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Authors: David Carlisle

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BOOK: The Midtown Murderer
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Chapter 7

Trent moved easily in her direction, smiling. She was bending to scrutinize her bandaged ankle.
She’s beautiful, he thought. And young. “Hello,” he said.

She
smiled at him without any superiority, only kindness. “We never introduced ourselves,” she said, pushing her brown hair over her shoulder. “I’m Rikki Clay.”

They shook hands
. “Rikki, why aren’t you home resting?” he asked, prompting her to talk so that he could examine her features one by one. Curved nose, wide mouth, and blue eyes. And well-dressed, he thought. Ideal.


It was two
A.M.
when the doctor released me from the hospital,” she said quietly. “My car had been towed to the precinct, and my sketch portfolio was in the trunk. I had one of Daddy’s officers drive me over so I could pick it up.”

“What do you sketch?”

“I’m an Atlanta police artist; I do victim sketches for investigators to work with, composite drawings of criminals, clay busts, and such.”

“Are you a police officer?”

“No. I teach art at Georgia Tech. I make some extra money working for Daddy.”

An admiring grin formed on Trent’s face.
“I’d love to hear about that police work.”

Rikki smiled. “Stop by the studio anytime
; it’s on the third floor.”

“I will. So,
how’s the ankle?”

“The
y X-rayed it,” she said, lifting it slightly to look at the ace bandage. “Nothing broken; I just have a deep sprain.”

“Stay off it for a while.”

Right then Butler came out of the bathroom. His eyebrows climbed when he saw Trent talking to Rikki. He set his hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Are you ready to go, dear?”

“Yes, Mike. I am so, so tired.”

“Come along then,” he said, his eyes shooting daggers at Trent.

“Bye, Trent,” she said
, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. “And thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

Trent took the elevator down to the lobby and found Radcliff waiting for him by the night duty officer’s desk.


OK, macho man,” Radcliff said. “Priest told me to escort you out of the building.”

Trent had a feeling Radcliff really wanted a minute alone with him, and that he seemed to be deciding whether or not to say something.

They were outside when Radcliff spoke up. “What went on with Clay?”

Trent watched his breath form clouds in front of his face.
“A run-of-the-mill meeting. They questioned me about killing the thugs; then they discussed the Atlanta gang problems and how the Kings are muscling in on the Outlaw’s meth business.”


My money says the thwarted carjacking is connected to the Midtown murderers.”

“Hard to say until someone is arrested.”

Radcliff lighted a cigarette. “There you go again, thinking like a cop.”


What happened on the highway could have been between the Kings and the Outlaws,” Trent said thoughtfully. It had quit snowing. Gray clouds scuttled by in the night sky.

Radcliff shrugged. “
I’d say Eddie Garcia is after payback; word on the street says the Outlaws recently executed one of his top lieutenants.”


Who’s Garcia?”


A rival mob boss who runs the Apostles,” Radcliff said. “They were the Outlaw’s main competition in this town.” The street light illuminated the tips of his gold teeth, and his breath was a funk of cigarettes and alcohol.

Radcliff
explained that Garcia was incarcerated for life over in Macon, Georgia, where he managed the organization with an iron fist, delegating resources and manpower, providing protection for his people in prison or out, ordering contract hits on rivals, or his own people if they didn’t toe the line, and generally conducting the day-to-day affairs of the business.

Trent
nodded. Then he thought of Rikki and Butler by the water fountain. His eyes hardened. “Do Rikki and Butler date?”

“For the last couple of weeks,” he said, puffing his cigarette and keeping it close to his mouth for the next drag.

He handed Trent a pint of Early Times. “Complements of the Midtown Blue. Now go home and grab some well deserved R-and-R.”


Thanks,” Trent said, turning toward the parking lot. The wind was picking snowflakes up off the ground and tossing them into the air.

“Hey, Palmer.”

Trent turned and Radcliff gave him the gunman’s salute. “That was a sweet piece of work you did on the highway last night,” he said with a not-quite-right smile.

Trent wasn’t sure what he meant, but he was quite aware of Radcliff’s eyes on his back as he
mounted his Ducati.

#

Instead of pulling into his driveway, Trent rounded the corner, turned off his headlights, and drove deep into Piedmont Park. He stopped on the far side of the outdoor tennis courts where a narrow dirt road sloped below the playing surfaces. There was dense forest on the other side of the road and he was positive he was out of sight. He retrieved the bloodied purse from under the bike’s seat and shined his pencil flash inside. Pocketing a wad of wet cash, he left everything else then drove to the park entrance and dumped the purse into a trash bin.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8

It was
three in the morning when Trent stepped into his office. He lived on Monroe Avenue, a two-lane black ribbon of pavement, and across the street, an ornate iron gate framed by a pair of stone columns marked the entrance to Piedmont Park.

Trent was new to the city and had found a bargain on an office
near the downtown. He had a two-room suite in a run-down three-story office building. His office was on the first floor, in line with Thu Do Imports, Inc., and McIntosh, C.P.A. Six-inch gold letters gave him the edge over the others: Peoplefinders.com.

Rather than have a separate apartment, he struck a deal with the
building manager to live in the second room of the two-room office. The outer room had been designed as a reception room which he had turned into his office. The room behind it was a small windowed office where he set up his living space.

He
slipped Grant Green’s
Born to be Blue
into the CD player and sat quietly on a padded swivel chair at his rolltop desk. There were books piled on shelves, and more remained unpacked in cardboard boxes. Snow was piled on the windowsill and frost coated the glass.

He sipped the Early Times as
horrific images from last night coursed through his mind: Crowbar’s lifeless body splayed on the pavement, a flash of lightning freeze framing the thug he shot into stances that would stay in his mind long afterwards.

He unfolded the
morning paper. The headline was centered on the top half of the front page: HACKED BODIES FOUND IN METH LAB HOME. It never ends, he thought, gazing at a photo on the lower half of the front page showing an officer talking to several journalists in front of a derelict house where the triple homicide had occurred. There’s a familiar face, he thought, reading the accompanying article that detailed the sharp rise in meth-related killings in Atlanta. The piece began:

“Gangsters are public enemy number one,” said
Detective Lieutenant McClure, the Atlanta Police Department’s spokesman. “Atlanta will not bow to terrorism. Justice will prevail . . .”

Gangsters, Trent thought angrily,
his fingertips straying unconsciously to a pink scar that ran from his ear to his chin. He was a fit man of forty with broad-shoulders and curly dark hair, and the pain and sight of that wound were daily reminders of the bullet that almost ended his life. He was lucky to survive. But his fiancée did not.

He stared
at the frost-coated window and drifted off into memories of Sylvia. She was a young Latin beauty with dark skin and a smile to light the darkest corners of life. He fingered the upside down five-pointed gold star in his hand as he recalled the events that had led to his shooting and her death.

H
e had been assigned to gather enough evidence to convict a hard-core member of the Latin Kings for ordering the execution of the wife and daughter of an opposing cocaine supplier.

Trent spent
months investigating Huero Largo. He received dozens of death threats for his efforts, and the morning a grand jury convened to hear the charges, he was in his driveway polishing his Ducati. Suddenly he found himself on the ground with an expanding pool of blood under his head, the victim of a drive-by shooting. While he convalesced, Largo was arrested and charged with racketeering and two counts of murder.

T
rent was seated in the front row of the courtroom the morning the jury was set to deliver Largo’s verdict. An underworld friend of Largo’s leaned close to Trent and whispered that he had intimidated the star witness to the point that she would not testify. Trent clutched the railing in disbelief, gripped by fear that the biggest gangbanger in South Florida might be found innocent.

Trent remembered the judge saying, “Has the jury reached a verdict?” The foreman’s short stocky body, in jeans and a red sweater, seemed to rise like a balloon rather that just stand up. “Yes, Your Honor, we have.”

Trent looked down at the floor, his left leg shaking, anger and vengeance weighing heavily on him. The judge instructed the thug to rise; his lawyer rose with him.

“Read your verdict, please.”

The foreman, smiling, said, “On every count, we find the defendant not guilty.”

“WHEEE-OOOO!
” Largo took great gulps of breath and seized his lawyer in a bear hug. “Great job!”

Trent
snapped. He remembered dashing to his car and retrieving a tire iron from the trunk. Then he slid the two-foot piece of steel down his jeans and mingled with the crowd outside the courthouse. When a Court Officer led the grinning thug into the sunlight, Trent crushed him square in the jaw with the tire iron. Blood exploded from the thug’s mouth, and his tongue protruded, forked like a snake by a deep gash running from front to back. Trent swung again and again, mesmerized by the wet thud of the blows to the thug’s skull.

Trent was tackled by officers before he killed
Largo. He was placed in a jail cell, and by the time the handcuffs were removed, the Chief of Police had fired him from the force.

And then
Trent got hit with a knockout blow-a blow so overpowering that three hundred and ninety-six days later he was still struggling to regain his balance. The day before he was released from jail, Sylvia was found in their apartment bathroom hanged with an extension cord. His mind kept returning to the autopsy picture the police had showed him. The thugs didn’t rape or shoot her. They’d beat her to death then hung her. Trent swore that Largo had ordered her murder, but the police were backlogged and put no real effort into her investigation.

Trent
had gone often into the closet where she had died, for this is where he knew he was closest to her. He would hold out his hands and imagine himself caressing and kissing her. One day he took his gun in the closet, intent on putting a bullet through his brain. He knew he had hit rock bottom, not because he had contemplated suicide, but because he had ample nerve to pull the trigger. That day he entered a treatment program.

When
Trent had pieced together enough of his life to function on his own, he left Miami and wandered. Realizing that he could never mourn Sylvia enough to sooth his aching heart, he settled in Atlanta. It was a big city full of action and strangers and noise. But it was the noise that he wanted most. For he knew that it is only when one is happy and at peace that one can bear silence.

Trent
’s phone purred. There was a text message waiting for him. It read: ‘Sylvia was a great time. Be seeing you soon! The Kings.’

He
texted back: ‘Send every guy you got. Bring a fucking army. You’ll need it.’

Trent
fell asleep reading an Internet article on how to entirely become someone else while laying the groundwork to permanently depart from parts known.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9

It was somewhere around 5:00
A.M.,
and Trent’s nightmare of last night’s events had his heart pounding and his head spinning and it took him a few moments to sort out where he was and realize that someone was knocking on his door.

He
got up, pulled on a pair of jeans, and squeezed a look through the peephole. There were three people standing close together so they would show up well in the lens; two uniformed officers with shaved heads stood with their hands behind their backs, and a man wearing an expensive fur-lined cashmere overcoat and leather gloves was holding an ID up high to catch the entrance light.

“Midtown police
for Mr. Palmer,” the man called, just loud enough for Trent to hear him through the door.

“He’s not here,”
Trent said in a whiskey baritone.

“Any idea when he’ll be back?”

“Not sure, sir. I’m the building janitor.”

“Open the door please.”

“I’m not authorized to allow anyone into any office in this building; I can write down a name and number and leave it on his desk.”

Trent could hear whispering from the other side of the door. There was silence then-

Crack!
The wood frame around the lock splintered, dust filled the air, and the door smashed open. Trent stood back as the trio trooped in.

T
he baby-faced cops were short and compact and full of subdued menace. One had a black goatee that clung to his lips and chin; he carried a twenty-five pound steel battering ram. The other was a freckly African American with a buzz cut; he cradled a cut-down shotgun. They were dressed in tan Midtown police uniforms with dark coats and tall boots polished to a mirror shine. The third man with wide shoulders and close cropped hair pulled the shattered door shut as far as it would go, then wandered around the office admiring the furnishings.

G
oatee feinted a blow at Trent with the swing-arm and said, “Crash and bash! Your tax dollars hard at work!”

Trent ignored him and said angrily, “
You fuckers got a warrant?”

Freckles
leveled his shotgun at Trent and said, “No got.”


Nice office,” McClure said, seemingly oblivious to the conversation around him. “Is it just you during the day?”

“Yes. When business picks up . . .”

“I see.”

“What
can I do for you, McClure?”

“It’s what you can do for yourself,”
McClure said, his gray eyes checking Trent out in much the same manner he did in the interview room when Trent thought he was your basic supercop rather that a supercop who was more crooked than any crook he had ever met.

“Which is
?”

“Choices,
Palmer,” McClure said, removing his calf-skin gloves and coat and laying them neatly over the chair. “You have the choice to be cooperative; if not, you stay in Atlanta could be . . . difficult.”

Trent remained quiet
, unsure of what he might say.

F
reckles cracked gum between his molars and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. The other cop glared at Trent.

Trent was sweating. It was cool in the apartment, but he was sweating because the officers three feet away from him were scarier than the thugs he
had encountered on the highway last night. “I told you everything that happened; what else do you want?”

McClure brushed lint from his black suit coat and said,
“We have a discrepancy. A king-sized one.”

“I’m not aware of any.”

“Shall I spell it out?”

“Sure.”

“There were several one-hundred dollar bills saturated with blood floating in the water around the Latino you knifed; yet he had no wallet or effects on his body. Know where any of it is?”

“I have no idea
.”

McClure crossed his arms and rubbed his temples. With his eyes closed he said,
“This is how I see it, Palmer. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. But you set up the carjacking, iced the thugs, and in the process came away with the object.”

“What object?”

“The thug was in possession of an object that is quite valuable to us. It’s missing, and you were the last person to see him alive.”


I wish I could help you, McClure, but you got me wrong. I would never set those gangsters up and rob them. That would be suicidal.”

McClure stared angrily at Trent.
“It is essential that you tell me the truth. Again, do you have it?”

“No.”

McClure glanced at the latex-gloved cop, as if screaming, “So this is the way it’s gotta be!”

“Look,” Trent said, his mouth parched, “no need for this. I told you—”

The fist landed like a sledge, the latex chafing his face like tire rubber. He heard his jaw hinge crack and a whiteness rose in his mind blotting out the world. When the world came back, it came back in searing pain as he rolled on the floor trying unsuccessfully to evade repeated blows from the cop’s batons.

“Where
is it?”

“I. Don’t. Know!”
Trent yelled, breathless as he rolled in a ball trying to cover his head with his hands; he tried to blink away the black spots forming before his eyes when a baton slammed down on his cheek.

Trent stared at
McClure’s spit-shined shoes as he instructed his uniforms to search the apartment; they went through Trent’s place like a machine, poking and prying into every corner.

After a few minutes t
he cops shrugged at McClure. He reached in his coat pocket and took out a black pistol sealed in a plastic evidence bag and showed it to Trent. “It’s a thirty-eight, unregistered; been fired twice.”

Trent looked at the gun then up at McClure.
“So?”


This is the gun that killed a Midtown cop last month. It’s splotched with blood and covered with your fingerprints.” He put on his coat and gloves and said, “I also have time-stamped photos the morning the officer was murdered. Two photos show you leaving the Atlanta International Airport on your bike less than a mile from where the officer was murdered.”


So you or your dwarf squad killed him.”

McClure
acted as if he had not heard him. “It is essential that I know you are telling the truth; if there is any doubt in my mind, my brothers in blue will discover this gun and the photos and link the evidence to you. Rest assured you will never be taken into custody.”

Trent thought that was a polite way of saying he’d
be summarily executed. He gritted his teeth waiting for another blow.

“Buy this at a jewelry store?”
McClure said smugly, dropping the Latino’s upside down five-pointed gold star in front of Trent’s face. The intricate design was inches from his eyes. He could clearly see the Hebrew letters at each of the points of the pentagram. “Get the object to me ASAP and your life returns to normal,” McClure said, as his uniforms stepped outside. “And don’t call the police; it won’t help,” he said, leaning in the doorway and taking a last look around the apartment. “Good-bye.”

BOOK: The Midtown Murderer
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