Paul won’t be fired in a few days. I will be. This is my last shot. I’m not asking for much. Just stay out of my way. That’s it. I’ll coordinate with Paul and make sure he gets the credit for anything I do.”
Bowers blinked and then took a step back, softening his posture. “The board may not fire you.”
“I appreciate the encouragement, but I’m gone in a few days. We both know that.”
Bowers took a deep breath as if he were thinking. Then he looked around. “Officially, I have to say you’re on leave until you get a verdict from your disciplinary hearing and IA clears you from the shooting this morning.”
“How about unofficially?”
Bowers looked down at the grass beneath his feet. “Try to stay out of trouble and try not to hurt anybody.”
“Thank you.” I paused for just a second. “For what it’s worth, the house is owned by a guy named Danny Navarra. You should put out an APB for him and see what he knows.”
“No need,” said Bowers. “Our gang intelligence unit gave us the house this morning, but you beat us to it. Danny Navarra is sitting in jail right now on a B and E charge. Picked him up two weeks ago, and he couldn’t make bail.”
“So he didn’t set the fire?” I asked.
Bowers shook his head. “No. Mitch Kelly from the Fire Investigations Division at IFD came out with some of the first responders. Place is too hot to get in, but he said it was probably remotely triggered. They’ve seen a couple of those this year. Arsonists will go into a high-end hobby shop and buy a remote-activated launch system as well as a couple of engines for a model rocket and put them on top of a bucket full of gasoline. You hide, hit a button, and the rockets blast, igniting the gas vapors. Costs some money, but it’s a lot easier and safer than running a fuse.”
“So anybody can do this?”
Bowers nodded. “I sent Nancy Wharton by the local hobby stores that sell this kind of system, but I’m not hopeful. If our arsonist was smart, he bought it on the Internet.”
“Sounds like you’ve got this under control.”
“We do for now,” said Bowers.
“Then I’m going to leave you to it. I’ve got some stuff to do.”
“Good luck, and stay out of trouble.”
I nodded and then walked the remaining half block to my car. With my department’s unofficial approval, Tomas Quesada would pay for this “tip.”
Chapter 13
The sun had started to set by the time I got back to my car. On a normal night, my wife and I would be feeding the kids right about now. I drove a couple of blocks away to the parking lot of a CVS on the corner of North Kenwood and Thirty-Eighth Street and called Hannah’s cell phone. When she answered, I could hear Kaden saying something in the background, which made me smile.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said. “I just wanted to call and say I’m going to be a little while. I’ve got a project at work. It’s going to be a big one.”
“I thought you might,” she said, her voice soft. It wasn’t until she spoke that I realized how much I had needed to hear her voice. People at our mosque look at us and see a decorated police officer and his nurse wife and kids and automatically think I’m the head of the household, the backbone of the family. They have no idea that every ounce of strength I have comes from my wife. “The kids and I are staying at Jack and Yasmine’s. You’re welcome to come, too.”
I wondered how welcome I would be if she knew I had gone out drinking before I shot Dante.
“I’d like that,” I said. “Is there somewhere we can talk there?”
“Of course,” she said, her voice sounding surprised. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but we should probably talk later.”
“Of course, sure,” she said, concern edging out her surprise. “I’m going to put Kaden to bed soon, but Megan will be up until nine or so, and I know she’d like to see you. We can talk after that.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “I’m working, though, so I’ve got to get going. Hug the kids for me.”
“I will. I love you.”
Despite everything that had happened to me, I found myself smiling. “I love you, too.”
After hanging up, I forced the warm feelings I had for my family as deep into my mind as I could. I lived in two worlds. In one, my family was my greatest strength, the wellspring of everything good in my life. In the other, I couldn’t afford sentimentality. It clouded my judgment, kept me from doing the things I needed to do. Tomas Quesada had sent me to Danny Navarra’s house so I could watch a woman die. Even if he had just passed a message and location along, somebody had pulled his strings. Whether he wanted to talk to me or not, he would give me that name and then he’d go downtown to talk to my department about everything else he knew.
As I turned into Quesada’s neighborhood, I found kids playing an evening game of basketball in the light cast by floodlights on nearby houses, with hoops they had wheeled into the street. When they saw my car, they shouted “Game off!” and jumped to the sidewalks and wheeled their hoops to the nearest driveways.
Attending an elementary school in central Indiana, I had grown up with basketball. We played it every time we had gym class, and I eventually got fairly good at it. Despite my being a decent player, the other kids rarely invited me to those sort of neighborhood pickup games, partly because I was a smartass, but partly because the other kids didn’t understand why I had to periodically go home in the middle of a game for prayers, or why I couldn’t have hot dogs at neighborhood barbecues that seemed to pop up every weekend when the weather was warm, or why my mother and sister covered their heads, even in the heat of the summer. The kids in my neighborhood let me see their world, but they never let me forget that I existed outside it. Looking back, I should have thanked them for that. They made me stronger than I could ever have been on my own.
I waved to the boys as I drove past. A few reciprocated, but most simply started shouting “Game on!” and grabbed the hoops to start up again. In the day-to-day grind, I forget why I do the job I do, but neighborhoods like that, places where kids can play without being threatened by gang members or drug dealers, serve as a reminder of the importance of my job. I do what I do so those kids don’t have to live in fear. That doesn’t make the missed family events any easier, but it does make it seem worthwhile.
I parked directly in front of Quesada’s house and checked my firearm to ensure I had a full magazine, including a round in the chamber. The temperature had probably dropped ten degrees since the sun went down, and the rhythmic thump of a basketball striking concrete carried on a cold north wind. As I stepped out of the car, I pulled my jacket tight around me to conceal the firearm on my shoulder.
Quesada’s house looked little changed from earlier that day. A light over the porch illuminated the front walkway and door, and I caught the flicker of a television from one of the bedrooms upstairs. Like my own house’s, the driveway on the left side led to the detached garage and backyard. I doubted he’d be too open to seeing me again, so I didn’t bother knocking on the front door. Instead, I walked past the house and down the driveway as if I were an invited guest. None of the boys playing basketball up the street seemed to notice me.
The rear of the house had a pair of French doors that opened on
to a brick patio. None of the lights were on back there, but one of the doors had swung open. With the temperature in the thirties, I doubted Quesada had done that on his own. And if he had, he would have shut it immediately. Something was off. I reached into my jacket, pulled out my firearm, and chambered a round before crossing the yard to the door. I paused at the threshold, listening intently as I looked into the kitchen. Quesada had simple white cabinets, marble countertops, and stainless steel appliances. Not even a single coffee cup cluttered his counters. Despite the open door, I couldn’t hear movement.
I crept inside. A hallway directly in front of the French doors stretched to the home’s main entrance on Middle Drive and two doors, both of which were painted white to match the cabinets, led from the kitchen. The first led to a powder room—empty—while the second led down into an unfinished cellar. I couldn’t hear anyone down there, so I closed the door softly and left the kitchen, being careful to stay near the walls in the hallway to prevent the floor from creaking. A staircase in the entryway led to the second floor, while open archways on the left and right led to a living room on one side and a dining room on the other. Again, both appeared empty.
I stopped and smelled the air. No gasoline this time. The first floor appeared clear. I had put one foot on the bottom step when someone flicked off the overhead lights.
I vaulted into the living room and felt the floorboards sag beneath my weight. The room had two couches, neither of which afforded me much of a hiding spot, and a marble fireplace. A black candle burned in a Santa Muerte shrine in the fireplace. I gritted my teeth and pressed my back against the wall beside the arched opening to the entryway. Almost as soon as I did that, I heard the floorboards creak upstairs. The way Quesada had moved earlier, I would have expected his footsteps to be quick and light, but these were heavy.
The wall behind me vibrated as the guy came down. I held my breath and pointed my firearm directly at the archway in case Quesada’s guest decided to go into the living room. The floorboards at the base of the steps creaked as he hit the bottom, but he didn’t linger at all. He simply turned right and headed to the kitchen. This very well could be the man telling Quesada what to do. I couldn’t let him leave, not without finding out who he was, at the least. I stepped out into the entryway in time to see a figure silhouetted in the moonlight in the hallway. He carried something big, like a basketball, tucked under his right arm and what I could only describe as a sword in the left.