by Michael Omer
Hannah took a deep breath. “Okay, thank you. If you just answer my questions, this will all be over and you can go back to your job, okay?”
Damion grunted in what sounded like approval.
“I understand you got a call from Traynor Road tonight, is that correct?”
“Yes, they asked me to come, but when I got there no one would come down, I called and called, and no one answered the phone, I don’t know why people do that, do they not respect my time, am I nothing to them—”
“Okay! At what time did you get to the address?”
“At around twelve-twenty.” Damion seemed to be surprised at his own ability to answer succinctly.
“Did you see anyone?”
“No one came, there was one man who ran out of the building, and I called him, but he didn’t answer, just got in his car and drove away, so I don’t think he was my passenger—”
“Right! This man you saw running. Did you see what he looked like?”
“No, it was dark, but he had wide shoulders, and I think he was white, I didn’t see anything else.”
“What color was his hair? What was he wearing?” Bernard asked.
“I don’t know, it was dark, and he was running fast. Maybe a coat.”
Maybe a coat. This was less than helpful. Almost anyone walking outside that night would have been wearing a coat.
“Did you see the car?”
“A red Toyota Corolla.” Damion answered quickly.
“Did you catch the license plate?” Hannah asked hopefully.
“Why would I?”
Hannah shrugged. No reason at all, really. Some people just remembered license plate numbers. “When did you drive away?” she asked.
“Around half past midnight, I got a call from another passenger, I wasn’t about to continue waiting until his majesty decided to show up, I have three children and a wife to support, what do people think—”
“Did you see anyone else during that time? Anything out of the ordinary? Hear something?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “Please let us know if you remember anything.” She gave Damion a card, which she believed would find its way into the first trashcan the taxi driver encountered.
The man seemed to consider starting another tirade about lost fares, but common sense must have prevailed, because he turned and left.
“A red Toyota Corolla,” Bernard said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and Chad Grimes has one.”
“Maybe,” Hannah said.
It was twenty minutes before five in the morning when the detectives parked in front of Chad Grimes’s home. The sky was completely dark, but every once in a while a car drove by, its driver probably on his way to work. A man passed by them, walking a large dog, glancing curiously at their Dodge Charger. Hannah didn’t see a red Toyota Corolla anywhere on the street. Grimes’s home was a small, crumbling, old house, the white paint peeling, the front yard a tangle of weeds and garbage, the windows covered with faded blue shutters. As they got closer to the door, the detectives walked slower, their hands close to their firearms.
Chad Grimes was an unpredictable criminal who had spent a total of eight years in jail, six of those for aggravated assault against a police officer. He had attacked a patrol officer who came to investigate a noise complaint. Grimes had been high on meth at the time. Though he had been out of jail for the past eighteen months, Hannah and Bernard had no reason to assume he wasn’t as dangerous as before.
Hannah knocked on the door. They had no warrant for Grimes’s arrest; all they wanted was to ask some questions. She thought about Frank Gulliepe, lying on the floor, several stab wounds on his body. Had Grimes followed Frank and Jerome when they left Leroy’s? Had he waited in the hallway until Jerome had left, and then entered Frank’s apartment and stabbed him?
She knocked again, louder.
“I have a gun!” a woman called from inside the house. Both Hannah and Bernard moved to opposite sides of the door and flattened themselves against the wall. Hannah’s pulse accelerated as adrenaline rushed in her blood. Bernard drew his gun.
“Ma’am, this is the police!” Hannah called. “Please put down your weapon!”
“Oh!” The woman sounded cranky. “Why the fuck didn’t you say so? What do you want?”
“Is Chad home?”
“No.”
“We just want to ask him some questions, ma’am.”
“He’s not here.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Ma’am, can you please open the door?”
There was a moment of silence. “Show me the badge,” the woman finally said from inside.
Hannah carefully pulled out her badge and waved it in front of the peephole. Bernard tensed and pointed his gun at the door.
“Yeah, okay,” the woman said. They heard two locks click, and something that sounded like a deadbolt sliding. Then the door opened.
The woman standing in the entrance was pale and skinny, with short, bleached-blonde hair. She wore a loose blue t-shirt and long black pants, and held a baby in her arms. There was a fresh bruise on her cheek and another bruise, faded, on her neck. Her bottom lip was swollen.
The woman’s eyes dropped to Bernard’s gun and widened. She took a step back, looking as if she was about to slam the door, but Bernard quickly lowered the gun and holstered it. The woman looked at both of them warily.
“You woke up the baby,” she finally said. “Do you know how tough it is to get her to sleep?”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Bernard said, his gun secure in the holster. He sounded completely sincere, and Hannah assumed he was. Bernard’s baby was infamous in the squad room because of Bernard’s frequent complaints about their hectic nights.
“Can we come in?” Hannah asked.
“Do you have a warrant?” the woman asked.
“No.”
“Then you can’t come in.”
“Can you please tell us when was the last time you saw Chad?” Hannah asked.
“Yesterday morning,” the woman said.
“Did he tell you where he was going to be tonight?”
“No.”
“Is he usually gone for the entire night?”
“Chad does whatever he wants.”
“Will he be back today?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Hannah glanced into the house. All she could see was an old, frayed couch and the corner of a table.
“We just want to ask him some questions.”
“So you said. And I said he isn’t here.”
“Ma’am,” Hannah said, her tone softening, “is there something you want to tell us?”
“Not really,” the woman said in a steely voice.
“Your face is bruised…”
“I accidentally ran into a tree,” the woman said.
“That’s one hell of an accident.”
“Yeah.”
“Ma’am, if there’s something you would like to report… Don’t forget, you have to take care of your baby—”
“Don’t tell me I have a baby,” the woman interrupted her. “I know I have a baby. You know what else I have? Two fucking police officers on my doorstep in the middle of the night, asking me questions while my damn nipples are about to freeze off. You worried about the baby? Awesome; here’s a suggestion: don’t knock on my door in the middle of the night—it wakes her up—and mind your own fucking business.”
The voice was fierce and angry, but underneath the fury Hannah could hear a sea of despair. She looked at the woman, who returned her stare, unblinking. Hannah sighed and said, “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
The woman closed the door without saying a word. They heard the door lock. The detectives got away from the house.
“Now what?” Hannah asked.
“Now we call for help,” Bernard said.
It wasn’t even five in the morni
ng when Bernard called Captain Bailey. Fred Bailey was not happy to wake up.
This was the second time that night he’d been woken by a phone call. The first one had been to let him know that Frank Gulliepe had been murdered. Now he was being woken up by Bernard, calling about the same murder. Why did they keep waking him up? What did they expect him to do from his bed? Surely they didn’t expect him to leave it?
He angrily told Bernard he didn’t want to be woken up before seven A.M. unless his own house was burning. And even then, he added, they’d better be sure they tried to put out the fire before disrupting his precious sleep.
Bernard waited until Captain Bailey finished his tirade, and then informed him that Chad Grimes, who was a suspect in the Frank Gulliepe murder case, was either away from his home or hiding inside.
Captain Bailey told him to get a judge to sign a search warrant, and to let him go back to sleep, damn it.
Bernard explained that there wasn’t enough for a search warrant.
Captain Bailey told him to have someone watch the damn house until Grimes decided to show his nose.
Bernard told him that was his job.
Fred Bailey knew this was his job. “Fine,” he said, and hung up.
He thought for a moment. He didn’t want to spare one of his precious detectives on something so mundane as watching a door. He called Captain Jack Marrow, the patrol captain.
Marrow was furious to be woken up, especially since the man who woke him up was Captain Fred Bailey. Marrow suspected it was Bailey who was behind the prank in which someone had pinned a pirate flag on his door. He had always known the promotion to the rank of captain would be cause for mockery. It wouldn’t have been, if only Disney had named their favorite pirate captain by any other name. But the pirate’s name had been decided upon without consulting him, and its resemblance to Captain Marrow’s name was a blight on his life.
One day, Marrow hoped, Disney would create a movie in which the main character was named Captain Fred Kailey, and then he would have his revenge.
Bailey explained that it was critical Marrow send one of his patrols to watch Chad Grimes’s home.
Marrow reckoned it might be a better idea if Bailey assigned one of his detectives to do that.
Bailey asked if Marrow really wanted the murder investigation to stall because he refused to spare one measly patrol team?
Marrow said he was going to go back to sleep, and Bailey could shove his murder investigation where the sun didn’t shine.
Bailey said that if Marrow hung up the phone, he’d call Chief Dougherty herself to resolve the matter.
Both of the captains pondered silently for a couple of seconds, envisioning the wrath this would rain on their heads. Bailey was, in fact, bluffing, but Marrow couldn’t be sure. Eventually he agreed to send a patrol to watch the Grimes’s house for twelve hours. If Grimes didn’t show his ugly face by then, Fred Bailey and his entire squad could piss off.
He hung up and tried to go back to sleep, but memories of the black pirate flag on his door kept intruding. Eventually he got up in a very bad mood, and yelled at his daughter when she spilled a glass of milk on the floor by mistake. Then his wife yelled at him for making their daughter cry, and the entire Marrow family started the day on the wrong foot.
Bernard knew none of this, and was happy to see Tanessa Lonnie and her partner arrive in an unmarked vehicle. He thought it was nice how quickly the issue had been resolved, and it was really a testament to the efficiency and cooperation of the entire Glenmore Park police force.
Chapter Five
Detective Jacob Cooper was a brilliant investigator with sharp instincts, a nose for hidden information, and an uncanny ability to crack almost anyone in the interrogation room. All this was completely moot in front of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amy, who was apparently angry at him again, though he had no idea why.
“Honey, do you want some pancakes for breakfast?”
She glared at him. “I’ll eat some toast,” she snapped.
“Do you, uh… want me to make it?”
“Are you proposing to put a slice of bread in the toaster for me? Thanks Dad, what would I have done without you?” She put the slice of bread in the toaster herself, just in case he’d missed the dripping sarcasm.
Jacob tried to think. Had he missed an important date? This seemed unlikely. Her birthday was four months away. What other important dates were there? Perhaps he’d been supposed to buy her something and he forgot? Or maybe he’d missed some random school event he was supposed to show up at? Why was it that psychopathic murderers and rough drug dealers made perfect sense to him, while his daughter made none?
“Do you want a ride to school?” he asked in a desperate attempt to fix whatever this was.
Amy seemed to consider it, weighing the pros (no school bus, a short and comfortable ride) with the cons (will have to be moderately nice to Daddy, who is the devil incarnate).
“I’ll take the bus,” the relentless despot declared, sentencing Jacob to a long day of wondering what he had done wrong.
“Okay.” He sighed. He decided that drinking coffee at work would be better than drinking it here, with a vicious teenager glaring at him. “Have a nice day, honey.”
She did not wish him the same. Her stare clarified that, as far as she was concerned, his day would hopefully be an everlasting nightmare.
“Bye, Marissa!” he called to his wife, who was still in bed.
“Bye, sweetie!” she called back. At least she wasn’t upset with him. That was definitely something.
He decided to walk to work. The police station was not far from home, and he usually preferred, when the weather permitted, to get there on foot. He put on his coat and went outside, still trying to crack the case of the mysterious fuming daughter. Had he, perhaps, said the wrong thing? Not this morning. She’d been clearly pissed off since the moment she woke up. Perhaps last night? He definitely recalled saying “good night, Amy,” but that didn’t seem like grounds for hatred. He sighed.
He strode down Bifrost Avenue, breathing in the morning’s fresh, chilly air. Despite the cold, the sky was bright and blue, and he slowly cheered up. Amy’s mood was like a force of nature. You had to let it run its course. She never stayed angry for more than a few hours, and once she was done she was the sweetest daughter a man could wish for. By the time he’d passed by the college, he was already quite happy. Even seeing Mad Remington walking down the road, muttering to himself, pushing his supermarket cart, did not manage to dampen Jacob’s mood. It was one of those beautiful days that just made him relish being alive. He didn’t feel like a fifty-six-year-old goat at all. He wouldn’t have given himself a day over fifty-two.
He pulled his iconic hat a bit downward, to protect his eyes from the morning sun. Everyone knew Jacob by his hat. It was an old gray fedora, which he had received as a birthday gift from his wife a decade or so before. He wore it almost constantly, because he was completely bald underneath and did not want to get sunburned. He had lost his last strand of hair when he was twenty years old. He knew people often did things like “comb their hair” or “get a haircut,” but he didn’t even recall what that was like.
He tried to compose his thoughts and prepare for the day ahead. He had some paperwork to fill out. There was a report due regarding last week’s double homicide that, for some reason, had been rejected by the computer. The Glenmore Park police department used a cutting edge program, purchased only a few months earlier, to file their internal reports. It made Jacob’s life miserable.
The current problem, according to the error message he had received when submitting the report, was Err-176 No Instance of Crime Found Searching. This cryptic message, which was as mysterious as his daughter, would probably mess with his day. He could let Mitchell handle it—his young partner would fix the problem in a second—but Jacob wasn’t inclined to ask for his help. Mitchell already did most of the work when their cases involved computers. The least Jacob could do was fi
le the goddamn paperwork.
He reached the police station. There was something very reassuring about this building, which represented a large part of his life for the past twenty-five years. Same old cracked stairs climbing up to the entrance. Same old doorway, with the sign Glenmore Park City Police Department. Same old security guard checking his ID, despite the fact that Jacob had walked through this security gate more than fifteen thousand times.
A cup of coffee with his name on it would make this morning perfect. “Good morning,” he said as he walked into the squad room.
Hannah was there, hunched over a mobile phone, and she did not seem to think it was a good morning at all. “If you’re making coffee, get me a cup,” she muttered. “Better yet, get me a bucket.”
“Weren’t you on a stakeout last night?” Jacob asked, approaching the coffee machine. “What are you doing here?”
“Murder,” Hannah said curtly.
“During your stakeout?”
“No,” she said. “After. The captain didn’t want to disturb your beauty sleep.”
“That’s a shame,” Jacob said, blessing the captain in his heart. “Really, I wouldn’t have minded being woken up.”
“Well, then, I’ll be sure to do that next time,” Hannah said.
“Where’s Bernard?”
“Gone home. Had to sleep.”
“You should go ahead and get some sleep too. I don’t think you’re doing any good in your state.”
Hannah grunted in response.
Jacob handed Hannah a cup of coffee and sat down in his cubicle with his own cup. He opened his mailbox and stared morosely at the rejected report. He tried resubmitting it, and the computer vehemently spat it out again with the message Err-176 No Instance of Crime Found Searching. He tried fiddling with the report—changed the headline a bit, reversed the order of the detectives on it—and resubmitted it. The report was rejected once again, this time due to Err-239 Invalid Detective. Well, that was just rude.
He groaned and turned around. “So,” he said. “Tell me about that murder you’re investigating.”
