by Deanna King
He clicked off. No McMuffin at Mickey D’s today. Stale donuts and break room coffee would be breakfast, and better than nothing. What a cliché cop breakfast, he thought, shaking his head with an eye roll.
No new case yet, no new murders; but that would be short-lived, it was Houston after all. Maybe on an off chance, his captain would let him and Lucky work his brother’s cold case. Naw, he knew that would not happen. He worked that case on the side whenever he was not on another case and Davis had stopped him. The case was Jack’s obsession, and it had started to cloud his judgment. He was good at his job. His gut would “talk” to him like an inner voice, but it never said a word about his brother’s unsolved case. The crime scene photos tugged at his insides. Now he wished he could just un-see them. It had been a bad decision on his part. Over the years, the pictures were no longer of his older brother, just pictures of a puzzle, and he was searching for the missing pieces.
Twenty minutes passed and the traffic began to move, albeit sluggishly. It took another five minutes for the traffic to have a decent normal flow. Jack was up to forty miles per hour, yippee. It took him another half hour to get into downtown. Parking his personal truck in the police parking garage, he took the service elevator up, cut through the front reception offices, and went through a side door to the Homicide and Major Crimes Division. Stopping at the break room, he grabbed two medium-sized Styrofoam cups, filled them with coffee, grabbed a stale donut, and then walked into the side door of the sixth floor.
It was a large room with multiple desks facing each other in pairs. Each desk had file cabinets on either side. Jack sat across from Dawson, and there was a short partition between the desks. They’d been fortunate to be closer to the back of the room, and it gave them just a hair more privacy. Jace Severson and Xi Chang shared that area with them. There were four more pairs of desks facing each other, and some days when most of the fellas were there, it was noisy. Being in a corner near the back of the room was a coveted spot.
Jack’s boots made no sound on the dark gray and black Berber carpet as he headed back to his work area. Dawson’s back was to him, and he was deep into typing on his computer.
“Morning, pard, here’s some sort of fresh coffee.” Jack set the cup in front of Dawson.
“Thanks, Mom, I am happy you’re here to take care of me.”
“This is where the caring stops. Get your own sweetener.”
“Mmm. Nope, like mine black and strong, like my women.” His same reply as always.
Dawson Luck, a transplant from the Arizona Police Department Robbery Division, was a bit of a narcissist. He was five foot nine, had a big nose and big feet. His eyebrows resembled a long black caterpillar. When he either frowned or concentrated, it appeared the caterpillar was trying to fold up. Somehow, he had it in his own mind that he must have game, and considered himself a ladies’ man.
The first time his wife had shown up at the station the fellas had all been in awe. Their mouths gaped open when she told them she was Mrs. Dawson Luck. She was gorgeous. The entire station wondered what in the heck she saw in Dawson. It could be, they had all hooted, it was his big feet. He was one lucky SOB. With the last name Luck, Lucky was a fitting nickname, more fitting when the fellas saw his beautiful wife!
He recalled a time when his partner had been feeling macho and so full of himself. He got his butt kicked by a feisty black patrol cop named Cassandra Sparrow. He was good-naturedly teasing the female officers in the gym. His teasing was innocent, and no one had ever thought of his teasing/aggravating as any type of sexual harassment. Dawson was very careful about that. He loved his wife; he would never be stupid enough to jeopardize his marriage or his job. One day, he caught Cass in a bad mood, not at all ready for his sassy mouth.
She’d had a crappy day on patrol. She and her partner, Amy Cordova, were working out some of their frustrations on the wrestling mats, and Detective Luck, without thinking, made a simple girlie remark. Cass looked up as sweat rolled from her forehead and a dark expression crossed her face. She didn’t like Lucky. She didn’t care for the way he talked to women, or about women.
“Dawson, you bring your big nosed, big footed self over here,” she taunted back. She stood up, her entire height of five foot six, and jutted one hip out. At about a hundred thirty to a hundred forty pounds, toned and in great shape, she was the sixth child of seven brothers. She had learned that she had to outsmart them…then outmaneuver them.
Dawson beamed at her. “You talking to me?” His DeNiro accent was horrible.
Cass crooked her finger inviting him to join her on the mat.
“Sure, butterfly, I’m’a coming,” he said with a wink and then sauntered over to the mats.
On the mat at the ready, she took him down, not just once, but three times. She was fast, she was smart, and she had brothers bigger than her that she whopped up on. Dawson was a piece of cake. The others stood around watching the show, and the third time she pinned him down they applauded her.
Cass took a bow. Dawson submitted and gave way with the sweep of his arm. “You, Cass, are a better man than me,” he joked.
Smirk on her face, Cass gave him the up and down once-over. “You best be remembering that, Detective Luck,” she huffed.
They shook hands. Leaving the mats, he headed to the men’s locker room to prepare himself for the onslaught of razzing from the guys. It would go on for days and Jack had learned that Dawson was able to laugh at himself and not get sensitive about the joshing. He wasn’t close to Dawson, not yet, but he was learning about him every day.
When he had first made it to Homicide, Jack’s partner had been Frank Windom. Frank had been an excellent partner, teaching Jack what he had learned over the years. He had been in Homicide for twenty-seven years and planned to retire in three. He told Jack that he was glad to end his career with a partner who cared as much as he did about the job. Jack admired his mentor, happy he had three years to learn from him. Two years later, Frank dropped dead of a massive heart attack, leaving a large void in Jack’s professional and personal life.
“West, Luck,” Captain Yao’s voice boomed from the hallway, “come to my office.” The captain’s office was next to the cubical area, a medium-sized room with a wooden desk. Two oversized bookcases along the back wall were filled with files, books, a surplus of whatnots, gifts, and some small framed pictures of family and friends. It was obvious the captain was not a neat freak.
Papers cluttered the desk, and the lateral four-drawer file cabinet that sat inside to the left of his doorway was piled high with case folders, books, binders, and other means of information, bagged or boxed. On the floor next to the desk closest to the window sat several evidence boxes closed up with yellow or red evidence tape and a clipboard on top with a sign-off sheet.
He was on the phone when they came in. He indicated with his head for them to take a seat. Lucky took the seat on the inside next to the window and West took the seat nearest the door. The wooden armrests were scarred with age and the blue cloth seats faded from years of being in direct sunlight. West and Luck watched the captain flip through some papers on his desk, listening, nodding, and interjecting a “yeah” and “uh-huh” every few seconds into the phone.
Captain Davis Yao was an American born Chinese in his early forties, married with two daughters. He dreamed of leading the homicide team in a town as big and sprawling as Houston, and he succeeded.
“Absolutely, I’ll take care of it. Of course, Darrin, we can have lunch next week. Sure, sure, call me later to set up the date.” With that, the captain hung up.
“Chief Pratt wanted me to tell you both that you did excellent work on the Griffin murder case.”
The case had been tough emotionally on all of them. A fifteen-year-old girl murdered by another min
or who was short of being an adult…five months shy of turning eighteen. What a way to celebrate a milestone birthday.
“So, no new case has popped up. I want you each to work a cold case. The cold case unit is short officers. Chief Pratt wants us to assist when we can. Find something that might have been missed the first time or shake out a new lead. Just work the cases and if nothing new pops it may have to go back to cold case storage. I want you to dig deep, however, if a new case comes in, you’ll have to set them aside.“
The captain’s glasses slipped down his nose as he scanned some papers in front of him, then he peered up at them.
“Here are the two I’d like you to work. You should have the files in an hour, which is when I expect to have your current case reports all nice and neat and on my desk, right?” His eyes went from West to Luck.
“You bet. I am almost done with the last of the reports, sir. I’ll have them on your desk before that.” Dawson bobbed his head. Jack was grateful that Lucky was meticulous about keeping the paperwork in order. Paperwork was his partner’s thing and Jack had no complaints.
“Okay, guys, that’s all I’ve got for now.” Captain Yao dismissed them.
Jack and Davis Yao had grown up in the same neighborhood until Davis’s family moved into Houston Proper. More than seven years passed, and they accidentally ran into each other at the station. Jack was a second-year patrol cop, and Davis four years in Vice. No one knew they had known each other when they were kids. Yao was his boss and he thought everyone would think he was showing favoritism, so they tried to keep that info on the down-low. It hadn’t mattered, everyone eventually found out. Hell, what were they thinking, they worked with detectives.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Done. Now, I take this in and get them to file it then our part of the Griffin case is wrapped up.” Dawson hit save and print.
“Good deal. You know,” Jack stood up stretching his neck, “it’s a bit quiet in here without 7-11.”
7-11…they were an odd and funny pair. They had gotten the name 7-11 because of Detective Chang’s first name. It was Xi pronounced ghee with a ZH sound as in zhee but spelled with an X and an I as in the Roman numeral eleven. One of the detectives jumped on that, and his nickname Eleven had been born. Ghee and Jace Severson became partners, and the same detective who had given Xi his nickname boomed with laughter.
“That’s funny, Severson and Eleven, oh boy, now we’ve got a 7-11 for real.” The whole group busted out laughing, even Severson and Chang. They embraced the nickname, “Team 7-11.”
“Detective West,” a female voice sounded out. Jack, standing with his back toward the side door, turned to see one of the department’s file clerks standing there. She was an older black woman, rather short and plump, and had been with the HPD in Files and Archives for nearing thirty years. If anyone needed to know where something was, all you had to do was find Miss Flossy, Florine Millie Carter-Jackson-Albright. She had been divorced once and widowed twice. She pushed a cart in front of her with several large binders piled on top. These were the cold cases Davis had wanted him and Dawson to work.
“Yes, that’s me.” He gave her a dashing smile. Flossy’s face broke out into a huge grin. She would know this handsome cowboy detective by his front side or his backside; he was the epitome of a Texas hunk.
“You know, I know it was you, Detective Jack. You can’t ever hide from Miss Flossy. You is too good looking for this place. Why isn’t you a model? That’s what I always say.” Tsk’ing, she pushed the cart closer to his desk.
Jack blushed, as he always did, and Flossy let out a full-bodied laugh.
Jack skimmed over the pages on the clipboard that Flossy handed him and signed off on a file. He and Dawson were given cases from the late 1980s. Jack grabbed the file and read the name: Mason, Celeste.
“That there’s a case that needs a solving,” Flossy remarked. Jack knew that Flossy read many of the unsolved cases, they intrigued her, and she always dreamed of being able to put an investigation to bed.
“I hope you can help that young woman cross over to the light. You think so, Detective Jack?”
“Miss Flossy, who knows? We just might just do that.” Jack stared straight into the snappy brown eyes of a woman who was a firm believer of the Lord, the devil, and the other side.
“Be praying that you do.” Flossy stared at him, gave him a mischievous grin, turned, and then pushed the cart back out the door.
Jack took the binder, set it on the file cabinet, and cleared room on his desk. With a small pad and pencil for notes, he flexed his arms, cracked his knuckles, and then flexed his fingers, getting ready.
It was now 11:45, his coffee long gone, and he was a bit hungry. Jack stopped from opening up the murder book. He needed food and coffee before he began his read. He knew he would be at it for a while because that was who he was. He headed down to grab a Subway sandwich, which was conveniently located in the lobby. Cops liked it, it was a close place to grab a bite to eat when you were knee-deep into an investigation. He would have liked to have driven down the road a piece to Antone’s and grabbed a couple of Originals—subs already made to order and delicious—but he’d settle for Subway and break room coffee. That would hold him over for a while, or until he needed to stretch his legs.
Lucky was walking back toward his desk as Jack was leaving.
“Going for a sub, you want something?”
“Grab me salami on rye with hot mustard, would ya, and a Diet Coke. There’s a twenty spot in the first cubbyhole, take that.” Dawson nodded his head sideways to his own desk.
“No problem. Salami on rye, hot mustard…the usual,” he repeated.
“I’ll be back in twenty.” Jack walked behind his partner, ignoring the part about getting the twenty out of his drawer.
A sub, a drink, and a bag of chips, this was the lunch special for the duo, the best lunch for the workingman. West and Luck both set up ready to eat and began the intensive reading on some of the town’s unsolved murder cases. At the top of page one Jack read: “Mason, Celeste, case number 081286, Unsolved.”
Jack began to read. The report called in on the unknown body 08-12-1986…
Celeste’s story had begun over twenty-five years ago.
He read for a few hours, getting through some of the preliminary reports and some of the witness statements, but stuff in the binder was all over the place and out of order. His bladder was singing a tune, and he was beginning to tap his boots in time along with it. He needed a break and a coffee refill, but before that, he headed to the facilities.
In the men’s room, he bumped into the Tornado, Vice Detective Rick Tormo, who primarily worked with the Gang unit. Not much younger than Jack, Rick was medium height, about five foot eleven, and weighed in at about 205 pounds. He was in decent shape and worked out in the station’s gym. Jack figured with his muscles as toned as they were, and being on the Gang unit, he had to stay in shape to keep up with boys half his age who were gang members. Houston had its share. He was to some extent funny, always trying to make the fellas laugh, but not always successful.
Being in the Gang unit, he thought Rick’s personality was too sunny. He always saw the bright side of things. He was jaded, had been since Cole was murdered. He didn’t fault the man for trying to see the best in everything; he didn’t understand it, that was all. Gangs were vicious and some of the things they did would set the hairs on your neck afire and your blood boiling.
Rick was married, two kids, and had been on the force for almost eleven years. He knew Rick wanted to get on the Homicide table, but there were no openings. He was good-natured about it saying he would stay with the Vice unit for his twenty or thirty if he had to.
“I enjoy the fact I don’t h
ave to wear a suit and tie or dress up. Man, I can wear jeans with holes, a T-shirt that says ‘Father of the Year…Honorable Mention,’ and a ball cap.” Then he would spurt out a laugh. He was a man with energy and excitement about him, a whirlwind on the job. The fellas in Vice had dubbed him the “Tornado.” It had stuck, as every nickname did, wanted or unwanted.
Rick had just finished washing his hands when he saw Jack in the mirror behind him, “Howzit hanging, Jack?”
“Long and hard, Rick, long and hard.” Jack’s brows waggled in mirth. Rick was in Vice, it was the expected comeback as usual.
“You fellas have any new stuff going on in Vice these days?”
“Same ole, same ole, you know, guys out there peddling drugs, threating to pop a cap in someone’s ass, gang graffiti gone wild, women and teenage girls going wilder, you know the story. Although, I’ll say I haven’t put in as much OT as usual. It’s okay though, I get to play with and enjoy my kiddos before they have to get in bed, been rather nice. Jack, man, I have to get back for a department meeting—something about some new forms and stuff like that. See ya.”
He waved off and pushed through the swinging door. Jack’s bladder reminded him that it and his feet were playing a duet, and he headed to the urinals on the other side. As he stood there taking care of business, he thought about the Tornado. Rick was always in a rush when he was around. He acted more like a tsunami when he was near, ready to blow off and out of sight as fast as he could. He knew it was because he’d badgered Rick to death about Cole’s case with questions on top of questions. Hell, if he thought about it he would have run from himself too. Rick had been a kid too when it had happened, and he didn’t know any more than Jack did. Next time he saw him, he was going to apologize for being such a pain and a nuisance.
How the body was located… he read…. in 1986…
