(2012) Officer Jones

by Derek Ciccone

  I drove the minivan up to Samerauk Bridge and parked. I removed my suit jacket, and searched the vehicle. I found nothing useful, except a pair of football cleats. Mixing the cleats with an expensive suit was admittedly an outfit that J-News wouldn’t be caught dead in, but all JP cared about was making his way to Gwen. Without a flashlight, I descended the sharp, rocky incline.

  Gwen was attempting to balance herself—her legs straddled on two adjacent rocks at the river’s edge. As I’d suspected, she had changed into a sweater and blue jeans with hiking boots. When I got close enough for her to hear the rhythmic tapping of my cane on the rocks, she turned with fright.

  “So are you trying to cover the tracks of your boyfriend?” I went on the offensive.

  Her look turned annoyed. “You scared me, JP. What do you think you’re doing here?”

  “I might ask you the same. Except I know what you’re doing.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Working with your boyfriend to cover up his crime. You might as well come clean—I’ll get to the bottom of it sooner or later. And if I was a betting man, I’d put my money on sooner.”

  Gwen laughed, which didn’t seem to fit the context of our conversation. But I was too busy noticing how beautiful she looked with the moonlight shining off her perfect cheekbones, to contemplate it.

  “With the way you’re going about it, JP, it looks to me like you might want to hold off on placing that bet. I’m pretty sure whatever answers you’re looking for, I’ve already found them. So don’t worry your pretty little head over it.”

  A brief silence filled the night, except for the sounds of the rushing river in the background. Despite my bravado, I was no less confused about her purpose than when I arrived. But suddenly I had a theory—one that made me smile. “Are you investigating your own boyfriend?

  She shook her head in disgust. “It’s hard to find answers, JP, when you don’t even know what the question is.”

  “Why don’t you fill me in.”

  “The most important question is: what were you thinking when you put that outfit together? Was Brooks Brothers having a sale on athletic cleats?”

  “Maybe I should give your boyfriend a call so we can sort this out. I hear he likes to hang out by the bridge at night.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend!” she exclaimed, then caught herself.

  If my relief happened in a forest without anyone around to hear it, would I still be relieved? The answer was, oh yeah.

  “So you’re pretending to date this guy to get a story, Miss Ethics and Morals?” I asked with a sheepish grin. I couldn’t help it.

  “Shouldn’t you be at your brother’s funeral?”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Leaving is one thing you’ll never need help with, JP. The only thing I’m trying to do is investigate a possible crime.”

  “I already took care of that—Noah didn’t kill himself.”

  “Tossing a hose over a bridge isn’t research, it’s a childish prank.”

  “What do you know about this guy, Gwen?”

  She continued to sift through rocks. “Did I just hear the great JP Warner actually ask little ole me for information?”

  I moved closer, struggling to balance the plastic cleats on the rocks. Miraculously, I arrived safely at the river’s edge and sat next to her on an adjoining rock. When I took a closer look, I saw the vulnerable girl from our younger days.

  After a moment of awkward silence, she asked, “Have you ever heard of Casey Leeds?”

  Chapter 41

  “About a year and a half ago, a rash of suspicious fires hit Rockfield. And what really raised people’s eyebrows, was that a local fireman named Casey Leeds was showing up before anyone to save the day,” Gwen began.

  “Hero syndrome?”

  “That’s what the police thought, so they had Leeds tailed.”

  “Let me guess, the cop who tailed him was none other than Kyle Jones.”

  Gwen nodded. “And he must have been willing to work holidays, because Jones called in on the Fourth of July, claiming that he’d witnessed Leeds set an old farm ablaze on the north side of town. Sure enough, Leeds was the first one to arrive at the scene, seemingly to save the day. Within minutes, half the Rockfield police force arrived.”

  “I’m presuming this didn’t turn out good for Casey.”

  “He’d taken Jones hostage with a gun that he’d somehow wrestled away from a trained police officer. Casey was ordered to freeze and drop the weapon. He refused, and frantically yelled out that a mysterious caller had been informing him about the fires. And that he was the only one who could save the children inside. He sounded just like a man holding a police officer at gunpoint should … crazy.

  “The police gave Casey his last warning to drop the weapon. But he was a paranoid mess and didn’t trust anyone. When he made it clear he wasn’t relinquishing his weapon, Jones pointed toward the burning farmhouse, yelled, ‘fire!’ and dropped to the ground

  “Casey was a fun-loving gregarious man, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, so he thought that Jones was referring to the burning farmhouse. By the time Casey figured out that ‘fire’ was a cue for them to shoot, he was riddled in bullets.”

  I began throwing out questions as fast as they popped into my head. Who was the caller? How exactly did Leeds get Jones’ gun? Why couldn’t he let the police go in to save the children?

  “The whole thing was fishy to me, too,” Gwen responded. “Especially since there were no children who resided at the residence. So I started checking around. His sister, Mary Leeds, was the one person he confided in. Over time, I gained her trust enough that she talked to me off the record. She told me that the caller initially threatened to expose a secret in Casey’s past if he didn’t follow orders. The caller continued setting the fires, providing him the chance to redeem himself from his ‘sin’ if he saved the children inside the burning homes. But if he didn’t save the children himself, or if he told anyone about the phone calls, the caller would continue to set fires, but this time wouldn’t inform him, and the children would die. So Casey thought he had no choice, and made Mary promise that she wouldn’t tell a soul.”

  I flashed a confused look. “His sin?”

  “He never revealed it to Mary, so I continued searching. I found a source in the First Selectman’s Office who told me of an incident from years ago, long before I returned to town. There was a house fire on Grayson Drive. When the call came in, Casey was at Main Street Tavern. By this point, he’d long forgot the difference between drunk and sober, and sped to the firehouse. He drove the large hook-and-ladder truck, his usual role. On the way to the fire Casey drove off the road, rendering the vehicle useless. The rest of the fire trucks made it safely. All of the family members were rescued, except one—a seven-year-old girl died of smoke inhalation.”

  “Did Casey’s accident cause the girl to die?”

  “Probably not. But the fact that Casey was over the legal limit when he crashed the fire truck was covered up by the fire department. But by the time the truth came to light, Maloney had replaced you father in office, and he didn’t operate with the same integrity.

  “After Noah’s trial, Maloney had used the lingering negative publicity surrounding the perceived light sentence to reinvent himself into the drunk driving warrior. It became priority number one around here, and the money started to role in from the ADDs and other similar organizations. Problem was, he’d learned about the Leeds incident prior to Noah’s trial, and chose to keep it covered up—my source told me he rationalized that it would have hurt the public confidence if people believed the firefighters were driving around drunk, especially since the incident had happened years ago. So if the Leeds incident came out after Noah’s trial, then so would the questions as to why Maloney didn’t do something about it, and at best he would have looked like a total fraud.

  “Until Noah’s death, I didn’t know that we were dealing with a vigil
ante-style serial killer,” she went on, “or that drunk driving was the common thread. I considered Leeds and the fires to be an isolated incident. I wish I’d put it together earlier, then maybe I could have warned Noah he was in danger.”

  I was now pacing the river edge, thinking aloud, stating what was now obvious, “Jones was the caller, and the redemption referred to the fire truck accident—the accident that both Leeds and Maloney hoped would be buried forever … and the secret that Jones obviously stumbled upon. I’ll bet that Jones offered to be the one to follow Leeds, and made it look like he was a team player willing to do the dirty work. No cop I’ve ever met likes stakeout duty.”

  “And being first to arrive, gave him time to drop his gun without witnesses. And knowing that Casey was at his wits’ end, he was betting that he’d do something irrational … like pick up the gun and take him hostage. By being taken hostage, Kyle would be absolved from any blame in the shooting.”

  Gwen had begun to shiver. The temperature had plummeted. “Since you were offered the highest salary in the news business, maybe you can tell me why Kyle Jones is so obsessed with those who drink and drive?”

  “I’m actually just an unemployed farmer living with his parents.”

  “I’ll be sure to temper my expectations.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve checked a few items in his past, but I’ve come up empty.”

  I didn’t waste time running any of my initial theories or research by her. With her direct access to Jones, she was already two steps ahead of me on all fronts. Problem was, I got the feeling that Jones was about a mile ahead of both of us.

  A sound startled us—a scurrying through the brush. Gwen’s eyes cut through the darkness, as if she was feeling Jones’ presence, and expecting him to leap out at us. But I knew that wasn’t his style—everything he did was meticulously plotted out. It was likely some sort of wild animal, which I found strangely comforting.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gwen said. It was the first thing we’d agreed on in a long time.

  Instead of dropping me off at my car, she took me to the house she shared with her father and Tommy, off River Lane.

  We went inside and Gwen disappeared into a bedroom. She returned with a printout and handed it to me.

  “It’s an exclusive interview Noah gave to me about a month ago. He opened up about the accident with Lisa, and the aftermath. I promised him I wouldn’t print it until he was ready. I figured you should see it.”

  I sat at the kitchen table and began reading my brother’s words. After a few pages, my emotions grabbed me so tightly I thought Carter had me in a chokehold.

  I looked up at Gwen, tears in my eyes. “He wanted to live.”

  “I know,” she said softly.

  “We need to work together to bring Jones down.”

  “We? You don’t seem like the team player type, JP.”

  I didn’t like the insinuation—never had. “Why don’t you call Byron Jasper and Jeff Carter and ask them if I’m a team player? Ask them if they trusted me in their foxhole with our lives on the line?”

  “I did,” she said with a grin, always taking joy in one-upping me. “They said you would die for them, JP Warner, and they wouldn’t trust their lives to anybody else.”

  I recovered from my surprise with a smile. “So I guess we’ll be working together … just like old times.”

  Gwen’s look turned serious. “They also told me not to take any crap from you.”

  We were about to sail out into uncharted waters in Noah’s Ark, and Gwen was the captain—these were definitely new times.

  _______________________________________________________

  Part Four-

  Batman & Robin

  _______________________________________________________

  Chapter 42

  Gilbert, Arizona

  Day after Labor Day—1995

  Kyle Jones finished putting on his police uniform. His military background had rendered him meticulous—Lucy called it anal-retentive—about the look of his uniform. He checked himself one last time in the full-length mirror, passing the inspection. He took a deep breath, not looking forward to what he had to do next.

  He couldn’t sleep the last few nights. Grady’s words had awoken something in him, something that he thought he had put behind him years ago. He knew he must rededicate himself to the vow that he and Grady had made—seeking justice for those who were unable to help themselves.

  But even with this epiphany, Grady’s assault on Lucy crossed so many lines that he knew their relationship would never recover, and he had no choice but to evict him. Batman and Robin would be no longer.

  He walked into the sun-filled kitchen to find Grady sitting at the breakfast table, slurping cereal and reading the morning edition of the Arizona Republic.

  Grady looked up from his cereal with an apologetic look. They both began talking. Then simultaneously stopped and then began to talk again at the same time.

  “You first,” Kyle finally said, once again putting off the inevitable.

  “I just want to say how sorry I am about the other night. I had no right to attack you and Lucy like that. I was wrong.”

  The apology was nice, but not enough. “Listen, Grady, I think it might be best if you found another place to live. Lucy feels uncomfortable around you after what happened.”

  “I totally understand,” he responded affably. “I’ve already started looking for a new place, but would you mind if I came back to shower when I have a job interview, and perhaps keep some clothes here? I promise I’ll call ahead to make sure Lucy isn’t here if I come by. I really don’t trust the people at the shelter.”

  “Shelter?” Kyle asked with surprise.

  Grady returned his attention to the classified ads. “Yeah, I checked out one in Tempe yesterday. Hopefully I’ll land a job soon, so it’ll only be temporary.”

  “You’re looking for a job?”

  He looked up. “I heard what you guys were saying about me the other night. Actually, I always hear what you’re saying.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Grady.”

  “No, don’t be. You were right. It’s time for me to stop making excuses for myself. Today is the first day of the rest of my life,” he said and proudly held up the classified ads full of his ink circles. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there and I plan on going after it.”

  Kyle sat down across from him. “That’s good to hear. If you want to drop by to clean up when you have an interview, it’s fine by me.”

  Grady smiled. “Thanks, Kyle.”

  Kyle studied the man diligently circling classified ads in magic marker. It was more like the Grady he knew. Even his slouching posture was gone.

  “Sometimes when I have a difficult project in front of me, I like to keep a journal, so I can keep track of my goals and then mark things off when I accomplish a task. I find it very helpful,” Kyle offered.

  “I’ll keep that in mind—I appreciate the advice.”

  Kyle looked at his watch, noticing that he was running late. But just before he turned to head for the door, Grady set the paper on the breakfast table. Suddenly staring back at them was a front-page photo of Leonard Harris of the Arizona Cardinals. He was flashing a big smile at the news that he only received probation for the vehicular homicide of two Arizona State coeds, despite his blood alcohol level being well past the legal limit. It had been the biggest story in the Valley for the past year.

  Kyle felt like the headline was mocking him for his own transgressions. He was lucky he didn’t kill any innocent people the other night. He and Grady looked at each other, and it was as if they were reading the other’s mind. Sending a bat signal.

  Kyle began to head toward the door. He knew it was another reminder that he needed to recommit himself to justice. As he did, Grady called out, “Kyle?”

  He turned, “Yeah?”

  “We’ll always be Batman and Robin, right?”

  Kyle nodded, feeling their bond reki
ndling. “Always—Batman and Robin.”

  Chapter 43

  He was Batman now. The mission was clear—written out in a bold headline on the front page of the newspaper. He could no longer deny his destiny. He must get justice for those two girls.

  The accident took place in December of last year. Harris had been the star of the game, getting three sacks as the Cardinals beat their rival, the Dallas Cowboys, on Monday Night Football.

  After the game, he joined a couple teammates, who hopped from bar to bar on the festive Mill Avenue, accepting numerous free drinks from strangers. Harris finally felt like the star he was always supposed to be. He partied until two in the morning, before leaving in his Porsche 911 Carrera.

  The two girls had gone out to celebrate their final night of the semester at nearby Arizona State University. Finals had just ended and Kelly and Laura were booked on flights home the next day—Kelly to Wisconsin, Laura to Boston—but they wouldn’t make it. They never saw the black Porsche that sped out of nowhere as they attempted to cross University Drive.

  As part of his probation, Harris was given court ordered alcohol rehabilitation. With the unique access available to a police officer, Batman was able to discover the location of the rehab class. It was in an unmarked storefront in a North Scottsdale strip mall, located between a Subway and an Osco Drug.

  The meeting was open to all comers. Batman, outfitted in US Air Force T-shirt and jeans, walked inside the windowless room. Metal folding chairs were set up in a semicircle—it looked like a school classroom, with a desk and blackboard facing the “students.” He sat next to the large black man dressed in a running suit.

  A middle-aged woman was the instructor. She wore glasses and a blue sundress. Her reptilian skin told a story of many unprotected years in the Arizona sun. She began predictably, “My name is Barbara and I’m an alcoholic.”