SERGEANT?
Ned? Ned was a sergeant?
“Ned was a sergeant with Internal Affairs? What are you talking about? You mean Ned was—”
Turner leaned against the dresser with his arms crossed. “As it turns out, Ned Kiefer was a poor choice. He had too many personal problems that got in the way of doing his job.”
“I don’t believe you. He would’ve told me. He would’ve told—” Then I remembered my first undercover assignment, the number one rule: “Tell no one.”
I’d violated that rule and it almost killed me. When I made that terrible mistake, Chelsea had come to my rescue and saved me. Now with the Gadd investigation I’d again been thrust into a similar situation. Only this time I was one of the people on the inside who didn’t know the game and wasn’t told the rules. Ned had not violated the first rule, he’d not told his best friend what was going on. The consummate professional. The sadness that he didn’t trust me took hold and dragged me down further.
Had it contributed to his death? If he had told me, would it have made a difference? Would things have changed going through that door?
After my mind put all the pieces together, I looked at Whitney. “There’s only one reason you’d put an undercover on the team. You thought Chelsea was somehow linked to the bank robbers. Is that right? Am I right?” I raised my voice. “You think she’s aligned herself with that asshole, Gadd? You’re out of your ever lovin’ mind.”
Whitney didn’t verbally answer; he didn’t have to. I read it in his eyes. I shot a hand out and grabbed a handful of his dress shirt and tie. “So that means … that means, because Chelsea and I were involved on a personal level, you didn’t know whether or not I had agreed to come into her little game. Is that it? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why it was appropriate to use our department’s Internal Affairs division. Right?”
Turner tried to intervene and grabbed onto me. Whitney held up his hand and stopped him. Turner let go.
I let go of Whitney. I said, “No, that’s not enough to prove a thing. You have to have more. You have to have something that implicates her with Gadd. It can’t just be supposition, or circumstantial. You have to have something solid. What is it? Wait. Let me guess, you’re up on her phone and you have conversation. Right? Is that it?”
Turner looked at Whitney and said, “This bonehead is too smart for his own good.”
“What is it? What do you have? What did she say?”
Whitney stood and straightened his tie. “We didn’t have enough for the tap.”
“So a pin register then?” I said. “You trapped and traced all of the phone numbers she used coming in and going out. So what? So she called Gadd’s phone number. That doesn’t mean a damn thing. Anybody could’ve answered. You don’t know for sure. For all you know, she could have an informant inside his crew.”
Turner said, “According to our policy, she would have had to notify her supervisor if she did and also have an informant file with a registered number. She made no such notification and there isn’t a file or number.”
“That’s a policy violation. That doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy that would get a judge to agree to a pin register.”
Whitney said nothing.
I said, “That ain’t shit. That could mean anything and you know it.”
Whitney shook his head. “Don’t be a fool. You’re looking at this as someone emotionally involved and not thinking objectively. Look at the totality of the circumstances.”
“There’s not enough. There’s not.”
Whitney said to Turner, “Show him.”
I looked at Turner. “Yeah, show me.” But I really didn’t want to see what they had. I loved her too much. I’d lost Ned. Now they wanted me to think I’d lost Chelsea, too.
Turner went over to the scarred bureau, reached into a black nylon field case, and pulled out a manila file folder. He came over and handed it to me. My hands quivered as I opened the file to 8”×10” black-and-white photos.
Turner said, “Don’t feel too bad, she’s made fools out of all of us as well.”
From a distance, the photo depicted a large black man with his back to the camera, who could or could not have been the Darkman. He leaned into a maroon Crown Victoria handing over a package, a folded paper bag in the size and shape that could’ve been a stack of US currency. I recognized the location—the parking lot of Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles.
I also recognized Chelsea as the driver of the Crown Vic.
My stomach turned sick. How could she do it?
I thumbed through the other photos looking for one that confirmed the guy as the Darkman and didn’t find it. “Who’s the dude?”
Turner jumped forward, pointed his finger, and raised his voice. “That’s Gadd and you damn well know it. That happened right after one of the bank jobs four weeks ago, before you came into this thing. Before we put your team on him.”
“Before you put Ned on her, you mean.” I closed the file and handed it back. “I can’t confirm that it’s Gadd, not by those. Whoever took these really screwed up and ought to be fired.”
Turner yelled, “I took them. It was the best I could get. It was almost like the dude knew someone was on him.”
“If you were involved, I bet he did.”
He let the file drop and clenched his fists.
Whitney yelled, “Stop it, the both of you!”
He came over to me. “This thing has gone off the rails. We’re asking you nice to help us get it back on track.”
“Not only no, but hell no.” I headed for the door.
Whitney said, “Where are you going?”
“You want me to wear a wire to trap Chelsea. I won’t do it. Make your case any way you want, but not with me. I’m going to prove you two assholes are wrong.”
“It wouldn’t be prudent to do that alone, Deputy Johnson. Let us go with you.”
At the motel room door, I looked back at them. “Not a chance, pal.” I stepped back over to the file on the floor and grabbed one of the photos with Chelsea and Gadd. I folded it twice into a square and stuck it in my back pocket. I slammed the door on my way out and took off running.
And kept running.
After fifteen minutes of weaving in and out for five blocks, I got my bearings. They’d driven me into the city of Compton off of Rosecrans. I found a pay phone and paged Chelsea once more but this time with a “911. 911. 911.”
I stepped back into the shadows and waited, watching the street. No way did I want members from the Sheriff’s Department or the FBI following along.
I checked my watch. Checked it again. At eleven minutes the pay phone rang. I stepped back into the halo of illumination cast by the streetlight, visibly vulnerable for far too long, and jerked up the phone. “Chelsea?”
“Bruno, where are you?”
“What happened? You were supposed to follow Ollie. Never mind, come pick me up. I’ll be at the corner of Spring and Elm in Compton. Hurry.” I hung up so she couldn’t object. I stepped back into the shadows one more time and watched. They would have at least tried to follow me from the motel. I know I would’ve. I turned and jumped the fence heading south through the yards, crossing more streets. The black-and-white photos of Chelsea with Gadd wouldn’t leave me alone and scraped on my soul like fingernails on a chalkboard. Not Gadd, Jesus, not with Gadd.
I cut over to Spring Street, traveled west through the alley and back into the yards. Without a helicopter, they wouldn’t know that I’d left the shadows by the phone, if they’d even been with me up to that point. I zigzagged a few more times until I came out onto Elm just as a white Toyota Celica pulled up and shut off its lights. I tried to peer in through the tinted glass. The driver’s window came down. I put my hand on my gun butt.
“Bruno, quit messing around and get in.”
Chelsea.
I ran around and got in. She took off.