by John Moralee
“Yes, Colonel, but we’re hoping you can help us solve a crime we’re investigating. We’d like to talk to you about a friend of yours.”
“Who’s that?”
“Davis Lando.”
“What about him?”
Cade didn’t answer his question. You couldn’t conduct an effective interview on a man’s porch. He could always go inside to end it – but he couldn’t do that if you were invited inside him home. “You mind if we come inside, sir?”
“Sure.” The colonel lowered his shotgun and nodded for them to follow him into his home. They walked into a white-painted room with a ceiling fan turning slowly, creating a gentle cool breeze. It looked like a comfortable living room except for a gun rack on one wall containing some serious weapons, all of which were legal in Louisiana, though barely. Colonel Ryker displayed the weapons like some people displayed high-school trophies. On the wall behind a TV were a number of framed family photographs. They showed the colonel mostly in civilian clothes with his attractive wife and daughter. He had dozens of pictures of them. It was clear he loved them as much as his gun collection.
He put down his shotgun next to the chair he sat down in. “So … how can I help NOPD?”
“Colonel, what can you tell us about Davis Lando?”
“He’s a good man and a fine soldier. I’d trust him with my life. Why do you want to know?”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“Yes,” he said. “I saw him about three weeks ago. Why do you want to know?” he asked again. “Has something happened to him?”
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid he’s been killed.”
The colonel took the news without showing any emotion. “How?”
“He was tortured – then shot. With a shotgun.”
The colonel tightened one hand into a fist. “You got any suspects?”
“We’re following several leads,” Cade replied. “Mr Lando told his girlfriend he was coming to Louisiana for a job with an oil company – but that was a lie. He also told her to contact you if she had any messages to pass on. Do you know why he was really here, sir?”
“I hate saying this, but Davis came down here to have some fun – without his girlfriend knowing about it. He made up a story for his girlfriend so she wouldn’t know what he was really doing. He asked me to cover for him if she called. He really came here to have a reunion with the other guys from his unit. They went to stay at a hotel in the French Quarter. They were supposed to be having a good time – without their wives and girlfriends. David knew his girlfriend wouldn’t approve of him partying with his old buddies. That’s why he lied.”
The colonel gave them the name of the hotel and the names of Davis Lando’s friends.
“I hope you catch his killer,” he said, escorting them to his door.
*
“Do you think Colonel Ryker normally greets visitors with a shotgun?” Gail said as they drove back to New Orleans.
“I don’t know. He lives in Cajun Country. They probably don’t trust any strangers out there.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird Davis Lando has been dead for at least two weeks but his so-called buddies haven’t reported him missing?”
“Yeah, I do. Makes me think we’d better question them one at a time.”
Cade wanted to confront the men without them already knowing about the discovery of Davis Lando’s body, but Colonel Ryker had already informed them before they met the men, ruining any chance of judging their initial reaction. The men seemed upset and angered by the news, but were they acting? Had they killed Davis Lando for some reason? Each man was certainly capable of killing. It was what they had been trained to do.
Their names were Eckley, Gruber, Sanchez, Lincoln, Smith and Thompson.
Cade and Gail individually questioned them in Homicide’s interview rooms. The men all told the same story – that they had come to New Orleans to party. None of them had thought it had been unusual when Davis Lando disappeared without a word. They had assumed he had hooked up with a girl. Nobody had any idea who had killed him or why.
Cade suspected the men of being involved in Lando’s death somehow, but he couldn’t break them without some evidence connecting them to the crime scene. Unfortunately, forensics found nothing placing any of them at the condemned house. He was forced to let them go – but he talked his captain into putting the men under some surveillance. The soldiers left in a taxi that took them to their hotel, where two detectives observed them go up to their rooms. The detectives would watch the hotel all night.
Cade went home to bed. He was woken from an erotic dream about Gail by his phone ringing. It was too early. He grabbed the phone and grumbled his name. The caller was one of the detectives. Cade was dismayed to learn that the soldiers had slipped out of the hotel during the night, probably via a fire exit, without setting off the alarm. The detective didn’t know where they had gone.
Cursing, Cade phoned Gail. He could hear her shower running in the background as he told her the bad news. They met at the hotel, where they questioned the staff. One maid told them she had seen the men packing their bags last night. The men had not broken any laws by leaving the hotel early – they had paid for a month in advance - but it was a red flag that they didn’t want the police watching them. They also learnt that the staff had considered them to be the perfect guests. Unlike most tourists visiting New Orleans for the bars, music and wild nightlife, the soldiers had kept their rooms clean and had never come in drunk or rowdy. Just like soldiers preparing a mission.
Cade looked at Gail. “You get the feeling we don’t have a clue what’s going on?”
Gail nodded grimly. “Think they skipped town?”
“No – they could have done that before we questioned them if they planned that. I’m sure they’re still here – but doing what?”
“Let’s talk to the colonel again – if he hasn’t vanished, too.”
*
But the colonel was not at home. His silver-grey SUV had gone, too. Cade didn’t have probable cause to get a warrant to search the colonel’s home, but he BOLO’d the SUV hoping someone would report its location. He had to know what was going on because he felt certain that it wasn’t good.
Cade spent a couple of hours on his phone and computer collecting information. He learnt some tragic news about the colonel’s past. His wife had been murdered in 2005 by the serial killer called the Car-jack Killer. She had been his fifth victim. The Car-jack Killer - aka Terrell Lewis – a six-foot-six, 250-pound black man with a pathological hatred of white women - terrorised the Deep South between 2003 and 2007 until he was finally apprehended by the FBI. He was now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the brutal rape/murders of fourteen women. His usual MO had been to car-jack lone white women who he would threaten to kill if they did not obey his orders. He made the women drive somewhere remote, where he would beat them, rape them, then strangle them. The one exception to his usual MO had been when he targeted the colonel’s wife.
One day she had been driving home with her daughter Jessica, aged fourteen, who had been sitting in the rear, when they stopped at a red light. (Later, after he was caught and confessed his crimes, Terrell Lewis had admitted that he had not intended to abduct Jessica along with her mother because he had not seen her until after he pulled out his gun and got into the vehicle. She was an unwanted passenger.)
Jessica had been forced to watch Terrell Lewis rape and kill her mother. Afterwards he had also raped her – but he had not killed her. He left her tied up in the trunk of the car, where she was found three days later by a state trooper, alive but dehydrated and forever traumatised.
Colonel Ryker retired to look after his psychologically wounded daughter - but Jessica never recovered from the experience. She started self-harming and taking drugs. Aged sixteen she was arrested for possessing crystal meth with her dope-smoking skinhead boyfriend. She went into rehab four times, but she kept going back to her boyfriend, who encouraged her
to take drugs and sell her body to pay for them. Aged eighteen she was arrested for solicitation. She received six months inside a secure rehab clinic, but she came out clean. While she was locked up, her boyfriend was caught dealing and sentenced to five years. With the help of her father and therapy, Jessica vowed to change her life. She got a job in a restaurant and started taking some college classes. It seemed as though she was finally getting her life together – but then her old boyfriend reappeared after he finished less than half of his sentence. He wanted to get back together. She reluctantly agreed. Two months ago Jessica had stopped going to her therapy sessions because her boyfriend didn’t like it. Then she stopped attending classes. She started living with her boyfriend again. The colonel had tried to convince her to come home to live with him – but she had refused. Then she had stopped calling him. The colonel went around to see her, but Jessica and the boyfriend had moved – leaving no forwarding address.
The colonel had reported her missing, but the police had done nothing because she was now an adult.
Davis Lando and the other Special Ops soldiers arrived in New Orleans a few days after her disappearance. Colonel Ryker had paid for their flights and hotel rooms. Phone records proved he had made many calls to them before they arrived.
Now Cade understood why the unit had come to New Orleans. Gail was at her desk. He called her over and updated her.
“The colonel’s been searching for his missing daughter, so he asked his Special Ops unit for help. Looks like Davis Lando got himself killed trying to find her.”
“What’s the name of the deadbeat boyfriend?” Gail wanted to know.
“You won’t believe it. It’s Clinton Bush.”
Gail raised an eyebrow. “You’re kidding!”
“I kid you not. On the street they call him ‘Two Presidents’ or ‘TP’ for short. He’s been a neo-Nazi since he was a teenager, just like his daddy, who got killed in 1998 robbing a liquor store. Now Clinton’s twenty-five with a rap sheet as long as a roll of toilet paper. He joined the White Pride in prison. A real nice guy.”
“Where’s he living?”
“I don’t have a current address,” Cade said. “The dirtbag violated the conditions of his parole by disappearing – so he’s a fugitive now facing a long time in prison if he’s caught.” He looked at a list of Clinton Bush’s previous addresses. One caught his attention. “Whoa – check this. Before Katrina the guy once lived only four doors away from the house where David Lando was killed.”
“Damn. He knew the neighbourhood. We’ve got to nail this guy, but how they hell are we gonna find him?”
Clinton Bush had dozens of relatives, friends and known associates. Every one of them would have to be checked out. Finding him would not be easy, Cade thought, but at least they had a suspect now.
“Hey, Lambert!” another cop called out. It was Detective Lenny Holland. “You got a BOLO out on a silver-grey SUV?”
“Yeah.”
“Good news then: we just found it. It’s parked near the Happy Home trailer park. The local uniforms have it under surveillance, but there’s nobody in it. They want to know what to do.”
“Tell them to do nothing but watch it until we get there,” Cade said. He turned to Gail. “The Happy Home trailer park is a haven for druggies, welfare cheats and ex-cons. What’s the colonel’s car doing there?”
Gail’s fingers moved rapidly on her laptop. “Ah-ha! TP’s got an older cousin called Lee living there. Says here that as a teenager Clinton used to live his cousin after his mother kicked him out. His name is Lee Bush. He’s never been charged with any felonies, but he’s got three DUIs. He was busted for selling drugs, but he got off on a technicality. I bet the colonel’s gone there to extract information out of him about the whereabouts of TP. He’ll probably go medieval on his ass.”
“Damn. We can’t let that happen.”
They picked up their guns and headed for their car.
*
Cade had arrested quite a few of the trailer park’s residents when he was in Vice, but he had not been there for a couple of years. In that time the trailer park had somehow managed to become uglier and more depressing. Many of the hundreds of trailers looked like they had been trashed by the latest hurricane, yet people lived in them, surrounded by junked autos, loose garbage and sinister-looking weeds. There were no well-kept yards here. No grass for the kids to play on. A dusty gravel road cut through the trailer park with trailers packed together on either side with barely enough space between them for the residents to open their doors. Some of the trailers looked like strange metallic monsters, sprouting TV aerials and mushroom-like satellite dishes. There was a patch of grass where several children too young for kindergarten were playing soccer with no sign of an adult supervising.
Cade parked their car some distance away, not wanting anyone to know they were coming. He had changed out of his suit into casual clothes so the locals would not recognise him as a cop. Gail was wearing black jeans and a leather jacket that hid her weapon. As they exited their car, a scrawny black dog ran towards them barking. It ran off when Cade glared at it.
Lee Bush’s trailer was on lot 1024 – about a quarter of a mile down the road. They approached it cautiously, but when they started walking towards the door it suddenly opened. A man stood in the doorway.
It was Colonel Ryker. He was dressed in civilian clothes – a brown shirt, grey pants and a baseball cap. His shirt was worn loose, but Cade noticed a bulge underneath. A hidden gun?
“Detectives,” the colonel said as though he had been expecting them.
“You armed, Colonel?”
“Yeah – got a 9mm right here.” He slowly lifted his shirt. It was tucked into the front of his pants. “I haven’t used it.”
“Sir, I’m gonna take that off you for safe-keeping,” Cade said, nodding to Gail. She covered him as he went up to the colonel, who handed him the weapon without saying anything. “You got anything else on you, Colonel?”
“Just a knife in my boot.”
Cade took that off him and frisked him anyway. He wasn’t concealing any other weapons. Gail kept her gun on the colonel while Cade checked inside the trailer. He was expecting to find Lee Booth inside – beaten or worse. But there was nobody there. He went back outside.
“What are you doing here, Colonel?”
“Detective, I’m ready to tell you the truth – but not in public. We’d better get out of sight first before someone see us. I have the key to that trailer opposite. Let’s go in there, okay?”
First Cade closed the door of Lee Bush’s trailer. Then Cade took the colonel’s key and made sure nobody was in the other trailer before agreeing to the colonel’s request. Cade stepped into the darkness within, his eyes finding it hard to adjust to the gloom. The blinds were closed, but he could see the furniture had been ripped up, bottles smashed, the TV broken. Someone had thoroughly ransacked the place. It smelled like a cat had urinated on everything.
Gail entered behind Cade. She closed the door. The colonel sighed and looked resigned.
“Since you’re here you must’ve figured out that I’m looking for my daughter?”
Cade nodded. “Yes, we figure it out. But why didn’t you tell us when we came to see you?”
“I wasn’t sure I could trust you. For all I knew, you could have been involved in the killing of Davis. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I’ve been doing, Detectives. I know Davis’s death is my fault. He wouldn’t have put himself in danger if I had not asked him to help me find my daughter. I thought I could find my daughter without getting the police involved. That’s why I had my men look for her. I found out that Lee Bush was a good friend of her boyfriend Clinton, so I sent Davis to put him under surveillance in case Clinton showed up here. Davis moved into this trailer pretending to be an ex-con called Ray Gundrey. It was his mission to gather intel. He befriended Clinton’s cousin in the hope that he’d learn about Jessica’s location so my men could rescue her. Evidently something we
nt wrong with his mission that got him killed, but I didn’t know he was dead until you told me. I had been hoping that he had just gone deep cover, waiting for an opportunity to contact me when he had located Jessica. I’m very sorry about his death, Detectives. He was a patriot.” The colonel pulled a memory card out of his pocket. “Whoever tore this place apart was trying to find out information about ‘Ray’ – but they missed this. It contains all of the intel Davis gathered on Lee Bush. You may find it useful when you question him. It contains surveillance pictures of Lee Bush breaking several laws.”
Cade took the memory card. “Where’s your unit now, Colonel?”
“I told them to stand down. I came here alone to make Lee Bush tell me everything he knows, by any means necessary, so I could save my daughter.” Ryker showed them a photograph kept in his wallet. “This is Jessica when she was fourteen.” It showed a grinning teenager. “This is the last happy photograph taken of her. It’s the only photo of her I like to keep – before her troubles started.” He sighed. “Promise me you’ll do everything you can to find her.”
“I promise, Colonel.”
“So do I,” Gail said. There were tears in her eyes.
“Are you going to arrest me now?”
Cade didn’t want to, but he had broken into Lee Bush’s trailer and lied to them. He looked at Gail to see what she was thinking. She shook her head, saying, “Colonel, I suggest you go home immediately and wait there for us to do our jobs. We will arrest you if you impede our investigation again.”
“You going to give me back my weapons?”
“Not today,” Cade said. “Leave now, Colonel. Before we change our minds.”
The colonel slipped out of the trailer, leaving them to stake out Lee Bush’s trailer.
“I hope letting him go wasn’t a mistake,” Gail said.
“Me, too,” Cade said.