He waved for Reynaldo to come along, and Amelia called out, "No fucking way, Frank. I'm not taking this case. We're not taking any new local cases."
"But it's your area of expertise, Amelia. You guys are equipped to handle this shit and we're not."
"One, we're not taking any cases that aren't slam-dunk home runs as per the US Attorney's Office, Frank. They want hundred percent conviction rates for everything we charge, no exceptions. The way this works is, you small agencies do the legwork until you have enough to file charges, and we swoop in and steal it from you if it looks like something we can win easily. You know that."
"But this is different, Amelia. We can't work this case."
She picked up the file and held it toward Frank, "Without the address of his digital wallet and the passkey to his files, we can't either."
Frank and Amelia were deadlocked, staring at each other without either of them moving or speaking. Reynaldo's head turned from one to the other and he said, "So that's it? We just give up?"
"Leave the case open until you get new information," Amelia said. "Maybe you'll get lucky."
"This man is abusing children!" Reynaldo said. "There's no way we can get lucky with that!"
"Then get me the address and passkey," she said. "Until then, I can't help you."
Reynaldo flung open the door to Amelia's office and headed for the elevators, muttering a long string of Spanish curses as he passed the secretary and shoved the office door open with both hands. Frank picked up the envelope from Amelia's desk and said, "Sorry about that."
"He's young," she said. "He'll grow out of it."
Frank looked at her, "Grow out of what?"
"Having hope."
Frank found Reynaldo sitting in the passenger seat of their car, arm propped up on the door, hand covering his mouth. He got in and wedged the file between the seats so it wouldn't lose any of its contents and said, "Well, that sucked."
Reynaldo did not respond, keeping his fingers pressed against his lips like he was trying to physically restrain himself from speaking.
Frank turned the car on and gently pulled out of the parking space, navigating the narrow turns of the parking garage as he followed the Exit signs. "I know you're upset, but Amelia is good police. Honest. She goes all over the world fighting this sort of thing. She probably has much bigger fish to fry than Freddie Phelps."
"Good for her," Reynaldo said bitterly. "But we don't. We have this, and now nothing is going to get done about it."
"That's how it goes sometimes, Rey-Rey. A case sits until we develop new information."
"What's the new information going to be, Frank? Some kid gets raped and that's when we finally decide to get off our asses and do something about it? Why do we have to wait until something terrible happens to someone before we give a damn?"
"Because that's how the system works, Reynaldo! We can't go around throwing people in jail just because we want to. We have to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable fucking doubt in court or it isn't worth a squirt of piss."
"Then we kill him," Reynaldo muttered.
"Yeah, okay. Good idea."
"We put a fucking bullet in his head because he is a sick dog."
Frank stopped the car and turned to look at the younger officer, who refused to turn away from the window. "Hey. Look at me. I'm serious. Look at me."
Reynaldo turned slowly toward him, "What?"
"No."
"Fine."
"Hey! I'm being serious. You understand me? No."
"What do you care, Frank?" Reynaldo said. "You didn't want to come down here anyway. You just want to walk away and not look back and leave it all up to someone else to deal with, right? Your big plan was to dump it on someone else and wash your hands of it. But instead, it will not go away and is still our problem."
"It's your problem," Frank said. "Not ours."
"You know something? You're right. So go fuck yourself." Reynaldo popped the car's door handle open and grabbed the case file, putting his foot on the ground before Frank could move the car. "I'll find my own way back. That's how it's going to be from now on anyway."
Reynaldo slammed the passenger side door of Frank's car shut so hard it echoed off the low concrete ceiling. There were cars lining up behind him waiting to exit. Frank jumped out of his car and held up his hand to shield the irritated honks of the cars waiting to leave. "Hey! Get back in the car, dumbass. We can talk about this."
"Go to hell, Frank," Reynaldo called out over his shoulder.
"Stop being a baby. I have one other option, I didn't want to use it but if it means that much to you−Honk at me one more motherfucking time and see what happens, asshole. If it means that much to you, I will swallow my pride and go talk to the one guy who can help us. Reynaldo?"
He watched Reynaldo escape through the stairwell door and vanish. Frank looked back at the person sitting in the car behind him, an old woman who could barely see over the top of the dashboard. She was talking on her cellphone with her eyes glued to Frank, no doubt giving his clothing description and the license plate of his car to 911. "Sorry," Frank said as he ducked back inside his car and did his best to get the hell out of there.
Dez Dolos tapped his pen against his desk nervously as he stared through his office window. He'd never spent this much time sitting in the office in the seven years he'd been assigned to the Philadelphia area. People stuck their head in his door and made jokes about him being some new guy they'd never seen before. He laughed at every one of them and made small talk, trying to get a read on what they were thinking as they spoke, searching their faces and body language for any clue of deception. Right then, it was his only way to try and divine what was happening. He pulled out his phone and looked at it. Still nothing from Ondrey Williams. Fuck.
His phone buzzed from the secretary's desk. "Agent Dolos? There's a Frank O'Ryan here to see you. He says it's important."
Dez felt something stiffen in his throat and his right knee began to bounce up and down instinctively. "Send him back," Dez croaked, hanging up the phone and grabbing for the bottle of water sitting on his desk. Holy shit, he thought. Here we go.
"Hey," Frank said, knocking lightly on the doorframe. "Long time, no see."
"I know!" Dez said, a little too excitedly. He waved for Frank to come into the office, but didn't get out of his chair. "How the hell are you?"
"Pretty good. How's business?"
"Busy as usual. You know how that goes." Dez was bent forward in his seat, both arms lying flat across his desk, his entire body an arrow aimed directly at Frank. "So what brings you down here?"
Frank looked over his shoulder at the open door and jerked his head at it. Dez said, "Sure, no problem," and Frank got up to close it shut before he sat down. "Uh oh," Dez said with a large smile. "This sounds serious. Am I in trouble?"
"Not that I know of," Frank said with a light chuckle. It was clear there was no real warmth between the two of them, and all of this was just empty gestures of congeniality. He took a deep breath and said, "You know I've never asked for this before, but we've got a kind of special case up my way. The kind of thing that we could use a little…extra help persuading someone with, you know what I mean?"
Dez kept his expression purposely blank. "A case?"
"Yeah. A child pornographer who works in town, and we need these codes from him before ICE will help us out. We have reached an absolute dead end, and you know I wouldn't ask this under any other circumstance."
"So…."
"So, I was thinking that maybe our friend could have a chat with him."
"Our friend?"
"Yeah."
"Which one of our friends, Frank?"
"The one with the big front teeth and large fluffy ears."
Dez looked at Frank's neck and chest, trying to see the bulge of any recording devices that might be strapped to him. Modern recording devices were the size of key fobs and could be dangled from a necklace, so there was no real way to know how Frank was re
cording him, but it didn't matter. The important thing was that Dez knew it. Dez started at Frank and said, "A bunny rabbit?"
"Yeah," Frank said slowly. "The one who lives in the warehouse."
Dez suddenly slapped the table and let out a manic laugh, clutching his sides and squealing until he could barely breathe. "Oh shit," he wheezed, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "God damn, you should see your face. Listen, if you need our help with something, it's no problem. We'll be glad to give you any assistance you require. I'll send my boys up there and we'll review your case file and put some surveillance on this asshole, muy pronto. If it's something the Task Force can take off your hands, you know we'll be glad to do it."
"But what about−"
"Listen, I've got to get going," Dez said. "I have to meet someone. Is it okay if I call you later on in the week to set up a time for us to swing by?"
Dez was already through the door and hurrying down the hall before Frank could answer. Frank turned around in his chair and watched Dez barrel through the exit toward the stairs, thinking, What the hell just happened?
The landing door slammed shut above him and Dez was halfway down the flight of stairs toward the parking garage before he whipped out his phone and called Skip. "You're not going to fucking believe this. Frank O'Ryan is the snitch. He just tried to get me on a wire talking about the Rabbit."
"You're shitting me!" Skip said. "Wasn't his dad the original?"
"It doesn't fucking matter now. We've gotta deal with him fast."
Skip paused long enough to weight that out in his mind. "Let's meet up and figure out our next move."
"My thoughts exactly," Dez said. He ended the call and stuffed his phone back in his pocket, stopping to look through the dirty parking garage window, scanning the lot for any cars backed into parking spaces or white guys wearing baseball hats slunk low in their seats, insistently ignoring him. In other words, a surveillance detail.
Chapter Nine
It was late afternoon and the sun squatted directly over their heads with no trees or buildings to provide cover. The freshly asphalted road reflected the light and conducted heat through the oily rock mash up into the soles of their boots. Several cops stood huddled under the lifted rear gate of a marked SUV, sweating through their electric green, reflective safety vests. They stared at the small box inside the SUV, hoping it didn't beep.
It did.
"Fifty-seven!" Corporal Donoschik hollered out triumphantly. He raced into the roadway and started flapping his arms up and down in wide circles, waving for the car coming down the hill to stop.
Please run him over, Reynaldo thought.
"You!" Donoschik shouted at the driver, his finger aimed through the air like he could zap them through the windshield. "Pull over!"
The driver, an older woman wearing her seatbelt slowly turned her steering wheel to the right to pull into the church parking lot where the police officers' vehicles were parked. "You!" Donoschik called out to Reynaldo, signaling him in the exact way he'd done to the offending drivers.
Reynaldo sighed and carried his metal ticket case over to the woman's driver's side window and said, "Good afternoon, ma'am. I'm Officer Francisco and we're doing a traffic safety detail today. Unfortunately you were clocked going over the posted speed limit of forty-five miles an hour."
"How fast was I going, Officer?" she said.
"Fifty-seven."
"Oh, my goodness," she said, covering her mouth. "I'm so sorry. I always try to be so careful, but coming down that big hill, I guess I went too fast. My son is going to kill me. He's a Philadelphia police Lieutenant."
Reynaldo turned and shot a look over his shoulder at Corporal Donoschik. The Corporal was standing at the side of the road, arms folded, waiting impatiently for more cars. "Hang on one second, ma'am," Reynaldo said. He walked over to Donoschik and said, "This lady is the mother of a police officer."
"No breaks," Donoschik said.
"But, how about a written warning?"
"No. Breaks."
Reynaldo lowered his head and walked back to the woman. She had her driver's license, registration card and insurance card waiting for him. She smiled when she handed him the cards and he hadn't even asked. Reynaldo took the cards and quickly jotted her information down on the ticket. The Corporal had issued each man fifteen pre-written tickets with the location and date and speed machine information already written on it. They were all under orders to not leave until all of their tickets were issued.
"Listen," Reynaldo said softly as he tore the woman's copy of the ticket off and handed it to her. "Tell your son that I cannot give warnings today, as much as I'd like to. If you look on the back, it explains how to request a hearing."
"A hearing for what?" she said. "I was speeding."
"I know, but what I'd like you to do is pay very careful attention to the part that says to plead not guilty and request a hearing."
"But I am guilty," she said.
Reynaldo sighed and leaned down into the window to point at the part that he wanted her to read, "A speeding ticket carries points and a fine. Your insurance will go up. Please just talk to your son and tell him that I said I am sorry, and that I showed you what this says right here. He will explain the rest to you."
The woman clearly didn't understand what he was trying to tell her as she took her copy of the ticket from him and said, "Okay, officer. Listen, you be safe standing out here in the sun like this. Do you want me to bring you some water? I can stop at the store and be back in five minutes."
"No, ma'am," Reynaldo said. "Just drive safe and remember what I said, all right?"
She waved to him and said good bye, and as she pulled back onto the street, he wrote down her license plate number and drew a star next to it to remind himself if he ever saw her again. He imagined that she wouldn't. He imagined that she'd be too embarrassed to tell her son and simply pay the ticket.
Donoschik's voice suddenly cracked like a teenage boy as he whooped, "Seventy-Eight!"
He leapt into the roadway, jumping up and down and waving his arms like a cheerleader or a double-dutch dancer, but the car's wheels locked up and it skidded to a stop in the road. Gray tiresmoke twirled into the air from the stretch of rubber along the virgin roadway, but even as Donoschik ran to yank the driver out of the door, it opened on its own and the driver leapt out, shouting, "Help! Help! There's a dead body!"
Donoschik seemed immune to the words as he grabbed the man by the arm and twisted, trying to force his face down onto the hood of his car, screaming, "You trying to run me over, you piece of shit?"
"No! I saw you all over here and ran to get help! There's a dead body down the street! I didn't even see you standing in the road. That's why I locked up my−ow, shit!−brakes!"
Reynaldo put his hands down on the hood of the car and said, "Where's the body?"
"Sitting in a car off to the side of the road. I pulled over to text my girlfriend and saw him there. He's blue."
"Let him up," Reynaldo said.
Donoschik scowled at him, still clutching the man's arm in a tight lock.
"Let him go so he can show me the body."
Donoschik pushed the man away and hiked up his bright leather belt, "You're still getting cites."
"What the hell's a cite?"
"Cites! One for speeding and one for reckless driving. I'm going to bury you under points, mister."
"No you're not," Reynaldo whispered. "Come on and show me where the body is. I'll get all his info at the scene and you can file your cites," Reynaldo said to the Corporal.
Donoschik looked at the man and then back at Reynaldo and said, "How many tickets do you have left?"
"Seven."
The Corporal looked past Reynaldo at the other men, still huddled under the canopy and said, "Who has less than seven tickets left?"
All of them raised their hand.
"Who wants to go deal with a dead body?" Reynaldo said.
All of the hands dropped.
> Reynaldo turned to Donoschik and said, "I know how to do this. There won't be any problems if you let me handle it."
"Fine," Donoschik said. "Just go take care of it and get back up here to finish up your detail."
Reynaldo scurried across the parking lot toward his car and jumped in, throwing his lights on to stop the cars coming toward the speed trap and leaving them on as he followed the man back down the road. He hoped it slowed everyone down and kept them slow enough to pass by Donoschik and his underlings unscathed.
The man stepped on his brakes and rolled down his window, pointing off the road at a small gravel driveway that led to nowhere. Reynaldo saw a red Audi with bright chrome wheels parked there, pulled in so it was facing the woods. The car looked familiar, but he couldn't place it. He walked around the car, reading and re-reading the license plate, knowing they were supposed to mean something to him, but not knowing what.
He approached the driver's side door slowly and reached for the door handle, only to see a young man inside, slumped over wearing a tank-top and orange pajama pants. A needle was sticking out of Paul Moses's inner left arm, dangling like a fishing rod held precariously by an inch of blued skin.
"You dumb son of a bitch," Reynaldo muttered.
Moses's body had purpled and stiffened and even un-stiffened in the time he'd been sitting there. It had long since released the gastric fluids and dirty brown water from its bowels. There were maggots swimming in Moses's open eyes, the shape and color of rice. Rice that fed on decay and eventually, Reynaldo knew, turned into flies.
He held his breath and opened the door, stepping back in case any bugs within fled the confines of the car. He walked around the car, opening each door, letting the cross-breeze carry the stench of death into the woods. The motorist was still sitting by his car on the road, afraid to approach and said, "Was I right? Is he dead?"
"Oh, he's dead," Reynaldo said.
"How long has he been there?"
"At least a day or two, if not more."
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