by J. D. Martin
“Great, thanks,” he said as I came up next to her. She saw me approach as she hung up the phone, “Saint, we’ve got his number. It’s a cell phone.”
“Perfect, check with the cell provider and see if we can get a GPS location on the signal.” She didn’t have to be told how to do her job since she had already picked up the receiver to begin dialing. If we got a trace on Bradley’s cell, the truth about the vigilante might finally come to light.
With the GPS from the phone provider, the signal led us to two-story yellow house. We parked two blocks down and positioned a lookout across from the house to confirm Bradley was inside. I wasn’t expecting a struggle but we didn’t want to lose him a second time; once was bad enough. To make sure we didn’t make the same mistake twice, we had Detectives Edward Pinick and Richard Bronson backing us up.
Pinick was a short fellow with thick brown hair that curled naturally, so he liked to keep it as short as possible. He was of thick stock just like his partner, except Bronson easily had two feet on Pinick. The pair had been partners for nearly a decade at that point, and each of them were rarely seen without the other.
Fifteen minutes before we moved on the house, the four of us went over how we wanted to breach. Pinick would enter the rear with Bronson while Delgado and I would take the front. Our lookout would continue watching the house for any exits through windows. The warrant arrived ten minutes before we planned to breach.
To make sure everyone was on time, we all programmed our watches. “Okay,” I said, “sync on 9:35 in three-two-one.” Multiple watches beeped simultaneously. “Gentlemen, we breach at 9:45 on the nose...happy hunting.” All parties separated and headed to their entry points.
Leaving the squad car down the street with a uniformed officer avoided alerting anyone to our presence as we ran towards the house. The unmarked that had been keeping an eye on the house was still close enough to assist if we needed a vehicle for pursuit. A few doors from our target, I noticed the nearby street lamps were out, making it easier for us to slip by undetected. We didn’t want any mistakes since it would be difficult to live down the kid escaping us more than once.
Creeping up the front driveway, Pinick and Bronson separated from us to head towards the back of the house. When Delgado and I reached the front door, we waited for the other team to reach their entry point. My heart was pounding in my chest like it did every time I was in a situation like this. All the planning in the world couldn’t prevent something from going wrong. And once you were in position, all the things that could happen got the adrenaline flowing. The anticipation excited the nerves, which made it that much more important to stay focused.
I wanted everyone on my team to make it out alive, but we had no way of knowing what was on the other side of the doors. Would everything go according to plan? Would the suspects have weapons, and would I have to fire mine? These questions always ran through my head as the seconds ticked by. Even the most seasoned veteran couldn’t escape the worry of what could be.
We all wore bulletproof vests, but there were still plenty of body parts exposed. A stray bullet could penetrate you in the arms or legs and still leave you with a good chance of living to tell the tale. But my head was exposed too, and ringing that bell would be the end of the fight. Surveillance gave us the information we had to work with, and our plan was to be executed with speed to keep the likelihood of incidents low, but there was always a chance. Checking my watch, I looked at Delgado and an unsaid conversation passed between the two of us. It didn’t need to be verbalized because we were ready. We breached in five…four…three…two…one…”KCPD!”
Delgado kicked the door open and entered with me hot on his tail. We cleared the first room and turned down the hall that led towards the next. Following the plan, we laid out, we quickly swept the house to find three occupants that didn’t know what hit them. One moment they were all on a couch in front of the television, and the next they were on the ground with guns pointed towards their heads. Luck was on our side this time as Pinick put Bradley Thompson in handcuffs.
Slapping a pair of bracelets on him, “You’re under arrest for the murder of Danny King.” He read Thompson his rights and escorted him out of the house to the flashing lights as he professed his innocence. The vehicle down the street had been pulled to the house by the officer that had waited in the driver’s seat. Taking Thompson to the end of the driveway, Pinick opened the rear door of the first black and white he came across.
Putting his hand on Bradley’s head, he helped guide him into the back seat, “You’ll have your chance to tell us your story once we get you downtown Mr. Thompson.” Pinick shut the door as the boy continued screaming of his innocence. Ignoring him, Pinick got in the passenger seat to head towards the precinct. Bronson rode back in the unmarked car with Delgado and myself. The consensus was that we had our man.
Back at the station, Bradley was handcuffed to the table in the interrogation room. He’d been left to wait for over half an hour, so his throat and long since grown tired of screaming. No sense in wasting the energy when nobody was ready to listen. Instead, he now sat quietly picking at the back of his left hand. There was a scrape he got from a metal trash can lid when running from us the first time that had scabbed over. I contemplated how to handle his questioning as I watched him through the glass, but I knew he was adamant about proving he didn’t kill King.
Once the room was set up with audio running, Marcus and I stepped in to begin the interrogation. “About time,” said Thompson. “I’m telling you I didn’t kill him. I found him that way!”
Each of us pulled out a chair opposite Bradley and sat down. I set a notepad on the table and wrote his name and the date at the top of the legal pad. “You gotta believe me,” he continued. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Is that so?” Marcus asked. “Perhaps you can provide us with your version of events. Why didn’t you call 911? Were you too busy trying to think up an alibi?”
“I can tell you exactly what happened that night; I was working.”
“Where were you working?” I asked. “If you let us know, we can call your boss to verify your employment.”
“You can’t,” he said. He went back to picking at his hand.
“Why not?”
“Because I was working for Big King, ok? I got a bag from him around ten. I was given an address and a time to deliver it.”
“What was in the bag?” asked Marcus.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why is that?”
“Does a mailman open your mail before dropping it at your house?”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Where did you deliver it?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“You don’t seem to be giving us anything to show you aren’t the one that killed King,” said Delgado. “You can’t tell us where you went or what you were delivering. How can any of this prove that you are innocent?”
“If I tell you where I went, the people there will know I snitched on them.”
“How are you snitching? You don’t know what was in the bag.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but everyone knows what Big King was into.”
The kid had a point. All of us knew that there were narcotics in the bag, but Bradley didn’t want to admit to transporting it since that would put a felony on his record. What he didn’t seem to understand is that he could say it all he wanted, but nothing would really stick without any evidence of a crime. Right now, he needed to focus more on giving us something that pointed away from his connection to the death of Big King.
“How about we skip the exact address,” I said. “Can you tell us where you met King for the bag, and what area you took it too?”
Bradley gave us the corner where he got the bag, and indicated to a neighborhood about an hour away from King’s place. “I then had another bag they gave me to take back to King,” he said. “On the way back, I stopped at that 24-hour diner near Westport to get some eggs and
waffles. Big King always gives us a little extra cash to get a bite on late deliveries. He was cool like that.” Apparently, kindness to old ladies and teenagers in his employ made up for everything else.
“I got done and left for Danny’s around 1:30, and it took me over an hour to get there since it was all uphill. It was some time around four when I got there. After I locked up my bike, I went upstairs and found King already dead.”
“Did you see anybody else there?” I asked.
“No—wait…I did bump into some guy in the hallway outside King’s place. With all the burnt-out bulbs, I didn’t see him until I ran into the guy. He said excuse me, so I knew it wasn’t Big King because he wouldn’t like someone running into him.”
“Sounds about right,” said Delgado.
“Please continue,” I added to keep Bradley talking.
“Yeah, so the lights were off inside the apartment.”
“How can you be sure of that?” I asked.
“Because the fucking door was open, man. I called out a few times, but I didn’t hear anything so I walked in to turn on the lights. I’ve been there a few times so I knew where the switch was, but I felt something wet on the wall near the switch. It wasn’t until the lights came on that I saw all the blood.”
Bradley continued that he stepped back from the wall, puzzled about what he was seeing. It wasn’t until he bumped into the chair where Big King was strapped down with blood spilling from his throat that he realized what was happening. Feeling a retching in his stomach, Bradley made a mad dash to the bathroom with his hands over his mouth to contain what was coming. Sliding across the tile on his knees, he lifted the lid and threw up the waffles he’d eaten earlier. As he flushed the toilet, he realized that King’s death meant he had the chance to make the biggest score of his life. He knew King kept a duffel bag full of cash from the week’s score in the bedroom closet until he deposited it on Wednesday afternoon. This meant there was nearly a week’s worth of dealings in that bag.
Without another thought, Bradley ransacked the closet until he found the bag of cash. It wouldn’t be missed now that Big King was out of the picture. Nobody would even know that it had been there. With the duffel bag strap over his shoulder, he rushed out of the apartment as fast as his feet could carry him. Bursting forth into the hallway, he mentioned that he nearly ran over an old lady that shouted profanities at him.
“When I got down the stairs,” said Bradley, “I heard that woman start screaming. That’s when I figured she found Big King. But all I cared about was all the money I’d just made.”
Marcus asked a follow up, “Can you give us a description of the man you saw?”
“Hell yeah, I can,” he said with renewed excitement. Asking about the description of the man he ran into meant there were more suspects than just him, and that was news worth celebrating.
“Okay, so what did he look like?”
“First off, I don’t want to go back to juvie. You get me immunity on the drug charge and anything on me running from you, and I’ll talk.”
“Quite the demand from someone who is still our prime suspect. Your alibi hasn’t even checked out yet, and you think you can run the show? The sooner you give us the information we want, the sooner we’ll be done here.”
“I’ve been around the block enough to know that if I don’t get immunity on those charges, I’m going to get locked up either way. You get that taken care of and I’ll squeal like a pig. Until then, I’m done talking.”
“That will take a little while,” I said to close the discussion. “First, we’re going to check on your story with the diner and we’ll get back with you, so you should get comfortable.”
Chapter 12
“Were you working on Monday between midnight and 3am?” Standing in the diner on Main Street across from the movie theater, Simmons questioned a server about our prime suspect. The waitress confirmed that she had been there all night. “Did you see this boy here around that time?” He held out a photo of Bradley Thompson and her eyebrows shot up with instant recognition.
“Yeah, I remember this kid. He was here between like one and two that morning; I remember thinking how young he looked to be out so late. As I recall, he came in and left on a bike that he chained up out front.”
This was the conversation that Simmons relayed to me over the phone. He’d been in the area, so I requested that he canvass the diner for us. As Bradley’s luck would have it, a witness corroborated his whereabouts, which meant he couldn’t have been at King’s during time of death. I thanked Simmons for checking and ended the call.
“I guess that’s it on Thompson,” I said.
“What do you mean?” asked Pinick from his desk that sat behind mine. Turning towards him, I explained to him and Delgado that walked up how Bradley’s location had been confirmed. “Wait, the waitress said he left on his bike a little after 2PM, right?”
I nodded, but I could see on Pinick’s face that something about that was eating at him. “That doesn’t’ alibi him out,” he said.
“How so?”
“Just because he left on his bike around that time, doesn’t confirm he was on it the entire way. He could have easily ridden away from the diner a bit before getting into a car. King’s place is only like a twenty-minute drive from there. He could have easily made it there in your window.”
I felt like a detective fresh off the streets with that bomb drop. “Shit,” I said, “you’re absolutely right. If we can’t confirm everything he said about riding back to King’s on the bike, then he’s still our prime suspect.”
“He could have easily still killed King then,” said Marcus. “The breakfast story could just be a way to get out our scope, but how do we confirm one way or the other?”
As we pondered on the question, Pinick’s brow wrinkled and his eyes stared out the ceiling until his lips suddenly spread wide in a huge grin. “Traffic cams!” He clapped his hands in praise of his idea as he leaned forward as if to tell the two of us a secret.
“There are a few that run along the road to King’s place,” he said. “We can check them to see if Bradley is seen on any of them.” It was a good idea that showed me why I liked having Edward Pinick on our team. It was a simple idea that was exactly what we needed.
I called into traffic to get the footage from that morning, and to our benefit there wouldn’t be many commuters due to it being in the middle of the night. We could simply fast forward through the footage until someone passed by. Since it was well past our shift and it was his idea, we passed the reigns over to Pinick and Bronson to do the legwork. Their response was that they’d love to, but I could feel the sarcasm oozing off their excitement. Nobody liked scrubbing camera footage.
In the break room Pinick prepared two cups of coffee; one with creamer and two sugars and one black that he carried through the bullpen. He passed a few officers filling out paperwork from an arrest they made where he overheard the radio on a late-night talk show. The topic of the day was on the Blood Week murders. “Killing is killing,” said the caller. “It doesn’t matter if you only kill other murderers; you’re still a killer.”
The talk-show host responded that there had been mixed reviews about the vigilante, and he then questioned what the police were doing about it. “More than you are, schmuck,” Pinick said as he passed. Another caller came on to praise the work of the vigilante. He even went so far as to state he was willing to sign up for the fight if the vigilante needed a sidekick.
A pat on the back startled him enough that he nearly dropped one of the cups. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Simmons laughed. “I wanted to make sure you’re coming to poker night. I feel another hot streak coming on. I can just take your donations now if you want to make it easier on yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah enjoy it now because I’ll be taking it back from you with interest soon enough.” Simmons smiled and started walking away before Pinick stopped him. “Hey, do me a favor and have them shut that crap on the radio off.” W
hile everyone had a right to feel however they liked about the situation, he didn’t care for listening to badmouthing about the force if he could do something to avoid it. It was even worse hearing that babble flying around in the office.
Saying he’d take care of it, Simmons walked right over to the radio and changed the channel. With coffees in each hand, Pinick walked into the IT room and handed the straight black cup to Bronson. They needed a pick-me-up if they expected to make it through the traffic reels that had come in without passing out.
“Thanks, the pizza should be here soon. We have ten traffic cams along the route that Thompson took back to King’s apartment. Your half of the DVDs is stacked by the other player.” Pinick hadn’t expected nearly that many cameras, so he sighed heavily at the amount of time this was going to take them. Sitting down at the second monitor, he slipped the first DVD into the system and started its playback.
The majority of what he saw was an unchanging picture of an intersection at night through two hours of video. Luckily, they played them back at four times normal speed so each video only took a half hour or so to view. Every so often he would have to roll the video back and slow it down when something had come into view. One of these times afforded them some entertainment to break of the monotony.
On the screen was a man who was exceeding the limits of alcohol that the human body could handle trying to walk up a hill. He was bent over at the waist doing everything he could to keep his balance. After a few steps, it looked like someone changed the pitch of the hill on him as he suddenly tipped to the right and started jogging sideways. The man tried to stop himself but it was a parked car that finally helped him do so. Slamming into the vehicle at full speed, he fell onto it and set off its car alarm.
Pinick let a loud laugh slip out causing Bronson to jump. “Pause your video and look at this guy,” said Pinick. Bronson rolled his chair over to join him, and they spent the remaining fifteen minutes of his drunken stupor laughing and sipping from their cups. Once the poor sap finally made it up the hill and out of frame, they each continued searching their separate film reels.