Moratorium

by Chuck Sampson

  It was the kind of day you would want to meet your sweetheart and go sail boating, not witness the brutal slaying of a beautiful girl. Cyrus turned to go back into the door of the guard house. He didn’t make it. The strangely familiar face registered in his mind and he remembered- Evie. His legs became rubbery and he was shaking all over; he felt his stomach churning like a blender. He leaned against the wall, and heaved.

  Evie was his first and only spy as well as his first and only lover. She was a courier actually. Sending messages back and forth between sides. Everyone knew who she was, but no one knew for certain who she worked for. As far as Cyrus was concerned, who her boss was didn’t matter. He would’ve lived in East Germany with her if that was the way she wanted it. He couldn’t believe she had done such a dangerously stupid thing. Someone high up the food chain must have made her believe crossing the death strip was safe, or else she would not have tried to do it. A last minute revenge by the Stazie, he surmised. They could see that everything was about to come unraveled and probably figured out her part in the debacle. At least now he knew who she had been working for.

  From then on, everything was clear to him and all his plans changed. He decided not to go to law school and switched his major from law to criminal justice. He decided he wanted to stop bad people from hurting good people and to hell with standing operational procedures.

  Once he graduated from college, he went to work for the Long Beach PD. That was twenty years ago.

  And even now as he got dressed, he still wanted to be a good cop. It was all he had. There was no one else, except his mother. He never had the time. Being a cop was not a nine to five routine. Homicide had swallowed up his whole life. If it hadn’t been for a couple indiscretions on his part while he was stationed in Germany, he would have been a forty five year old virgin. It wasn’t because he didn’t like women; he just could never imagine having a wife and kids. Not without Evie. And a mistress, well that kind of thing just wasn’t his style. He was an and all or nothing kind of person, a “true blue odie”, his buddies in the Army would call him, half mocking and half in admiration.

  This morning he was tired and worn down. That car wreck was one close call too many. Maybe Max was right, too, maybe I’m too shook up over the Nichols case and prejudiced against the beach boy, Mathers. For God’s sake, Cyrus said to himself, the kid saved your life and all you could do to repay him was send him to jail.

  Cyrus was at his desk less than five minutes before Rudy called and asked him into his office. He got out his notes from the night before and went over them. Names, dates, and times, it was all there. As he walked down the hall toward Rudy’s office, he frowned. It wasn’t going to be easy to tell Rudy that his prime suspect in the biggest case since Nichols had just become a hometown hero-again.

  “Come on in Cyrus and sit down.”

  Cyrus sat in the chair in front of his desk. Rudy looked tired, his eyes were red from lack of sleep and his shirt was wrinkled, like he’d been sleeping with it on. There were three Styrofoam cups half filled with coffee on his desk. Rudy leaned back in his chair and said, “I am glad Max and you are ok and I’m especially glad Mathers isn’t hurt.” Rudy looked as though he had been up all night. He rubbed his face and blinked his eyes a couple of times, “Are you O.K. enough to be working? I wouldn’t mind if you took a day off after yesterday. I was up myself most of the night with Max.”

  “Yeah, Rudy I’m all right, just a few bruises. How’s Max?”

  “He looked pretty beat up to me. But the doctors let him go anyway. He’s so stubborn he came to work this morning even after I ordered him not to. So tell me Cyrus, is this guy Mathers a hero?”

  “Sure is. He wouldn’t get out of the cruiser until he got Max and me out.”

  “How’d he get out of his handcuffs?”

  “I don’t know, but what’s it matter?”

  Rudy nodded, “So where does that leave us, is this guy -guilty or not?”

  “Hero or not, the facts are still the facts, we have the murder weapon-”

  Rudy slapped the coffee cups off his desk and stood up, “I don’t care about the damn facts Cyrus, what’s your gut telling you?”

  Cyrus bit his lip. He wasn’t going to respond to Rudy’s dramatics. He wasn’t going to take the bait. “What’s my gut got to do with anything?” Cyrus replied in an even tone. “Mathers is a good collar we have a reliable, respectable eyewitness. We got his fingerprints on the murder weapon-”

  “Sure, sure, I know all that. You’ve been a cop twenty years, Fleming. What I want to know is this guy a murderer or not?”

  “Isn’t that up to the jury?”

  “I guess. I just don’t want to hand over another case to the DA that blows up in their face.” Rudy held his hands up to his head and sat back down. “Cyrus, I wasn’t there, but you were. You saw this kid in action. Tell me are we screwing up or what?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is the kid saved mine and Max’s life. I can’t believe he’d murder anyone, especially for money. I realize that now.”

  “So is the eyewitness lying?”

  “I don’t think so. She seemed pretty convincing to me. She works as a secretary for Dick Carswell. She didn’t know Dana Mathers, so I don’t see why she would want to frame him.”

  “Then who did she see at the beach swat Tanner on the head with a baseball bat?”

  “She never said that Rudy.”

  “She never said what?”

  “She never said she saw Dana hit Mike Tanner with a bat. She said saw Dana standing over Mike’s corpse holding the bat.”

  “O.K., so which is it, Cyrus? Murderer or hero?”

  “I don’t know.” Cyrus shook his head, “He could be a killer, but not a murderer. There is a difference. Dana must have been defending himself and he killed him by accident. Then he tried to cover it up.”

  “Aw com’on, the guy is six foot three and built like a brick wall, why would he need a bat to protect himself from a little guy like Tanner?”

  “Just because the guy is small doesn’t mean he can’t put up a good fight. Size in a fight matters, but not as much as you might think.”

  “I don’t know. A guy that big running around with a bat for protection… seems a little odd. The kid lied to you didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, that story about the spare tire doesn’t make sense. He had scrapes and cuts on his hands just like he’d been in a fight. The wounds were fresh too. He must have smacked that Tanner kid with the bat for a good reason is all I know.”

  “Well if that’s the case, why doesn’t he just tell us? He can’t be worried that no one would believe him. Even if we didn’t, any jury the DA picked sure would.”

  “He’s not a lawyer, he doesn’t know that. Besides, he killed his fiancé’s brother. He probably doesn’t want to admit that to her. He told me after the accident that he was being framed.”

  “And you don’t believe him because of the eyewitness?”

  “That and all the other physical evidence. She doesn’t know him. She has no reason to lie about seeing him there that I know of. Besides, the only enemy he had who would want to frame him is the victim. He’s just scared.”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway, once the press finds out about his heroics, his release is a done deal, no jury in this town is going to convict him. And that’s if the DA doesn’t drop the case just to save the State the embarrassment. I hope you got a lot of money in your 401K. I got a feeling after this fiasco the DA is going to force our department to go through another re-organization, if you know what I mean.”

  Cyrus was about to tell him that he was going to quit after this case anyway, when the phone rang. Rudy showed him the palm of his hand and picked up to the receiver. After listening for a couple of minutes he said, “Bernie wants us to come down to his office and inspect the tie-rod piece he got from your sabotaged cruiser. Let’s go.”

  Bernie met them in the hallway just outside his door. He was carrying one of the cruiser’s
tie rod pieces with him to show Rudy and Cyrus. Bernie shook his head as he spoke, “Professional work,” he said, holding the two pieces of tie rod up so they could see, “You really have to be an expert in thermal mechanics to know exactly how hot to heat this metal. Too high and the front wheel collapses as soon as you leave the curb, not high enough and you can drive forever.”

  Cyrus took the tie-rod pieces from Bernie and looked it over. Then he said, “We probably would have made it to the jail house if I hadn’t hit the accelerator like I did.”

  “That’s right. The preciseness of the work is how we know it was done by a professional using a high tech laser welding tool.” Bernie pointed to the place on the tie-rod where the blue-tinted section and the normal, dark-grey, colored metal met, near the end close to the bushing.

  “What happened to the brakes?” Rudy said.

  “It looks like all the brake fluid was drained, but the lines weren’t cut. We think they spiked the brake fluid with a type of acid.”

  “Acid?”

  “Yes, the acid broke down the tubing in the brake line and leaked out the brake fluid slowly, so that it wasn’t easy to detect.”

  “You know anybody with that kind of technical talent that wants to kill you, Cyrus?” Rudy asked, putting his hand on Cyrus’s shoulder.

  “Not off hand.”

  “I got to get back,” Bernie said as he snatched the tie rod from Cyrus.

  Rudy nodded and said, “Good work Bern.” He turned to Cyrus, “You think maybe because of the Al Gore masks they were wearing, they might be eco fanatics?”

  “I don’t know, probably not. Could be the just opposite, maybe they hate Al Gore. Or they might have just been a couple of drunken college kids releasing some frustration after exams.”

  “Any chance the sabotage was meant for Mathers? Maybe Jack Tanner wants to make sure Blondie gets justice for his son’s death.”

  “Makes sense, they have a lot of experienced welders working on those oil rigs.”

  “I read somewhere that Jack Tanner started out as a welder on an oil rig.”

  “Sure would explain why Daddy Tanner has made himself scarce. Kill Dana before the jury exonerates him. But how did he know Mathers was in the squad car? Or for that matter how would anyone know?”

  “Go find out. I’ll handle the press. I can’t have people getting away with attempted murder on one of my prisoners or any of my detectives, especially you, you’re best anchor man our bowling team’s ever had.” Rudy smiled.

  Cyrus only grinned and walked away in response, he was afraid to make another comment for fear that Rudy would change his mind about answering questions from the newspaper and TV hacks. Cyrus turned the opposite way, went down the hallway to his desk, and sat down. Max was seated at his desk across from him. When he spun his seat around so that he faced him, he winced at the sight of the large grape colored bruise that extended from base of Max’s neck to his temple and said, “That’s one nasty hicky.”

  “It’s still pretty sore.” Max squinted his eyes, “That airbag felt like a sledge hammer. I guess a bruised neck is better than a fatal brain concussion.”

  Cyrus nodded in agreement. “Yeah and it’s a lot better than what happen to that poor truck driver that hit us.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He died. I heard on the radio on the way in.”

  “When I worked as a traffic cop every accident I had that involved an eighteen wheeler had the same result. The driver of the car the truck hit died instantly and the driver of the truck was only badly shaken.”

  “Same thing happened this time, well almost. The truck driver died from a heart attack, not from the impact of the collision. I guess being badly shaken and having a bad heart can get you killed.”

  He sat down, booted up his PC, and then looking back at Max he said, “Rudy wants us to find out who sabotaged our squad car. The fact that the truck driver died makes it a homicide. The first thing we need to do is find out who had access to it.”

  “I checked this morning with the station garage. If anyone tampered with the car, it wasn’t the night before we wrecked.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “The cruiser was locked up in the squad car parking lot all night.”

  “Someone could have broken in; did you check the surveillance tape?”

  “Yeah, it was parked dead center of the camera’s view. I just spent the last hour going over the tape; no one touched it the night before.”

  “That leaves out any chance of it being Jack Tanner trying to kill Mathers for murdering his son.”

  “Yeah, he couldn’t have known he was dead in time enough to sabotage the car.”

  Cyrus motioned to Max to have a seat in the empty chair beside his desk. Max made a slight grimace and took his seat slowly.

  “Are you okay, maybe you should go home and rest?”

  Max shook his head no and said “It’s better if I stay active. The doctor said I’d be okay as long as I don’t overdo it.” Max pulled out a small medicine bottle and shook out a couple of pills into the palm of his hand.

  Cyrus opened the bottom desk drawer, got out a bottle of Dasani and handed it to Max. As Max downed half the bottle of water, Cyrus spoke, “They, whoever they are, tampered with it when we were out on a call. In fact they did it when we were investigating Mike Tanner’s murder at Rincon Beach.”

  “They must have been pretty quick or invisible. Thad got there about ten minutes after we did.”

  Cyrus shook his head, “Thad’s got tunnel vision. He’s all business. He could have walked right past them while they were jacking up the car.”

  “Especially if he was on his way to inspect a fresh corpse.”

  “From what Bernie told me about how they sabotaged the tie rod, the guy was a professional. They probably had it all planned ahead of time.”

  “How can you be so sure about when it happened?”

  “Because before last night, the last time you accelerated the cruiser was when we got past the traffic at the Carpentaria exit. You stomped on the pedal pretty hard, remember?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What was the name on that tow truck that took Tanner’s car to the Impound?”

  “Alliance, I think that’s the one in La Conchita.”

  “I need you to go down to the gas station at La Conchita and check out that tow truck driver. If they have a welding tool there, call Bernie and get an investigator down to the garage and see if they can figure if it’s the same torch they used on our cruiser.”

  “Why me? I was going over to county jail and thank Dana for saving my life.”

  “Yeah I know, you like this guy, don’t you? That’s why you put his cuffs on pretty light, he told me.”

  Max hung his head.

  “I’m glad you did it,” Cyrus said, “because if you hadn’t we’d both have been turned into a pile of ashes. I need you to go down to La Conchita because you look a lot more intimidating than I do.” Cyrus pointed his finger at Max, “especially with that big, purple, hickey. Drop me off at county jail on the way.”

  “It’s not on the way, Cyrus.”

  “I know, let’s go.”

  Cyrus got up, put his jacket on over his black polo shirt and started for the exit. Max followed behind. Once they were outside, Cyrus took a left and headed toward the squad car parking lot the next block over. Max stood in front of the door and watched. After a few moments he called out, “Where you going?”

  Cyrus stopped in his tracks and his face turned bright red. He walked back over to where Max stood in front of the station, grinning.

  “Don’t say another word,” Cyrus said.

  “My Silverado’s parked across the street,” Max pointed toward the parking lot.

  For several minutes they drove along State Street in silence. As Max sped up to merge on the freeway, Cyrus spoke. “You know there’s something funny about this case.”

  “Funny? My neck doesn’t think this case is f
unny. I can’t even smile without crying.”

  “No, not that kind of funny, I mean odd. No Jack Tanner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jack Tanner has yet to appear. At first I thought it was because he had something to do with the sabotage of the cruiser. Shouldn’t he be down here threatening to sue us for not having already prosecuted and jailed Dana?”

  “Maybe, but then again, maybe not.”

  “Now you lost me.”

  “He may not care what happens to Dana or anything else for that matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “You lose your child and you might have wished you’d been killed too. I can’t even imagine the suffering he’s going through.”

  “True.”

  Max let him off in front of the Santa Barbara County Jail. Walking down the wood floored hall that led to the inmate visitation room, he could see the heads of the inmates and their visitors through the large glass window at the hall’s end. The popping sound from the wooden tiles echoed as he went. The bare grey walls reminded him of high school, only cleaner. He walked through the gray-blue, steel door on the left. A young Deputy Sherriff, built like a weight lifter, stood behind a chest high counter, looking over something on a clipboard chained to the counter top.

  As soon as he noticed Cyrus he said, “Hello Detective, I can’t believe you’re back at work already after that hellacious car wreck.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “You kidding me? It’s all over the television. What’s it like flipping over in a squad car?”

  “It’s a real hoot.”

  “I know it wasn’t fun,” the guard said, “but what you do sure beats the heck out of signing in inmate visitors all day.”

  Cyrus puts hands on the counter top and leaned forward, “Don’t worry you’ll get your chance at some pain one day, just be patient. You been busy today?”

  “Yeah, that Dana Mathers guy has had a lot of visitors, and that’s not including his lawyer and several reporters. One of them was pretty hot looking, too.”

  “Really, let me see the roster.” He pointed at the clipboard the young guard held.

  The deputy extended his arms and held it so Cyrus could see. He read the name second from the top aloud, “Deidra Jones, Dana’s high school sweetheart. She’s not a reporter. She’s a columnist.”