The Betrayers (20 page)

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Authors: James Patrick Hunt

BOOK: The Betrayers
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They packed into the station briefing room. Hastings stood at the front of the room, still in plainclothes, Karen on one side of him, Rhodes on the other. Hastings had insisted Rhodes stand up there with him. Beyond them was a sea of cops, most of them dressed in the green military-looking jumpsuits with black turtleneck sweaters underneath. In black stencil on their backs, it read POLICE TACTICAL UNIT. There were about thirty of them. Another twenty cops, some in uniform, some in plainclothes. Facing them was Charlie Day, captain of the tact team, Ronnie Wulf, chief of detectives, Chief Mark Grassino, and Assistant Chief Fenton Murray. Aaron Pressler, the department's media spokesman, leaned against the door with his back, as if to keep civilians from interrupting. The St. Louis county sheriff and his chief deputy were there also. Everyone aware of the others in the room, of the task before them. Scared, but excited and hungry too, wanting to bring this fiend down. In their more honest moments, they would admit personal dislikes for at least someone else in the briefing room. At other times, the normal human emotions of envy, resentment, pettiness, and anger would surface among them. But on this night, they all took comfort in the fraternity, the brotherhood. On this night, they shared the same determination.
Chief Grassino stood in front of the podium.
“The target's name is Michael Dillon,” Grassino said. “We have his summary sheet, but most of you are not going to have time to read that. He is the chief suspect in the murders of Deputies Chris Hummel and Wade Childers and Sergeant Robert Cain. This man is a professional killer. He is smart and he is tough. We believe that for that past year
and a half he has been living in St. Louis under the name of Jerry Rosinski.”
Behind Chief Grassino on a white screen there was a grainy black and white photograph of Mike Dillon, set against a gray wall of a building. He wore sunglasses and a light-colored windbreaker.
Grassino said, “Our information is that he is residing in a small two-story house on 4351 Reno Street. Near the Hill. Captain Day of the tact team has obtained the floor plans of the house and he will brief the members of the tact team on those. Presently we have patrol units guarding the back and the front, waiting for us. Lieutenant Hastings has obtained both a search warrant and an arrest warrant. As this is a high-risk search, it is my order that the detectives remain on the outer perimeter until the raid is concluded. Once Dillon is secured or it is determined absolutely that he is not there, the homicide detectives and technicians will be allowed in.”
Grassino turned and briefly regarded Hastings. Hastings nodded an affirmation back. It wasn't necessary, Hastings thought. Established procedure prohibited detectives from being primary in high-risk situations akin to combat, but Hastings was grateful to Grassino nonetheless for taking the step of letting the officers know he was not a coward. A small gesture, but a mark of a natural leader.
Grassino turned back to the officers. “I guess that's about it. You've all been well trained, and you don't need me to tell you how to do your jobs. Good luck.”
 
 
Twenty-five minutes later, Hastings and Rhodes sat in the Jaguar, parked three blocks down the street from the house on Reno Street. Parked one block beyond the outer perimeter. The second level of security was the inner perimeter, consisting entirely of tact team members surrounding the house. The last and most dangerous level was the entry team, the officers who would be going in; tact team officers were stacked up on the front and rear security at the back door.
In the Jaguar, Rhodes released the safety on his service weapon, a .357 semiautomatic. Hastings's gun, a .38 Chiefs Special snubnose revolver, did not have a safety.
Rhodes said, “It's cold.”
“Yeah,” Hastings said.
“Do you think he's there?”
“I don't know.”
“Man,” Rhodes said. It had only been a few hours. Cain was dead and it hadn't sunk in. A shooting that led to a witness and then an identifiable suspect and an address. Another police officer dead, sacrificed, perhaps to find the killer of the first two.
“George?”
“Yes.”
“It just happened, you know. Who would know?”
“Right. Who would know.”
Hastings was feeling it. His body temperature up and his palms sweaty. They were at a safe distance, but there were men and a few women going into the house of a man who used machine guns on police officers. He wanted the time to pass. He wanted it to be done. He wanted Dillon shot in the head before he knew it was happening.
“We'll get him,” Rhodes said.
And Hastings was thinking, yeah, maybe. If the guy was your typical dumbass criminal shooter, he wouldn't think to hide. He'd be in the house registered in his alias watching cable television with three or four beers in him. Look up in shock as twenty to thirty cops in black Kevlar stormed in his house and made him piss down both legs. Put his face down into the sofa as he cries out for help, the loser within hoping for capture in some way. More often than not, that's how it went. But a handful of them were smart. They cleared out before the police got there. They thought things through and made contingency plans. Mike Dillon's file suggested he wasn't a typical dumbass. If he wasn't in the house, he would probably leave town. He would probably have money
stashed someplace and a clean car and he would take one of two dozen roads out of town. He would be gone in the night. Dillon had time. He had shot Cain and the ambulances had come and the woman was questioned and the warrants were obtained and there was a pre-arrest briefing. All of it necessary, all of it eating time.
Rhodes peered through the windshield.
“There they go,” he said.
A muffled blast and flash in the distance. Stun grenades. Curt commands barked out.
Rhodes said, “I think they're in the house now.”
Ram smashing in the deadbolt on the front door. On the back door, they used the shotgun with a shell designed to blow the hinges off the doors. Officers running in, more commands, breaking off in twos, every closed door and unexamined corner a threat.
Three minutes went by. Then another two.
The handheld radio squawked. Hastings picked it up.
“Yeah.”
“Captain Day here.”
“Yeah.”
“He's not here.”
The man was a captain and he knew his business and he deserved respect. But Hastings couldn't help asking.
“You sure?”
“He's not here,” Day said. “You can bring your men in now.”
“Jimmy, you're lying to me.”
Rizza said, “I swear, on my mother, he called before you got here. He said he was coming.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here. Jack, I know where he lives. You want, we can get in the car and drive over to his house. But I'm telling you, if we do, he's probably going to get here after we do.”
“It's been well over an hour.”
Rizza shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call him.”
“Okay, but he's not going to be there.”
“Call him.”
Regan kept the gun on Jimmy as he walked over to the telephone hanging on the wall.
 
 
Hastings was not in the kitchen when it went off. The detectives and technicians all knew better than to touch the phone with bare hands. The suspect's phone was under no circumstances to be used to place calls. But it was ringing now so a detective ran to the front of the house and called for Hastings, the supervising detective.
Hastings rushed back, looked at the phone. There was no answering machine and they had not been there long enough to set up a listening device to it. It rang twice more before he picked it up, his hand in a latex glove.
Hastings said, “Yeah?”
“Mike?”
Hastings grunted. “Yeah?”
“It's Jimmy. Where the hell are you?”
Hastings said, “Where are you?”
“I'm at the garage.”
There was a silence.
Shit.
Jimmy Rizza said, “Who is this?”
Hastings bit his lower lip. He said, “Who is
this
?”
Jimmy hung up the phone.
 
 
Regan said, “Well?”
Jimmy said, “That wasn't him.”
Regan sighed. “Jimmy.”
“It wasn't. Fuck, I don't know who it was.”
Regan raised the pistol.
“Jack,
fuck,
I don't. I don't fucking know.”
“Jimmy—”
“Christ, I'm telling you, that was not Mike. I don't know who the fuck it was.”
“Jimmy.”
“Jack, the whole time, we've been in this town, I have never heard anyone else answer that goddamn phone but Mike. For all's I know, it's someone working for you.”
Regan hesitated.
“It's no one I know,” Regan said. “I came alone. I always do.” He pointed the barrel of the gun at Jimmy's kneecap.
“
Jack.
I swear—”
The telephone rang.
Regan's eye was on the end of the gun, the sight resting on the knee. It would cripple Jimmy and start him screaming and he would stop fucking around like a little kid. Shatter the kneecap and not bleed out and then he could get some answers.
The telephone rang.
“Jack, that might be him. Let me answer it.”
The telephone rang.
Jimmy started backing away to the phone, his hands raised, fingertips quivering.
“Okay?” Jimmy said. “Just let me see.”
The telephone rang and Jimmy picked it up.
“Hello,” Jimmy said.
“It's me,” Dillon said. “We got problems.”
Jimmy said, “What's going on?”
“I don't know,” Dillon said. “You tell me.”
Jimmy said, “What are you talking about?”
“You got cops there?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Are the police there?”
It came back to Jimmy now.
Who is this?
A man's voice he hadn't heard before. A policeman. Immediately, he decided not to tell Mike.
“No,” Jimmy said. “Man, what's up with you?”
Dillon said, “I got about a hundred of them surrounding my house now. Looks like they called in the fucking marines.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. You know anything about it?”
“Mike, I didn't say a fucking word.”
Dillon was calling from a pay phone at a gas station. His Cadillac was parked on the side. He kept his back turned against the night traffic, but occasionally turned his head back to look for patrol vehicles.
He said, “Yeah, well, there was some trouble at Sharon's place.”
“Sharon's place? Hey, I thought you were going to come here first.”
“Change of plans,” Dillon said. “We gotta leave town, Jimmy.”
“Mike, did you take care of her yourself?”
“No,” Dillon said. “She's alive. That's the problem. We have to go.”
A policeman answering Dillon's home phone.
Who is this?
Jimmy said, “Mike, what did you do?”
“I clipped a couple of cops. And if I go down, you're going down too. Understand?”
Jimmy Rizza looked at Jack Regan's .45 and remembered the cop's voice on the phone. Man, when it rains it pours. Jimmy said, “Yeah, I understand.”
“Good,” Dillon said. “The way I figure it, we both need to get out of here.”
“Okay, Mike. Whatever you say. Why don't you come out here?”
“No way,” Dillon said. “You come and meet me. Bring the Thunderbird, you understand? You have to bring the Thunderbird. You show up in something else, I'm liable to be disappointed.”
“All right, Mike. Where?”
“The Savvis Center. Mezzanine, section 307. Remember, bring the Thunderbird.”
Dillon hung up the phone.
Jimmy put his receiver back on the wall. He said, “He wants me to meet him.”
Regan said, “Where?”
“The Savvis Center. You know, where the hockey team plays.”
“You should have told him to come here.”
“Jack, the police are surrounding his house. He's afraid they might be here too. It doesn't matter what I say or what you do, he's not going to come here.”
A big sports arena, Regan thought. He wants the protection of a crowd.
Jimmy pointed to a 1989 beige Ford Thunderbird. “We're supposed to come in that,” he said.
Regan glanced at the car. He pictured a gun hidden under the front seat, or in a secret panel on the driver's side door. He almost smiled.
“No,” Regan said.
“He
insisted,
Jack. You know how he is.”
Regan said, “It's not going to matter, though. Is it?”
Jimmy sighed. “No, I guess it won't.”
The telephone started ringing again.
Jimmy looked at the phone for a moment. Christ. Raining. He said to Regan, “I'm ready.”
It was still ringing when they left.
 
 
Contrary to film lore, modern-day technology can trace a telephone call the instant the call is placed. A civilian with *69 capacity knows that much. Soon they had the address of Rizza's garage, which they would later learn was registered to another alias of his, and they sent a couple of radio cars immediately.
In the rear foyer at the house registered to Jerry Rosinski, they found a dog crate with a terrier mix inside. The dog was frightened and curled in the corner. A uniformed officer took his head gear off and showed the little dog a human face and coaxed it out. The detectives suggested that they take the dog out to the front yard so it wouldn't mess up evidence or shit in the house.
Rhodes said, “Maybe he'll come back for the dog.”
Hastings said, “I doubt it.
Fuck.
Let me think here.” He said, “The guy on the phone said, where are you?”
“Yeah?”
“So he was expecting him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Like, what's holding you up, where are you.”
Rhodes said, “You want to go out there?”
“Yeah,” Hastings said. “Listen, you stay here. Call me if you find something. Something that will tell me that this guy's not halfway to Canada by now.”

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