Never the Crime

by Colin Conway

  “Sounds defeatist to me.”

  “It’s realistic, is what it is.”

  “The murder rate is up, too,” Sikes persisted. “Substantially. What do you say to that?”

  “I say you’re looking at the percentage there, and not the raw numbers. Last year, there were eighteen murders in Spokane. That was a ten-year low. During the NIBRS reporting period, there were twelve murders, which puts us on pace for twenty-four. That’s roughly average since about 2000 or so, but the percentage reads as a thirty-three percent increase. Raw numbers this low skew how the percentages look.”

  “I’m sure the families of all twenty-four victims would be comforted by your convenient math,” Sikes said.

  “All due respect, sir, what’s your deal this morning?”

  “My deal? My deal is that I want to know what you’re going to do about these crime rates, Chief?” He stared hard at Baumgartner. “Do I need to remind you that you work for me?”

  “I know the chain of command,” Baumgartner growled.

  “Good. Are you starting to get a picture of how bad the optics on this are?”

  Baumgartner didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t going to be outright insubordinate to Sikes. The man was his boss, after all, and Baumgartner respected that, but he’d never kissed anyone’s ass in his career, and he wasn’t going to start now. “I understand why you don’t like the way it looks,” he finally said, diplomatically.

  “It looks like dog shit. Those stats are your work results, Chief.” Sikes gave him a humorless smile. “Since you’re so focused on results over optics.”

  Baumgartner stared back at him flatly. He’d seen Sikes like this a few times over his term, though the mayor had rarely directed this attitude toward him. Other staff members were more frequent recipients.

  “I am working on it,” he said. “It takes some coordination.”

  “I expect positive results, and soon. You can count on that.”

  Baumgartner tapped a meaty finger on the table. “As long as we’re counting, let’s not forget that sexual assault and serious assault are both down significantly.”

  “Sexual assault and serious assault?” The mayor gave him a look like he’d just watched the chief step on a landmine and the loud click still rang in the air. “So sexual assault isn’t serious?”

  Baumgartner shook his head dismissively. “Come on, don’t play semantics with me, Mister Mayor. Of course sexual assaults are serious. The two crimes are catalogued as separate categories, that’s all.”

  Sikes stared at him for a long moment, then he let what passed for a genuine smile spread across his face. “Well, good. I think we fully understand each other. You have my full confidence, Robert. I know you’ll reverse this trend. It’s too important.”

  It never failed to amaze Baumgartner how quickly the mayor could shift gears and change his persona. The sheer artifice of it disgusted him. He preferred to know where he stood with people, and to make sure they knew the same. But in his own way, the mayor was being very clear. Fix the crime statistics, or else. He didn’t know how big the mayor’s balls were when it came to the or else part, but he didn’t want to risk finding out. Besides, fighting crime was his job, so it wasn’t like he needed coaxing to get on it.

  “Speaking of sexual assault,” Sikes said, his tone amiable again, “what did you do with Hahn’s letter?”

  “I gave it to Stone. He’s investigating it.”

  “Quietly?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is there anything to it?” Sikes looked left and right, then lowered his voice slightly. “Did he rape her?”

  “I haven’t got a report back yet. I’ll brief you when I know.”

  “Make sure you do. If it’s bad, I need to know first. I want to distance myself from that kind of trouble.”

  Of course you do. Distance yourself and leave me holding the bag.

  Baumgartner popped the remainder of his bacon strip into his mouth.

  I don’t think so.

  “I understand,” he said, around his food. “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ve already gotta distance myself from Buckner and all I did was let that idiot support me. Don’t want to be in bed with another one who’s accused of running around with an underage girl. What’s gotten into these guys? Can’t they find some desperate housewife to consort with? I mean, it’s not rocket science.” The mayor wiped his mouth and motioned toward Baumgartner’s plate. “How’s your breakfast?”

  “It’s good.”

  Sikes looked around the posh restaurant. “Best place in town for breakfast, am I right?”

  Baumgartner grunted and finished off his coffee, leaving the remainder of his waffle uneaten.

  CHAPTER 12

  Detective Wardell Clint stared at the open case file, trying to concentrate, but his tired, bleary eyes could barely focus. So far, all he could make out of the case was that it was an assault, possibly a robbery. The unreliable victim “maybe” knew his assailant and was in that part of downtown where drugs were sold for “no reason” and couldn’t remember if anything was taken from him. The whole thing was shaping up to be a fight over a dope deal instead of an actual legitimate robbery, which was barely worth Clint’s time, in his considered opinion. The only reason the case even got assigned probably had to do with the partial license plate. It was a potential lead, but one that would be tedious to follow-up. He had four digits out of six, so he’d need to run all the possible configurations of the last two digits, looking for possible matches to the vague vehicle description. Then he had to run all the registered owners for possible suspects. All that work for someone who probably got jacked in the eye for trying to underpay a dealer. No one would have looked twice at the report if the punch hadn’t been hard enough to break the orbital bone.

  He wondered if Michelle in Crime Analysis could run some sort of search to speed up the process…

  “Ward?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Clint responded automatically. He looked up to see Lieutenant Dan Flowers standing next to his desk. “It’s Wardell. You know this, Lieutenant.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Flowers shrugged. “Forgot.”

  “Sure you did.”

  Flowers frowned. “I did.”

  “Uh-huh.” As Clint saw it, either Flowers was being honest, and he had legitimately forgotten, in which case the unit commander’s lack of attention to something as basic as a person’s name was questionable leadership. Or Flowers called him by the shortened version of Clint’s name on purpose, in which case…well, that was questionable leadership, too. Maybe it was some latent racism. Clint wasn’t sure. In the grand scheme of all the crooked shit going on in the world, the first name thing wasn’t a big deal, but it still rubbed Clint the wrong way. “What do you want, Lieutenant?”

  Flowers didn’t hide his exasperation.

  “What’s going on with the Ainsley case?”

  Clint let out a slow, controlled exhale. “It came to me as a push-in home invasion robbery, but that’s a load of crap, no question. The girlfriend refused to be interviewed, said she couldn’t remember. The boyfriend told some bullshit story about a couple of unidentified males forcing in through the door when he opened it.”

  Black males, Clint thought, but decided not to mention. Funny how it was always a black man, though, wasn’t it?

  “So…?”

  “So, either it’s a domestic violence situation and they’re covering up, or it’s some kind of bullshit about drugs.” He held up his newest case file. “Like this ridiculous caper right here.”

  Flowers ignored the reference. “How about the Nylander case?”

  Nylander was the suicide he’d been called out for three days ago. “He’s still dead,” Clint said.

  Flowers gave him a stern look. “No shit, he’s still dead. I mean, did you get anywhere yet with—”

  “Where exactly am I supposed to get on that case, Lieutenant?” Cli
nt interrupted. “I conducted a thorough investigation. All the evidence clearly indicated that he purposefully hung himself. He even left a note, which is far less common than people think. There was no evidence of foul play. My report wasn’t at all ambiguous about this.”

  “Look, Detective,” Flowers responded, an edge creeping into his tone. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “I wasn’t patronizing you. I was answering your question.”

  “I wasn’t asking you about your finding. I was asking you if you had any luck locating the next of kin.”

  Clint held up a finger. “First off, you didn’t specify that. And second—”

  It was Flowers’s turn to interrupt Clint. “I didn’t get a chance. You jumped right in the middle of my question.”

  Clint paused. Then he shrugged. “That is factually correct,” he admitted.

  Flowers waited, as if he expected more. Probably an apology, Clint figured, but he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  Learn my first name, ofay, and maybe I’ll consider it.

  Besides, he’d already conceded that Flowers had been correct. That should be sufficient. How much ego stroking or hand holding did a grown man need?

  Flowers sighed, which Clint took as a sign that the matter was settled. He turned back to his case file, ignoring the lieutenant. When Flowers didn’t walk away after fifteen seconds, he glanced back up. “What is it?”

  “The Nylander case? What was the second thing?”

  “Oh, that’s right. The second thing is that locating the next of kin is not my job. I’m a detective, not a funeral director.”

  Flowers scowled. “I know it’s not a normal part of your duty, but you could do it.”

  “Of course, I could. But it isn’t my job, and it’s a clear misuse of my time, especially with my case load being so high.”

  “Everyone’s case load is high.”

  “Mine is nine percent higher than anyone else’s,” he told Flowers. “I’ve done the math.”

  “You’ve got time for that kind of math, but you can’t run down a next of kin?”

  “Managing my case load is part of my job.”

  “No, it’s my job,” Flower said.

  “With that kind of variance, something is obviously going on with the way you do your job, Lieutenant.”

  “God damn it,” Flowers growled. “Why are you always so impossible?”

  Clint just stared at him.

  “Look,” Flowers explained, “we lost a lot of experience when Talbott and Pomeroy went down, okay?”

  Clint didn’t answer, but his jaw clenched. Even when he wasn’t following Garrett around, the officer’s actions invaded his life. Talbott and Pomeroy were Garrett’s partners in the dirty shit he was up to, and Clint was supposed to mourn their passing?

  “The new detectives take a little time to spin up from property crimes investigations to major crimes level work,” Flowers continued. “I have to balance the case load accordingly.”

  Clint almost exploded. After everything else, now Garrett’s actions caused him more work, too?

  Flowers seemed to sense Clint’s fury, even if he didn’t know its origin. A look of concern crossed his face. “You all right, Ward…ell?”

  “I’m fine,” Clint gritted.

  “Things’ll get better soon,” Flowers said. “Marty Hill is back on light duty from his knee surgery, so he’ll pick up cases and the new detectives are just about up to speed. Everything will even out over time, as far as the case load goes.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right.” Flowers nodded, and his expression shifted to something that looked to Clint like he thought they just had a “good talk.” “So you’ll follow-up on Nylander, then?”

  Clint thought for a moment. Then he asked, “The chaplain gets paid, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let him do it, then.” Clint turned back to his file. This time, after a few seconds, Flowers shook his head and walked away.

  Good.

  He read through the remainder of the new assault case and put it near the back of his case load rack. The rack used to be organized by report number and date, with the most recent case in the front, but Clint had adapted his thinking on that. Now he organized his cases by priority. Important cases, especially homicides, were near the front. Bullshit like this latest robbery/assault case were near the back. Finding next of kin didn’t even make the rack.

  And Garrett?

  The Garrett file was an unofficial collection of his notes that he kept in a small locked file box, and he kept that secured in the trunk of his car when he wasn’t in the field working the case. At night, he brought the file box into his house, just in case Garrett ever got wise to him and tried to steal it out of his trunk. His aged Crown Victoria was still a department-issue vehicle, and Clint wouldn’t put it past Garrett to con a universal “cheater” key out of some mechanic at the city garage so that he could get into Clint’s car.

  If he knew he was being watched, that is.

  Clint figured Garrett had to know he was watched at first, right after everything that went down. Did he wonder if that tailed off and eventually ended? Clint wouldn’t fault him for thinking so. Twenty-one months was an absurd amount of time to keep up an investigation that wasn’t bearing any fruit. But Clint knew the truth, and there was no way he was letting go.

  “Wardell?”

  Clint pressed his lips together in irritation and looked up to see Captain Tom Farrell at his desk.

  Farrell frowned in concern. “Something wrong?”

  “Except for the fucking brass parade to my desk while I’m trying to work important crimes? No, Captain. Not a thing.”

  Farrell’s frown changed to irritation. “Don’t treat me like I’m the enemy.”

  You’re the brass. The brass is the enemy.

  “I’m only checking on you.”

  Checking up on me, you mean.

  “I don’t need checking on,” Clint said. “And if I do, my mama will be the one to do it.”

  Farrell looked a little closer at him. “You’re looking rough, Wardell. You want to take a day off or something?”

  “No. Do you want to take a day off?”

  “No,” Farrell said.

  “Then that’s settled. How about we both get back to what we were doing. I was working.”

  Unlike Flowers, Farrell didn’t rise to the bait. “All right, but let’s get coffee soon and talk about things.”

  Clint whipped backward in his chair, leaning away. “You know what?” he whispered harshly. “You ain’t doing no one any good coming by here and looking all friendly with me. Why don’t you just let me do my job and I’ll let you know when there’s something you need to know, huh?”

  A momentary anger flashed behind Farrell’s eyes, but he didn’t respond right away. He appeared to be studying Clint, and that was not something Clint liked or approved of. He didn’t know if he could continue to trust Farrell or if the man was still as on board as he had been in the aftermath of Garrett’s crime spree, but he did know that he didn’t need a daddy.

  “Wardell—”

  “I’ve got to pee,” Clint said, standing. He turned and walked away from Farrell and down the hall. When he reached the bathrooms, he kept on walking until he was out the west doors and felt the brisk wind on his face. He hesitated there, wanting to enjoy the sensation, but the odds were too high that Farrell would follow him and try to have the same conversation here as at Clint’s desk. He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t stay here.

  Might as well do something productive.

  Clint walked to his car, stopping to remove his file from the trunk before heading south. Garrett wasn’t due to work for several hours yet, but there were things Clint could check on.

  CHAPTER 13

  Gary Stone sat in the small lobby outside the chief’s office. Marilyn, the chief’s assistant, ignored him as she worked on he
r computer, her fingernails clicking the keyboard annoyingly loud.

  Marilyn was in her early fifties with short curly hair, lightly applied makeup, and a conservative polyester blouse. She had been in the position for almost twenty years surviving through three different chiefs. Marilyn held a certain amount of status within the department for the secrets she held, not to mention the access she controlled. No one dared cross her.

  The lobby was set back from the harshly illuminated hallway and was lit by decorative lamps instead of overhead lighting. A perk that someone close to the chief could get. Photos of forests hung on the walls. Near Stone’s chair, a noise machine played rain sounds. He wondered its purpose. Was it for ambiance or to hide voices from inside the chief’s office?

  Stone glanced at his watch. It was fifteen minutes after the hour. The chief was rarely late, but this was now going on ridiculous.

  “Marilyn?”

  “He said he was on the way,” she said without glancing at him.

  Stone nodded. He was silent for a moment, then turned to face Marilyn. He opened his mouth to ask another question, but she quickly turned to face him, irritated by the interruption. Stone saw the look in her eyes and remained quiet.

  “He said for you to wait. I don’t know how to be any clearer than that, Officer Stone.”

  He nodded even though Marilyn had already turned back toward her computer. Stone leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. In his hands was a file containing the handwritten report on Betty Rabe’s accusation against Councilman Hahn.

  He opened the folder and reread his work. The missing report number continued to bother him. If this report was lost, technically there would never be a record of his interview.

  Technically.

  “Marilyn,” the chief’s voice boomed. Stone sat upright, even though the chief was still not visible to him.

  “Good morning, sir,” Marilyn said.

  “Has Officer—never mind.” The chief rounded the corner and now stood directly in front of Stone. His eyes focused on the manila folder in the officer’s hands. “Is that the report?”

  “Yes, sir.”