by Eskens,Allen
I can’t help myself. I slap him in the side of the head as hard as I can. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re innocent! Don’t you fucking dare!”
He answers back through clenched teeth. “What do you want from me? Just tell me, for Christ’s sake. You can beat me all you want, but what good is it if I don’t understand?”
I stand up and go back to the auger taking a cleansing breath before I start drilling again. There is pain in the center of my palms. At the top of the auger I push down on a metal cap with a sizable hex nut fixing that cap to the top of the shaft. As I crank the auger, the cap remains motionless in my hand, but the nut turns, grinding its way through my glove and into my skin. In a matter of drilling two holes, that nut has chewed up my gloves pretty good. I’ll have to do something about that.
“Talk to me dammit! Give me a chance to defend myself.”
I break through the ice and water floods up through the second hole.
“This ain’t right. Why won’t you tell me what I’ve done? I’ll prove you’re wrong, but you have to tell me what I did.”
“We both know what you did. You can play games all you want,” I say. “But we both know and that’s all that matters.”
“I’m playing games? You break my arm, club me in the head. You tie me up and start drilling holes though the ice—and you think I’m playing games? Well fuck you. I’ll play your game. I’ll wait you out, because this is all for show. You don’t scare me.”
“I didn’t bring you here to scare you,” I say. “I brought you here to kill you.”
Chapter 17: Minneapolis—Yesterday
Chapter 17
Minneapolis—Yesterday
The tide of a man’s mind isn’t always governed by those conspicuous forces whose gravitational pull is so massive as to be able to bend light. Sometimes a guy can fall into a mood over a single misplaced word or an almost imperceptible scent that summons the reek of an old, gangrenous memory. I wasn’t aware of the source, but on the second day of the New Year, I awoke in just such a temperament. I had never been this close to the truth about my wife’s death. I had Fireball just about wrapped up. I should have been in a happy mood, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t seem to escape the cloud of melancholy that swirled around my head.
The reason for my skewed disposition came to me in the shower, my eyes closed, the steaming hot water cascading down my face. It was then that I remembered the dream—only a vague outline at first, then more. It was a little girl, four or maybe five years old. I tried to talk to her, and she kept turning away from me as if she hadn’t heard me, her face hidden behind a fine veil of red hair. When nothing seemed to work, I sat down on a stone wall and sang My girl, a song I used to sing to Jenni when she felt sick or sad.
At the sound of my shaky tune, the little girl turned around to face me, lifting her chin and letting the light catch her eyes. I had seen those eyes before, and that hair and smile, in a picture that sat on the shelf in my bedroom. It was Jenni when she was a child—but at the same time it wasn’t Jenni. This little girl was different, a likeness but not a reflection. She reached her hand out to me and I took it in mine and held it the way a father would hold onto a daughter’s hand.
Despite the hot water raking my skin, a chill ran up my back. It was a dream, I told myself. Nothing more.
I arrived at the HCMC Burn Unit at 8:00 a.m. that morning, anxious to see Orton’s face—or what was left of it—as I fed him the rope for his execution. He would try to explain away the bits and pieces of what he thought I knew. They all did. But in the end, his bullshit story about gang members would shatter and fall to the floor. I was betting that I would have a confession in less than half an hour.
I buzzed the nurse’s station and flashed my badge, walking to the ICU section where Orton was being kept. Orton hadn’t changed since the day before, except that they had removed the bandages covering his eyes. He was awake and looked up at me when I entered the room, his eyes showing no hint of recognition.
“Good morning, Dennis,” I said.
With those words, Orton’s eyes grew large and he took in a sharp breath. “I don’t want to talk to you,” he said. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“Dennis, I’m Detective Rupert. We spoke yesterday, remember?”
“I know who you are. You took advantage of me. I want you to leave.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “We—”
“You can’t talk to me if I say I want an attorney. I want an attorney. You have to leave.”
“What’s going on?”
Orton fixed his gaze on the ceiling, his eyes dancing as though trying to remember a script he’d memorized. “I’m not saying anything else. I’ve invoked my right to remain silent. I want you to go now.”
I nodded as though I understood, but I did not. The man on the bed in front of me was a vastly different man than the backtracking fool I’d left the previous evening. Someone must have gotten to him, convinced him to button up.
I stepped out of his room and went to the nurse’s station, where a young man in blue scrubs was typing on a keyboard. I showed him my badge in case he hadn’t seen it when I walked in. “I was wondering, do you keep a sign in sheet of visitors on this unit?”
“No, we don’t. We have the locked door over there.” He pointed to the unit doors. “If you’re a family member, we’ll let you in.”
“But I’m not a family member.”
“I suspect the badge gets you in a lot of doors that most folks can’t get in.”
“Did anyone come to visit Mr. Orton recently?”
“There was someone in his room when I came on shift an hour ago.”
“Do you know who that might have been?”
“Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention. I think it was a man, but I can’t even be certain about that. If you want to get a picture, though . . .” The nurse pointed at a bubble on the ceiling where a security camera hid behind tinted glass.
“Thanks,” I said. “Can you aim me in the direction of the security office?”
The nurse pulled out a map of the sprawling hospital and circled a small box on the second floor.
On my way to the Security Office, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out expecting to see Niki’s number. Instead, I saw a number that I didn’t recognize at first. Then it came to me. Farrah McKinney.
“Max Rupert here.”
“Detective Rupert, this is Farrah McKinney . . . from yesterday.”
“Yes, Ms. McKinney, how are you?”
“You said that if I could find that recording, the one with your wife’s voice on it . . .”
“You found it?”
“I did. And I am downtown interpreting at the courthouse this morning. We should be done by around ten, if you want to meet.”
“I do. If you’re at the Government Center, there’s a cafeteria in the basement. You ever been there?”
“I know where it’s at. That works fine. I’ll be there around ten.”
“See you then.”
I hung up and walked into the security office, where a man in a blue uniform sat behind a bank of monitors, scribbling on a pad of paper. I showed him my badge. “I have a suspect in the Burn Unit,” I said. “I was wondering if I could look to see who he’s had as visitors.”
The man, a rotund fellow with an overgrown mustache and a clip-on tie hanging from his shirt pocket looked at my badge, his eyes squinting as if badge inspections were a specialty of his. A name tag on his shirt read Clark, and I was unsure if that was his first name or last, so I didn’t use it.
“You want what again?” he asked.
“I’d like to see if any visitors have been on the Burn Unit this morning. I have a murder suspect in there and I think one of his visitors may be a person of interest. Can you pull the surveillance footage up for me?”
“Nope,” he said, with a slight air of smugness. “I run security. I’m not an IT guy. That’s something for the computer geeks to handle.” Clark
made no move to pick up a phone or page a computer tech. I paused for a couple beats, waiting for him to act and he just stared at me.
“Is there by chance a computer guy around that could rewind the footage for me?”
“You don’t just rewind it. This is high tech stuff. It’s not like we’re some podunk gas station with a VCR in the back room. We’re talking state of the art.”
I leaned my elbows onto the countertop between us, lacing my fingers and giving them a good squeeze to try and pull the stress away from my face. “Someone in this hospital has the ability to pull up footage of visitors to the Burn Unit, am I right?”
“Well . . . yeah.” Clark said. “Of course.”
“And you have enough tech savvy to pick up a phone and summon that person here, don’t you?”
Clark shifted in his seat and glared at me without answering.
“So would you be so kind as to make that call?”
Clark shot me a fake smile. “Tech folk are a busy bunch, you know. Maybe you should just leave me your card and I’ll get back to you.”
He struck me as a man who carried a sizable chip on his shoulder when it came to cops, and I wondered if he’d been kicked out of a police department in his past, told to resign or get fired, a mark that would ensure he’d never wear a badge again—even a security badge.
I made a point of holding Clark’s gaze in mine and said, “I’ll tell you what . . . Clark. You see what you can do while I go upstairs to visit my old friend Doctor John. Maybe he can grease the skids a bit.”
I had met the CEO of HCMC at a conference once, a symposium on dealing with mentally ill clientele. We were by no means close friends, in fact, I don’t think I would have even recognized him had he walked into that security office right then. But I knew his name—not the name on the letterhead, but the name he preferred to be called by those under his watch. Doctor John. To Clark, that name was as good as knowing the secret password.
He tried not to show his concern, but the man had an easy tell. He brushed his thumb across his lips, and his nostrils flared as his breathing shifted into a slightly higher gear. I took out a card, laid it on the counter and smiled, hoping to calm Clark’s pulse. “It’s important,” I said.
“Sure,” he said, the weight of the chip now gone from his shoulder.
I left the security office and checked my phone as I headed to my squad car. I had missed a call from Niki, so I called her.
“Did you come back to the office last night before meeting me at Rusty’s?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“Both of our computers were on when I came in this morning. I know I shut them off before I left.”
“Briggs?”
“Has to be.”
“Damnit,” I whispered. “He’s digging through our investigation.”
“His door’s been shut all morning and Commander Walker’s out sick.”
“Again? What’s that been? Ten days out in the last month?”
“You think something might be seriously wrong with Walker?”
“I think Briggs knows something we don’t,” I said. “I don’t like this one bit. I’m on my way back now so we—”
“No, don’t come back here. I have a bunch of stuff to show you, but we should meet outside the office.”
“Meet me at Eddie’s. I’ll buy.”
“I’m heading out now. See you there.”
I cut off the call and paused at the revolving door before leaving the hospital, looking out at the steam rising from the taxis picking up and dropping off patients. I thought about Commander Walker and his many recent absences. Had he been losing weight? Or was that my imagination. We hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but if you brushed away the mud of office politics, I always trusted him to cut through the bullshit and deal straight with me.
I pulled up his personal cell number and hit send.
Chapter 18
Chapter 18
C
ommander Walker answered his phone as he always did—with a single word. “Walker.”
“Commander, it’s Max Rupert. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but . . . well I have a question that I think only you can answer.”
A pause. Then, “Go ahead.”
His voice came through the phone flat and tired, and I regretted the call. I felt like a school kid tattling to a teacher. “It’s nothing too urgent,” I said. “It’s about Lieutenant Briggs. I thought you might be able to fill in a blank or two.”
“What’s Briggs doing now?”
“Niki and I are looking into the death of a woman on New Year’s Day. They found her burned up in a minivan. Everything points toward her boyfriend.” Now it was my turn to pause as I tried to put my suspicions into words.
“Okay,” Walker said. “What’s that got to do with Briggs?”
“Lieutenant Briggs has been . . . well I’d call it hovering. He’s pressing Niki and me for information, and we believe he’s been digging through our computers and spying on our investigation. I’m just trying to figure out what his interest is.”
“You think he’s got a political angle?”
“I do,” I said. “The woman’s boyfriend is Dennis Orton, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the mayor.”
“I see.”
I thought about saying more, but realized that I had no more to say. All I had was hovering and a couple computers that turned on overnight. A wave of embarrassment passed over me, and I was trying to figure out a way to get out of the conversation when Commander Walker cleared his throat and spoke.
“Max, what I’m about to tell you is confidential. Do I have your word on that?”
“I’ll need to tell Niki,” I said.
“That’s fine. She’s good people. You got lucky with that one.”
“Best partner a guy could ask for,” I said.
“Here’s the thing, Max. I have cancer—colon. They diagnosed it just before Christmas. They say I have a good shot at beating it, but I’m taking a leave of absence. I’ve been talking to Chief Murphy about the timing, and we were thinking about an announcement before the end of the month.”
My heart dropped into my stomach and I wished that I hadn’t called.
“I’ll need surgery and probably some follow-up chemo.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, Matt. How’s Lydia handling it?”
“Like a good wife. She’s all smiles when she’s near me, but I can see in her eyes that she’s scared.”
“If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“I know, Max.”
“So Briggs knows about this?”
“He does. Murphy brought him into the loop because Briggs will become the interim head of Homicide while I’m gone.”
A groan escaped my lips.
“And Max . . . I can’t promise that I’m coming back. In fact Lydia’s been pushing me to retire.”
“And Lieutenant Briggs will become Commander Briggs.”
“That’s not my choice, Max. You know that. Hell, if I had my way there would be no Lieutenant Briggs—there’d be a Lieutenant Rupert. But I don’t call that shot, Murphy does.”
“I’m not the management type, Matt. You know that. The one who should be moving up is Niki. She’s the brightest in the department—hands down. She’d make one hell of a commander.”
“I know that Max, but more importantly, Briggs knows that. You have to be careful with him. He’s a climber. While you and Niki are out solving crimes, he’s scheming his way into my chair. That’s where Dennis Orton comes in. I don’t know the connection, but it was Orton who lobbied Chief Murphy to make Briggs a lieutenant. If Briggs gets his way, he’ll be the youngest Commander in department history.”
“And the most unqualified,” I said.
That brought a snicker out of Walker. “Your words, not mine.”
“Fucking politics. I wish I could just do my job and be rid of the rest.”
I could hear the smile in Walker’s voice as he said, “Being in government an
d ignoring politics is kind of like being in the middle of the ocean and ignoring water.”
“I suppose you’re right about that,” I said.
“You and Niki should watch your backs when it comes to Briggs. That man is good at his game, and his specialty is to get dirt on his rivals. Take them down in a pre-emptive strike if he can. He was behind that reprimand you got last year.”
I found myself, in my mind, back in Walker’s office getting chewed out for taking Jenni’s file out of Archives. I remember Briggs standing in the corner watching my castigation with an air of self-satisfaction and a smug grin that just screamed “punch me.”
“If it were up to me, I’d have dressed you down and called it a day. But Briggs went over my head to Chief Murphy. I had no choice but to issue the reprimand.”
I shook my head in disgust. “And he’s going to be the new head of Homicide.”
“Maybe . . . well, probably. But watch your back—you and Niki both. He sees you as threats. He may pull some stunt to shore up his front-runner status between now and my official retirement. Don’t put anything past him.”
I thought about our computers. What was on them? What could he find? Niki did a Cappers search for Jenni’s name. Briggs will follow the bread crumbs and know that I’m back on Jenni’s case. He’ll also know that Niki is helping me. I shake my head again and whisper, “Fucking politics.”
Chapter 19: Up North
Chapter 19
Up North
My palms are sore and it’s only the third hole; I have five more after this. With every turn of the handle, that hex nut on top of the auger has been eating through my gloves and digging into my skin. I can feel blisters starting to form. I pause about one foot down into the hole to consider this problem. I’m wearing a stocking cap and my coat has a hood, so I take off my cap and draw the hood up over my head. I’ll use the cap as a buffer between the hex nut and my hands.
I’m not wearing a watch, but I’m sure that we’re into the afternoon. The sun is barely visible through the low hanging clouds, and to the west, the line of blue sky advancing ahead of the cold front is growing wider. I know that I’ll have to finish this project in the dark. I’m fine with that. In fact, it seems fitting.
