Never the Crime

by Colin Conway

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you ever want to move down to our floor, we’d make room for you. I hope you know that.”

  Stone smiled. “I appreciate that, sir, but I go where the chief tells me.”

  “But where do you want to be, Gary?”

  “I don’t know if it matters as long as I’m in city hall. I like it here.”

  Hahn winked. “Okay then, we’ll talk with the chief about it. See if we can make it happen. Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

  The lobby doors opened, and Hahn stepped out, not bothering to wait for Stone or to even see if he was following. Stone hurried behind him.

  “Yes, sir. We received a letter.”

  “Jean mentioned that. Another threatening one. Anything to it?”

  “No, sir. Everything was fine with that, but we received a different letter. One of a personal matter.”

  “Oh?” Hahn asked while striding toward the north exit of city hall. “Something personal?”

  “Yes, sir. It was from Betty Rabe.”

  Hahn shoved the door open, banging it against the outside wall. It was then that the name registered with him. He turned to Stone. “Who?”

  “Betty Rabe.”

  “Betty? You mean Beth? Beth Rabe?”

  “Yes, sir. The same.”

  Hahn straightened, looked around the entrance and nearby parking lot, then said, “What did she want?”

  “She said you assaulted her.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, sir. Sexually. That’s what she said.”

  “I did no such thing. I wouldn’t. Never. No.”

  “Okay, well, that’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “I wouldn’t. You believe me, right? Who did she send this letter to?”

  “The mayor.”

  “The mayor? Shit. Shit! Why would she send it to him? He gave it to you?”

  “He gave it to the chief who gave it to me.”

  “The chief knows about this, too?” Hahn stepped close to Gary and whispered, “Listen, Gary, I’m just a guy, like you. I’m not perfect. You probably know I was messing around with her, but I realized it was wrong and I stopped it. That’s why she wrote the letter. You can see that, right? She wasn’t happy about me breaking it off. She begged me not to do it. Maybe this is her way of getting back at me. I don’t know, but I would never hurt her.”

  “You never assaulted her?”

  “No, never. I mean, what else am I going to say, right? But you know me, Gary. I’m not the kind of guy who is going to hit a woman, much less force myself on her. Yeah, okay, I had an inappropriate relationship with her, but so what? Life goes on.”

  Stone raised his eyebrows.

  Hahn noticed his reaction. “I don’t mean to sound so cavalier about it,” he stammered. “But she’s young, she’ll get over it. It was pretty obvious I wasn’t her first.”

  “She’s only seventeen.”

  “She’s above the age of consent.”

  “Doesn’t matter in the eyes of the public. Just ask Councilman Bucker.”

  Hahn stepped back. “Do you really want to go down this road?”

  “I only want to find the truth.”

  “Listen, I have no idea why she would write a letter like that, but if you want to discuss this further, set an appointment with Jean and we can talk tomorrow.” The councilman trotted toward his car.

  Stone let him go. For a moment, he stood on the sidewalk replaying the conversation in his head. Then he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and texted Jean.

  sorry for what I said. It was rude.

  A couple seconds later, his phone dinged. Jean had responded. It’s cool. See U tomorrow.

  “Officer Gary Stone,” a woman’s voice said.

  Councilwoman Margaret Patterson was heading toward him. She wore a dark green pantsuit and her purse was slung over her left shoulder.

  “Ma’am?” Gary asked, tucking his cell phone into his pocket.

  “Ma’am? Do I look like my mother? It’s after five and we’re all alone. You can call me Margaret.”

  “I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Too formal. Call me Maggie.”

  It was then he could smell alcohol on her breath. “Okay,” Stone said, elongating the two syllables.

  “What were you and Councilman Hahn talking about?”

  “Nothing. We just walked out together.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Gary Stone. He was tucked in tight on you. He only does that when he’s sharing secrets. I know how he is.”

  “No secrets, ma’am. I promise.”

  “Okay, fine. If you don’t want to play, then I’m leaving.” She jangled her car keys and turned toward the parking lot.

  “Ma’am? Councilwoman?”

  She turned back to him. “Yes, Gary?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “As a matter of fact, that’s none of your business.”

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  The councilwoman smiled. “Are you offering to give me a ride, Gary?”

  “No, ma’am. I would call you a cab, though.”

  She jangled her keys once more, then grabbed them, silencing them. “I don’t get you, Stone.” She spun on her heel and walked into the parking lot.

  CHAPTER 8

  Spokane Police Officer Tyler Garrett stood in front of the granite headstone. The setting sun still provided enough light to read the inscription.

  Delmar Everett Oakley

  “I’m back,” Garrett said. “We never did resolve those differences.”

  A Nissan with a loud muffler raced by on Government Way. Garrett lifted his gaze and watched the car speed northbound.

  “Kids,” he said. “They don’t appreciate the sanctity of this area.”

  He was at Lilac Memorial Cemetery, among a cluster of graveyards along the stretch of road.

  Garrett’s microphone chirped on his shoulder and he listened to the dispatcher send a unit to investigate a two-vehicle collision.

  “You know, I should have gone to your funeral,” Garrett said, “but I didn’t think it was right with how things ended for us. Mom asked if I went, asked if I talked with you before you died. I lied and said I did. She didn’t need to know about our bad blood. She was sad you passed. I’m not sure I told you this before, but you two should have gotten together, Oak. I could have used you in my life more.”

  Garrett shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “I’ve said it before, but I’m still sorry for letting you down. It was hard living up to your expectations.”

  Another vehicle raced by the cemetery, its stereo blaring some heavy metal music. Garrett watched the beat-up truck with disdain.

  “You were always too black-and-white for me, but I still loved you. I hope you know that. Even when you stopped loving me, I kept loving you.”

  Garrett’s patrol car rolled toward the exit gate and triggered the sensor, causing it to slowly open. He had contacted the cemetery’s office a few months ago. The managers were happy to give him the passcode. He explained that he wanted to visit the grave of a friend, but it wasn’t always conducive for him to do so during regular hours. They were happy to have an officer drive-through the property whenever he wanted.

  After his car passed through the gate, it slowly closed behind him.

  Garrett waited to turn onto Government Way and resume his patrol shift. He was going to turn south and could see in the distance a gray car alongside the road. Due to the number of southbound cars, he couldn’t turn into the flow of traffic.

  A white BMW zoomed by heading north. The driver was looking at her phone as she drove. She never noticed she had just sped past a police officer.

  He turned his steering wheel, accelerated into the northbound lane, activated his emergency lights, and followed the white car. It took her some time to realize Garre
tt was there with his red-and-blue lights whirring, then a little more time to realize the lights were meant for her. When she did, her brake lights flashed, and she pulled over.

  Garrett pressed the button on the car’s microphone. “Charlie three sixteen, a traffic stop.”

  “Charlie three sixteen, go ahead,” dispatch responded.

  “A white BMW M3,” Garrett said, then recited the license plate number. “Government Way and Fort George Wright Drive. Code four.”

  “Copy. Code four.”

  Garrett exited his car and walked confidently to the white sedan. The driver, an attractive woman with brown eyes, red lips, and a short afro, looked up at him.

  “Ma’am, I’m Officer Garrett with the Spokane Police Department. Do you know why I stopped you?”

  “I was speeding.”

  “Do you know how fast?”

  “I don’t know. Forty-five, maybe?”

  “Do you know the speed limit along here?”

  The woman looked back over her shoulder. “No.”

  “It’s thirty-five.”

  She glanced up to Garrett. “Really?”

  “You were also texting.”

  Her brow furrowed. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You were doing something with your phone when you drove by me.”

  She lowered her eyes, then nodded. “I was looking up directions.”

  “There you go.”

  “Am I getting a ticket?”

  Garrett held out his left hand. “License, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”

  “So, that’s a yes?”

  Garrett tilted his head. “Why don’t we start with the paperwork first?”

  She quickly removed her driver’s license from her purse and handed it to him. Then she dug through her glove box to find the registration and proof of insurance. When she found the papers, she returned to her seated position and handed them to Garrett.

  “Wait here,” he said and headed back to his car.

  He ran her name through DOL.

  Tiana Madison Kennedy.

  Her driver’s license was current, but she’d had two speeding tickets in the past three years. Thirty-two years old. Her address was in downtown. Garrett thought about it for a moment, then realized it must be a condo.

  He checked her insurance certificate and it was current. He put it to the side.

  Then he ran her license plate through DOL. It was also current.

  He put his hand on the edge of his mobile data computer and thought for a moment, weighing the options. When he made his decision, he grabbed her license and registration and exited the car. As he walked, he pulled out his business card and put it underneath the paperwork.

  “Mrs. Kennedy,” he said.

  She turned to look at him. “It’s Miss.”

  “Miss Kennedy, I’m going to let you off with a warning tonight.” He handed her back her paperwork. “But do me a favor and slow down through here, okay?”

  “Thank you, Officer. I will. I promise.” She tossed her license back into her purse. Then she noticed his business card. “Tyler Garrett,” she read.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re the officer that was in that shooting a while back.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The city treated you horribly. I mean, really bad.”

  Garrett stared at her.

  “Until the settlement, right?” She smiled a little. “That kind of money wouldn’t suck. I read about you in the paper. The whole thing, what a mess.”

  “Do you have any questions about the warning?”

  “No.”

  “If you do, you give me a call, okay?”

  She nodded.

  Garrett tapped the edge of her door. “Drive safe, Miss Kennedy.”

  He walked back to his car.

  CHAPTER 9

  Detective Wardell Clint sat in his unmarked police car. Most of his vehicle was obscured by a roadside billboard sign hawking the nearby Northern Quest Casino. The billboard itself was periodically lit up with something that Clint assumed was supposed to approximate the Vegas feel the Indian tribe was going for. He didn’t care. Most gambling was a tax on people who were bad at math, and most advertising was barely concealed manipulation to trick people into spending money on things they didn’t need. He had no use for any of it.

  The way the sign lit up gave him a strategic advantage when he parked behind it. The flashing lights created a curtain of light that kept him hidden from the casual eye, and difficult to see even if someone was looking.

  And Clint was pretty sure Officer Tyler Garrett was always looking.

  Piece of shit.

  Clint’s stomach burned with acid. Without taking his eyes off the cemetery entrance, he reached into the glove box and removed a bottle of antacid tablets. He chewed several of them, the chalky, processed fruit flavor barely registering anymore. He put the bottle back in its place and closed the glove box.

  Glove box. What a stupid name for the passenger side container. Clint knew where the name came from. Early cars were mostly convertibles and the weather, along with the rough nature of the vehicle design and the barely improved roads, necessitated driving gloves. Gloves were like anything else—they needed a place to be stored. So manufacturers created a compartment for them. It made perfect sense to him, but it was an anachronism now, and no longer accurate. He understood, and almost accepted, that the world was a messy place, but it still irked him when things were wrong or in disorder when they didn’t need to be.

  People were incapable or unwilling to change their preconceived perceptions, that’s what it was, as far as Clint was concerned. It was easier to go on calling it a glove box than change the paradigm, even if it was for the better. He’d seen that same tendency in a lot of cops and especially detectives, and it always resulted in substandard results.

  But it was the perception people had of Officer Tyler Garrett that had him chewing antacids these days. Clint knew the man was dirty—knew it!—but the officer was slippery and had managed to avoid getting caught, so far.

  Officer. It pained him to even use the word to describe Garrett. The son of a bitch not only provided protection to a drug dealer, siphoning off money to do so, he killed two detectives in the process. That both Butch Talbott and Justin Pomeroy were dirty did little to assuage Clint’s outrage. No one publicly admitted to either fact. Talbott got a hero’s funeral, and Pomeroy’s suicide was quietly acknowledged as a tragic consequence of the weight a police career brings. But Clint knew the truth. Any man who dishonored the badge the way they did deserved to be called a lot of things, but not officer. That word had a long, proud history with only a few unfortunate tarnishes to it. It didn’t belong to men like Talbott or Pomeroy, and especially not to Garrett.

  That wasn’t what most of the world thought, Clint knew. They saw a model police officer—handsome, fit, and smiling. The public ate that up, the politicians loved it, and the department exploited it. Garrett being black was a bonus.

  For Clint, Garrett’s race added to the betrayal. He played the race card to cover his dirty deeds, and for the most part, it worked. In the face of questionable evidence and strong public opinion, the city cut its losses. The investigation—Clint’s investigation—was halted, all charges were dropped, and Garrett was reinstated. The city even paid an undisclosed settlement to him.

  Undisclosed, Clint thought ruefully, but big.

  Clint ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to fend off sleep. Then he half rubbed, half scratched his afro. He noticed the usually tight cut was getting a little long. He jotted a note on his pad to see a barber sometime tomorrow.

  Haircuts. Just another in a list of benign concerns that most people worried about. They were soft. Cake-eaters, all of them. Clint envied them their blissful ignorance. They got to look at Garrett and see a hero, a hard charger. He knew better.

  Most cops weren’t cake-eat
ers. They were meat-eaters. Clint was all right with that fact. The job frequently dictated the need for that kind of mentality. But Garrett wasn’t just a meat-eater. He was like a dog that had gone rabid, but everyone still reached out to pet him, unaware that he’d contracted the disease.

  When Clint looked back at the cemetery entrance, the gate remained closed. Even at this distance, he could see the small red light indicating the access pad that provided some measure of security to the facility in the evening hours. This had been no obstacle for Garrett, so Clint surmised the piece of shit must have the gate code. How he got it was a mystery, but Clint was reasonably certain he could find out without any difficulty. He imagined Garrett approaching the manager or the groundskeeper, all confidence and sincerity, with some bullshit story about who was buried there and how hard it was to get in to pay his respects since he worked power shift. If the employee was black, Garrett might even throw in a strategic brother to help seal the deal.

  The thought of it burned Clint to no end. Garrett wasn’t just a dirty cop, he was a goddamn charlatan. And yet, that wasn’t what people saw.

  For now, he assured himself. Someday, they’d see the truth, and he’d be the one to bring that bad karma back around.

  The only other person who really knew the truth about Garrett was Captain Tom Farrell. Clint had overcome his natural and well-reasoned distrust of the brass where Farrell was concerned. They both shared the same desire to see Garrett brought to justice someday, somehow. Despite his feelings about the brass, most of which hadn’t changed, Clint knew having some air cover was good strategy, if he was going to bring the man down.

  But Tyler Garrett remained the golden child of the department, and the city. If anything, the so-perceived wrongful treatment in the aftermath of his officer-involved shooting only served to enhance that image with a healthy dose of martyrdom. Garrett played that piece well, too, not showing any rancor or bitterness, or giving anyone reason to doubt him. “I’m just glad to be back to work to serve my community,” he’d said in one of the few interviews with any media.

  Over the last twenty-one months, he seemed to be doing more than just playing a role. The son of a bitch was toeing the line, as far as Clint could tell. There was no way to be certain, because Clint couldn’t keep him under surveillance twenty-four seven, but he dedicated every spare hour to watching Garrett and waiting for him to show his true colors. So far, since the shooting and all that followed, Clint had nothing.