by Mark Pryor
“Is that so?” Something bubbled inside me, a mix of surprise, relief, and shock, but mostly amusement.
“Yes, sir. You need his name, too?”
“No, that’s OK,” I said. “I know who you’re talking about.” Brian fucking McNulty. Wannabe judge, general irritation, and now voyeur.
And, most interestingly, he’d not said a word to me about it.
CHAPTER TEN
The following afternoon, Thursday, I called Brian at home. “Feeling any better?”
“Sometimes. Mostly not.”
“You should go see a doctor.”
“No, I’m just dehydrated,” he said. “Don’t want to drag myself down there, pay the thirty-dollar co-pay, and sit in the waiting room full of sick people, only to be told to lay on the couch and drink water.” He coughed weakly. “Fuck that.”
“You need me to bring you anything?”
“Nah, Connie has me covered. She’s a good nurse, that one.”
“Cool,” I said. “Hey, did you remember to cancel your ride-out for tonight?”
“Oh, shit, no. Dammit, thanks for the reminder.”
“Well, I can do that for you.”
“You can? Wow, thanks Dom. I wrote the sergeant’s name on the white board in our office. They usually come by for me around four, four-thirty.”
“I’m on it. Rest up, see you next week.”
“Yeah, I won’t be in tomorrow. Thanks again.”
I rang off and looked at the clock. Ten minutes to four. I closed my office door and changed out of my suit, pulling on jeans and my official DA windbreaker. I checked that I had my wallet and phone, then walked past Terri’s office. Her door was open so I stuck my head in.
“I’m taking Brian’s spot tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Riding out. I called earlier to check on him, and he forgot to cancel with APD, so I said I’d fill in, unless you have an objection.”
“No,” she said. “Nothing much going on tomorrow, so I’ll cover whatever we have. Enjoy the ride and take tomorrow off. Which sector is it?”
“Henry.”
“I thought he covered David.”
“I wanted a little more excitement; thought I’d ring the changes just for tonight. I cleared it with both sergeants.”
“Fine with me.” She chuckled. “Henry Sector. Have your own vest?”
“No.”
“Then don’t forget to duck.” She smiled. “See ya on Monday, if you ain’t dead.”
I grinned. “If I am, cover my docket for me.”
At four o’clock sharp, a black-and-white police Crown Vic bumped into the parking lot in front of the Betts and circled around to the step where I was sitting. The officer, a Hispanic man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, threw me a wave and then got out and came around the car to greet me.
“You’re my prosecutor, sir?”
I stood. “Dominic, none of that sir nonsense.”
He smiled. “Oh, sure. I’m Thiago DeAraujo. Call me Thiago.” We shook hands. “Hey, are you that British prosecutor? You were all over the news a year or so ago, I recognize you now.”
“One and the same.” I gave him a friendly wink. “But don’t say British, I’m English.”
“Not the same thing?”
“It’d be like calling a Canadian a North American. Not quite specific enough.”
“Or like calling me, a Brazilian, South American. Got you.” He jerked a thumb at the car. “You ready to go?”
When we were seated, I asked, “So how long have you been with APD?”
“Nine years,” he said. “Senior guy on the shift. You ever ride out before?”
“Yeah, a dozen times maybe. I usually get out at all the calls, except the traffic stops.” Those were the most unpredictable. Pretty much every other call you knew what you were headed to, and other cops were likely there already, but several officers had told me they prefer to worry solely about the driver they’re pulling over, rather than the driver and me.
“That works. Otherwise, get out whenever you want, just stay here if I ask you to.”
“Will do.”
“And you know where the button is for the AR? Ever shot one?”
“I do and I have. Maybe if things get a little slow I can fire it out the window a few times.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I’m sure no one would mind.”
“So we’re off to Henry Sector?”
“Yeah, one of the spicier parts of town.” He put the car in drive and we set off. I looked at the computer that sat between us, with the calls listed. “Nothing happening right now, so maybe we’ll run traffic, or just back other people up. But don’t worry, the quiet never lasts long.”
As we drove east, we talked and he told me about himself. A Brazilian who moved to Boston and then Austin, he was still in the Navy Reserves, and was desperately in love with his blond, Minnesotan wife, a nurse. I knew because his face lit up when he talked about her and, for the thousandth time, I wondered what it was like to feel such love and passion for another person.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel emotion when I meet a girl. It’s just a little more, how can I put this? A little more me-oriented. For example, I get sort of obsessed and doting, jealous even, until I’m suddenly not. My current situation was different, had lasted longer than usual, but partly that was because she played hard to get. She wasn’t fooled by me, didn’t let me manipulate her. I respected that. My mind lingered on her a moment, then shifted inevitably to Bobby, and I made myself focus on the task at hand: Henry Sector.
For patrol purposes, the Austin Police Department divided Austin into nine sectors. The smallest was the downtown area, George Sector, where half the cops rode bikes. Below George lay David Sector, the largest, which covered the most affluent part of the city, its southwest corner. Extending directly east, with the always-packed Interstate 35 as its western border, lay Henry, a part of town I was not familiar with. I soon saw why.
It seemed a world apart from downtown Austin, ruled by its predictable, gridded streets and familiar landmarks. Different, too, from the wide-open but ordered David, where the apartment complexes were properly kempt and so many people lived safely in their gated, or at least community-watched, neighborhoods.
No, right from the get-go I could see that this part of Austin was different. The roads themselves wound up and down through neighborhoods that were hard to distinguish from each other because the small patches of undeveloped land were littered with the tarps of the homeless and small clusters of blacks or Hispanics who stood stock-still and watched intently as we passed by. The apartment complexes here were devoid of trees and swimming pools, five-hundred-dollar-a-month shit-boxes stacked on top of each other and home to more people than you’d want visiting, let alone living, in your Westlake McMansion.
“See this bus stop coming up?” Thiago said. “Watch them scatter like cockroaches when we go by.”
The bus stop sat on a side street by the parking lot of a convenience store, and Thiago slowed to turn right into the lot. Six men and two women looked up, spotting us seemingly in unison, and without hesitation they split up, striding away in different directions, with their hands in their pockets. They might as well have been whistling innocently, as guilty as they obviously were.
“Buying and selling drugs?” I asked.
“Drugs for sure. Probably guns, too. Pisses the community off. Folks don’t feel safe catching the bus, and that’s how most people here get to work. I come down here a couple times a shift to scare them off, but they scuttle right back.”
“Like cockroaches.”
“Precisely.”
“Speaking of which, I’m curious. What’s your opinion of us prosecutors?” I asked.
“You really wanna know?” He glanced over, smiling. “I’m kidding. Don’t have much interaction with you guys, to be honest. Occasional phone call or e-mail complaining about something we screwed up.”
“Then don’t screw thing
s up,” I said, smiling back so he’d know I was kidding. “How about testifying?”
“Twice in nine years. Now, I’ve been to juvie court a few times, but the case always got postponed.”
“Yeah, that happens. Usually because the kid doesn’t show up for court.”
“So why do you let them out before their trial?”
“I don’t,” I said. “That’s the judge’s call. They rarely hold kids in detention, not unless they’re some kind of danger to society.”
“Far as I can tell,” he said, “a lot of them are, and you still let them go.”
“Like I said. Not me, the judges.”
“We joke about it,” he said. “We catch them and bring them in, you give them hugs and lollipops and let them go.”
“You’re not far wrong. It can be frustrating for us, too, but we do the best we can.”
Just after nine, Thiago pulled into a gas station. “Bathroom break. Only about three in this sector clean enough, and welcoming enough, for us to use,” he said.
“That’s a shame.” We climbed out of the car and once my door was shut, he locked up and we walked to the main doors.
“Tell me about it. I drive out of sector to eat; pretty much every fast-food and burger joint here is manned by ex-cons or juveniles on probation.” He winked. “I don’t need extra toppings on my sandwich, if ya get my drift.”
“I sure do.” I held the gas-station door open for him. “And neither do I.”
He let me use the restroom first, and I wrinkled my nose as I did so. If this was one of the clean ones, I could see why he avoided the others. I flushed and washed my hands, then walked out to the car to wait. Leaning on the cruiser, I made a phone call.
Thiago reappeared a minute later, a serious look on his face. “We gotta go. Some juveniles trespassing in an abandoned house.”
As I climbed into the car, I groaned dramatically. “Juveniles? Didn’t I make that a rule?”
“What’s that?”
“I see enough of the little buggers during the day, I think I deserve a night off from them.”
He laughed as he switched on the overhead lights and siren. “Too late,” he said. “Buckle up, we’re the closest ones to the house, so for once you could be catching kids instead of letting them go.”
I tried to keep an eye on the road names, but daylight was fading and half of the streetlights were out. I followed along as we turned right from Montopolis Drive onto Riverside, the police car’s tires squealed as Thiago cut off a corner into a smaller, residential street, and then I was lost.
“Who called this in?” I asked, above the wail of the siren.
“A neighbor, I’m guessing.” He glanced at the computer. “Doesn’t give a name, and you see how it says DNC at the end?”
“Yes. Do Not Contact, right?”
“You have ridden out before,” he said with a smile. “So I’m guessing a neighbor who doesn’t want to be seen talking to the cops. Pretty common around here.”
Thiago killed the lights and siren a couple of blocks from the target house. He turned on the spotlight by his window, directing it onto the houses as we cruised down the street, looking for the right number. He stopped several houses away and shone the light on the address we’d been given. The house was small, its postage stamp of a front yard overgrown, and the chain-link fence around it rusted and broken. The windows weren’t broken, though, and I couldn’t see any movement behind them.
“We waiting for backup?” I asked.
He looked at the computer. “No one close. Probably just a bunch of kids smoking weed and drinking. You wanna stay here? They might run.”
“No, I’ll come. I could use some exercise.”
He opened the glove compartment. “Spare flashlight, grab it. If the place is abandoned, there’ll be no electricity.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed the flashlight and followed him out of the car and along the sidewalk toward the house. The street was quiet; if the kids were in there partying, they weren’t very good at it. Or maybe they’d passed out, but nine o’clock seemed a little early for that. Even for kids.
The gate to the property was open, hanging off one hinge, and I let him lead me up the short path to the porch. The boards on it sagged, and I wasn’t convinced we wouldn’t fall through, so I waited as Thiago stepped up to the front door. He paused there and spoke into his radio.
“Henry 507. The door’s open. I don’t hear anything, so they probably took off. I’ll check the place and advise.”
He held the flashlight in his left hand and put his right on the butt of his gun.
“You want me to wait out here?” I asked.
“Probably should.”
I watched Thiago disappear inside the house and saw the beam of his flashlight bobbing up and down through the front window. I turned to look down the street, but all the doors were closed, no nosy neighbors wondering what was going on. In three minutes, Thiago came out and spoke into his radio. “Henry 507. Code four.” All clear.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“A few cans and a lot of cigarette butts. You wanna see inside an abandoned house?”
“Sure.” I stepped onto the porch and went through the front door. Thiago followed me. “Smells of mold and weed,” I said.
“But nothing recent.”
“There’s a dead animal in here somewhere,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“Probably a rat in the wall or attic. Raccoon, maybe.”
I shone my flashlight around the tiny living room, brushing it over two armchairs and a long couch, all in brown. A coffee table knelt in front of the couch, two of its legs broken off, the chipped wood surface sloping down to the beige, stained carpet. Crumpled beer cans littered the floor, and a hub cap had been turned into a giant ashtray, one that hadn’t been emptied in a while.
A door led into the kitchen, all Formica and broken cupboards. The fridge had fallen forward, propped up now by a dusty kitchen counter. I turned and walked back through the living room to the lone bedroom. A double bed held a mattress and nothing else, and I grimaced at the stains on it. As desperate for sex as teenagers got, would they really drape themselves over that? I hoped not. Another mattress stood against the far wall, between the windows and the closet, resting at an angle like a teepee.
Something caught my eye when my light flickered over the base of the mattress. A shoe. I looked again, wondering whether one of the hoodlums was hiding out, or maybe passed out. I shifted to my right to make sure the shoe hadn’t just been left behind, but there was definitely a leg attached.
I cleared my throat. “Hey, Thiago.”
“Yeah?” he called from the living room.
“I want to show you something.”
“I got enough porn at home, thanks.”
“No, really.”
I watched as the beam from his flashlight preceded him into the room. “What’s up?” he asked.
I pointed my light at the mattress, and after a moment he saw it, too. He slowly drew his weapon, and I backed up a little, giving him room, my eyes fixed on that one, unmoving shoe.
“Austin Police,” Thiago said. “Show yourself.”
We waited, but there was no movement. Thiago gestured for me to step farther back, so I did. The room was silent but for his breathing and the creak of his gun belt as he shifted. He spoke again: “Austin Police, show yourself.”
He moved forward toward the mattress, then seemed to realize he couldn’t move it while holding his gun and flashlight, so I stepped toward him, training my light on the mattress. allowing him to holster his flashlight and have a free hand. I stood close behind so he could pull the top of the mattress from the wall, and he did so with a flick of his wrist, his gun aimed squarely at whoever was behind it. The mattress fell to the floor with a whump, kicking up dust that made us cover our mouths.
The body sat there, legs crossed like he’d died doing yoga, his back against the wall and his hands resting gently in his lap. His skin was sallow
, a mix of gray and yellow that told me he’d been dead a few days. A gun lay on the floor beside his right knee, and a single, spent shell casing sat upright less than a foot away, as if someone had placed it there on purpose.
Thiago spoke into his radio. “Henry 507. We have a sig three. White male, looks like single gunshot wound to the head.” Then he turned to me. “We need to leave everything as we found it, and wait for Homicide to get down here.”
I backed out of the room, unable to take my eyes off the body, off the neat hole in the right side of his head, the patch of red on the wall behind him, and the ragged, tangled mess of hair and bone where the bullet had exited. I made sure not to touch anything in the living room, heading straight for the front door, which was still open. Outside, the fresh air hit me, and I almost gagged, which surprised me. Thiago took it as a sign of emotion and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry you had to see that, man,” he said.
“Hey, no worries. I guess the fresh air is bad for me.”
He gave a gentle laugh. “Yeah, something like that.” He held up a finger as the dispatcher spoke into his earpiece. “Negative,” he replied. “No visible wallet or sign of an ID. I didn’t touch the body. Ten-four, will wait for Homicide.”
We stood in silence for a moment, looking up and down the street. “Crime Scene guys on the way?” I asked, more to pass the time than anything. Of course they were.
“Yeah. They’ll do their thing, maybe find out who he is.”
“If it helps, I can tell you that right now.”
His head snapped up. “You know him?”
“Yes,” I said. “His name’s Robert something, and he’s a fifteen-year-old juvenile delinquent. His sister and probation officer know him as Bobby.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We stuck around for another two hours. Thiago and several other officers were sent to knock on doors to find out if anyone had seen or heard anything, but in this neighborhood everyone knew that was a fool’s errand. Four of the twenty houses on the street were as abandoned as this one, and the homes that were occupied contained either old people too deaf or blind to see anything, or scraggly-limbed drug users who wouldn’t have noticed if a Russian tank had driven down the street and blasted Bobby into smithereens.