by James Hunt
Susan had sat in a room with Kip and three other witnesses, all of them watching as he pulled a gun and put a bullet straight through an unarmed man’s skull. A man whom he had invited over for dinner, and then she watched Kip finish his meal while the dead man remained at the table. He was a cold-blooded killer. He just happened to be smarter than the rest.
Freddy said nothing after sealing them inside the room, the silence meant to be calculated intimidation to keep the enemy on their toes.
Guns were in every pair of hands in the room, no one shy about revealing their form of protection, and again she became deadly aware of her lack of weaponry.
Carson said nothing as he sat the backpack down on the table.
Kip gestured to one of his gang members, who walked over and rifled through the money in the bag.
“You really need to count it?” Freddy asked.
“Just want to make sure we’re getting our money’s worth,” Kip answered, then set his eyes on Susan and smiled.
“Anything you wanna say?” Susan asked, giving him an attitude.
“No.” Kip spread his hands out in a helpless gesture. “But I think it’s important to acknowledge the people who make good things happen. And if it weren’t for you, then none of us would be here.” He smiled. “Funny how everything fell into place today.” He tilted his head to the side, that coy smile spreading up the side of his face. “Don’t you think… Susie?”
Freddy and Martin exchanged a glance.
Susan knew Kip was fishing, and she just had to keep her wits about her long enough to see this through to the end. And she was so close to the finish line. “I guess it was only a matter of time.”
“Yes,” Kip said. “Only a matter of time.”
Kip’s associate stepped away from the briefcase, finished with his counting. “It’s all there.”
Kip clapped his hands. “Then a deal is a deal.” He snapped his fingers, and the rest of his group brought over four large duffel bags and placed them on the table opposite the money in the bag.
With the product on the table, Freddy motioned Carson to walk over to investigate. Carson opened the bags, pulling out a package of heroin, and sliced his knife down the middle of it, sticking his finger inside. He tasted it and then smacked his lips obnoxiously before he looked back over his shoulder to Freddy. “It’s good.”
“Then it’s done,” Freddy said.
Martin and Carson picked up the duffel bags, and Kip cleared his throat.
“Freddy,” Kip said. “A word?”
Freddy hesitated but eventually crossed the room to Kip’s side. The pair whispered back and forth, and when the conversation ended, Freddy looked directly at Susan.
“Pleasure doing business with you all.” Kip smiled and led his men toward the doors, leaving Susan alone with the South Siders.
Carson and Martin had the bags in hand and were about to follow the Third Streeters out the door, but Freddy held up his hand, stopping them.
“Is there something you need to tell me, Susan?” Freddy asked.
Susan frowned, and two red spots burned high on her cheeks. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I just need to know if you want to tell me something or not,” Freddy said. “Because if you do, then now’s the time.”
Susan waved her hand. “Oh, this is bullshit—”
Freddy pulled out his gun, aiming it at Susan, his finger already on the trigger. The nine-millimeter bullet was big and powerful enough to cause critical damage to any part of her small frame. She’d die of shock and blood loss before help arrived.
“Freddy—”
“Don’t.” Freddy walked closer and pressed the end of the barrel against her forehead.
Susan clenched her fists, staring Freddy in the eye, afraid that if she broke eye contact that she’d die. “You think I’m working a side deal on you? Is that it?” She laughed. “Why the fuck would I do that, Freddy? Why the fuck would I try and mess up the one thing that I’ve been working toward since I started working for you?”
“And what exactly have you been working towards?” Freddy asked.
“To take the product away from our competitors,” Susan answered. “You control the supply; you control the market. You control the market; you set the prices. We both know that’s what Marco wants. We both know that’s the end game.”
“All I know is that I think you’re a better fucking hustler than anyone in this room,” Freddy said. “And while Marco trusts you, he pays me not to trust you. Understand?”
Susan nodded.
“So I’ll ask you again,” Freddy said, inching closer. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Both Martin and Carson took a step toward Susan, each of them drawing their weapons. Susan swallowed, the dray ball of fear dropping to her stomach like a lead ball. She couldn’t talk her way out of this one.
Gunfire thundered from the alleyway and half of Kip’s crew flooded back inside the building, shooting at the alley on their retreat.
Amongst the confusion and exchange of gunfire, Susan sprinted behind a cluster of washing machines. She covered her ears, which were already deaf from the shooting. Muffled voices and muted pops were intermixed among a high-pitched din.
A hand yanked Susan from behind the washing machine and slammed her on the ground where she lay on her stomach. When she opened her eyes she saw Carson on his stomach, his hands cuffed behind his back, dead.
Blood spread from the center of his stomach, forming a crimson pool that shimmered beneath the fluorescent lighting. It almost reached Susan before she was picked up off the ground and carried outside with the others. She saw Freddy, briefly locking eyes with him as the officer whisked her outside.
Away from the metallic scent of blood and smoke that clung to the air after the gunfight, Susan struggled to catch her breath as she was led away from the dilapidated building and thrust him into the back of a squad car.
The adrenaline from the shootout, the sight of the blood, and the rush of the moment made her head spin. She swayed back and forth, losing her sense of balance.
“Hey!” A fist pounded against the Plexiglas partition. “Don’t throw up!”
“Fuck you.” Susan drew in a breath, struggling to sit still as she felt every pothole, crack, and turn through the Southern Seattle streets. She glanced down to the cuffs behind her back, the clamps tighter than she remembered. “Were these necessary?”
“It’s protocol, Q. You know the drill.”
Officer Susan Quinton, who for the past six weeks had donned the alias Susan Pritcher, struggled to keep her head from spinning, her mind disoriented from the gunfight and the roughness of how she was handled during her arrest.
“Did we lose anyone?” Susan asked, her upper back starting to cramp.
“Had one SWAT take a bullet in the chest, but it hit Kevlar. He’ll have some bruising, but nothing serious.”
Susan exhaled in relief. She leaned her head back and counted the seconds until she was out of these clothes, out of these cuffs, and done with Susan Pritcher for good.
3
It was mid-day by the time they returned to the precinct, and the place was buzzing when Susan was escorted by the pair of detectives that had cuffed her, which remained on her wrists to make sure that the gang members being processed still saw her as a criminal like them. But she forewent processing and was brought to one of the interrogation rooms for debriefing by her lieutenant.
The moment the door shut, Susan turned around, exposing the cuffs as Sergeant Hayes removed the restraints.
“Ugh, thank God.” Susan groaned in relief and rubbed the tender flesh around both wrists then paced around the room, stretching her legs. “You didn’t have to clamp the cuffs so tightly.”
The door opened, and Lieutenant Williams entered. “I’d thought six weeks on the streets would have toughened you up, Q.” He was the first at the table and the first to sit down, dropping a stack of files at the desk’s center.
<
br /> Susan stared at the papers as Sergeant Hayes sat next to Lieutenant Williams, then walked over and stood behind her chair, frowning. “Where’s the captain?” With a bust this big, she expected some of their superiors to be on hand.
“He’s busy,” Williams said. “Take a seat.”
Susan sat down on the opposite side of the table, making the conversation feel more like an interrogation than a debrief. As the youngest member of Vice Narcotics, Susan was also the rookie, and the fact that she was the only woman on the team wasn’t doing her any favors. But she had learned a long time ago that so long as you kept fighting, so long as you never quit, there was little that people could do to stop you.
Lieutenant Williams opened the first file, which belonged to Freddy, and he clicked a pen. “Let’s get this done.”
The past six weeks on the streets was one of the most significant undercover assignments that the Vice unit had attempted. The primary objective was to apprehend the top two lieutenants of the two biggest gangs in Seattle in hopes of crippling their organizations and grilling them to provide details of the inner workings of their operations.
It had been Susan’s job to set up a ceasefire, trying to get the pair of gangs to work together so that the Attorney General could file a RICO case to put them all behind bars. It was the latest effort in the state’s drug task force to fight against the opioid epidemic.
The South Siders and the Third Streeters were the biggest drug dealers of heroin in the city.
The process was slow and monotonous, Susan recounting every detail since her last correspondence with Sergeant Hayes, who had run command on the sting at the Laundromat. Lieutenant Williams wanted to make sure that they had crossed all of their T’s and dotted all of their I’s. A part of her appreciated that about him, and another part wished that he’d get the stick out of his ass so she could go home and take a shower.
Three hours and several cups of coffee later, the stack of files had been transferred from one side of the table to the other, and Williams clicked the button on his pen, returning it to his shirt pocket like a nerd in grade school.
“Sergeant Hayes, you can go ahead and get started processing all of this,” Williams said.
For a moment both Susan and Hayes paused, unsure if Williams had said what he meant. But the longer Williams stared at Hayes, the more both realized that they hadn’t misheard.
“Yeah.” Hayes pushed his chair back and then picked up the files at the end of the desk, walking out with the same dazed and confused expression on his face that Susan had on hers. It would have been her job to log the reports after the debrief, as was a tradition for the officer at the bottom of the totem pole.
Once the pair were alone, the lieutenant folded his hands together and placed them on the desk. “You did good work, Q. Not many officers could have pulled off what you did. Undercover work is not for the faint of heart.”
“Thank you, sir,” Susan said, sensing that she was going to be blindsided with something, and she was unsure if she would be rewarded or punished. For some reason, she believed that either was possible giving her standing with the department. There were specific protocols to be followed when performing undercover work, but most of them were not conducive to obtaining the results needed to do the job effectively. And while Susan was thorough in her report to the lieutenant, she had omitted certain details.
“Sergeant Hayes kept me updated closely on the investigation,” Williams said. “He had some interesting things to say about your behavior undercover.”
Susan remained stoic, still unsure where the LT was steering the conversation.
“I know the two of you clashed over how to handle the investigation, and I understand that things look different when you’re in the heat of the moment.” Williams leaned back, hands folded behind his neck like he was shooting the shit with an old friend. “But sometimes quick decisions are required.” Williams smiled. “I just want you to know that I believe all of the decisions that you made were in the best interest of the investigation and the department.” He lowered his eyes and glanced at the crook of Susan’s arm before making eye contact with her again. “I just want to make sure that you’re in the right mindset moving forward. Undercover work can be… trying.”
Susan knew that it was against department policies to engage in drug use when undercover, but it was like the lieutenant said; sometimes you had to think on your feet. “I’m fit for duty, sir.”
“Excellent.” Williams rocked forward. “You’ve done good work, and I’d like for you to build on that momentum.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Lieutenant,” Susan said. “I’m just glad we were able to get these guys off the streets.”
“It’s more than just a vote of confidence,” Williams said, then checked his watch. “Follow me.”
Unsure of what was happening, Susan followed the lieutenant out of the interrogation room. Still dressed in her undercover garb, she was desperately out of place amid the suits and ties of her peers. Not to mention the stench that she had accumulated from two days of no shower.
When the pair reached Williams’s office, Susan was surprised to find two detectives inside and Nate Donaldson, their Narcotic Liaison Officer.
“Gentlemen, I hope we didn’t keep you waiting.” Williams shook everyone’s hand. “This is Susan Quinton. She just finished a six-week undercover assignment and handed us the top lieutenants in both the Third Streeters and the South Siders.”
Susan nodded to the pair of detectives that she didn’t know, both of whom looked at her with an inquisitive eye.
Once Williams settled behind his desk, he introduced her to the detectives. “Susan, this is Detective Palmer and Detective Winterguard. They’re Homicide over at the 14th Precinct.”
Both Palmer and Winterguard nodded in the same casual manner, their heads nearly in sync with each other, and Susan got the impression that the pair had been together for a while. Like any good couple, they’d even started to dress like one another.
But their attire was the only physical similarity. Palmer was in his mid-forties and had a gut that suggested he was taking whatever was growing inside of him to full term. He had a full head of black hair, which he kept cut in a crew-cut style and wore a pair of black and rectangular glasses. She knew Palmer by word of mouth. He was the nephew of the current police chief.
Winterguard was shorter than Palmer, and what white hair he had left on his head was barely able to cover the liver spots on his scalp. His jowls sagged, and he looked less than a week away from collecting his eighty and retiring to a life of tee times and nine a.m. beers.
“And of course you know Nate,” Williams said.
“Hey, Susie Q.” Nate Donaldson was in his late twenties and was a civilian contractor, but his age didn’t belittle his experience. He had spent his entire adult life working the shelters in Seattle and had been assigned to the mayor’s task force the prior year to help stem the opioid crisis. Nate had been instrumental in helping to not only secure funding but making sure it went to the right places. Both he and Susan had lost family to addiction. It was the root of their fight against the street dealers and their suppliers. He was a resource that the entire Vice team leaned on heavily. He knew all of the junkie hangouts, and what was more, he had credibility with the folks in the streets. That went a long way when you wanted to deescalate a violent situation.
“South Side is no joke,” Palmer said. “I did a stint with Williams ten years ago in Vice. Hard shit.”
“Little young for undercover work, don’t you think?” Winterguard asked, looking to Williams.
“One of the reasons why we picked her,” Williams said. “She had top marks at the academy, graduated first in her class, and has a knack for digging up dirt on the streets, which is why I asked her to be a part of this. Go ahead and give her a rundown, Palmer.”
Palmer pivoted in his seat and faced Susan. “We got called to a house down in Beacon Hill. A teen girl turned up dead in
her home in the middle of the night. The girl was a runaway, addict, been gone for over a year.”
“It was an overdose,” Winterguard said, blurting it out while picking something out of his nail.
“If it’s an overdose, then why is homicide involved?” Susan asked.
“We’re waiting on an official report from the coroner, but from the position of the body post-mortem, it looked like someone brought her into the house,” Palmer said. “And they changed her clothes.”
Susan grimaced. “How old was the girl?”
“Eighteen,” Palmer answered.
Susan wished she would have been surprised, but teen girls sprouted up on the streets like weeds. Most of them were runaways, either by choice or circumstance, but nearly all of them were addicts. The young ones usually sold their bodies to buy new drugs or pay back what they owed their dealers. And while she didn’t know this dead girl’s name or who she was, she wanted to nail the creep that killed her. Even if it was just an OD. People needed to understand that everything has a price.
“What do you need from me?” Susan asked.
“We’re working on a few theories, but based off of the way we found the crime scene, we think that the girl was targeted by someone she knew,” Palmer said. “There were no signs of forced entry, no broken windows, nothing. It was like the girl appeared in her bed out of thin air.”
Susan took a moment to study the pair of detectives, then looked to Williams, knowing that she wouldn’t be called in on just a simple OD homicide. There was something bigger at play. “You guys think that this could be a serial killer.”
“We don’t know shit until we get the autopsy report,” Winterguard said, sparking the first signs of life since he’d been in the room. “I think we’re getting worked up about nothing.”