Random Victim (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

No False Moves

The apartment proved to be a mixed bag. It was on the top floor of one of those stylish brick buildings that proliferated
on the North Side. Leal, Ryan, and Smith showed up with a legion of county cops, evidence technicians, and a K-9 officer.
Martin Walker was not there, the landlord said. The guy had been renting it for the past year, only his name wasn’t Walker,
it was Brian Tubbs.

“He left me alone and paid his rent on time,” the old man said, looking at the picture. “What do I care what name he used?
He wasn’t there much, anyway.”

“How about this person?” Leal asked, showing him a mug shot of the battered Bobbi with his wig.

“Yeah, she’s been here, too,” the landlord said. “Looks like she has some lumps there.”

“Man, you don’t know the half of it,” Ryan said, grinning from ear to ear. “Now, all we ask is that you open the door for
us. Otherwise, we’ll do it ourselves.” He pointed to Smith, who was holding a big sledgehammer.

“Okay,” the old man said, “but that dog’s not going to pee on anything, is he?” He looked down at the large German shepherd
sitting on the landing, panting.

“The dog’s completely housebroken, sir,” the K-9 officer said.

“Believe me, compared with your tenant, he’s a real sweetheart,” Leal said.

The old man grunted and pulled his passkey from the loop on his belt. It unlocked the bottom door lock, but not the top dead
bolt. “That’s funny,” he said.

“How long since you’ve done an inspection?” Leal asked.

The old man scratched his chin, and shrugged.

Smith frowned and gently moved the old man away from the door. He swung the hammer with a pivoting motion that made a sharp
cracking sound when it hit just below the lock, and the door swung inward.

All the rooms were checked and photographed. The dog alerted on several places, but no substantive amounts of drugs were found.
They did find a scale and a quantity of Pony-Pak rolling papers along with some crack-baking supplies.

“Bobbi told us he’d been expanding their product a bit,” Ryan said, directing the ET to photograph and tag the stuff.

What they found next bothered them more so, although it, too, had been described by Bobbi. Several kiddie-porn movies and
a VCR, along with a Polaroid camera, were in a cabinet in the bedroom, along with a stack of stoned-looking young boys masturbating
and performing fellatio. From the background in the photos, it was apparent that the pictures had been taken in the bedroom.
Some of the photos had obviously been taken by one of the participants, a flabby middle-aged white male.

“That son of a bitch,” Leal said.

“More fuel for the fire,” Ryan said, handing the stack to an ET with an evidence bag. He snapped at his latex gloves after
he dropped the photos. “Makes me still feel like washing my hands, you know?”

“Really,” Leal said. “If I find him, he’s going down hard.”

“The way it looks, we’ll probably be figuring out who we want to play us on
Most Wanted
,” Ryan said.

“I want Eddie Murphy to play me,” Smith said. “Him or Laurence Fishburne. How ’bout you, Sarge?”

Leal shrugged.

“I’ve been told I resemble Tom Selleck,” Ryan said. “But he hasn’t been doing much lately. Maybe somebody more popular.”

“Gain a few pounds and we’ll see if Drew Carey is busy,” Leal said. Smith laughed, and Ryan smirked. It was the first time
Leal could remember that the three of them had shared a light moment together.

“Okay,” Ryan said, imitating John Wayne. “Looks like this little fracas is about over.” He went back to his regular voice
as he took out his cell phone. “The state’s attorney wanted us to check with him before we hit the house to review anything
new that we might want on the warrant.” He began dialing.

“What about the office?” Leal asked.

“We can do that next,” Ryan said. “All we’re looking for there are copies of his records. We got some dudes from Financial
Crimes to do most of that one. They know what to look for.” He put his hand over the receiver. “The boss wants to come along
when we hit the house.”

“Look,” Leal said, “why don’t you guys finish up here. I gotta go outside and make a call.”

“Got a hot date?” Ryan asked. “With Sharon Divine?”

The comment stung, but Leal just replied, “No, I told Hart I’d call and give her a heads-up after we were done.”

Leal was just on the verge of disconnecting when Hart finally answered. He figured her caller ID had identified him, because
she answered with a, “Hi, Frank, how did it go?”

“We just got finished sorting through the apartment. About what we expected.”

“Did he have a lot of kiddie porn?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, including some homemade shit. Polaroids.”

“What a creep. I hope I can be there when we nail him good.”

Leal hoped that, too, and debated telling her about Brice’s decision to bring Murphy into the picture.

“What took you so long to answer the phone?” he asked instead.

“I just got out of the bathtub,” she said. “The doctor said I could do some light exercise, so I went for a walk. Then I have
this special ointment that’s supposed to minimize any scarring. What a trip trying to put that on my back.”

“Need any help?” Leal said.

“Oh, yeah, right,” she said, her tone light.

It’s good to hear her laugh, at least, Leal thought.

“So what’s your next move?” she asked.

“We’ve got the warrants all set. Financial Crimes is going to the office with us and we’ll grab all the records we can. Then
we’ll hit his house.”

“Wish I could be there for that.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he said. “But I do have some other good news.”

“What?”

“You’ve been nominated for an award for pinching Bobbi and helping break open the case. Undersheriff Lucas will be contacting
you. And,” he purposely waited, “it just might be the Medal of Valor.”

He waited for her to say something. “Ollie?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, why?”

Leal looked up to see Ryan, Smith, and a host of others coming out of the apartment, Ryan grinning at him and pantomiming
kissing into a mock telephone.

“Look, Ollie, I have to go. But don’t worry, I’ll call you later and give you a heads-up, okay?”

Ryan slapped Leal on the back and said, “Time to go, Frankie, unless you want to keep making time with your girlfriend.”

“I got to go,” Leal said.

“I heard him,” Hart said. “Good luck, and be careful, Frank.”

“You, too, kid,” he said, hoping she’d get through this all right. But then he reflected a moment more and figured she would.
She has cojones. He smiled at the thought. In a figurative sense, she’s got ’em.

Ryan called on the tac frequency for Leal to meet him at the small ice cream shop that was about half a mile from Walker’s
house. Orders were that they were supposed to use that as a staging area, and when Leal pulled up he saw a line of perhaps
a dozen squads parked along the road, with all the coppers standing there eating ice cream cones. He spied Ryan and Smith
sitting in some wire chairs under a large umbrella on the back patio.

Ryan grinned at him and licked at an immense cone of tutti fruiti.

“Have a double-decker, on me, Frankie,” he said as Leal walked across the street.

“What kind of bullshit is this?” Leal asked. He nodded a hello to Smith.

“Orders,” Ryan said, dabbing at his mustache. “The boss called. Doesn’t want us to go in yet.”

“Why’s that?”

Ryan grinned again. “Because he wants to be in on the entry team.”

“Great. And when the fuck will that be?”

“Relax, Frankie.” He rolled his tongue around the side of the cone. “We got a surveillance team on the house.”

“How do you know they aren’t out having ice cream, too?” Leal said, sitting down in a huff.

Ryan snapped his fingers and a young girl dressed in a white shirt with an embroidered horse on it came over.

“Please get my friend here one of these,” he said, holding up his cone. He made a show of reaching in his pocket for his wallet,
removing a five, and winking. “And I’ll need a receipt, too, please.”

The girl hurried off and Leal said, “Don’t you think she’s a little bit too young for you?”

“Hey, old enough to bleed, old enough to breed, I always say.”

Leal frowned, thinking of his own daughters and hoping that they never met someone like Ryan. He took out his notebook and
a pen and placed it on the table.

“All right, as long as we’re here fucking off,” he said, “we might as well do some planning.”

“What’s to plan?” Ryan said. “We hit the house and break down his front door.”

“Uh-uh,” said Leal. “We’ll do it MEG style.” He drew a quick diagram of the house, and made notations where he wanted each
officer to go in. Then he checked in with the surveillance team, asking if they saw any activity.

“Negative, Sarge,” came the reply.

“All right,” Leal said, turning to Smith. “Joe, you and I will go into together, all right? Our objective is to get to the
bathroom as quickly as possible in case Walker is home.”

Smith nodded, smiling. “So nothing gets flushed, right?”

“With a two-level house like that,” Leal continued, “you can’t rule out a bathroom on the lower level as well. If it is there,
it’ll probably be right below the one upstairs.”

“And how do we know where that one is?” Ryan asked.

“Simple, you just look for the standpipe coming out of the roof.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “I can see your time in narcotics really sharpened you up.”

Leal glanced at his watch and frowned.

“Why the hell does Brice want to be on the entry team?”

Ryan shrugged. “Maybe he misses it, being saddled to a desk all day. The LT is a hands-on type of guy, though. I know this
for a fact.”

“Oh yeah?” Leal said.

“I remember being with him on a barricaded suspect call once,” Ryan said. “He was the sergeant and I was still a patrolman.
This asshole barricaded himself in this trailer in Stickney. Every once in a while he’d peek out with a rifle. Hadn’t fired
it, but he’d threatened a couple of people.” He licked some more of the ice cream cone.

“So we got this fucking trailer surrounded, see, and this candy-ass lieutenant, who didn’t know his butt from a hole in the
ground, is running the show, trying to talk this guy out with a bullhorn. The guy keeps giving him the finger, and the lieutenant
is getting madder and madder. Meanwhile, they got the old thirty-seven millimeter gas gun all ready to go, but the lieutenant’s
afraid to make a decision.”

“Sounds typical,” Leal said, thinking of Brice.

“Anyway, Brice is off to my left behind a squad, and next to me is this rookie, been on the street only a couple of weeks.”
Ryan paused to grin. “This kid calls over and asks Brice what he should do, ’cause he has to take a shit real bad. Only he’s
saying he has to go ‘number two.’ Now by this time, it was getting a little bit dark, and I’m thinking that we’re probably
gonna be there all fucking night, when Brice tells the kid to just go squat in the bushes and take a crap.” Ryan swirled the
cone against his tongue. “ ‘Just squat down there,’ Brice tells him. So just when the rookie drops his pants, old Brice whips
a rock over at the kid’s squad and says, ‘Look out, he’s got a silencer.’ ”

Ryan paused to laugh, and Leal and Smith were chuckling, too.

“But the kid had his shotgun propped up next to him and grabs for it, and the thing discharges into the air. Well, the lieutenant
thinks we’re under fire and finally gives the command to use the gas. The kid wound up with pants full of shit, and the poor
dumb asshole had to dive through a glass window ’cause he’d barricaded the doors to the place.”

“I think I remember hearing about that,” Leal said. “Wasn’t there a fire, too?”

“Yeah,” said Ryan. “The fucking trailer burned down. Man, those things go up like Christmas trees. But I did learn one thing.
If you have to go, go now, or forever hold your pants.”

“And your shotgun,” Leal said.

The waitress reappeared with Leal’s cone. She dropped the receipt and change in Ryan’s hand and Leal was just about to take
a bite when he heard one of the other officers say, “Hiya, boss.”

“What the hell is this? A goddamned party?” Brice’s gruff voice carried over to them. “Doesn’t anybody do any real police
work anymore?”

Ryan and Smith stood up quickly and dumped their cones in the trash. Ryan then grabbed the one from Leal and dumped that one
also.

Brice walked up to them and glared.

“This a fucking Sunday social?” he said.

“We were waiting on you, boss,” Ryan said. “Figured the men could use a little break.”

“Listen,” Brice said. “When I run an operation, it’s done by the book. No false moves.”

Leal glanced obliquely at Ryan, who still had some vestiges of pink ice cream on his mustache.

“Everybody in position?” Brice asked.

“Roger that,” Ryan said. “We were just going over the house diagram.”

Brice stared at him a moment more, then raised his radio to his lips. “This is Lieutenant Brice. Get in position. We’ll move
on my command.”

They went to their vehicles and slipped on the Kevlar vests with
POLICE
printed in white block letters across the front and back. Everyone was grimly silent as they drove up to the adjacent houses,
which in this neighborhood were a good fifty yards away. Cutting across lawns on foot, they moved to the far side of the evergreen
shrubs along Martin Walker’s driveway, then strode quickly to the front door. Brice opened the screen door, and rang the doorbell.
“Police,” he yelled. “Search warrant.” He motioned to Smith who was holding the sledgehammer. Smith set his feet and slammed
the hammer into the solid oak door as though he was swinging for the fences. The door buckled and slammed inward.

“Police,” yelled Leal as he went through the door. He and Smith made a quick but cautious trek to the upstairs bathroom and
listened as, one by one, the rooms were cleared. At the end it was apparent that they’d hit still another empty house.