Cold Blue
Authors: Gary Neece
a Jonathan Thorpe novel
by Gary Neece
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Amazon Edition
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This book is a work of fiction, names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright ©2013 by Gary Neece
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Perthshire Press
Second Edition: June 2013
For other titles by Gary Neece, visit
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
For my parents,
whose only want was for their children
“All the old knives that have rusted in my back,
I drive in yours.”
–The Phaedrus
Plato
Monday
February 5
Early Morning
SERGEANT JONATHAN THORPE BROUGHT HIS
eyes down from the desolate highway to the soft green glow of his dashboard lights. Five minutes till four. Up early, rather than out late, he enjoyed this time. The hours before dawn brought a ghostly peacefulness to the city, a serenity disturbed only by fellow cops, hooligans, and the few unfortunate souls finding their ways to work. Most of the one million or so who made up Tulsa’s metropolitan area slept peaceably in their beds. Those not at rest resembled the Rapture’s left behind, if Thorpe still believed in such things.
Shrewd criminals had long since retired from public view. They feared the slew of uniformed officers on duty, all of them bored and searching for someone, anyone, to pull over. “Big dope,” as Thorpe referred to large quantities of narcotics, was mostly transported and sold during business hours when the cop-to-citizen ratio was much more favorable to the bad guys.
Thorpe’s attention wandered. It’s a trait those with driving experience share, though his autopilot had adapted a few additional skill sets. While he efficiently operated his vehicle—feet working pedals and hands the steering wheel—with little conscious effort, he also checked for tails in all three mirrors, looked for suspicious activity in his peripheral vision. He stamped passing cars and faces into his short-term memory. With each landmark passed, his random thoughts burst with a kaleidoscope of memories. Every street corner elicited visions of arrests, shootings, fights or foot pursuits.
While this activity fluttered in recesses of his mind, he considered the fellow “citizens” with whom he kept these early hours: the junkies, prostitutes and small-time drug pushers—too ignorant to get off the streets. Dealers lurked in darkened doorways and urine-steeped alleyways. They roamed side streets with small amounts of dope destined for motel whores and twenty-dollar crackheads.
He’d encountered every kind. Cagey dealers swallowed the drugs as soon as cops laid eyes on them. Later, they retrieved their cellophane-wrapped wares in the privacy of their own bathroom. The patient ones awaited nature’s call. Those unwilling to postpone deliveries might introduce fingers to esophagus, subsequently plucking their illicit treasures from steaming gastric acid and last evening’s meatloaf. Others were less cautious, keeping their products on them during the stop, concealed in the car or on their person. Often they kept the drugs under their tongue and only resorted to swallowing when their secret was discovered. An officer might grab a suspect’s throat to prevent the destruction of evidence. Meanwhile, passing motorists were subjected to yet one more crooked cop choking the shit out of another “innocent” citizen. Then there were those who thought themselves particularly clever—believing they’d hidden the contraband where one would
never
look, let alone find it. Disgustingly, their fetid fingers usually gave them away. Maybe that’s how crack
really
got its name.
On this morning Thorpe was after one of the smart ones, smart by crack dealer standards at least. As the supervisor of the Tulsa Police Department’s Organized Gang Unit, Thorpe knew the difference. He pulled himself back to task as he made his way across the south end of the Inner Dispersal Loop (IDL), a network of highways ensnaring downtown. Free from the commuters’ version of an oval track, Thorpe took a series of side streets before turning north on Country Club Drive and cutting through the middle of a sprawling, government-assisted “community.”
Thorpe thought about his tax dollars at work here. Yes, he was a cop but had to pay taxes like everyone else, and often replied he was self-employed when dipshit citizens told him they paid his salary.
Government assisted housing; free rent for freeloaders
. Thorpe knew his thoughts were unfair; he’d met decent people who
had
to live in places like this. He felt sympathy for the innocents because animals of the two-legged variety mostly controlled the complexes.
Country Club Drive and its bifurcated housing complex shared a fence with Tulsa’s Country Club golf course, which occasionally hosted the LPGA. Thorpe doubted many lady pros would jump the fence and enter the apartment grounds to retrieve an errant ball—to do so would imply their balls were bigger than those used in golf—and therefore wouldn’t be needing the L preceding PGA. The entire complex was scheduled to be razed and rebuilt in a couple of years. For now, it was a good place to buy dope and get robbed—if that was your thing.
Thorpe exited the north end of the complex turning west. Several blocks later he approached Waco Avenue and looked north toward his target’s home. In the distance, he could see Marcel’s gold Cutlass parked on the west side of the street. Thorpe continued on before turning into the Greystone Condominiums. The condos were encircled by a black iron fence and an electronic gate to which Thorpe already had the code. He punched in the numbers from memory, pulled into the complex, and parked in a relatively low-lit area.
Garbed in dark blue coveralls, a hoodie, and full-face ski mask, Thorpe examined the area through deeply tinted windows before exiting his vehicle. The frigid conditions ensured his clothing wouldn’t garner unwanted attention and disguised the fact he was the only Caucasian within a square mile. Taking a winding route through the complex, Thorpe exited a pedestrian gate on the northeast side of the condos. Heading east, he resisted the urge to jog and remained alert for movement in the still morning. Except for his breath rising in the cold, nothing stirred. He passed Marcel’s street once more and continued east another twenty-five yards before encountering a private drive that led north into a wooded tract of approximately five acres.
Thorpe had learned from previous surveillance the only structure on the property was a dilapidated barn, void of any human activity. An old metal farm gate blocked the drive another ten yards north of the property line. Thorpe used a small pair of bolt cutters on a section of barbed wire fence just to his left. He could have easily scaled the gate, but the act would create noise, and as his primary escape route, would also slow his departure.
Faintly illuminated by moonlight, he strode up the old drive, wincing when the occasional patch of gravel crunched under foot. Though not audible more than a few yards away, in Thorpe’s ears the noise sounded like thunder; his senses were hyperaware.
Thorpe followed the drive deeper into the woods until reaching a stone marker he lifted and tossed into the weeds. Turning and trekking into the thicket, he stopped and uncovered a large, water-resistant canvas bag, which he’d concealed under dead vegetation and fallen branches during an earlier scouting mission. Collecting the bag, Thorpe began picking his way through the trees. Spidery limbs and prickly vines grabbed at his clothing as he trudged toward the deserted barn. Winter-stripped of their canopy, the barren trees filtered enough moon and starlight so he could navigate without use of artificial light.
Stepping into a clearing, the barn loomed before him. Thorpe pulled open its rickety door and inspected the inky black with a flashlight. Drawing in a deep breath, Thorpe entered the darkness, removed equipment from the canvas bag, and began preparations.
Five minutes later, the creaky door burped Thorpe into the night; he made his way back southwest until he came to another barbed wire fence. There, he secreted himself inside the tree line with Marcel’s Cutlass twelve to thirteen yards directly in front of his place of concealment. The yellow glow from the distant streetlight didn’t reach his position and neither would the illumination from Marcel’s porch light if activated.
As a member of the Fifty-Seventh Street Hoover Crips, Marcel Newman was one of the “smarter dealers,” and directly responsible for several murders within the Tulsa area. He’d been charged with homicide twice; one of his victims was an innocent six-year-old girl who happened to be playing in a yard behind Marcel’s intended target. Charges were dropped after frightened witnesses refused to testify. Marcel Newman was a killer, and he associated with other known killers.
Thorpe’s Organized Gang Unit (OGU), along with Vice, had conducted a lengthy surveillance of Marcel’s activities. The operation had ended approximately a week and a half earlier with little result. During surveillance, officers noted Marcel would leave his grandmother’s house here and drive to a nearby convenience store where he would buy breakfast sandwiches and drinks. Afterward, he’d continue to his girlfriend’s apartment on the northeast side of town. Why Marcel arose so early and why he slept at his grandmother’s house was never determined.
The investigation did reveal one useful piece of information: Marcel left this residence every weekday at six in the morning. No exceptions. No one who led Marcel’s lifestyle should keep such regular patterns; one day it would come back to bite his ass. This was the day.