Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3)

by Gary Earl Ross

  “Before I go,” I said to Bianca, “how’s Keisha?”

  “Fine. She’s in Germany, visiting an old boyfriend who’s stationed there.”

  “Sonny Tyler?”

  She smiled. “I think he’s good for her, after…you know, after everything.”

  I nodded and turned to Jen. “How’s SOS?”

  “They figured out pretty quick John detail wasn’t a good fit for somebody like me.” She half chuckled before her expression grew somber. “It’s extra hard when the ones hurt are kids. But I’ve been finding my way. Right now I’m kind of a liaison to LGBT crime victims, unofficially, of course. Still, it’s a sign the world is getting better.”

  “About damn time,” Bianca said.

  Excerpt Two

  From In the Mouth of the Wolf by Drea Wingard, with Grant Gibbons (2)

  Grant’s funeral, held at the Banneker A.M.E. Church in the heart of Washington, is standing room only. Later, after you have had a chance to read through the signatures in the register of mourners, you will understand the breadth and diversity of the crowd gathered in the large sanctuary. In an echo of police and firefighter memorials you have seen on television, there are broadcast and print journalists from around the nation—including two survivors of the mass shooting in a Maryland newsroom. Others are from Canada, England, France, and Germany. But few notebooks are visible. You see no laptops or iPads. Broadcast coverage, you have been told, is limited to four cameras sharing a common feed. The words of the NBC Nightly News anchor interviewed earlier on National Public Radio linger in your mind throughout the service: “When an American journalist is attacked and murdered in his own home, we are here to mourn not only him but the death of the civility that has long made American journalists the envy of news services everywhere.”

  Others in attendance include the editor of the Post, the Librarian of Congress, a dozen U.S. senators, three times as many House members, a single Supreme Court justice, various Washington staffers, the mayor and four council representatives of the District of Columbia, several members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, and Alpha Phi Alpha brothers from eighteen states occupying seven rows. The pews immediately behind you are filled with friends, neighbors from various places you’ve lived, Grant’s co-workers and yours, classmates you haven’t seen in decades, and strangers you likely will never see again. So many people have offered sympathy, tears, and embraces you have begun to feel numb.

  You are seated in the middle of the front pew beside your only living relatives—your cousin Sam from Buffalo and your daughter. The only child of two only children, Miranda clutches your left arm, weeping against your shoulder, as her fiancé Ben keeps an arm draped over her shoulders. More an older brother than a cousin, Sam sits on your right, helping you to your feet when the assembly must stand, though he himself, a long-retired widower, is not in the best of health.

  There is abundant security—DC police in uniforms, dark-suited men and women with earpieces and flag lapel pins, nine or ten FBI windbreakers along the walls, and a Fairfax County plainclothes detective at either end of your pew—as if the presence of politicians and the media will draw Gravel Voice and his posse out of hiding to strike during the funeral.

  All this for Grant, who died in your lap as blood in his lungs made breathing harder and each head-snapping gulp for air helped bone fragments from the broken bridge of his nose sliver deeper into his brain. For Grant, whose failure to load his gun had left you dry-firing into your own temple.

  In black robe and kente cloth stole, the Rev. Dr. Arlo Durance, whom you’ve known for more than twenty years, climbs into the pulpit. A big brown-skinned man with thick lenses in wire rims, large hands, and a head full of white hair, he clutches the sides of the pulpit and recites two passages of scripture without opening the Bible before him. The first is from Isaiah 57: “The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, while no one understands. For the righteous are taken away from calamity and they enter into peace.” Next is the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want…”

  The sound system gives Dr. Durance’s already powerful voice more resonance. Finishing the psalm, he gazes out at the packed assembly, quiet save for shuffling feet and the occasional cough, as if waiting for a sign to continue. After a moment, he removes his glasses and wipes his eyes. His voice cracks as he says, “Friends, there is a storm coming, as destructive as any hurricane or wildfire. It did not start in recent times, with mass shootings at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, a Baptist church in rural Texas, a mosque in Quebec City, or a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Fed by the frailties and fears of those who have forgotten to love their neighbors, it is an evil as old as the human heart, with a hunger that exceeds its size. It is in a constant struggle with what Lincoln called our better angels. It is remorseless, has manifested itself as wars, genocides, and all manners of slaughter and atrocity, from the public lynching to the home invasion. Sometimes we beat it down into the ground, bury this evil for the betterment of all. But it always manages to dig its way back to the light. Now it is rising again, a tempest the like of which we have not seen in decades, with winds of rage driving a rain of hate that threatens to wash over our entire country and out into the world. Brother Grant Gibbons is not the first victim of this coming storm, and as much as I pray to God I am wrong, he will not be the last.”

  Five days after the funeral, Miranda, Ben, and you sit in a small conference room in the Massey Building, across a metal table from Lieutenant Grace Wesley and Sergeant Glenn Covelli. Tall and broad-shouldered, with green eyes and ash blonde hair, Wesley is in her late forties. She is the one who interviewed you at the hospital that first night, explaining both the Castle Doctrine that exempted you from prosecution and the path the investigation would take. She is the one who called to tell you they had identified the dead man—Brick Butler of Montgomery County, Maryland—and that he had been cremated in a private service. Since then she has called at least once a day to check on you.

  Perhaps a decade younger, Covelli is clean-shaven, with thinning black hair and thick eyebrows. He seldom speaks but his dark eyes are so alert you suspect he misses nothing. Today he is watching you and Miranda as Wesley reviews the latest developments. They were the detectives in your pew at the funeral, and to the extent you can trust anyone right now, you have begun—just begun—to trust them.

  “As I told you on Monday,” Wesley says, “Butler had a long criminal record in Maryland—drug possession, fraud, petit larceny, assault and battery, for which he did six months in MCI Jessup. Because he lived in Montgomery County and died in Annandale during the commission of a crime, we have to work across state lines with other law enforcement entities.”

  “Including the FBI,” you say. “They said they were Liberty Storm. Doesn’t that make this a hate crime?”

  “Liberty Storm is a start, but this is the first murder linked to that group, with only your word that’s what they said.” She cuts off your response with an uplifted hand. “Until we have more evidence, we can move ahead with breaking and entering, assault, and murder. For what it’s worth, most hate crimes are prosecuted at the state level anyway, with support from the FBI. If this begins to look like a more complex interstate conspiracy and Liberty Storm is linked to other crimes, the federal role will grow.”

  Even as frustration fries your nerves, you know it’s still early in the investigation. You appreciate Wesley’s effort to sound reassuring, so you nod.

  “We believe it was during his time in Jessup,” she continues, “that he first hooked up with Liberty Storm. They’re based in Maryland and identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Their rolls are secret, but they’re believed to have a membership of fewer than sixty men, including MCI parolees. State investigators have been looking into his known associates and men he served time with. Since we last spoke, they’ve identified ten likely members and have forwarded the information to us.”

  Miranda squeez
es your hand, and you take a deep breath to steady yourself.

  “How soon will they be brought in for questioning, lieutenant?” Ben asks, using leftenant instead of lieutenant.

  Wesley and Covelli both shift their attention to your future son-in-law, perhaps—as you were before you got to know him—jarred a bit at hearing a British accent come out of a black man’s mouth. The accent suggests intelligence and gravitas, both of which Ben, an engineer born in London to Nigerian immigrants, possesses in abundance. It also suggests an authority that demands attention and respect.

  “That, Mr. Madaki, depends upon whether Ms. Gibbons is able to pick any of them out of a photo array,” Wesley says.

  “Probably a waste of time,” you say. “Mostly I remember their faces were painted like skulls.”

  “I know,” Wesley says. “If I could, I’d have the pictures painted like skulls, but that would never stand up in court.” Then she smiles. “Nothing, however, prevents me from showing you these first.” From an envelope on the table, she extracts a medium-sized color photo and slides it across to you. “Brick Butler without makeup.”

  You recognize the deep blue eyes at once, and your throat tightens. Studying the face for a long moment, you try to picture the paint—the white cheekbones and jaw, the blackened hollows of his cheeks and his nose. Butler is unsmiling here but you remember his deathly grin, the spit that smelled of garlic.

  “One of Butler on your floor,” Wesley says, slipping a hand inside the envelope. “But only if you’re up to it.”

  You nod. Then you gaze down at the man you killed, face paint intact, head in a hood soaked with blood. Unsmiling. You place the photos side by side for comparison and gaze at them for half a minute.

  “You may have seen enough of their faces through the paint to lead us in the right direction,” Wesley says. “Would you be willing to try?”

  “Yes,” you say without hesitation.

  Wesley nods to Covelli, who explains the procedure in a soft baritone. “This will take a while because you’re going to look at ten arrays on a laptop computer. Each set will have six pictures. Sergeant Wesley and I both know which picture in each group belongs to the man found by Maryland state cops, so the arrays will be shown blindly. The only other person in the room will be a technician who has no information about which investigation the arrays are for.”

  “I can’t be with her?” Miranda asks. “For moral support?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Covelli says. “A sigh or a shift in body language could unwittingly influence your mother’s perception. Even the technician won’t see the pictures. She’ll be on the other side of the laptop with a notepad and a remote control.”

  “Ms. Gibbons, you and Mr. Madaki can wait for your mother in the coffee room,” Wesley says.

  “You can take as much time as you like to look at the pictures,” Covelli says. “We can step out and send in the tech as soon as you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now,” you say.

  Five minutes later you click on the fourth photo in the second array. The cheekbones, the narrow pale eyes under blond brows, the unruly blond hair. You are certain it is Gravel Voice.

  10

  The Wednesday after Pete’s party, I met Tripp Caster outside the District Attorney offices in the Erie County Court Building, the Romanesque landmark where in 1901 President William McKinley lay in state, not far from the courtroom where his assassin would be convicted of murder ten days after his death. I had been summoned on a matter of justice less swift. Joey Snell had decided, finally, to plead guilty to possession of a firearm. Before he’d accept the plea, however, the ADA had told Eli Aronson that Joey must face his chief accuser one last time. At my insistence, Phoenix had not accompanied me.

  “He kept implicating Hellman,” Tripp had said in his phone call the afternoon before. “He reminded one of my colleagues of how Hellman and his attorney kept implicating Tull.”

  “The devil made me do it,” I said.

  “Exactly, so we sent an investigator to Attica. Hellman’s doing life-plus, but a murder for hire charge could complicate things for him.”

  “Like spending so much time in solitary he starts eating his own fingers. But let me guess. Hellman never heard of Snell.”

  “Almost a bullseye. He said he never met the wimpy little shit.”

  I laughed. “So I guess Snell’s plea deal includes someplace other than Attica.”

  “Now you get the giant teddy bear on the top shelf.”

  Blue suit crisp and brown shoes gleaming, Tripp led me down a bright hallway to a wooden door with a pebbled window, beside which stood a uniformed sheriff’s deputy. Accordion file in hand, Tripp opened the door and gestured me into a yellow room with one window and a square wooden table with four matching chairs. Eli Aronson sat in one, in the same brown suit he’d worn to court. His client was to his left, looking smaller in an orange jail jumper. Cuffed hands on the table and neck tattoo pulsing, Joey met my gaze without flinching. The finger splints were gone and the cheek stitches replaced by black stubble. His face was fuller—incarceration carbs, I suspected.

  “Morning,” the public defender said.

  Nodding a greeting, Tripp took out a file folder and sat across from Aronson. Having left my Glock home because of the metal detector, I slipped out of my black denim jacket and draped it on the chair across from Joey. Rolling up the sleeves of my blue shirt, I sat. For a moment we all looked at each other as if waiting to see who’d produce the deck and deal.

  “My client would like to say something.” Aronson turned to Joey. “Mr. Snell?”

  Biting his lip, Joey looked down and took a breath. “Mr. Caster said I gotta come clean with you, Mr. Rimes.” He raised his eyes. “He said you need to know what I know.”

  I said nothing, waited.

  “Tell him what you told me about Jasper Hellman,” Tripp said.

  “Go ahead,” Aronson urged.

  Joey swallowed. “Guess you know he hates you—for his bag, for busting him.”

  I nodded.

  “What you don’t know is he’s pretty much on his own inside.” Joey shifted in his seat, a big man trying to get comfortable. “Most of the inmates are black or Spanish, so people like us…like me, white guys, we gotta stick together. For power.” Eyes never leaving mine, he let that sink in. “But Hellman don’t have a lot of friends. Some guys don’t like him ‘cause of his bag. He gets light work duty ‘cause of his bag. Showers in the infirmary. But bag or no bag, he acts tough enough to take care of himself. A lot of guys find him creepy or scary.” He let out a breath. “I think the dude wants a little respect so he talks not to look sad.”

  “That dude and his partner killed seven people,” I said. “Put a friend of mine in a wheelchair. If you want me to feel sorry for him—”

  “No, no,” Joey said, shaking his head. “When you’re new on the block, he’s kind of a legend, or steps up like one to make people back off. They call him Bag Man—gross when you find out why. But he says himself Bag Man killed seven people. That’s a lot of bones.”

  I leaned forward, my right fist clenched on the tabletop. “Those bones included three elderly people and a child.”

  Joey leaned back as if afraid I’d swing on him. “I don’t know nothing about a kid! The way he tells it, he took out tough dudes who crossed him and had it coming—like the inmate who promised him a Philly sidecar and wound up shanked. Bag Man talks to anybody who’ll listen. About you too, shooting him when he put his gun down. But sooner or later most guys stay away from him.” He swallowed. “He never told me nothing about a kid.”

  “Because killing children makes you scrap meat in the joint, so having your ostomy site raped would be the least of your worries. Just so you know, he was shooting at me when I shot him.” My jaw tightened as I glanced at Tripp and saw he’d scribbled Philly sidecar shank on a post-it note. “I don’t even know why an SOB like him is in gen-pop anyway unless it’s like the back-door death sentence Jeffery D
ahmer got.”

  Joey looked confused. “Who’s Jeffrey Dahmer?”

  For a couple of seconds I closed my eyes and took a deep breath against the throbbing in my temples. I released it slowly. “If everybody else got tired of him, how come you didn’t?”

  Still leaning against the back of the chair, Joey gave an awkward-looking shrug. “He was nice to me, you know. I was scared when I got there, and this older guy wanted to show me the ropes. Guess I felt I owed him. Most guys don’t like him but most are smart enough to leave him alone. If you’re his friend they leave you alone too.”

  “Tell me about your relationship.”

  Joey stiffened. “You mean, were we like fags or something?” He leaned toward me, face reddening. “That’s some sick shit, man. Where the bag hangs and all? I’m not doing a sidecar for nobody.”

  “You made it sexual, not me.” I didn’t say it seemed he had protested too much.

  Joey looked at Tripp and Aronson. Neither spoke but may have shared my thought.

  “Let me explain something about tandem killers,” I said.

  “Tandem?”

  “Killers who work together in pairs.”

  “Oh.” The flush began to recede from his cheeks.

  “Jasper Hellman and his cousin Marv Tull were tandem killers.” I paused to let him catch up. “Tandem killers interact in a special way. Sometimes sexual, sometimes emotional, but it’s often a dominant-submissive relationship. Leopold and Loeb in the Twenties. The Lonely Hearts Killers in the Forties. The kids who shot up Columbine in the Nineties. The DC Snipers in 2002. It’s an old pattern. One leads, the other follows. Are you with me?”