CHAPTER ELEVEN
DELIA
“Good work, Delia, you and Vern both,” Chief Black tells me. “But I’m surprised that you didn’t arrest the woman.”
I’m sitting in the Chief’s office, reporting on the morning’s activities. “No drugs in plain view, boss, and she has her own residence. So there was nothing to arrest her for.”
True as far as it goes, but most cops would have arrested her anyway. Bust her and let the prosecutors and her lawyer worry about the technicalities. Even if she was never indicted, I could have used the threat of prosecution to extract information. And I might have done exactly that, except for the baby.
“So, Chief, the kidnapping? Anything changed?”
“The kidnappers made contact last night. Or, Elizabeth Bradford made contact. She says she’s unharmed and please be ready to pay the money. The kidnappers didn’t speak.”
“Who’d you put on it?”
“John Meacham’s our liaison.”
“The Dink? Are you kidding?”
“Delia, the situation is exactly what you anticipated. Meacham sat behind a desk all day. He wasn’t briefed until early this morning and the Feds only told him what I just told you. We’re out of it.” He paused long enough to run the tip of his forefinger along the sutures in his head, as if surprised to find them there. “Anyway, there’s good news too. The city’s scheduled to receive the first inflow of federal money by the beginning of October. That’ll mean expanding the force by fifteen officers. We’ll be receiving a pair of armored vehicles as well, probably Lenco BearCats. No more headlong charges into enemy fire.”
It’s almost noon and I’m famished. I exit the station house on Polk Avenue and circle City Hall to emerge at the northern end of City Hall Green. More dirt than grass, the Green is roughly the size of a football field, including the end zones. Not exactly Golden Gate Park, true, but the Green is slated to be the center of our revitalized downtown. Just now, it’s planting time and three eighteen-wheeler flatbeds bearing an assortment of trees are being unloaded by a crew of city workers. I stop for a moment to acknowledge their greetings. I’ve become a local celebrity since the video from the fire hit the air. The situation has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The talk should be about Emmaline, about the child and her fate.
The red-brick shops bordering the Green range from three to six stories high. Long neglected, if not abandoned, they were the pride of the city when first built a hundred years ago. That era’s due for a comeback. The soot-black facades are being power washed, a bay window has been pulled from one building, and masons are working on a line of columns above the top windows of another. I’m seeing the Green six months from now surrounded by thriving boutiques and trendy bars, and maybe one of those fusion restaurants, Filipino-Peruvian or Nigerian-Hawaiian. I’m also imagining a digital security camera attached to each building. The Baxter City Council has already passed the appropriate regulation. We’re joining the twenty-first century.
Maxwell Plank, the Courthouse Diner’s owner and host, finds me a booth in the back of the restaurant, away from the other diners. As he leaves, a middle-aged waitress named Haley, Max’s cousin, drops a glass of water and a menu on the table.
“How you doin’ today, Captain?” she asks. Haley was thrilled when I made Captain. She told me that she’d always wanted to be a cop, but she was afraid of guns and thugs. “And how’s that little girl? Whole town’s talkin’ about nothin’ else.”
“All good for now. She’s with Zoe Parillo.” I watch her walk away, her ample backside swaying from side to side, the effect nearly insolent. Word out there is that Hayley suffers no fools.
A few minutes later, as I sip at an iced tea sweetened with honey, Vern slides into the booth across from me.
“Problem,” I tell him, “in Maryville at the end of the week.”
“Yeah, the funeral.”
Our schedule calls for a task force of Maryville County Deputy Sheriffs and Baxter cops to raid a colony of bikers living on a derelict farm that straddles the border between us. Mostly Wolf Lowriders, the bikers are dealing meth from the farm, but not the home-cooked variety. The speed they sell is supplied by a Mexican cartel at a price well below the product offered by home-cookers. Our assault is designed to demonstrate our serious intentions. The farm is well guarded.
It’s not going to happen, though. Not at the end of the week. A Maryville Deputy Sheriff named Powell York was shot to death last night, probably in the course of a routine traffic stop, though no one’s certain and there are no suspects yet. Maryville’s Sheriff, Martin Leland, has scheduled the Deputy’s funeral for Friday morning. I’ll have to be there, Chief Black too.
“I know Sheriff Leland,” Vern says. “He coached my Pop Warner football team. Way back when. I knew Powell York too. A cautious man, far as I remember, and it don’t seem like him to be caught off guard. But if he was killed in the course of a routine traffic stop, he never called in to his dispatcher. Leland told me there’s no evidence. No shell casings, no tire impressions, no nothing.”
It’s the one you don’t see coming that kills you and we all know it, Vern included. You’re distracted, or someone comes out of a closet, or shoots from a darkened window, or you simply misjudge the threat. Then you get the Honor Guard Funeral with a couple of hundred cops in attendance.
We lapse into silence for a moment, then Vern looks up at me, smiling his lopsided smile. Never one to dwell on the depressing aspects of the policing profession, he’s about to lighten the conversation.
“So, this morning, I take the husband to one side after we secure the scene. I’ve read him his rights and now I’m testing the waters. Will he turn? Become a CI? Meanwhile, he beats me to the punch.”
“How?”
“He offers me two thousand dollars if I let him skate, five thousand if I let him take the weed and the acid with him. I’m tempted to ask where the money’s hidden, which would mean another charge, but it’s not worth the effort. The kid hasn’t asked for a lawyer and I’ll take another shot at him when we get to the house. So I dump him on a chair in the living room and take his wife into the kitchen. First words out of her mouth, she propositions me. And I’m thinkin’, ‘What next, the fucking dog?’ ”
I’m smiling now, remembering a time back in Virginia when I was propositioned by a teenie streetwalker named Fancy-Nancy. I was semi-closeted at the time and believed I was successfully projecting a hetero image. Yeah, right.
“So, I walk her back into the living room and she shakes her head when her husband comes into view. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘I’m ready to cooperate if you cut my old lady loose. Whatever you wanna know.’ ”
“Did you take the deal?”
“Nope. I charged the both of ‘em.” Vern looks behind him for Haley. He’s obviously hungry. “The way I’m thinkin’, Delia, a couple of days in a cage and they’ll beg for a chance to rat on their parents.”