SK01 - Waist Deep (30 page)

56

It was fully dark by the time I pulled up in front of
Roger
Jackson
’s place and turned off the car.

“What are we doing here?” Kris asked.
“I thought you were taking me home.”

“I am.
But I left
Roger
in a delicate situation.
Besides, he needs to know that the deal we’ve made extends to him, too.”

She shrugged and looked up at the house.

“Kris?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know a girl named Linda, do you?”

She turned to face me.
“No.
Why?”

I shook my head.
“It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” she said.
“Do you want me to come in with you or wait in the car?”

I
considered for a moment, then decided that she was probably not going anywhere.
I
started to answer her when I heard
the pounding of heavy boots. Someone swung
my car door
violently open.

“Don’t you move, scumbag!” a deep voice brayed at me.
“Hands on the steering wheel!
Now!”

I moved my hands slowly toward the wheel and grasped it lightly.
Beside me, Kris’s eyes gr
ew wide as her door flew
open, too.

“Outta the car, missy,” another gruff voice told her.

A single file line of men in black fatigues trotted quickly up
Roger
Jackson
’s walkway.
All the men were helmeted and wore goggles.
The lead man carried a ballistic shield.
The second man carried a black battering ram with white lettering on the side that read “Knock, knock.”
The rest of the men carried assorted weaponry.

It was a police raid and we were caught right in the middle of it.

I glanced over at Kris, who was staring back at me.
Her eyes were wide with surprise but still shrewd beyond her years.

“Let’s go, missy,” the gruff cop’s voice told her.

“Remember our deal,” Kris whispered, and got out of the car.

57

I reached my hands out to my left, stretching them out the open door as far as possible.

“Now step out of the vehicle with your left foot only,” came the next command.

There was a loud crash, cries of “Police! Search Warrant!” and the S.W.A.T. team knifed through the front door and disappeared into
Roger
Jackson
’s house.

Shit.

Lieutenant Crawford must have worked late and
read Adam’s report. My grace period just went up in a puff of smoke.

“Put your left foot out. Now!” the voice commanded again.

I put my left foot out the door.

“Officer—” I started to say.

“Don’t talk!
Put your right foot—”

“I have a gun.”

There was a short silence.
Then, “Where?”

“On my right hip.
In a holster.”

“Okay.
Do
not
reach for it.”

Duh,
I thought, like Kris would say.
But I only nodded.

The voice talked me the rest of the way out of the
driver’s
seat and then ordered me to face the car.
I did, and braced myself.
Even so, I was surprised by the raw force that took me into the side of the vehicle.
Hands trapped my arms and pressed on my shoulders, pinning me to the hard metal.
Another set of hands started searching me.
It was an awkward pat-down motion that either belonged to a rookie or someone amped up on adrenaline.
Had I searched like that when I was on the job? Before I could consider that thought, someone
jammed
a boot against the inside of my right foot, forcing it
outward.
My left knee quivered under the strain. After a second, it gave way.
I started to fall in that direction.

“Don’t resist!” came two voices at once.
The pair of hands at my back pushed harder.

“I’m not,” I shouted.
“My knee’s bad.”

“Gun!” someone shouted.

Then everyone tensed up and
a moment later I was eating asphalt
.

58

I sat in the interrogation room and stared at the wall, rubbing my wrists.

The cops on scene had
handcuffed me
on
c
e I was proned out
and they had my gun
.
That began what seemed like eight hours in handcuffs for me.
My cheekbone had a nice little cherry on it from grinding into the pavement, the weight of some cop across the back of my neck.
I knew it was all textbook.
I’d been the “bad guy” hundreds of time on the mat
s out at the police academy gym. B
ut when it was for real and on
asphalt
, it hurt like hell.

After a complete search of my body, they’d shoved me into the back of a patrol car without a word.
All in all, I felt mildly grateful.
No one had recognized me.

I’m sure it wouldn’t last.

I sat in the room with my back to the door.
Every few minutes, I could sense a body at the door
.
I wasn’t sure if it were the same officers, a
r
ookie named McLaren and an FTO that looked like a rookie
himself. Maybe
word had started to spread and
other
people were coming to check things out.

The interrogation room itself was bare.
A table and three chairs.
That was it.
Not even a clock.
I didn’t have a watc
h but I imagined it had been almost an hour
from the time we arrived at the police station.

About
twenty minutes
in, I’d
ask
ed
to go to the bathroom.
The rookie had conferred with his FTO and initially refused.
When I asked if the detectives would enjoy having to skirt a puddle of urine to get to their chairs to interrogate me, he reconsidered.
He was smart, though.
He did another complete search, turning out all my pockets, and stood two feet away from me while I used the urinal.

Time slipped by, maybe as much as another
half
hour.
My wrists stopped hurting.
My knee didn’t.
The wheels in my head just kept spinning
. T
he whole while
,
I sat there just wishing I’d taken Kris straight home to her
dad
.

The thing was,
I was in a bind now.
I’d made promises.
I’d promised Rolo I wouldn’t tell the cops about his involvement.
He might not have told me the whole arrangement he had with LeMond or
Jackson
, but he hadn’t out and out lied to me.
He wasn’t
, as he’d say, in breach of contract.
And
his information had
help
le
a
d me to
Jackson
, eventually.

I’d also made a promise to LeMond that I wouldn’t tell anyone about Yvette.
He’d pretty much invalidated that when he lied to me about Kris but then I’d made another promise at Kris’s apartment.
I couldn’t break the first one without breaking the second.

Most importantly, I’d promised Kris.
That was the promise that, if kept, might give her family a fighting chance.
It might keep Kris from thinking that all she really was to anyone was damaged goods.
I knew that right now, she still thought she was
on her way to being a star.
S
omething told me that could change very easily and it would be the damaged goods scenario that might take root.

The real question was, how hard of a hit would I have to take to keep
all of
those promises?

I sighed, and waited.

59

Thirty or f
orty minutes later, the door opened and two detectives strolled in.
I didn’t recognize the first one, but I knew the second.

Jack Stone.

Stone had been a patrol officer when I was on the job
. H
e was a veteran then, working day shift.
I hadn’t heard about him making detective, but then Adam really only updated me on the few people he thought I’d care about
, such as Katie
.
I’d never had any
real
trouble with Stone, but I knew his reputation.

Stone flopped down in the chair opposite me, his collar open and his tie askew.
He’d gotten a little heav
ier
since I’d seen him last and it showed in his middle and in his face.

The other detective sat in the chair to my right.
He looked mildly Asian and younger than me, with his dark black hair combed forward in the front.
Red port wine splotches of birthmark
stood out on his cheek.
He wore a pair of thin,
square
glasses, which he adjusted several times after sitting down.

Stone pointed at him, but looked at me.
“This is Detective Matsuda.
I’m
Detective
Stone.”

I gave a short nod, but said nothing.

He turned to Matsuda.
“This,” he said, pointing to me, “is Stefan Kopriva, formerly of the
RC
PD.”

Matsuda nodded, as if this was news to him.
I knew better.
This was an orchestrated dance, the steps to which the two of them had worked out before ever coming into this room.

“Steffie here is famous,” Stone went on.
“Did you know that?”

Matsuda shook his head, turning a pencil slowly in his fingers.
The sheet on the notepad in front of him remained blank.

“No?
” Stone asked. “
Well, let me educate you on a little
River City police
history.
See, Steffie is actually famous for
two
reasons.
Long about eleven years ago
or so
, we had us a pretty nasty serial robber.
They called him Scarface on account of the long scar that ran here.”
He drew his finger from above his brow down to his chin.
“Scarface hit eighteen, maybe
twenty convenience stores at gunpoint.
He even shot at a cop one night after one of the robberies.
Then he killed one of the clerks, some half-retarded kid.
After that, the brass got serious on his ass and set up a task force to catch him.”

Stone leaned back and adjusted his tie.
I stared at him flatly.

“You know that plaque out in the lobby, Richie?” he asked.
“The one near the Front Desk?”

“The one that says ‘Fallen Heroes’ on it?”
Matsuda’s voice had no accent.
And though he seemed to know his lines, he wasn’t a great actor.

“Yep, that’s the one,” Stone said.
“On that plaque is the name of one Police Officer First Class Karl Francis Winter.
He was a friend of mine and this robber, this Scarface piece of s
hit, shot him dead one night on
a traffic stop.”

I
clenched my jaw.

“Young Steffie here watched Winter die, didn’t you?
” Stone’s voice had grown hard.

I was there,
I thought
.
I held Winter’s
hand and watched the bl
ood spread out from beneath him, black in the moonlight, resembling
a pair of dark wings on the asphalt.

“You j
ust sat that there like a dipshit rookie and watched t
he life bleed right out of him,” Stone said.

I didn’t answer.
The doctors all said that Scarface’s bullet had nicked Winter’s aorta.
They said he’d have probably died even if he’d fallen straight onto an operating table after being shot,
with a host of emergency room doctors
already scrubbed and prepped for surgery.

Even so, Stone’s words hit home.

“Scarface didn’t quit there, Richie,” Stone said, but he
continued to look
at me.
“No, he was a heroin addict and we found out later that he was supporting at least two
w
hores and their habits, too.
So out he went again.
Only the next time he came out of a store, our hero, this man right here, had the dumb luck to roll right up on the whole thing in progress.”

Matsuda sniffed,
feigned
contempt on his face.

“What were
you
pulling into the Circle K for, Steffie?
”Stone asked, sneering.
“
There to get some Bubble Yum?
Or maybe a dirty magazine?”

Coffee,
I whispered
inside my head
.
All
I
wanted was a cup of coffee.

Stone glanc
ed over at Matsuda.
“They had themselves a little gunfigh
t.
‘Shootout at the Circle K,’ they called it.
Scarface got hit in the exchange, but Steffie couldn’t quite finish the job.
Thomas Chisolm had to, didn’t he?”

My stomach burned.
He was leaving a lot out, like the part about Isaiah Morris and his flunkie ambushing me from behind, but I didn’t bother correcting him.

“Chisolm?” Matsuda asked.
“He was my last FTO before I got out on my own.”

“There wa
s a real cop,” Stone said
, turning back to me
.
“Tom Chisolm.
He sure carried your water, didn’t he?
”

I winced and rubbed my knee, trying to ignore the rising bile in my gut.

“You were the toast of the department there for a year or so, weren’t you?” he asked, shaking his head while he spoke.
“A little hero in our midst.”

“I wasn’t a hero,” I said.
“I just did what I had to do—“

“No,” he interrupted, “You’re right.
I guess you weren’t a hero, after all.
I think Amy Dugger would agree with that.
She’d be about sixteen or seventeen right now, wouldn’t she?
A perfect age for your newfound career.
If she were alive, that is.”

Newfound career?
What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Stone turned to Matsuda.
“I suppose you don’t know the Amy Dugger story, either.”

Matsuda shook his head, sticking to the script.

Stone gave me a look.
“Rookies,” he sighed.
“Take ‘em out of the uniform and put
‘em in the dick’s
office and they act like rookies again.”

I didn’t respond.

Stone continued.
“Amy Dugger was a little six
-
year
-
old girl that went missing one fine
spring
day in…what was it, Steffie?
Ninety-five?
Ninety-six?”

I shrugged.

“It was ninety-five,” Stone said.
“I’m sure of it.
Anyway, she was snatched up off the street by what turned out to be her own grandma.
It was some messed up situation where the
mom
and the
grandma
were fighting each other and fighting over the kid.
One or
the
other of the bitches was crazier than forty bastards, if I remember right.
But the grandma was definitely a suspect.
Not the prime suspect, not at first, but she definitely needed a talking to.”

Stone leaned in toward me.
“And who else should they send, if not the hero from the Circle K?”

I
ground my teeth, willing myself to remain still
.

“Such a hero,” Stone muttered, then looked at Matsuda.
“What do they teach in the Academy, Richie?
Huh?
If a suspect gives you permission to search, what do you
always
do?”

Matsuda
responded immediately
.
“You always search.”

“Why?”

“Because the assholes give us permission all the time when they’re holding something.
They think we won’t really search or we won’t find it.”

Stone nodded in agreement.
“That’s right.
But when Stef went to see Grandma and she gave him permission to search her house for little Amy Dugger, do you think he did?”

“No,” Matsuda said.
“I don’t think he did.”

“Right again,” Stone said.
“He didn’t.
Even though Officer Jack Willow, who was a youngster at the time with less than a year on the street, argued and pleaded with him to do the search.
But Steffie wouldn’t.
No, he was a hero and heroes know best, don’t they?”

Stone fell silent and his sarcasm hung in the air.
My jaw was clenched and I forced myself to relax it.
I couldn’t let him get under my skin.
That’s what this whole charade was about.
He was enjoying himself, that
much was
certain, but the point of the whole thing was to g
et me off balance. Then
he could attack me on whatever it was they were charging me with right now.

“The thing is,” Stone continued, “we eventually got around to figuring it was the
grandma
and her stupid pedophile husband who had kidnapped Amy.
And rather than give her back to her
mom
, especially after what the husband had done, they killed her.
They killed that little six
-
year
-
old girl.
Can you believe that?”