Saboteur: A Novel (2 page)

Chapter
3

The New Guy

In October, San Diego was quite simply the perfect place to
be. Endless days of dreamy blue sky and warmth at a time when most states were
experiencing the first chills of fall. It was crisp and clear, but in Southern
California the frigid winter simply never arrived. It would be Nick Sullivan’s
first year off the East Coast and the beginning of a job he was sure he’d hate.
San Diego? Ok, every city had crime, fair enough, but he had hoped to end up in
New York or even Chicago. That was full time work for a real detective. So this
was his punishment then. This was how a career fizzled; and all for what?

He simply couldn’t believe his luck. The chief had been
irate enough to show up at his apartment with a baseball bat. He was wise
enough not to answer the door. Small town police force--a complete rumor mill.
In a town like Richmond, cops didn’t really have to follow the law anyway,
especially not with each other. Dickson would have certainly used the bat too,
at least until he took it away from him. It would have been ugly. Instead
Dickson’s nephew, a deputy, had called him in on a Sunday, told him he was,
‘the best damn detective he had ever seen and that he was awfully sorry to see
him go, but that Richmond just wasn’t big enough for Carl Dickson and the man
who had slept with his beloved niece Caroline.’ Never mind that Caroline was
probably even now moving on to the next deputy that caught her fancy, or
Quarterback or whoever. Still, it had been his fault, in as much as a man can
be faulted for falling victim to horny southern girls’ charms when he’s five
shots into a bottle of Jack Daniels. She had done the pouring and was
twenty-five for God’s sake, hardly too young for him by much. He could have
made a thing of it, refused to leave or quit, but thought it would be better to
just move on.

A change sounded good in fact, and
in some ways at least a transfer to San Diego was an upgrade. So he’d made the
drive all the way from Richmond to Dallas in one night of
nonstop-coffee-drenched driving. It had made him awfully thirsty though. The
beer in Dallas had lasted for three whole days plus the one new, though very
temporary girlfriend. He’d simply slipped out of the hotel while she slept it
off. He’d almost missed his first day on the job and had to drive like the
devil himself to make it to San Diego in time.

He looked up as he pulled into the parking lot of the San
Diego Police Department. In the dark the building looked like a fancy hotel
with soft green track lights cascading against the ribs of the structure.
Inside there were hardly any lights on at this hour. He had arrived during the
biggest horse race of the year, and it turned out there wasn’t a single vacant
room available anywhere. It wouldn’t be the first time he had slept in his car,
but frankly as exhausted as he was he could have slept anywhere. He might have
flown, but flight attendants weren’t what they used to be, screaming babies,
and even a good stiff drink did nothing to calm him during turbulence. No safer
place than the confines of his old banged up El Camino. At least he had a good
parking spot. As he turned off his engine he was sure he could hear the sound
of the ocean breaking against the seawall only a few blocks away. It was dark
still. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour at least, so he stretched
himself across the seat carefully, but before he managed to roll over on his
back, fell into a dead sleep.

He awoke to the beeping of his trusted Casio calculator
watch, now so old it beeped out of key like a drunk slurring his speech. He
loved using the calculator in front of people. It sent a clear signal that he
was old school and proud of it. That was true in some respects at least. He
peeled his face from the seat leather and grabbed his bag out of the
floorboard, then slowly wandered into the station. He headed for the nearest
bathroom, where he would have to imitate a quick bath. A few cars were now in
the lot, but he was still plenty early enough. The email had stated he was to
arrive promptly at 6:30 am and it was now exactly 6:27. Luckily the restroom
was just inside the door of the main entrance, so he slipped in unnoticed. He
wanted to make a good first impression after all. Minutes later he emerged
looking largely unchanged except for a poorly tied tie and an extremely
wrinkled shirt. They were nice clothes, but so badly disheveled he looked like
someone who had been on one long bender--a member of the Rat Pack perhaps.

Sullivan was forty now, but his
raffish good looks had suffered none. His nickname “Ice Man” had been both an
acknowledgement of his detective skills and of his uncanny resemblance to the
character from
Top Gun
. He looked
like a young Val Kilmer gratefully and his appearance caused almost everyone
not to take him very seriously. This he liked. Being underestimated was always
the best position from which to operate and so to become a cop, he had offered
to take the most dangerous undercover jobs first. He hadn’t really had much of
a choice after the bust of course. He might have seen ten years for the amount
of cocaine they had found in his house, his parents’ house actually, and of
course their cocaine. They had started him dealing at fourteen and by nineteen
he was the go to guy from Richmond all the way to the Tennessee border. He
would have ended up dead like both of them too, if not for some instinct of
self-preservation, which had caused him to turn himself in. He wanted to make
the people responsible for his parents’ death pay for it, so he decided to
become the law. In the process, he’d helped the police bring down an entire
drug ring, reaching all the way to Juarez. It turned out pretending to be
someone else was a skill he had an undeniable gift for; a gift he had been
cultivating all his life in fact. He’d always been able to blend in easily
because he had spent so much of his youth surrounded by shady people. As a boy,
making predictions about how drug addicts were likely to behave was simply a
self-defense mechanism; as an undercover cop it had become invaluable. His
instincts bordered on the supernatural. Still, because he had continued
volunteering for the most dangerous stings with little or no training, everyone
had said he’d be dead in a year; there had even been a pool around the office.
He was at the top of everyone’s list, but he proved them all wrong and in the
process finally got himself clear of the law. He’d spent exactly half his life
breaking the law and the other half prosecuting it.

 
Thirteen years
later to the day of his arrest for cocaine possession he had become Richmond’s
most recognizable detective and a minor national celebrity. He had solved the
city’s most infamous case, the first and only serial killer the town had ever
known, dubbed “The Red Neck Killer” by the media. The brutal murders of four
college co-eds had set the town on fire with suspicion and fear for two
sweltering summers and for two years long years there hadn’t been a single
tangible lead; not until Sullivan had followed one of his famous hunches. The
final clue was so unbelievable that he still couldn’t understand why he had
chosen to follow it. But that was part of the nature of his gift. He knew what
to pay attention to and what to ignore, especially in people. How many times
had he watched an interrogation and known instantly who to believe and who not
to? So what if he hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about his ‘instincts’ when
those media vultures had asked how he had caught the Redneck Killer.

“Sullivan you make the goddamn lie
detector obsolete,” Dickson had disgustingly acknowledged. “I’m just glad
you’re on our team,” he’d always said, and then mockingly, “You are on our team,
right?” Some men could never forgive a man his past. Now Dickson had pissed all
over his future too. Well, he thought, at least the weather was nice.

Sullivan peered from the hallway of room 717, which opened
into the main gallery of the investigation’s unit. It was an old room by west
coast standards, full of antique mahogany, with a long corridor of separate
interrogation suites set up against the adjacent wall. It looked right out of
Dragnet, and had a kind of retro charm that made him feel somehow at home. It
was huge though. The biggest police station he’d ever seen. As he surveyed the
room he saw to his left row after row of phone operators, all typing furiously
while talking into headsets. It could have been a customer service call center
in India for all that. He stretched his neck to find the end of the row, but as
he did he heard a commanding voice shouting in his direction.

“You. Blondie! You my new detective
or ya’ looking for the beach volleyball courts?”

Sullivan opened his mouth to speak,
but before he could do so the bulldog of a man grabbed him by the arm and lead
him toward the interrogation suites. The man’s face was beet red and an unlit
cigar dangled precariously from his mouth, which he did not need to remove to
shout apparently.

“Sullivan, right?” the man grunted.

“Right, that’s me.”

He had seen angry police sergeants
before, but this was ridiculous.

“Sullivan, I want you to take a
look at the verminous collection of wasted potential standing before you.”

The man pointed to a small group of
detectives huddled against the wall, obviously the ones in question. Each was
looking shamefacedly toward the ground.

“These are the best my city has to
offer apparently and right now a woman who brutally murdered her husband is in
that interrogation room, guilty as the fucking cat that ate the canary and then
bashed in its goddamned head in with a hammer, and not one of these geniuses
can get a word out of her. I’ve heard you’re some kind of damn prodigy. Your
boss recommends you so highly in fact that I’m absolutely certain you must’ve
shot a little old lady crossing the street right in the fucking back to get
transferred with such a glowing recommendation. Carl Dickson hasn’t had a nice
thing to say about anyone since the day I met him. But Sullivan, you’re in
luck. I want you to get in that room and prove to me you are worth the goddamn
paper your recommendation is printed on and enlighten us all with these
super-fucking-natural interrogation powers of yours. And don’t dare come out
until she has signed this confession, or you just might end your career as a
beat cop writing muthafuckin’ parking tickets in El Cajon. I’m Tackett,” he
said pointing a finger in his chest. “She’s in there. Now go!”

 
“Don’t forget your pen,” he said, holding
it only inches from Sullivan’s face.

He stood dumfounded for a moment.

“What are you waiting for a tour of
your new goddamned office? This is it kid. Get in there or get back to Richmond
or wherever the hell you came from. And knock twice when she signs it or get
the hell out of my precinct!”

He wasn’t sure he could stand there
any longer without throwing a punch, so he tiptoed around the sergeant
carefully. Tackett was solidly built, but he was an old man and Sullivan never
listened to abuse for very long before taking a shot. He slid silently into the
interrogation room and heard the door lock forcefully behind him.
Goddamn, this place was intense.

He hadn’t known exactly what to
expect at his first day on the job, but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting this.
In the corner of the room behind the desk sat a woman with straight black hair
pulled back into a headband. She was smoking. She barely looked up when he
walked in. The room was spare and even more strangely had no windows or glass.
Somehow, someone had clearly forgotten the value of double-sided mirrors. He
was truly alone with her then.

Old school. Wow. Ok
,
he thought
. This is make or break.
He
could always apply somewhere else
. Mall
cop, maybe
.

The woman suddenly looked up seeming to notice he wasn’t
quite prepared.

“Boy, they are really scraping the
bottom of the barrel now aren’t they? Did all the grown-ups go home, honey?”

The woman was probably in her
thirties, late thirties--maybe even forties, but her clothes, jewelry, not to mention
attitude were all Beverly Hills. Since he knew absolutely nothing about the
case he decided to play right along.

“Yeah, they did give up actually.
My sergeant just sent me in to entertain you until the place closes.”

The woman drew from a lit cigarette
seductively, like something right out of an old black and white movie. It made
him crave a smoke badly; he thought he could taste it. As she exhaled she
placed her tongue on the tip of her lip before speaking.

“You must be fresh out of the
academy? No wait. There’s something else—ah, you just act young. I see it now.
I know a Botox doctor who could fix those crow’s feet. That forehead. You’ve
done a lot of worrying in your life. Let’s see I put you at about 42, no wait
younger, just 40.”

“You’re a good guesser,” he said
flashing a toothy grin.

The woman laughed.

“Would you like to smoke too?”

“Can you really smoke in here?”

“I can do whatever I want, wherever
I want detective.”

“Speaking of th--”

“Nice transition detective,” she
said interrupting before he could get a word out. “Look, I have already spoken
to all the idiots in charge and there is nothing left for me to share I’m
afraid.”

The woman tilted her head and
looked at him with a squint, adjusting the cross around her neck on its chain.
She let her hand slide slowly down to her breastbone.

“Tits like these take you places
detective, help you out of all kinds of messes. But there’s something about
you. It’s odd. We’ve just met, but I feel--I don’t know how to explain—I feel I
can’t lie to you. You’re almost movie star good-looking, do you know that?”

“Well,” he said chuckling
nervously.

“Are you a real cop,” she said
staring directly at him for the first time.