In the Line of Duty

by Carolyn Arnold

  Troy nodded. “I thought of that, too.”

  “Did you try looking into BMWs registered in close proximity to Rico’s?”

  “First thing I did, and no luck.”

  “Well, I might as well tell you now. We’ve got Gangs officers listening in on a few gangs’ hideouts, including the Hellions’.”

  “Are they using a parabolic mic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For the Hellions’, where are they positioning themselves?” If the officers were set up in such a place that they picked up on members outside, it was considered public.

  “A neighboring property that backs up against the yard for the Hellions’ hideout.” Winston checked his watch. “They’ll be in position now.”

  “Keep me posted.” Troy looked back to his screen. One benefit to the varied approaches on this investigation meant a wider net, making it more likely they’d catch the driver and the shooter sooner rather than later.

  -

  Chapter 20

  “DID YOU WANT TO STOP by and see Annabelle first?” Madison fastened her belt as Terry settled into the passenger seat. They were headed to Chestnut Street in search of the beige-sided house with a decaled jalopy.

  “Since when are you so concerned about Annabelle?”

  “I guess it’s just everything that’s happened today… We can never know what’s going to happen.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  Silence fell in the car for a while, and then Terry broke it. “I’m probably going to be in for a butt-kicking when I get home, though.”

  Butt-kicking. Only Terry wouldn’t call it an ass-kicking. Him and his aversion to anything close to swearing.

  “That’s if I get home,” Terry added with a small grin. “We’re headed to Satan’s house.”

  Only her partner would say something like that and toss in a smile.

  She put the car in gear, and twenty minutes later, they were on Chestnut. The house was easy to spot and one of the least cared-for properties in the area. Just as Snyder had described, part of the backyard was visible from the road, and there was a rust bucket up on cinder blocks. From this vantage point, Madison couldn’t see the decal. Maybe once she got out of the car and onto the sidewalk… But first things first.

  She plugged the address into the laptop and searched for information on the history of the house and its current residents. The good news was the Stiles PD hadn’t been called out to the house before. She brought up the residents’ names and turned the monitor so Terry could see the results.

  Terry leaned over to read the information, his eyes only a few inches from the screen. “Three names, all males, early to midtwenties.”

  “Do you need glasses?”

  He straightened up. “No, I—”

  “The way you’ve got your nose to the screen, I’d say you do.”

  “I can see it perfectly from here.” He held eye contact for a bit longer before glancing back to the laptop. But doing so was straining his eyes if the vein popping in his forehead and the skin pinching in the corners of his eyes were any indication.

  “Uh-huh. I can see that.”

  He rolled his eyes, and she smiled. Usually she was the one shooting him a narrow-eyed glare or rolling her eyes.

  Terry pressed a finger to the screen. “Their names are Clark Cousins, Travis Sommer, and Mike Godfrey.” He clicked on Cousins’s record. It showed a misdemeanor charge a few years back. Next was Sommer, and his record was clean. Godfrey’s record showed he was in and out of foster homes as a kid and spent some time in juvie, but he hadn’t been behind bars as an adult. “No BMWs or weapons registered to any of them,” Terry added.

  “All right, let’s go meet the Three Stooges.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  Madison shrugged a shoulder and got out of the car.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone is home,” Terry said, obviously noting, as she had, the drawn “curtains” that were really bedsheets.

  “Guess we’ll find out.”

  They walked up the drive, and with the light from the moon and the back porch, Madison made out the sticker on the rear quarter panel of the jalopy before she got too far. She pointed at the decal. “There it is.”

  A shiver raced down her spine, and she talked herself into calming down. It was an image, nothing more. It couldn’t reach out and bite her. Despite not being raised in a religious household that drummed the concepts of heaven and hell into her head, she still had a respect for good and evil, light and dark. And if these people knew what they had put on that car—if they were aware of its symbolism—they were potentially dangerous. She was ready to draw her gun if the need arose, but she wasn’t going to put her hand anywhere close to her holster so as not to possibly provoke anyone watching through a crack.

  Her heart was pounding as she headed to the front door with Terry. She banged on the wooden door and then rang the bell. “Stiles PD! Open up!”

  Terry was gaping at her. “You think you could go about things a little less—”

  The door flung open. A man in his twenties, about six foot two, appeared. Smug arrogance had his face scrunched up, his lips curled in disgust. His eyes were sharp and focused. “What do you want? None of us here have done anything wrong.”

  “It’s funny how your mind instantly goes into defensive mode,” Madison snapped.

  “What do you ’spect? Cops show up at my door, nearly banging it down.”

  She lifted her badge, which was on a chain in a holder around her neck. “What’s your name?” She let the badge fall back against her chest.

  “Hey, you came to my house, you should know.”

  “Three men live here. Your name?” This time Madison’s tone didn’t allow for wiggle room or avoidance.

  “I’m CC. Now it’s your turn.”

  Clark Cousins, she presumed.

  He hooked his thumbs into the waist of his jeans, which were already riding low on his hips and appeared to have seen better days. But then again, tattered jeans were a thing.

  “Detectives Knight and Grant. Why don’t you tell us about the decal on that piece of crap car out there?”

  “How ’bout I don’t?”

  She cocked her head and leveled her gaze on him. “How about you do and we don’t lock your ass in jail?”

  He pressed his tongue to his cheek, pushing it out. “What’s it to you?”

  If she told him a cop had been shot and that the decal had been seen on the shooter’s car, he’d probably be the type to find it amusing, and then she’d have a really hard time not busting his face. Or if he was involved, things could turn dark fast.

  “The same decal was seen on a car at a crime scene this morning.”

  Cousins laughed. “As you can see for yourself, that car hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “I never said it was that car. I said it was the same decal. What does it mean, and where did you get it?”

  “You’d have to ask Sommer. The POS out back is his. So is the decal.”

  “Did he design it?” Madison asked.

  Cousins shrugged.

  “Where is Mr. Sommer now?”

  “Mister? All formal. I like it.” He leaned against the doorframe and ogled her from her shoes upward. His eyes paused at breast level. Eventually, his gaze came up to meet hers. The invitation in them was all too obvious and instantly nauseating.

  “Hey, Casanova.” Terry snapped his fingers. “Travis Sommer—where is he?”

  Cousins curled his lips and gave one more fleeting look at Madison before trudging down a hallway.

  “Where are you going?” she called out.

  “To get T.”

  When Cousins was out of earshot, Madison turned to Terry. “CC, T… What the heck? Hey, you could be T, too.”

  About a minute later, the sound of a back door swi
nging open caught their attention.

  “He’s making a run for it,” Terry said, leaping off the front stoop and rounding the side of the house.

  “Ah, son of a bitch!” Madison grumbled.

  She followed Terry, but she hated running pursuits. Detested might not even be a strong enough word to accurately describe her feelings.

  The west end of the backyard was mostly covered by a crooked, run-down garage. That left the north and east sides of the property. Chain-link fences lined both those sides, but at only four feet high they weren’t much of a challenge for a motivated suspect to hop over.

  Madison saw a man running north. It wasn’t Cousins, so she guessed it was Sommer. So much for his clean record. Only the guilty and/or the terrified fled. Either way, it meant he had something to offer the investigation.

  “Stop!” she called out as she kept moving. Since she’d been with Troy, she’d started exercising more, taking Hershey for daily walks, but still… Running was the Devil’s pastime. “Shit!” Her ankle twisted slightly on the hard, uneven ground. She somehow caught her balance and stayed upright.

  “Stiles PD!” Terry yelled from ahead of her. “Stop where you are!” Then, as if he had nitros attached to his ass, he really kicked his speed into high gear. He jumped over the fence, clearing it by at least six inches.

  Maybe she could just stand back and catch her breath… Terry had this under control.

  But despite her weak body trying to control her mind and willpower, she pushed through. She sized up the fence and pictured herself jumping over it and clearing it in the same way Terry just had.

  She amped up her speed. The exertion of her muscles was actually feeling good and feeding her energy. She was ten feet from the fence, five, two— Her legs ground to a halt, but her upper body didn’t get the message in time, and she slammed against the fence.

  Her heart was pounding fiercely. All she could keep picturing was a broken arm or leg and blood. She swallowed the bile that rose simply from the image in her head of not clearing the fence and looked in the direction Terry had headed.

  Terry tackled Sommer, and both men crashed to the ground. Sommer was aiming blows at Terry’s head, but Terry jerked out of the way each time and rolled so that he was on top of Sommer. With the guy pinned beneath him, Terry managed to flip Sommer facedown and yank his arms back to cuff him.

  And now it’s on.

  -

  Chapter 21

  “WHY DID YOU RUN, TRAVIS?” Madison was pacing the interrogation room while Terry had assumed his spot against the back wall. He hadn’t yet started jingling his change, but he would soon enough.

  Travis Sommer was seated at the table, his arms on the surface, hands no longer cuffed but clasped in front of him. His eyes followed her every step as she, too, watched him.

  “I ran because cops were there to see me.” Derision licked every evenly paced word.

  “Not a good enough answer, Travis.”

  “Why do you keep saying my name?”

  “As you said, it’s your name. Should I call you something else?” She stared at him blankly.

  Sommer expelled a heavy breath. “Travis is fine.”

  “Do cops come to see you often?”

  Sommer remained silent.

  She addressed Terry. “He’s hiding something.”

  “I don’t—” Sommer ran a hand down his face. “You know who I live with, right? CC and Godfrey. They’re both criminals, not me.”

  “Wow, friend of the year,” Madison said.

  “I’m just telling you how it is, and it’s probably not anything you don’t already know. I don’t have a record of any kind.”

  Madison slipped into the chair across from him. “That doesn’t really mean anything. Maybe you just haven’t been caught.”

  He leveled her with a stare. “Are you serious?”

  She solidified her stance. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I’m not guilty of anything.”

  “You ran from police officers,” she stated. “You must have something to hide.”

  “What do you want?”

  She placed a photo of the decal on the table in front of him. “What does it mean, and where did you get it?”

  “That’s why you want to talk to me? Because of a sticker on a piece of junk? That car isn’t even roadworthy.”

  Madison slapped down a photograph of Barry in uniform. She remained silent for a few seconds. But it wasn’t for dramatic effect and it wasn’t to further impact Sommer; it was because she needed to steady her emotions.

  “That is Officer Weir. He was killed this morning. Shot while he was pumping gas into his cruiser,” she said sharply.

  “Well I didn’t do it.”

  “This decal—” she pressed her fingertip to the photo “—was seen at the crime scene on the shooter’s vehicle. So you need to start talking.”

  Sommer blinked rapidly. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  Madison leaned across the table. “Talk.”

  Terry started jingling the change in his pockets.

  “I, uh, I got the decal a long time ago.”

  Do I need to hold his hand the entire way?

  “We’re listening…”

  Sommer went pale except for splotches of red in his cheeks and on his neck. “You were right about not getting caught… I did some things in my life, things I’m not proud of, but I’m a changed man.”

  “As evidenced by the company you keep.” She couldn’t force the skepticism from her voice.

  His eyes fired to hers, but he didn’t hold the gaze. “Judge them however you like. Anyway, I got involved with some questionable people.” He looked down at the photo of the decal. “That star and the goat—it’s the Devil’s sign. They thought it was cool to toy around with that crap. They performed ceremonies… They hurt animals.”

  Liquid heat made its way from Madison’s stomach and up her spine, the rage pulsing beneath her skin. “You hurt them, too?” She could barely get the words out through her clenched jaw.

  “No! I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s part of why I was kicked out.”

  Even to hear that Sommer himself didn’t get involved in animal cruelty and torture did little to dampen the fire that had started inside Madison just at his mention of it. She worked to defend human lives that were snuffed out, but she felt just as strongly about standing up for animals who looked to humankind for nurturing. Anyone who raised a hand to—or neglected—an animal didn’t deserve to be called human. Her mind slipped to the K-9 unit and the law under review that would approach the killing of these fine animals in the same way as taking down an officer. Her vote would be cast in favor thereof.

  She pulled out the sketch artist’s drawing of the shooter. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Sommer studied the image for a while before responding. “I wish I could say yes.”

  “Who else was involved with this gang you were in?”

  “A gang?” Sommer’s lips twitched, and his eyes brightened. Was that pride?

  Technically, the law considered any group of three people joined together for the purpose of participating in criminal activity a “gang.”

  “How many of you were there?” she asked.

  Sommer stared her in the eye. He wasn’t going to answer.

  She’d let that question go. For now. “Did they ever torture or kill people?”

  Sommer leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. “Maybe I need a lawyer.”

  “The only reason you’d need a lawyer is if you were directly involved with those crimes. Were you?”

  Now Sommer wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Were you?” she repeated.

  “No,” he spat. “But I feel guilty about it every day. I didn’t do anything to help. I—”

  �
�You feel guilty but you weren’t involved?”

  “I witnessed things…”

  “Murders?”

  No answer.

  “Human or animal?”

  Still no response.

  “Did you witness what they did with the bodies?”

  Sommer crossed his arms.

  “Did you—”

  “Yes, yes, all right!” His eyes widened, and he banged the table with the side of his fist.

  She put a lined notepad in front of him with a pen and pointed at the office supplies. “Their names. Now.”

  Sommer picked up the pen, holding it lengthwise and pinching an end with each hand, and stared at it as if it would provide him answers. “They will kill me if they find out. I’m surprised they’ve even let me live as long as I have.”

  “Would these people kill a cop?”

  Sommer let go of the pen. “I don’t know. But I want to see a lawyer.”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” Out in the hallway, Madison spun to face Terry. “I can’t believe this. He knows where bodies are buried, he knows what these people are capable of, but he’s demanding a lawyer? Barry is dead, and Sommer’s so-called friends from years ago might even be behind this. How can we just stand by while the clock is ticking?”

  Terry’s face was stoic.

  “How can you be so calm about this?”

  “We don’t know that these people were involved in Barry’s death. All we have is a sticker, Maddy.”

  “All we have is a sticker? Are you being serious? Do you hear yourself right now? The word on the street is that a gang is claiming responsibility—”

  “The decal doesn’t tie back to any gang.”

  “That we know of,” she pointed out. “And how are we supposed to just close our eyes to these other violent crimes Sommer mentioned? How do we know that Sommer isn’t connected in some way to the Hellions now?”

  Terry was quiet for a second. “Let’s take things one step at a time.”

  “Again, how can you be so calm, Terry? Barry’s killers are out there and…” She saw the pain in her partner’s eyes. “You know that.”

  “Like you said, they’re out there. We need to keep ourselves together and focused. For Barry. We don’t have enough to hold Sommer.” He held eye contact with her, and she found the adrenaline cooling in her system.