Cold Blue

by Gary Neece

  a Jonathan Thorpe novel

  by Gary Neece

  * * * *

  Amazon Edition

  * * * *

  This book is a work of fiction, names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright ©2013 by Gary Neece

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Perthshire Press

  garyneece.com

  Second Edition: June 2013

  For other titles by Gary Neece, visit Amazon

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my parents,

  whose only want was for their children

  “All the old knives that have rusted in my back,

  I drive in yours.”

  –The Phaedrus

  Plato

  Monday

  February 5

  Early Morning

  SERGEANT JONATHAN THORPE BROUGHT HIS eyes down from the desolate highway to the soft green glow of his dashboard lights. Five minutes till four. Up early, rather than out late, he enjoyed this time. The hours before dawn brought a ghostly peacefulness to the city, a serenity disturbed only by fellow cops, hooligans, and the few unfortunate souls finding their ways to work. Most of the one million or so who made up Tulsa’s metropolitan area slept peaceably in their beds. Those not at rest resembled the Rapture’s left behind, if Thorpe still believed in such things.

  Shrewd criminals had long since retired from public view. They feared the slew of uniformed officers on duty, all of them bored and searching for someone, anyone, to pull over. “Big dope,” as Thorpe referred to large quantities of narcotics, was mostly transported and sold during business hours when the cop-to-citizen ratio was much more favorable to the bad guys.

  Thorpe’s attention wandered. It’s a trait those with driving experience share, though his autopilot had adapted a few additional skill sets. While he efficiently operated his vehicle—feet working pedals and hands the steering wheel—with little conscious effort, he also checked for tails in all three mirrors, looked for suspicious activity in his peripheral vision. He stamped passing cars and faces into his short-term memory. With each landmark passed, his random thoughts burst with a kaleidoscope of memories. Every street corner elicited visions of arrests, shootings, fights or foot pursuits.

  While this activity fluttered in recesses of his mind, he considered the fellow “citizens” with whom he kept these early hours: the junkies, prostitutes and small-time drug pushers—too ignorant to get off the streets. Dealers lurked in darkened doorways and urine-steeped alleyways. They roamed side streets with small amounts of dope destined for motel whores and twenty-dollar crackheads.

  He’d encountered every kind. Cagey dealers swallowed the drugs as soon as cops laid eyes on them. Later, they retrieved their cellophane-wrapped wares in the privacy of their own bathroom. The patient ones awaited nature’s call. Those unwilling to postpone deliveries might introduce fingers to esophagus, subsequently plucking their illicit treasures from steaming gastric acid and last evening’s meatloaf. Others were less cautious, keeping their products on them during the stop, concealed in the car or on their person. Often they kept the drugs under their tongue and only resorted to swallowing when their secret was discovered. An officer might grab a suspect’s throat to prevent the destruction of evidence. Meanwhile, passing motorists were subjected to yet one more crooked cop choking the shit out of another “innocent” citizen. Then there were those who thought themselves particularly clever—believing they’d hidden the contraband where one would never look, let alone find it. Disgustingly, their fetid fingers usually gave them away. Maybe that’s how crack really got its name.

  On this morning Thorpe was after one of the smart ones, smart by crack dealer standards at least. As the supervisor of the Tulsa Police Department’s Organized Gang Unit, Thorpe knew the difference. He pulled himself back to task as he made his way across the south end of the Inner Dispersal Loop (IDL), a network of highways ensnaring downtown. Free from the commuters’ version of an oval track, Thorpe took a series of side streets before turning north on Country Club Drive and cutting through the middle of a sprawling, government-assisted “community.”

  Thorpe thought about his tax dollars at work here. Yes, he was a cop but had to pay taxes like everyone else, and often replied he was self-employed when dipshit citizens told him they paid his salary. Government assisted housing; free rent for freeloaders. Thorpe knew his thoughts were unfair; he’d met decent people who had to live in places like this. He felt sympathy for the innocents because animals of the two-legged variety mostly controlled the complexes.

  Country Club Drive and its bifurcated housing complex shared a fence with Tulsa’s Country Club golf course, which occasionally hosted the LPGA. Thorpe doubted many lady pros would jump the fence and enter the apartment grounds to retrieve an errant ball—to do so would imply their balls were bigger than those used in golf—and therefore wouldn’t be needing the L preceding PGA. The entire complex was scheduled to be razed and rebuilt in a couple of years. For now, it was a good place to buy dope and get robbed—if that was your thing.

  Thorpe exited the north end of the complex turning west. Several blocks later he approached Waco Avenue and looked north toward his target’s home. In the distance, he could see Marcel’s gold Cutlass parked on the west side of the street. Thorpe continued on before turning into the Greystone Condominiums. The condos were encircled by a black iron fence and an electronic gate to which Thorpe already had the code. He punched in the numbers from memory, pulled into the complex, and parked in a relatively low-lit area.

  Garbed in dark blue coveralls, a hoodie, and full-face ski mask, Thorpe examined the area through deeply tinted windows before exiting his vehicle. The frigid conditions ensured his clothing wouldn’t garner unwanted attention and disguised the fact he was the only Caucasian within a square mile. Taking a winding route through the complex, Thorpe exited a pedestrian gate on the northeast side of the condos. Heading east, he resisted the urge to jog and remained alert for movement in the still morning. Except for his breath rising in the cold, nothing stirred. He passed Marcel’s street once more and continued east another twenty-five yards before encountering a private drive that led north into a wooded tract of approximately five acres.

  Thorpe had learned from previous surveillance the only structure on the property was a dilapidated barn, void of any human activity. An old
metal farm gate blocked the drive another ten yards north of the property line. Thorpe used a small pair of bolt cutters on a section of barbed wire fence just to his left. He could have easily scaled the gate, but the act would create noise, and as his primary escape route, would also slow his departure.

  Faintly illuminated by moonlight, he strode up the old drive, wincing when the occasional patch of gravel crunched under foot. Though not audible more than a few yards away, in Thorpe’s ears the noise sounded like thunder; his senses were hyperaware.

  Thorpe followed the drive deeper into the woods until reaching a stone marker he lifted and tossed into the weeds. Turning and trekking into the thicket, he stopped and uncovered a large, water-resistant canvas bag, which he’d concealed under dead vegetation and fallen branches during an earlier scouting mission. Collecting the bag, Thorpe began picking his way through the trees. Spidery limbs and prickly vines grabbed at his clothing as he trudged toward the deserted barn. Winter-stripped of their canopy, the barren trees filtered enough moon and starlight so he could navigate without use of artificial light.

  Stepping into a clearing, the barn loomed before him. Thorpe pulled open its rickety door and inspected the inky black with a flashlight. Drawing in a deep breath, Thorpe entered the darkness, removed equipment from the canvas bag, and began preparations.

  Five minutes later, the creaky door burped Thorpe into the night; he made his way back southwest until he came to another barbed wire fence. There, he secreted himself inside the tree line with Marcel’s Cutlass twelve to thirteen yards directly in front of his place of concealment. The yellow glow from the distant streetlight didn’t reach his position and neither would the illumination from Marcel’s porch light if activated.

  As a member of the Fifty-Seventh Street Hoover Crips, Marcel Newman was one of the “smarter dealers,” and directly responsible for several murders within the Tulsa area. He’d been charged with homicide twice; one of his victims was an innocent six-year-old girl who happened to be playing in a yard behind Marcel’s intended target. Charges were dropped after frightened witnesses refused to testify. Marcel Newman was a killer, and he associated with other known killers.

  Thorpe’s Organized Gang Unit (OGU), along with Vice, had conducted a lengthy surveillance of Marcel’s activities. The operation had ended approximately a week and a half earlier with little result. During surveillance, officers noted Marcel would leave his grandmother’s house here and drive to a nearby convenience store where he would buy breakfast sandwiches and drinks. Afterward, he’d continue to his girlfriend’s apartment on the northeast side of town. Why Marcel arose so early and why he slept at his grandmother’s house was never determined.

  The investigation did reveal one useful piece of information: Marcel left this residence every weekday at six in the morning. No exceptions. No one who led Marcel’s lifestyle should keep such regular patterns; one day it would come back to bite his ass. This was the day.

  MARCEL WOKE AT 5:45 A.M., groggily pulled the blankets aside, and slung his legs over the edge of the bed. He reached and turned off an alarm radio blaring a nineties rap song, then slipped into his baggy black jeans, extra-long white t-shirt, puffy black coat, and Timberland boots—his “Tims.” Marcel liked to sleep at his nana’s house because it sat on a dead-end street, which decreased the likelihood of his rivals attempting a drive-by. Plus, he’d never conducted business at the residence so he wouldn’t likely be bothered in the middle of the night by an annoying search warrant service. In short, he felt safe at his grandmother’s house.

  Marcel shuffled into the kitchen, pulled the refrigerator out a couple of feet, and reached around until he fingered a nylon holster secured to the back with duct tape. He slipped a Taurus 9mm Millennium Pro out of its cocoon and stood admiring the pistol’s weight. The weapon had a matte stainless-steel slide with a black-checked polymer grip. He’d had an acquaintance purchase the weapon for him at a gun show at the Tulsa County Fair Grounds; it was far superior to the Ravens and Jennings pistols most of his associates carried and well worth the 400-plus dollars he’d paid. The magazine held ten rounds plus another in the throat. At just over six inches in length, the weapon slipped easily into his coat pocket and could be withdrawn rapidly. Marcel dug his heels into the puke-green linoleum, pushed the heavy refrigerator back into place, walked to the front door, and flipped on the porch light. Swinging open the frost-covered storm door, he stood behind the threshold, uncommitted.

  Marcel scanned the area, then offered himself to the dark, placid morning.

  WHEN MARCEL ACTIVATED THE PORCH light, Thorpe was ready. He’d already used the same pair of bolt cutters to cut the three strands of barbed wire separating himself from the Cutlass. He watched Marcel cascade from the steps like an NFL halfback alighting from the team bus. At an inch or two under six feet, his foe was solid. Thorpe had been wise to bring along the weapon. Marcel probably fought like most any other gangbanger, his head down, swinging wildly with absolutely no technique. But one lucky punch slipping through Thorpe’s defenses could be devastating. It amazed him how some guys amassed so much muscle by sitting and smoking dope all day. During surveillance, his squad had never seen Marcel exercise once. Of course when a guy went to prison, the government ensured he got his requisite time with the weights. They generally entered society with an extra twenty pounds of muscle along with a reenergized hatred for authority.

  As Marcel rounded the front of the Cutlass and stood near the driver’s side door, Thorpe watched through a red-dot scope as his target looked cautiously to the south. He kept the sight level as Marcel turned and peered directly at his position. Thorpe held his breath fearing the rising condensation would be visible in the frigid morning. Marcel seemed to shrug off whatever alarmed him and returned his attention to the car. Should have trusted your instincts, asshole. Thorpe sighted down and left from the edge of Marcel’s right shoulder, taking into account approximately four inches of coat insulation.

  AS MARCEL STEPPED AROUND THE front of his Cutlass and stuffed his right hand into his pants pocket for the vehicle’s keys, he tried to shake the chill crawling its way up his spine. He turned back to his car, cupped his hands against the lightly frosted glass, and checked his backseat floorboard in one last salute to his paranoia. Seeing nothing, he took the key out of his pocket and inserted it into the lock.

  Marcel heard it as much as he felt it—the thwack that drove his right shoulder forward. As the pain registered, he instinctively reached across with his left hand to probe for injury. Brain playing catch up, he attempted to retrieve pistol from coat pocket, finding his right arm unresponsive. Switching to his left, he was suddenly yanked back by the injured shoulder as if his body were conspiring against him. Marcel landed flat on his back; he tried to push himself up with his good arm when it was kicked out from under him. A boot crashed down on his injured arm. A knee pinned his other to the pavement. Above him loomed a masked man in coveralls. The dark figure pressed a large knife into the skin below Marcel’s left eye.

  “If I wanted you dead, you would be. You make one sound, I’ll pop your fucking eye out and feed it to you.” Burning green eyes, remarkably brilliant in the darkness, reinforced the stranger’s threats.

  NOT WANTING TO LINGER IN the street, Thorpe quickly gagged Marcel with a rag and duct tape. He rolled him over and cranked his left arm behind his back. The wounded right shoulder offered little resistance as Thorpe brought the wrists together and bound them with tape. He removed Marcel’s pistol, unzipped his own coveralls and secured the weapon. Then he directed his captive to draw up to his knees. Marcel complied, and Thorpe pulled him to his feet. When Thorpe spun Marcel around and pushed him toward the woods, a muffled cry emanated from beneath the tape. Apparently Marcel had hoped they’d be heading back to the house, with the stranger unaware his grandmother was inside. Marcel stumbled into the ditch and purposely fell to the ground; Thorpe would have to drag him the rest of the way. Off the street and in the shadows, Thorpe swit
ched on a hands-free LED headlamp mounted on his forehead.

  Thorpe had shot Marcel with a crossbow. Attached to the bolt was high tensile, braided fishing line. He’d used the line to yank Marcel backward as he reached for his weapon. The barbed broadhead was still buried in Marcel’s shoulder. Thorpe cut the strand so it wouldn’t get caught on foliage as he dragged his cargo through the woods.

  At an even six feet with little body fat, Thorpe was 190 pounds of compacted muscle. He had a fighter’s physique. Still, Marcel was a thrashing encumbrance, and the fifty-yard haul through the underbrush was grueling. Arriving at the barn, Thorpe pulled Marcel across the threshold and over to a support pole in the corner of the pitch-black interior. He slammed Marcel’s back against the timber and held him by the throat. Thorpe wrapped tape around the pole and his captive’s neck several times, but wouldn’t leave Marcel in this position for long as suffocation would soon follow. Having secured Marcel to the pole, Thorpe cut the tape on his captive’s wrists, brought his arms behind the pole and secured them again. Then he cut the tape around Marcel’s neck and placed a black hood over his head. Afterward, he used additional tape to cinch Marcel’s lower torso securely to the support pole.

  Thorpe carried a police radio underneath his coveralls. A wire ran from the instrument, up his sweaty back, and into a bud inserted in his left ear. So far the radio remained quiet. No one had phoned in a disturbance regarding Thorpe’s activities, leaving him free to interrogate his captive.

  First, Thorpe removed his own boots and exchanged them for a different pair inside his canvas bag. He then left the barn to retrieve his crossbow as well as Marcel’s Timberlands and his baggy-assed jeans. The unlaced boots and loose pants had come off as he was dragged through the woods. Thorpe also needed to evaluate the crime scene he’d created. The time Marcel spent alone, cloaked in silent darkness, would only facilitate the coming interrogation.