“How did you get my number? My address?” Darlene Webb was standing outside of her apartment building’s front door, hands spanning her waist. Classic cop stance. The plaid flannel shirt she wore over a turtleneck and jeans did little to hide the shoulder holster and weapon at her side.
Ambush may be the right word for what I was doing to her. I’d parked, gotten to her building, then called her from the sidewalk announcing my presence on her literal doorstep. She had hung up and come outside to meet or confront me, I still didn’t know which.
“I came bearing gifts,” I said while lifting a single shoulder in a shrug that I hoped was the opposite of intimidating.
“What?” Her question communicated her bewilderment.
I pulled a small paper bag from my jacket pocket. Thrust it out toward her. Reluctantly Webb removed a hand from her hip and accepted it.
“Great wrapping,” she said, sarcasm in full effect, as she opened the bag. Looked inside as if something was going to jump out and bite her. When she realized it wasn’t alive, she took out the coaster I’d purchased at a novelty shop in a neighborhood full of them.
“Camp Crystal Lake?” she read. As she looked down at the cabin sketch and the tiny drops of fake blood, I could clock the exact moment when she got the joke.
“A little Friday the Thirteenth humor,” I said in reference to the gift and today’s date.
“You’re lucky that I like camp movies.” Webb allowed a very small smile.
“Camp…or camp?”
“Cheesy horror. My babysitter let me watch on Fridays when my mom and dad were working. She’d let me watch Halloween and even Alien.”
“It’s getting cold,” I said. The balmy Indian summer daytime temps were quickly giving way to freezing nights. “Can we talk somewhere other than the steps?”
Webb looked me up and down as if assessing my capacity for violence. She had the same skeptical look that Blake Tatum had the first time I’d showed up to her place. After years on the force, I got it, police were sometimes considered armed and dangerous even to our own. I tried not to take it personally.
“C’mon in,” she said, then turned toward the building. I assumed it was an invitation to follow to her apartment. She opened the living room door and I stepped in behind her. I was both surprised and charmed to find that the entire living room area was dressed up in autumn decorations including cornucopia of dried gourds, and fairy lights twinkling through a string of multicolored leaves along the molding.
“This is interesting,” I said taking that in as well as the exposed brick wall of her living room and the outsized fireplace in her kitchen all of which I could see from the door.
“It’s cheap,” she said defensively. I wanted to backpedal and tell her my “interesting” was a compliment, not Midwestern passive aggression. “The rest of the folks here are medical students, so it’s quiet. New building owners. Hoping they install some outlets.” She gestured toward the wires snaking along the brick wall. “Extension cords shouldn’t be my best friends.”
“Can I sit?” I asked in response to her disjointed monologue. She nodded and I parked my butt in a wood-and-leather Ikea chair.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked as if I were…almost…a welcome guest. “I have a coaster.”
I felt myself relax a little at her small attempt at humor.
“What are the options?”
Webb walked over toward the open-plan kitchen. I wanted to ask if the fireplace was functional, but didn’t think she’d want to talk architecture with her impromptu guest. I knew I should be grateful for the beverage offer. She opened the fridge, and bent her head to assess the contents.
“Club soda. Water. Fruit punch soda,” she announced.
“Faygo pop?” I inquired. She answered by pulling the colorful plastic bottle from the fridge. “I haven’t had that in years. Bring it on.”
She brought over a glass of bright red pop, placing it and the coaster on the small brass-and-glass table at my elbow. I took a big sip and it was like a walk down memory lane. Every organ in my nearly forty-three-year-old body would probably protest later, but for now, it was good.
“Why are you here?” Webb was done with small talk.
“Everyone seems to ask that question,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I hunched forward, steepled my forearms and fingers, elbows on my thighs. “You know I’m investigating Tia Wetzel, right?”
Webb’s head shook almost before I could finish my question.
“I’m not familiar with the case.” Webb’s voice was carefully neutral. She’d go far in policing. Even farther if she was promoted up the command chain. “Is that why you were in Long’s office?” she asked.
“Wetzel is a murder suspect. I was working with Long to get a warrant for cell phone records.”
“Oh. Okay.” She was still standing, hovering between the kitchen and living room. “I’m not even sure we should be talking about this.”
I couldn’t decide if Webb was in full “cop” mode or just bad at the kind of camaraderie cops usually shared. My own agenda still hazy in my mind, I decided to plow ahead anyway.
“You said something about a guy named Ja Roach being killed.”
Webb nodded, but didn’t speak.
“I think your case may be related to mine.”
“How?” Her hands were back on her narrow hips.
“Who do you think murdered Sarah Pope?” Detectives often had a theory of a case that didn’t one hundred percent jibe with the prosecutor’s.
“Tyisha Cooley was indicted for that crime.” Her answer made me think I wasn’t wrong about Cooley’s prosecution going against the grain.
“You didn’t answer the question,” I blurted. This dance with her was exhausting. I was getting an inkling as to why the interaction she’d had with Long was so terse and awkward.
“What are you getting at here?” When I didn’t answer, she stood there for a long time coolly appraising me. “Do you know anything about me?”
“I only looked up your phone number and address. I didn’t do any asking around if that’s what you mean.” What I didn’t say was that she was a woman in a man’s field and I knew the answers to questions about her would inevitably be tinged with sexism. There were still a lot of men on the force who thought women shouldn’t be there. I wanted to meet her myself, make my own judgment.
“I used to be Cleveland police.”
I smoothed my face against the surprise.
“Why did you switch?” Most cops did not go from big-city action to suburban boredom unless there was a good reason. She had neither of the two usual ones, having kids, or being close to retirement.
“It wasn’t quite voluntary. Do you remember a guy named Troy Duncan?”
I wracked my brain, but couldn’t exactly put a finger on it. “It sounds familiar—”
Webb didn’t wait for me to puzzle it out. Instead, she made a swift motion with her arm cutting me off.
“Let me shortcut it for you. He was African American. My then partner, Marc Baldwin, shot him in an alley behind a restaurant in the Flats. Baldwin thought he was a gangbanger with a gun. Turns out Duncan was a chef with a knife roll.”
I held up my hands when the memory of the civil unrest that followed came to me. “I remember now. What happened to Baldwin?”
“He put up a fuss about losing his job. I think he kept his pension. I had to stop following the case…for my own sanity. I didn’t have anyone going to bat for me and I got screwed over by the city. This job was my consolation prize.”
“I’m sorry it turned out that way.” I was empathetic. Despite how it looked to the public, in the wake of the shooting of an unarmed man, someone somewhere often got sacrificed, and not always the person who deserved it.
“I broke the code, but I wasn’t going to take the fall for something I didn’t think was right. What I’m saying is that I’m not a cat. I don’t have any more lives to give. The vibe I’m getting from you is that you want something I probably can’t give you.”
“Vibe?”
“You’re here on a Friday. You came bearing gifts.”
“I—”
“Tell you what. You get one free pass. We’ll have this one conversation where you get to push whatever off your chest. Maybe I tell you if you’re barking up the wrong tree. Then you go back to your job, and I go back to mine.”
“Webb—”
“One chance. Don’t waste it. Go.”
One chance.
I considered my words. Whether to go in slowly, try to lead Webb down a Socratic path where she’d eventually jump to the conclusion I’d made, or get to it. I had a sense she was serious that I’d only get one bite at this apple. I decided to put it all on the table, go for broke.
“I think Lori Pope is a cold-blooded murderer. I believe that she’s responsible for that guy Roach, for Cooley, and probably for more.”
“You think the Cuyahoga County prosecutor is out putting needles in someone’s veins and shooting people?”
“Maybe. Maybe not her. Maybe she’s got cops on the take to do it for her.”
“Are you accusing me of murder?” Webb took a defensive posture, stepping back while never breaking eye contact as if I were some drug-addled criminal.
“No. No. Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything like that. It’s just that Pope has all of us chasing our tails. Indicting the wrong people. Investigating the wrong people. Throwing suspicion on the wrong people.”
“There’s corruption at every level.” Webb slow blinked.
“Why do people keep saying that?” Corruption was one thing. Straight up violent criminal behavior was a wholly different category.
“Because…it’s true. We all do the best with the resources we have. Sometimes we get it wrong. Police get laser focused, then get it wrong. Prosecutors pile on, and then get it wrong. It’s not a perfect system. It’s the one we have.”
I hated that butt-covering speech. Every cop and every prosecutor and every judge gave it. I wanted them to get it right, to not need to give the speech at all.
“It’s way less than perfect. I get up every morning and fight against that. I try to be the change that I think the department needs. But that doesn’t mean that I can sit back and allow a murderer to go free. Especially when it’s someone who pulls all the strings like a puppet master.”
“Fine. I hear what you’re saying. Do you have any proof?”
Hunting Lori Pope was like trying to find snipe.
“That’s where you come in,” I said. “I need eyes and ears on the ground over here. I can’t go it alone. If I say any of this to my partner or my boss, they’ll crucify me.”
“And what? You’ll end up in Cleveland Heights or any of the other small suburbs surrounding the city.”
As if inner-ring suburb was equivalent to exile. That was not my worst fear.
“No, not that. A murderer could go free. I need to stop it. We need to stop it.”
I tried to look in her eyes to gauge her empathy. I wasn’t encouraged. Webb closed her eyes. Looked away. Shook her head slowly, but emphatically.
“I already gave one for the team,” she said taking my glass to the sink, rinsing it slowly. Then she deliberately made long strides to the apartment door. Webb opened it wide. She stood there until I got the hint, stood, and walked toward the exit. Finally, she spoke again once I was in the hallway.
“Count me out.”
The click of the door in my face brought the point home.