by Rick Reed
Cato must have read the public’s pulse correctly, because she had beat Hensley hands down. When she was sworn in, no one doubted there would be a tsunami of changes in local government and that included the police and fire departments. One of those changes would shake the police department to its core.
“I have it on good authority that I’m to be replaced by Richard Dick,” Chief Pope said, confirming Jack’s prediction.
Cato would be the first female mayor of Evansville, but this wasn’t the first time Marlin Pope’s position as Chief of Police was on the chopping block. Three years ago, Thatcher Hensley planned to replace Pope with Richard Dick, but he couldn’t pull it off for several reasons—one being political suicide. In Hensley’s estimation, to replace the first black policeman to ever attain the position of Chief of Police with Richard Dick, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan Brotherhood poster child was unthinkable. And then Dick had gotten into hot water by stealing and hiding evidence from a murder scene in a high-profile case. Dick had skated on criminal charges somehow. Each new mayor had had the option of appointing a new Chief of Police, along with other department heads. Pope had lasted longer than most. Chief Pope was retained, but the mayor who tried to replace him would be gone soon. Politics was loads of laughs. But some city leaders wouldn’t be laughing on January first.
Chief Pope opened the laptop on the table. “This audio is part of the reason you’re here. I have an assignment for you. Listen and then I’ll tell you what you need to know.” He tapped the rewind button and the play button on the laptop.
The sound of knocking came through the little speakers. A door opened. Double Dick’s unmistakable, condescending voice said:
Dick: “Mrs. Day?”
A woman’s voice. Presumably Mrs. Day. “Why are you here, Richard? Why now?”
Dick: “You know who I am. What office I’m going to…”
Mrs. Day: “I know who you’re hoping to be. You think you’re going to be the Chief of Police.”
Dick’s voice took on an intimidating tone: “That’s right. I am going to be Chief of Police. That’s why I’ve come. I want to answer your questions. See if we can make this right. I know I haven’t been forthcom—”
Mrs. Day: “You haven’t spoken to me or to my family for thirty-seven years. You were there the night he was killed and you refused to tell us what happened. If your father wasn’t who he was, you would be in prison.”
Dick in a conciliatory tone: “Now, Mrs. Day. You know that’s not true. I was never interviewed or charged with anything. I wasn’t even a suspect. None of my friends were. We all had alibis for that night, Mrs. Day. You know all of that.”
Mrs. Day: “My husband was killed four years after my son’s murder. The police investigation was a joke. A cover-up. Harry never heard a word of explanation from you or your friends during all that time. You refused to talk to us and heaven knows, we tried to meet with you and your father. And now here you are, trying to ease your guilty conscience.”
Dick: “I’m here, Mrs. Day, to offer my condolences for the loss of your husband and your son, and because I want to say it was wrong of me not to have talked to you. I can’t speak for the others, but I’ll answer all your questions to the best of my knowledge. It was all so very long ago. I want you not to publicly oppose my appointment as Chief of Police. In exchange, I’ll answer any of your questions. I swear.”
Chief Pope stopped the audio and Captain Franklin asked, “You heard Deputy Chief Dick’s voice on the recording?”
“Yes. I take it the Deputy Chief wasn’t the one recording this,” Jack said.
“No. The woman you heard on the recording is Mrs. Amelia Day. Her son, Maximillian Day, was murdered thirty-seven years ago today. He was seventeen and a senior at Rex Mundi High School. Mrs. Day’s daughter, Reina, recorded the conversation between Deputy Chief Dick and her mother at Mrs. Day’s home,” Pope said.
Captain Franklin said, “According to Mrs. Day, she received a call from Deputy Chief Dick two days ago at around ten or eleven in the morning, asking if he could come by for a talk. She told him to come to her home at a later time that day. She called her daughter and told her about the call. Reina came to the house early and secretly recorded the conversation between her mother and Richard.”
Chief Pope took over.
“They had a history, Max and Richard, that goes back to before the time Max was murdered in 1980,” Pope explained.
“This is a cold case? Is there new evidence?” Jack asked.
“It is a cold case and there’s no new evidence.” Pope said. “The Days don’t like or trust Richard, Richard’s family, or the police department and city government. They feel the police failure to solve Max’s murder was deliberate, a cover-up due to the fact that Richard was in a fight with Max the night he was killed, and Richard’s father was a Captain over the investigations unit. Max’s father, Harry, was killed in a robbery four years later in 1984. Harry’s case was never solved.
“We obtained this copy of the recording from Mrs. Day and were just informing Richard when you came in. He admitted to the conversation, but didn’t know it had been recorded and as you saw, didn’t take it well.”
That explained the temper tantrum Jack witnessed in the hall.
Jack said. “I take it this recording will somehow throw a wrench into the Deputy Chief’s bid for Chief of Police?”
Chief Pope said, “There’s quite a bit more on the recording, but you get the gist. Let me give you some background. Max Day was a seventeen-year-old senior at Rex Mundi in 1980. He and Richard were on the football team and there was bad blood between them.”
Jack could imagine Dick being a dick to someone, but he couldn’t imagine Dick in a football uniform unless it had a chest full of medals and rank insignia. Maybe that’s what the bad blood was about. Maybe Max mussed Dick’s medals.
Pope continued. “Richard was the captain and starting quarterback for the Rex Mundi Monarchs. As I said, Max and Richard had bad blood, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Max was found shot to death inside his parked car near the back of Locust Hill Cemetery just before midnight on November twenty-sixth, 1980.”
“Was Deputy Chief Dick a suspect?” Jack asked.
“For the sake of brevity, let’s just all call him Richard. Not to his face, though,” Chief Pope said. “Yes and no. Richard was a suspect according to the Day family, but not the investigators. The file”—Pope put his hand on the skimpy manila folder—“doesn’t list any suspects. Nor does it mention a fight between Richard and Max, either before or the night of the murder. Mrs. Day says the investigators lied about there not being suspects. There were three suspects. I’ll let her explain how she came to that conclusion when you talk to her.”
“The Deputy Chief—I mean Richard—went to talk to Mrs. Day to ensure she wouldn’t crap all over his chances with the new mayor,” Liddell said.
“Yes. In any case, he poked a hornet’s nest,” Captain Franklin said. “That’s where you come in.” He added, “I wasn’t on the police department when all of this happened and I don’t remember hearing anything about either of these cases.”
Chief Pope said, “I remember them vaguely from my motor patrol days. Richard’s father was the Detective Captain in command of the investigations unit, so he was in charge of both investigations. There were rumors around the department that Max’s murder would never be solved because the Captain’s son was involved. Harry Day was killed in a robbery just before Richard joined the police department. That was four years later. I took it as station-house talk and didn’t give it any credence.”
“Holy shit, Batman!” Liddell said. “Sorry for the language.”
Jack pushed forward: “Is Richard involved or connected to Harry Day’s killing?”
Franklin said, “No. But Richard should never have approached the Days. Going to Mrs. Day now makes him appear com
plicit in Max Day’s murder. Both mayors—outgoing and incoming—are demanding this one be resolved and Richard either be cleared of the murder or arrested. The Days have gone to the media with this.”
The PD will be accused of a cover-up or fools for doing a poor investigation in the first place. In today’s world, police were guilty even if proven innocent.
“So. You want us to investigate Deputy Chief Dick for a thirty-seven-year-old murder?”
Pope pushed the thin file folder across to Jack. “Read through this.”
Jack flipped the file open. It was Maximillian Day’s. Jack placed the open folder between himself and Liddell and they briefly scanned the pages. It took less than a minute. A police department offense report and a couple of short supplementary reports made up the entire file.
Pope said, “That is all we have on Max Day’s murder investigation. I doubt there will be much evidence. We haven’t even gotten that far yet.”
Jack waited. There was obviously worse news coming.
Pope said, “They didn’t specifically request a reinvestigation of Harry Day’s case, but if we are to put the Days’ complaint to rest we have to investigate both.”
Jack had already decided that was the smart play.
“Mayor Hensley called me this morning, demanding to be briefed after we’re done here. Benet Cato, the incoming mayor, has already listened to the taped conversation. She’s aware of the Deputy Chief’s predicament and wants this case solved before she takes office in four weeks. She wants total transparency as to your findings. I explained to her that we couldn’t release details of an ongoing investigation, but she can be very persuasive.”
“How in the hell did she get the recording before we did, Chief?” Jack asked.
Chief Pope said, “Mrs. Day’s daughter. Reina Day, emailed the recording to Benet Cato.”
Jack asked, “Does Deputy Chief Dick know Cato has the recording?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Chief Pope said. “I was explaining where we were and had just started the recording when he left. If this were a typical investigation with an officer as a suspect, police procedure says I should suspend the officer from duty until the officer is cleared. The recording of his conversation isn’t real evidence. The Days obviously don’t trust him and are claiming a cover-up by the police department in favor of Richard Dick. They are expecting us to continue to cover this up and you know that will be what the media pushes.”
“This happened in 1980. That was thirty-seven years ago, Chief. Why didn’t they raise a stink then?”
Captain Franklin answered, “According to Mrs. Day, they did raise a stink, but you can see by the very thin file that the case wasn’t worked very hard, and if there were follow-up investigations none of the paperwork made it into the file. None of the complaints made by the Days made it into the file, either.”
Jack asked, “Do we need to pull the file on Harry Day?”
“There is no case file, Jack,” Captain Franklin answered.
While Jack was digesting this interesting tidbit, Chief Pope said, “I’ve talked with Mrs. Day. She said she and her husband requested meetings with Captain Dick, his son Richard, and the parents of two other boys that she claims were involved in the fight with Max close to the time of the murder. They all refused the meeting and Captain Dick wouldn’t speak to them at all. If that’s true, Mrs. Day’s claims of a cover-up may hold water. She said she and her husband weren’t allowed to see the case file and the detective who worked the case wouldn’t talk to them.”
Jack remembered Detective D. Olson was the name on Max Day’s offense report. He didn’t know Olson.
Jack said, “Is that even possible? I mean, wouldn’t the news media have been all over this? I have a hard time believing the lead detective and the Captain wouldn’t talk to the family of the victim.”
“I don’t have an answer for that. If there was wrongdoing by the police department, we have a duty to find the truth and that means a full investigation,” Pope said.
Jack didn’t like it. The whole thing stunk of political maneuvering. Why was Double Dick being considered for Chief to begin with? There were 385 other officers in the department, and a dozen or more sanitary maintenance people who could do a better job than that asshole. Also, who had the most to gain from sabotaging Dick? The Day family hated his guts, but Chief Pope would be out of his position. Jack knew Pope and couldn’t believe Pope was ordering an investigation for political reasons. And he kept coming back to Reina and Mrs. Day. They hadn’t done anything. It was Dick who approached them. He had whipped them into a frenzy with his haughty manner. If they kept Dick from becoming Chief, maybe that was the best justice they could hope for.
But there was one more consideration. Maybe Benet Cato thought the investigation would fail and if so, she wanted the failure to be on the previous administration, not hers. She could point out the reason these cases were never solved was because of the lack of transparency by the police department. Which would mean she was going to go public to show the voters that she was keeping her promise of transparency. The case smelled of corruption and she’d promised that heads would roll. Either way, four weeks was a short investigation window for a thirty-seven-year-old crime.
“Why us, Chief?” Jack asked.
“You can blame that partly on Benet Cato and partly on me,” Captain Franklin said. “Benet Cato is clever. She apparently knows that you two and Richard are not on…the best of terms. She also knows that you have a reputation for doing the right thing. It’s a win-win situation for her.”
“We’ll get on it, Chief,” Jack said, picking up the slim case file and starting to get up.
Pope said, “We’re not done yet. Come with me.”
Chapter 4
The four men, Jack, Liddell, Franklin and Pope, stood outside the closed door to the Chief’s office.
Pope said, “I don’t want you working this case out of the detectives’ office. Take it home. Take it somewhere private.” He put his hand on the door handle. “Before we go in, you need to know that Claudine Setera is involved. She’s here with Mrs. Day.”
“Great!” Jack said. “The news media is going to saddle up and ride this to death.”
“We’ll handle the media,” Franklin said. “You two do what you do best. Catch the murderer. Or murderers.”
Jack understood the position this put the Chief in. More importantly, he knew what position he and Liddell were being put in. Murphy’s Law said: It’s easier to get your tit in a wringer than to get it out. Theoretically, Jack knew he could turn the case down, but he respected Chief Pope. Maybe he would find evidence that Dick was criminally involved. Murphy’s Law also said: Wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first.
Pope opened the door to his office and ushered them all inside.
Claudine and Mrs. Day were seated across from the Chief’s desk on a leather love seat. Pope introduced Jack and Liddell to Mrs. Day and the men took seats.
Claudine spoke first, addressing Chief Pope. “We’ve been waiting over thirty minutes.” It wasn’t said angrily, but she was establishing the pecking order.
Jack ignored her and said, “What can we do for you, Mrs. Day?”
Mrs. Amelia Day was a small, attractive woman in her mid to late sixties, dyed red hair with some gray showing. She was well dressed and groomed, fingernails cut close, unpainted, and she wore no jewelry except the engagement-wedding ring on her left hand. A MedicAlert bracelet was on her right arm. Jack sized her up as stable, reasonable but no pushover, who didn’t feel she had to dress to the nines to be taken seriously. And she had been smart enough to bring her attack dog—Claudine. She apparently didn’t know Claudine would bite her as well.
On the other hand, Claudine Setera was dressed to meet the president or go on a date with an oil sheik. Cleavage was her top priority. Claudine was in her mid-t
wenties, dark hair worn long over her shoulders, dark eyes, immaculate olive skin. She was a Channel 6 news anchor and investigative reporter. She was as treacherous as she was beautiful. She had come up through the ranks, first working for a newspaper and then for Channel 6, where she moved up the ladder quickly. Jack had to admit Claudine was tenacious and usually got her story. He’d learned she was honest, fair even, but he didn’t trust her. He saw her usual notebook was missing. Instead, she held a digital recorder. The red light was on.
Bitch.
Mrs. Day deferred to Claudine.
Claudine said, “Chief Pope was given a copy of a recently recorded conversation between Mrs. Day and Deputy Chief Richard Dick. Are you aware of this?”
“We’re aware,” Jack answered.
“And are you also aware that Mrs. Day’s son, Max, was murdered in 1980?”
“Miss Setera,” Jack began. “This isn’t your interview. I can verify that the Chief assigned that case to us,” Jack said and faced Mrs. Day. “We’ll need to talk to you, Mrs. Day. Preferably alone, but you can have your daughter present, if you wish. She was the one who recorded the conversation, correct?”
Claudine’s eyes flashed at the hint of being excluded.
Mrs. Day spoke for the first time.
“She did. Reina was supposed to meet us this morning at Channel Six, but Miss Setera was kind enough to come here with me until she gets here.”
I’ll bet she was.
“Would you like to wait for your daughter?” Jack asked.
“Reina’s an ob-gyn,” Mrs. Day said proudly. “She wanted to be here, but she must have been called to some emergency.”
“Mrs. Day, if your daughter can add anything to the investigation, we should talk to her separately. We need to make sure we have your individual thoughts and memories.”