Certain Justice

by Dennis Carstens

Jefferson looked at his watch then covered his mouth with the palm of his hand. He stood in the street staring at nothing but obviously in thought for a moment.

  “Officer,” he said to a uniform he didn’t know who was watching the street.

  “Yes, sir,” the man responded.

  “Keep an eye on my car. I’ll be back in a while for it,” Jefferson said as he started walking.

  Exactly fifty-six minutes later he rapped on the door of the van with Natalie Musgrove sitting inside. Without waiting for a response, Jefferson slid the door open and found Musgrove with her handgun at her side.

  “Jesus Christ, Sarge, I about jumped a foot.”

  “Sorry, Natalie,” he said. “What time did you knock on his door?”

  “12:17,” she replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I logged it.”

  “Okay, good. I need you to run me back to the crime scene and my car.”

  “You sure it’s…”

  “Yeah, he’s not going anywhere else tonight.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Owen Jefferson parked his department issued Chevy sedan in an open spot on Third Avenue alongside the Old City Hall building. It was barely past 6:00 A.M. and the downtown traffic was still very light.

  Jefferson got back to bed shortly before 3:00 A.M. and had dozed off and on for a couple of hours. Every time he closed his eyes the black, dead eyes of Jimmy Oliver were staring at him. This one bothered him more than all of the others. He knew why, too. He should have seen this coming. He should have done something, anything to at least warn Oliver if not give him more protection.

  “Don’t take it out on Marcie,” he quietly said to himself as he opened the car door and got out.

  Twenty minutes after he arrived at the conference room they were using Marcie Sterling came in.

  “Why didn’t you call me last night?” she said without speaking a greeting.

  “Good morning, Marcie,” Jefferson.

  “I thought we were working together on this,” she continued. Marcie was standing at the front of the table, an annoyed look on her face.

  “I thought about it,” Jefferson sighed, “but decided not to. It was after midnight and I saw no reason to drag you out of bed. There was nothing you could do.”

  “Oh, you mean you were being considerate,” Marcie said almost apologetically.

  “Yes, I was,” Jefferson said realizing he had just talked himself out of trouble. “Sit down and we’ll go over it,” he continued while Marcie hung up her coat.

  When he finished, Marcie said, “So, Parlow was missing again.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “I’m beginning to lean toward him. We got nothing on anybody else and he’s the least alibied one of the three of them.”

  “You didn’t let me finish. We found Parlow shacked up with a woman friend. She swears he was with her from ten o’clock until we found him. But could’ve been Traynor,” Jefferson said referring to the walk he had taken from the crime scene to Howie’s building.

  “Yeah, possible,” Marcie agreed. “But it just doesn’t seem likely. How did he get out again without being seen? We’ve had his ass covered and…”

  “I know,” a dejected Jefferson said.

  Marcie sat back, furrowed her brow and stared at her partner for a moment then said, “You want it to be Traynor. Why?”

  Jefferson thought over her statement then said, “I guess I do. I’m not sure why. Probably because it makes the most sense. Who else would have a motive to go after Jimmy Oliver?” He paused for another ten seconds or so then continued. “I’m just not sure I buy his ‘I found Jesus’ act. You had to know him from the old days. I have a report to write.”

  At 7:30 Selena Kane came into the room carrying a cup of coffee. She took the seat at the head of the table, looked at Jefferson and said, “Tell me.”

  While verbally giving her the report of Jimmy Oliver’s murder, Jefferson finished typing his official one. He hit the print button on his laptop and the printer began spewing out several copies.

  Before he could finish giving Kane his report, the department phone rang and Marcie answered it. She listened for several seconds then said, “I’ll tell him, just a minute. It’s the M.E., Marston. They found three more hairs and…”

  Before she could finish Jefferson grabbed his extension and said, “What do we have?”

  While Jefferson listened to the M.E., Marcie told Selena Kane what Marston had told her. They found three hairs on Jimmy Oliver that were not his and examined them. They appeared to be an exact match to the one found on victim number six, Cara Meyers.

  “We’ll be right there. Give us ten minutes. We’ll run them over to St. Paul ourselves,” Jefferson said then hung up the phone.

  “Call St. Paul, the BCA. Give them a heads up what we have and we’re on our way,” Jefferson said to Selena Kane. “Let’s go,” he said to Marcie who was already up and holding the conference room door open.

  While the two of them were hurrying down the hall leading to Jefferson’s car, his cell phone went off. He checked the caller I.D. and answered it.

  “I heard about last night,” Tony Carvelli said. “Should we go?”

  “Um yeah, that will be fine,” Jefferson cryptically answered not wanting Marcie to know what the call was about.

  “What was that?” Marcie asked.

  “Personal. Nothing to do with the case,” Jefferson said after ending the call.

  The two of them walked a few more steps while Marcie continued to look at him and Jefferson obviously ignored her. “Bullshit,” she said.

  “Leave it alone,” he answered her. “Trust me this one time.”

  Tony Carvelli and Maddy Rivers were parked in front of the apartment building next to Howie Traynor’s. Maddy was dressed in a mild disguise. She wore dark blue slacks, a lighter blue blouse and a somewhat floppy blue wool hat. She was wearing stylish black-framed glasses and carried a leather satchel briefcase. Her long hair was tucked under the hat and anyone who saw her would think she was a businesswoman making a call.

  “Six minutes, no more,” Tony reminded her. “Even that’s pushing it. We should keep it to three minutes.”

  “I’ll be okay, Daddy,” Maddy said mocking his concern. “You just keep an eye out and stay in touch,” she continued referring to their comm. system.

  Maddy was wearing a small ear piece that she would receive calls on from Tony and allow her to transmit to him. They had also taken the precaution to drive by St. Andrews to be sure Howie and his cop surveillance were both there.

  Maddy held two small metal instruments in her right hand and the briefcase in her left, as she approached the door to the apartment building. With her experience and training she believed she could get the lock open in under thirty seconds. But barely two steps from it the door opened and an elderly tenant came out.

  “Oh, hello,” the woman said to Maddy, a little startled to find her at the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Maddy replied with a friendly smile, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Oh, it’s all right, dear. You go on in,” the woman said as she held the door open for Maddy.

  “Why, thank you and you have a nice day,” Maddy said as she entered the building.

  Barely ten seconds later she was on the building’s third floor kneeling on one knee at Howie’s door. Using her lock picks she had the door open and was inside n under twenty seconds.

  “I’m in,” she quietly said to Tony.

  “The clock’s ticking, get moving,” he answered her.

  Before arriving at the apartment, the two of them had gone over how Maddy should conduct her search. They had come up with a list of where to begin and how much time to spend in each room.

  “I’m in the kitchen,” Maddy said for Tony’s benefit.

  She quickly but not carelessly began going through all of the drawers and cupboards. Wearing surgical gloves, she pulled the drawers out and went through each and even
looked under them. Using a small penlight she checked behind the stove and refrigerator looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  “Time’s up, move on,” she heard Tony say.

  “Heading for the living room.”

  Maddy smoothly repeated the same process in the living room and finished seconds before Tony told her to. She did the same thing in the bathroom and so far, found nothing. This wasn’t a surprise since the two of them had not expected Traynor to be that careless.

  Maddy worked her way through the bedroom with Tony giving her a running reminder on the time. She searched the dresser, the bed and opened the bedroom closet and began shining the light around thinking this might be how Traynor was getting out somehow.

  “Oh, shit,” she heard Tony say. “Traynor just pulled up in front of the building. Get your ass out of there!”

  Not one to panic, Maddy closed the closet door, looked around the bedroom to make sure it appeared in order then started toward the door.

  “Jesus Christ, he’s running toward the front door. Are you out?”

  “Almost,” Maddy answered him. She took a quick look around the living room then, satisfied, grabbed the satchel she had placed by the door and stepped into the hall. As she did a short stab of fear hit her when she heard Traynor’s footsteps pounding up the front stairs.

  Maddy started walking quickly down the hall to the back stairway but realized she wouldn’t make it. Halfway there she came to a door on her right without an apartment number on it. She tried the handle and it opened. Maddy looked into the dark room, realized it was a janitor’s closet then stepped into it and quietly closed the door behind her seconds before Howie reached the top step.

  She listened and could hear Howie unlocking his apartment door then closing it when he went in. All the while this was taking place, she had Tony Carvelli barking in her ear. Satisfied that Howie would not hear her, she finally answered Tony and told him where she was.

  Less than a minute after entering his apartment, Maddy heard him come out and then heard his feet thumping down the stairs. While she listened, she felt along the wall by the door for a light switch. She found it and switched on the light.

  “He’s coming out, I think,” Maddy told Tony. “Let me know.”

  A few seconds later she heard Carvelli confirm that Traynor was out and headed back to his car. He was carrying something with him that he did not have when he went in.

  “Must’ve forgotten something when he went to work,” Carvelli said. “Give it a couple minutes then…”

  “Wait, I found something,” Maddy responded.

  She had noticed what looked like a trap door with a handle on it in the ceiling. Maddy reached up for the handle and was just tall enough to grab it. She pulled down on it and when it opened several steps of a stairway opened up and unfolded.

  “What the hell are you doing?” an anxious Carvelli asked.

  “I think I found a stairway to the roof. I’ll go up and check it out,” she said as she started up the stairs.

  When she reached the top there was another small trap door. She pushed it open and sunlight came streaming in causing her to blink several times.

  “It’s the roof,” she said. “I’m going to check it out.”

  Maddy went through the trap door and onto the roof. It was flat and covered with asphalt and gravel. While she walked around she gave Carvelli a running account of what she observed. She stood along the three foot wall that surrounded it and looked out over the neighborhood. The apartment building next door was eleven or twelve feet away and she wondered if Howie could jump it.

  “Time’s up,” Carvelli said while she stared at the gap between the buildings. “Get out of there.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she replied. It was when she turned to go back to the stairs she noticed a small pile of loose lumber. “Hey, there’s something here,” she said to Tony while moving a few of the boards. “It looks like there is a plank of some kind nailed together. It’s a pair of two by sixes put together and it looks long enough to reach the other building.

  “Can you check it?”

  Maddy tried to lift but could barely pick it up. “No,” she said. “It’s too heavy. I can lift it but not carry it over there. But I’ll bet Howie could.”

  “Okay. Let’s check with Jefferson and tell him what we found. Get out, now.”

  An hour later, Owen Jefferson entered the Lakeview Tavern in south Minneapolis. It was still mid-afternoon and it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the dimly lit bar. The booths were along the side to his left opposite the bar and he noticed Carvelli wave to him from one of them.

  “Hey, Owen,” Maddy said as Jefferson sat down next to her.

  Jefferson greeted the two of them then said, “Okay, what did you find.”

  Carvelli let Madeline tell the detective what she did, admitting to at least one felony, and what she found. Before she could finish the bartender appeared and chatted with Tony and Jefferson. He brought the three of them soft drinks and when he left Madeline finished her story.

  “What do you think?” Owen asked her. “Could he get up on the roof and get to the next building and get by our guys?”

  “Yeah, it’s possible,” Maddy said. “Those two by six planks I found are probably strong enough to hold him. But they’re pretty heavy. I could lift them but no way could I carry them to the edge of the building and lay them across.”

  “He could,” Tony said. “He was a strong guy and in prison there’s not much else to do but work out.”

  “And he still does, at least four or five times a week,” Jefferson added.

  “Then he has to walk across them three stories up to the next building,” Maddy said. “Not too many people could do that.”

  “He could, “Tony said again. “He’s a burglar and a damn good one. I never met one that didn’t have nerves of steel and Howie was one of the best.”

  “What about Parlow? Did he have an alibi?” Tony asked Jefferson.

  “Yes,” Jefferson admitted. “At least one we can’t crack for now. We’re still looking at him and the other guy, Forsberg.”

  “Now what?” Maddy asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Jefferson said. “If the hair samples we took for testing come back as a match to Traynor, we should have enough for an arrest and a search warrant, especially with his history with Jimmy Oliver. We’ll have the test results within a day or two, probably tomorrow. Then I’ll go help with the search and find the ladder leading up to the roof.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Marcie Sterling would never admit it but she was feeling absolutely euphoric. Someone had leaked it to the media that an arrest was being made in the Crown of Thornes killer case. Marcie was in the lead followed by two male detectives and a male and female uniform cop with a handcuffed Howie Traynor in the middle. Marcie was wearing her best “I’m in charge” look as she marched down the crowded hallway toward the detective’s room. A small mob of both print and broadcast journalists jammed the hallway and Marcie charged directly through them. All the while the bright lights lit up the scene, the cameras recorded her and the reporters shouted the questions.

  “I am innocent. I’m a patsy. I haven’t done anything,” was repeated over and over by Traynor.

  Gabriella Shriqui squeezed through the crowd and fell into step beside Marcie. Gabriella asked several questions of her as they made their way down the hall, all of which were answered with a stern, “No comment”.

  The entire scene would have been laughably ridiculous except for how serious the underlying crimes were. The best part, the one that would be played on air over and over and go national occurred as Marcie opened the squad room door.

  One of the male detectives, tired of Traynor proclaiming his innocence, grabbed Howie by the arm and snarled, “Shut the fuck up you pond scum asshole.”

  A week long suspension was in his immediate future. It would also teach him to control himself when the cameras were rolling.

  The DNA
results had come back from St. Paul as a positive match. They were exactly the same as the single hair found on Cara Meyers and a ninety-nine plus percent match to Howie Traynor.

  This time, Steve Gondeck had better luck with the signing judge, a different one than the previous judge. An arrest and search warrant had been quickly issued and the MPD needed no motivation to move quickly.

  Traynor had been arrested outside of his apartment building when he arrived home from work. Jefferson had intentionally waited until then not wanting to go into a church again. He also didn’t want a nosy priest interfering right away.

  A very cooperative Howie Traynor was read his rights and acknowledged he understood them. He was shown and given a copy of both the arrest warrant and search warrant. The only comment he made was to politely say he wanted a lawyer. Marcie and her crew of cops then put him in a squad car and drove him downtown.

  A half hour later, while watching the forensics team go through Howie’s apartment, Jefferson decided he had waited long enough. It was time for him to “discover” the janitor’s closet with the stairs to the roof.

  He casually left Howie’s apartment and strolled down the hallway to the janitor’s closet. A minute later he was back getting one of the forensic team members to follow him up to the roof.

  “What are we looking for?” the man asked.

  “Not sure,” Jefferson said. “Something that might explain how he managed to get out and slip past our surveillance.”

  In less than two minutes they found the twelve foot planks that had been nailed together. Whoever had done so had nailed four two by four boards crosswise on the underside of the longer boards. These were obviously to hold the large boards together. The two of them carried the plank to the edge of the building. They laid it across the space to the next building and it made a perfect walkway between the buildings.

  “That doesn’t explain how he got out, Owen.”

  “Yeah, it does. If he got over to the building next door, he could go out the back door. See those lilac bushes in back along the alley?” Jefferson continued pointing at the thick, leafy bushes behind the next building. “Our guys wouldn’t have seen him sneak out that way.”