The Betrayers

by James Patrick Hunt

  “But I’ve already found a nice girl.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  Terry stepped in and put his hands on her arms. “I have,” he said and kissed her.

  She kissed him back and for a moment stopped thinking and let it become passionate. For a moment, she wished she were in an alternate universe or life where this could continue and they could eat together and rent movies together and be lovers and husband and wife and mother and father. But then she remembered that it could only be a fantasy and she pushed him back.

  “Don’t do that again,” she said, her voice shaking. “Please.”

  She hurried to her car, leaving him standing alone in the parking lot. A few minutes after they both drove their vehicles off the lot, the lights of a black Pontiac, parked on the other side, came on as its engine started. Dillon shifted the car into gear and drove away.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Dillon met May Connelly at a party at Jerry Doyle’s house a couple of years after he got out of prison. Blonde and long-legged, she was the kind of girl he had thought about when he was locked up. A magazine girl come to life. She told him that she admired Princess Diana and that her favorite movie was Grease. He set her up in an apartment on the Gold Coast and gave her a black Trans Am. She was twenty-three when he met her.

  When she was twenty-eight, he found out she was running around with another guy. A car salesman. When he confronted her about it, she admitted it and told him that he, Dillon, was a great guy, but she wanted to start a new life. Maybe the car salesman would marry her, maybe he wouldn’t, but she thought it was best that she and Dillon stop seeing each other.

  Dillon said she should do whatever made her happy.

  The next night, he took May Connelly to his house and strangled her to death. With Jimmy’s help, they buried her in the northern woods of Wisconsin.

  Jimmy Rizza had never asked Dillon to explain why they were doing this. Dillon told Jimmy that May was planning to leave him. That was enough.

  On this night, Dillon had seen Sharon kiss another man. Just some yutz driving a Dodge minivan. What was that? What was wrong with her? Dillon had never told her about killing the deputy, never spoke of it aloud. But she had to have known he was involved in it. She wasn’t dumb. Having known about that, why would she run around with this piece of shit?

  No, she was not dumb. Just ungrateful. He paid her mortgage and helped her out and she was fooling around with some cluck driving a minivan. At least May had been honest about things, had admitted what she was doing and told him she was going to leave him.

  Although, that in itself offended Dillon. The idea that May could just tell him it was over. Like she was the one in control. Stupid bitch. Stupid ungrateful whore. Sharon, in contrast, was lying to him. Again. Keeping things from him. Again. Betraying him.

  Well.

  It would have to be done now. She would have to be killed and made to disappear. And the kids too. The kids had seen him at the house. There was no way around it. He’d feel better if they were all in Chicago. The northern woods of Wisconsin were a short drive from there. It would be a long drive from here. He and Jimmy would have to take turns at the wheel.

  THIRTY

  There were three black and white county patrol cars and one highway patrol cruiser at the IHOP on Lindbergh Boulevard. A common “Signal 13” for law enforcement. Lunch.

  Deputy Damon Jacobs was sitting inside with other deputies among plates with oversized portions and buttered toast. The uniformed deputies regarded the plainclothes detectives as they approached the table. Obligatory handshakes were exchanged and then Jacobs walked to another table with Hastings and Murph.

  Damon Jacobs said, “What can I do for you?”

  Hastings said, “It’s my understanding you were a close friend of Chris Hummel’s.”

  “That’s right. I was best man at his wedding. And we went through academy together.”

  Hastings said, “What was your personal impression of him?”

  Damon Jacobs said, “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  “He was a good officer,” Jacobs said. “Conscientious, smart … honest. You hearing something different?”

  “Yeah,” Hastings said. “From the people he put in jail. But I want to know what you think.”

  The deputy looked at the detectives one at a time, then looked back at Hastings. “What is this?” he said.

  Murph said, “We’re not here to trash him. We’re homicide, okay. Not I.A. We’re trying to find out if there was some personal reason someone had for killing him.”

  Deputy Jacobs said, “Personal? I’d say he took it very personally.”

  Hastings said, “You want to help us or not?”

  Jacobs said, “Okay. I already told you: Chris Hummel was clean. He did not steal. He did not take freebies. That doesn’t mean he was perfect. But he was a clean cop.”

  Hastings said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he was immature. He took a while to grow up.” Jacobs said, “You how know how young cops are.”

  Murph said, “You mean he was fucking around on his wife.”

  “Yeah.”

  Hastings said, “Who with?”

  “Aww, there were a lot of girls. There was a girl who worked in dispatch. Tracy something or other … . Walsh. Tracy Walsh. There was a probation and parole officer. Her name was Brama or Ramma or something. There was a nurse he used to see when he worked security at the hospital.”

  Hastings said, “Do you remember her name?”

  Deputy Jacobs signaled to another deputy. He came over to the table. His identification strip on his pocket said his name was Fuchs.

  “Roy,” Jacobs said. “Who was that nurse Chris used to run around with, worked at Southcrest?”

  “You mean Trudy?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Trudy. She still at Southcrest?”

  “Last I heard.”

  Hastings said, “Trudy what?”

  The deputies sought answers in each other’s expressions until one said “West” and the other one said, “Yeah, Trudy West.”

  There was a smile on Roy Fuchs’s face when he hit the name, and it was not lost on Hastings.

  Hastings said to the deputies, “This Trudy West, she been with other cops?”

  Jacobs waited until Fuchs left and spoke in a different tone to the detectives.

  “Yeah, but … hey,” he said, “I want to make it clear that Chris stopped the running around over a year ago. He really did. His old lady actually filed divorce papers on him and he went to her on his knees, literally, and begged her to take him back. And she did. Now you can call him a pussy for doing that, but I wouldn’t.”

  Hastings said, “She took him back?”

  “Yeah. Last year. Listen,” Jacobs said, “the man just spent over forty thousand dollars fixing up their house. Would a man do that if he was planning to leave his wife?”

  “He might,” Murph said.

  “Well,” Jacobs said, “he wasn’t.”

  “Okay,” Hastings said. He motioned to Murph that they were finished. They stood and Hastings said to the deputy, “How did you know Hummel was paying to have his house redecorated? Did he tell you?”

  Jacobs said, “He told everybody.”

  In the car, Murph said, “So the man ran around on his wife. So fucking what?”

  Hastings turned to regard the man. He said, “You mad at me, Murph?”

  “No, I’m not mad at you. I just don’t like this. This gets out and it embarrasses him, his family. What does it have to do with anything?”

  “It might have plenty to do with it. We keep checking for things related to the man’s work, but we can’t ignore the personal. You know that.”

  “So two cops get machine-gunned because one of them can’t keep his pants on?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he banged the wrong girl. An angry boyfriend. Or husband.”

  “Machine guns, George. That was a prof
essional hit.”

  “Then maybe it was a professional’s girlfriend.”

  “Maybe,” Murph said. Though he didn’t seem too sure about it.

  “Hey,” Hastings said, “did you ever hear about that Tulsa homicide with the bow and arrow?”

  “No.”

  “This cop’s wife was divorcing him, sleeping with another guy. So he decided to kill her. While he was on duty, he crept to her window and killed her with a bow and arrow.”

  “A bow and arrow?”

  “Yeah. He was a hunter, apparently.”

  “Fucking barbarian. Why didn’t he just use a gun?”

  “I don’t know,” Hastings said. “Guess he wanted to use the bow and arrow. It’s a silent weapon. Anyway, like I said, the dumbass did this while he was on break while on duty. So he’s gone for half an hour. His partner got questioned and …”

  “Wouldn’t cover for him?”

  “He covered for him. For about a day. But then caved after they leaned on him, or got a good lawyer, and said, no, he could not account for his partner’s whereabouts for at least thirty minutes.”

  “So they got him?”

  “Yeah, they got him.”

  Hastings waited for a light to change from red to green. When it did, he moved the Jag forward and shifted over to the right lane to take the entrance ramp to I-64.

  “Okay,” Murph said, “what’s the point?”

  “I don’t know,” Hastings said, “I was just thinking about it.”

  “That a cop can go bad? Is that the point?”

  “No,” Hastings said. “The point is that everyone has a secret life. Or another life. The one outside of work that we think we know, but we don’t. That cop in Tulsa, he was working in law enforcement and he wanted to impale the mother of his children with an arrow, for Christ’s sake. I’ll bet no one he worked with thought he was capable of that.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. That partner of his may have been wise.”

  Hastings shrugged. He said, “I want you and Rhodes to examine what Hummel was doing the week before this shooting.”

  “You mean off duty?”

  “No. On duty. Get the dispatch logs and the tapes of the radio calls. Check them thoroughly. I want to know every place those guys went and when.”

  “You mean, while on duty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Murph said. They rode in silence for a while.

  And Murph said, “You’re going to talk to these women Jacobs told you about it?”

  “All three,” Hastings said. “Kind of like The Dating Game.”

  “Well,” Murph said, “you should interview them separately, though.”

  Hastings looked at the detective for four seconds before saying, “Yeah, okay.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  At a station north of Springfield, Illinois, Regan used cash to pay for the gasoline. He was driving a light blue Mercury Marquis. He started the car, let the engine settle as he hesitated for a moment. He drove the car to the side of the building where the convenience store employees parked. He stopped the car there and put it in park and leaned back and closed his eyes.

  He had not slept since leaving Max Collins’s house the night before. It had taken him that long to line up the car and traveling money and new weapons. When he was younger, he would take speed to keep himself awake. Whiskey later to come down. Ping-pong. He had stopped doing that, had learned to listen to his body when it told him he needed to sleep.

  He closed his eyes and thought of Mike Dillon. A job in Louisville. One of Mike’s friends had partnered with a businessman. Big Barney’s Car Wash. Though the guy in Louisville was named Barry, not Barney. He liked Big Barney better, he said. Though Dillon had said the guy thought his own name sounded too Jewish. Barry Donfin, that had been the guy’s name. Dillon said Barry had been taking more than his share of the profits. Or hiding things. Or maybe Barry Donfin had just rubbed Dillon the wrong way. Dillon could be like that. He had once killed a guy because the guy kept calling him “Rex.” Jimmy Rizza told Regan the guy should have known better, which explained nothing. Regan took half of Dillon’s forty thousand and drove to Louisville through the night. He waited in the parking lot of a country club for Barry Donfin to come out. Waited until Barry bent over the trunk of a beige Cadillac to put his golf clubs in, then shot Barry three times with a high-powered rifle.

  He was off the parking lot seconds after Barry slumped to the ground. Easy. Returned to Chicago and picked up the rest of his fee from Dillon.

  No. Regan had never had any personal trouble with Dillon.

  Or Jimmy Rizza, for that matter. It would not be accurate to say they were friends. They knew each other, grew up in circumstances not dissimilar. To the degree nature allowed, they even understood each other. There were differences between them, and Regan liked to think he recognized those differences. Jack Regan was, too, a born killer. But he was selective and he was careful. He was good at killing, but he did not do it without purpose. He would not kill someone for calling him a mick or a faggot or a piece of shit or “Rex.” For Dillon and Rizza, the insults and double crosses gave them an opportunity to let blood flow. And where these opportunities did not exist, they could be very imaginative in creating them.

  Regan regretted that Jimmy had sent his brother after him. It meant that Regan had no choice but to kill not only Sean but, now, Jimmy as well. He had planned to simply meet with Jimmy and ask him where Dillon was. He had little doubt that Jimmy would know this. And he had also believed that Jimmy would not hesitate to give up Mike. Irish, Italian, Russian … whatever. All these guys eventually ratted each other out. The Italian pricking of fingers and sharing of blood and the Irishman’s talk of Dublin and the famine and the year God forgot Ireland, it was all silly. Human nature was human nature and blarney was blarney and brothers were brothers. Jimmy would know by now that Regan had killed Sean and there was nothing that was going to change that. Jimmy would now want to kill him and there would be no reasoning with him.

  None of this bothered Regan on any personal level. To his way of thinking, it was Jimmy who had crossed the line, Jimmy who had brought his brother into it.

  Ah, Regan thought, forget these things. For now.

  He opened his eyes and closed them again and concentrated on the sound of trucks rolling by in the distance. Within minutes he was asleep.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Senior probation and parole officer Brahma Jones asked if he was going to read her the Garrity warning.

  Hastings said, “Garrity? This isn’t a disciplinary investigation.”

  Brahma Jones said, “It’s not, huh?”

  And Hastings saw it coming.

  “No,” he said, “it’s not.”

  Brahma Jones said, “Then I ain’t got a fucking thing to say to you.”

  She was a short, heavy woman, a roll of tummy hanging over her belt. Chris Hummel had been skinny. Hastings looked at her and an unpleasant image of the two of them formed in his mind, and he quickly escorted it to the door.

  They were in the break room of the local probationary office, Hastings sitting at a table with this woman who was getting tough with him for some reason.

  Hastings said, “What are you concerned about?”

  The woman said, “First of all, I’m married.”

  Hastings shrugged. “Hummel was married too.”

  “You’re missing the point,” she said. “I don’t fool around.”

  “Officer,” Hastings said, “this is a criminal investigation. You are not the target of this investigation. You want to plead the fifth even though you’re only a witness, I can’t stop you. But if you do that, I’ll go straight to your supervisor and tell him you refused to cooperate with me on a murder investigation of a brother officer. And I’ll back it up with a letter that I will insist be placed in your personnel file. Now if you tell me that nothing was going on and it’s true, then we’re done and you have my apologies. But if you lie to me, even on
ce, I will hammer you.”

  The woman stared at him, not having the strength to show anger.

  “It’s not your business,” she said.

  “If it relates to his murder, it’s very much my business.”

  “It doesn’t relate to it. Not one bit.”

  “I’ll make that determination, officer. Are we clear?”

  “I—”

  “Are we clear?”

  “Yes. Lieutenant.” She stated his rank like it was something you step on.

  Hastings said, “Let me say for the record, I don’t give a shit if you slept with him in his mother’s bed. I’m not here to judge you. And this is not an internal affairs investigation. But—people saw you together. And they formed impressions about it.” He said, “Were those impressions wrong?”

  “I’m married,” she said.

  “Were those impressions wrong?”

  The woman looked away from him. “No,” she said, “they’re not wrong.”

  Hastings eased back, a little. He said, “Did your husband know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you absolutely sure of that?”

  “Yes. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

  “I understand your husband works for St. Charles PD. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where he was the night of the murders?”

  “He was on duty. In St. Charles. It’s miles away.”

  “Okay,” Hastings said. “And you?”

  “I was doing home visits to offenders. It’s in my logs. You want to question the people I visited, go ahead.”

  “Okay.”

  After a moment, Brahma Jones said, “You don’t actually think I killed him, do you?”

  “No. I just need to check things off.”

  The woman said, “Man, you are reaching.”

  She was trying to get something back now because he had threatened her. Hastings ignored it. He said, “What did you think of Chris?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, was he nice, was he cruel? Did he ever scare you or hurt you?”