“It is far too early to tell yet. He is in an induced coma for now. He hit his head pretty hard when he fell. At his age it is going to be a real struggle I’m afraid. I sure hope you get the animals that did this,” he said.
“We have them in custody.”
“Good. I hope they string them up by their thumbs,” he said.
He directed us to where Mr. Waters' granddaughter and grandson were waiting. His grandson was a big strapping guy. Maybe an inch taller than Dan who is right at six-one. He looked like he had been chiseled out of stone. We spent a few minutes talking to them but honestly there wasn’t much we could do for them at this point.
“Any chance they are the wrong guys?”
“Not according to the witnesses. We are facing one small problem at this point, at least it could be.”
Stan, the grandson asked, “What kind of problem?”
“It could be nothing but I’m sure their attorney will make a big deal out of how the witnesses can recognize them but can’t remember a thing about the guy that shot them.”
“Is this going to be one of those race things?” he asked.
“I hope not but you know how attorneys are,” was all I said.
“Any chance I could talk to them for a few minutes?”
“What do you think Dan?” I asked my partner.
“Probably not a good idea. We don’t need any more people to arrest.”
“I think Dan is right. The best thing you can do is pray for your grandfather,” I told him.
***
When we got back to the station almost every detective was in the conference room watching a computer monitor.
“What?” I said to Dan.
“Hey, it beats me. Guess we should go see.”
“Angie, Dan. You guys need to see this,” the captain told us.
“Play it again. Watch this. It is unbelievable.”
It was on YouTube and started off with Jamar ‘fangs’ Soto filming himself with what I assume was his phone.
Fangs: This is gonna’ be so cool. You just watch BD smack this old white dude down. He is gonna be o..u..t, out.
He then cuts to Mr. Waters as he is walking slowly along.
Fangs: This is my man ‘Big T’, he gonna be the driver. Gonna give that ole cracker a little boost, you know what I mean?
It quickly changes to Tyrone ‘Big T’ Lippton coming up behind Mr. Waters. The next part shows Kyreen ‘Bad Dude’ ‘BD’ Johnson walking toward Mr. Waters.
Fangs: Now this is one bad dude. This is BD. He gonna lay that white boy out so he don’t know what done happened.
It changes to Big T as he gives Mr. Waters a big shove in the back and Kyreen swings a roundhouse catching Mr. Waters in the face. He falls face down obviously seriously hurt. Blood is spreading from his nose as he lays there.
Tyrone: Whoa damn, he done laid that sucker out. Man that old fart ain’t even moving. You one bad dude BD.
The next two minutes is nothing but filth, bragging and trash talking telling each other how tough they were. They take a few shots of Mr. Waters lying in a spreading pool of blood.
The movie flickers a few seconds and then they were looking at the same three guys, lying on the ground, blood spreading out from where they had been shot in the knee. All three are yelling and crying. You can just see the barrel of a gun come into the picture as he shoots first one then the other in the elbow. The shooter leans down even closer to shoot ‘Bad Dude’ in the elbow. You can almost see the arm separate as the elbow is shattered. Then the screen goes blank. They all just sat there a few seconds before saying anything.
“Wow,” I finally said.
“And then some,” McGregor added, “Come to my office. I want to discuss this.”
I have to tell you, a thousand things were racing through my mind. First this was a race crime. They intentionally looked for a ‘cracker’. Second, there is no doubt about the identity of the perps. Third was with it being on YouTube, it was going to be almost impossible to pick a jury. This was going to be a nation event of major proportions. All the elements were there for an explosive situation. Fourth, no matter what we did, it would be dissected and second guessed every step of the way.
McGregor closed the door and we sat down on the old leather couch.
“I guess you know how ugly this is going to get?” he said.
“Captain, this is one time if you wanted to pull me off a case, I wouldn’t complain.”
“Oh no you don’t Bartoni. We are in this together. This is the last thing I need at the moment.”
“So what do we do? I mean I have a suggestion but I’m sure you are going to think I have lost my ever lovin’ mind.”
“It can’t get much worse. What?’
“I should go talk to the DA and see what he thinks. I'll lay it out and let him give us some direction,” I said.
“What? This coming from the woman who called the DA a wuss to his face? Now you want to go talk to him?”
“I see it as sort of CYA. If they have a say in how we handle it, they can’t cry later.”
“You play nice with Peters,” he admonished.
CHAPTER THREE
Carl Peters is the DA and I have crossed swords with him in the past. Yeah, I did call him a wuss which wasn’t one of my better moves but we seemed to have gotten past that.
“So these guys knock Mr. Waters out, and they are making a video of it. It gets posted on YouTube along with a clip showing the other guy shooting the three perpetrators. Does that about sum it up?” Carl asked.
“Pretty much, along with the fact that every witness could identify the three black guys and not a one could even remember the shooters' skin color.”
“How is that possible?”
“They don’t want him found. These three guys have done this before and they are sick of it. They see it as justice.”
“What justice? We can’t have people going around taking the law into their own hands,” he replied.
“That’s not really the biggest problem as I see it,” I said.
“No, I guess you’re right. For now we have to get that video off the air ASAP.”
“Already taken care of or at least working on it. I had Eric take care of getting it pulled and while that helps, over one million viewers saw it before we could get a handle on it.”
“Oh that’s just great. So every Tom, Dick, and Harry knows what went down.”
“Pretty much.”
“And we have absolutely nothing on the shooter?”
“Just the descriptions I gave you. No two match. We can’t even be certain about his hair color or what he had on. They are all covering for him. They see him as a hero.
“You know the press is going to be all over this,” Carl said.
“Absolutely. I suggest you get ahead of the curve and hold a press conference and try to quell any ugly stuff before it happens.”
“Okay but I want you to go back and re-interview each witness and see if their stories are the same.”
“I can tell you right now the biggest response we will get is it happened so fast I just don’t remember,” I told him.
“I know it’s a pain but that way if the press asks if we have done an extensive investigation we can say we have talked to everyone twice. Then I can ask for the public’s help,” Carl said.
“Okay, just as long as you don’t really expect anything to come out of the interviews.”
“I’m aware it is a long shot.”
“Do you want the captain to be there with you at the press conference?”
“If it wouldn’t inconvenience you, I would like to have you there to field any questions I can’t answer about the investigation.”
I looked at him to see if he was yanking my chain but he seemed sincere.
“I can do that. Dan and I will both be there,” I replied.
“That would be excellent.”
Someone pinch me, metaphorically I mean. He was actually being rather pleasant.
***
I gathered up my partner who was stuffing junk food from the vending machine down his throat. I’ve learned never to get too close when he is eating. I could get sucked right in. The man is the black hole of food. Nothing can escape once it gets too close.
“You ready yet?” I asked once he burped.
Men are so rude. It would never occur to me to stuff a bunch of food down my throat, let out a burp, and then act pleased about it. I was finally able to drag him down stairs and we set out to go re-interview the witnesses.
At each house where we found people home it was pretty much the same story. Either they professed hardly any knowledge and had just been trying to put it out of their minds or they could hardly remember it taking place at all. A couple witnesses did give almost the same version with only slight variations. I told one couple, probably in their seventies, that they might be eligible for a reward if they could identify the suspect and he was convicted.
“Well ma’am we already got the reward,” the husband said.
“Excuse me?”
“Having those thugs off the streets is more than enough reward for us,” he told me while his wife was nodding ‘yes’ the whole time.
“You know what he did was against the law. You can’t just shoot people.”
“Don’t the police shoot people?” he asked.
“That’s different and you know it,” I said.
“Is it? He actually did your job for you. The way I see it, he deserves the reward for doing what he did. Do you know what the average response time is when you call 911? I’ll tell you. It's around nineteen minutes. Could you have caught these scums in nineteen minutes? Or nineteen hours? They have been doing this for going on four weeks and you were no closer to catching them than the man in the moon. You owe this guy big time. If Mr. Waters lives, it will be because of him stopping this trash from doing it again someday.”
“Obviously I am not going to change your mind and you are not going to help us. The DA said we could have the witnesses charged for withholding information and hindering the police,” I told him.
“And there you have why people don’t tell the cops squat. You go after the wrong people. If you spent more time looking for people like those three pukes and less time harassing the victims you would get a lot more cooperation. Now I told you, I don’t have anything further to add. You want to charge me, give it your best shot. Otherwise, leave us alone,” he said, getting up and opening the door.
***
“Wow, I’m impressed,” Dan said when we got to the car, “I half expected you to go off on him.”
“Why? He’s right. Threatening someone about not cooperating is a stupid idea, especially in this case. I don’t know what they really saw. Hell one of them could have told us the truth and how would we know? When you get that many different stories, how do you determine who is telling the truth and who is lying?” I replied.
“Still, I though he was going to trip your trigger at any time.”
“Dan, just between you and I, the truth is, I think he stepped over the line shooting them twice. I get what he was doing. By shooting them in the elbow he was making sure they would never do something like that again but both the knee and elbow was over the top. Also videoing it is a bit much as well. He could have come up with a plausible defense if he had shot them once but standing over them and shooting them while they are lying on the ground is going too far.”
“So do what do we tell the DA?” Dan asked.
“That we got nothing useful, just as we expected. Threatening them is a huge waste of time. If this is going to be solved it will be done the old fashioned way with lots of leg work and running down leads. Maybe the appeal by the DA will get us some response.”
“Oh we will get a response alright but not the kind we want,” Dan told me.
“That is a distinct possibility.”
“Back to the station?”
“Sounds right unless you have a better suggestion,” I answered.
He didn’t.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was cold or at least I was cold. Something about a drizzly day always makes me feel like it is colder than it really is. Add in a slight wind and I was miserable waiting for the dog and pony show to be over with. The press was assembled and everyone was just grumbling as we waited for the DA to show up.
He finally came dashing out of the building and went to the microphones after handing me a note.
“Sorry ladies and gentlemen, I had an urgent issue come up so I will get right to the point of the press conference. Obviously this concerns the shooting of the three men accused of participating in what is being termed ‘The Knock Out Game’ where some unsuspecting person is knocked out by either an individual or a gang. It is usually perpetrated on older people or women. This is done by cowards that are trying to tell themselves they are tough. As you know this happened recently with an eighty–five year old victim by the name of Mr. James Waters. Mr. Waters was walking along when three men decided to make him a target. They even went so far as to film the event and as one shoved Mr. Waters from behind, the other person hit him in the face.
There is no disputing the facts of the case since it is all captured on video, filmed by one of the assailants. I have just received word that Mr. Waters died a few minutes ago. Mr. Waters was a Korean War Veteran and was highly decorated, receiving two purple hearts along with the distinguished service cross. This case is now officially a homicide. Making matters more complicated is the fact that an unknown citizen who apparently witnessed the assault decided to take matters into his own hands and shot the three assailants. Evidently they decided to post both the assault by the three men and then him dealing out what he must consider as justice.
After extensive interviews with witnesses, we have conflicting evidence and have not yet been able to get an accurate description of the perpetrator of the shootings. Detectives Bartoni and Roberts are heading up the investigation and are currently running down leads in hopes of finding the person responsible for the shootings.
Ladies and gentlemen, the DA’s office can simply not condone this type of vigilante action no matter how justified it may seem to some. We are urging anyone with information about this person to come forward. While to some he may seem like a hero, he has in fact taken the law into his own hands. We simply cannot have that type of person on the loose in our city. We have a dedicated police force that is charged with maintaining our safety; individual citizens do not have the authority or training to handle these types of situations. Now I will take your questions,” he said.
“Are you telling us that with a dozen witnesses you have nothing to go on?”
“What we have so far is twelve different descriptions of the person, the car and the type of weapon used.”
“So they are intentionally misleading you?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that eye witnesses are often confused when they suddenly find themselves in this kind of stressful situation. They tend to see the horror unfolding but miss many of the actual details.”
“You’re telling us than none of the twelve could give you an accurate description,” a woman reporter asked.
“I’m telling you that in a situation you are not prepared for, it can be quite stressful.”
“So they don’t trust the cops to get the person,” she quipped.
“If I may?” I said to the DA.
He gave me the deer in the headlights look. I knew he was thinking oh my goodness if Bartoni goes off on her we will be eaten alive in the press. The problem was, there was no graceful way for him to say no.
“You’re Barbra Kelli, from the Channel 9 aren’t you?”
“You know who I am Detective Bartoni,” she said.
We have had a couple of spats in the past and didn’t particularly care for each other.
“Ms. Kelli, you know your camera man pretty well don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“You rode o
ver together for this conference didn’t you?’
“So?”
“So, without looking to your right, what color of jacket does he have on? What color are his shoes? Does he have a blue or black tee shirt on?”
“That’s not the same thing,” she shot back.
“You don’t know do you?”
“These people were looking at the man when he shot them. That is hardly the same thing,” she said angrily.
“Okay, take a look at him. Then look back at me.”
She didn’t like it but the others were watching and she was on the spot so she looked at him. I let her get a good look before I asked her to turn back around.
“What brand of tennis shoes is he wearing?”
“What? Shoes? You asked about his shirt and jacket.”
“But you looked right at him. Does he have a belt on? Where are his sunglasses?”
“This is ridicules,” she said obviously getting madder by the second.
“No Ms. Kelli, it is a lesson on how people respond when put into a situation that is not usual for them. They see things or at least think they do. They miss things. The mind plays tricks on them and they often see what they want to see. That is exactly what happened with you. You were under pressure from your peers. Unspoken, but nevertheless you knew they were watching to see how this was all going to play out. That is exactly what we are facing,” I told her.
Her face was red but she didn’t say another word. I stepped back and let Peters finish the questions. Strangely enough no one asked another question about the witnesses. Imagine that.
***
“You know you made a real enemy out there today,” the DA said as we walked back inside after it was all over.
“We weren’t friends to begin with. She is a hack. She always has her own agenda. She isn’t a reporter; she is a crusader for her own interest. We were going to be toast no matter what was said. She is always negative about what we are doing. I have never once seen her report on the victims. It’s always about the mistreatment of the criminal and how abused they are.”
Victim's Advocate: Angie Bartoni Case Flie # 12 (Angie Bartoni Case Files) Page 2