A lot of truth is said in jest.
Eminem (1972-), American musician
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Tracey screamed into her phone.
“This is no shit!” Amber screamed back. She was thrilled to know her career would probably end on the high note this case was likely to generate. “We need to get productive before the NTAC changes his mind. When is the goddamned M.E. going to email the autopsy? Wait, screw that. Where is Ballistics on the bullet?”
“Damned if I know,” Tracey said. She was as excited for herself as for Amber. If her partner was being allowed to keep the al-Taja case, that meant Amber’s boss—the NTAC—wasn’t calling her Chief to demand jurisdiction. That meant Tracey stayed on the case, too.
“Scoot over here and get me and we’ll go over to the lab ourownselves,” Tracey said.
“On the way.”
Since the Detroit Police Forensics Lab closed in 2008 under a scandal of gross incompetence, the DPD forensics work was farmed out to the network of seven Michigan State Police labs, including all the firearms work. DPD used the MSP lab in Northville Township, about twenty-five minutes across I-96 from the DPD headquarters.
Tracey had a contact there and pinged on her by text to see if her schedule could stand an official visit. Within minutes come on over i have donuts was texted back, including little chocolate emoji donuts and coffee cups, and a smiley face with heart eyes. Minutes later, Amber and Tracey were headed to the Northville State Police forensics lab and its commander, Lieutenant Adriana Hero.
Adri Hero had taken plenty of abuse over her proud Greek name from kids in school growing up, but it was nothing compared to the drilling she sustained once she’d signed up for police work. Just try going to the state police academy in Lansing with a recruit nametag that screams HERO.
Lieutenant Hero looked up when she heard three soft taps on the door glass and waved in Tracey and Amber.
“Hay yooou!” she drawled, her standard greeting. Adri’s Greek heritage had given some ground to her upbringing in suburban Atlanta. The beguiling southern accent bubbled out of her like soft waves of honey and music.
Adri came around her desk, and she and Tracey embraced warmly. Tracey had never been quite sure about the sexual tension that seemed to exist between her and Adri, but she had admitted to Amber that she enjoyed the ambiguity. Forewarned, Amber went in for just a firm handshake of her own.
“Adri, Special Agent Amber Watson, FBI. Amber, Lieutenant Adrianna Hero, Michigan State Police. The one and only. Lab commander.”
“Pleasure,” Amber said.
Adri nodded and smiled. “Same here. I’ve seen your name on a case report or three.”
“In fact, that’s why we came over,” Amber said. “You have a ballistics report on a bullet found in the crushed skull of Mohammed al-Taja, a.k.a. The Well-Dressed Guy.”
Adri reached for a folder on her desk. “Yeah, I pulled it when Tracey said you guys were coming over about it.” She sat back down in her chair and spread the pages out across her desk. “The short version? He was already dead when he hit the sidewalk, is what the M.E. thinks. Me, too. Have you read this autopsy report yet?” Adri pointed to a page with her longish red index fingernail.
“Um, not yet,” Tracey said, using her hand to cover a comical Oh shit! smirk to Amber behind Adri’s back. “I think it must be in my email.”
“Well, no problem. I printed this out for you guys, anyway. The M.E. found symmetrical stippling around a contact wound on the back of al-Taja’s head. No exit wound, so that says something about the load: The round was probably custom-made for close-in work, if you know what I mean.”
They did: Assassination.
“We checked the rounds remaining in the clip, and the low-power theory was confirmed. Doc found the bullet when he went into the skull. Evidently your killer put his gun to your guy’s head, shot him, and then tossed him head-first over the edge of the City-County Building, figuring if he hit the fall right, the crumpled head would cover up the shooting. Almost did, too, seems like.”
Adri raised a small plastic Ziploc bag sealed with red evidence tape. “This is the bullet.”
She raised a second bag holding the prettiest little all-pink Kel-Tec .380 you ever did see.
“And turns out, we already had the gun that fired it.”
Tracey swore. “Christ on a fucking cracker.”
It was the same weapon The Grim Reaper had recovered from his gangbanger traffic stop.
She lunged for her iPhone and dialed the downtown lockup while looking over the ballistics report on the gun. The name of the gangbanger Jeff O’Brien had arrested on the speeding charge was Liam Cortez Williams. No wonder he used Liam. Who names their kid William Williams?
What she didn’t know was whether Williams had been charged with the two guns and weed found in his car at impound.
Sometimes, especially following minor primary charges like this traffic beef, proposed gun or other charges lagged for days or even weeks in the prosecutor’s office if the connection to the suspect wasn’t perfect, or if the suspect had a bitchy lawyer who was certain to drag out search warrant protests, chain of custody gripes, and maybe the influence of the phase of the moon.
It didn’t help that The Grim Reaper occasionally was resourceful in his policing and report writing. All in the greater cause of justice, you understand, but sometimes not as strictly legal as the justice system yearns for.
If he had not been charged with the guns found coincident with the traffic stop, chances were better than even that William Cortez Williams was already in the wind, with or without a lawyer. Non-violent offenders got big slack at the Wayne County jail anymore. Overcrowding was the rule on good days, and there was no overtime money for extra deputies. So, you didn’t kill somebody, you usually walked.
William Cortez Williams may have either killed The Well-Dressed Guy, or he knew who did. Or he knew someone who knew who did the killing. Tracey had to locate Williams and hold him to find out, and she might already be out of luck.
There were few days on Tracey’s calendar when she felt like she was dropping the ball. Suddenly, this seemed like it was going to be one.
The phone rang downtown at the Wayne County Jail on Clinton Street. “WayneCountyJailDeputyFelixHowMayIDirectYoCall?” asked the bored deputy answering the phone in one breathless statement.
“Jesus, Felix, I’m so glad it’s you,” Tracey said. “You got a guy on a traffic warrant, William Cortez Williams, probably booked as Liam Cortez Williams. Please, for the love of the smiling Christ, tell me you still have him.”
“Who this?” Felix said, and paused for a moment. “Naw Tracey, I’m just playin’. I know it’s you, hon. Hold on, lemme look.”
Tracey could hear thick fingers tapping uncertainly on his computer keyboard. Few sheriff’s deputies were notable for their clerical skills. Not even the clerks.
Holding her hand over the cellphone mic, Tracey whispered to Amber, How fast can we get down to the new jail?
Corvette Watson reached into a pocket for her ignition key and smirked. “Are you kidding? We’re halfway there right now.”
There were muffled sounds of talking as Felix covered the phone with his hand and told another man what he wanted from Greektown for lunch. He continued to hunt and peck the keyboard with one agonizingly slow hand.
“Oh, okay,” Felix said into the phone. “Yeah, here we go. We got him, hon. For a minute, anyway. You know we can’t keep nobody but damn serial killers anymore, anyways. He s’posed to be released in, like, fifteen minutes or somethin’ like that. Him an’ his asshole lawyer doin’ the paperwork for his bond-out right now.”
Felix didn’t know whom William Cortez Williams had gotten as his lawyer. He just thought all lawyers were assholes.
Tracey yelled into the phone, “You hold that son of a bitch, Felix, do you hear me? You fucking hold that man until I get there!” and then she sprinted with Amber for the door. On the other end, Deputy Felix pulled the receiver away from his head.
“Hello? Hel-lo?” he said. “Well, okay then.” Then he hung up.
“Uh, buh-bye,” Adri said to her empty office.
The two women jumped into the police Corvette. Amber buckled her seatbelt and ordered Tracey to do the same while inserting and twisting the ignition key.
She released the parking brake and shifted into Reverse in one smooth motion, then back into first gear before the car stopped rolling backwards. She dropped the clutch hard and the big V-8 howled like an angry prehistoric beast.
The smoky burnout she laid in the police crime lab parking lot was as good as any NASCAR victory dance in the last ten years.
Amber lit up the Vette’s many emergency red and blue lights and ignited the electronic siren. Still, the non-standard police car got many startled looks when it flashed past the obligingly stopped traffic.
Once onto the interstate headed back downtown, Amber wished she’d had time to raise the convertible top. At a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour, the wind whipping their hair was fierce. Tracey leaned in under the windshield for a little protection, and gathered her red hair close around her head with both hands.
This time of mid-morning, the commuters were already at work and traffic was blissfully sparse. As the speedometer climbed above one-forty, Amber leaned over toward Tracey and shouted at the top of her lungs, “This makes my dick hard!”
They both laughed. Police work could be such a blast.
The Corvette rocketed into the jail’s official-vehicle parking area and skidded to a stop, brakes glowing red hot and smoke rising from the wheel wells.
“Go-go-go!” Amber shouted at Tracey, who vaulted from the car and ran into the Wayne County Jail. Thirteen minutes, door to door. Not too shabby.
Tracey ran directly to the office where Deputy Alvin Felix would be found.
“Fe-Felix,” she gasped, out of breath. “My, my guy. Where’s my guy?”
“Oh, Mr. Williams? I believe he’s waiting for you down in reception. Gimme some, girl.”
Felix grinned his best self-satisfied grin and raised a palm that Tracey high-fived.
Cooperation with more important officers in the law enforcement continuum could get a guy out of dreary lockup duty and into the street doing actual police work, if a guy played his cards right. Felix was going to the gym and had already dropped twenty-six pounds. He’d had his uniforms taken in twice. He intended to wear them in a patrol car one day soon.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Tracey said. She gave Felix a powerful hug that he would shamelessly brag about later.
Felix walked Tracey down to the reception area on the public side because it was closer and faster than having to negotiate the internal maze of locked doors and hallways.
The so-called Reception space was a full-duplex room. Suspects were sometimes brought in this way, but it was also used to check in visiting friends and family members who arrived to see prisoners, and it was the route back to the street for prisoners being released or bonded out.
Inbound or out, it was just a big waiting room that still reeked of despair and cigarettes, though smoking there had been prohibited for many years.
They appeared at the admin window and Felix rapped on the thick Plexiglas partition with the Cass Tech high school ring he still wore proudly, though the ring threatened to submerge in Felix’s fleshy, sausage-like finger.
“Yo man, where William Cortez Williams at?”
“Who?” Deputy Bobby Ivey said. Thin wisps of dull, mouse-brown beard failed to disguise the acne that scourged his pale skin.
“William. Cortez. Williams,” Felix said, like talking to a child. “I sent you an email about keepin’ him until Sergeant Lexcellent got here?” Ivey returned an uncomprehending stare. “From Homicide? Your inbox?”
“Email?” Ivey said with distrust. “My inbox?”
He poked at his computer. Even from her side of the partition, Tracey could see the tired old terminal was hardly more than a boat anchor. And the deputy was no brain trust.
“I ain’t got no damn email, bro,” Ivey said.
“Hey, just scroll—“ Felix got agitated with his colleague’s embarrassing ineptitude in front of Sergeant Lexcellent. “Look, just buzz us in, man.”
A loud vibrating sound told them the door to the admin office was now unlocked and they could enter. Tracey felt an acidic bowling ball mature in her stomach. That was going to stomp her ulcer into a bloody puddle if it kept up.
“Lemme in there, man,” Felix growled.
Ivey stood back. Felix reached over and pushed a key labeled PAGE DN. A whole new screen of email messages was pulled up. Felix’s note was right at the top, the Subject line STOP RELEASE ORDER WILLIAMS, WILLIAM C in all capital letters.
It had been pushed down and off the screen by other incoming emails. There were other pages of communications that had also never been read, acknowledged, nor acted upon, going back weeks.
“Oh, no shit!” Ivey said. “I neva knew that was there.”
“Okay, deputy, now you do,” Tracey said, leaning in. Fury smoldered on her fair, freckled skin. Her hands trembled when she raised them to caress Ivey’s round, oblivious face.
“Where is he?” she asked with a fake, twitching smile. “Where is Williams?”
That cartoon light bulb must have winked on in Ivey’s head.
“Liam Williams? He gone, man. Asshole lawyer took him out just before you two walked up.”
Tracey considered lowering her soft hands down to Ivey’s pencil-thin neck.
“You’re that cute girl from Homicide, right? JTF-type? What that’s like?”
Amber arrived in the office then from the official side. She took one look at Tracey and put both hands lightly on her friend’s right arm, because Tracey wasn’t much of a puncher with her left.
Gently, then with increasing volume, Tracey asked, “Deputy Ivey, may I please see the fucking paperwork?”