CHAPTER FIVE

MONICA

 

 

 

 

 

 

My hands encased in nitrile gloves, I pulled out one cardboard box after another, peeled off the lids, and flipped through the contents. There was no way to tell whether a record was missing aside from checking each and every call-for-service number from each and every year, including our earliest documents—yellowing pages dated to the 1960s.

It was the kind of tedious work my undiagnosed OCD delighted in.

A few feet down the row, Lehman shoved a box back onto its shelf. “Did you know a cow got loose downtown in 1968?”

“That so?” I asked, my eyes and fingers scanning numbers.

“Yep. Farmer Willard Tillman’s cow. Name of Annabelle, a doe-eyed Jersey who made the best cheese in four counties. They herded her onto the Riviera Pier where she jumped off and swam ashore, right into her daddy’s waiting arms—well, his trailer, anyway.”

“Good for her.”

Lehman sighed and leaned against a shelf. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Helping you with this. Rock-turning is your department. I’m more of an interviews and interrogations guy; you know that.”

“That’s only because people couldn’t hate your ass any more than they already do.” Prying away at people’s secrets didn’t win you friends. “And I might point out, you have no one to interrogate until we pick up a lead.”

“Touché.”

I waved to the next shelf. “Nineteen sixty-nine is waiting.”

He sighed and pulled out another box, cardboard sliding on particle board and metal. “You’ve seen the security footage. The perp couldn’t have been in here more than five minutes before Steph showed up. He didn’t have a chance to find whatever he was after.”

“You don’t know that.”

He leaned his arm on the shelving. “Why do you always consider the impossible to be the likely?”

“You’re the one who told me a cow dove off the Riviera Pier.”

He hung his head and shook it side-to-side. “I wish I hadn’t told you that.”

Lehman was the big-picture guy. I was into the details. In theory, that should have made us a great team. Instead, we were trapped in a constant push-pull, one of us railroading the other into whatever we wanted. I usually won, but Lehman spent the rest of the time griping.

An hour later, our fingers flying through the nineties, Lehman was singing just loud enough for me to hear. “Oh, bury me not… Under lock and key… Where paperwork howls… And reports blow free…”

He’d been improvising lyrics for the past fifteen minutes and I was ready to cram a box over his head. A scathing comment about to fly off my tongue, I bit it short as my eye finally caught what I’d been looking for.

A loose sheet of paper, half out of its box, torn at the corner where a staple used to be.

I pulled the sheet free. The header on top listed the date as August 29th, 1995, the page number as three of three. The print-out began mid-sentence, the first sheet missing from the report.

…resisted arrest by refusing to follow orders and struggling as I attempted to put on the handcuffs. Officer Steele arrived at the scene at this time and assisted and we then were able to contain the subject. The subject was identified via his driver’s license as Roger Ridley Holland. His rights were read to him at this time…

My eyes flashed to the signature at the bottom of the report. Sergeant Horace Stubbs.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed.

The cop’s version of the cowboy lament died mid-verse. “What?” Lehman asked.

“Oh, shit.”

He shoved his box back onto the shelf and came to peer over my shoulder. “What? What is it?”

I passed him the torn report. He scanned the type-written text. “The Holland Murder,” he said, all business now.

“Murder?” I repeated. “Really, Lehman?” I felt the heat rising beneath my collar.

Lehman tilted an eyebrow at me. “Yes, Monica. So said a jury of his peers in a court of law.”

I jabbed a finger at the signature. “So said Sergeant Stubbs, you mean.”

Lehman raised his hands, one of them holding the torn page. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s dial this down a notch.”

“Dial it down a notch?” I spat out. “I nearly lost my job over Stubbs.” I pointed out a line from the report. ‘Officer Steele’—that’s me. And look—remember this?”

I stormed around the corner to a set of shelves against the wall, old personnel files. I’d been a stark rookie in 1995, still in my first year of probation, barely sturdy enough to carry a ballistic vest and duty belt without crumpling under the weight. I was finally a full-time cop, and I’d staked my fledgling career to blow the whistle. In Stubbs’ folder, I knew I’d find my own written complaint—the one the lieutenant had brushed over. The one that had earmarked me as an over-zealous greenhorn. In that complaint, I had accused Stubbs of knowingly disturbing the crime scene. Of fabricating evidence. Of framing Roger Holland for murder instead of the accidental death it was. Holland was a baker, for God’s sake, not a murderer. The victim had been his best friend.

I pulled out a box marked with the letter S and pawed for Stubbs’ file. A moment later, my hands froze.

“It’s gone,” I said, disbelief filling my voice. “Stubbs’ personnel file. The whole thing. It’s gone.” I felt as robbed as I had the day my lieutenant told me, Yes, I’ve seen your complaint and filed it appropriately.

Lehman glanced at the torn report in his hand. “I guess we know what the perp was after, then. Info on the Holland case.”

I looked at my partner over my shoulder. “Where’s Roger Holland now?”

Lehman shrugged. “Still up at the state pen, I think. They gave him life. But he’d be an old man now. What about Stubbs? Where’s he?”

“Door County,” I replied. “Retired to some cabin on the peninsula.”

“Should I be disturbed you know that?” Lehman asked, hoisting an eyebrow.

I glared daggers at him. “I never take my eyes off a dirty cop. Especially one that got away.”

Lehman rolled his head dismissively. “Monica, you could never prove he did it—or even why he’d want to.”

“Sergeant Stubbs liked making things easy,” I shot back. “Too easy. Why let the jury hang on murder versus accidental death when it could just be a nice, clean murder? He sentenced Roger Holland himself the night he walked onto the scene.”

Lehman raised his hands again. “Okay, okay, let’s not drudge up all the bad feelings right now. The important thing is, we’ve got leads.” He lifted the ripped sheet still in his gloved hand and waved at it. “Maybe we even have fingerprints. We know what our burglar came for. The only question now is why.”

“Holland’s raising a new appeal,” I said.

Lehman raised his eyebrows. “He is?”

“I don’t know. But he could be. And Stubbs wants the records conveniently erased. He wants no evidence that Holland could use against him.” I jabbed a thumb at myself. “He wants my record of complaint to disappear.”

“Or,” Lehman countered, “Holland’s raising a new appeal and needs this evidence.”

I shook my head, frowning. “His lawyer would be nuts. He could simply file a request for the police report.”

“The report, yes,” Lehman agreed, “but the personnel file?”

“So he stole it? I don’t buy that. Stubbs, on the other hand… I worked with him, remember? He was so rotten inside, he stank. Plants shriveled when he walked by.”

Lehman sighed. “Much as I enjoy discussing semantics…” He took down the S box from the shelf, placed it in my gloved hands, and laid the torn report on the lid. “This isn’t our baby anymore. It’s all getting turned over to D.C.I. now.”

The Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigations. We weren’t allowed to investigate one of our own cops, even if he was retired. Conflicts of interest were the reason why—like my keen desire to turn Stubbs’ spine into a twisty-tie and shove his head up his own ass.

I blew a strand of hair out of my face. “They better do it right. I catch one whiff of any half-assed police work, and I’ll have their badges.”

Lehman rolled his eyes. “Monica, your half-ass is an ass and a half to anyone else.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Watch it, buster, or I’ll have you for sexual harassment.”

“Sexual harassment. Right.” He turned me around by the shoulders and dug his index fingers into my back, nudging me towards the door and the evidence collection room down the hall. “You go stow those in evidence. I’ll call D.C.I.”