Stone Cold as-1

by Joel Goldman

  “Nah, that ain’t it. That ain’t it. So it gotta be ’bout that bitch doctor. Why you care so much what happen to her?”

  Alex shuddered as her chest tightened and heat rose from her neck to her cheeks. She ground her teeth, fighting against the shakes, unable to answer.

  “Uh-huh. That’s what this is all about. How long you been divin’ into her muff?” Dwayne asked.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Rossi’s cell phone rang as he walked through Truman Medical’s parking lot to his car. It was Lena Kirk.

  “Tell me you found something,” Rossi said, “or tell me you’re in love with me.”

  “Are those my only choices?”

  “No. You can always go with c-all of the above.”

  She laughed. Rossi liked the sound.

  “You’ll have to settle for a. I found traces of blood in one of the pieces of fabric I pulled from the fireplace. I’ve got to run more tests to see if it matches any of the Hendersons’.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know. The sample I got is pretty small and the fabric is very fragile, which makes things tricky, and the lab is backed up as usual. Under normal circumstances, it could take a week, maybe two.”

  “These aren’t normal circumstances.”

  “Nothing with you ever is. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, and you can still choose b.”

  “So many choices, so little time. Good-bye.”

  He wasn’t in love with Lena Kirk, but he liked the idea of being in love with her. Truth was, he just liked the idea of being in love. It was a condition he’d gone too long without, and he knew the reason. He was a hard man to love. Too much crime grime, his last girlfriend had told him. Translation? he’d asked her. Too much blood, too many bodies, too much rage, she’d told him, and she wasn’t wrong.

  He settled into his car, fired up the engine and the air-conditioning, and called Gardiner Harris, hoping he’d add to Lena’s maybe good news.

  “You catch a killer?” Rossi asked him.

  “Nope, but I’ve got my line in the water. I looked over the list of Kyrie Chapman’s known associates. One of them is a gal named Gloria Temple.”

  “She might have been Chapman’s girlfriend.”

  “And you know this how?” Harris asked.

  “I think it. I don’t know it. Jameer Henderson testified at the Wilfred Donaire trial that Kyrie Chapman had some girl give Dwayne Reed a gold necklace that belonged to Donaire. We don’t know if that’s what happened but Dwayne was wearing the necklace when I arrested him for the murder. After the trial, I asked around, trying to find out who the girl was in case it went down the way Jameer said it did at the trial. I figured she had to be close to Chapman, probably his girlfriend.”

  “And?”

  “Best I got was some secondhand rumor from a CI that Chapman had the hots for Gloria, so she could have been that girl.”

  “Makes it sound like Chapman killed Donaire and used his girlfriend and Jameer Henderson to put the murder on Dwayne,” Harris said.

  “That’s what Alex Stone told the jury and they bought it, but it was my case and I know that’s bullshit. That’s why I tracked Gloria down after the trial and asked her if she was the girl that gave Dwayne the necklace.”

  “What’d she tell you?”

  “Told me to go fuck myself.”

  “How’d that work out for you?”

  “Great. I even sent myself a text message the next day to say how great it was.”

  Harris laughed. “Well, you’ll always have the memory. At any rate, according to the case file, no one’s been able to find Gloria since Chapman got popped. Makes me wonder why.”

  “Good place to start,” Rossi said.

  “Good as any. What’s biting in your pond?”

  “Nothing good. I just left Truman. Had a talk with Bonnie Long, the ER doc Dwayne threatened to rape. Turns out she and Dwayne’s lawyer got a thing.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “A girlfriend, girlfriend thing.”

  “No shit! Alex Stone is a dyke?”

  “You mean lesbian.”

  “Since when did you get PC?” Harris asked.

  “Guess it just snuck up on me. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “And ruin your reputation for being an asshole? No chance. Does Dwayne know?”

  “You got me, but if he finds out, it’s not going to help their attorney-client relationship.”

  “I hear that. You going to have a talk with Dwayne outside the presence of his counsel?”

  “Thought I might.”

  “Thought you would.”

  “Later,” Rossi said and closed his phone.

  After he put Dwayne in jail on Saturday, Rossi had been assigned first to the canvass of the Hendersons’ neighborhood and then to reconstructing the family’s movements in the twenty-four hours preceding the murders and then to interviewing the Hendersons’ friends and relatives. It was one piece of the broader by-the-book investigation and it had yielded nothing.

  He’d established that Jameer had gone to his shop that morning but went home when the handful of customers said they preferred to wait for the other barber to cut their hair. It had been like that since the Wilfred Donaire trial.

  Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Jameer had testified against Dwayne. Snitching, even under duress, had made him and his family outcasts. They were better off being seen with Dwayne than with Jameer. No one had seen the Hendersons that day at the grocery, gas station, or cleaners, or at church or out in the yard. No one had seen them anywhere at all.

  Rossi had been at the Henderson crime scene a short time on Saturday, long enough to see the aftermath of the slaughter and escort Alex to her car before going after Dwayne, and he hadn’t been back since. Even though experienced homicide detectives and a thorough CSI crew had inspected it down to the dust motes and all the useful physical evidence had been removed, he wanted to see the crime scene again.

  Not because he thought he’d find the case-breaking evidence that the others had missed. He just wanted to get a feel for the murders that he couldn’t get by reading another detective’s report or by studying one-dimensional photographs. He wanted to see the scene from the both the killer’s and the victims’ perspectives. That would give him more to work with when he caught up with Dwayne.

  Rossi ducked under the crime scene tape strung across the front door. The murders had taken place in the living room, which was in the front of the house to the left of the narrow entry hall. That’s where he’d finish his tour. He turned to his right, crossing through a small dining room furnished with an oak table buffed to a high sheen and adorned with a pair of brass candlesticks. A breakfront made of the same oak and filled with china and porcelain dolls crowded the small room.

  He continued through the dining room and into the kitchen, then out into the center hallway and up the stairs, where there were three bedrooms and one bath. Like the dining room, the rest of the house was clean, neat, and orderly yet had the lived-in feel of a family that took pride in what it had, no matter how modest.

  The living room was different. Upturned furniture left as it had been found, a big-screen television facedown and shattered, newspapers and magazines scattered like a strong wind had blown through the room. And there was blood. Some splattered on the walls and carpet, some soaked into the carpet, some silhouetting where bodies had lain on the floor.

  When the house was finally released as a crime scene, it would be scrubbed clean. The next owner, if there was one, would rip out the carpet and paint the walls, but none of that would change what had happened in that room.

  Rossi pictured the sequence. There were no signs of forced entry, which meant someone let the killer into the house, maybe because the Hendersons knew him or because he showed them his gun.

  The killer rounded the family up in the living room, forcing Mary to tie Jameer to the chair before binding her children’s wrists and an
kles. Rossi could hear her pleading. Take our money, take anything you want. Take me but leave my family alone, please. I’m begging you.

  And he did take her. On the floor with the handle of a baseball bat and in front of her husband and children, strangling her when he was finished. The kids had to have been next. Bat to their heads. Probably the boy’s bat, a gift from his father, a weapon of brutal convenience. That left Jameer, made to suffer through his family’s suffering, killed with a bullet to his brain. Swift death. Small mercy.

  Rossi had seen enough. He left, their imagined cries echoing in his head. Grim faced, he started his car and went hunting for Dwayne Reed, choosing Odyessy Shelburne’s house as his first stop.

  A car was parked in the driveway when he pulled up to the house. He recognized it as the same kind of car he’d seen Alex Stone driving up and down the Hendersons’ street.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Rossi got out and walked to the car, peering into the driver’s window for anything that might confirm whether it was her car. If it was hers, he’d move his car far enough away so that he could watch the house without being noticed until she left. If the car wasn’t hers, he’d knock, hoping to find someone who might know something useful. All he had to do was run the license plate.

  Before he could call it in, gunfire erupted from inside the house-two quick shots, a brief pause, and then a third shot followed by the sound of a woman screaming. He ran up the walk, kicking the front door open, gripping his gun with both hands, lowering it when he saw Dwayne Reed lying on the floor in a pool of blood, a gun at his side, and Alex Stone standing nearby holding a gun, its barrel still smoking. Odyessy Shelburne knelt next to her son, moaning, cupping his lifeless face with her hands and looking up at Rossi.

  “My baby! My baby! She killed my baby!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Alex was deaf except for the ringing in her ears, her mind fogged as the sound of gunshots reverberated and faded. Everything around her had slowed to a crawl, Odyessy laboring to raise Dwayne’s head to her bosom as if she was immersed in glue, her mother’s cry drawn out and distorted.

  She gazed at Dwayne’s bloody body, blinking to convince herself that he was dead, that she had fired the fatal shots, bending her arm toward her face, staring at the gun in her hand, weapon and appendage both foreign and unreal. Another voice broke through her sound barrier, her hearing restored.

  “I said put the gun down, Counselor! Don’t make me tell you again!”

  Alex turned toward the voice, furrowing her brow when she saw Rossi, struggling to understand why he was aiming his gun at her. Was he friend or foe? Was this kill or be killed?

  She took a sharp, quick breath, tightening her grip on the gun for an instant, her brain shouting at her, It’s okay.Do what he says! Do what he says! They stood that way for seconds that passed as lifetimes until the fog lifted and she nodded at him, crouching to the floor and carefully laying her gun on the ground.

  “That’s good, Counselor. Now step away from the gun.”

  Alex nodded again, dropping her chin to her chest, backing up until she bumped into the wall, as Odyessy dove for her gun, grabbing it and aiming at Alex’s heart. Rossi bolted at Odyessy, crashing into her as she pulled the trigger, the bullet grazing Alex’s left shoulder.

  He grabbed Odyessy’s wrist, slamming it onto the floor and knocking the gun loose, sending it skidding across the floor. Screaming, Odyessy tried to claw his face. Rossi flipped her onto her stomach, yanked her arms behind her back, and bound her wrists with plastic handcuffs. Dragging her by her shirt collar, he put her in a corner, face to the wall.

  “Move and I’ll shoot you,” he told her.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Not today, Odyessy.”

  “That bitch kilt my boy! I saw her do it. Whyn’t you put some cuffs on her?”

  “Hold that thought. You’ll get a chance to tell your story, but for now, shut your mouth.”

  “I ain’t gonna shut nuthin’!”

  Rossi leaned toward her, his hand on her back, whispering, “Listen to me. You want Alex to hear your story before I have a chance to question her? All you’ll do is give her a chance to come up with a different version that puts it all on you. So if you want to help your son, shut the fuck up. Okay?”

  Odyessy shook his hand off her. “Okay, but you don’t get that bitch, I will!”

  Rossi turned toward Alex, who was slumped on the floor, back against the wall, legs extended. There was a hole in the right-side pocket of the jacket she was wearing. He knelt next to her, examining it. The edge of the hole was singed and still warm, meaning the gun had been in her pocket when she fired. He started to ask her but didn’t when he saw the vacant-eyed look on her face. He pulled her jacket off her shoulder, a blood blossom oozing through her shirt.

  “Like they say in the movies, it’s just a flesh wound,” he told her, placing her right hand over the bleeding. “Keep pressure on it.” When she didn’t respond, he tilted her chin up toward him, shaking her head. “Hey! Pay attention!” Satisfied when her eyes focused, Rossi pressed her hand down. “Pressure! Got it?” She nodded. “Say it out loud.”

  Alex searched his face, the reality of what had happened settling in, knowing but not believing what was coming. “Got it.”

  “Good. Now, stay put. I don’t want to cuff you while you’re bleeding, but I will if I have to. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Alex listened as Rossi called for backup and two ambulances, watching as he felt Dwayne’s neck for a pulse they both knew had vanished. She paid close attention as he inspected the room, taking pictures with his phone of Dwayne’s body, the location of shell casings, and a bullet hole in the ceiling from Dwayne’s gun and one in the wall behind her courtesy of Odyessy, then wider shots of the room from each direction.

  She realized that she was the focus of Rossi’s examination and that he was building a case that could send her to prison for the rest of her life. It was enough to sharpen her senses and overcome the initial shock of the shooting. She watched for any mistakes he might make, mistakes that could mean the difference between conviction and acquittal, disappointed but not surprised when she didn’t find any.

  She looked at Dwayne’s body, waiting for some emotion, any emotion, to sweep over her, but none came. She’d killed a man and she felt nothing. She wondered if or when she would and what it would mean if she didn’t, certain that when Judge West told her to break the rules, this wasn’t what he had in mind.

  Rossi was going by the book, securing the scene, keeping both her and Odyessy under control and quiet so that neither could influence or be influenced by the other, waiting until help arrived before questioning them. Soon detectives, uniformed cops, paramedics, someone from the coroner’s office, and a CSI team would be crawling all over the house.

  She was about to be dropped into the muddy waters of the criminal justice system, left to sink or swim. Thinking about the conspiracy she’d entered into with Judge West, she shook her head, remembering a question her mother used to ask when their best-laid plans went horribly wrong. Who said God didn’t have a sense of humor?

  It didn’t take long for the troops to arrive. A freshly scrubbed and earnest paramedic cleaned and dressed her wound.

  “The bullet barely got you. The blood always makes it look worse than it is.”

  “Tell that to him,” Alex said, nodding at Dwayne’s body.

  The paramedic pulled back, slack jawed. “You’re kidding right?”

  Alex blushed, embarrassed at her reaction. Bonnie had told her countless stories from the ER about how inappropriately some people responded to traumatic stress. They weren’t all jerks, Bonnie explained. It’s just that death and mayhem can aggravate the worst instincts. She’d joined their ranks.

  “Bad time for gallows humor, huh? Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Whatever,” he said, losing interest in her. “I don’t think you need stitches. If it keeps bleeding, have someone
take a look at it.”

  Rossi waited until the paramedic patched her up, offering Alex a hand to help her to her feet.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  She followed him outside to a late-model dark brown Crown Victoria sedan with enough dings in the fenders and rust on the body to make it a standard-issue unmarked police car. Gardiner Harris was standing next to the rear passenger door.

  The last time she’d cross-examined Harris, she’d forced him to admit that he had consumed a bottle of wine before responding to a late-night crime scene. That he’d been off duty and hadn’t expected to be called out didn’t soften the blow. Harris gave her a devil’s grin as he opened the rear passenger door. She slid in as Rossi went around to the driver’s side and joined her in the back while Harris got behind the wheel.

  Alex knew that this was where many cases were won or lost-depending on which side you were on. In these moments the odds were stacked heavily in favor of the cops. Suspects on their way to being defendants were out of their element, shocked, scared, stupid, or all three. Some tried to talk their way out of trouble. Others were too easily led into it. Few could resist the instinct to explain or defend themselves. She made a vow not to be one of them.

  Rossi let out a long breath. “Hell of a thing that happened in there. You want to tell us what happened?”

  “No,” Alex answered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not an idiot.”

  “Look, Alex, we’re just trying to figure this thing out, not that anybody is going to shed a tear over Dwayne except maybe for Odyessy, and she’ll be so high by sundown she’ll forget him by morning. You’re the only one we can rely on to explain this mess.”

  “Sorry.”

  “How about we get you a cold drink or something?” Harris offered.

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “What would you like?” Rossi asked.

  “A lawyer,” Alex said.