The Strategist

by John Hardy Bell

  Brandt sighed as he pushed the door closed. “Goodbye Walter.”

  Graham put a hand up to stop the door. “Goddamn it, Oliver. You can’t just dismiss me like that. After everything I’ve done, I deserve a few minutes.”

  Before Brandt could even respond, Officer Davies rushed to the door and slammed it in Graham’s face.

  The detective was too stunned to move. From behind the door, he heard voices, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Had it been anyone other than Commander Brandt, he would have stormed the office door and demanded answers. But doing so would probably cost him a lot more than his badge. So he waited. In less than a minute, the door swung open, and Officer Davies blew past Graham like he wasn’t even there. Graham immediately turned to give chase, but a heavy hand stopped him.

  “Don’t think about it, Walter.”

  Graham’s eyes burned with a fury that he did nothing to suppress. “Who does that cocksucker think he is?”

  Brandt simply stared at him.

  Graham fought back the urge to punch him in the face. “You’re just going to let him get away with doing that to me?”

  “At this point I’m not particularly worried about it.”

  “Did I just step into Alice in Wonderland or something? What the hell is this all about?”

  “Something that doesn’t involve you.”

  “Now all of a sudden things don’t involve me? Stephen Clemmons is sitting in that holding cell right now because of me. I get that done and now I’m not of any use to you anymore?”

  Brandt’s doughy face suddenly contorted with anger. “I suggest you watch yourself, Walter. What’s happening now is of no concern to you whatsoever. I don’t know how many different ways I have to tell you that.”

  “But they are of concern to Officer Davies?”

  Brandt walked back into his office. “I don’t have time to sooth your hurt feelings, detective. As I said before, if you want to talk to me another time, email a meeting request.” With that, Brandt closed the door.

  Graham was in the process of raising his hand to pound on it when a voice stopped him.

  “What’s going on Walter?”

  Graham turned to see Detective Sullivan approaching. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

  “What were you and the commander talking about?”

  “Nothing at all,” he mumbled.

  “Well, I need to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Camille Grisham.”

  “Seriously? Enough about Camille Grisham.”

  “It’s important, Walter.”

  “No it is not.” Graham tried to walk past her but she stopped him. “Take your hand off me, Chloe.”

  She promptly complied. The concern in her eyes was palpable, but Graham couldn’t worry about explaining. He walked away without saying another word. At that moment he couldn’t have cared less about Camille Grisham or his soon-to-be ex-partner. He had one objective and one objective only: find Officer Patrick Davies and put him in his place.

  CHAPTER 43

  Sullivan’s first thought was to go to Lieutenant Hitchcock’s office to voice her concerns about Graham’s behavior. But the word rat kept echoing in her mind. She knew she wasn’t a rat. She was simply worried about her partner. But Graham wouldn’t see it that way. “It always starts out with worry,” she could hear his voice say. “But it ends with you selling me out to Internal Affairs. It’s touching how concerned you rats can be.” Sullivan tried to shake Graham’s voice out of her head as she raised her hand to knock on Hitchcock’s door. The lieutenant never hesitated to tell her that his door was always open should she ever need him. But she suddenly realized that this meeting would mark the first time that she would actually be inside his office by herself. Every other time she had been there, it had been with Graham. Even during her first briefing the morning after she was promoted to detective, he was right by her side, whispering in her ear about the perils of working homicide, the tedious paperwork they’d routinely be bombarded with, and his enormously high expectations that she would ‘beat the odds’. To this day she had no idea what odds she was supposed to beat, or if she had actually beat them.

  With no one-on-one experience to draw from, it was impossible to know what Hitchcock’s reaction would be to her.

  The sad fact was that there wasn’t a single person in the entire detective bureau with whom she felt comfortable enough to express her true fears about Graham. He had served with most of these guys since they were young beat cops. Even if Hitchcock shared Sullivan’s concerns, his long-standing relationship with Graham meant that he would still give him the benefit of the doubt.

  It was a benefit that Sullivan had yet to earn. Being the only girl in the old boy’s club meant that she was already toeing a fine line. If she were to make the wrong kind of noise now, her career as a Denver homicide detective could be over before it had the chance to begin.

  Standing outside Hitchcock’s door, Sullivan understood for the first time just how alone she was. There were no friends. There were no after work venting sessions with the boys and a few beers. And ultimately there was no respect, at least not from Graham. She was on her own, and had been from the start.

  It probably didn’t help that there wasn’t an ounce of blue blood running through her veins. Her father ran his own drywall business, her mother was a kindergarten school teacher, and her four brothers and sisters were all working the standard nine-to-five in one boring capacity or another. She was the first one in her family who had ever considered becoming a cop. No one from the Boulder, Colorado suburb that she was born in had an interest in even seeing a gun, let alone carrying one. So the Sullivan family had a difficult time accepting Chloe’s choice of profession. Ten years and three promotions later, they still did.

  Press on, Chloe is what she would tell herself after every family get-together when the questions became too ridiculous and insulting to handle. “Aren’t you getting too old for this cop-thing, sweetheart? At some point you have to think about children.” “Are you ever afraid that you’re going to shoot yourself with that thing?” Finding the courage to press on in the face of her resentment became more difficult each time she had to do it.

  It would be difficult now too, but just like she had done so many times before, she found the courage.

  Sullivan stepped away from Lieutenant Hitchcock’s door. She didn’t need him to intervene on her behalf. She needed to hash things out with Graham on her own. And she needed to do it right away.

  After passing his empty desk, she made stops at Commander Brandt’s office, the conference room, and the coffee lounge where he spent entirely too much of his day. But Graham was nowhere to be found. Confident that he had left the building, she rushed down the stairs and into the parking garage on the off-chance that she would run into him before he could drive away. When she saw him leaning against the open door of his car, she was relieved. But as she approached him, her stomach suddenly felt queasy. Unfortunately, it was a feeling she was growing accustomed to every time she saw him.

  This time, however, it felt much worse.

  Walking up behind him, Sullivan could see that his cell phone was pressed hard against his ear, but she didn’t hear any conversation. Just as she was about to call out to him, a patrol car roared past them and out of the parking garage. When Graham saw it he shoved the phone in his coat pocket and turned around to get in his car, nearly running head-first into Sullivan as he did.

  “Holy shit, Chloe. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  “Sorry Walt,” she answered with as much calm as she could muster.

  “Next time you decide to hover behind me, give a little warning.”

  “I didn’t want to interrupt your phone call.”

  Graham mumbled something indecipherable and slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  He started the car without answering.

  “What the hell is yo
ur problem, Walter?”

  Graham strapped on his seat belt, grabbed the door handle and looked up at her. “We’re on opposite sides of this thing, Chloe. I only wish I had known that before I agreed to take you on in the first place.”

  Sullivan shook her head. “We aren’t on opposite sides of anything.”

  He glared at her before pulling the door closed. She barely had a chance to back away before he peeled out of the parking space.

  Sullivan suddenly felt frozen. She wanted to call someone, but she had no idea who to call. And even if she found someone, she wouldn’t have anything substantial to tell them. Internal Affairs generally doesn’t waste time investigating secretive asshole detectives who are rude to their partners.

  So she did the only thing she could do.

  She was in her car and out of the parking garage before she gave herself time to think about it. By the time she came to appreciate the depths of the risk she was taking, she had already caught up to Graham’s car.

  Of all the instincts that drove her since this investigation began, the instinct to follow him had been far and away the strongest. She gave no thought to where he would lead her. But Sullivan knew with every fabric of her being that she needed to be there.

  CHAPTER 44

  When Camille walked into the house some five hours after promising she wouldn’t leave, she headed straight for her father’s computer with the five blank flash disks she had picked up on her way back. Since she was only interested in copying the movie file, the transfers would only take a couple of minutes, and she was hopeful that she could make the copies and leave before he realized she had come home.

  She had just inserted the first disk when she heard his voice.

  “If you keep stealing my car, I may need to have you arrested,” Paul said in a not so ironic voice.

  “I had to go dad,” Camille answered without turning around. She wanted to keep focused on her task, but she also didn’t want to see the look on his face, a look that no doubt resembled disappointment. She heard his footsteps approaching.

  “Do I even want to know what you did while you were out?”

  “Probably not,” she answered, still unable to look him in the eye. When the video was transferred onto the first disk, she inserted the second.

  “And what do you plan on doing with that?” Paul asked.

  “I’m taking it to the Denver field office. The special agent-in-charge is named Peter Willis. I plan on calling him in the morning.”

  “And the rest of the disks?”

  Camille stared silently at the monitor. The floor creaked as Paul inched closer.

  “I hope like hell you don’t plan on confronting Richmond yourself.”

  Camille finally summoned the courage to turn around and look at him. The look of disappointment on his face was more profound than she could have imagined. “I’m afraid that ship has already sailed.”

  Paul bit down on his lip. “Christ, Camille. You promised me you wouldn’t do that. What on earth were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. If I had been, I would have realized from the beginning that Elliott was the wrong Richmond to go to.”

  “You’re not even going to tell me that you–”

  “I sent a copy of the video to her office.”

  The look of disappointment in Paul’s face was suddenly replaced by something much darker. “You did what?”

  “I sent it to her office,” Camille calmly repeated. “But I have no way of knowing whether or not she actually got it. So to answer your question about what I’m doing with this disk, I am on my way to deliver it to her personally. It’s what I should have done in the first place.”

  “So it wasn’t bad enough that you directly confronted Elliott Richmond. Now you’re going to confront his wife? There simply aren’t any words to express how unbelievably foolish that is. What if her children see it?”

  The shock on his face was offset by the resoluteness in hers. “That would be terrible, but it’s not really my problem.”

  Paul walked to the computer, knelt down, and took the second disk out. “Then I guess I have to make it mine.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Stopping you from doing something really stupid and really dangerous.”

  Camille’s eyes burned with anger. “Give me that disk.”

  “Give me that one,” he countered, pointing to the disk that Camille held in her hand.

  “I can’t just let this pass, no matter what you or anybody else has to say. One way or another Elliott Richmond is going to account for what he did. ”

  “Nobody is asking you to let it pass, honey. Just don’t do it this way.”

  “Dad, we’ve already had this conversation.”

  “That’s right, we have. And I’m hoping this time you’ll actually listen to me.”

  Camille got up from the computer, still clutching the disk in her hand. “Keep the rest of them. I can make more copies whenever I need to.”

  She tried to walk out of the room but Paul grabbed her by the arm. She tried to break free but his grip was too strong.

  “What are you doing? Let go of me.”

  Paul was silent as he took hold of her other arm.

  Camille tried harder to pull away, but couldn’t. She was about to push him in the chest when she looked into his face. What she saw made every muscle in her body go limp.

  He was crying.

  CHAPTER 45

  For the first time in recent memory, Graham was second-guessing himself. Knowing how problematic it would be to confront Davies inside police headquarters, he decided it best to wait until the officer left the building, which he did within five minutes of their run-in in Commander Brandt’s office. After lengthy wait in the parking garage, during which time he had to endure the indignity of yet another meaningless conversation with Detective Sullivan, Graham trailed Officer Davies’ patrol car for over ten miles without giving it a second thought. But as he watched it pull up to the curb in front of Camille Grisham’s house, he suddenly felt nervous.

  The school of police work he came from was very old and the rules were very strict. The first rule was to do whatever you had to do to make it home to your family every night. The second rule was never to bring compassion with you when you walked the street. Compassion was born not only out of weakness, but out of a misguided sense that the world operated on a defined system of right and wrong. It was easy for men in ivory towers to philosophize about morality and justice. But in the world he operated in, morality was non-existent, and true justice only occurred when the accused lacked the means to buy their way out of it. The irony of the system was that there was no system. Life on the street was survival of the fittest; every man for himself and only himself. That was the credo Graham had lived by for nearly three decades, and it provided all the justification he needed for what he had done to Stephen Clemmons and countless others like him.

  Clemmons was nothing more than a means to an end; a way to ensure Graham’s continued survival. More importantly, he was an easy mark. Men like him were arrested every single day. Ninety-five percent of them claimed they were innocent. Clemmons was no different. And like the rest, his claim of innocence would register as less than a blip on the public’s radar screen. Once they turned on their televisions and saw his picture with the caption ‘suspect’ underneath, they would feel confident that all was again right in their world. In turn, they would fall all over themselves praising Graham and the department for providing the swift, sure justice that they demanded.

  Stephen Clemmons was a gift.

  Camille Grisham was something else entirely.

  From the moment he met her outside of Julia Leeds’ house, Graham saw something in Camille that worried him. Aside from the fact that she was a former FBI agent and the daughter of a cop he had the displeasure of knowing very well, there was a desperation in her eyes that was troublesome. It wasn’t the kind of desperation that came from grief; it was the kind that came from an u
rgent need for answers. She wasn’t the least bit concerned with being comforted or consoled. She wanted blood.

  If Graham were thinking clearly, he would have warned Commander Brandt after that first meeting. By the time he and Sullivan interviewed Camille for the second time a few days later, it was too late.

  Graham had not been aware of the ‘who’ behind Julia Leeds’ murder until Camille showed up with a flash disk and a long list of pointed accusations. When he heard Elliott Richmond’s name, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. Richmond was one of the wealthiest, most well-respected men in the state. He was also the most morally bankrupt.

  With his recent behavior, Graham was making a strong push for second place.

  The work he did for Brandt didn’t bother him, even with his knowledge of Elliot Richmond’s involvement. His moral compass had been broken a long time ago, and it was entirely too late to fix it. What did bother Graham was the sudden uncertainty he felt as he sat in front of Camille Grisham’s house. She may have been a potentially fatal thorn in his side, and her father may have been an uppity, self-righteous do-gooder who rubbed most everyone around him the wrong way with his idiotic idealism. But they were still cops, as was the man whom he had blindly followed here.

  Graham knew little about Patrick Davies prior to this week, other than the fact that he was a young patrolman recently out of the academy with no significant track record of arrests, citations, or even traffic stops. Yet the talk around the campfire was that the top brass, from Chief Connolly and Commander Brandt on down, had him pegged as a rising star. He recalled Davies being at Julia Leeds’ house during the initial investigation. In fact it was he who informed Detective Sullivan and himself of the potential witness on scene – the witness who turned out to be Camille Grisham. He also escorted Dale Rooney and his wife out of the homicide unit after their interview. Beyond that, Graham had no basis on which to form an opinion about the officer.