"I don't know."
I raised my eyebrows.
"One thing Danny demanded was a lot of rope," Bloch said. "He kept his own list of snitches, dealers, leads. I got him to agree to weekly updates, but he missed them all the time and even when we did connect, he was cagey about everything."
"So you don't know if this was part of a case or not."
Bloch nodded. "There's no reason to think that it wasn't, but which one? New or old? Was he just fishing, or was this the next to last meet before he set up a bust? He left us crap for notes. I've gone over all of them and don't have a clue."
I spun my coffee cup around by the handle. Bloch's fidgeting with the sugar was contagious. "When you called, you said you had something that made you nervous, something you wanted to talk over. Garcia's killing is bad, really bad, but--no disrespect--it's something you should take up with MPDC Homicide."
"They're on it. In their own way."
"So why me?"
"What do you know about HIDTA?" He pronounced it "hide-uh."
"High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area," I said. "A task force. Feds and locals from all the Metro jurisdictions get together to compare notes on drug traffic, trying to keep the left hand in touch with the right."
"Right. Crack dealers don't pay attention to county and state lines. Dope that winds up in DC didn't magically sprout there, it had to come through Virginia or Maryland. And it didn't start there, either, of course, those are just distribution points along the chain."
"Every city with a population of two or more's got that problem."
"Sure, but not everybody has two states, a city, and a federal jurisdiction in a ten mile radius, either. Dealers know what a headache it is for a DC cop to try and get a warrant in Maryland or set up a wiretap in Virginia. And if they decide to go up to a sunset overlook on the George Washington Parkway to do a deal, well, that's a National Park, right? All of a sudden it's a federal case. Then the DEA and Park Service police are in charge, even if every ounce of the dope from that deal winds up on K Street in the District."
"Enter HIDTA," I said.
He nodded. "Virginia cooperates with Maryland cops who work with MPDC who partners up with the DEA. Jurisdictions melt away, everybody shares on the work and the glory, bad guys have nowhere to hide."
"Must look good on a poster."
"It works better than you'd think. There are a lot of egos, sure, and the higher up you go, the crustier everyone gets. At the soldier level, though, everybody's on the same side."
"It sounds beautiful," I said. "Before I tear up, though, what does this have to do with me?"
"I'm a medium cheese with HIDTA. Danny worked directly for me. The important point is that, while I might be a DC cop, I'm also dialed into all the other players. I hear things, I see things, I might not get to if I was buried all by myself in Major Narcotics."
"Okay."
Bloch reached into a brief case resting on the floor and pulled out a thick handful of manila folders identical to the one he'd produced on Danny Garcia. He put them on the table and pushed the top one across to me.
Inside the folder was a single photo of another crime scene, another murder. It was a black man in his boxers and a T-shirt. He had a belly and soft, un-muscular arms and legs. Salt and pepper hair cropped close. He'd been beaten badly--the bones of his arms and hands looked broken and bent out of shape--and shot in the back of the head, apparently with a small caliber round since there wasn't much of an exit wound to speak of. There was blood and probably urine around the body. It looked like a lot of other scenes I'd seen over the years.
I flipped the photo over, revealing another. A white guy in a tank top and shorts, young and in good shape. Red hair. Pale. Freckles. Or maybe it was blood. Superman tattoo on the left deltoid. A little ironic. Like the first body, he looked like he'd gone through a thresher, with arms out of joint and a lot of blood-letting. The photo had been taken from near his feet, so I couldn't make out details, but a small, quarter-sized black dot in the back of his head testified to another single gunshot wound. His fingers were broken and mangled.
I turned that one over. A third scene, a third body. Or fourth, counting Danny Garcia. Like the first, a black man, sprawled on a blacktop parking lot or road. There wasn't much context, but comparing him to a nearby car door, he looked enormous, maybe six and half feet tall. Two-seventy, two-eighty? He was fully dressed, sporting jeans and a University of Maryland polo shirt. Blood was hard to discern against his ink-black skin and the asphalt. Unlike the others, he hadn't been beaten. I couldn't see evidence of a gunshot, but on a body that big, it could be anywhere.
"Bloch, I don't want to look at this," I said. But I cycled through the pictures again. I could feel Bloch's eyes on me as I peered at the glossies, closer this time. Not surprisingly, I'd focused on details at first glance. Looking for setting, characteristics, gun shot wounds. I shuffled back and forth between the four photos several times, checking, then looked up. "The beatings. They're crazy. Vicious. Faces broken apart. Arms and hands and feet twisted, pulled."
Bloch nodded.
"Except for that last one," I said. "That one's odd man out."
"Maybe. But for the rest, they're the same. It's the beatings. They were all pre-and post-mortem, or so the coroners tell me."
"Coroners? Plural?"
He reached over the table and flipped the stack over so that I was looking at the first body again. "Terrence Witherspoon. MPDC beat cop, First District."
"PSA?"
"One-oh-six."
I grimaced. One of the worst in southeast DC. "Okay."
He flipped to the next photo. "Brady Torres, Arlington PD."
Flip. "Isaac Okonjo. Montgomery County Sheriff's department, Maryland."
I felt a twist in my gut that had nothing to do with the coffee. "Danny Garcia. MPDC Major Narcotics Bureau."
Bloch nodded, looking at me with eyes like twin lumps of coal. "You see it?"
"I see it," I said, but not liking it. "Someone's killing cops."
. . .
Blueblood available September 2012.
one bad twelve
A group of Mafia wiseguys sweat it out as they wait to hear who's snitched on them in "Up a Rung"; a disturbed woman loses more than her mind in "Possession"; and a postman's larcenous streak gets him in a terrible mess just a few days before Christmas in "Special Delivery."
There are just a few of the thirteen tales that had to be bribed, shoved, and bullied into one bad twelve. Read them, buy them, or ignore them...just don't turn your back on them.
one bad twelve is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords as well as other fine online retailers. The stories are also available in four micro-anthologies: Three Shorts, Three the Hard Way, Three on a Match, and Three of a Kind, available on all ereaders. Please check matthew-iden.com for links and excerpts.
Finding Emma
No one likes Jack. His wife is gone and his neighbors avoid him. He's a recluse and a creep and that's just the way he wants it.
But when ten-year old Emma goes missing in the nearby woods, the eyes of his neighbors turn on him in fear and accusation, escalating as the days pass. The answers they--and the reader--get, however, are the last that anyone would suspect...
Finding Emma is a novella of literary horror totaling 17,500 words or about 70 paperback pages.
Available on Amazon and Kobo; coming to all digital ereaders soon.
Sword of Kings
"My sword is dying."
King Andreas was confident, bold, courageous...until his sword--the living symbol of his power--began to crumble in his hands.
With his brother Jon by his side, Andreas has little time to find out why the sword, passed down through a hundred generations, is failing now. The answer he finds may save his kingdom, but at a terrible price.
Sword of Kings is a 4,100 word short story of high fantasy. Included in this volume is a Story Notes essay detailing the thought process and backg
round behind the writing of the work. Available on Amazon and soon to be had at all major digital publishers.
Assassin
For almost twenty years, war has raged between the mountain kingdom of Thrace and the sea-faring land of Andal, exhausting both nations. Prince Lowan, the educated and debonair second son of the King of Thrace, has arrived to make peace with his father's enemies. But the price Andal requires for peace is high--too high--and Lowan knows there are many ways to influence a nation at war.
Assassin is an original fantasy short story of 4,200 word, or about 17 paperback pages. It includes a Story Notes section, outlining the background and thought process behind the writing as well as an excerpt from Matthew Iden's fantasy short story Sword of Kings.
Assassin is available on Amazon and will soon be available through all major ereaders via Smashwords.
Seven Into the Bleak
A band of companions--each with his or her own reasons--delves deep into the heart of the Bleak, the infamous and horrifying cavern world miles beneath their own. But their dreams of a quick journey fade into black when their way home is cut off.
Tavern songs dwell on heroes returning laden with loot, fame, and glory, but rarely do they talk of the fear, and loneliness, and misery of life in the World Under the World. The group of seven is hard-pressed to simply survive--both from struggles within and without-and there will be no songs to sing of the companions if they succumb to the horrors of The Bleak.
Seven Into the Bleak is an original fantasy short story of 8,100 words or about 30 paperback pages. Find it on Amazon and soon on all major digital publishing sites.
About the Author
Matthew Iden writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, thrillers, crime fiction, and contemporary literary fiction with a psychological twist.
An eclectic resume--he's held jobs with the US Postal Service, international non-profit groups, a short stint with the Forest Service in Sitka, Alaska and time with the globe-spanning Semester at Sea program--has given him inspiration for short stories and novel ideas, while trips to Iceland, Patagonia, and Antarctica haven't hurt in the creative juices department, either. A post-graduate education in English Literature wasn't necessary, but it helped define what he didn't want to do with his life and let him read a great deal of good books.
Please visit him on the web at matthew-iden.com, Tweet @CrimeRighter, or find him on Facebook, www.facebook.com/matthew.iden.
Matthew lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
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