Collision Course (A Josh Williams Novel) (8 page)

Sergeant
Harriman called for a female officer to transport the witness to the station for a statement.

Her name was Cheryan Pincince, age 17, the niece of Mustafa Subedar's girlfriend. He instructed the officer to contact the girl's parents and get them into the station as soon as possible. Whatever happened here was no ordinary robbery.

Bureau of Criminal Identification, known as BCI, arrived at the store. They were now dealing with two shooting scenes, three homicides, one officer involved shooting, and a related car accident. Sneaking out early was out.

Detective Frank Mooney and Detective Lieutenant Mark "Dad" Pereira held fifty years collectively processing crime scenes. Thirty-two of the years belonged to Pereira. He grew into the nickname "Dad" since he was old enough to be every officer's father, with the exception of Joe McDaniel.

Sergeant Harriman gave the detectives details; two dead, victims of an intense, life altering, experience with the business end of a shotgun. He did not recall seeing any expended shell casings, but one of the shooters was lying next to a semi-automatic handgun.

Harriman also told the detectives of the unusual account by the clerk, making them aware this was a strange one.

As they gathered their equipment, they could not help but notice a pasty-white looking Straphanger Jones leaning against the dumpster. Nor could they ignore him.

"Hey, Straphanger, they tell me you added some color to my crime scene in there, what the fuck is wrong with you man?" Det. Mooney loved to torture cops with weak stomachs.

"Fu...ahh...fu....ah, shit, fuck you, Mooney." Jones again convulsed with dry heaves.

"Jesus Christ, Strap, get a grip, it happens to a lot of guys, right LT?" Smiling at Lieutenant Pereira.

"Oh, yeah, sure,” shaking his head. “I would not give my breakfast back to no body. Get it? No Body." Pereira laughed. "Hey Strap, I think I see a piece of bacon on your shoe." Causing a new wave of dry heaves.

Mooney walked over to the still distressed officer. "I think you need a new nickname there, Strap. How about Yak Man?" laughing as he starting photographing the outside area.

The detectives began documenting the scene, chuckling at the various sounds emanating from outside.

Pereira stuck his head out the door, "When you're done doing the worm dance over there, make yourself useful. Check around the perimeter and the dumpster, maybe we'll get lucky and the asshole will have dropped his driver's license."

Lieutenant Perreira smiled and shook his head,
what is the world coming to when a cop cannot appreciate a good shotgun blast to the skull?

Pereira began video imaging the scene inside the store. Near the front counter, he could see blood on the floor. Next to this area was a small blue dust mask, torn strap, blood spatter on the strap and inside of the mask.

Moving into the main area, Pereira saw a male victim, dark skin tone, perhaps of Middle Eastern descent, lying partially on his left side, right arm at a forty-five degree angle to the body with the hand resting on a blue steel, small frame, semi-automatic handgun.

The hammer on the weapon was cocked, the magazine was in place, and there was a single shell casing lying just behind the victim. Pereira guessed it was a nine millimeter, but that could wait.

The top of the victim's skull was missing from a point just above the eyebrows to the point just prior to curve in the back of the skull. Fragments of the skull, brain, skin, and blood were sprayed against the inside wall of the store.

Moving toward the back of the store, Pereira found the second victim. This was a young, white, male, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two years-old. He was lying face down, the left arm curled underneath the body, the right arm extended with the hand clutching a four-inch locking blade knife. The body surrounded by a pool of blood in various stages of coagulation. The body appeared intact with the exception of an approximately baseball sized exit wound just below the shoulder blade. The wound was asymmetrical, with various tissues, rib fragments, and viscera evident.

There was assorted tissue and blood spatter on the floor, display counters, and wall behind the victim. Pereira shot the last of the initial video and motioned for Mooney to start collecting the evidence.

While the BCI detectives worked inside, Straphanger Jones sufficiently recovered, or run out of undigested food, to make himself useful. As he walked around the front of the store, he saw the blue dust mask lying next to the dumpster. His initial reaction was to ignore it, but then it occurred to him it seemed an odd place for such an item.

Opening the cover of the dumpster, he peered inside. As he looked over the edge, Lt. Pereira came out of the store to get some additional equipment. Jones looked into the dumpster, saw a barrel of a shotgun pointed up in his general direction, and screamed. He dove to the ground, directly into the various piles of vomit he so fortuitously placed there.

Pereira, intrigued by this, walked over to capture the still screaming Jones on video.

"He's in there, he's in there." Jones was yelling. "He pointed the shotgun at me." Swimming vigorously toward Taunton Avenue.

Pereira lifted the cover on the dumpster, saw a shotgun absent a critical component for being considered imminently dangerous, namely a person with a trigger finger. He continued to video Jones while trying to think of the most appropriate soundtrack to select for what was sure to be a sensation at the next cop party.

The
next few hours were a blur to Josh.

He kept playing it over in his mind.

I saw the gun. I heard the misfire.

The guy kept moving, wouldn't listen to me.

How could this be?

I thought it was a gun. The guy pointed it at me, didn't he?

There was no gun. Josh knew that now. Knew it was a cell phone.

Josh began to have doubts.

Did he screw up? Did he kill an innocent person? What the fuck is going on?

Chris Hamlin came in with Josh's wife, Keira. She embraced her husband and looked him over. "Josh" she said softly "it's alright, you're okay, and that’s all that matters."

"What the hell does that mean," Josh exploded "that's all that matters, you think I fucked up? You think I shot one of your innocent victims of police brutality?"

Chris was confused.
What the hell was happening with these two?

Keira Walsh Williams was thirty-four years old with a Boston College Law JD and successful practice as a Criminal Defense lawyer. She did volunteer work for the Innocence Project.

You could not find two more diametrically opposed people then Josh and Keira, but they were together three years. They seemed happy. She avoided cases involving her husband's department and it seemed to work.

Yet Josh was angry, borderline crazy, glaring, fists clenched.

Chris walked between them. "Keira, give me a minute with him it's been a tough morning."

Keira turned, looked back, "Fuck you,” and walked out.

"That would be a fucking change wouldn't it, you fucking bitch."

Chris reached out and slapped Josh. No idea where it came from except she knew she hated that word.

Josh looked her, shocked "What the fuck, Cheeks...."

"Don't you ever use that word again.”

"What the fuck. Are you a nun now? Suddenly you have standards. You fuck anything that is breathing at the start of the process and now you're gonna lecture me about being fucking proper?"

Chris slapped him again and kicked out his legs. Josh looked up.

"I am going to say this one more time, I have no idea what's going on here, but I do know one thing. You will never use those words when referring to your wife again. Is that clear? If I ever hear you use that word about her again, lying on your ass will be the least of your worries. Is that clear?"

Josh started to sob.

Chris realized she made a mistake. She should have asked Josh first. There was something going she did not understand.

"Josh, I'm sorry. I thought seeing her would help."

Josh sat back down and buried his face his hands. "I don't know, I don't know." Chris sat down next to him and put her arm around him. "Talk to me Josh, maybe I can help."

Joe
McDaniel was tired. Ventraglia was just about broken, but he could not keep his focus on him. He worried about Josh.

More often than not, it was the cops who really cared that ate their guns. It is one of life's ironies that the type of personality that made the most compassionate and effective cops made them the most vulnerable.

Josh was one of them. He cared.

He did things right.

Did everything he could to give JoJo a chance to give up.

Unless he found a way to cope, it would eat him alive.

McDaniel found his own way; he wanted to point Josh to that. He was troubled knowing that he could not.

Nightmares are personal demons, finding their own solutions.

So he went back to doing what he did best, getting people to admit to things that they prefer to keep to themselves.

With few exceptions, everyone possessed a trigger that compelled the truth, or at least a version of it. Sometimes it was a latent guilty conscience, sometimes, a misplaced sense of accomplishment.

Often it was just weariness, McDaniel's stamina outlasting theirs.

When Ventraglia started talking, McDaniel listened dutifully and wrote it all down. He made sure Ventraglia signed the Waiver of Rights form. Another detective witnessed the signature and filed it. He made sure Ventraglia initialed each line in the statement and signed it. He offered to add or change anything Ventraglia said needed to be.

He also knew it was bullshit.

The forensics told a different story. The cloned cell phone showing the calls to Machado and 911, the shotgun traced to a B&E McDaniel knew Ventraglia committed. However, it was enough to tie the moron into a felony murder wrap.

All of which was recorded on the video camera, embedded in the wall of the interrogation room. The recording device, under lock and key in the Internal Affairs division, was inaccessible to anyone.

Anyone, that is, except Joe McDaniel.

When one has been a police officer as long as Joe McDaniel, you accumulate favors. Some of these favors cross generations.

On a cool summer evening in 1971, an East Providence Police Officer spotted two young males in the back of a closed business. Getting out of the car and approaching them, he saw one of them drop a screwdriver. The officer grabbed the kid and pushed him against the wall, as he did this the second male jumped on the officer, trying to get to his gun.

The officer, hanging onto the weapon with one hand, was fighting for his life. A patron of Bovi's came out, saw the fight, and went inside to call the station.

Joe McDaniel was the first car on the scene, running to the officer he heard him yell, "They’re trying to get my gun, Joe, the fucks are trying to get the gun."

McDaniel used his blackjack on the head of the kid on the officer's back, and then took out the front teeth of the other one.

McDaniel pulled the toothless one to the ground and cuffed him. The other one was unconscious.

A month later, Joe McDaniel went to court and convinced the prosecutor to drop the charges on the youths so they could enlist in the service. They both did, served in Viet Nam, and returned to start an alarm and video surveillance company.

Flashing forward to 1985, the new police station was under construction, Joe McDaniel persuaded the owner of the company contracted to install the video cameras to provide him with a key to the system. Joe McDaniel locked many people up, but he never forgot they were human. He took care of those who made mistakes of judgment, not for any other reason but his humanity and understanding of human behavior.

The key might come in handy someday if a good cop was in trouble or justice needed some help and was about to be denied.

That day arrived.

He thanked Ventraglia for his ‘honesty,’ stood up, and left the room.

Sometimes a little truth is all one needs. The public defender would have to reveal all the truth to compromise the lies in the statement, which in and of itself would incriminate the son-of-a-bitch.

How is it in the trick box, asshole?

Handing the documents to the Captain of Detectives, McDaniel said "Hey Cap, we got this wrapped up, I am buying at Bovi's, see you there," and winked.

The Captain, who was in diapers while McDaniel was already on the job, nodded, put the documents in the investigative file, and left.

McDaniel went to his desk and retrieved the key.

A short while later, he returned, wearing the police issue raincoat, black side out, and a Richard Nixon mask. He entered the interrogation room and inflicted such pain on Ventraglia as to make a Gestapo interrogator cringe. Moreover, he did it without any blood, the raincoat being a protection from the relaxation of Ventraglia's bowels that often issued from these moments.

The janitor would be pissed, but not surprised, about the extra time required to clean the room.

This did not change anything, McDaniel thought. But, God help me, it felt right.