The Vigilantes boh-10

by W. E. B Griffin

  The big-boned, obese body made for a fairly tight fit in the body bag. It also made the bag more or less droop over the gurney’s tubular frame.

  “Principal Bazelon was a good and decent woman,” Javier said then. “I remember the year before she retired-it was my first year at Shaw Middle School. This woman was so strict, but also so kind.”

  Soo nodded, his face looking sympathetic.

  “I’ll tell you,” he went on, “she was a major influence on me back then. And so many others. She taught me a lot. ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’ That’s Shakespeare. She got me reading him.”

  He looked down at the body in the bag. “And now this?”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Iglesia said, then glanced around to see if anyone could be listening. He went on in a softer voice: “What I think is, she didn’t just die in her sleep, is what I think.” He paused. “No, I know she didn’t. Just look at her wrists and ankles. Bruised and swollen from something. Tied with something, some rope, something that’s been taken off. And that’s called tampering with evidence.” He paused again, then nodded as he added, “Mitchell will make it. He misses nothing.”

  The medical examiner, their boss, was Dr. Howard H. Mitchell, a very busy bald man with a dark sense of humor. He was usually found in a well-worn rumpled suit and tie, either performing an autopsy or dealing with the paperwork of a place that had to deal with an average of a murder a day, plus the questionable deaths, such as that of Mrs. Joelle Bazelon.

  Iglesia shook his head, then closed the top flap and began working the web straps over the bag that would secure the load to the gurney.

  That done, he and Soo grabbed the tubular handles at each end of the height-adjustable gurney and lifted, once again grunting under the weight. They raised the top of the gurney to about the level of their waists. They wanted it high enough to have better control while wheeling it, but not so high that the center of gravity could cause the gurney to become ungainly and top-heavy and dump onto its side.

  Kim Soo unlocked the rubber wheels, and he pushed as Javier Iglesia began pulling the gurney toward the open front door.

  As they went, Javier shook his head and quietly said, “I was there when they threw Principal Bazelon’s big retirement go-away thing. It was a big deal, it was. She was a big deal. And whatever happened to her, this just isn’t right. What I think is that girl of hers isn’t saying what really happened.”

  After Iglesia and Soo had first arrived at the house and were processing the scene before preparing to remove the deceased, Javier had overheard a good bit of what Sasha Bazelon had been telling the two blue shirts.

  Iglesia had been impressed with her-at eighteen, she was a year younger than his baby sister-and while she was just shy of hysterical, it was clear that on any other day, the slender, light-brown-skinned young woman would be absolutely beautiful.

  The five of them had all been in the living room, the two cops interviewing the girl while the techs did their work.

  Officer Geoffrey Pope, nineteen years old, was a rail-thin five-nine with closely cropped blond hair and a youthful face. Javier knew he had exactly one year on the Philadelphia Police Department.

  Corporal Charlene Crowe was a black, stout thirty-year-old with a friendly face and warm smile. She stood a head shorter than Sasha, and she had to look up at the girl while asking questions. The shoulder patches of Crowe’s blue uniform shirt had two blue chevrons outlined in silver.

  In fits and starts, interspersed with crying jags, Sasha had told Corporal Crowe, “I came home late last night from my friend’s house down the street. Grammy was sound asleep on the couch, snoring. So I quietly went to my room. When I came downstairs this morning, she was still there. But no longer breathing. When I checked for a pulse, her body felt cold and hard.”

  And then came the waterworks.

  And then she’d basically repeated what she’d said.

  And then came the waterworks again.

  Javier found it curious that Sasha almost never looked Corporal Crowe in the eyes, and when she did it was for only a split second-then she’d bury her face in her hands and sob.

  It wasn’t that he felt the tears were not authentic.

  The girl was clearly in deep emotional distress, and damn near inconsolable.

  She’s shaking to her core, she’s crying so much.

  But… there’s something that’s just not right, something that’s missing, not being said.

  Yet when asked if anything at all suspicious had happened in the last days, weeks, even months, she’d said there’d been nothing.

  She said, “Grammy got sick a lot, mostly from her diabetes. And her weight. I guess… I guess her heart just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Kim Soo and Javier Iglesia rolled the gurney out the front door and the wooden boards of the porch creaked under all the weight. The two uniforms talking with Sasha Bazelon looked over their shoulders and made eye contact with the medical examiner techs.

  Sasha looked up from her hands, saw the packed body bag strapped to the gurney, and let out a wail.

  “Officer Pope,” Javier Iglesia said, “when you get a moment?”

  Javier dipped his head once sideways, in the direction of the white Ford panel van.

  Pope nodded.

  Soo and Iglesia wheeled the gurney past the small crowd, trying to remain professional and not make eye contact. But then a tiny, ancient-looking black lady-Javier thought she easily could be in her nineties-held her Bible up to her forehead and cried, “Go with God, sweet Joelle. Rest in peace. Praise be the Lord!”

  Javier saw that she was clearly upset, but unlike the other younger women had her crying under control.

  A strong and brave lady, Iglesia thought as they made eye contact, and with sad eyes and thin pensive lips, he nodded. Far braver than I.

  “Amen,” he said softly to her.

  As Kim swung open the two rear doors of the white Ford panel van, Javier said, “You know, this and South Philly have been my home all my life. And it’s all changing. It’s all slowly going to shit.”

  “Mine, too. The whole city is,” Kim replied. “So, what’s your point?”

  “My point is, good people are getting hurt. And someone needs to step up, is my point. I mean, I know we did pot and stuff at South Philly High. But now dealers are selling to middle schoolers, and not just pot, but bad stuff like candy smack.”

  “Candy smack?”

  “Yeah. I mean black tar heroin, is what I mean. Cheap deadly shit from Mexico, mixed with sugar. And other junk. And then the kids get hooked, then need money to go score more, so then they go rob some old lady, maybe tie her up and kill her. That’s what I mean, man!”

  Kim Soo looked wide-eyed at Javier Iglesia.

  “You don’t know that’s what happened to her,” Soo said, glancing at the body bag.

  Iglesia glanced up at the row house porch, then turned and stared Soo in the eyes and said, “I know two things. One, that girl knows something that she isn’t telling about Principal Bazelon. And two, I’m not going to sit around while my neighborhood goes to hell.”

  He gazed down the block. Across the street, three houses down, he noticed that another group had gathered. Five boys. They were sitting on a short brick wall and watching the activity at the Bazelon house. They looked to be teenagers, a couple maybe a little older, and in their baggy jeans, oversize gangster jackets, and hoodie sweatshirts, they did not appear to be on their way to church.

  The only thing they worship is trouble.

  “See these punks?” Iglesia said as he nodded at the group. “I guarantee you they’re up to no good. Ten bucks says they’re using, five says selling. And who knows whatever the hell else.”

  Kim Soo turned to look, then faced Iglesia and said, “Aw, hell, Javier. You don’t know that. A lot of kids do that gangsta-from-the-’hood look. We used to hang out in high school wearing tough looks, too.”

  “
Uh-uh,” Iglesia said, shaking his head. “It’s different now, is what it is.”

  Soo shrugged his shoulders.

  After a moment, Iglesia added, “You see any of the speech that Ben Franklin rich guy gave last night on the news? While Jimmy’s team was at the Old City scene of the first two pop-and-drops?”

  “Pop-and-drops?”

  “Yeah, that’s what a sergeant I know in Homicide says they’re calling them. There was five to start. Now there’s eight. And they’re all stacked up in the meat locker, waiting for Mitchell and his buzz saw. The Homicide sergeant came by the office one day and took a look at them.”

  “Yeah, I saw that eye-for-an-eye guy’s speech right before I hit the sack. He’s paying ten grand for anyone bagging a bad guy-‘evildoers,’ he called them!”

  “Yeah!” Javier Iglesia said, his face lighting up.

  Soo realized that Javier was quickly getting his talkativeness back.

  Javier went on: “Now, that’s what I’m talking about! I mean, someone has finally had enough of the city going to hell and they’re stepping up to help fix it, is what I mean. Ten large per ‘evildoer’ is some seriously high stepping up.”

  He paused and looked down at the body bag.

  “Too damn bad it’s too late for Principal Bazelon.”

  Javier then softly repeated, “Rest in peace. Praise be the Lord.”

  He shoved the gurney, causing its framework to collapse as it rolled up and inside the rear of the van. Then he gently, respectfully, closed the left door, then the right one.

  Police Officer Geoffrey Pope was standing on the curb, behind where the right door had been open, making Javier wonder how long he’d been there and how much he’d heard.

  “Hey, Geoff,” Javier said to him. “You standing there long?”

  “Long enough to hear the news flash that the city’s going to hell. And your short prayer for the deceased.” He paused, then added, “You don’t look too good, Javier.”

  “I’m-”

  He stopped as he glanced at the small crowd on the sidewalk. A few were watching the conversation between the cop and the tech with rapt interest.

  “Step around here,” Javier said, walking around to the far side of the van to block the view of the curious.

  Javier pulled out his wallet and from it extracted a business card. He held it out to Officer Pope.

  “Here’s my card, Geoff. It’s got my cell phone number on it. I live eight blocks away, the other side of Warrington, over where the middle school is.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And if there is anything I can do to help get this girl to talk, as a citizen, as a concerned neighbor, whatever, you let me know.”

  “I’m not sure I should share anything-”

  “Who the hell am I going to tell anything?”

  Pope held up his hands chest high, palms out. “Hold up, Javier. I’m just-”

  “Look, Geoff. My baby sister is her age, and I know when she’s holding something back. And I’m telling you, that poor girl is holding something back.”

  “You don’t think she did it, do you? What’d be her motive?”

  “Maybe she gets the house?”

  “That banshee cry of hers is deep. It’s not contrived.”

  “Whatever it is, she’s lying.”

  Pope shrugged.

  Javier said, “I mean, I don’t think it’s a malicious lie, I don’t. But there’s something not being said.”

  “There always is, Javier. Welcome to police work.”

  W. E. B. Griffin

  The Vigilantes

  V

  [ONE]

  2620 Wilder Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 9:02 A.M.

  Will Curtis drove the rented white Ford Freestar minivan up onto the cracked South Philly sidewalk, braking to a stop in front of the tiny, run-down, two-story row house.

  He studied it and thought, Hope this sonofabitch is in there.

  I can’t believe that last sonofabitch’s address was so old the house was completely gone, burned to the damn ground.

  Don’t want two dead ends to start my day.

  Curtis wore his Federal Express uniform, complete with the grease-smeared FedEx cap. The driver and front passenger doors of the minivan each had a three-foot-square polymer sign displaying the red-and-blue FedEx logotype and the words HOME DELIVERY. He knew his makeshift package delivery van wouldn’t pass muster with anyone back at the distribution warehouse, but so far it had looked like the real deal to everyone else.

  Curtis got out from behind the steering wheel and glanced around the neighborhood.

  It wasn’t that early in the morning, but the street was quiet. There were only the sounds of dogs yapping down the block and, not too far off in the distance, the horn blare from a SEPTA light-rail train.

  He saw a skinny, mangy gray cat across the street. It was eating Halloween candies that had been dropped and squashed on the sidewalk.

  Probably stolen from some poor kid.

  But who’d go door to door for candy in this dump of a place?

  For drugs, sure. Which is why it’s quiet now.

  Damn lowlifes up all night chasing ass and doing dope.

  But catching them now all good and sleepy will be some sort of justice.

  He reached back inside the door of the minivan. There was a stack of He reached back inside the door of the minivan. There was a stack of six thin white paperboard envelopes on the dashboard, and he pulled the top one off the stack. Each of the envelopes bore the distinctive FedEx logotype, as well as a clear plastic pouch holding a bill of lading.

  Stepping carefully, Curtis carried the envelope toward the front door of the row house. Parts of the crumbling sidewalk were broken down to bare dirt, and there were knee-high dead weeds in the cracks.

  The house itself, built of masonry blocks with a front facade of red brick, was also in really bad shape. There were several holes in the wall where bricks were completely missing. The house hadn’t been painted in far too many years, leaving bare wood that had rotted in places. Racks of rusty burglar bars covered the solid metal front door and the four doublewindows-two upstairs and two at street level-and the first-floor windows were fitted with poorly cut pieces of weather-warped plywood.

  To the right of the concrete steps, on the sidewalk and up against the foot of the house, Curtis saw five or six black trash bags. They were packed full, piled high, one on the bottom with a big torn hole. They looked to have been there for some time, easily days if not weeks.

  Curtis went up the flight of four concrete steps leading to the battered front door. He saw out of the corner of his eye what at first he thought were two black cats. They’d been along the wall behind the trash bags. Then they’d bolted away, running behind some weeds in front of the small wood-framed window of the basement.

  Those aren’t cats. They’re goddamn rats!

  He now noticed that the basement window was open, pulled inward from the top. The rats had disappeared into it.

  Curtis shook his head in disgust.

  As he reached the bar-covered metal door, a breeze blew past, bringing with it a vile stench. He gagged.

  He looked at the garbage bags.

  Jesus! Whatever it is has to be in there.

  It’s worse than raw chicken-or maybe dead rats-that’s gone bad.

  He looked to the window where the rodents had run inside.

  Or… could it be coming from the basement?

  What a shithole!

  He pulled back his sleeve, testing the air. The breeze had stopped and the stench had subsided.

  For now.

  I need to see who’s home, then get the hell out of here…

  There was no doorbell-just a crude little hole where it had once been mounted-so he balled his fist, reached between the bars, and pounded on the metal door.

  As he waited for some kind of life to wake up inside-other than the vile vermin-he glanced at the FedEx envelope in his hand.

 
Its bill of lading had a return field that read:

  United States Department of the Treasury 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500

  Will grinned. He knew that was the address of the White House, and had listed it as an inside joke. He had no idea where the hell the U.S. Treasury had its main office-and didn’t give a damn, because he knew the “recipient” wouldn’t know, either.

  The field for “Recipient” read:

  Kendrik Mays 2620 Wilder Street Philadelphia, PA 19147

  Also on the bill of lading was a bold black X in the box beside the line that stated: GOVERNMENT-ISSUED ID amp; PERSONAL SIGNATURE OF RECIPIENT REQUIRED FOR DELIVERY.

  After knocking again and waiting another few minutes, he’d yet to hear anything moving inside the house.

  Dammit! Not even another rat.

  Another dead end.

  Move this one to the bottom of the stack with the other dead end.

  Maybe try again later. At least there’s a house at this address.

  Just as he turned to go down the steps to the minivan, he saw movement in the left downstairs window, where he noticed a knothole in the warped wood.

  So you use that as a peephole, eh?

  Nervously, he readjusted the. 45-caliber Glock that he had stuck under the waistband of his pants, right behind the buckle of his heavy leather belt.

  This morning’s work wasn’t wasted after all…

  Curtis turned back to the door.

  At five o’clock that morning, Will Curtis had awakened and gone downstairs to the kitchen to make his coffee, just as he’d done every day for as long as he could remember, easily twenty years.

  All the while careful not to wake up his wife.

  Not even a week after Wendy had been attacked, Linda had moved into her old bedroom. It was on the back side of the row house’s first floor. It had not exactly been left as a shrine after Wendy had moved out and gotten her first apartment-if only because Wendy had needed a lot of the furniture and other items to kick-start her new independence-but it still had a lot of her personal items from growing up, things like the many trophies she had won playing soccer in junior and senior high school. And the walls were practically covered solid with framed and pushpinned photographs of Wendy and her countless gal pals, from birthday parties to summer trips at the Jersey shore, all from various points of her teen years.