Channing dressed in sweatpants and a hooded Cincinnati Reds sweatshirt and went into the kitchen. He drank black coffee and ate a slice of dry toast. When he felt confident that the first piece of toast was going to stay down, he had a second. Turning on the television, he watched the early morning news coverage of the murder at the Incline. Channing seriously doubted that Abdella was killed anywhere near the Incline, but reporters were reporters and facts were expendable.
Turning off the television, he looked at a set of wooden pegs hanging next to a bookcase on the far side of the room. On the pegs hung several medals from races in which he had competed. Of course, he had not actually won any of the races, his natural athleticism had its limits, but he had finished multiple marathons, half-marathons, and other races where anyone who completed the race received a medal. He walked over to the medals and held one in his hand. It was from a race he and Mary had run in St. Louis. They had driven ten hours the day before just to get there, had a late dinner of greasy chicken wings, and made love half the night. When they arrived at the race for the seven a.m. start time, they were exhausted, but it didn’t matter. They were together on an adventure and nothing else seemed important. Inexplicably, they both ran fast times that morning and found the energy to do some sightseeing that night.
Channing felt the texture of the medal. He looked at the date. Not that long ago, but a lifetime of hurt lay between then and now. She had always deserved better than him, and he knew it. He gripped the medal, wishing it were her hand and that he would never have to let it go. Putting the medal back on its peg, he took a step back and his mind drifted toward the alcohol he no longer had in his house. He started thinking about driving around to see if any place would sell it to him this early in the morning, but he stopped himself and put on a pair of running shoes instead. Sliding the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, he went out his front door and walked out to the street. Facing the rising sun, he let a chilled breeze hit his face and took one stride down the isolated street. Then another. Then another.
– – –
Mayton used the sleeve of his jacket to pull the double doors. As usual, the lobby of the New Heights Outreach office located off Frankstown Avenue was crowded and chaotic. The air smelled of cigarettes and hopelessness. The Outreach, as it was simply referred to, was a non-profit group that capitalized on human selflessness and generosity to assist those who were not only destitute, but suffering from HIV or AIDS. Hardly a face looked up when Mayton allowed the doors to close behind him. Godless, was the only word that came to mind. Most of the people here were suffering because they had sinned and their suffering would not be alleviated because, in this city, good Samaritans were in short supply.
“Lester, my man!” came a voice from behind the reception desk.
He slowly walked toward the desk, scanning the room for the person he was looking for.
“Jimmy.”
“It’s been a while. Sure glad you’re back. We are hurtin’ for volunteers and you and your wife would be a sight for sore eyes!”
Mayton stopped looking around the room and looked down at Jimmy. Mayton had stopped volunteering at the Outreach when Mary had gotten sick. Obviously, Jimmy had not heard that she was gone.
“I’m looking for Danny. Is he still…”
“Danny Berres?” asked Jimmy. “Yeah, he’s still alive.”
The twenty-seven-year-old, hippy-looking receptionist leaned in and lowered his voice. Mayton detected a hemp odor coming from him. He had never spent much time around marijuana, so he could never tell if the odor was from the woven bracelets the young man wore, or if he actually smoked the drug. Probably both, he thought.
“He doesn’t have long now. He’s at the end of it and most days he don’t make it in here. We just send some meals over to him on the days he doesn’t feel like coming in.”
“Has he been in today?” asked Mayton.
Jimmy shook his head. “We called and checked on him today. He said he would get down here to get his food if we couldn’t deliver anything to him. We really don’t have the staff right now to make very many deliveries, but since he’s nearing the end, I told him we’d take something over to him in a bit.”
Lester tried to appear as compassionate as possible, but it was becoming harder and harder for him.
“I tell you what, Jimmy. I’d like to say goodbye to him. Why don’t you give me his dinner and his address and I’ll take it over to him?”
Jimmy’s face lit up.
“Lester, my man! That would be fab-u-lous! He lives in the low-income housing on Lincoln. I’ll get you the apartment number.”
With that, the young man went to the back to retrieve a meal and an address. Mayton turned and looked at the room’s inhabitants again. He saw drug addicts, homosexuals, morally loose men and women who’d had every opportunity to follow the path. Surprising even himself, Mayton thought, Burn them all. Burn…them…all. Maybe he would. But for now he would have to start with just one.
– – –
“Well, look what the cat dragged in!”
Detective Chester Hatley stood up from his train-wreck of a desk, knocked over a stack of papers, and stuck out a huge paw.
Channing tried to produce a smile and took Hatley’s hand first. Lambert did not make the slightest effort at amicability, but shook hands more as an involuntary response than anything else.
“Sorry we have to do this on a Saturday, but you know how it is. How ‘bout we step on into the conference room and let’s figure out where we are on this thing. You guys grab your notes and I’ll be in there in a minute.”
Ten minutes later, the two original detectives from the Culligan case were still waiting in the conference room. They had not said more than a few words to each other. Lambert was trying to assess if Channing was sober. He could feel her watching him—knew she did not want to ask because part of her did not want to know. Channing could have honestly said he was sober, but he decided not to bring it up. She had no reason to believe him either way. She would have to make her own determination.
Channing wanted to get the briefing over with quickly so he could get something to eat. He had miscalculated his toast experiment in the morning and threw up twice during his three-mile run. In spite of that, it felt good to run again. To feel his heart race due to exertion instead of a panic attack had lifted his spirits. When he had returned to his driveway, he made a bad choice by dropping to the ground to rattle off some fast push-ups. In the past, he would have been able to crank out fifty of them in less than a minute. This time, he stopped after completing only a handful. It was not muscle fatigue that stopped him, it was his skin. When he went into the down position during the push-ups, it felt like the maze of scars on his chest and back was ripping apart. It was not his skin anymore. He was wearing a stranger’s skin. A patchwork of affliction covered his body and had infected his mind. He stood up and walked into his empty house, feeling better, but not quite adequate.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Hatley as he entered the room. “There’s a press conference in about an hour and Captain Wyche wants me there. I think the mayor is coming over to make a statement, too. Wooo-wheee, this is a big one, huh? I guess you two didn’t know what you were getting into when you caught the Culligan case. Well, now it’s prime time homicide!” He said those last words like a sportscaster promoting a football game. Lambert and Channing remained silent.
Seeing his colleagues were not amused, Hatley became more serious and said, “I’ve read your reports. It looks like you guys couldn’t come up with much.” Hatley looked up from the reports and waited for the detectives to expound, but they did not.
Looking back into the stack of papers in front of him, he continued. “A white van is the only possible clue?” This time the other detectives acknowledged him, but only with nods. Looking up at the younger detectives, Hatley said, “It seems like you two didn’t find much.”
Channing and Lambert stared at Hatley, but did not speak.<
br />
Reading another sheet of paper, Hatley observed, “There were no similar crimes found in the system—at least not until the thing at the Incline—and forensics couldn’t give us much.” Hatley was talking more to himself than to his audience. Channing realized that the much older detective had not familiarized himself with much of the information until now.
“There was one guy you talked to…where is his name…, yeah, here it is…Middle something.”
“Middlebury,” Lambert said. “Stuart Middlebury.”
Hatley squinted at the page in front of him and said, “Right. Middlebury. Damned small font. I hate trying to read these things.”
“Just try to sound out the big words,” said Channing.
Hatley glared at Channing for a few seconds, then returned to the reports.
“What happened with him? It says here that he was arrested for aggravated assault when you stopped him from grabbing a weapon.” He looked to Channing for an answer.
“We got called away, but Sergeant Harris sent a couple of uniform guys to the hospital to officially charge him. He’s got nothing to do with Culligan’s murder. He’s just a racist who decided to go for a gun when we were talking to him.”
“What made him go for the gun?” asked Hatley.
Lambert’s eyes shifted to her right and found Channing, but Channing was already answering the question.
“No reason. Middlebury is out of his mind. He’s not relevant to the case…end of story.”
“Fine. So, we are still at square one. Well, maybe the Abdella killing will help us out. And we have a lot more eyes on this now.”
Hatley leaned back in his chair, his tie creeping up his large stomach.
“I think you two got us off to a decent start. No reason for you to worry about all this anymore, so—”
Lambert broke in with, “Harris said we are still on the case. He told us we would still be working the Culligan angle.”
Hatley smirked and crossed his arms.
“Well, we can all agree it’s pretty much a dead end, so I’m not sure what more you can do. I tell you what, why don’t you take another look at those videos where you saw the white van. Maybe something else will jump out at you. We’re setting up a tip line, so there may be some phone tips to follow up on. And when you finish with that, maybe you can go back and re-interview those people from the bank where Culligan worked before becoming a politician.”
Channing momentarily thought about explaining the difference between a brokerage firm and a bank, but decided it would be futile.
“That’s it?” Lambert stood up. “Watch videos that we already watched and interview people who have already been interviewed. That’s our role on this task force?”
“Darling…I don’t think you understand how these things work. Even Jackson here, with his experience, hasn’t seen as much as I have. With big cases like these, it’s a team effort. And with any team, there has to be one leader and lots of worker bees. I’ll deal with coordinating the hive and constructing a case, and you two do your part.”
“Darling?” Lambert yelled while leaning across the conference room table, clinched fists on the cold surface. “Did you just call me darling?”
Channing stood up and gently took hold of his partner’s arm.
“Let’s go.”
After a moment, Lambert allowed herself to be guided to the door, then left the room first. Channing turned back to the older detective, whose smile showed that he was extremely proud of eliciting such a response from the female detective.
“Hey, Hatley?”
“Yeah.”
“You do realize that the bee that runs the hive is the queen, right?”
Hatley’s smile disappeared and Channing went to find his partner.
Lambert stood in an empty hallway that spurred off the opposite side of the squad room. She was staring at a trophy case that contained group photos of the department’s homicide squad, dating back to the 1970s. Channing walked up beside her and looked at the photographs. She did not turn to look at him when she spoke.
“Look at all of those faces.”
Channing examined the photos one by one. A majority of the faces were male. Almost all of the faces were white. Channing could count on one hand the number of black females, almost all were in photographs taken in the past ten years.
“Not a lot of them look like me, do they?”
Channing did not answer.
“I knew what I was getting into when I joined the department. I knew I would hear it from the public and I knew I would hear it from my coworkers. I’ve always known that I’d be under a microscope. But, when I’m confronted with that kind of ignorance, I have to fight back. I don’t think you can understand that, and I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Now she turned to face her partner.
“I like you, Jackson. I think you have a good heart and good intentions. You may have saved my life at Middlebury’s house and you could have thrown me under the bus back there when that sexist jerk asked why Middlebury went for his gun. And I really do think you are trying to get your life together and overcome something I can’t even begin to imagine. I let you lead me away from Hatley just now out of respect for you. I didn’t listen to you when you told me that Harris wouldn’t allow the BOLO for the van and I didn’t listen to you with Middlebury, and I was wrong both times. So, this time, something in my head told me to listen to you. But let me make this very clear. I will not be treated like some disobedient child and sit quietly in the corner! I will not spin my wheels working a dead-end case while the department Men’s Club moves on without me. I won’t be chastised and put in my place—not by him and not by you! So, you better tell me why you pulled me away this very minute!”
Channing turned to his partner and was taken aback when he saw tears forming in her eyes. They were tears of anger, not sorrow.
“I pulled you away because we can still solve this thing. If you would have gone any further, he would have gone to Wyche or Drayson and we’d be off the case, and I don’t think you want that.”
“We are off the case! Following up dead-end leads is not working a case.”
“I agree, but something Hatley said got me thinking. He said that he would be constructing a case. That reminded me of something I heard the night Culligan was killed. The first officer on scene told me that Culligan had been implicated in some sort of kickback scheme with a construction contractor. Evidently, it was in the news for a short amount of time, but nothing ever came of it. The officer told me that some disgruntled employee with the construction company blew the whistle on the whole thing, but nothing else happened afterwards.”
Lambert dried her eyes and said, “Nothing like that came up when we were talking to the other city council members.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“And you aren’t going to mention it to Hatley?”
“No, I’m not.”
“And if it ends up being relevant to the case, we could get in big trouble for not sharing that information.”
“Yes, we could.”
“But, if anyone could get away with it, it would probably be the hero cop who survived an indescribable hell, and the up-and-coming black, female detective with a spotless record.”
“Uh-huh.”
With that, the corners of Lambert’s mouth started to turn up. She asked, “The information you got from the officer at the Culligan scene…do you think it might be good?”
Channing shrugged. “Probably not. The officer was a woman.”
With that, they both did their best to keep their expressions serious, both failing miserably.
– – –
“There’s a familiar face!”
Lambert and Channing spun their desk chairs around to search for the voice. They had been sitting at Channing’s desk, using his computer to search for any old news stories about Culligan and any improprieties with a construction contractor. So far, they had been able to verify that a former employee of a comp
any named Harper Construction had accused his old employer of entering into a conspiracy with Councilman Nicholas Culligan. The accuser, a fifty-two-year-old man from Butler, Pennsylvania named Bryan Clifton, claimed that Culligan had given Harper officials insider information regarding competing bids. Clifton had assumed Culligan received kickbacks in return, but could not verify any payments. Clifton stated that he Harper Construction terminated him after he took his concerns to his manager.
Channing stood as the smiling man approached. Two men and one woman, all of whom Channing assumed were part of the man’s staff, waited across the room. Captain Wyche, looking irritated at the deviation in the route they had all been taking, stood next to the staff.
“Mr. Mayor,” said Channing, as the two men shook hands.
Slowly, Lambert stood up and Mayor Marc Wirrer flashed a smile and threw out his hand.
“Marc Wirrer.”
“Tina Lambert.”
“You work with this guy?” Wirrer said while nodding his head toward Channing.
“I do.”
“Well, you won’t do any better.”
Wirrer directed his attention back to Channing.
“It’s been a while. Since the medal ceremony, right?”
Channing nodded, “Right.”
“I hadn’t heard that you were back.”
“It’s only been a few days. I’m still getting back in the saddle.”
“Well, it’s great to see you back. I assume you’re helping out with all this nastiness that’s going on?”
“Yes sir, we’re on the task force.”
The mayor showed an expression of approval. Channing was certain it was a well-practiced expression.
“Good, good! Captain Wyche has assured me that people who commit assassinations like this are usually caught very quickly.”
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