Private Heat (25 page)

Ron had to repeat the message twice. Finally, he said, “I have a partner, and we are holding the man at gunpoint. … Yes, there are two of us. … Yes, with guns. … No, the third man does not have a gun that we know of. He's the man sitting in the car with his hands on his head. … No, this is not a carjacking. … I am Ron Craig … a private investigator. We have apprehended a man tampering with the crime scene on Union Avenue. … No. There are no police officers here. That's why I called.”

I reinstalled my neckwear. Tires squawked as a marked police cruiser displaying red and blue rollers slid sideways to a halt and blocked the street. The cruiser doors exploded open. “Drop the guns, motherfuckers!” yelled a hatless patrol officer who looked too young to talk that way. He crouched half behind the open passenger door and surveyed Ron down the barrel of a twelve gauge. “You're under arrest!”

Ron laid his weapon on the roof of my car, raised his left hand over his head, and took a step backward. “Yes, there are now policemen on the scene,” said Ron into his cell phone. “You're welcome.” He let the telephone fall onto the neighboring lawn.

The officer stood up and turned his attention—and the cavernous barrel of the street sweeper—on me. I held my bifold ID case aloft. I could see down the barrel of the shotgun to the crimped red top of the shell in the chamber. “Detectives,” I said, “the man in the vehicle was apprehended tampering with this crime scene.”

“Just put 'em away, gentlemen,” said a familiar voice from behind me, “and stow that cannon, Fremont.”

I thumbed up the safety and holstered my weapon.

Sergeant Franklin stalked up wearing a grim face. “I thought you were on afternoons,” I said.

“Shift rotated,” he said. “What's going on here?”

“We drove by to check my car,” I said, “and saw this man sitting in it and jerking on the shift lever. The garage door was open. The man told me that he wanted to move my car so that he could pull the boat out of the garage.”

“Why should I believe you?” said Franklin.

“I'm sure you'll believe whatever you think is right.”

“Right now I'm trying to believe this is a carjacking.”

“What?” I asked. Fay took his hands off his head and slithered back to the driver's seat.

“The neighbor called in a carjacking.” Franklin looked past me to Fay. “How about it, sir, this car belong to you?”

Fay passed a disgusted look around the vehicle. “Hardly.”

“Why are you sitting in it?”

“These two cretins won't let me get out.”

Franklin's face went from grim to sour. “They make you get into the car?”

Fay lightened his tone. “No, sir,” he said. “I was trying to move it so I could get my boat out of the garage. Randy and Karen were storing it for me. I can show you the registration.” Fay started reaching for his wallet.

Franklin rested his hand on his holstered pistol and waved a halt with his left hand. “Not just yet,” he said. “Is your boat all right, I mean, did you open the door and go in there and check it out? Maybe you need a copy of the fire report.”

“Yes sir, it's fine, I don't think that there is any fire damage.” Fay bolted out of my car and brushed past me. He wagged a finger at Franklin and said, “Officer, I demand that you arrest these two buffoons immediately.”

Sergeant Franklin caught Fay by the wrist and the scruff of the neck, swung him in a semicircle, and deposited him across the rear deck of my car. “Spread your legs,” he said. Franklin kicked Arnold Fay's feet apart. “Officer Fremont,” he said. Fremont looked up from examining Ron's identification. “Come over here, pat down this gentleman, and cuff him.”

Fremont walked around the car. Ron started putting the papers back in his wallet. Franklin let go of Fay, took a step to the rear, and put his hand on his holstered sidearm.

“Randy's dead now,” Franklin said to me, “and I want to hear the whole story, from you.”

“I just told you what happened.”

“No, I mean about the night before last, and I don't want to hear a replay of the bullshit story you guys fed me.”

Fremont plunked Fay's wallet and a wad of keys on the rear deck of my car.

“Sergeant, you told me not to say a word.”

“That's what I told Lieutenant Emmery and Hal Flowers from the prosecutor's office, and they're not happy campers.”

Fremont flopped a fat roll of bills wrapped in a rubber band onto the trunk lid. The top bill was one of the new hundreds with the giant off-center
portrait of Franklin. Then came the pièce de résistance, a small black leather kit. Fremont unzipped it and found that it contained a razor blade, a bifold mirror, and a tea-bag-sized baggie of a white powdered substance.

“Bingo!” said Fremont. “We have a winner!”

Franklin smiled, pulled out his can of mace, shook it up, and stepped in close while Fremont handcuffed Fay.

“What's your name?” asked Officer Fremont.

“Arnold Fay.”

“Mr. Fay, you're under arrest for the possession of a controlled substance,” said Fremont. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney …”

“Mr. Fay, is that your truck parked at the curb?” asked Franklin.

Fremont had Fay by the elbow and walked him toward the cruiser. “Yes, sir,” Fay said over his shoulder.

“Are there any more drugs or paraphernalia in it?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you take anything from the house or car and put it in your truck?”

“No, sir,” said Fay.

“Did you drive here in that truck?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you bring anyone else with you and is there anyone in the residence?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Fay, you are also under arrest for tampering with a crime scene. Do we have your permission to search your vehicle?”

“Fuck you.”

“I'll take that as a no,” said Franklin. “We are going to search the vehicle pursuant to your arrest. If there is anything like I asked about in the vehicle, you should tell us now. Tell us what it is and where to find it. That might save a lot of wear and tear on your truck.”

Fremont deposited a silent Fay in the back seat of the cruiser. I leaned on the side of my car and cracked out a smoke. Ron picked up his cell phone and walked back to sit in his van. Franklin and Fremont searched the truck. Under the front seat they found a fat nine, and on the floor in the back seat, a pair of leather gloves, a wrecking bar, and a hammer and chisel.

The pistol turned out to be registered to Fay, and he had a permit to carry for business purposes. They called a tow truck, anyway. The nose candy charge would make his pistol permit dissolve like a cake in the rain. Sergeant Franklin decided that the hardware constituted burglary tools.

Franklin came back and said, “Your turn!”

“What do you want to know?”

“First things first,” said Franklin. “Did you get into your car or go into the garage?”

“Why, no sir, Sergeant Franklin. We surely did not.”

“Too bad,” said Franklin. “Now you can tell me about the night before last.”

“You heard it from Randy and Karen.”

“This is your chance to set the record straight.”

I cleared my throat and said slowly, “My attorney has cautioned me against discussing my dealings with Officer Talon.”

Franklin passed me a disgusted glance and turned toward the cruiser. “Okay,” he said as he walked away, “I see how you are.”

“But …”

Franklin smiled—I could see his cheek flex—but he flushed the grin before he turned around. “What?”

“I can tell you that Talon didn't kill Campbell,” I said.

“He kicked in the door and shot up the house.”

“If you say so. Anyway, it was his house.”

“He could have killed you or his wife.”

“He didn't,” I said.

“We have the gun from his locker.”

“Same one you think he used here?”

“Not possible,” said Franklin. “I checked the security tapes. Randy never returned to the station after I dropped him at the YMCA.”

“They tried to plant it on him here,” I said. “When that failed, they planted it in his locker.”

“Who's they? You saying that cops are involved in this?” Franklin squared his shoulders. I could see the steam rise.

“They aren't cops,” I said. “They gave up being cops when they started being criminals.”

“Who the hell are you to say crap like that?”

“A detective.”

“This isn't some sleazy divorce case.”

“Yes it is.”

Franklin locked up his jaws and rolled his head around so that he was looking at the sky. When he looked back at me he said, “I want some proof. That's rookie stuff, ‘Detective.'”

I pulled the cigar out of my mouth and blew a narrow plume of smoke onto the glowing end. “How about my word? I'll give you an affidavit attesting to criminal acts that I've observed.”

“Sorry,” said Franklin, “you're not considered criminal enough to be a ‘reliable source.'” He laughed. “Not yet.”

“In that case, all I have so far is incontrovertible proof of littering and malicious destruction of property.” I flicked the ash, stuck the stogie back in my face, folded my arms, and set stern eyes on Franklin.

“Ain't gonna cut it. Why are you telling me this crap?”

“You insisted,” I said.

“I want to hear about what Randy told you and how the lie Randy and his wife told me got cooked up.”

“You help me get to the bottom of this, and I'll write down exactly what I said, what Randy told me, and have it notarized.”

Franklin knitted his brows and looked at me through narrow eyes. “Why would you do that?”

“I want your help and it's the only thing I have to trade. This sleazy divorce case has turned me into a murder suspect.”

“Give me your statement and maybe I can help you.”

I laughed.

“What's funny?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It's just that I've never heard that line before.” I shook my head. “I don't think you can help me.”

“Just what would you like me to do?”

“You can start by getting real. You can't call my hand. You gotta ante up, wait for some cards, and lay a few bets.”

“Law enforcement isn't a game of chance.”

“Sure it is. Every trip to the courthouse is a crap shoot.”

“Only with jokers like you in the game.”

“The law is in the hands of the professionals,” I said. “Justice is still in the hands of the people. That's the way it's supposed to be. I'm sure it's very frustrating for you.”

“You know, Hardin, a little bit of you goes a very long way.” He stepped into my space and squared his shoulders.

“Wait, don't get mad yet,” I said. I took the cigar out of my mouth and leaned close to his face. “First tell me what makes you angrier: the fact that you have some bad cops, or the fact that I know it?”

“You said that you didn't have any proof.”

“I said I was working on it and that I wanted you to help me.” Franklin's face softened and I backed up.

“Cox and Shephart?” he asked. He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes up.

“No,” I said. “They weren't here the other night.”

“So who then?”

“Guys who were here.”

“That's damn near the whole shift, plus guys we called in.”

“Follow the gun,” I said, “and you'll know who.”

“We didn't recover a gun.”

“So follow the ballistics.”

Franklin made a negative wag of his head. “The slug they took out of Campbell was too deformed to match. It was some kind of soft-lead hollow point.”

“Compare the slugs from the house to the gun that was found in Randy Talon's locker.”

“There weren't any, genius. The two slugs in the door lock disintegrated.”

“Some kind of soft-lead hollow point?”

Franklin raised his chin, flopped his head to one side and pursed his lips. “Yeah,” he said and straightened his head, “but that don't necessarily mean shit.”

“The officer who responded to the call had to have reported a lot more than just two shots,” I said.

“The lab techs didn't find any—said the rest of them probably went into the cement slab under the carpet.”

“What about the ones in the hot tub?”

“In case you forgot, hotshot, Randy was murdered with a hatchet.”

“The ones they found when they drained the hot tub looking for residual evidence.”

“What residual evidence? The fucking hatchet was sticking out of his head.”

“There are slugs in the tub.”

“How do you know?”

“Educated guess,” I said. “Let's go in and look.”

Franklin looked up at the house and shook his head. “It's a sealed crime scene.”

“So suggest it to Cox and Shephart.”

“I'll think about it. This ain't my case. I'm going to take some heat for sticking my nose in.”

“I can't suggest it to them,” I said. “Anything I say, they'll just try to backtrack onto a case against me.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Randy trusted me,” I said.

“Randy's dead.”

“Not because I ratted him out.”

“You got something else?”

I nodded. “Just something that hasn't occurred to you yet.”

“You have no idea about what might have occurred to me.”

“So, ante up and we'll see.”

“So like I said, I had to talk with Emmery and Flowers this morning. They wanted to make you for obstruction, but my report wouldn't go the distance. They told me what they needed and wanted to know if maybe I remembered something that I forgot to put in my report.”