Ice Shear

by M. P. Cooley

  Zeke Jelickson got up from his seat. He walked slowly, his stance wide in his steel-toed boots.

  “Zeke . . .” Linda Jelickson said.

  Zeke seemed to be considering his beer bottle carefully. He paused, a foot from Dave. And then he swung.

  I dove forward, jamming Jelickson’s arm sideways in midswing. The beer from the bottle sprayed wide, hitting Dave, but the bottle missed his face. Using momentum, I pinned Jelickson’s arm around his back and held it.

  Linda Jelickson leaped out of her seat, sending a tower of CDs crashing down. Dave straddled the coffee table, his foot hitting one of the ashtrays and spilling its contents across the off-white—now off-off-white—carpet, and grabbed her arm.

  “This is how you treat a grieving father!” Linda Jelickson yelled, trying to pull out of Dave’s grasp. “You people!”

  “I didn’t mean to spill my beer on you, Officer,” Zeke said, but I felt his arm flex, the flaming skull tattoo moving under my hand, and Jelickson’s face slid sideways, mashing against an M. C. Escher poster. It tore against his cheek. Being shorter than Zeke had its advantages here. I used my lower angle to pull his arm tighter, but this wouldn’t last—the second I let him go he would pound me into the ground.

  “Wrong,” I said. The patches on his back were easy to read: ABOMINATIONS, 1%, and COPPERHEAD, which must be his club name. “You were trying to hit him with the bottle.”

  “Why, I wasn’t trying to hit him with anything.” The saccharine tone of Zeke’s jagged voice was more insulting than if he’d told us to fuck off and die. “An accident, I swear, Officer.”

  “He’s right, Officer Lyons.” Dave spoke only to Linda Jelickson. “Zeke’s mind wasn’t clear after he heard the news that we might not be able to put together a case because people are withholding evidence.”

  Linda Jelickson stopped pushing against Dave, and as she relaxed, I released my hold on Zeke.

  Zeke Jelickson shook out his arm. “I don’t know who might have been ‘withholding evidence,’ but the congresswoman is all twisted up, warped inside with all the power she’s got. That woman, and her husband, too, they’re users, no doubt about it.”

  Linda Jelickson nodded. “I’m a mother, and I can tell. Amanda Brouillette’s got no mother’s love, and neither does this bitch here. Any idiot could see it.”

  “We’re done,” Dave said at last. “But consider this, today, a freebie. You are grieving parents, and you aren’t,” he emphasized, “suspects. But you take a swing at me or anyone else in this town and you will be locked up. And if you don’t keep the boys outside on a leash, you will be locked out. Am I clear?”

  Linda Jelickson didn’t reply, going to the door and holding it open for us. Jackie’s voice could be heard from the porch, trying to talk her way past the gauntlet. The requirements for her entrance were different than those for Dave and me.

  “Show us your puppies,” a guy was saying, gesturing for her to lift her shirt.

  “Jackie,” I asked, “does your father know you’re here?”

  Jackie squared her shoulders. “The Jelicksons are expecting me.”

  “We are,” and Linda Jelickson opened the door wide, gesturing Jackie in with her cigarette. “Jackie dear, come in, come in.”

  Jackie slid past the men, but stepped back when Linda tried to hug her.

  “Can you put out the cigarette? It’s not, it’s not . . . healthy.”

  Linda Jelickson flicked the cigarette over the porch railing where it burned out in the snow. “Do you want a soda, Jackie?” She threw her hair over her shoulder. “Of course, it’s family only.”

  CHAPTER 18

  OW, FUCK.” DAVE GINGERLY pulled the blue cloth away from his body and winced. “I think my chest hair is freezing to my shirt.”

  “Now, now,” I said. “Zeke didn’t mean to spill beer on you. I’m sure he’s very sorry.”

  “Because he wasted beer. He wasn’t sorry that the wasted beer ended up on me.”

  I bumped Dave’s shoulder with my own to adjust his course as he ran up the steps of the police station—he was going to run into the frieze next to the entrance rather than through the door itself. The carving depicted Justice, her scales and sword at the ready, with a beaver, the official New York State animal, nestled at her feet. It had probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “Please hold,” we heard Lorraine say as we pushed open the door. She raised an eyebrow at Dave. “You know you smell like a bar mat, right? And while that’s not a problem most days, today you should get yourself cleaned up. Jerry called, and the chief and him are out of their meeting with the governor. Jerry said, and I quote, ‘The governor handed out so much pain, there’s more than enough to go around.’ Unquote. Always the big talker, Jerry. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes or so. Plus, you got an FBI agent waiting for you in Room Two.”

  “Oh, joy,” I said.

  Dave grabbed a shirt out of his desk drawer and jogged toward the locker room. “Please let me solve this case before I run out of clean shirts. Hey,” he called over his shoulder, “don’t kill the G-man before I get back.”

  Hale sat at the far side of the table in Interview Two. Two files and a stack of papers were at his right hand, and a recorder? a camera?—I was no longer up-to-date on the latest surveillance technology—at his left. Behind him was carnage: bloody pictures of Ray and the bloodless pictures of Danielle.

  “You willing to hear me out?” Hale said, his black suit picking up the faintest layer of dust as he spread his arms wide on the table.

  “Dave might. My bullshit detector is still in place.”

  “That might change once you hear what I have to say.”

  “Doubtful.” I pulled a chair from the corner so we had seats for five.

  “I—”

  “Let’s wait for Dave, shall we?”

  We sat in silence. Hale turned sideways, keeping one eye on me while he studied the wall of evidence. I could see him follow the ribbons that led from one photo to the next. He seemed calm, unflappable under my scrutiny until he made eye contact. He then, ever so slightly, blushed.

  Behind me the door opened, the chill air hitting my neck. I continued to stare Hale down, trusting Dave at my back.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” Dave said finally. “I bathed.”

  He collapsed next to me, the steam of the shower still clinging to his clothes, radiating out.

  I slanted a glance at him. “Didn’t have time to towel off?”

  “I’m solving a murder here. At least I’m no longer going to pass out from alcohol fumes.” Dave crossed his arms across his broad chest. “So what’s up?”

  “Something . . . something big.” Hale gestured at the recording device.

  “Something big enough that you waved Craig off the crime scene?”

  Hale froze. “Wait. No. You don’t believe I’d do that.”

  “He knew you. He described what you were wearing, your stupid hat.”

  “The boy was snow-blind.” Hale leaned forward on the table. “He was mistaken.”

  “No one in law enforcement,” I said, “no trooper, no one from the sheriff’s department—no one would wave away someone from the crime scene.”

  “No one in law enforcement includes me.”

  “Really?” I said. Dave shifted, and his leg pressed against mine under the table, whether to give support or calm me down I didn’t know. And I didn’t care. “You’re protecting Craig, who very well might have murdered two people.”

  “June, you as much as anyone knows an agent has only two things: his reputation and his confidential informants. Craig wouldn’t—”

  “Means, motive, opportunity,” I ticked off on my fingers.

  “We track him constantly.”

  “Constantly. Really? So you knew he was at the scene?”

  “Constantly might be too strong a word.”

  I had a full head of steam built up. “Well, whether you are lying—”

  “I’m n
ot.”

  “—or not, which we have no way of proving, why don’t you describe this big investigation so (a) I don’t haul your CI in and hold him, and (b) you restore some of your beloved reputation. Because right now? You look pretty dirty.”

  “No,” Hale said. “Let’s settle this, for good. I wouldn’t compromise the investigation. Until I know you believe that, we can’t move forward.”

  “I believe you,” Dave said.

  “Really?” Hale said.

  “What?” I said.

  “I do.” Dave grabbed his neck, an exaggerated version of Hale’s tell, and gave me a meaningful look. “I don’t believe that he would wave Craig off.”

  I stifled a smile.

  “I might believe that you didn’t lie,” I said to Hale, “but to build my trust, why don’t you tell us everything that made you compromise two murder investigations.”

  Hale didn’t say anything, instead pressing the tiny button on the small machine that lay next to him.

  “So I’m trying,” Zeke Jelickson’s voice roared out, and Hale lowered the volume, “to get a handle on things.”

  “Well, sheeyit,” said a man’s voice with a southern accent. Texas, I thought. “What’re ya doin?”

  “Funeral for the girl. And Ray’s body—”

  “Brother, you have my deepest sympathy. Lost my own boy young.”

  “Ray lived a righteous life, and I plan to stick it to the cowards who murdered him, so that his death is paid back. Paid back in full.” Zeke breathed deeply. “In the meantime, we got to take care of business.”

  “Your girl took care of the wire transfer. She was just full of surprises—it was those Orientals in Canada tipped us off that she had paid in full. If I didn’t know how close you were to your boys, I might have been worried that she was gettin’ ready to cut us out of the sugar. Such a shame she passed on. She was a firecracker.” There was a pause. “And they told me you got her pilot lined up. He’s solid, right?”

  “Hold on a sec.” In the background Linda Jelickson could be heard saying, “Watch out for that cabinet there. It makes me nervous; it could tip over and kill someone. Do you want a soda?” And Jackie answered, “Yes, please.”

  Static crackled until finally Jelickson spoke. “He’s solid. We’re locked down, and we got the Merrimen in for protection since the Mongols are across the river, and the Angels are up north.”

  “Tiny’s a good man, and he knows how to play ball,” the voice said. “Does Marty?”

  “Marty’s back in the bosom of his family,” Jelickson said quickly.

  Huh? Was the break between the father and son a fake-out?

  “That’s good. When you lose kin, draw the family you got tighter.” The man hung up.

  The sound of a phone being dialed filled the room. “Marty, I’ll keep this . . . short. Quit the act. Get your ass home.”

  Hale flicked off the machine. “Thank you kindly, by the way. We’ve had a wiretap on that phone for two months, and this is the first time someone has used it.”

  Dave nodded graciously, all noblesse oblige. “Lyons made him whimper.”

  “I know.” Hale laughed. “But your consideration and, I’ll say, kindness completely threw him off. He panicked, and made a phone call. You’re a good cop.”

  I was unconvinced by Hale’s ass kissing. “How much surveillance do you have?”

  “We couldn’t bug the place, but we got ourselves a wiretap.”

  “How’d you get a judge to approve that?” Dave asked.

  “And how’d we not hear about it until now?” I added.

  “A federal judge gave it to us, under seal. This investigation has already spread to six states, and this murder—”

  “These two murders,” I pointed out.

  “These two murders might be the ticket to shut down the Abominations for good.”

  Hale explained how they had been running surveillance on a ring down south. Mexico was the source, but Missouri was the distribution center.

  “And we were monitoring the buys down there, when Craig rolled into town. We stopped him at the airport with a cargo load of pseudoephedrine, and told him we were going to arrest him and seize all his father’s assets, and well, let’s just say the boy would have sold his grandma out to get off. He started spouting out names like Jelickson, and we knew this was going to be big if we could line it all up just right.

  “Craig was sweating bullets, completely freaked out. His father is a hard man, plus Craig was real upset about letting down Danielle. He blurted everything out, sure if we heard about Danielle’s desperate plight, we would help him rescue her.”

  “Rescue her?” I asked. “By distributing meth?”

  “By Craig’s logic—and I will admit I had a hard time following it myself—Danielle needed the money to free her from her controlling husband and his violent family. Craig seemed to forget that Danielle already had a rich father who would pay a hefty sum to send his son-in-law away, preferably to hell.”

  “So Craig wasn’t lying when he denied sleeping with Danielle?” I asked, thinking of the photos on Ray’s extra phone.

  “Craig claims that she took her marriage vows so seriously that she wouldn’t even consider cheating on her husband, despite Marty being a rat bastard. Based on our background check”—Hale flipped through a few of the papers on the desk—“Danielle was overstating her reverence for marriage, at least other people’s. In addition to that TA Phil told you about—who had been happy to be seduced by Danielle up until she laid waste to his career and his marriage—there was also a married anthropology professor who paid for her trip to Fiji on a research project that took place entirely inside the walls of a hotel.” Hale flipped a few more pages. “There was also a movie producer. He did small-scale projects, TV movies and the like, and again, very married. Danielle used his credit card to buy her wedding dress, which she then returned for cash. He wrote off the dress as script research, which the IRS found very interesting.”

  We told him about the photos we’d found on Ray’s phone, fleshing out Annie’s report, which Hale had read.

  “The thing is”—and Hale opened the first folder—“Craig had to work hard to deny that Danielle was an operator.”

  In the first photo he showed us, Ray held an open box in front of Danielle while she fastened a diamond hoop in her ears. The earrings were Ray’s Valentine’s Day gift, it seemed. The next picture had Danielle and Ray on their back porch kissing passionately, his hands on either side of her face. The photographer had caught them when they had blocked out the rest of the world, even Jackie and Craig, who could be seen, backlit, in the kitchen. Two motives for murder, right there.

  “Of course, Craig claimed that it was all an act, that she was leading Ray on so he wouldn’t tip off his brother. Craig seemed to think of himself as her white knight, when honestly, he was her whipping boy. That didn’t prevent him from telling us everything he knew about the drug operation in an effort to ‘save’ her.”

  “No lawyer?” I said.

  “Craig was not yet in custody, so no reason to read him his rights. His strategy consisted of blurting out everything he knew, which would then convince us to let him and Danielle go free. He also seemed to think that he would get buckets of money for his trouble.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “And he got that impression from . . .”

  “He came up with it all on his own, and, well, perhaps I didn’t enlighten him about his misunderstanding. He seemed very concerned that Danielle would find out he’d screwed up—more so than even his dad—and was in a hurry to get back. Craig gave up the entire meth ring, from Ray, Danielle, and Marty, all the way up to the Jelicksons, in less than sixty minutes.” Hale tipped his chair back on two legs—he seemed to be savoring the memory. “Well, what he knew. It seems as if the Jelicksons didn’t tell Craig a whole lot.” Hale dropped back onto four legs, jerking forward. “We sent him on his way, but before we did we took a load of pictures, so he knew we had him
dead to rights. He flew back to Hopewell Falls thinking that he and Danielle would walk into the sunset together, free of charges and with enough money to buy a fleet of charter planes, and that Marty would go to prison and never bother Danielle again.”

  Hale explained that the Albany field office had watched as Craig landed. The agents documented that a woman and a young man, who were later identified as Danielle and Ray, loaded the pseudoephedrine into the Brouillettes’ Jeep.

  “And do you have pictures of that?” I asked.

  “We do. But look, I need you to promise to keep this info quiet.”

  “Have you thought that maybe you are doing a little too good of a job of keeping this quiet? Maybe being a little more forthcoming with information might help us out here.”

  “Which is why I’m showing you these.” He opened the folder and slid three eight-by-ten surveillance shots across the table: Danielle on the phone, deep in conversation; Craig and Ray loading sacks into the back of the Jeep while Danielle kept watch; and a third of the truck driving out of the parking lot.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “And why didn’t you bust them right then?”

  “Well, you see, this was an on-the-fly operation, put together in a few hours without full manpower. . . .”

  “Danielle and Ray lost the tail,” I said.

  Hale nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. And while we tried to get Craig to ask some leading questions—with a wire, of course—Danielle gave up nothing, just telling him to stand by for the next pickup.”

  “Which was when?” I asked. Hale seemed to have no concern for the fact that the drugs were out there, poisoning people, while he and his boys got their act together.

  “Which will be tomorrow. And the next supply is coming through Canada. With the south eating up all the pseudo before it has the chance to cross the Mason-Dixon, Danielle decided she needed something bigger. The thing is, I’m not sure she clued in her in-laws. You heard that phone call. Danielle was making her own deals, independent of the Abominations.” From the folder he pulled out more pictures, surveillance shots, grainy, done in the dark, at strange angles: Ray carrying huge glass containers into a warehouse, glaring at Craig, who was gripping the head of one of the massive beakers, the rest of the container lying broken at his feet.