Authors: Ken White
Without waiting for a reply, Ferrer headed for the front door of the police station. We
followed.
Central District was also City Police headquarters, and home to the police crime lab.
The morgue was in the basement, which seemed to be the location of choice for morgues in
the five District police stations. The crime lab shared the basement with the morgue.
Ferrer led us through the maze of corridors, finally stopping at a large
metal door. “I’m sure you’ve seen worse,” he said, looking back at us. “But this is never
pretty.” He opened the door.
Nedelmann and the two dead Vees were stretched out on adjoining metal tables. All
three had been stripped, and any blood or other matter had been wiped away.
There were three men in the room, standing around the table where Dick lay. Two stood
together on one side, their backs to us, both wearing blue hospital scrubs. The other man wore a white lab coat
over his shirt and tie.
One of the guys in scrubs was saying, “. . . maybe eight minutes away from full change.”
“Five,” the other one said. “At the most. Look at the throat wound. It’s already sealed.”
“It’s partially sealed. There’s been no actual tissue regeneration.”
“What do you call that?” the other said, pointing at the wound.
The guy in the lab coat cleared his throat and the two guys in scrubs turned to face us.
They eyed me, Jimmy, and Ferrer, then focused their attention on Takeda. That made them
Vees for sure. A Vee would assume that another Vee was the person in charge. Ferrer wore a
cheap cop suit. Takeda didn’t. She was the outsider. That made her the important one.
“Hi, Al,” the guy in the lab coat said to Ferrer. “Have you met Sutherland and Roberts
from the crime lab? I asked them to come by since you said this one was fast track.”
Ferrer nodded. “How ya doing,” he said to them. He pointed to Jimmy. “Captain Jimmy
Mutz, Downtown watch commander for day shift.” He pointed to Takeda. “Miss Takeda, with
the Area Governor’s Office.” He pointed to me. “Mr. Charlie Welles, also with the Area
Governor’s Office. Mr. Welles is your audience, gentlemen.”
“Dr. Donnel Riley, Medical Examiners office,” the guy in the lab coat said. “Okay, time
of death on this one was approximately four hours ago. Cause of death was catastrophic
damage to the heart, resulting in a lack of blood circulation.”
I stared at Nedelmann’s corpse. It kept me focused. “You can skip this part,” I said. “I
know how he died.”
I looked at the two guys from the crime lab. “When we came in, I believe you two were
discussing where he was in the change from human to vampire when he died?”
“Yes, sir,” the one on the right said. I think it was Roberts. “I say stage two, Sutherland
thinks it was stage three. It’s debatable, I guess.”
“No it’s not,” Sutherland said.
“Gentlemen...” Riley said softly.
They looked at each other, then back at me.
“Excuse my ignorance, but what difference does it make?”
“A great deal,” Sutherland said, stepping forward. “If it was stage three, we might be able
to run an integration test.”
I guess Ferrer read my blank expression. “Mr. Welles is human, gentlemen, and probably
not knowledgeable about our tests.”
“Depending on how far along the subject was in the change, there’s a possibility that we
may be able to identify his bloodparent through an examination of the blood,” Dr. Riley said.
“As the body changes, the human blood is used as fuel by the vampire blood to complete the
transformation.” He paused. “If there was enough vampire blood in the subject, we might be
able to match the characteristics with that of a suspected bloodparent through an integration
test. Assuming, of course, that we have a sample of the bloodparent’s blood on record.”
“Is that likely?” I asked.
“Impossible to say. If the bloodparent has been arrested or works for a
governmental entity, it’s quite possible. If not...I'll say maybe.”
“How about the other two?”
“Their blood and prints are being run through records,” Riley said. “It’s fast track, so we
should have either a hit or no record found within a couple of hours.”
“Donny, I want you to stay on top of this,” Ferrer said. “Anything you come up with,
send it up immediately. Even the misses. I’ll be working out of the major crimes task force
office tonight.”
The doctor nodded.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Ferrer said. He turned to us. “This way, please,” Ferrer said.
We took the elevator up to the fifth floor and Ferrer led us down the hall into a small
conference room.
“Have a seat,” Ferrer said, sitting at the head of the table, facing the door.
As I sat, I asked, “So how many men do you have on this right now?”
“We’ll get to the incident involving Officer Nedelmann in a moment,” Ferrer began.
“First . . .”
“We’ll get the incident involving Officer Nedelmann now,” I said. “Dick Nedelmann
wasn’t some human runaway you can stick in a cooler and forget.”
“Charlie . . .” Jimmy said softly.
“No,” I said. “Fuck this. Every Vee cop in this fucking city has been giving me attitude.
I’m getting goddamned tired of it.”
Ferrer’s lips were tight as I spoke. When I stopped, he said, “Mr. Welles, I’ve tried to be
cordial to you, in spite of the fact that one of my officers was butchered like a dumb animal
last night, as a direct result of your investigation.”
“Holstein was dirty,” I said.
“Holstein worked for me,” he said. “Just like Nedelmann worked for you. And frankly, I
understand exactly how you feel right now. I was feeling the same way twenty-four hours ago.
You can be goddamned sure that nobody is going to forget about Nedelmann.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “I knew your partner, Joshua. Did you know that?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Joshua mentioned you a few times. I got the impression that you two
were pretty close.”
“We were. I was Army CID before the war, worked with Joshua on a couple of cross-service cases. He was a good man. He’ll be missed.”
“I agree,” I said. “What does that have to do with what happened tonight?”
“Were you aware that Joshua was working with the city police department immediately
prior to his death?”
I straightened up in the chair. “No, I didn’t know that. What do you mean, working with
the city police department?”
“During the five months preceding his death, Joshua was an active participant in an on-going internal affairs investigation of this department.”
“What was he doing for the department?”
“I don’t know,” Ferrer said. “I didn’t run the investigation. I’m homicide. He wasn’t
working with my unit.”
“Then who the hell was he working for?”
“Joshua Thomas was working for me,” I heard from the doorway behind me.
It was a voice I knew.
Chapter Thirty
He was a good thirty pounds heavier than I remembered him, and his hair was gray at the
temples, thinning on top. When he walked into the room and closed the door, I saw that the
extra weight hadn’t slowed him down. He still moved with an easy grace.
“Hey, Daryl,” I said.
“How’s it goin’, CW,” he said.
Jimmy watched him come into the room. “Hello, Chief.”
Daryl squeezed his shoulder as he walked past. “Evenin’, Jimmy.”
He stopped next to Takeda and looked down at her. “And you must be the mysterious
and dangerous Tiffany Takeda. I understand you made quite an impression at Uptown station last
night.”
Takeda didn’t say anything.
Daryl moved to the head of the table and sat down next to Ferrer. “Start the ball, Al,” he
said.
“For whoever doesn’t know him,
this is Deputy Chief Daryl Northport, commander of the
joint Organized Crime Task Force,” Ferrer said.
“Joint meanin’ human and vampire,” Daryl interrupted. “There’s a day shift captain and
a night shift captain. Both of them report to me. I also coordinate with the State Police, Area
Governors Office, and the Federal boys.” He glanced at Ferrer. “Sorry, Al, wanted to get
everybody up to speed.”
Ferrer nodded. “The operation that Joshua Thomas participated in began approximately
six months ago. It was known as Operation Clean Slate. That operation is ongoing at this
time.” He paused and looked at Daryl. “The rest is yours, Chief.”
“Thanks,” Daryl said. “Before I start, lemme say that I’m gonna be goin’ into some detail
‘bout this investigation, and I got my reasons. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m hopin’
that somethin’ you hear is gonna help you help me.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay. Does the name Ritchie Santoro ring a bell with any of
you folks?” He waited a beat, then said, “I didn’t think so. Santoro was our inside man in the
Carlo Barozie mob. Vampire, if it makes any difference to anyone, which it shouldn’t. He
wasn’t a cop. He was just a civilian, a good citizen who knew some fellas in the Barozie gang
and volunteered to use his connections to help us clean ‘em up.”
He nodded in Jimmy’s direction. “Jimmy probably knows some of this. I don’t know
about Miss Takeda or Charlie there, so I’ll fill you all in. After they closed down the
detention camps, things were real bad for a while. The city police force was kinda ragged, and
everybody was tryin’ to get things workin’ again, way they had before the war. The half
dozen mobs that had sprung up while most folks were in the camps didn’t have that problem.
They were organized, and when the city started fillin’ up again, they were ready to bring in
some fresh blood, if you’ll excuse the expression, and make some money.
“The gangs were operatin’ openly. I was runnin’ the human side of organized crime at the
time, and frankly, I felt like I was just pissin’ in the wind.”
He looked at Takeda. “Excuse my language, ma’am. But it’s true. One of my officers
was gunned down outside Westside station, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
I knew who did it, but I couldn’t touch ‘em.”
“Yeah, I remember those days,” Jimmy said.
Daryl nodded. “Finally the powers-that-be got the message that we weren’t doin’ jack,
and if things kept up, we might as well shut the doors and go home, ‘cause we couldn’t protect
the people in this city from those hoods. There was a departmental reorganization, and I
ended up at the top of this particular heap.”
He smiled. The smile slowly faded. “About that time, Ritchie Santoro volunteered his
services. I was willin’ to try anything at that point, so I gave the okay to send him in. Hoped
for the best, figured at the worst we’d have another gangster out there terrorizin’ citizens.”
He paused. “Santoro was a goddamn goldmine. Carlo Barozie took a shine to him,
and Santoro started feedin’ us some real good information, about Barozie and about Barozie’s
competitors like Big Jewels Gagliano and Arnie Kaiser.”
He paused again. “Then one day Santoro stopped checkin’ in with us. Few days
later, a package was delivered to my office. Inside was Ritchie Santoro’s head with an apple
stuck in his mouth. Barozie wanted to be real clear with his message, and he was. Only it
wasn’t the message he thought he was sending.”
Daryl tapped his head with his finger. “See, ol’ Daryl is one of them smart country boys.
There were exactly six people in this department who knew Santoro was working for us. And
all of them were working for me as part of the Organized Crime task force. Only nobody but
me knew there were only six of them.”
“It was a set-up,” I said.
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a set-up, Charlie. Santoro was the real
deal. I wasn’t expectin’ him to bring home the blue ribbon. But when I took over the task
force, and had access to all the reports and incidents that had been filed, I started noticin’
some things. Little things, mostly, but when ya add ‘em up, it was pretty clear that there were
officers in this department who were, at the very least, feedin’ information to Barozie and the
others, and probably flat-out workin’ for ‘em.”
Daryl leaned back in the chair. “So I brought in six officers, two I knew were clean, four
I had my doubts about. Didn’t let them know in the beginning what mob we were targetin’ or
who we had inside. Let it slip out over a month or so, but gave them all the same speech.
Very sensitive, don’t tell anybody, if somebody else mentions it to ya, report it to me, anybody
talks about this they’re gonna lose their job. You know, that kind of thing. Laid it on thick.
Never told ‘em how many people knew, always made it sound like there were a lot of people
in the know.”
“What made you think one of them wouldn’t say something to a buddy, let your carefully-guarded information get outside the little circle?” I asked.
“They’d be afraid that their buddy already knew, would tell me they were talkin’ about it,
and they’d lose their badge,” he replied. “Fear is a powerful motivator, especially these days.
Getting fired from the police department can cause more than unemployment, if you get my
drift.”