Deathtrap (Broslin Creek)

by Dana Marton

  Protect the good, punish the bad.

  He walked around the park, putting posters up and asking the people who were walking their dogs before heading off to work. None of them had lost a Rottweiler or recognized the dog in the picture. When he ran out of posters, he walked back home, stopping in front of his house for a second. The place seemed gigantic compared to Sophie Curtis’s cottage, way too big for a single guy who was never home.

  He’d considered selling, but the time had never seemed right. Yet, what the hell was he waiting for? Anger swept through him suddenly. Stacy wasn’t coming back.

  He was hurrying up the walkway when his phone rang. Joe from the station. Bing grabbed the call, hoping some labs had come back early for the Haynes case.

  “Sorry to bother you, Captain. We have a drunk and disorderly. It’s your father, sir.”

  Eight o’clock in the morning. Bing closed his eyes for a second. Filled his lungs. “I’ll be right there.”

  Mango slunk up the steps and, in a rare display of affection, rubbed against his leg. But only for a minute before he flashed his, I’m done with you; be off, human look over his shoulder. Bing let the cat in, then drove straight to the station.

  “Morning, Captain.” Leila, the admin assistant, put her hand over the phone for a second to greet him, then went back to her call, very sternly reminding someone about the fines for illegal garbage dumping. She was widowed, raising three teenage sons on her own, and as tough as any of the cops at the station.

  She had short hair, short nails, and a generally no-nonsense attitude, except when it came to her footwear that came in colors that would outshine neon lights and had heels that could be classified as lethal weapons.

  “Morning.” Bing passed by her, nodding to Joe, who was working at his computer in the back but stood up to walk forward.

  “Thanks for the ticket yesterday, Captain. Flyers won. Took an ice girl out on a date.” He grinned.

  He could find a date on the dark side of the moon, that one. Bing shook his head, amused.

  Chase was on the phone. The rest of the office stood deserted. Mike was off shift. Harper had the day off. Jack Sullivan was at Disneyland, of all places, with the new love of his life and her daughter. Bing didn’t begrudge him a break and some happiness. If anyone deserved it, it was Jack.

  Bing Sr. sat in the back hallway, a sneer pulling at his lips as he spotted his son.

  “Ooh, here comes Captain High and Mighty. You gonna throw your old man in the can, tough guy?” He rattled the handcuffs that held him to the bench.

  Joe flashed an apologetic look. “What do you want me to do with him?”

  “Was he driving like this?” He’d have to be put in the can if he had been. The judge could sort him out later. The law was the law.

  “Picked him up at the convenience store. He’d gone over to pick up smokes before heading in to work. He was yelling at people in the parking lot, trying to throw punches.”

  He lived next to the store, so he’d probably walked there, but once he got his smokes, he would have driven to work, Bing thought. “Got his car keys?”

  Joe nodded.

  “You can give them back to him when he comes in sober.” He turned to take his father home but caught sight of someone he knew walking up to the reception desk.

  It was Tag Taylor. He and his wife both worked for the same company as Stacy. Stacy and Taylor’s wife, Amanda, had been friends. There’d been a couple of cookouts at each other’s houses. Although, Bing tended to miss most of the socializing. Half the time he was late because he was chasing a case; the rest of the time, he had to leave in the middle of things because he got called in.

  “Hey,” Taylor called out as soon as he spotted him. “I thought I might catch you here.” He was in his midthirties and graying on top already, a businessman who talked little else but work, building teams, and business strategies. He liked to show off, from bonuses to golf trophies. He was fond of saying that if you weren’t keeping score, you were just practicing.

  They hadn’t seen each other since Stacy’s death. “Tag, how are you? How is Amanda?”

  Amanda had had a brief brush with breast cancer a few years ago. Stacy used to keep Bing up to date on it. He knew she’d gone into remission, and he hoped she’d stayed there. Cancer was nasty business.

  “Fine. She’s made manager.” Taylor shook his head. “Mark my word. Someday that woman’s gonna rule the world.”

  Good for her. “What brings you in here?”

  “Speeding ticket.” He gave a wry grin. “I’ve been putting it off”—he waved the ticket—“but if I don’t pay it today, I get an extra penalty or something.” He flashed Bing a hopeful look.

  “Officer Kessler will help you with that.” Bing glanced back to his father on the bench, who was twisting the cuffs to get them off. “I’m on my way out. You take care. Amanda too.”

  He caught the disappointment in Taylor’s eyes, but he kept walking. The law was the law. He didn’t bend it for anyone, not for family, not for friends. He didn’t waive tickets. He’d scraped enough dead bodies off the pavement to have little patience for people who chose to ignore traffic rules and put others in danger.

  He strode over to his father and unlocked the cuffs, pulled the man up, ducked the punch, then steadied him when he would have fallen on his face.

  “Don’t you judge me, boy.” The man tried to spit on him next, but missed and hit his own steel-toe boots. “You think you’re better than me?”

  Bing said nothing.

  Which didn’t stop the old man from keeping up his tirade. “I know you hate me. You always blamed me for your mother. You didn’t save your own wife, did ya?” He swore. “Probably too busy harassing honest people who just want a cold drink between shifts.”

  Tag Taylor watched them from the reception desk with a cold expression on his face until Joe finally distracted him with some paperwork. If he was going to get offended over the damn ticket, there was nothing Bing could do about it.

  He led his father through the station and outside, then pushed him onto the backseat of his cruiser that waited in the front lot. “I’ll take you home. You can come back and get your car keys when you’ve slept off the booze.”

  “What gives you the right to take them?” Hate dripped from his words. “What gives you the right to stand in judgment over me?”

  Nothing. Not a damn thing, Bing thought as he started the car. He was as much at fault for his mother’s death as his father was.

  Just hours before the accident, they’d been pulled over by the cops on their way home from school. They asked his father if he’d been drinking.

  “Driving my kid home from school,” he’d protested. And when the officer asked Bing whether his father had stopped at the bar on their way home, he had lied, “No, sir.”

  Since his father hadn’t been taken to jail, he’d been free to drive his mother and younger brother over to West Chester that evening to the ER. Hunter had a bad ear infection. Their father had been even drunker by then. They’d hit a tree. The EMTs couldn’t save Dotty Bing.

  “Where were you when your wife died?” His old man tore into Bing with new ammunition.

  Bing didn’t defend himself on that account either. He’d been out on a call when Stacy had been killed. He hadn’t even been on duty. He should have been home. He should have protected her. He fully accepted the blame. Just as he’d failed his mother, he’d failed his wife.

  He’d failed Stacy two years ago, and he’d failed her every single day since when he didn’t find her killer.

  He drove, gripping the wheel hard, focusing on the road while his father swore viciously and cursed him. Since he didn’t get into shouting matches with people in the backseat of his cruiser, as a rule, all he said was, “You’ll sleep it off and feel better in the morning.”

  Most everyone had dark shadows in their lives. Some wrapped themselves in them—a cloak that kept everyone out. He didn’t have that luxury. He couldn’t
walk around like a wounded bear. He was responsible for the people in his department and for the citizens of Broslin. He kept his darkness buried deep, the grief, the overwhelming guilt, and the sheer, frustrating embarrassment that he was a police captain and he hadn’t been able to bring his own wife’s killer to justice.

  But he would now. New clues were surfacing. His gut said Stacy’s death and the Haynes murder were connected.

  His father swore some more. “You want me to lose this job? I don’t show, the boss’s gonna fire me.”

  “He’ll fire you anyway if you go in drunk.” Bing kept his cool. “Or you’ll kill yourself. Construction and alcohol don’t mix. Call in sick. Do whatever you want. You want to drive to work, don’t drink.”

  His father kept grumbling in the back, kept berating him. He was like a dog with a bone, had always been like that, had never been able to let go of anything.

  Since thinking about dogs reminded Bing of Sophie Curtis, he called Leila at the station. “Forgot to tell you when I was in. Someone lost a Rottweiler in the park across from my house. If you’d put the word out around the office, I’d appreciate it. Male, maybe five years old, no collar. In case somebody calls in.”

  “No problem. I’ll put it up on the department’s Facebook page too.”

  He thanked her and hung up, hoping someone would call for the dog. He didn’t want the Rottweiler to be stuck at the shelter permanently.

  Maybe he and Mango could have a talk about it.

  But before he could fully consider that, his radio went off.

  “Gunshots reported in the woods out behind Deer Run Lane,” Leila’s voice came through the set. Broslin PD was a pretty small department. In addition to dealing with most admin tasks and manning the front desk, Leila also stood in as dispatcher.

  Bing was a block from his father’s house, Deer Run Lane just a few miles down the road out this way. He pulled over and let the man out with a, “You take care of yourself,” then headed off to investigate, not much caring how many curses were thrown after him.

  He slogged through mud for over half an hour before finding the clearing with the makeshift shooting range, pasta jars lined up on a fallen log as targets.

  “Coming out!” he called loudly before he moved forward. “Hold your fire.”

  Brian Haynes pointed his gun at the ground. “Captain Bing. Are you looking for me? Do you have any news?”

  “I have a report of gunfire too close to housing.”

  “What?” he glanced around, his face confused and apologetic at the same time. “I drove an hour to get here. How can I be too close?”

  “The road winds around.”

  His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I thought I was at a safe distance.”

  “Why don’t you put that gun down while we talk for a minute?”

  Haynes lowered the gun awkwardly to the grass. “I did go to the firing range. All the guns going off… I thought it might be easier here, by myself. I want to be able to protect my daughters,” he said miserably.

  It wasn’t as if Bing couldn’t understand the blame and the guilt, the part where Haynes would have given anything to change the past. He just wanted to do something to make sure he could protect his family in the future.

  “You need to practice at the range. I go early, once a week if I can, Wednesday mornings. There’s barely anybody there. If you come in, I can give you some pointers,” Bing said and watched as relief washed over the man’s face. “How are the girls doing?”

  Haynes took a long time to answer. “They cry a lot. My sister came up from Kansas. They like her. That helps.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I just had to get out of the house for a little while.”

  They talked for a few more minutes before Bing walked back to his car. On his way back to the station, he happened to drive by Mike, who was doing a traffic stop. Bing pulled up to assist, since the driver—CEO type, driving a sixty-thousand-dollar BMW—seemed to be resisting. He explained to the man that neither his self-importance nor his money was going to get him out of the speeding ticket, and stayed while Mike wrote the guy up, since the man looked like he might just step on the gas and make a run for it. He called the inconvenience to his schedule outrageous and an infringement on his civil liberties. Lawyers were mentioned.

  Mike got red in the neck but kept his cool and stayed courteous. He had the temperament to be a good cop, Bing thought. He’d gained some experience since he’d been hired by the Broslin PD. He was an honest man, through and through, and eager to do well. He had one grandfather who’d been one of the first Irish cops in New York City and another who’d been in the Irish mob, running rackets in Jersey. One way or the other, crime had always been front and center in his family.

  The reception desk stood empty by the time Bing made it back to the office. Leila was out for an early lunch. Only Joe worked behind his desk.

  While Mike had moved to Broslin for the job, Joe’s family had been around forever. He knew a lot of people in town and, due to his football past, everybody knew him, which could be an advantage, or disadvantage, depending.

  “Where’s Chase?” Bing asked as he passed Joe on his way to his office.

  “Out on a possible burglary call,” he said. “Amber Lane, in that new development by the Stoltzfus farm. He’ll call in if it turns into anything.”

  More than half the time it didn’t, just someone home alone, hearing a noise outside and calling it in.

  Bing strode into his office and checked his e-mail. No new labs. He filed the paperwork on the reported shooting, then opened up the Kristine Hayes file. Not much in it yet, just the original missing-person report and what crime-scene information Joe and Mike had already entered. The lab results would fill it out a little more, and provide clues, hopefully.

  He left the file open on his screen and pulled Stacy’s folder from his desk drawer, then laid out the sheets of paper on his enormous desk in rows. There had to be a clue here somewhere. What was he missing?

  Joe came in and leaned against the door frame. “So, my sister keeps bugging me to ask.” He flashed an apologetic look. “I don’t suppose you made a decision on selling the house. It’d be her hundredth listing. They get an award at the agency or whatever.”

  He was a ladies’ man and enjoyed the fact, proud of his reputation, but when it came to his sister and her kid, he would have jumped through flaming hoops to help them in any way he could.

  “I mean, if you’re thinking about selling like you said, she’d appreciate the business.”

  Bing’s first instinct was to come up with yet another excuse why it still wasn’t the right time, but he caught himself. What the hell.

  “Tell her to give me a call.” There. He was no longer standing still. He was moving forward.

  “Really?” Joe grinned from ear to ear. “Thanks, Captain. That’s great. You need help with anything in here?”

  He was a good kid, turning into a fine officer. He’d been a high school football star back in his day and had gone to college on a sports scholarship. As good as Bing had ever seen, but for some reason or other, he didn’t make it pro. Still, he was a small town hero as far as most folks around here were concerned.

  Bing considered him for a minute. Harper, Chase, and Jack were fine detectives in their own right. He tried to involve Joe and Mike in as much investigating as he could, so they could practice and learn. They both had potential.

  “Remember that pen in the SUV yesterday?” He lifted the folder he’d been staring at and turned it toward Joe. “Stacy had something with the same logo. Both women worked at Anselm-Gnamm Pharmaceuticals. So is that it, or is there more?”

  Interest flashed across Joe’s face. “You think there’s a connection between the two murders?”

  Bing drew a slow breath. He wanted a connection, which made this tricky. It could make him read things into the data that weren’t there. But a connection could mean new clues. And maybe then he could redeem himself, at least partially, by catchi
ng Stacy’s killer.

  “Kristine was twenty-nine,” he said. “Stacy thirty-three. Neither grew up in Broslin. Kristine was from New York, Stacy from New Jersey.”

  He kept comparing the data in front of him. “They went to different colleges. They didn’t overlap at the pharmaceutical company. Stacy died a few months before Kristine was hired. They worked in different departments, on different floors, with different people.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a strong connection,” Joe said carefully.

  Yet it was more than what Bing had before. “If I could figure out where this logo comes from, it might tell us something.”

  “Could be a logo for an internal project at work.” Joe thought for a second. “I used to go out with a graphic designer. She made logos and headers for web pages put up for internal projects at a big corporation. A pharmaceutical company might have one for every drug they’re trying to bring to market. Or a big reorganization. Some internal employee recognition program, whatever. It might not ever be seen outside the company intranet.”

  Bing nodded as he considered the possibility. Internal projects could run for months, if not years. They could be run by an interdepartmental task team. Maybe Stacy and Kristine had been on the same team, just not at the same time. Maybe so was the killer.

  “Except nobody at the company recognized the damn logo when I showed it around after Stacy’s death.” He would show it around again. First thing Monday morning.

  Joe opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Chase burst through the station’s front door, dragging a guy who was resisting like a champion fighter—the B&E suspect, presumably. He was six feet two at least and close to three hundred pounds, and hopped up on drugs, judging by the wild look in his eyes. He didn’t have a shirt on, and his pants were halfway to his knees.

  Joe jumped to help as the idiot knocked Chase against the reception desk.

  “Easy now, easy!” Bing yelled and ran to join the fray.

  The day didn’t slow any from there: a battery case, another drunk and disorderly, a couple of migrant workers driving without a license, and a pretty nasty accident that happened just as Bing was about to leave. He stayed and helped with the processing, which took several hours. They had to be careful with every detail, since criminal charges would be filed in the case.