The Good, The Bad and The Murderous (Sid Chance Myseries Book 2)

by Chester D. Campbell

  He found a call from Sgt. Wick Stanley on his answering machine. Wondering why Wick hadn’t tried the cell phone, he checked and found it as lifeless as the coho salmon in the freezer he’d intended to cook for dinner. In all the confusion and frantic activity of the past few hours, he hadn’t noticed the battery had gone dead. He plugged in the charger and called Wick on the landline.

  “What’s the story on Jaz?” his friend asked. “Bart said you had some suspicions about Grimm and Kozlov.”

  “I took Jaz home. She’s okay but pretty shaken by all this. Did Bart tell you about the glove?”

  “Yeah. And that you think they fired the Burden gun. Why would they do that?”

  “My guess is it’s an old weapon and somebody wanted to be sure it was still in working order.”

  “Evidently it was.”

  “Right. Bart doesn’t think Grimm would stoop to planting evidence like that glove. What about Kozlov?”

  “I warned you about him, remember?”

  “Does this sound like something he might do?”

  “Maybe. I’ve heard he could be on the take.”

  “Anything you can put your finger on?”

  “Not really. I know he hangs around some of the guys in narcotics. One of them told me Ram asks a lot of questions, acts like he might want to transfer over there.”

  Sid carried the phone into the kitchen and switched on the coffee maker. “His dad could arrange that easily enough, couldn’t he?”

  “Yeah, and it hasn’t happened. Which makes me wonder why he’s asking all those questions.”

  “I’d like to meet him. Does he do the bar scene?”

  “Some of the guys from the precinct hang out at Nick the Greek’s place over on Charlotte. I think he’s one of them. If you’re going over there, Sid, be careful. You could wind up next on his list.”

  Sid remembered that anonymous phone call. “I’m already on it,” he said.

  The activity and noise level at the Olympia Restaurant and Bar & Grill hardly seemed what Sid would have expected at ten-thirty on a Monday night. Walls of dark paneling and soft lighting gave the place a subdued look, but half the tables were lively with the clamor of conversation. Sid walked in and looked around. He saw a few uniforms scattered about, and several others with the cop look. As he stood near a front table, an older woman in a long flowery dress approached.

  “You need a menu?” she asked.

  He raised his voice to be heard over the chatter. “No thanks. Do you know if Ram has been in tonight?”

  A burly cop with white hair at a nearby table grinned as he spoke. “His daddy don’t allow him to stay up this late.”

  The others at the table laughed. One of them turned to glance at Sid. “You from narcotics?”

  “No, but I heard he buddies with them.”

  “They don’t hang out here. Maybe at the Ram’s Horn over in Melrose. I suppose Kozlov thinks it’s named after him, horny little bastard.”

  A slick-headed man with owlish eyes across the table leaned forward. “You better hope this dude’s not a buddy. You could be in deep shit at the CJC.”

  Sid grinned. “No problem. As yet I’m not acquainted with Kozlov or his old man. Thanks for the intel.”

  Sid returned to his car and sat there in the revealing glow of a nearby floodlight. He pulled out his cell phone, working again after a quick charge, and felt a grudging appreciation for Jaz’s love of the latest technological gadgetry. With her phone she could punch a few buttons and get the location of the Ram’s Horn. He did the next best thing. He called her.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said when she answered in a listless voice.

  “I may not sleep for a week until I can figure my way out of this quagmire.”

  “Don’t despair, I’m working on it. How about looking up the address of a bar called the Ram’s Horn? It’s in the Melrose area.”

  “What are you looking for there?”

  He told her what Wick Stanley had said about Ramsey Kozlov and filled her in on his visit to the Olympia Restaurant.

  “Some of the guys used to gather at Nick the Greek’s place when I was on the force,” she said. “I agree with Wick. Ram Kozlov could be a dangerous character. Be really careful with him, Sid.”

  She gave him the Ram’s Horn’s location, and Sid headed for the nearest I-40 entrance ramp. He found traffic moderate as he drove beneath the eerie glow of multicolored city lights, a reflection off the giant mirror of an overcast sky. Before reaching downtown, he detoured onto I-440, which took him around the western and southern suburbs and through the three-level spaghetti scramble above Franklin Road. Though the north-south thoroughfare was his target, to get back there required swinging onto I-24, exiting at Thompson Lane, and driving west a couple of miles. Nashville’s traffic patterns were not always logical.

  He hit Franklin Road a few blocks south of the Melrose area. As he drove north, it brought back memories of his teen years when he had frequented the shopping center anchored by the Melrose Theater, no longer a movie house. A bowling alley at the other end had been torn down. It was a shame how many of his old haunts no longer existed. After passing the darkened center, he spotted the bar beside a sign that featured a ram’s head with the familiar curved horns. He recalled it as the symbol of Madison High School, where his mother had taught before it closed in 1986.

  The Ram’s Horn turned out to be smaller and darker than the Olympia Restaurant. At eleven-thirty it hosted only two occupied tables and three people at the bar. The walls appeared black and the dim lights provided barely enough illumination to recognize faces. As he walked toward the bar to the accompaniment of a Britney Spears song, he saw three guys in tee shirts and a fourth in a denim vest at one table. The way they eyed him made him wonder if they might be narcotics officers. He took a stool at the opposite end from two men and a buxom blonde in spiked heels. A frilly white skirt barely hid her bottom.

  “What’ll you have?” asked the bartender, a young man with more rings attached to his face than Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey had in their tents.

  “Got Sam Adams?”

  “Nope.” He rattled off a few of the more popular beers.

  “Miller Light.”

  Sid caught a movement from the other end of the bar in his peripheral vision. He looked around to see the blonde approaching with a smile heavily enhanced by makeup.

  “Buy a girl a drink?” she asked in a sultry voice.

  Sid gave her a deadpan look. “Sure, honey, but you’ll have to take it across the room. I’m a solitary drinker.”

  “What an asshole,” she said, turning and flouncing away.

  Sid heard the tee-shirt guys laughing above the music. When the bartender brought his beer, he asked, “Do you know Ram Kozlov?”

  “The cop? Yeah.”

  “Has he been in tonight?”

  “Earlier. That’s his buddies over there.” He nodded toward the quartet at the table.

  Sid took a swig of his beer and set it on the bar. He walked over to the table. “I understand Ram Kozlov was here earlier. Think he’ll be back tonight?”

  The one in the vest looked up with a wary eye. “You a friend of his?”

  Sid shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to chat with him. I’m a private investigator working on the opposite side of a homicide case of his.”

  “You’re the big dude he talked about,” a young man with short sandy hair and a NASCAR shirt said, nodding. “He wasn’t too happy with your interfering in his case.”

  “I wasn’t interfering,” Sid said. “I just wanted to make sure he had it right.”

  Denim vest tilted his head and looked up. “Whatever.”

  “If you see him, tell him I’d like to chat with him,” Sid said and headed back to the bar.

  He glanced back as he slid onto the barstool and saw one of the men talking on his cell phone. Sid finished his beer and ordered another. He took his time with this one, and it was after midnight when he g
ot up to leave. Two of the narcotics guys had left, but the other pair still nursed their drinks. Sid nodded at them in passing.

  As he walked toward his car, he saw the dome light come on in a sporty looking BMW convertible parked beside him. Ramsey Kozlov slammed the door, swung around the front and stopped, facing Sid.

  “I heard you were looking for me,” Kozlov said.

  “I wanted to ask why you’re still pursuing the Djuan Burden case when you know he’s not guilty.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? I’ll bet you’re the kind of guywho likes to make jokes.”

  Sid hadn’t expected such an approach but recalled what Jaz had told him about her Kozlov experience. It was a clear effort to throw him off guard. He also remembered Wick’s description of the man as manipulative. He kept his voice even. “You know that gun isn’t the murder weapon.”

  Kozlov grinned. “Yeah, he didn’t shoot it. He just waved it around to scare people. Scared Omar Valdez to death.”

  “Glad you mentioned that. We have evidence that Omar Valdez, better known as Estefan Perez Delgado, was killed by a hit man.”

  Kozlov’s jovial mood shifted suddenly. “What evidence?”

  “An eyewitness who saw him leave, plus photographs from a surveillance camera. Is he the same one you gave the glove to leave at Earline Ivey’s house?”

  The parking area outside the bar was poorly lit, but Sid could see the anger building in Kozlov’s face.

  “You’re full of shit, Chance. Your girl friend is as guilty as that black boy.”

  “You’re absolutely correct, Detective. Neither one of them is guilty, but I think you have some things to answer for.”

  “Oh, you do? Well, I think you’re digging your grave, cowboy.”

  “You planning to send the exterminator after me?”

  “You know what happens to people who dig around in a pile of shit? They get eaten by maggots.”

  With that, Kozlov spun around, stalked back to his car, jumped in, and sped off with tires squealing.

  Chapter 29

  Sid had intended to shake up the cocky detective enough that he might say something incriminating, but as he drove home, he wondered if he had gone too far. Wick considered Kozlov dangerous, and if he had been involved in the Ivey murder, he was capable of anything. Sid decided to be especially cautious while driving, plus doubling his alertness at home. After securing his car in the garage, he went inside and checked all of his eaves cameras and alarms, which were set to leave a computer record of any attempted breeches.

  First thing the next morning he called FBI Agent Baron Eggers.

  “I have something else you might pass along to your DEA colleagues,” he said. “I’ve been getting signals that something’s definitely amiss with Metro Detective Ramsey Kozlov. He’s paired with Grimm on the Delgado murder case.”

  Sid told how his investigation led him to believe the detective was involved in shifting attention away from the hit man in the Delgado murder, that Kozlov had fired the gun to make it appear that Burden was responsible. Sid added his belief that the detective was also complicit in the killing of Earline Ivey. He recounted his confrontation with Kozlov outside the Ram’s Head Bar. Although it was still mostly conjecture, he decided to lay it all out for Eggers and let the Feds run with it.

  “Sergeant Stanley suspects, and I’m inclined to agree, that Kozlov has been passing on information about Metro drug enforcement. There’s a possibility these murders could be tied in with it.”

  “Okay,” Eggers said. “I’ll pass this on to the people handling the drug angle and let them sort it out.”

  A little later, Sid received calls from Judge Gabriel Thackston and the old newsman, Jack Post, inquiring about Jaz’s situation.

  “Our poker partner would never have committed such an uncivilized act,” Thackston said.

  “You’re absolutely right, Judge. I’m devoting my full energy to proving this was a despicable frameup.”

  “Who do you believe was involved?”

  “I’m really not in a position to say much about it at this stage.”

  “I understand. Reminds me of a trial I presided over once where the prosecutor introduced incontrovertible evidence the defendant had committed the crime. But before final arguments, the defense found a man who confessed to the crime. Those things happen.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll get a confession, but I intend to nail the perpetrator.”

  “Well, you have my blessings, Sidney. If I can help in any way, please let me know.”

  Post called a few minutes later. He had received a voice mail from a former newspaper colleague the night before while he was attending a Nashville Predators hockey game. “He left a message saying that media circus was a setup deal with the department brass. They tipped off the news folks about Jaz’s arrival time at the Criminal Justice Center.”

  “Thanks for confirming it,” Sid said. “I was at her house when the detectives came after her. I’m sure their hurry was to get her downtown to meet the schedule.”

  “The story says she dropped a latex glove with her fingerprints on the porch at Earline Ivey’s house. What’s with that?”

  “Somebody dropped one she had used, Jack, but it wasn’t Jaz. She was never close to that house.”

  “Then who did it?”

  “I’m working on a theory, but I can’t say anything about it yet.” He had to be judicious in his comments to the old reporter. Post liked to talk too much.

  “Let me know if I can dig up anything for you. By the way, how are you coming with that other murder case? The one where the boy just got out of prison?”

  “We hope to have an answer tomorrow.”

  “Good. When you talk to our girl, tell her to hang loose.”

  Sid called Jaz to see how she was holding up.

  “I’m marshalling my forces,” she said. “K.C. Urban has a good friend who’s one of the top criminal lawyers in town. We’re meeting with him later this morning. Did you find Ramsey Kozlov last night?”

  He told her about the confrontation outside the Ram’s Horn Bar.

  “You shouldn’t have given him any ideas,” she said, sounding worried.

  “I hoped it might prompt him to say something like Grimm’s ‘you can’t prove shit’ remark. But it didn’t work.”

  “Have you had any more ideas?”

  “I have one I plan to pitch to Wick and Bart, see if they’ll buy into it.”

  “Concerning what?”

  “If we had some solid evidence of wrong-doing, we could take this thing to the Office of Professional Accountability, file some charges.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “Right. So maybe we can play the bad guys against each other.”

  “Grimm and Kozlov?”

  “Since it looks like Ram could be playing this Earline Ivey thing all on his own, we might try to isolate Grimm and get him to turn on his more guilty partner.”

  “Good luck. Let me know how it goes.”

  Sid got on his computer and found a recent photo of Detective Kozlov. He printed out a copy and stuck it in his pocket, intending to show it to the woman at the florist shop. But first he headed downtown to visit his client’s grandson at the Metro Jail.

  In contrast to the way he looked during the previous interview, Djuan came in with his head held high. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t look downcast, either.

  “Granny told me you were close to finding the real killer,” he said as they took seats at the small table.

  “That’s right. We don’t have a name, but we know he’s a killer for hire. The FBI is working on it now, so it’s just a matter of time.”

  “Time is all I got these days.”

  Sid felt his jaw twitch as the thought of what two cops had done rankled him. “We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible. I promise.”

  “After this, I’d have to be really lucky to get a job.”

  “This shouldn’t hurt you. You’ll be completely e
xonerated.”

  “That don’t mean nothing to folks who won’t hire cons.”

  Sid stared him in the eye and spoke in a calm, sincere voice. “Don’t get down on yourself, Djuan. You need to focus on what you want to accomplish. Don’t give up.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like, Mr. Chance.”

  Sid smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do. Around four years ago, I was arrested for bribing a drug dealer. It was the result of a crook and a sheriff who didn’t care whose life he messed up. I got down on the world and spent three years living by myself in the woods like a hermit. Miss LeMieux coaxed me into taking an assignment for her company, then encouraged me to become a private investigator. When you believe in yourself, you can accomplish great things.”

  Djuan gave a slight grin. “You think I should be a private investigator?”

  “I think your talents probably lie in other areas, but you have talents, and you need to apply them. We’ll talk about it some more when I get you out of here.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am,” Sid said. “Just keep your hopes up.”

  Before heading back to his office, Sid called Bart Masterson and asked if they could meet somewhere for a little chat about Jaz’s problem. He thought it best to discuss it in person rather than on the phone. They arranged to meet for lunch at a restaurant in Madison which had a fairly high noise level, enough it was unlikely anyone would eavesdrop on the conversation.

  Sid arrived early and asked for a table at the far end of the dining area where he could see when Bart came in. He ordered coffee and checked out the menu while he waited. The tall figure with the oddball mustache soon strode across the room like an Old West lawman on his way to a gunfight.

  “What’s on your mind?” Bart asked as he dropped into a chair across from Sid.