There Are No Innocents E-Book

B.R. Stateham

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Turner Hahn and Frank Morales work as homicide detectives for the South Side Precinct. They are two old pros in the art and science of tracking down and arresting society’s darkest predators. This time, Lieutenant Dimitri Yankovich - the command of the precinct’s second shift - hands the two detectives a couple of particularly difficult cases to solve.

Case number one involves the murder of a successful corporate lawyer, who's been found dead in his car on the third floor of a parking building. The second case is a female body, found floating face down in the river. Reported kidnapped 15 years ago, she's now lying on a mortician's slab.

Both cases turn out to be more complicated than Hahn and Morales first expected, and Lieutenant Yankovich also has a personal interest in one of the cases. But can even his two best detectives bring the killers to justice?

Leseprobe

THERE ARE NO INNOCENTS

TURNER HAHN AND FRANK MORALES CRIME MYSTERIES BOOK 3

B.R. STATEHAM

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2022 B.R. Stateham

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Edited by Fading Street Services

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

CHAPTERONE

We had a problem.

Although it was just seven in the morning, the sun was coming up, and the heat was beginning to build. It was late July. July in this city meant only three things: wind, heat, and more heat. The wind was blowing a steady gait from out of the south. That meant it was going to be a hot day. A witheringly hot day.

The blue shirt underneath my sport coat was damp. And the day was just beginning. By time nine o'clock rolled around I would have to change shirts and ditch the coat. Later on, after we finished our initial investigation, I’d be nothing more than a piece of melted cheese dip. Already I could feel the heat radiating off the car beside me. The small Caddy, black as coal, was going to turn into a boiler in about an hour. There’s nothing like a black car and black leather seats which can absorb heat and magnify it tenfold. Throw a dead body into the car, add in about three tons of humidity, and you can imagine the rest.

But that wasn’t the problem.

As I walked around the driver’s side of the black Cadillac CTS-V I kept glancing at the front windshield. Punched through the glass about six inches above the upper rim of the steering wheel was a bullet hole. Striation lines radiated outward from the hole. But the windshield itself was intact. A quick glance at the back window had the bullet’s exit point. About half the window was gone. The remaining glass was coated in blood and brain matter.

Slumped back across the black leather seats of the car was the victim. The front part of his head was there. The back half wasn’t. The dead man looked to be in his ‘30s or early ‘40s. He had on a blue suit. Dark navy-blue. Hand stitched and tailored to perfection. Made from imported Egyptian cotton. Maybe worth a grand or more. Minimum.

Underneath the suit was an off-white linen shirt. Not something found in a typical Wal-Mart. Around his neck was a signature red silk tie. Again, maybe one or two C-notes for a price tag. Expensive Italian leather for shoes and wraparound shades still sitting perfectly on the bridge of his nose completed the picture.

Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t worried about balancing his check book like the rest of us. Not so long ago I used to think twice every time I wanted to buy a Daffy Duck tie off the racks at K-Mart. Times have changed. So has the health of my bank account. But this guy ... this guy looked as if he never had to worry about money. Hell. His car alone–new–was two and a half years my salary. Give or take a couple of nickels. The guy, when he was breathing, was awash in cash. Very rich. That meant very powerful. He would have powerful friends. Powerful friends usually expected quick results whenever one of their kind checked out unexpectedly.

But that wasn’t the problem.

No.

The problem was the dead man and how he died. Specifically, in the place where he died. Hearing steps behind me, I turned and watched my partner, a red-headed and bearded Neanderthal wannabe with the IQ equal to a couple of Einstein's, approaching. Glancing at me, the guy mashed his thick eyebrows together and whistled softly.

“This doesn’t look good.”

“Yes. I was thinking the same thing.”

He turned and looked out over the railing of the parking garage slot the Caddy was parked in. Third floor of a four-floor parking garage. The Caddy was facing to the south, parked up against the southern cement retainer wall. In front of him was nothing. Nothing for twenty square miles. Just an empty wheat field which stretched out forever.

“You know what the problem is, right?” Frank grunted, shoving hands into his wrinkled gray slacks as we faced the wheat field and stared off into nothingness.

“Let me guess. The trajectory of the bullet doesn’t come up from the wheat field. It’s coming from slightly above the parking garage.”

“Yep, that’s the ticket,” nodded Frank, grinning maliciously, “But there’s more.”

“Uh huh,” I nodded, turning to look to the north. To the direction the bullet was heading after it passed through the victim’s cranium and the back window. Another goddamn wheat field. “The bullet can’t be found. So, we have no evidence, other than a dead man and a couple of bullet holes, to start from.”

The parking garage, with the attached five-story office building of black glass and black granite beside it, set in an industrial park on the city’s south edge. A quarter of a mile to the west was I-475 sweeping around the city. All six lanes of the cement ribbon were filled with morning traffic. You could hear the constant hum all the way out here. The one paved street leading to the crime scene sliced through mostly farm country. But there were a couple of new office complexes around and a third in the process of being constructed. Downtown was ten miles to the north and east. In between was nothing but wheat fields and a few brand-new housing developments.

“There you go. On the money. That’s why they made you the youngest detective sergeant on the force. Brilliant, my friend. Brilliant!”

I turned, looked at my partner, and grinned.

Smartass.

Did I tell you Frank has no neck? No? Well, he doesn’t. Just a head built like a block of steel-reinforced cement sitting on a set of shoulders wide enough to make the flood gates at Hoover dam jealous. His hair is a floridly brilliant colored carrot red. Stringy and always blowing around unruly in the slightest breeze. Somehow the red hair and short-trimmed but equally red beard complimented his square head nicely. If you enjoyed looking at nightmares.

He’s got hands the size of dinner plates. When he rolls them up into fists, they look like giant wrecking balls a crane uses when they throw them around to knock down buildings. No, he’s not much to look at. Actually, he’s like sushi. He’s an acquired taste. You either like him or you don’t. There’s no in-between. I liked him. We’ve been on the force together for over twelve years. Partners in the South Side Precinct most of those twelve. You can’t ask for a better man. They don’t make ’em better. And there is a plus to this guy. His looks make him look like a dumb mug straight out of a mental ward. But he’s just the opposite. He knows every detail about everything.

You can’t stump him.

I know. I’ve been trying to since the day I met him.

“Wanna give me an idea on the murder weapon, genius?” I asked, grinning.

“Nine millimeters. Hard nose. Maybe from, say, at an elevation of about eight or ten feet off the floor. Or, more precisely, about fifty feet from ground level.”

“Out there,” I said, waving a hand toward the wheat. “Fifty feet above the ground.”

Frank nodded, grinning that evil little grin of his I was all too familiar with.

“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head firmly and lifting a hand up, palm outward, toward him. “I had the last Sherlock. Remember the Levant Case? That was a Sherlock. It’s your turn. You are the lead investigator on this one, buddy.”

A ‘Sherlock’ was our little way of telling each other a particular case was not going to fit the typical run-of-the-mill murder we police types are so fond of. This one had all the markings of something that was going to be tough to figure out. Most homicide cases are relatively simple. Nine times out of ten the victim knew his killer. Six out of ten times the murder was a spur of the moment affair with all kinds of witnesses and evidence lying about to finger the perpetrator. (The Perp… jeez, I hate that word. Too many cop shows on TV.) So, most of the time cops simply follow the leads, like a good machinist follows his blueprints, and eventually you wind up with the guilty party.

But.

Sometimes there’s a monkey-wrench thrown into a cop’s normal routine. A case comes drifting along and gets dumped into your lap which doesn’t follow the rules. The evidence is usually very little. Or nonexistent. Typically, there are a multitude of possible suspects. Each with several reasons on why they would pull the trigger. To solve a case like this means you had to work like Sherlock Holmes. Deductive reasoning. Ruling out all the possibilities until you came onto the one possibility, no matter how absurd it might be. That one possibility which answered all the questions. Frank, for all of his fabulous smarts, hated these cases. Hated them so much he became very creative in throwing them back to me.

“Naw, I had the last Sherlock. The Hutch case.”

“The Hutch case? Jesus. That was a pimp shooting one of his girls in broad daylight in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts. Sixteen witnesses saw the shooting. She lived long enough to tell us her pimp did it. The pimp confessed, for chrissakes. How could that be a Sherlock?”

“But we couldn’t find the gun, Turn. It took me, oh, a couple of hours to figure out where he hid the murder weapon. That’s what made it a Sherlock. So, it’s your turn. Quit squawking.”

A wiry smirk played across my lips.

What the hell. I don’t mind taking these cases. Frank hates ’em. I find them stimulating. I enjoy the banter the two of us go through every time one of them comes up. Work with a guy long enough and you either begin to enjoy his company, or you hate his guts. I liked Frank. We worked well together.

Maybe I should introduce myself. I’m Turner Hahn. Detective Sergeant Turner Hahn, South Side. I’ve been a cop ever since I graduated from college. Twelve years. Ten with the gold badge of a detective. I’m a little over six feet three with black hair and gray-blue eyes. I used to be a football player. I played linebacker in college. Played for a college in the Big 12 conference. Once I had dreams of playing in the NFL. But this kid from Syracuse, built like the back side of Mt. Everest, decided to use my legs for bowling pens. He threw a rolling block on me, caught my right leg under his fat ass, and that was that. So long NFL.

Yes. I was married once. Childhood sweetheart from high school. But then one day I came home and found a note on the table informing me she decided to run off with an accountant by the name of Rodney. At least he would be home at night. So now I call myself a confirmed bachelor. I live in a rundown building on Floyd Street about two blocks from the Brown River. Floyd is down in the industrial section of town. The place I have is a red-brick mass of badly constructed masonry. But cheap enough for me to afford on a detective sergeant’s pay. No. I couldn’t afford to buy a building. Not on my pay scale. I can afford it because my grandfather gave the building to me. The old coot claims to be a farmer living upstate. He does own a big farm and a good portion of the year he can be found living in the main house up there. But the old man has secrets. Secrets he doesn’t share. Secrets I don’t want to know about, frankly. But there's one secret that's not so secret. He’s rich. Rich with a capital “R” in front of it. Rich enough to make the legendary King Midas look like a shyster. He and I are much alike. He’s an old widower who loves cars. He refuses to marry and likes to tinker with his toys when he’s not planting wheat or irrigating corn. And he likes to come to the city and share a case or two of beer with me and talk about cars.

The old man gave me the place because I needed a place to work on and store my babies. The building used to be a garage. The babies I collect are Muscle cars. You know, the Detroit iron of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s which had enough horsepower to pull the Queen Mary through the Panama Canal. Or maybe bruise kidneys against your spine if you hit the accelerator too hard. I own a ‘69 Z-28 IROC with a 302-cu. inch Chevy small block, green with white stripes and white vinyl interior. There’s also a sweet ’71 Plymouth Road Runner with the 383 engine in it. On a daily basis I use a ’68 Shelby Cobra Mustang 350 G.T. with the small block 289 as my personal transportation.

Oh, I guess I’m a collector of books as well. First edition, autographed books. Mostly detective fiction and novels. But anything which has been signed by the author. The second floor of the garage I remodeled and converted into a loft. More like a giant library really. With a kitchen and some bedrooms added as necessities. Just one giant room for the living room, dining, and kitchen, with an entire wall filled with nothing but books and a few rather expensively framed watercolors scattered about. Yes, amazingly enough, I’ve been known to sit in a chair with a good book and a glass of wine and listen to Mozart as I read. What the hell is wrong with that? Hard to think a cop who likes to get his hands greasy digging in the innards of an engine block can actually read as well, isn’t it?

Well forget it. It doesn’t matter. I know I’m an odd duck.

And …oh, one other thing. I have a flaw. Or, at least, I think it is a flaw although Frank thinks it’s The Gift of the Gods. Some people think I look like a famous dead actor. My curly black hair, the mustache, my eyes, the dimples, make a lot of people think I look like the ‘30s matinee idol Clarke Gable. Believe me, brother, it’s not a ‘gift.’ I’m not Clarke Gable. I’m Turner Hahn. Cop. Bachelor. Someone who, although he admires and likes the cut and shape of a fine-looking woman, nevertheless wants no part of ’em on a permanent basis.

Frank thinks I’m an idiot. With my looks, he tells me, I could have women hanging all over me. Not that I sometimes don’t think about it I’ll admit. But I’m not that interested. The failed marriage, a few badly ending affairs, and I’ve come to an obvious conclusion. Life is a lot sweeter messing around with cars, reading a good book, and going home to an empty house. At least it’s safer.

So that’s it. Color in the lines with the crayon labeled “Cop.”

Grinning, I looked back at the kid in the white smock walking up to me chewing a big wad of gum loudly and with the wind blowing his unruly dirty brown hair around. Joe Weiser was the kid’s name and he worked with the City/County Medical Office. It was Joe who usually came out on homicide cases. For all of his looking like a geeky teenager hardly able to walk and chew gum at the same time, he was very good at his job.

“Jesus, you got nothing here, boys. Have a fine day and see you later,” he said, lifting a hand and waving as he grinned, turning to walk away.

“Joey, get your lily-white ass over here and stop playing around,” Frank growled, something almost like a grin spreading across his block for a head.

“What do you have?” I asked.

“Our victim has been dead roughly twelve hours judging from the way the blood has coagulated and the amount of rigor mortis setting in. Victim’s name is Stewart. David R. Stewart, attorney. Now that’s a kick. A dead attorney. And hey, it’ll come as no surprise to you two the man died of a gunshot wound to the head.”

Joe grinned, his jaw working on the wad of gum in his mouth, pushing the clip board in his right hand up and underneath one armpit. We grinned. Or, at least, I grinned. Frank sort of pulled his lips back in a snarl and rolled his right hand up into a fist, cracking knuckles in the process, before unraveling the fist. The noise of his knuckles barking sounded like car doors being ripped open by a hydraulic jack. Joey got the message. The grin left his smirking lips. So did the color in his face.

“Uh… sorry. That’s all I have for now. Give me five, six hours and I’ll have more for you.”

“We’ll give you a call,” I said, nodding.

With a quick, nervous wave of the hand, Joe split the scene. Frank chuckled quietly as he watched the little geek leaving. That’s what so loveable about Frank. He scares the hell out of a lot of people. Especially when he flexes his fists.

“Who were the first black and whites on the scene?” he asked, turning to look behind the Caddy at the two patrol units parked on either side, “And who found the stiff in the first place?”

“Jones and Bradley got the first squawk. Got here about a half hour ago. Found a Linda Edwards sitting in that Honda over there, almost in hysterics when I pulled up. She used her cell phone and called it in.”

“Where is she now?”

I pointed to the second ambulance behind one of the black and whites. Medics were working on a young woman who was sitting on a gurney. She had an oxygen mask on, holding it there with both hands, but even from this distance she didn’t look too steady. Her complexion looked like it was freshly kneaded bread dough. Odds were, she was going to faint. And soon. Medics stood on either side of her waiting for her to pitch forward and take a header toward the pavement.

“I’ll talk to her. Maybe she can give us something more than just a name.”

“I’ll find out what Mick and Gabe know,” I said, turning to find the first officers to arrive.

It just goes to show you. In this line of business, you can get trapped in doing the usual routine. Police work is nothing more than a routine. Ask questions. Investigate the clues. Ask more questions. Follow up the leads. Ask more questions. In the end you nab your crook. The routine is a safety net to get the job done. But it’s also a trap. A trap which suspends the brain from actually ticking over. Routine work does not ask you to think. Just stay between the lines and color in the dots. The trap springs when a case comes along which nixes the standard police routine.

Sometimes Harry Houdini comes back to life and commits a crime. Not literally. Figuratively. A crime is committed which defies explanation. A crime filled with smoke and mirrors and sublime sleight-of-hand trickery. This case was an act of deception worthy of Houdini.

CHAPTERTWO

Our dead lawyer was a corporate schmooze whose firm had maybe two hundred clients in the local Fortune 500 companies in this state. He was the senior partner and co-founder in a law firm consisting of five partners and a stable of conscripts. All expensive and all extremely intelligent coming from the best law schools in the country.

The firm of Stewart, Pierce, Hoskins, Alberts & Benedict occupied the entire fifth floor of the office building the garage was attached to. Spacious to the point of opulence. So new the paint smelled fresh, and the carpet was still springy to step on. Daniel Stewart’s office was the biggest office on the floor. Windows, the entire north wall, had a magnificent view of the immediate farm fields surrounding the building and the distant skyline of the city’s downtown just a few miles away. On the light-oak paneled walls, real wood and not the normal four by eight sheets of paneling one buys at the local lumber yard, were seven or eight original oil paintings. Each painting had an individual spotlight to accentuate the canvas. Each was by someone whose name I recognized.

Impressive.

A quick glance of the dead man’s office told me several things about our victim. The man’s desk was spotless. A big desk set close to the windows, with a black onyx top, and not a paper or folder seemed out of place. Pencils were aligned in perfect formation on the left-hand side of the desk’s center. Black and red ink pens on the right. Three thick folders were stacked one atop the other on the left inner corner. On the right inner corner was the phone/intercom.

The furniture in the office was black leather. Expensive black leather.

Our victim liked his life to be lived in an orderly, planned, and concise fashion. And he liked to flash his money around.

“The boy was a stickler for precision,” Frank grunted, unimpressed, as we eyed the place.

“You know what I say about an organized mind.”

“Yeah,” Frank nodded, grinning. "An organized mind is the sign of a sick puppy. If that’s the case, then the chump outside must have been a rat's ass away from wearing a straitjacket.”

“We need to find one of the partners and take him out to the garage to identify the body. Anyone here yet?”

“One. A Franklin L. Pierce. Apparently, he and our victim started the firm ten years ago. Stewart came out of law school and created this from scratch. Apparently, he offered Pierce a full partnership right off the bat.”

Funny thing about high-priced corporate lawyers. They know their way around a lawsuit and the courtroom. They can smooth talk their way through the front doors of a convent if they had to. But they are not used to seeing a dead body. Especially a messy one. Franklin Pierce became physically sick when we asked him to identify the body. We had to shuffle him over to one side and allow him to hurl up his Starbucks and rolls over the hand railing two or three times before he caught his breath. Eventually, standing up straight, wiping his lips with a silk handkerchief, and as pale as fresh alabaster, he nodded and turned to face us.

“My god! Poor Dan. Who could do something so horrible as this?”

“Apparently someone who had a major disagreement with him,” Frank answered, his big frame dwarfing the small frame of the lawyer in front of us. “Got any ideas who that might be?”

“We had our share of those who disliked our successes, Detective. But in the business world you can’t become as successful as rapidly as we did without stepping on someone’s toes. Our reputation as a firm is our intense aggressiveness in defending our clients. But we do no criminal litigation. We don’t represent organized crime. Or, at least, not to our knowledge. Admittedly, a number of firms would like to see terrible things happen to us. I can’t deny that. But not this. Not murder. This is unbelievable. Insane.”

I saw it. And glancing at Frank I knew he saw it as well. The way Pierce used his hands as he spoke. The dark gray silk suit. The dark gray button-down shirt and the black silk tie. The once perfectly folded white silk handkerchief placed just so in the suit’s breast pocket. And finally, Franklin L. Pierce himself.

The lawyer was a small man. Smaller than even a normal-sized woman. Dark curly blond hair, thinning up front, with dark brown eyes made the small man visually impressive. In an effeminate sort of way. Glancing at my troglodyte friend and partner, I read his unreadable face and said nothing.

“So, you think none of your associates or competitors are capable of murder.”

A brief hesitation, a narrowing of the eyelids and a shift in his stance told me there was something. But Pierce shook his head and shrugged elegantly.

“For the life of me I can’t think of a soul, Detective. I’m at a loss for words.”

Yeah. Sure.

No matter. Eventually we were going to get back to that little part he forgot to mention. All in due time. I nodded and half turned to look at the office.

“When did you see your partner last?” Frank asked, picking up something off the dead man’s precision-lined desk and in the process forging a look of disapproval from the man standing beside me.

“Last night. Here, in the office, around seven or eight. At the end of the day, the partners usually get together for a twenty- or thirty-minute confab to touch base with everyone. We’ve decided to do away with formal staff meetings during the day. Too stressful. In this work there is more than enough stress to work through. So, we’ve become more casual in our approach.”

“How did he act last night? Was he tense? Was he relaxed? Did anything strike you as being different?” I chipped in, turning to look at the little man again.

“Tired. I would say he was very tired. The last couple of months he has been working on a rather large piece of litigation involving patent rights. A smaller company is suing one of our clients over who owns the patent. Such cases involve lots of detail work and reams of reading pertinent decisions. They are time-consuming and can sap the strength from you.”

“What about his home life?” Frank grunted, putting an expensive pen down on the desk not exactly like he found it. Causing the look of irritation on Franklin Pierce’s face to increase in severity. “Was our victim married?”

“Oh, indeed. Old college sweetheart. Became engaged when Dan was in his last year at law school. Married the day after he graduated. A beauty. Or so they tell me.”

I tried not to smile.

The last statement sounded like something pushing awfully hard toward jealousy. Was Franklin Pierce jealous of our victim’s wife? Could that mean more than a business relationship between Pierce and the deceased? Jealousy was one of the oldest reasons to murder someone. Especially someone who had been as good-looking as our dead man out in the parking garage. I glanced at Frank and saw him nod slightly. We agreed. It was a string in the investigation we would have to follow up on.

“What’s the wife’s name?” Frank grunted, folding his arms across the massive span of his chest, and frowning as he looked down on Pierce.

Frank, when frowning, and as big as he is, could make a canonized saint fidget nervously with his prayer beads. It wasn’t that Frank was just taller than Pierce. It was like looking at Mt. Everest hovering over an anthill. It was about mass. Density. Strength. Oblique intimidation.

Intimidation.

A gravely misunderstood tool, intimidation. When used in the hands of a craftsman it can open up entirely new lines of investigation. It can reveal clues which otherwise would have remained hidden.

“Jocelyn Stewart.”

Frank looked at the lawyer and grunted. Grunted in a tone that made me turn and glance at Pierce and then at Frank.

“Jocelyn Stewart. The one who owns the cosmetics empire?”

“That Jocelyn Stewart,” the lawyer agreed, a thin smirk peeling back his lips as he nodded.

“Who’s Jocelyn Stewart?” I asked.

“She owns Frederic’s of Georgia. One of the largest cosmetics firms in the country. Old money. Really old money if you know what I mean.” Frank answered, glancing at me, and not looking happy.

Sighing, I looked at the lawyer. I knew what Frank was hinting at. Money. Old money.

Meaning lawyers. A ton of them. And power. Layers of political power magnified by the color of green. How Frank and I stumbled like a couple of blind men into these cases was a mystery to me. It had to be Karma. Both of us must have really pissed people off in our previous lives. And for that, we were being grievously punished in this one.

“We’ll need to ask some questions to everyone in the office. Does the deceased have a personal secretary?”

“Certainly. Two, actually. Vivian Spears is Dan’s personal assistant. If you’re interested in Dan’s itinerary, she would be the one to talk to. Deborah Charles is Dan’s records assistant. She keeps track on all of Dan’s legal briefs, documents. Things like that.”

We nodded and said we needed to talk to them.

Two hours later we had nothing. Nothing suspicious. Nothing to point to a possible motive for murder. Nothing for a suspect.

Nothing.

And as usual, when we had nothing, something always came along to break up the monotony.

Riding the elevator down from the law offices, Frank’s cell phone began singing “Take this Job and Shove It.” A country/western tune I really disliked in general and certainly despised as a ring tone. But it was his phone. Not mine. Sighing, but keeping my mouth closed, I eyed the big grunt beside me and waited until he scanned the phone’s screen before clearing the screen and dropping it in his sport coat.

“That was Yankovich. Apparently, we’re getting a new case handed to us. A new old case, to be precise.”

“Huh?”

“Just wait. You’ll see what I mean. We’re gonna meet Yank at the morgue in a half hour.”

Dimitri Yankovich was our shift commander at South Side. Generally Frank and I pulled the four to midnight shift in the detective division at South Side. Yank was the lieutenant in charge of the eight detectives assigned to this shift. He was also second in command of the precinct–which basically meant he kept an eye on everyone–uniformed officers and detectives–who worked with us on that shift. Frank and I and one other set of detectives worked the homicide desks. A third team worked Narcotics while the fourth team of detectives worked Robbery/Larceny cases.

Yes. Business was that good down on our side of town.

Walking out of the office building and into the sunlit walkway which would take us over to the adjacent parking building I slipped a pair of aviator’s sunglasses on and glanced at my watch. It was almost nine in the morning. We had been on duty for almost thirteen hours. Tired, brother, wasn’t even close to describing how we felt. If I didn’t get a hot shower soon and about nine hours in the sack, I knew I was going to do something stupid. Really stupid.

CHAPTERTHREE

Lieutenant Yankovich stood facing us with a frown on his lips. Nothing unusual there. Yank’s usual expression was a frown on his lips and a somber resignation on the rest of his face. The resignation of a man who had fought the wars and seen far too much crime and corruption in his life before eventually coming to the conclusion he could do very little to stop it. The tall, slightly stooping shift commander had hands in his slacks while underneath his left arm was a thick folder. A very thick folder.

A blue folder. A cold case file.

Which seemed odd to me. Discussing a cold case file standing in the semi-empty morgue seemed odd. Between us a white sheet covered a body lying on the steel top of an examination table. Obviously, it was no longer a cold case. Glancing at the white sheet, noting the contours of a woman, I suspected it was a very active case now. Yet the question remained. Why here? Why drive across town to come to the morgue and personally hand the file over to us? Why not just drop the file on our desk, as he usually did, mumble something, and walk away?

The lieutenant nodded as we stepped up to the metal table and handed me the folder. There was no greeting. No small talk. He acknowledged us with a nod of the head and went right into his speech.

“Fifteen years ago, a fourteen-year-old girl by the name of Yasmine Hollander disappeared from her home in the dead of night. While the parents slept in their bedroom someone came in through the kitchen door, walked through the kitchen and dining room, went up the staircase, walked down the hall to Yasmine’s bedroom, and kidnapped her. In the backyard they found the threadbare old teddy bear she liked to sleep with lying in the grass by the gate in a wooden picket fence. In the alley behind the house was a set of tire tracks. There were also the tracks of a man wearing a size twelve set of shoes. Along with her tracks. Yasmine’s.”

He didn’t look at the white sheet covering the body. His voice was calm and soft. Casual. Sounding like he was giving a lecture to a group of police academy rookies. But there was something else. This wasn’t the lieutenant we were used to. Usually there was more animation in the man’s voice. Something was here which was of real interest to the lieutenant. There was this sense of secrecy–of conspiracy–I couldn’t shake off.

“There was no evidence of the kitchen door being forced open. Someone had a key and let themselves in. Left no evidence behind them. How they got up those creaky old stairs and not make a sound is a puzzle. The Hollanders had a dog, a German Shepard, which usually slept at the foot of the parent’s bed. If it were a stranger entering the house the dog would have alerted everyone.”

“The abductor was well known by the family,” Frank sounded, nodding. “That sounds like a very close family friend. Or a close relative. Who became the prime suspect?”

Yankovich eyed Frank for a long time. What little color was in his already pale face left it. In seconds he looked as white as the corpse under the white cloth. But slowly, color returned. Clearing something out of his voice he glanced down at the cloth and then back up to Frank.

“Me,” he said quietly.

Damn.

We expected a lot of possible answers. An uncle, maybe a brother, possibly a cousin. But this was totally out beyond the center field fence line. This was like getting hit in the back of the head with a shovel. We stood there, eyeing the lieutenant, not knowing what to say.

“Yasmine’s father was Franklin Hollander. City commissioner Franklin Hollander from the Tenth Ward. An honest politician if you can believe that. He was the man who told me the police force needed honest cops. More honest cops. So, he got me this job. Was my mentor, if you will, who kinda helped me along in my career. Behind the scenes he worked tirelessly to get me promoted. And I was. Went up the ranks faster than most cops. Too fast. Way too fast for a lot of men. You two know the score. Promotions are not that common. One man goes up the ranks too quickly means others who are more experienced are tossed to one side and bypassed. It’s a slap in the face for them. Makes for a lot of resentment. Hell, Turner, I’ve been asking you for years to take the lieutenant’s test and go before the promotions board. The same with you, Frank. Both of you should be lieutenants by now. But neither of you are interested.”

It was true. Frank and I held the rank of Detective Sergeants, First Class. A gold badge. If we wanted to, and if there were openings, the two of us could go after a lieutenant’s badge. But getting that badge meant giving up working Homicide. Our promotions could shove us in some supervisory job anywhere in the department. But it guaranteed it wouldn’t be in Homicide. Newly commissioned officers didn’t get that promotion. Didn’t matter how many years’ experience in Homicide you had. It just wasn’t done.

“Why you, Yank?”

The lieutenant looked at me and smiled weakly, shaking his head.

“The Hollanders had me over their house two, three times a week. Yasmine was their only child, and she developed a kinda hero worship for me. I was over at their house so many times, the neighbors got to know me by my first name. All of ‘em. Suspicion fell on my shoulders almost immediately. Especially when, in the investigation, they found this silly diary of hers where she constantly talked of me in a girlish romantic way.”

“You were interrogated?”

He looked at Frank and nodded.

“Who were the lead investigators on the case?”

“Iggie Johansson and Mickey Mulligan.”

Jesus Christ.

I thought someone had swung that shovel across my face again. I blinked a couple of times and tried to put it together. But the way I felt inside you could have knocked me down waving an ostrich feather in front of me. The same could be said with Frank.

Iggie Johansson and Mickey Mulligan.

If there were any two pieces of low life excuses for humanity hanging around it had to be these two. They were two homicide detectives working out of the Downtown Division. To say Frank and I despised these two creeps would be a vast understatement. They were two slick numbers who worked both sides of the street. On one hand, they were good at their jobs when it came to finding and collaring the common criminal. They were Downtown’s top performers. Which made sense, if you asked me, since they were criminals themselves. They could smell a crook a mile away.

But they also were the two specialists for a crime boss and professional gambler by the name of Nathan Brinkley. Brinkley was into local politics. He liked sticking his fingers in the city’s bidding on construction jobs. He liked buying off commissioners. Many said he liked friends in the police department. Friends like Iggie Johansson and Mickey Mulligan. The rumors were these two fixed things too delicate, or too dangerous, for Brinkley to handle by ordinary means.

For years Frank and I had been looking for a way to tie Brinkley with some kind of corruption. Or even better, a murder rap. The word on the street was Brinkley wouldn’t hesitate to rub someone out if they become too much of an obstacle. The word also mentioned his two best men knew how to do it and never leave a clue behind. Their names were never mentioned. But they were in the system.

Who would be more in the system than two homicide detectives like Iggie and Mickey?

“It was their first case as detectives,” Yank went on quietly. “They latched on the fact Yasmine had a crush for me and I was already well known. We had had our run-ins before. We didn’t like each other the moment we met. Still don’t like each other. They tried every way they could think of to pin the rap on me. But there was nothing which would stick. Yasmine Hollander simply disappeared. She didn’t leave a trace anywhere. Iggie and Mickey hounded me on this case for over a year. They cost me a couple of promotions early on. That’s when I put a stop to it. I got Internal Affairs to step in and clear my name. When they seemed reluctant to do so I found a lawyer, a lawyer with a reputation of an attack dog when it came to defending his clients. One I knew who had no love for the top brass in the police department. He rattled some cages. Made some threats. The case became a cold case file. Stayed that way for fifteen years. But it’s not cold anymore.”

I glanced down at the body. She would be around twenty-nine or a little older by now. Frowning, I found myself wondering. What had happened in that fifteen lost years? How was she abducted? Why did she return? And how did she die? The last question I looked up and studied the lieutenant’s face. It was as if he was reading my mind.

“Found her in the river night before last. Drowned. No apparent indication of any foul play. But I’m not buying it. Something happened. Something made her come back. I’ve got this ugly feeling her return forced others to act and act quickly. And leave no clues behind.”

“So, we’re back to Iggie and Mickey,” Frank grunted, glancing at the body and nodding. “You think this has something to do with Nathan Brinkley?”

The lieutenant nodded.

“Like I said, Franklin Hollander was an honest man. Too honest many would tell you. But he was charismatic. He had a way of persuading a crowd and making them believe in him. He promised to clean up crime and corruption in the Tenth. He was working hard to make good on his promises. Which meant he became a direct threat to Nathan Brinkley. Six months after Yasmine disappeared, Hollander was killed by a drunk driver. A head on collision while he was coming home from a political rally. Both Hollander and the drunk died instantly. Two months after that Linda Hollander, Franklin’s wife, committed herself to an asylum. She had a nervous breakdown. A year later she died from a drug overdose.

It was Iggie and Mickey who investigated Hollander’s death. They were the ones who said a drunk swerved across his lane, jumped a median strip while driving a Chevy pickup and slammed into Franklin Hollander’s Lincoln. It didn’t sound right. It just didn’t fit.”

“You suspect those two?”

“Yes,” the lieutenant–and friend–nodded quietly, his eyes darting behind us to see if anyone was within hearing distance. “But no proof. Those two clowns have been getting away with murder for years. Along with their boss. It’s time we closed the case on this. That’s why I’ve asked you two to come down here. I want you two to wrap it up. Pen something on the three of them. Bring them in cuffs and let’s send them away for the rest of their lives. These three have gotten away with murder for years. Ruined people’s lives. Destroyed reputations. Enough is enough.”

The two of us nodded. It would be our pleasure to take out these three. All we had to do was prove they were guilty. Something we had been trying to do for years.

CHAPTERFOUR

“What’s our next move?” Frank asked.

We were sitting in the squad room, our desks smashed up facing each other, both of us alone in a room filled with desks. Downstairs the usual hum of a regular business precinct house continued unabated. People were being questioned. Crooks were being escorted back and forth from the holding cells to interrogation rooms. Someone was hollering and sounding definitely upset.

Normal. Just another day at the office.

Frank was at his desk, resting his ship’s prow of a hard jaw on one hand and staring down at the thick folder of Yasmine Hollander. He looked gloomy. Which is not to say he looked that much different. Frank is not handsome. He looks like a cross between a modern-day Neanderthal and a miniaturized King Kong all wrapped up in the same package. Not that he doesn’t grab your attention, mind you. It’s hard not to notice that mountain of bone and muscle walk into a room.

Fans, one on each desk, were trying to blow some cool air from the air conditioning toward us. But it was only a faint gesture. Half-hearted at best. Outside the temperature gauge was holding steady around 101 Fahrenheit. The streets were blistering hot. The sidewalks nothing but cement ovens blasting heat through your shoes and back up your legs. Yet city traffic was thick as ever. It didn’t matter. Heat, arctic cold, a fucking batch of tornadoes ripping around all over the county. No big deal. Nothing stopped city traffic. The constant drone of the city’s pulse drumming away was endless. Yet somehow reassuring.

Frank looked up from the file and stared at me. He was as bone tired as I was. I didn’t have a clue what time it was. But I knew we had gone well past the twelve-hour mark on this shift. We worked second shift. That, in a normal job, meant roughly from four to midnight. But being a homicide detective kinda negates the normal part of our job description. We worked until we got a case solved. Or we dropped from exhaustion. And the way I felt, and what I saw in Frank’s eyes, told me we were about to drop. Glancing at the small clock sitting on my desk I saw it was a little past noon. The moment the time registered, aching bones began to bark loudly. Muscles rolled with pain as I slid the wooden office chair back and stood up.

“Let’s go home, brother. Get some sleep. We’ll come back around six tonight and begin hitting it hard.”

“Someone needs to go interview the dead lawyer’s wife.”

“Already done,” I nodded, fighting a yawn. “Sent two uniformed officers over there a couple of hours ago. Flannery and O’Connor. They’ll ask all the right questions. We’ll have their summary on our desks when we return. Let’s go home. A hot shower and fresh bed sheets sound like my idea of heaven right now.”

Waiting in the parking lot behind the division house was my ’67 Shelby Mustang GT 350. White with blue racing stripes running down the middle of the hood, across the roof, and down the rear deck. Sliding into the bucket seat behind the wheel the engine kicked into life with a garrulous rumble, a sound that always sounds good to the ear, and the air conditioning came on full blast. Rolling out of the parking lot by the time we got to the first light we were actually cooling off. The first time today.

“She was a mother, you know,” the giant sitting beside me said quietly.

“Yasmine Hollander?”

“At least two kids, from what the coroner suspects. Twenty-nine years old and with kids.”

He didn’t have to say the obvious. Where were the kids? Were they safe? Or would we find them floating in the river sometime soon. Or worse.

Hell. I love my job. I think I do an adequate job in nabbing the crooks and scum and throwing them in jail. But I can’t say it’s always a job that brings satisfaction to me. Sometimes bad things happen. Very bad things happen. There’s no way to dodge that reality. Lots of times you do your best, and nothing comes out right. Nagging questions linger. Did you arrest the right person? Is someone innocent sitting in prison doing hard time because you botched up the investigation? Or worse. Did some shit head who needed to be put away forever walk because we screwed up? What about the victims and the people who knew and loved them? What about the survivors?

Yes, I love my job. But I admit there are days I’d be happier if I just went to work as a carpenter. No worries. No nagging questions. Just an eight to five job and going home to maybe a house filled with a wife and kids.

But that’s not me.

It never was going to be me. Maybe a wife–again–someday. Maybe a kid or two. Someday. But no nine to five job. No going home without nagging doubts occasionally. Yes, there would be days when all kinds of doubts would fill me and make my conscience roll with an uneasy swell. But there were days as well, slightly more than less, when I felt good going home, knowing one more scumbag was safely tucked away behind bars and not likely to get out very soon.

Twenty minutes later, I dropped Frank off at his house. He lives in a rambling old ranch planted in the middle of a deep green yard in the middle of suburbia. Three of his four boys, along with two or three dogs, were outside tossing a baseball back and forth. When he climbed out of the car he was mobbed by kids and dogs in a pack of yapping and squealing delight. Grinning, I watched the big man pick up his youngest, rub his curly red hair, and then dodge a couple of punches the other two threw at him playfully. Pulling away from the curb I hoped the big lug would get some rest. But knowing his kids and his Italian-born wife I wouldn’t bet on it.

Ten minutes later I pulled the Shelby in front of the steel garage door of the big warehouse I called home. Sure, it’s nothing but an old red-brick warehouse down in the industrial section of the town not too far from the Brown River. But it’s my home. The second-floor semi-loft I converted into a comfortable enough living space. The ground floor, what once was a garage years ago, is where I kept my toys. The muscle cars. Cars from the ‘50s through the ‘80s. Room enough down there to collect a dozen or more eventually. Like I said, I already had a couple of Shelby Mustangs, an IROC Z-28 Camaro, a ’72 Plymouth Roadrunner and a few other collectibles. Up on stationary jacks was the rusted remains of a 442 Olds convertible I was currently working on. The engine was stripped down to its bare block. The parts neatly arranged in an orderly mess waiting for me to clean’ em and reassemble.

Okay, let’s get this over with. I’m rich. I’ve got money. But, buddy, this is not bragging. Not the way the money came to me: a sudden inheritance out of nowhere from a grandmother I never knew. Came suddenly and unexpected when I was already detective. After years of living from paycheck to paycheck–after having a wife walk away from me because I could never afford the things she wanted–along comes this bag of cash and suddenly all my worries are over. Right?

Hell no.

In many respects the worries multiplied exponentially. A cop suddenly flushed with millions makes a lot of his fellow workers become suspicious. Especially if the money comes with a story hard to swallow. So instead of calming the waters and making my life easier, the results were just the opposite. Things became tougher. Except for my hobbies and rebuilding muscle cars and collecting first-edition autographed books of my favorite authors.

Yes. I can read. I’m fairly intelligent. I can use a hammer and a saw. So, I figure someday, if the money flushes away and the current job gets too messy, maybe I might become that carpenter.

And by the way–the inherited money? It came with a grandfather I never knew I had. A real character. Since our first meeting a few years ago he shows up on a regular basis now. When he does, he never comes without offering a few surprises of his own.

And women, you ask? Ah. Another problem. I like’ em. Like being around them. Like their smell. Like the way they move. Like the way they feel. But I’m not crazy about getting too involved. Not after going through the hell for a marriage now thankfully behind me. I do have a girlfriend. Mostly. And not to my surprise she was sitting in her battered old Toyota parked at the curb in front of the garage waiting for me when I drove up.

Her name is Debra Patterson. She is a long, lanky blonde-haired tomboy who has a wonderful smile that lights up her face like a dozen klieg lights. She wears round-rimmed glasses, and her curly harvest-wheat-colored hair falls in natural curls down past her shoulders. She’s one hell of a newspaper reporter. The main writer for the city’s major rag on the crime beat. As she got out of her car, I could see the smile on her face. But I knew she wasn’t here on a social call. This time of the day meant only one thing. Business. She was here to badger me about the dead lawyer.

I pulled the Shelby into the garage and pulled it into its assigned slot. I shut off the engine, sat in the car, and waited for her to step through the gaping hole of the garage door before I rolled out of the car. She came walking down the cement floor of the garage like a dream. Shaking my head, tired as I was, I had this overwhelming desire to take her clothes off and lay her in the backseat of the ’54 Buick convertible and do her then and there. But I kept my thoughts to myself and just smiled.

“Hello handsome,” she said, smiling, and blinking up at me with light blue eyes. “Haven’t heard from you in a couple of days.”

“I know. I promised to take you out to dinner the last time we were together. But you’re here now. Hungry?”

She nodded, her smile lengthening. She knew I could cook. Which was a good thing. God knew she couldn’t.

“So how about coming upstairs with me and I’ll brew up some eggs benedict and get us a couple of beers. And I’ll answer as many questions as I can on the Stewart case.”

“How did you know I wasn’t coming over here to seduce you?”

“On your lunch break? You’re a sweetheart to this old man’s fantasies, my love. But not in the middle of a workday. Tonight maybe. But a nooner? I don’t think so.”