Par Four, page 21
part #2 of Jake Hines Series
“I’m careful, don’t worry,” Jason said. “Unbutton your shirt. Unbutton your shirt! What’s this you got here? Oh, a beeper.” It was clipped at the back of his low-slung jeans, just below the three inches of jockey shorts that showed above the waistband.
“We might be able to trace that,” Bo said, watching Jason list it and put it in an evidence bag.
“That and the gun,” Clint said.
“Except the gun’s probably stolen,” Bo said.
“Take off your pants now,” Jason said, and, when the prisoner was slow to move, “You want me to take ‘em off for you? Take ‘em off then.” Alvin was actually sort of enjoying his strip search, I thought. Taking off his shirt, he had done discreet little mini-crunches to show off his washboard abs, and now with his pants off he was making sure we all got a good view of his massive thighs.
“I’m gonna need to make a phone call right away,” he told Jason.
“You’ll get you phone call soon as we get you booked,” Jason said. “Well, lookee here what we got.” He unbuckled an ankle sheath from Alvin’s right leg. “Goodness gracious, is that a real knife?” Jason found the button and the switchblade popped up gleaming under the overhead lights. “Gentlemen,” he addressed the gallery, “somebody better serve up a fresh ration of shit to the arresting officers about this. They shoulda found this hog-sticker in the pat-down. Damn good thing he was cuffed behind his back on the drive in. But if he’d’ve injured my precious body with this thing I might be feelin’ real testy about now.” Beside me, Bo, Clint, and Darrell began muttering profanities. Alvin stood preening ominously in his shorts and socks. He was looking forward to showing us what he had under the shorts, I thought.
“Call me when he’s ready, will you, Jason?” I asked the sergeant. I wanted to get my three men out of there before they got any gloomier.
“Let’s go up to the break room,” I said, “see if we can find Maddox a ride home.”
“How’d we miss that fucking knife?” Bo said. He looked as if somebody had stuck it right through his heart.
“He fought so hard,” Darrell said. “All I could think about was getting him subdued without killing him.”
“I don’t think we ever did do a pat-down, did we?” Clint said. “We were all hanging onto him so tight and afraid to let go.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you all just shut up about this right now? You made a helluva good search and got a very bad actor off the street. I’d be pleased to hear no more about that damn knife. And listen, Clint, thanks for coming in.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “This is the first time I started to think maybe this crazy POP job is gonna work out.”
“Hell, yes, it is,” Bo said. “Wish we had somebody memorizing cars all over town.” The three of them chuckled in a subdued way. They had been riding high after their success with Clint’s bright idea, and I was sorry to see the hidden knife spoil it.
“You did good,” I said. “See you Monday.” As I crossed the blinding glare of the courtyard with Darrell and Bo, I said, “Bo, before we interrogate your prisoner, will you get somebody in the records room to run his name and stats through MINCIS and NCIC?”
“Right away,” he said and went off toward the support staff.
“And Darrell? Better make notes on your morning’s work. Every little detail.”
“Including the knife?”
“Don’t get hung up on the frigging knife, dammit! Just tell how you found him and how hard he resisted arrest, and list the knife along with the rest of the evidence. Because you know, Darrell, when indictment time comes, no matter how much evidence we give ‘em, the county attorney’s office always wants more. So put in every scrap you’ve got.”
“I’ll do it,” he said, “but then can I get in on the interrogation with you?”
“Absolutely. I’ll come and get you when he’s ready.”
Ray was typing up the notes from the Tur family interview when I found him. He looked up and said, “I was thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, there’s a little patch of woods on the slope behind the Osco store, comes almost down to the water by the Adelaide bridge. Something about it–ever since I got back from there I been wishing I took a better look at it.”
“We’ll do it Monday,” I said. “Just finish what you’re doing and come to the meeting at quarter to five.” I was having trouble enough keeping pieces of this puzzle hung together. If each investigator started following his hunches I was lost. In the hall, someone called, “Anybody home?” I stepped out and found Lou French, carrying his suit jacket and breathing hard.
“How was lunch?” I asked him.
“Outstanding. You got a minute?”
“Sure. Come in my office.” Lou is the oldest investigator in the department, in both age and seniority. He would have got my job if his health permitted. But stress makes his asthma worse, so usually he stays in the station doing follow-up on recidivists and addicts, and processing handgun applications. More and more, lately, he saves his breath to run his lungs and waits carefully for retirement. Something about this morning’s work had lit his fire, though.
“Let me show you a fascinating fact about Rutherford real estate,” he wheezed.
“You’re racing your motor over real estate? The way you look, I was counting on sex and violence.”
“That comes later. First call this number.” He read off seven digits while I dialed. A sugary voice said, “Hello, this is Bestway Realty. Your phone call is im-port-ant to us…” and went on to entreat me to leave a message. I stared at Lou with my mouth open. It was Tammy’s voice.
“Got that?” Lou said, “Remember that voice, now, because I want you to call…” He gave me seven more digits, I dialed, and the same sweet voice answered for a company named Pioneer Property Management, imploring me to brighten her day by leaving my im-port-ant message.
“This is totally weird,” I said. “Lemme show you something.” I dialed my nemesis, A to Z Rental, and handed the phone to Lou. “Oh, yes,” he said, listening, “A to Z, I know about them.” He hung up the phone. “Your apartment?” I nodded. He sat back contentedly and began to tell me about his day.
“I went to the county assessor’s office. Babe’s house belongs to Bestway Realty, but she leased the bar from Pioneer Properties. The same voice on an answering machine kept answering the phone at both numbers. Finally I looked up the crack house. A to Z Rentals was listed as the owner so I called that and got a live human being with the same voice as the answering machine, and I persuaded her to give me an address. She didn’t want to but I said–”
“Lou,” I said, “I’ve got about five minutes. Can we cut to the chase?”
“Oh, sure. Sorry.” He riffled through his papers and said, “Anyway this Tammi Fae Boe–that’s her name–works in an office about the size of a broom closet, in the basement of the Kiowa Towers.”
“Kiowa Towers,” I said. “Really?”
He nodded. “Thought you’d like that. Funny little girl–green fingernails, sort of a ditz. When I said I needed to ask her some questions she said no, she couldn’t talk, she was too busy to even eat lunch. So I went out and got us some food, and while we ate she explained how one small, not very bright female can manage almost all the low-rent housing in Rutherford.”
“How?”
“Very swiftly. In a slipshod manner. With four phones.”
“And?”
“I asked her who her boss was and she said, ‘It’s a consortium of attorneys and physicians,’ very lofty, like I was supposed to fall over and faint from being so impressed. I couldn’t persuade her to be any more specific, so after lunch I went back to the tax assessor to find out who writes the checks. It’s a person named F. Alexander Gainesborough. Sounds phony as a three-dollar bill, doesn’t it? But his signature’s on every check from Cigna Corp. Which also just happens to own the car we’ve got in the impound garage.”
“No shit?” I had been trying to figure out how to get away from Lou without seeming rude. The car changed everything. “What about Kiowa Towers? Who owns that?”
“Um,” he consulted his notes, “Bestway. Which I guess in the end really means Cigna Corp.”
My pager sounded. I called dispatch and Neva said, “Your prisoner’s ready.”
“Ask them to bring him to my office, will you?” Damn! Too much going on!
“Lou,” I said, “I wish we could go over this some more right now but we can’t. I’ve got a prisoner coming up. Organize your notes and bring it all to the meeting, okay?” He headed off to his own space and I called Bo and Darrell, started out to get extra chairs, and was suddenly hit hard by a craving for coffee. I hustled toward the break room with my cup in my hand and ran into the chief in the hall.
“You know we brought in the kidnapper?” I asked him.
“What? I been in a budget meeting. Oh, Jeez, you got him? Damn, I’m gad to hear that! What’s he look like?”
“Come in my office in a minute and you’ll see. We’re gonna–Oh, piss!” The coffee pot was sitting on the burner almost empty, smelling evil.
“Here, come in my office,” Frank said. “Lulu always keeps a fresh pot ready. Why are you so upset just when you finally got a break?”
“Because there’s so much happening at once!” I said. “And it all keeps running together. And this kidnapping makes no sense at all as a moneymaking venture, Frank. Jessica just happened to be standing in that yard because she sneaked out of the school. There’s no way he snatched her except on an impulse.”
“So you mean we got a real child-abuser on our hands? Shit. Hard to prosecute, hard to prove. And it’s gonna give Schultzy the creeps for a year.”
“And when did you ever know a child abuser to call the cops just before he took his pleasure? That’s just crazy, Frank.”
“I know. You’re right. But he took her, and he called us, and we’ve gotta go ahead with what we’ve got. Goddam, however this turns out I’m glad you got that bastard off the street, though. You just made my day there, Jake.”
“I’m glad, too,” I said. “You coming in?”
“In a minute.”
Bo and Darrell had brought in chairs for themselves and were sitting against the wall, one on each side of my desk. Darrell looked as pleased as a kid at a picnic. Bo sat straight on his chair with his knees and feet close together and his hands clasped tightly on his knees; a muscle twitched in his jaw and his eyes were hard as blue marbles. Something about grabbing Bad Boy had wrapped him even tighter than usual.
Bad Boy looked more impressive than ever in prison fatigues; they showed off his bulging biceps and powerful throat. Stripped of jewelry, his scowling face conveyed more menace. He lowered his massive forearms onto the armrests of his chair with a meaty little slap.
I started my tape recorder and asked him, on a sudden hunch, “Are your folks from down around the Cayman Islands?” It was the only place I’d been in the Caribbean and his face looked like some I had seen there, with the European features of visiting sailors and the black skin of the girls they left behind.
“Antigua.” His voice surprised me all over again, piping frail and infantile out of his massive chest.
“You a citizen of the United States?”
“Yup. Born in Minneapolis.” I glanced at Bo and he nodded.
“Why’d you kidnap Jessica Schultz?”
“Kidnap!” He shook his head. “You got the wrong man.”
“See, now that’s not gonna work, Alvin, because the victim has identified you.”
“How could I have a victim when I ain’t done nothin’?”
“The child you took out of the play yard at Granny Goose Day Care Center says you did.”
“Man, why would I be hanging around a day care center? Thass just crazy! You juss got the wrong man is all.” He crossed his arms and glowered. “She’s white, right? This girl you’re sayin’ identified me? People in Minnesota think all black men look alike.”
“She picked you out of six pictures of black men, Alvin. Without any hesitation.”
“Don’t mean nothin’. You told her to pick one, she picked one. Mah lawyer will be here soon and straighten all this out.”
“He’s not gonna straighten anything out, Alvin. You’re in the can for kidnapping, which is a very serious crime. Do you understand that?”
He glowered. “Nnnhhh.” He had this thin, high nasal squeak, an all-purpose noise he evidently used when he didn’t want to answer directly.
“Actually it’s a federal crime. If we hadn’t found Jessica right away we’d have had to turn the search over to the FBI. And if the case isn’t closed right away we might still have to pass you along to them. You think you’re gonna enjoy having the Feds on your case?”
“Nnnnhhh.” He sat there, big as a boulder, giving me nothing, a wiseass waiting for his attorney.
I looked at Bo and Darrell and shrugged. Bo pulled a sheaf of computer printouts from under his arm, put them on the desk, and said, “Kidnapping’s not your usual gig, is it, Alvin?”
“Dunno wha’chew mean.”
“I mean I been going over your record, and it looks like what you usually do is deal drugs.” Bo laid his pages out on the desk and began to read. “Lessee, we got two short stretches at a juvenile boot camp, ‘89 and ‘91, you were pretty young then, weren’t you? Both of those for shoplifting. Then three arrests in ‘92, one breaking and entering, two burglaries, no convictions in any of those. Working your way up, though. In ‘93, you were arrested for armed robbery of a gas station and they made that one stick. You got five to ten and served two years in St. Cloud. Since your parole from there it’s all been drug busts, though, hasn’t it? Five arrests, all for dealing. And no convictions. Alvin has good connections,” Bo told me, sitting back and folding his arms. “Alvin’s connections get him good lawyers and the good lawyers keep him out of jail.”
Alvin sat watching Bo closely. I could almost hear him thinking, What the fuck is this we got here? Bo’s anger was so palpable I could feel it pumping where I sat. I was beginning to wonder about Bo myself.
“Them arrests was all a mistake,” he said, placidly. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
“Right,” Bo said. “We understand how innocent you are. What we can’t understand is why you suddenly took it in your head to grab that kid the other day. That was a bad mistake, Alvin, and it doesn’t seem like your usual M.O. at all. Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t.”
Frank walked in then, carrying a folding chair. He held a hand toward me, palm out, to indicate he didn’t need anything, set up his chair against the side wall where he could watch all of us, and sat down. Bad Boy looked at him a few seconds, decided he was harmless, and turned back to Bo and me.
“What did you have in mind to do,” I asked, “if we hadn’t showed up when we did?”
“Do?”
“What was next? You had Jessica there in the crack house with you. How were you going to get the money?”
He shrugged. “You keep havin’ fun with that idea if you want to, but I wasn’t there and I didn’t grab nobody.”
“Oh, bullshit. You’re smarter than that. Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to talk you out of this one, Alvin, because your pal Farah Tur gave you up too. Did I forget to tell you that? He told us how you grabbed that little girl and put a gag in her mouth.” A little flash of concern showed through a tiny crack in his composure and disappeared quickly. “He decided he didn’t want to risk a death sentence over some stupid plot to grab a little girl and try to get money out of her hardworking parents–”
“I don’t think you understand this man, Jake,” the chief said, suddenly. We all jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to look at him. His big body was hunched awkwardly in the little armless meeting-room chair, his hands hanging idly between his knees. Staring morosely at the prisoner with his big pop eyes, he looked like a rather obtuse man contemplating a corpse at a wake. “He’s ashamed of what he intended to do with Jessica, you can see that all over him. He’s hoping that since we interrupted him, maybe we’ll never figure out what his intentions were, that we’ll think he did it for money. Which I for one don’t believe for a minute, because just look at him,” Frank said, waving his arm toward the prisoner, “he’s got pedophile written all over him.”
“Peda-wha’?” Bad Boy quavered.
“Pedophile, Alvin, Jesus, you do it and you don’t even know what to call it? You get your rocks off with little kids, right? You meant to abuse Jessica sexually, didn’t you?”
“Whaaat?” Alvin had been feigning menace before. Now he got angry and seemed to grow a couple of inches in all directions. His face darkened and the big vein at the side of his neck began to pulse and swell. “You think I wanted to do some little child?” Under stress, his voice got higher. “Man, thass disgusting!” he squeaked, glaring at Frank. “What kinda creep are you?”
“He’ll keep denying it for a while,” Frank went blandly on. “They always do. But you keep after him on this, Jake, because before very long his own guilt feelings are gonna make him confess. As for that rap sheet of his you pulled off MINCIS,” Frank told Bo, “I wouldn’t worry a whole lot about the lack of any child-abuse record there. What you need to do is go in the sex offender file and find all the unsolved cases for the last six years or so, find the officers involved and call them, go over the details with them. Chances are you’re gonna find some descriptions that line up just fine. We’re probably gonna have grateful cops from all over the area calling us before long, just lined up waiting to get a piece of this guy.” He got up, set his chair neatly against the wall, said, “Very nice work, guys,” and walked out. From the hall, holding the door ajar, he met my eyes and nodded toward his office.
