by Don Bruns
‘No. He was on the force for twenty-five years. His record was exemplary.’
She studied him for a moment. ‘Detective, Quentin, I’m certain you were given a rigorous background check when you joined the force.’
‘I was.’
‘A company went to the Internet,’ she said, ‘checked your profile. They found out that you had uncovered a drug ring in Detroit, they knew that your wife had been run down by a motorist, they understood your father was in law enforcement and they also saw that you had turned on your two brothers who were part of the drug cartel. Am I right? They found that one of your brothers was in jail and one was on the run.’
‘I assume so. What’s your point?’
She reached into a small clutch purse for her cell phone. Holding it up to him, she smiled.
‘Detective, twenty-five years ago, about the time they hired Officer Leroy, phones didn’t take pictures. Google wasn’t even a dream. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was probably in the first or second grade. Now today you are very aware that with this device, the phone I carry in my hand, I can run a check on anyone in the country in three or four minutes. Just give me any name. Am I right?’
Archer smiled and nodded. ‘Good point. Background checks twenty-five years ago—’
‘They were not what they are today. Not by a long shot. I wonder what we could find? You have hundreds of employees on staff who may never have had an updated background check.’
‘I’m not sure that we don’t update,’ he paused, ‘but damn. That’s a good point. A current check might pick up something they missed when Johnny Leroy joined the force.’
‘I think it’s worth looking into.’ She put the phone back into her black beaded purse. ‘There may be something you missed.’
‘Anything else?’ Archer seemed somewhat chagrined. It was obvious he hadn’t considered the check on Officer Leroy. Solange knew that the policeman’s tenure with the NOPD seemed to show a spotless record and for some reason Archer hadn’t considered that anything might be uncovered with a new check. Chances were that a new check would turn up nothing radical, but she felt he couldn’t leave any stone unturned.
Besides, she was certain Leroy had been involved in the death of someone. Of course she’d seen Archer on TV talking about a shooting in the line of duty. That wasn’t the killing she was worried about. She was convinced there was another killing and the secret of it was buried. In any case, she had no proof and felt she had no right to mention the accusation at this time. She wondered how she might suggest Leroy had been involved in another killing, maybe one that happened while he was investigating a crime?
‘I didn’t pick up any other thoughts, but you know I’ll call you if something comes to mind. Just out of curiosity …’ she hesitated, ‘was Officer Leroy ever involved in a shooting, other than the one you mentioned on the TV interview?’
‘One of the first things we looked at,’ Archer said. ‘The answer is no. A robbery suspect drew his weapon, and the officer shot him. The incident was well vetted and it was clearly an act of self-defense. Other than that, nothing.’
‘The suspect was killed, right?’
Archer nodded.
She looked back to the room where the body lay. ‘I think I saw that,’ she said. But she would have sworn the victim was innocent. Not an armed robber threatening a cop. ‘Again, I’ll call you if anything else comes to mind.’
‘I look forward to it,’ he said.
‘It was good to see you again,’ she smiled.
‘Solange, before you go, do you have any other feelings about the suspect who was shot in Bayou St John? Joseph Washington?’
She closed her eyes and took a cleansing breath. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t. I told you that I feel Officer Leroy and the Bayou St John shooting are related. I obviously don’t have reasons for all my thoughts. That’s all. I pray that no violence or bloodshed happens because of his death.’
‘I do too,’ Archer said, ‘but that’s one prayer that I don’t believe will be answered. I told you, we expect protests. I just don’t know at what level.’
‘Quentin.’ Her voice was almost a whisper.
‘Something else?’
‘He didn’t carry a gun.’
‘Joseph Washington? We didn’t find one,’ he said. ‘The officer who shot him was certain he had a weapon. If he carried a handgun, it wasn’t on the scene when our team arrived.’
She was starting to fall into a trance. An uncomfortable mental cloud. The trance was acceptable in the privacy of her quarters, behind the door and curtain. In a public situation, in front of a client, especially this client, it was not the time or place. She closed her eyes.
Solange shook her head, trying to dislodge the feeling and instead appearing to have a small seizure. She wished the uncontrollable sensation away. Please, not at this time. Not at this place. Her hands were clenched, her eyes squeezed shut as she shook.
‘He didn’t want to kill again,’ she whispered in a guttural, throaty sound. ‘Do you understand that?’
The tension suddenly evaporated. Her limbs were loose, her eyes opened and she saw Archer’s face, his eyes filled with concern, his mouth open.
‘Jesus, Solange, are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, Detective. It was a moment of …’
He stared at her and she had no answer.
‘A glass of water? Should I call an ambulance?’
‘No, please. I’ll be fine. It happens sometimes.’
‘You’re sure?’ He reached out and touched her shoulder and she shuddered.
‘I am. Please, it’s time that I leave. Possibly seeing the body …’
‘You mentioned a second death. This Joseph Washington killed someone before?’
‘Joseph Washington?’
‘You said he didn’t want to kill again.’
‘I don’t remember saying that.’
‘Solange? What’s going on? Please, if you know something …’
‘Nothing. I told you, I have no other feeling about the man who was killed. Somehow, his death and death of Officer Johnny Leroy are connected. Other than that, I can’t help.’
She turned and walked out the door. The blast of heat didn’t faze her. She wanted to go home. There were times when whatever gift had been given her didn’t feel like a gift at all. It was a curse, and there were moments when she gladly would give it up.
‘Baron Samedi, welcome this Johnny Leroy into the realm of the dead,’ she whispered. The skull-faced god of debauchery with his dark glasses and a penchant for rum and cigars was a spirit she seldom if ever communicated with. But he could welcome Officer Leroy into death and possibly give him the escape he begged for. As for the other shooting victim, this Joseph Washington, he hadn’t called out to her, and she simply wished him the best in whatever after-life he found himself.
She said a silent prayer that Detective Archer would find her discoveries helpful. That he would act on what she had offered. She felt certain that if he explored the three elements he would be much closer to solving the murder of Officer Johnny Leroy.
Escape, money and reflection.
Maybe the detective needed to reflect on how Leroy had accumu lated his money. Maybe the officer had wanted to escape from his own reflection. She would think on it, discuss it with Ma, to no avail, but in the meantime her brain was tired. Her head ached. She was emotionally exhausted and felt that her spirit, her inner core, needed a long, slow timeout.
The voodoo lady fastened the chinstrap on her black helmet and straddled her red-and-black Honda Forza. The ride, the wind, it might refresh her. But a glass of white wine sounded even better at the end of her trip.
TWELVE
New Orleans’s Fifteenth Ward contained Algiers, on the west bank of the Mississippi. Slaughterhouse Point, named so for the slaughterhouse that used to be a large industry there, and now named Algiers Point, sat directly across the river from the French Quarter.
Joseph sat on a bench by the river, sta
ring at the city. Pop had taught him a lot about the history of New Orleans, and he knew the community. He’d studied it, he’d been here.
Algiers understood violence, playing a large part in the Battle of New Orleans, in which Andrew Jackson decisively beat the British. That in itself should have given the name Slaughterhouse to the piece of land on the Mississippi. In April of 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, the Confederate army burned a shipyard so the Union couldn’t use the facility to launch boats. They set cotton bales on fire, broke into private warehouses and stole rice, bacon, sugar molasses and corn. What they couldn’t carry away, they dumped into the muddy river. Anything they could do to stop the Union army.
A mob of Confederate supporters broke into powder and gun factories on the spit of land and carried away rifles and ammunition. Algiers was well aware of mobs, protests and violence. For almost two centuries the community had played key roles in resistance, helping shape the history of Louisiana and the country as a whole.
To this day, violence erupted regularly, and crime ran rampant. Now, Algiers’s population consisted of 90 percent African Americans and a portion of the area had the lowest income in America. New Orleans cops, Fourth District police officers of all races, dreaded calls in Algiers. Armed robberies, shootings, battery, they were a daily occurrence. While there were some upper-scale neighborhoods in the community, most of the area consisted of downtrodden unemployed blacks. Mixed neighborhoods were not rare in New Orleans, but Algiers was an entity unto itself.
Pop had told him several stories about how Algiers got its name. The one he liked the best was that it was named by a soldier who came back from the capital of Algeria and saw similarities to that ruling city, this poverty-stricken community that was once again about to be besieged. An unarmed black man had been gunned down by a white cop. Close range. No sign of any weapon on or about the thief. The burning of warehouses, the stealing of staples like bacon, cotton, rice, corn and molasses, the robbery of guns and ammunition may have been more chaotic, damaging and violent, but the chance of violence tonight was serious enough. There were no records of the populace that was killed during those past riots, those violent protests. Tonight would be well documented. An entirely different story.
Joseph needed mass confusion, a crazy sense of unreality. Then he could have his final act of vengeance.
Twenty-four-hour news channels would monitor the situation. Satellite trucks and media vans had been pulling up all morning long. Major networks would have a field day with this story. News outlets lived for tragedy. Child-kidnapping stories, rape stories, serial killers and race riots. They licked their chops, salivating, knowing that ratings would soar through the roof if the populace took to the street in protest. And Joseph had studied these protests. He knew what kept them alive.
The angry, incensed, politically motivated moved in. Some drove, some walked. Some took public transportation … not much public transportation in Algiers. However, the protestors from the other side of the river could ride the ferry for two bucks. They would show up.
Curiosity, anger, social networking, they all worked to build this unrest. Then there was the second tier. The unemployed, the paid protesters, the ones who simply wanted to loot and steal: liquor, appliances, jewelry and paper towels. Whatever they could carry out of a store. Handkerchiefs over the bottom half of their faces when the riots started, they’d wait. Then, when the media and the cops got there, they’d break some windows, force some doors, then grab and run. Beer, computers, cigarettes, liquor, whatever was available. Few of them ever got caught, and even with a little tear gas it was worth the effort. These were the ones Joseph was counting on. He knew they’d be there.
And it built. Groups who didn’t know each other roamed the streets around Whitney and Newton. The numbers grew by the dozens every half hour, then by the hundreds. Wary of each other, wondering what motives the others might have.
There were sign makers frantically scribbling on cardboard and poster board the words Black Lives Matter. They huddled with Sharpies on curbs, writing phrases like Am I Next? and A Badge Is Not a License to Kill. And as if they were an organized militia, the protestors lined up to accept and carry the slogans, often fastened to a stick and held high.
We Will Not Be Silent. Police the Police. The slogans kept on coming. I’m the Future – Don’t Shoot. #WhitePrivilege. And of course, the signs were not the problem. Peaceful protests were common to a situation like this. The problem was the bottles of gasoline with a rag stuffed into the opening. A Molotov cocktail. The thugs carried these in the open, like they would a hurricane on Bourbon Street. The problem was the pistols shoved into their pockets, their waistbands. The problem was the crowbars, the buckets of rocks and bricks used to destroy cop cars and break merchants’s windows. The problem was there were thugs in every race. People who seemed to live for the violence, who relished in destroying whatever semblance of peace there appeared to be.
Algiers was tinder. A highly flammable material that could catch a spark and burst into flame, then become a roaring fire.
Yet all the signs, all the slogans, all the posturing meant nothing if the world at large never saw them. When slogans fell on deaf ears, when homemade bombs only caused fire rather than worldwide rage or applause, then what was the reason? The purpose? A case of liquor, a TV, a six-pack of beer? There were those who reveled in that, of course; but the movement, the outrage needed to be shared to be fueled. For those who wanted to shake up the world, they thanked God that the NOPD didn’t see it that way, didn’t see that the coverage was necessary to the purpose. The Louisiana National Guard showed up and the State Troopers and Sheriff’s Department were along for the ride. And camera crews by the dozens, maybe fifty or more, they picked up on every nuance. Every sign that had been made was photographed and broadcast around the world.
An industry had arisen, people made a living on setting up the protesters. Bodies were shipped in from surrounding communities, given directions and told how to behave. They would get thirty bucks plus a box lunch and transportation. Better than sitting in their over-mortgaged shack or trailer, worrying about payments and hoping they weren’t going to be foreclosed. It was never mentioned during this recruiting stage that they might be gassed. They might be roughed up. They might be shot. They might die. Protests elevated. Riots ensued. It was a dicey proposition, but the participants didn’t have much to lose. Not much except their lives.
Algiers was on the edge. Ripe for a takedown. Ready for disaster.
THIRTEEN
‘Used to take two and half months to complete the background check,’ Levy said. ‘Now, they’ve shaved off about twenty days.’
‘Still almost two months to vet a new hire.’
‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to find, Q. The guy was pretty much an open book during the time he was on the force. And even with a full court press our investigators only move so fast.’
Archer nodded. He knew full well how bureaucracy moved at a snail’s pace. Television shows found DNA, records and fingerprints at a record pace. They had only one hour to find the culprit. Real cases took much longer. And he didn’t have that luxury of time.
‘We can dig into this ourselves.’
‘We?’
‘Josh, I could use some help.’
They both knew the problem. Recommended staffing for the department was thirty-two homicide detectives for the department. At the moment, there were eighteen on the force. With one hundred thirty-six murders so far in the year, each detective was handling almost eight cases for the year against a suggested six. The number kept going up. This was truly a staff that was overworked and underpaid.
‘I’ve got a pretty full load, Quentin. But I want to catch this guy too. Where do we start?’
‘I want to get the killer before we lose another cop.’
‘Agreed.’
‘OK, let’s consider his first background check, twenty-five years ago. Let’s see if there’s information s
omeone overlooked. It could mean we put in some late hours, but I feel Solange is on to something.’
‘Escape, money and reflection. I hope you’re right, Q, because it sounds pretty strange to me.’
‘Hey, she’s helped us in the past and I see no reason not to follow her instincts now.’
The officer’s arrest records had been fairly easy to find and categor ize. The background information on Officer Leroy was not so easy to accumulate. Twenty-five years ago, very little information was digitized and due to a tremendous shortage of manpower, there was little time or desire to transfer NOPD paper files to digital files now. No one cared what had happened almost three decades ago.
‘We’re going to have to pick and choose, much like his arrest warrants, Q. We’ll never get anywhere if we look at every file. It will take forever.’
And there was a pile of files. Not everything, but enough to consume serious amounts of time.
‘Damn.’ Archer stared at the folders bursting with papers. ‘Let’s start with before he was a cop. Education, employment, friends, associates …’
The folders were clearly marked, stuffed with yellowing sheets of paper. Archer sorted them then handed EDUCATION to Levy. He grabbed one that said EMPLOYMENT.
‘Anything that jumps out, feel free to chime in.’
Sitting at a long conference table the two detectives silently read and flipped through pages.
‘Not a stellar student,’ Levy said. ‘Cs and Ds in high school. It would seem our officer didn’t exactly apply himself.’
‘Back then you had to have some college to be a cop, right? Even to apply.’ Archer looked up from his file. ‘So, he must have done well enough to get into a school.’
‘They’ve backed off that requirement recently,’ Levy nodded. ‘Tends to shrink the employment pool quite a bit.’ He read further. ‘Yeah, he has a year at a community college,’ Levy said. ‘Delgado Community College in Slidell. Didn’t really have a major, just some basic courses.’
‘His employment is a little spotty.’ Archer studied the page he was reading. ‘Part-time job for a pool company, a roofing firm, stocking a grocery and at twenty-one he got a job with a security company, night watchman at a manufacturing company. Pretty elementary stuff.’
