Marcus was peering at my face. “Girl, get out of whatever you’re in. No man is worth it,” he counseled me. “Be strong. Walk out that door. Play some Gloria Gaynor. She’ll give you the strength you need.”
“This is not the work of a boyfriend,” I assured him. “You ought to know me better than that. This is the work of an enemy. An unknown one as yet.”
He touched a bruise with gentle fingers. “He sure got his licks in.”
“You’d make a good nurse,” I told him. “Why don’t you go back to school?”
“Money, honey child. Dinero. And I don’t mean Robert. Maybe when Humphrey, that’s Mama’s youngest, graduates from college.”
“You’re a good man, Marcus,” I told him.
“What do you want fro K yo>
“You remember the Roy Taylor case?” I asked. “About eight years ago?”
“Sure,” he said. “It was Frankie and Johnny revisited. He was her man, but he done her wrong. So she plugged him.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think the wife did shoot him, and if I don’t find out something new real quick, the state is going to administer a lethal injection to her in about two weeks.”
Marcus was silent as he considered the situation. “You’re a cynical woman, Miss Casey,” he finally said, “and if you don’t think she did it, then I hate to say it, but—they may have the wrong person sitting up there on death row.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And it’s a hard mistake to correct once the deed is done. That’s why I need you to rummage around in the department files and get me some information and names. A man named George Washington Carter testified at the trial. I think he was a partner of Taylor’s. See what you can find on him. Also, I need to know who else used to work closely with Taylor and in what capacity, especially if they’re named Pete or Steve. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any last names. And anyone else you can come up with. Plus, I need their current home addresses.”
Marcus made a face of delicate horror. “That’s easy to do,” he said. “But if I get caught, it’s hard to explain.”
“I know,” I admitted. “I’ll give you five hundred dollars. More if you need it. My client can afford it. That’s a lot of schooling for one of those little brothers of yours.”
“It sure is,” he agreed enthusiastically. “And since when has Marcus Dupree ever blinked an eyelash in the face of danger?”
“And what eyelashes they are,” I added, patting his smooth cheeks. “I’d kill for those long, lovely lashes.”
“You want something else,” he guessed at once. “You’re being too nice.”
“I’m sort of an obvious person, aren’t I?” I asked, disappointed.
He nodded. “But that’s cool, Miss Casey. It’s your style. So get out there and work it.”
I worked it. “I need a password to get into the Durham County court database. I need to search and cross-check for cases involving some specific people ov Kfic do,” her the past ten years or so.”
“Meaning those people I’m going to uncover for you?” he asked.
I nodded. “You catch on quicker than body crabs, my dear Marcus. Did I mention that I needed your information by this afternoon?”
“No, but I figured it was something like that, what with the price being paid and all.” He smiled. “Rush jobs are my specialty. I’ll go cruising through the files during my lunchtime. No one pays any attention to me anyway. It’s not like they’re going to be asking me to join them down at Elmo’s Diner. I’m lucky if they wave a sandwich my way. I’ll call you at one o’clock with what I find and give you the court password then. I have to make a few calls for that. And I might need more money.”
“No problem. I’ll be at my office.” I gave him a business card and he palmed it carefully, tucking it into the back pocket of his immaculately pressed pants. “Just let me know what you need for petty cash,” I added.
“Miss Casey,” he protested, checking his Jheri curls in the mirror and adjusting a subtle wave that dipped toward one nicely shaped eyebrow. “There is nothing petty about me. You ought to know that by now.”
While I waited for Marcus to call back, I spent a couple of hours back in the office cruising through old News & Observer files on my trusty Mac. I didn’t find out anything
involving Durham County court cases presided over by Peyton Tillman. But that was to be expected. I’d be more likely to get a hit if I could poke around the Durham Herald files. Unfortunately, they’d had the bad taste to upgrade their security system when they retooled their computer network last fall. I didn’t have a password into it just yet. I was thinking of canceling my subscription in retaliation.
Marcus called right on time with the last names I needed, giving me a little bit more to go on.
“Got a pencil?” he asked in a hushed voice. “There’s something fishy down here in Denmark, and it’s not the Ladies Auxiliary.”
“Oh, yeah? What gives?”
“I remembered George Washington Carter once I got a peek at his file photo. Tall, fine-looking brother with a chiseled triangular nose that looks like an Aztec god’s. The color of ebony, and skin that don’t need no Elizabeth Arden to shine. He used to work the Durham Bulls games as a security officer for extra cash, and I hardly knew where to put my eyes. On him or the next batter up.”
“What do you mean he used to work the games?” I asked.
“He’s AWOL,” Marcus explained. “Missing in action. Listed as inactive, but I poked around. He disappeared about two months ago, and no one has seen him since. Left behind a pregnant wife. They’re trying to keep it quiet because it looks bad for the department. I remember hearing rumors about some cop turning gay and leaving his family behind for the wilds of San Francisco or something like that. I think it must be him everyone is talking about.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You’d have known if he was gay, nosy as you are.”
“That’s true.” Marcus agreed. “And with a face like his, it’s likely I’d have been first in line.”
“Give me his last known address.”
Marcus rattled off an address near Northgate Mall. “There’s more,” he told me. “A fellow named Pete Bunn worked with Taylor. Chunky old white man. I didn’t know him. Had mean eyes in his photo, like an old warthog. Retired last month.”
“Retired?” I asked. “How old was he?”
“I knew you would ask me that question,” Marcus said, pleased. “So I detected around. He was fifty-eight.”
“Older than a lot of guys retiring from the force,” I observed.
“That’s true,” Marcus said knowingly. “But in this guy’s case, the timing was odd.”
“Odd enough to make you think he might have been forced to retire?” I asked. “Was there anything in his file to indicate he was dirty?”
“No,” Marcus said. “His file looks clean. But whose doesn’t? I just think it was kind of sudden. If he’d stayed a few months longer until June, he’d have hit another year of service and his pension would have gone up. So I smelled trouble in River City.”
“Good work. Now who the hell is Steve?”
“Well,” Marcus said slowly. “There’s plenty of Steve’s and Steven’s in the department. You know these southern white women. They have no creativity when it comes to naming their children. But the one you want is Steven Hill, I’m pretty sure of it.”
“Go on,” I told him, thinking that the name sounded familiar.
“The reason I am saying it’s him,” Marcus explained, “is that their personnel records show that all three of these men worked with Roy Taylor back in the good old days. It gets a little complicated. Are you with me on this?”
woront>
“Like a tick on a yard dog,” I assured him.
“All three men worked with Roy Taylor as beat cops patrolling Durham’s southwest district. It’s a pretty rough district. I myself would never walk there late at night without a pack of Rottweilers at my side. When things started getting really bad on account of that crack cocaine, the department formed a special crime unit to try and stamp out drugs all over Durham. You can imagine how successful that was.” He gave a disapproving sniff. None of Marcus’s many siblings had even dreamed of doing drugs and their big brother was the reason why. He was a gentle human being, but he’d have kicked their asses from here to Tallahassee if they had so much as thought about inhaling.
“And these men were all on that special drug unit?” I guessed.
“You got it. Along with Roy Taylor. But they didn’t have much time together before Roy was killed. Less than a year.”
“What happened to them after Roy died?” I asked.
“The remaining three stayed together for a while, but your George Washington fellow asked for a transfer back to a patrol beat. It’s not often someone asks to be demoted, understand.”
“Maybe he was a hands-on guy?” I suggested.
“He can put his hands on me any old time,” Marcus agreed.
“But first we have to find him.”
“A boy can dream, can’t he? Anyway, the two remaining unit officers, Bunn and Hill, were assigned to one of the new crime area target teams when they started organizing the department differently in the nineties. CAT teams, they call them. Don’t you just love that? I suggested they wear black cat suits to go along with the theme, but no one ever got back to me on the idea.”
“Probably too expensive,” I consoled him.
“Their CAT team focused on some of your choicer Durham neighborhoods, roaming around as needed. They were working heavy drug areas until about four years ago, when Bunn transferred into white collar and Hill came to headquarters, where he’s been moving up pretty fast for a white man. He’s a captain now, working in professional standards. They think it sounds better than internal affairs, but it’s the same thing. Good place to be right now. Plenty of opportunity for work.”
This was an understatement. A series of public-relations disasters had plagued the Durham Police Department over the past ten years, all of them unrelated, yet Krelf pseemingly never-ending. Good cops grew more and more demoralized by the day, as the actions of their less honest brothers in blue exposed them to public ridicule. The stories seemed endless: a drunk off-duty sergeant nabbed for shooting at a little old lady civilian who accidentally bumped him at a stoplight; an on-duty 911 operator selling drugs over the department phone lines; beat cops taking the “beat” part a little too seriously and bringing in suspects that were more blue than black by the time they arrived for questioning; a string of ranking officers resigning due to sexual harassment, taking illegal honorariums, having conflicts of interest and just about everything short of running a prostitution ring out of headquarters. I figure that if they could have come up with a way to accept credit cards, someone would have jumped on that angle, too. Durham’s new city manager had recently brought in a no-nonsense police chief who seemed serious about cleaning up the department. He’d have to be more stubborn than a mule at mealtime to succeed.
“To tell you the truth,” Marcus added, interrupting my thoughts, “I’m surprised the Hill guy is already a captain. Him being white and all. And not a college boy, either. ‘Course, he looks like one of those college boys what with his expensive haircut and all.”
Steven Hill. The name was familiar, yet it would not come to me. The wreck had really knocked the stuffing out of my memory. Maybe I should have stayed for that forty-eight hours of observation after all.
“You’re a genius,” I told Marcus. “What about their home addresses?”
Pete Bunn had retired to a farm in Chatham County. Steven Hill lived in a new subdivision off 15-501, one of those model communities where all the houses look so much alike that you have to double-check the address each time you pull into your own driveway. The neighborhood was closer to Chapel Hill than Durham, and that made it more expensive. Ratting on your fellow officers paid well.
“I don’t want to push my luck,” I admitted to Marcus. “But about that password I need to get into the Durham County court files?”
“Since when has Marcus ever let you down?” he demanded. He read out several telephone numbers and a string of access codes. “It’s going to cost you an extra two hundred dollars. I’m sorry. My source got a little greedy. But she wants a convertible for the summer real bad. I told her we’d pay for the optional tinted windows, but that was all.”
“You did good,” I told him. I promised to drop by his house with the cash soon, then rang off and got to work. I wasn’t worried about being caught hacking. Many of the bigger law firms in the Research Triangle paid out the wazoo for direct access to the new computerized court-records system. I’d be just one more law clerk poking around in cyberspace. I even recognized one of the phone numbers that Marcus had given me. He was routing me through the largest law firm in Durham as a precaution before I tapped into the court system itself. If anyone cared about my presence online, they’d just figure the fat-cat partners were earning their $300 an hour, per usual. I liked t Kal.loser he irony of the situation since that particular law firm had once stiffed me on a perfectly reasonable bill for a job well done. Maybe I’d download some kiddie porn onto their office network when I was done, then alert the FBI to move in, just for fun.
It took the entire afternoon to locate the case files I wanted, but I found them. Peyton Tillman had indeed rotated through the Durham County court system during his tenure on the bench. He’d heard a few embezzlement cases, one kidnapping and a politically touchy sexual assault by the head of a medical unit at Duke Hospital, but drug cases made up most of his docket. What can I say? Durham was more than the City of Medicine.