by Brian Shea
“LT, with all due respect, that car may be the only lead we have in finding one of our own. As on-scene command, I’m telling him to continue,” Sergeant Cooper barked. “Kelly, you catch that son of a bitch!”
The Audi approached the intersection with Dewar. It slowed and began to make the left, but approaching sirens and the fact that direction put him into a dead end told Kelly why the driver made a sudden decision to redirect. The erratic movement at the speed it was traveling caused it to swerve wildly. As the A8 began to lose control, Kelly slammed into the back end and sent the car over the curbing and head-on into a telephone pole.
The chase ended in a cacophony of screeching tires and twisted metal. Kelly was momentarily dazed by the collision, but quickly shook off the fog, and exited his car with gun at the ready. Sirens filled the air as members of the Eleven’s patrol division rallied.
The front end of the Audi was wrapped around the thick wood pole. The hood was crinkled like an aluminum can, and steam hissed from the damaged radiator. The airbag had deployed on impact and was now beginning its automatic deflation. Kelly approached the car and kept a steady aim on the driver, who was mashed between the driver’s side window and the crumpling nylon of the airbag. The driver obviously failed to buckle up. The picture of his twisted body would be a great poster for the benefits of wearing seatbelts.
Kelly barked orders over the deafening chaotic symphony of arriving units. “Hands! Show me your hands!”
The driver was slumped forward, and his head now rested between the steering wheel and the door’s frame. No sign of movement from the man. Dead would be bad for a whole lot of reasons, the foremost being this man was his best chance of finding Barnes.
Kelly closed the distance, with arriving officers covering his movement, and yanked at the driver’s side door. A grinding of metal on metal sounded. The crash had compressed the frame, making it difficult to open. After several hard pulls, and one well-placed kick, Kelly was able to gain access. Without the support of the door’s frame, the driver flopped out toward the opening. Kelly grabbed the driver’s left arm, which dangled loosely by his side.
He eyed one of the patrolmen close by to ensure he was covering him at gunpoint. Satisfied, Kelly holstered his weapon and placed his right hand on the neck of the man. Keeping the head stable, he slid his fingers around to check for a pulse. Faint, but the driver was definitely still alive. Without knowing the extent of the injuries, Kelly didn’t move the man. Unconscious was better than dead, and in the world of policing, a lot less paperwork.
“Medic.” Kelly turned to the closest patrolman. The uniformed officer was already relaying the information on the radio.
For the next three minutes, Kelly held the man in position, keeping his neck stabilized while maintaining control of his left hand. Medics arrived and took over. As soon as the driver was laid on the gurney, a patrolman cuffed both arms in place. Kelly looked down on the man and realized he wasn’t a man at all. The person, unconscious on the backboard, was a teenager of not more than sixteen. He riffled through the boy’s pocket and found a wallet. The learner’s permit showed a geeky-looking Jakub Balicki, age sixteen. Baffled, Kelly stepped back.
“As soon as he wakes, I want a call. Understood?” Kelly addressed the patrolman assigned as the medical escort.
The sirens were now off, and a firefighter had detached the car battery, so the loud buzz of the airbag alarm died off. The street returned to its quiet mid-morning norm. The hum of chatting officers and the onlookers filling the nearby sidewalks were the only sounds. Kelly walked back over to the car. Shattered bits of glass crunched under his weight as he squatted down by the open driver’s side door. He peered in, searching for any bit of evidence capable of pointing him in the right direction. He cocked his head to the left, dipping below the steering column. Kelly eyed the space under the driver’s seat, a common stash area for weapons. Nothing.
As he was easing himself back out, he heard something. A soft thud came from the rear of the vehicle. He pushed back and stood, looking to see if one of the patrolmen securing the scene had leaned against the back of the car. Nobody was close by. And then, he heard it again. This time it was slightly louder than before and definitely coming from the trunk area.
“Trunk,” Kelly called out to the two patrolmen lingering nearby. They were snapped from their conversation and went back into a tactical position, drawing their weapons and bringing them to a low ready as they approached.
Kelly pressed the release button. As the trunk latch released, he rushed around to the back of the mangled Audi.
Lying on a heavy-duty, black plastic drop cloth, and hogtied with duct tape over her mouth, was Kristen Barnes. Battered, but alive. There was an axe and a red plastic jug of gasoline near her feet.
Kelly pulled out a knife clipped on the inside of his front left pocket, and went to work cutting her free from her bonds. As soon as her hands were free, Barnes reached to her face to remove the silver-colored tape with one steady pull. She breathed deeply. “I thought I was a goner!”
“I’d never let that happen!” Kelly turned to one of the officers nearby. “We’re going to need another bus for her.”
Barnes shook her head. “No way I’m getting stuck in a hospital for the next few hours while the bastards who did this to me are still out there.”
“I’m definitely not going to argue with you on that. But at least have the medics on scene give you a once-over before we go on the hunt.”
“Where’s Kelly?” a nasally voice called out from behind the cruisers blocking the intersection. One of the officers standing by pointed the way.
Kelly turned and saw Lieutenant Duff storming in his direction. He squared himself to the approaching man.
“Who the hell do you think you are? When I tell you to break off a damn pursuit you do it!”
“If he did, I’d be dead.” Barnes stepped up and stood side by side with Kelly.
The lieutenant started to say something, but apparently seeing Barnes negated any semblance of a comeback.
Sergeant Cooper strolled up. “If you got a problem with the pursuit, direct it my way.”
Duff turned and shot an angry glance at the veteran sergeant. “Policy states if a pursuit is deemed dangerous, then we break it off.”
“If we’re quoting policy, then you should also know it states the pursuit may continue if the threat of imminent death or harm to others persists.” Cooper pointed at the axe in the trunk. “Looks like we can check that box. Also, policy states the pursuit is governed by the on-scene commander regardless of rank. Looks like my list trumps yours. And, let’s please not forget the third and most important factor. I was your sergeant when you were a boot rookie and just because you made rank doesn’t mean you know squat.”
Duff’s jaw went slack. His head ping-ponged between Cooper and Kelly. He walked away without further acknowledgement.
Cooper returned to orchestrating the fallout from the scene as Kelly and Barnes walked away, over to the rattling Impala. “Are you sure you don’t want to get checked out?”
“You know me better than that.” Barnes gave a coy smile as she brushed herself off with exaggerated bravado. “Plus, you’re going to want me on this. Especially since our best prospective lead is unconscious in the back of that ambulance.”
“Anything you can remember about where you were held?”
“I woke up in the back of the trunk. Never saw anything. I did hear a little bit before the drive.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Not really. Except they had thick accents. Eastern Bloc. Most likely Polish.”
“Well that narrows it down to about fifteen thousand of our city’s residents.”
The phone in Kelly’s pocket vibrated. He pulled it out. Bobby McDonough was calling.
“Now’s not a good time. Let me call you back later.” Kelly moved to hit the button to end the call.
“I found him.” Bobby’s voice caught Kelly’s atte
ntion before disconnecting.
“Found who?”
“The perv. Smalls. Remember you told me to put my feelers out? Well, he’s been located.”
Kelly perked up. “Where?”
“Same place you found that girl.”
“What do you mean?” Kelly turned his back on Barnes, who was standing patiently by the passenger side door. He hushed his tone. “What the hell did you do, Bobby?”
“Whoa. I didn’t do nothing. Walsh had already heard about the girl. Nothing gets by him in the neighborhood. You know that. All I did was tell him the perv might know something useful.”
Kelly sighed in frustration. He knew tipping off Conner Walsh carried with it an intrinsic risk. Now Bobby was calling with the fruits of that request.
“Listen, Mikey, just go down there and check it out. I think it’ll give you what you need.”
“You know the position this puts me in?”
Bobby chuckled softly. “Don’t worry. An anonymous tip has been called in from a bunk number.”
Kelly hung up without responding.
Barnes exchanged her coyness for confusion. “What was that all about?”
“We might have a lead,” Kelly said without looking up from his phone. He scrolled through his contacts to Sutherland’s. As if by some cosmic connection, the sergeant called in before Kelly could hit the green call button.
“Sarge, I was just about to call you.”
“Listen. I just heard from one pissed-off lieutenant about how you disregarded a direct order to break off a pursuit.”
“I can explain. I—”
Sutherland cut him off. “Nicely done! I heard your ballsy move saved Barnes.”
“Thanks.”
“Besides, I never liked that prick much anyway.” Sutherland changed tone. “Look, I know you’re working the Wilson case and Anderson is up on rotation for the next body, but I’ve requested you take this one as well.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because this body dropped in the same spot as the girl. And you know there’s no such thing as coincidence. Not in life. And definitely not in Homicide.”
“We’re on the way.”
27
The tires crackled over the hardpacked dirt road, leading to the all too familiar parking lot of Sheffield Electric. Kelly and Barnes arrived as several patrolmen taped off the area. Unlike the Wilson scene, Kelly was ahead of the crime scene unit and the M.E.’s office hadn’t yet been called.
Barnes turned to him as they entered the scene. “So, this is where Faith Wilson took her last breaths?”
“Sad, isn’t it? Not the place you’d want to meet your end. Not that any place is particularly a good place to be killed, but there’s far better.”
Kelly noted the time. His notepad was quickly filling up. He approached the officers pulling the tape and jotted down their names. Two he’d never worked with.
“You guys are fast. Normally it takes an hour or two before Homicide rolls in,” the red-haired rookie said.
“We happened to be in the area.”
“Yeah, we heard the chase on the radio. We were stuck on a domestic. Who the hell has a domestic at nine-thirty in the morning?” the larger, Hispanic officer said. “Sorry we missed the chase. Nice job ending it.”
“And good job telling Lieutenant Asshat to go screw.”
Kelly laughed to himself. Apparently, Duff was universally disliked. Maybe that was the secret behind his promotion—get him away from the troops. “I was told by my sergeant the body was dropped in the same spot as the one earlier this week?”
“I guess. We weren’t here for that, but from what I heard from Russo, it sounds that way. He worked the Tuesday morning scene. Russo’s my roommate.”
“Did you go in?” Kelly asked.
“We peeked but didn’t touch anything. Looks like a suicide to me. But, what do I know?” the redhead offered.
“Why do you say suicide?”
“He had a bullet hole in his temple and a gun still in his hand.”
“Sounds like we did a little more than peek, huh guys?” Kelly cocked his head.
Both gave sheepish grins and the fair-skinned officer’s cheeks brightened. That boy would be a disaster in a poker game, Kelly thought. He decided to let them off the hook. “But you sure you didn’t touch anything, right?”
“Nah. We didn’t even need to check for a pulse. Pretty obvious that dude was dead as they come,” the Hispanic officer said.
Kelly was tempted to tell the story of the ankle-grabbing woman but decided against it. No time for espousing knowledge.
“Once you finish taping off, start up a crime scene log. Nobody in or out without signing the book. Understood?” Kelly never assumed experience. Always better to err on the side of caution and explain the rules every time.
Kelly left the two men to finish their responsibilities as he and Barnes strode toward the corpse. He could see the twisted body of the man as they passed through the open chain link gate of the equipment storage lot. He slowed to a stop and pulled out his phone, photographing the approach. Unlike Wilson’s scene, Kelly did not work as slowly and methodically. He felt himself abandoning protocols in desperate hope of finding Faith’s killer. The underlying fear of Bobby’s level of involvement added to his heightened pressure.
“I’d normally run things a little different, but the call I received before Sutherland was from a trusted source, and he told me this body would hold the answer we’re looking for.”
“Devers?”
“No. Somebody much more trusted than him.”
The body was slumped to the left. His legs were bent as if he was in a kneeling position before falling. Kelly saw the gun, a .22 caliber revolver, still clutched in his right hand. The gun arm was draped over his right thigh. The body wasn’t in the hole dug for Faith Wilson. It lay just outside where her feet had protruded.
He moved in closer to the body and squatted low, balancing above the man’s head. The small hole was just above the cheekbone in the small pad of flesh of the right temple region. There was stippling and a barrel burn around the entry point, indicating the gun was in contact with the flesh at the time the trigger was pulled. The left eyeball bulged out from the socket. There was not a large quantity of blood underneath the head, which meant the bullet had not exited the skull. The rounds from small caliber handguns lost a lot of kinetic energy once exiting the barrel and had a tendency to rattle around the inside rather than create an exit wound. However, without moving the body, there was no way to confirm, and Kelly would wait until the crime scene tech was on scene for that.
“What are you seeing?” Barnes peered over his shoulder.
“On first glance, I’d say your old friend Phillip Smalls was kneeling here when he pulled the trigger.” Kelly stood and shook out his legs. “That’s if Smalls did, in fact, pull the trigger.”
“Why do you say that?”
Kelly didn’t want to give the answer coming to mind. So, he gave his most accurate variant. “Seems a bit odd that this creeper all of a sudden had such remorse for raping our vic that he comes down here to do himself.”
“It’d be nice if that were the case. I wish most of my cases ended with a bullet. These guys don’t reform. They come out just as depraved as when they went in.” Barnes pointed to the dead man. “Case in point is lying on the ground in front of you. He does a few years on a sex assault and as soon as he’s back out, we find his DNA in the body of a dead thirteen-year-old.”
“I’m just not sure what this body is supposed to tell us.” Kelly heard the rumble of tires and turned to see the Crime Scene Response Unit van pull up, with Raymond Charles at the helm. Kelly’s phone pulsed twice, and he examined the incoming text.
Bobby: Check jacket pocket. Delete message after reading.
The tech pulled out a cigarette and lit it while he waited by the van. Kelly bent back down and, using his pen, finagled the dead man’s coat pocket. He could see the triangular white corne
r of a piece of paper. He reached into his back pocket and pulled on his latex gloves. He used his cell phone to photo the pocket and the visible end of paper before removing it.
Standing with the folded piece of paper in his hand, he looked at Barnes. He could tell the question was at the forefront of her mind, but she didn’t ask it. Kelly unfolded the paper.
On it was a handwritten note. Kelly read the poorly scribbled words:
I’m so sorry. I never knew how old she was. I want you to know I didn’t kill her. The people that did keep these girls at the gray house on the corner of Downer and Sawyer. I can’t live with myself anymore.
P. Smalls
“That is the strangest suicide note I’ve ever seen.” Barnes raised an eyebrow.
“Agreed. I’m guessing once Charles pulls in the evidence on this one, we’ll be reclassifying it as a murder.” Kelly hoped Smalls’s death wouldn’t come back on Bobby. He also knew Conner Walsh’s crew well enough to doubt much in the way of usable evidence would be located on or around the body. You don’t run one of the most notoriously violent Irish gangs without knowing how to make a clean kill. But everybody slipped up once in a while, and maybe this would be the body to bring down Walsh. Kelly had been looking for that opportunity since he was a kid.
Barnes blew out an audible exhalation, her breath visible in the cool temp.
Kelly added, “On a bright note, it looks like we’ve got an address that needs a little attention.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Although this time, maybe we do it together. My head’s a little sore from my last adventure.” Barnes rubbed at the back of her head for added effect.
“It’s not going to be just you and me on this one. We’re bringing in the heavy hitters.”
Kelly walked toward Charles with Barnes in-step. “Hey there, Ray. Having a little déjà vu?”
“I guess they could have left the old tape up.” Raymond Charles eyed the paper in Kelly’s hand. “Digging around before we work the scene? New protocols in play?”
