Credo's Bandidos, page 18
I was confident that if he followed us, George would pick him out.
I didn't have long to wait. It was about 11:30 by the time Babe finally called. “Nathaniel just left to bring the car to the front of the hospital. The doctor released Mrs. Holloway and said she's going to be fine. He gave her some instructions as far as her blood pressure goes, so we’ll be able to take care of that. She's excited to stay with Nathaniel and me. I think she's lonely most of the time.”
“Does she understand what happened? Does she know it was the Coward who tried to hurt her?”
“She does, but she's pretty feisty. She's ready to take him on. Well, not really. She’s scared but still feisty. She wants to stop by her house to pick up some things. What you think?”
“Absolutely not. Tell me what she needs, and I'll stop by and get it. But you tell her I said she is not to go back to her house for any reason until I say it’s okay.”
“Okay, hang on a second.”
I could hear her talking to Mrs. Holloway, but I couldn't make out exactly what the old woman said in reply.
Babe came back online. “Do you have a pen and paper handy? She wants quite a few things.”
“Yup, go ahead.” I grabbed a pen and notepad out of my briefcase.
“She was wearing her nightgown when they brought her in, but she doesn't want to wear that one again. So, could you bring her a new one? She says it's in her top left-hand drawer. She needs new undies, some bras, two pairs of jeans, and three or four shirts that are hanging in her closet. All of her toiletries. There’s a flowered toiletry bag underneath the sink in the bathroom. Just throw everything in there. Also, she has a knitting bag in the corner of the living room. Could you bring that too? Make sure knitting needles are in there and bring the Afghan that she's started. She says it's a teal color. I think that's about it. What's that?”
I waited while she got more information from Mrs. Holloway. Most of the old people I know are very particular about their clothing and their toiletries. I decided to wait until after work to go get the stuff so she’d have plenty of time to think about what she needed.
“There's a pair of sneakers in the closet she'd like you to bring.”
“Tell her I'm not going until later this afternoon so she’ll have plenty of time to make a list.”
“We're coming out of the elevators now on the first floor, so I better go. I’ll try not to look too nervous when we come out of the doors.”
Nathaniel pulled his blue sedan into a parking slot in front of the hospital doors. He got out and opened the rear passenger door just as Babe pushed Mrs. Holloway out onto the sidewalk in a wheelchair.
Even though I had no clue what I was looking for, I scanned the lot on the off chance I might see a suspicious-looking person sitting in their car staring at the three of them—no such luck.
I waited until they turned north onto Campbell Avenue, let two or three cars go by, and then pulled in behind. It’s a relatively easy road to navigate if you have to tail someone because it’s a major north-south artery running through Tucson. The six lanes, three in each direction, give the tail plenty of maneuvering room to stay in sight of the target. The only possible obstacle was the number of traffic lights we had to go through. Still, I was able to keep close enough behind them by driving a couple of lanes over so that if they hit a yellow light, I’d be able to go through without having to stop on the red.
After a few miles, George called, “I’ve got them. Take a right at the next light. I want to check something out.”
“Okay, I’m taking a right on Kleindale. I’ll work my way around and pick up the trail coming off of Prince Road.”
“Copy.”
As luck would have it, they hit a red light at Prince, and by the time I made it to Prince and Campbell, their light had only just turned green. When they moved through the intersection, I pulled in behind without a glitch.
George called again, and I realized I needed to give him his own ring so I’d know who was calling without having to look at my phone. “It doesn't look like anyone’s following you or them. We're almost to their destination, right?”
“I'd say we’re about 3 miles away.”
“I think it's better if you break off completely. I'll follow them to the house and then take up surveillance from there.”
I didn't like taking orders from him, so instead, I made a series of turns to corroborate his belief that I didn’t have a tail. I sped up so that I arrived in Nathaniel's neighborhood before anyone else got there, parked two streets away, and waited.
Nathaniel's car drove through the intersection two blocks in front of me, and I watched in my rearview mirror until I saw George's car go by on the street behind me. I smiled at the fact that I could second-guess his route and then realized if I could do that, then the Coward could too.
I didn't think we’d been followed from the hospital, though. One of us would've picked up the tail. I wanted to see how George worked, so I drove around the neighborhood until I spotted his car on a side street. I parked several blocks away and approached on foot. George wasn’t with the vehicle, so I slipped through back yards and down alleys, trying to spot his vantage point.
Believe it or not, I came around the corner just in time to see him shimmying up an elm tree several houses away from the target. The tree had a bird’s eye view of both Nathaniel’s front and back yards. I couldn’t have picked a better vantage point myself. I suspected he’d scoped out the area prior to our arrival and nodded to myself. “Not bad.”
On a whim, I returned to my car and retrieved the slingshot I kept in my trunk in case I needed to herd any errant cattle that might wander into the city. Yes, that really is a thing.
I slipped into a neighboring backyard and made my way around to the front corner of the house, where I could see part of George's leg amid the leaves of the tree. I fitted a fairly small stone into the sling, one that wouldn't hurt too much, and let it rip.
His leg jerked when it hit home, and a leaf moved to the side as he searched the surrounding area.
Before long, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out and smiled, “Hey, George.”
I loved his single-word response, “Asshole.”
There was a smile in his voice, and even though he couldn't see me, I smiled back.
My phone buzzed again as I returned to my car. I dug it out of my back pocket and said, “Hey, boss, what’s up?”
“Are you with George Ogilvie?”
“Kind of.” The line was quiet, so I decided to add, “He’s watching Nathaniel’s house, and I’m a couple streets away next to our cars.”
“Where can we meet? I want to talk to him ASAP.”
“No problem. I’ll call and get him to come back to the cars, and you can meet us here.”
I gave her the address, and she said she’d see me in about fifteen minutes.
When she pulled up, I was surprised to see another person riding shotgun. It wasn’t until they began walking towards me that I recognized one of the commanders from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. “Captain Smith. It’s good to see you again.”
“Alex, it’s been a while. I think the last time I saw you was when we beat your team in the division softball finals.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not gonna happen again.” I looked at Kate, hoping for an explanation as to why she’d brought someone from the Sheriff’s Department along for the ride. She didn’t feel an overwhelming urge to share, so I waited until George slipped between two houses on his way to meet us. When he arrived, I made the introductions. “Sgt. Kate Brannigan and Captain Myles Smith, this is George Ogilvie.”
Once the handshaking was out of the way, Kate started right in, “Mr. Ogilvie, I understand you retired from the Los Angeles Police Department?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Both the captain and I spoke with your previous command staff there, and they speak very highly of you.”
George didn’t reply; he simply nodded and waited for them to continue.
Kate gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. We were all on edge, and I chalked up her reticence to the strain that had been building over the past few weeks. “So, tell us about yourself. I understand you worked undercover for quite a while?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did. I was deep undercover for several years on a case that hasn’t gone to trial yet. So, I really can’t talk about it. But if there’s anything else you’d like to know…”
She grunted her understanding. “I get it. Let’s cut to the chase then, shall we? Detective Wolfe tells me you’re here because of some animal cruelty cases that happened when you were a child. I’d like to hear more about those incidents.”
George seemed eager to tell his story, probably because he understood that Kate was the gatekeeper, and if he wanted in, he’d have to go through her. He began his story, and before long, everyone was chuckling at some of the mischief he and his brother Steve and a couple other boys had gotten into when they were kids.
George was quite the storyteller, and I enjoyed the spin he put on their antics. Having a gift for bullshit was common among undercover cops. They can talk your ear off on just about any topic, and you’ll never know whether they’re telling the truth or jerking your chain.
Kate watched him with a bemused look that told me she was just as familiar with undercover personalities as I was and didn’t fully believe everything he said.
When he came to the part about the fires, George sobered, and it became immediately apparent he was telling the truth as he remembered it. “It was like my brother, Steve, and I told Detective Wolfe. When he and I were about seven, in first grade, a few pets in the neighborhood started to go missing. You have to understand, it was a lower-middle-class neighborhood, and people, at least the adults, didn’t pay too much attention when pets disappeared. After a while, a dead cat showed up here, or what was left of a dog showed up there. They’d been burned, and their carcasses were left in places only the kids would find; you know, like abandoned sheds we commandeered as forts or beneath the old bridge where we used to kick around a soccer ball.”
Kate crossed her arms, “You mean to tell me that none of the parents had any idea this was happening? The kids didn’t tell their parents?”
George shook his head, “Like I told them,” he indicated me with a lift of the chin, “we were a blue-collar neighborhood, and kids didn’t go whining to their parents back then. In fact, if Steve or I ever went to our father and cried about something, he’d tell us to man up and quit sniveling.”
Kate nodded. “Okay, I get it. Go on with your story.”
“Well, Steve and I had a pet rabbit. He disappeared, and a few days later, we found him. We—”
Kate interrupted to ask, “Where?”
Apparently, only Steve could interrupt his brother with impunity because George cocked his head and said, “Does it matter?”
Kate didn’t just cock her head; she narrowed her eyes, crossed her arms, and began tapping her pen on her bicep, a sure sign of mounting irritation.
George stared at the tapping pen and seemed to understand the implications. He sighed, “It was an old building. Actually, it was a hotel that had closed down, jeez, years before we were born. All the doors were off their hinges, and the city should’ve boarded it up. Anyway, Steve and I were playing war games with some friends, and everybody was dodging in and out of the rooms. One kid called out that he’d found a dead animal, and when we found him, we saw that it was a rabbit. Who knows if it was our rabbit, but both Steve and I were pretty sure it was.”
He stopped to see if Kate had any questions. She didn’t, so he continued, “He’d been burned like the others, but what was really upsetting—” he caught and held Kate’s gaze, “and this is what made me come here, and what drew our attention to your cases—when we found him, someone had taken out his eyes and set them in the corner of the room. They weren’t burned or anything; they’d been very carefully set off to the side. He’d actually cleaned off a spot on the floor just for the eyeballs; all the dirt had been brushed away as though they were significant somehow.”
Captain Smith’s head popped up at that, and he murmured, “Good God.”
Kate, who’d already heard this part of the story, nodded. “I wasn’t clear on where you got the information about the eyes in our cases. You said that the reason you came here was because of the eyes. That information hasn’t been released to the press or the general public. I want to know how you and your brother found out about that particular piece of information.”
“We really didn’t know anything for sure until Detective Wolfe confirmed it when we met yesterday.”
“You knew something, or you wouldn’t have traveled all the way from L.A. to follow my detective all over the city and interfere with ongoing investigations by talking to people she’d interviewed.”
George looked slightly chagrined. “Yeah, sorry about that. But we honestly didn’t know for sure whether this guy was removing the eyeballs or not. Steve was sitting at a table, and—”
Kate interrupted, “Where?” Her tone was all business, and the word came out sharp and clipped.
George blinked several times while trying to gauge her mood.
Kate tilted her head and waited.
“Did I say something to upset you?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“I’m trying to decide whether I want to work with you or not, or rather whether I want you to work with us. I need someone who’s going to be straight with me, and I want to know whether you’re that man.”
George nodded, “Fair enough. Steve was sitting in a coffee shop. I don’t remember which one and two people he thought were journalists were talking about writing a story on the Coward and the fires. One of them asked if the other had heard a rumor about the eyeballs. The other one said no, they hadn’t, and the first one decided not to run the story because they hadn’t been able to corroborate the information. So, in other words, you have a leak. But it’s not an open faucet. I’d say it’s just a drip somewhere.”
Kate uncrossed her arms and motioned for Captain Smith to follow her a short distance away.
George looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think I’d like to get on her bad side.”
“You definitely don’t want to get on her bad side. She’s a badass with a ponytail. When you deal with her, you need to be completely straight and honest and cut out any extraneous crap that might muddy the waters.” I marveled at the fact that these words were coming out of my mouth.
“Crap?”
“Crap. U.C. guys can spin yarns with the best of them, and ninety percent of what they say is just that. Crap.”
“Maybe not ninety percent. More like fifty.”
“Well, when you’re dealing with Kate, it better be zero percent, or she’ll send you packing.”
Kate and the captain started back our way, and George whispered, “Roger that.”
“Mr. Ogilvie, if you’d like to work with us on our case, there are some things that need to happen first. Chief Sepe from our department spoke with Sheriff Harrison of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department earlier today. If you’re willing, The sheriff authorized Captain Smith to deputize you into their department. TPD doesn’t have that capability. This is a temporary move, but it will protect both you and us should anything happen during the investigation.”
George raised his eyebrows and looked over at me.
I shrugged because I had no idea this was going to happen.
Kate waited a minute and finally asked, “So, Mr. Ogilvie, is that something you’d be willing to do?”
“Yes, but what about my brother, Steve?”
“Honestly, you’re my main concern. Your activities will be more police-related than his. For example, when you helped Detective Wolfe follow our victim and set up surveillance, that’s more boots on the ground than sitting in a library doing research. Both activities could be a liability if something happens and you aren’t working directly under a member agency.”
George scratched the back of his head. “Makes sense. You need to cover your butts if I end up having to take police action to stop this guy.”
“Exactly. Not to mention the fact that you’re carrying a concealed weapon.” She said the last as a statement, not a question because it was apparent to anyone who knew what to look for that he was packing.
Captain Smith chimed in, “Do you have a concealed carry permit?”
George pulled out his wallet and produced a card. “Yes, sir. I have a federal permit that allows me to carry my weapon in all 50 states.”
The captain glanced at the card. “Then let’s get this done. I have a meeting I need to get back to at the station. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and smoothed it open. “If you’re willing to be deputized, raise your right hand and repeat after me.” When George raised his hand, Smith read the oath verbatim.
George repeated it back to him, and when they’d finished, Smith held out his hand. “Then Mr. Ogilvie, I deputize you into the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Congratulations. I’m assigning you to Sgt. Brannigan here. You’ll work directly under her, and she’ll liaison between you and my department.”
After they shook hands, Smith nodded to me and made his way back to Kate’s car.
Kate shook his hand also. “We can talk later, but for right now, get back to your surveillance on the house.” She pulled out her card and handed it to him. “Here’s my number, but I’d prefer you contact me through Detective Wolfe or Detective Bowman first before you call me. Any questions?”
