Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  “Savor and listen,” Jonathan said. “Ven, you’re on.”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on ICIS to see how the Braddock County PD are developing their case against Ethan Falk,” she said. “They’re beginning to make me uncomfortable.”

  She had both men’s full attention.

  “The detective in charge out there—a Pamela Hastings—is a pretty tenacious researcher. She keeps pushing until she finds answers.”

  “I hear admiration in your voice,” Jonathan said.

  “Of course you do,” Venice said. “You have to admire cops who go to the wall for their jobs.”

  “Gotta fear them, too,” Boxers said.

  “Yes, you do. This one in particular. Somehow, from the details she’s collected by talking with Ethan, she’s been able to triangulate back to an unsolved shooting incident eleven years ago in Ashland, Ohio.”

  Jonathan felt a tug in his gut. “That’s where we snatched Ethan from the bad guys.”

  “Bingo,” Venice said. “And we don’t know how they’ve categorized the incident because those were the days before ICIS.”

  Boxers cocked his head. “What do you mean, how they’ve categorized it?”

  Venice explained, “Well, on some of your ops where you leave bodies behind, the locals are able to put together that there was some kind of freelance rescue thing in play, and they don’t push all that hard for answers. Sometimes, they don’t connect those dots—or they do and they don’t care—and those are the cases I worry about. In those—and I’ve never pushed too hard to track their progress because no activity on ICIS is truly invisible—there’s a good possibility that some cold-case squad will pick them up in the future. I just don’t know what conclusions the Ashland Police drew.”

  “And that’s important?” Jonathan asked.

  “I think it can be. It’s been eleven years, but if Braddock PD reanimates the otherwise dormant case, I think that can be a problem.”

  Jonathan sucked another layer off his martini. “How do we find out?”

  “Are you sure you want to?” Boxers asked. “Knowledge has value only if there’s something you can do with it.”

  “What’s the expression?” Venice said. “Forewarned is forearmed?” She finished the last of her scallops and pulled on the cosmo. “There’s one note in the ICIS file that says she’ll be going to Ashland tomorrow to meet with the detective who investigated the case.”

  Jonathan exchanged glances with Boxers. “I don’t think we’re exposed,” Big Guy said. “Clearly, we didn’t leave any traceable trace behind, or they’d have already nailed us.”

  Jonathan didn’t like it. “Technology has turned over fifteen times in the last ten years. You never know what they can find now that they couldn’t find then.”

  “Plus, there’s the triangulation issue,” Venice said.

  Jonathan scowled.

  “You’ve been told this before,” Venice reminded him. “In West Virginia, remember? You get enough incidents documented in police reports about unsolved killings that follow a certain pattern and occasionally include reports of some guy named Scorpion, and a picture starts to form via triangulation.”

  “They still can’t track us,” Boxers reminded.

  “No, but they know,” Jonathan said. “The pressure is building to be more careful.”

  “The pressure is building to move on to a different line of work,” Venice said, punctuating her words with an eye roll. She pulled her laptop computer out of the bag that she’d stashed at her feet. It was her electronic memory. “But since I don’t expect you’ll be doing that anytime soon, let me fill you in on the details of Detective Hastings’ visit to Ohio.” She opened the computer, rubbed the mouse pad, and tapped some keys.

  Jonathan rose from his chair and picked up the plates. Next up: a rather mundane spinach salad that he’d prepared, which had been sitting in the fridge for the past forty-five minutes. All it needed before serving was some fresh strawberries, which he likewise removed from the fridge and started to slice.

  “The detective on the Falk op was a guy named Jim Dooley,” Venice said as she read her notes. “Hastings has an appointment with him tomorrow afternoon at two-thirty.” She looked up. “I wish we could have ears on that conversation.”

  “I still don’t understand what we’d gain,” Boxers said.

  “Information,” Jonathan said. “Like they said in Animal House, knowledge is good. Maybe we can learn more of what they know. Since there are no such things as coincidences, maybe we’ll find another connection to Stepahin.”

  Boxers’ face changed to an expression that looked a lot like dread. “You just said that like it was a thing that was going to happen.”

  “Hey,” Jonathan said. “Who in their right mind would turn down a field trip to Ashland, Ohio?”

  “Why?” Big Guy asked.

  “If nothing else, to meet Detective Pamela Hastings.”

  “Are you crazy?” Venice and Boxers said that in perfect unison.

  Jonathan continued to concentrate on the strawberries. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of eye contact. “If you want to gather intel, you have to meet with the people who have what you want,” he said. “And tomorrow evening, that will be Detective Pamela Hastings. Do you know if she’s planning to stay the night?”

  Venice typed some more. “She’s got a reservation at a Hilton Garden Inn for tomorrow night.”

  “There you go,” Jonathan said. “So, we know where Big Guy and I will be spending the night tomorrow.”

  “Why do I have to go?” Boxers said.

  “Because we’re a team,” Jonathan said through a smile. “Besides, you love adventure.”

  “So, what’s your plan?” Big Guy asked. “You’re just going to charm her into giving you lots of information that you have no right to know? And, not insignificantly, is all about you?”

  “She won’t know it’s about me,” Jonathan said. “I’ll be there as Rick Horgan tomorrow.”

  “CIA or FBI?” Venice asked. There were two versions of Jonathan’s best alias.

  “Depends,” he said. “What I need you to do, Ven, is find out everything you can about Detective Hastings. And I mean everything.”

  * * *

  In his heart, Ethan knew that prison life would define the remainder of his years on the planet, but his brain wouldn’t let him give up. Yes, he’d killed that guy, but an even bigger yes was that the guy deserved to die. As it was, his death was too easy, too calm. In a more perfect world, it would have involved more screaming and begging for mercy. But the world wasn’t anything close to perfection, was it? In fact, as far as he could tell, the world was one giant booby trap waiting for innocents to turn the wrong corner or talk to the wrong person, with the result being life-altering awfulness.

  He’d come so close to being past all that bullshit from back then. If only he’d taken the day off, or if he’d been assigned to the drive through, then maybe he wouldn’t have heard the voice, and if he hadn’t heard the voice, then he wouldn’t be in this shit hole of a place, surrounded by the dregs of the gene pool.

  Whoever had commissioned the construction of the Braddock County Adult Detention Center had apparently dictated that perpetual discomfort be a primary goal. During the day, inmates were locked out of their cells—because that made sense to somebody—but for twenty-three hours a day, inmates were confined to the indoors. That meant those who had not yet been assigned work details—people like Ethan—were relegated to spending twelve hours in the “day room”—a common area in the center of the cellblock that sported circular steel picnic tables with seating for ten, each seat surrounding the main table like moons, also made of stainless steel. Nothing was padded, and no seat allowed an inmate to lean back. The result was that no one sat for very long, but rather everyone sort of wandered in aimless circles within circles, hanging out with their homies or their fellow gangbangers. In Ethan’s mind, every step they took and every syllable they spoke t
o each other was somehow tied to bringing harm to him.

  He didn’t really flatter himself to believe that that was true—he was sure there were far juicier targets than he among the general population—but if he assumed only the worst, then he could never be disappointed, right?

  A television sat recessed into a wall and covered by a heavy Lexan shield, with speakers on the walls protected by heavy-gauge wire that might have been part of the security fencing. Set perpetually on either sports or religious programming—neither of which appealed to Ethan—they kept the volume at an ear-splitting level. Since no one watched the damn thing, all of the inmates had to raise their voices just to be heard in casual conversation, with the result being a cacophony of noise that put Ethan’s teeth on edge.

  In his real world, Ethan was a quiet guy who enjoyed quiet people and quiet times. If nothing else drove him bat-shit crazy during his time in the joint, the noise was going to accomplish the mission. Throw into the mix the guys who just loved to make noise for the annoyance value, and the result was a special kind of hell.

  Ethan spent his time in an emotional state that bordered on terror. He knew he wasn’t tough enough for this place, for any place where survival depended on defending one’s turf. He was here on a murder charge, and that gave him some odd bit of deference, but he was so frightened of the other inmates that he knew that deference wouldn’t last for long. Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. He was doomed.

  The only reasonable defense he could think of was to stay to himself. He didn’t talk to anyone, he didn’t occupy anybody else’s space. He tried his best to lose himself in one of the paperback novels that had been stacked on shelves in the day room, but between the noise, his churning stomach, and the dozens of pages that were missing from every volume, that wasn’t working so well for him, either.

  One thing he was sure of was that race was a very big deal here in the Adult Detention Center. Whites stayed with whites, and blacks and Latinos stayed with their own kinds as well. Asians seemed to be the wild card, not particularly cohesive among themselves, but also neither welcome nor unwelcome among the other groups. Ethan watched, took mental notes, but kept his mouth shut about everything and everyone.

  No one on earth was any whiter than Ethan Falk, but he avoided the racial divides. It was clear to him that once you sided with your own, you automatically declared war on the others, and he didn’t want to be at war with anyone. Problem was, if you didn’t choose a side, you didn’t have any allies. As foolish a notion as he knew it was, Ethan was rolling the dice on doing his time in in neutrality. Allies were only important if you had enemies, right? So if you just stayed to yourself—

  “So, what’s with the rod up your ass, Meat?”

  The words startled him. Ethan had been lost in his reading when the voice blasted him from close behind. He whirled on his picnic stool to see a heavily tatted and thickly built skinhead hulking over him. The man yanked the book from his hands and Frisbee-threw it across the day room. He planted one foot on the stool next to Ethan and he leaned heavily on his knee, clearly awaiting an answer.

  “I-I don’t know what you mean,” Ethan stammered. It was a statement of fact.

  “You give me a vibe that you think you’re better than the rest of us. This disturbs me. A sign of disrespect.”

  Ethan’s head raced. Should he stand? Should he try to back away? Should he laugh it off, or maybe apologize?

  “I don’t think I’m better than anyone,” he said. “I’m just quiet.”

  The Hulk dusted the side of Ethan’s hair with his fingers, raising a cowlick over his ear. “I think you’re more than just quiet,” he said. “I think you’re scared shitless.” He sold that last part with a smile.

  Ethan forced a smile in return. “Yeah, well, there’s some of that, too.”

  “You can’t let that happen,” Hulk said. “These folks in here are like vampires. But instead of feeding on blood, they feed on fear. Dude, you’re like a fountain of fear.”

  “Um, I’ll work on it,” he said. Even as the words left his mouth, he could hear the lameness of them himself.

  “You’re not showing me disrespect, are you, son?” The word son can be used in several ways. One is to breed familiarity and make the other party feel more at ease. This was not that way.

  “I don’t disrespect you,” Ethan said. And instead of just leaving it there, he added, “I don’t even know you. How can I feel any way about you?”

  The Hulk swelled in size and helped himself to the seat next to Ethan. “There,” he said. “What you said right there sounded like disrespect to me. Sounded like you think you’re smarter than me.”

  “I don’t think I’m smarter than anyone.” Ethan struggled to find the sweet spot between fear and calm, but he could hear for himself the underlying tone of disrespect.

  “I don’t believe you,” Hulk said. “What about that black boy over there? Don’t you think you’re smarter than him?”

  “I don’t know him, either.” Ethan could think of no more terrible an outcome of this than to be dragged into a race war.

  Hulk poked his shoulder. Hard. “What about me, then? Do you think that I’m smarter than that black-assed monkey boy?”

  The subject of their discussion—Ethan had no idea what his name was—had dialed into the conversation and was paying attention.

  “I don’t want any of this,” Ethan said. “Just leave me alone.” Then, perhaps a beat too late: “Please.”

  “Just leave me alone. Pleeease.” Hulk’s echo came in a singsong girly falsetto.

  Ethan said nothing. Maybe silence would defuse things.

  Hulk brushed the other side of Ethan’s head, leaving a matching cowlick. “Hey, don’t be rude. I’m talking to you. Do you or do you not think that I am smarter that that trained monkey over there?”

  I have piss-stained boxer shorts that are smarter than you, Ethan didn’t say. What he did say was nothing. Just let the moment pass.

  The Hulk smacked him again, harder this time. “Pay attention, Meat. Do you or do you not think that whites are smarter than blacks?”

  Oh, what the hell? Ethan thought. He might have even said it aloud. If you’re gonna die, die big. “There is no standard by which Kim Kardashian could be considered smarter than Martin Luther King.”

  The Hulk’s face reddened. “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “Actually, it kind of is.” The smart move at this point would have been to stand up, if only to have some measure of physical leverage. He worried, though, that it would be seen as an act of aggression. If there was any immutable fact in the universe, it was that he had exactly zero chance of winning a fight with this man.

  The Hulk settled it by grabbing a fistful of Ethan’s orange scrub shirt and pulling him to his feet. “You need to choose a side, asshole,” he said. “Are you with your own kind, or with the monkeys?”

  The target of all the insults was thinner yet taller than the Hulk, and he’d transformed himself into a menacing shadow, looming over Ethan’s table. Everyone else in the unit had evaporated, their absence proving their sanity.

  “How about you shut the hell up?” the newcomer said.

  “Back up, Chooney,” the Hulk said. “We need to know whether this white boy is with his own kind or with you.”

  Somehow, that seemed to make sense to Chooney—what the hell kind of name was that?—who puffed up as big as the Hulk and seemed to be likewise waiting for an answer.

  Ethan knocked Hulk’s hands away with an overhand sweep and took a giant step backward. “What do you want from me?” He shouted the question loud enough to reverberate for two seconds through the canyon they called a cellblock. Plenty loud enough to be heard by guards who were nowhere to be seen. “You want me to say shit that will get me killed. I want none of this! Just leave me alone!”

  “You need to choose a side,” Hulk said.

  Ethan took another step back. Call it maneuvering room. “No, I don’t,” he said, this
time modulating his voice. He redirected his eyes to Chooney. “Do I have any shot at joining your side if that’s what I wanted to do?”

  “Hell no.”

  He returned his eyes to the Hulk. “That,” he said. “You don’t want me to choose anything. You want me to pledge allegiance to you. And you want him to have reason to hurt me. Why would I do that?”

  The Hulk turned redder still. “How ’bout you do it so I don’t kick your ass?”

  In that second, reality poured over Ethan like a waterfall. He drew a deep breath and settled his shoulders. “You know what?” he said. “You’re going to do that no matter what I say. So why don’t you just get on with it?”

  Three seconds later, it got very, very ugly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Detective James Patrick Dooley (retired) lived in a 1950s-era brick rancher on Duff Street, not far from the center of the City of Ashland. A long-unused basketball hoop stood sentry at the top of the concrete driveway, just to the side of the closed one-car garage. What Pam noticed the most was the perfectly cut diamond mower tracks in the browning front yard. In Pam’s experience, cops tended to be slobs or super-neat. Clearly, Dooley leaned toward the anal-retentive side of spectrum. An ornamental fruit tree of some sort—Pam supposed cherry, but plants weren’t her thing—spread wide with green leaves just to the other side of the driveway, opposite the basketball hoop, and to the left of the tree, an American flag moved in the lazy breeze atop a tall flagpole.

  North Central Ohio was further along in autumn than Braddock County, Virginia, and as Pam opened the door to her county car, the chill was refreshing. The four-hundred-mile trip had taken nearly eight hours, and she felt thoroughly wiped. But the BCPD bean counters felt more comfortable spending $600 in gas than buying a $350 plane ticket. A lot of life’s niggling problems would evaporate if we could ship the budgeteers to an island.

  Pam had walked only halfway up the thirty-foot driveway before the garage door rumbled up, revealing Jim Dooley literally from the feet up.