THE ROGUE
ELEMENT
JOHN HARDY BELL
Copyright © 2014 John Hardy Bell
Second Sight Publishing
All rights reserved
This e-book is intended for personal use only, and may not be reproduced, transmitted, or redistributed in any way without the express written consent of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All of the organizations, characters, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
For more, visit http://jhardybell.com
CONTENTS
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
A Note to the Reader
For THE PUSHER
I’m sure there are worse things that can happen to a police officer than getting shot and nearly killed by a fellow police officer, but I don’t know what those things are.
~Detective Chloe Sullivan
CHAPTER 1
I stood outside of Lieutenant Owen Hitchcock’s office doing my best to keep down the bagel and cream cheese breakfast I had eaten twenty minutes ago. My nerves were getting the better of me and I wasn’t really sure why. I could only guess it was because I had never been summoned for an early morning impromptu meeting that didn’t involve a difficult case I was slogging through. The meeting request was short on details, but considering the fact that my partner was playing Candy Crush on his cell phone as I walked past his desk, I assumed it had nothing at all to do with a case.
Still worried that the contents of my stomach would have a hard time staying where they were supposed to, I knocked on the door; two quick raps so as to not draw too much attention. Why I cared that anyone saw me standing outside the lieutenant’s office was a question I couldn’t answer. I only knew that I cared.
I took in a hard breath. Before I could exhale, I heard Hitchcock’s muffled voice on the other side of the door.
“Come in.”
I quickly made my way inside the cramped office. A man who was not Owen Hitchcock sat behind the lieutenant’s desk. He wore a plain white shirt with a plain black tie. No suit jacket. His short-cropped brown hair was cut with military precision. A bureaucrat if I had ever seen one. And he definitely wasn’t from around here. His expectant eyes burrowed into me, as if he had been anticipating this moment for a long time. Otherwise he was expressionless.
Lieutenant Hitchcock stood to my right near the door, his wiry six-foot-three frame taking up nearly half the office space. He smiled; something he didn’t do on his absolute best day. And suddenly the gymnastics in my stomach started up again.
“Thanks for coming,” was how he began the conversation.
The bureaucrat’s eyes were still burrowing.
“It sounded kind of urgent,” I replied.
“It is.”
Hitchcock pointed to the chair opposite his desk and I promptly sat, avoiding further eye contact with the stranger sitting across from me.
The lieutenant continued. “I know it’s a busy time, so I promise to make this as brief as possible.”
“Brief is good,” I said before I could stop myself.
The lieutenant and his guest exchanged a glance. Hitchcock smiled again.
“Detective Scott Priest, this is Robert Fitzgerald. He’s visiting us from the State Attorney General’s office.”
Attorney General’s office. At least I was right about him being a bureaucrat. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fitzgerald.” My smile was more rigid than usual.
“Likewise, Detective Priest. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Good things I hope.”
“Nothing but.” His lifeless tone said otherwise.
Determined to put an end to the forced pleasantries before they got out of hand, I turned to Hitchcock with my best why the hell am I here look. Thankfully he picked up on the cue.
“Don’t let Mr. Fitzgerald’s presence here alarm you, Scott.”
“I’m not alarmed.” That of course was a lie.
“Good because there’s no reason to be. When he said he had heard nothing but positive things about you, he wasn’t exaggerating.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, lieutenant. But that can’t be why I’m here.”
“Actually it is.”
“So the Attorney General is handing out commendations now?”
“No commendations. Not yet anyway.”
The strained levity on my face suddenly morphed into frustration and I sighed as I shifted in my chair. “With all due respect sir, I have a dead woman in a hotel room and a lot of people I need to talk to about it. If this is something concerning a previous case or an administrative matter, maybe Detectives Krieger or Parsons would be better suited to—”
“We need your help, Scott. And it has nothing to do with a case.”
Even though I already knew as much, I had a difficult time masking my concern. “What does it have to do with?”
Hitchcock and Fitzgerald exchanged another glance, as if they were both expecting the other to answer the question. When Fitzgerald crossed his arms and sank back in his chair, the lieutenant knew the task was his.
“I don’t have to tell you how crazy it’s been around here the past couple of months. It seems like every time I pull into the parking lot, the pool of reporters circling the building gets bigger and bigger. They’re looking to take giant chunks out of everyone’s ass around here, and so far they’re succeeding. This business with the mayor’s husband doesn’t just have people upset, they want badges. Thirty years in the department and I can’t remember a worse time to be here.”
I shifted in my chair again, bracing for the uncomfortable territory I was about to find myself in. The situation with Mayor Sonya Richmond and her husband Elliott made everyone around here uncomfortable. If we weren’t hearing their names every night on the news, we were hearing it from nearly every private citizen we encountered on the street. And the opinions were rarely complimentary. These days if someone spoke of the DPD, words like ‘murder’, ‘corrupt’, and ‘cover-up’ were never far behind. The media hounds had already come to the collective conclusion that the murmurs were true, without a shred of credible evidence to back up their assertions, and once the media decided it was true, so did the public. Hitchcock was right; it wasn’t a good time to be a Denver cop.
The lieutenant continued. “Latest word is that Elliott Richmond may be indicted on federal racketeering charges. As far as the other accusations that are being thrown out there, no one knows where that’s headed yet.”
“Not even the AG’s office?” I asked the man occupying my boss’s chair.
“All I can tell you, Detective Priest, is that we’re working on it. But we’re still a long way from where we want to be.”
“Which is where you come in,” the lieutenant said.
My chest suddenly felt heavy. “I’m not following, sir.”
Fitzgerald spoke. “Despite the situation with her husband, the mayor has been pushing for a thorough investigation into the rumors of rogue recruitment within the department. The top brass is saying all the right things, but there i
s reason to suspect at least some level of complicity from within those ranks.”
“Explain what you mean by complicity.”
“I’m afraid that’s not really relevant to this conversation,” the bureaucrat insisted.
“I disagree, Mr. Fitzgerald. I’m not exactly sure what information you’re sitting on in here, but the guys in that squad room, myself included, don’t have the first clue about what’s happening around here. We do know that some hired gun pretending to be a fellow police officer shot two detectives we were all close to, but nobody seems to be in a hurry to tell us why they were shot or who this so-called officer actually was. If we want any kind of update, we have to watch the news, and they’re basically making stuff up anyway. So when you tell me that complicity in the top brass is irrelevant to this conversation, you’re essentially saying that it’s acceptable for us to keep taking the heat for them. And if that’s the case, then the rest of this meeting is going to be an enormous waste of everybody’s time.”
“That’s the furthest thing from true,” Hitchcock declared.
“Maybe from your standpoint, lieutenant. But I don’t think the Attorney General here gives a rat’s ass about how bad it is for the average cop on the street right now.”
“That’s a rather pointed accusation, detective,” Fitzgerald barked. “And an insulting one.”
I had just opened my mouth to respond in what I was sure would be an inappropriate way when Hitchcock stopped me.
“I think we would be best served to keep this conversation constructive, gentlemen.”
I settled back in my chair, willing to let the inappropriate thoughts go for now.
“This isn’t going to work, Owen,” Fitzgerald mumbled to the lieutenant.
“Calm down, Robert. It will work.”
My frustration finally boiled over. “So have we finally come to the part where you tell me why I’m here?”
Hitchcock nodded. “As I said before, we need your help.”
“I got that. But what exactly do you need my help with?”
“We need your eyes,” Fitzgerald said.
Afraid of how I might react to the bureaucrat, I looked to Hitchcock for clarification.
“Those rumors of rogue recruitment that Mr. Fitzgerald referred to? Not only are they true, but the practice may be much more widespread than we realize. Exactly how high up the food chain it goes we still aren’t sure. But we have reason to suspect it goes pretty high. We also think it’s an issue that affects multiple units within the department, from patrol to narcotics to homicide.”
I cringed when I heard the word homicide. “I know every guy in that unit, lieutenant. And I can vouch for every single one of them.”
“Unfortunately we can’t,” Fitzgerald said bluntly.
“Look, I don't know what you're implying, but I think you'd—”
“I’m sorry Scott, but he’s right.”
“Okay, so the department is filled with dirty cops. Do you think I’m one of them?”
“Absolutely not,” Hitchcock said emphatically.
“Then what the hell am I supposed to do about it?”
“Help us find the ones who are.”
For the first time in a long time, I found myself speechless. I knew there was a reason to be nervous about this meeting, but never in a million years would I have imagined this. My first instinct was to walk out of the office without saying another word, but I was too staggered to move. Hitchcock took my inaction as his cue to continue.
“I know how this sounds.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“Trust me, I do. What I need you to do is at least hear me out before you come to any conclusions. Can you please do that?”
“I’m all ears,” I answered, wondering if the lack of conviction in my voice was as obvious to the lieutenant as it was to me.
“The truth is there isn’t anyone in this entire department, let alone the homicide unit, that I trust more than you. You care about the job, you care about the men and women in that squad room like they’re your family, and you care about that shield hanging around your neck and what it represents. Right now, it doesn’t represent anything positive, and that bugs the hell out of you. You think about it when you’re on the job, you think about it when you go home. You come in here blurry-eyed because it keeps you up at night. Am I wrong about any of this so far?”
My silent stare was all the confirmation that Hitchcock needed.
“I didn’t think so. I know this because it does the same thing to me. But guess what? Not everyone in that squad room feels the same way we do. It doesn’t mean they’re bad cops. Most of them haven’t taken a taste in their entire careers, but they know about the ones who do and they turn a blind eye to it. They see exactly what’s going wrong out there and they choose to do nothing to make it better. You’re one of the few who wants to make it better.”
“And this is your opportunity to do that,” Fitzgerald added.
Why he felt the need to even be here, let alone speak, was beyond my ability to comprehend, but voicing my confusion would do nothing to help the situation, so I acted as if he wasn’t there. “You know as well as I do what happens to rats in this place,” I said to Hitchcock.
“No one is asking you to be a rat.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Doing your part to make sure this department doesn’t drown.”
The lieutenant’s words played like a canned halftime speech, and so far, I wasn’t the least bit motivated.
“Is this your melodramatic way of offering me a position in Internal Affairs? Because if you are, I’m afraid I’ll have to not-so-politely decline.”
“IA has no stake in this particular investigation,” Fitzgerald declared.”
“I was asking him,” I shot back, pointing at my boss.
Hitchcock sighed. “Just like he said, Scott. This isn’t a matter for Internal Affairs.”
“Why not? These kinds of cases are the only reason those idiots even exist.”
“We have every reason to believe that the crisis extends to that unit as well.”
“Now we’re calling this a crisis?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Fitzgerald snapped back in what I could only assume was his tough-guy voice. “If you don’t see it as such, then perhaps you don’t have your finger on the pulse of things around here to the extent that your boss thinks you do.”
My hand involuntarily curled up as I finally turned to the bureaucrat with my full attention. “Since you insist on putting your two cents into this conversation at every turn, why don’t you tell me what the AG’s stake is in this investigation?”
Fitzgerald was silent as he leaned back in his chair.
“At this stage, he’s here as an independent observer. Nothing more,” Hitchcock offered.
I kept my eyes on Fitzgerald, not believing one word the lieutenant had just said. “Nothing more?”
“As of right now, this investigation is a DPD matter. My only concern is in making sure the right people are taking part in the investigation.”
“Given the fact that we’re having this conversation, I’m assuming you consider me the right people.”
“Absolutely,” Hitchcock affirmed.
“And have you approached anyone else about this?”
“Only you.”
“Do you plan on approaching anyone else?”
Hitchcock looked at the bureaucrat for a long beat before answering. “Only if you decline.”
I could already sense there was a lot more they weren’t telling me. “So if I accept this assignment, I’d essentially be a task force of one.”
“The less people involved the better,” Fitzgerald insisted.
The full gravity of the conversation was finally starting to sink in and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “I’m a homicide detective, lieutenant. Isn’t this a tad above my pay-grade?”
“Yes it is. And that’s why you were the perfect person
to approach,” Fitzgerald said. “You’re among the most trusted and respected members of the department. No one would ever see you coming.”
“And you don’t see anything wrong with asking me to betray that trust?”
“We’re not asking you to betray anything,” Hitchcock maintained.
“You’re asking me to betray everything. You know as well as I do that if my participation in a corruption investigation of fellow officers ever got out, I’d be black-flagged for the rest of my life. There wouldn’t be another department in the entire country that would so much as sniff me.”
For the first time I saw something in the lieutenant’s narrow blue eyes that looked like hesitation. “It will never come to that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because you aren’t actually investigating anyone. We are. All you’re doing is collecting intel that can be used to assist us.”
“Most of the guys out there would consider that being a rat.”
Hitchcock leaned in close. “Well in here we would consider it helping to rid our department of internal elements that could destroy it.”
“Again with the dramatics,” I said with a sarcasm designed to mask my mounting fear that the lieutenant was right.
“There is nothing dramatic about it, Scott.”
“Okay, so are you going to tell me what this internal element is?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you haven’t accepted.”
I sat back in my chair as a thousand thoughts simultaneously raced through my head. I couldn’t grasp onto a single one. “So what’s the first thing that happens if I accept?”
Fitzgerald answered. “We fully debrief you.”
“And how much time would I have to consider it?”
“Not a lot,” Hitchcock said.
“I need something.”
“Okay, twenty-four hours. That means we would reconvene here tomorrow morning at,” he glanced at his watch, “Seven forty-five.”
The Rogue Element (Scott Priest Book 1) Page 1