Heroes Often Fail rcc-2

by Frank Zafiro

  Crawford shook his head. “Nothing, buttercup.”

  “Kiss my ass,” Reott said and intentionally took a deep drag of cigar smoke, then let out a long stream of blue, blowing it in Crawford’s direction.

  Crawford clapped sarcastically.

  “Smart-ass,” Reott muttered. “What are you doing about the phones?”

  “The phone lines are tapped and will record any activity,” Crawford told him. “I’ve got Browning and Tower running down leads and I told them to put the light duty kid on phone tips.”

  “Kopriva?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Who knows?” Crawford said. “Who cares?”

  Reott’s eyes narrowed. “Why the hositility?”

  “He could’ve save Karl Winter, Mike.”

  Reott shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  It was Crawford’s turn to shrug. “I think he could’ve. And, I don’t buy this hero crap some people are tossing around. It took Thomas Chisolm to finish his laundry for him.”

  Reott was silent. He knew more than a few people felt like Crawford did.

  “Anyway, he’s bright enough to handle phone tips,” Crawford said. “So we’ll keep him there.”

  “What if no ransom call comes?”

  “If it doesn’t come by tomorrow, Cap, it ain’t coming. Then we have to start looking at the likely possibility that this little girl is dead.”

  “What’s Browning think?”

  “He thinks she’s already dead.”

  Reott cursed, causing Crawford to smile. “What?” Reott asked him.

  “I just never heard a goat referred to in quite that way.”

  “Yeah? Well, you’re not from Montana.”

  Crawford allowed himself to chuckle. He puffed on his cigar for a few moments after the chuckle died out.

  “How’s the media been?” Reott asked.

  Crawford shrugged. “Fair, for the most part. They got the girl’s picture out on the airwaves. All the reports I saw were pretty reasonable.”

  “Including that Portland transplant?”

  “Shawna Matheson?”

  “That’s her.” Reott shook his head. “She’d turn a cat in a tree into a hostage stand-off. I can only imagine what she’ll do with a missing kid.”

  Crawford took a contemplative puff on his cigar. “I didn’t see hers. But who cares? Anything that gets people watching for the kid is a good thing. Most reporters are responsible, but a couple are — ”

  “Jackals,” Reott finished.

  Crawford puffed again and shrugged. Then he said, “You know graveyard patrol will keep the pressure on. They’ll stop any van moving.”

  “They should. That’s their job.”

  “Yeah,” said Crawford. “And they’re good at it. They’ll stop every van moving, especially if there’s a black man driving. But by tomorrow morning, you’re going to have black ministers and the Center for Racial Justice down here screaming bloody murder.”

  “Screw them,” Reott said. “We’re trying to find a missing kid.”

  “Some of your ‘jackals’ could jump on that particular story.”

  “Screw them, too. If I need to, I’ll make an on-camera statement and explain. People will understand. If we need any more explanation than that, I’ll give an interview to that lady reporter at the newspaper. The one who actually listens and writes things up half-way fair.”

  “Pam Lincoln.” Crawford pursed his lips and nodded. He agreed that she was a fair reporter, especially when it came to critical incidents. Then he said, “You know, if a ransom note shows up or it looks like the van headed to Idaho, the FBI will want in.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Reott replied, and blew a large cloud of smoke up toward his office ceiling.

  Lieutenant Crawford smiled grimly. He knew that they were in the eye of the hurricane right then, so he did the only thing he could do at the moment. He sat back and enjoyed his cigar, too.

  NINE

  2053 hours

  Officer Katie MacLeod walked past the sergeant’s office toward the roll call room. The door was closed but through the door’s glass window, she saw Lieutenant Saylor and Sergeant Shen talking with the Major Crimes Lieutenant. Shen looked up and noticed her pass by. He gave her a barely perceptible nod.

  Once in the roll call room, Katie walked to the Baker Sector table to choose a chair. Seating wasn’t assigned, but police officers were creatures of habit and slaves to seniority. Everyone had their own chair around the table and it was a major event if someone broke the seating chart rules.

  “You about done with that, Matt?” she asked Matt Westboard, choosing an empty chair and sitting down. He was reading the daily intelligence flyer from a three ring binder that contained the last several months worth of bulletins.

  “No,” Westboard said, pretending to ignore her.

  “Good thing there’s pictures on those flyers,” Katie teased. “Otherwise, it’d be a quick read for you.”

  Westboard glanced up at her, then around the room. Satisfied that there were no ears that might be offended, he jabbed back. “The only pictures today are from the ad for your 1-900 number. Unfortunately, they’ve been blacked out in places-“

  Katie threw her pen at him and caught him square in the forehead with the cap end of her plastic Bic.

  “Whoa, MacLeod!”

  “You should watch what you say, Westboard.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone gets an eye put out.” He picked up the pen and put it in his breast pocket. “If you think I’m giving this back to you, you’re nuts.”

  “Keep it,” she said. “I’ve got plenty.”

  “Plenty of callers, huh?”

  Katie flashed her middle finger at him.

  Westboard feigned shock. “Not a very lady-like gesture.”

  “Are you finished with the flyer or not?”

  Westboard slid the binder across the table to her. “I’m only giving you this to avoid having knives thrown at me next.”

  Katie pretended to ignore him and scanned the flyer. It consisted of noteworthy events and arrests made recently, outstanding wanted persons of some notoriety and unsolved crimes. It was an accomplishment of some measure in the patrol division to make an arrest that found its way into the daily intelligence flyer.

  As she read, other members of her platoon drifted in and took their seats. Anthony Battaglia sat immediately to her left. She could smell his cologne, which wasn’t unpleasant, just a little too strong. Connor O’Sullivan sat directly across from O’Sullivan.

  “You done with that flyer yet, Katie?” Battaglia asked her. He spoke with an intentional hint of a New York accent. Sometimes he and O’Sullivan spent their entire shift with Battaglia speaking in a thick New York Italian accent while O’Sullivan used a barely decipherable Irish brogue.

  Katie slid the binder across the table to him.

  “What am I, chopped liver?” O’Sullivan asked her.

  “You gotta ask for sumpin’ to get it, Sully,” Battaglia said, upping his accent a notch.

  “Oh, really?” retorted O’Sullivan in Irish brogue. “Well, will ya listen to the guinea over here with all the answers to life’s many mysteries?”

  “Do you guys ever quit?” Katie asked.

  “Never!” O’Sullivan said. “Never quit until the English are driven out and Ireland is free of tyranny!”

  “Stupid Mick,” Battaglia muttered.

  O’Sullivan smiled.

  Battaglia smiled.

  Simultaneously, they extended a middle finger at each other.

  Katie laughed in spite of herself.

  “You ever going to choose a seat, MacLeod?” Officer James Kahn asked, sliding into his self-assigned chair. Katie imagined that he’d been sitting in that same plastic chair so long, it probably bore the impression of his buttocks. “Every time I come to roll call, you’re in a different seat.”

/>   Kahn was still looking at her, so she tilted her head from side to side and said in her best ditzy voice, “They’re all so nice, I just can’t make up my mind.”

  Everyone except Kahn broke into a smile. He stared disapprovingly at her for a minute, then turned to Battaglia. “You done with the flyer?”

  “I’ve got dibs,” Sully said.

  “Screw your dibs,” Kahn said. “I’ve got seniority.”

  Sully opened his mouth to reply, but the door to the roll call room swung open and Sergeant Shen and Lieutenant Saylor walked in together. Shen took his position at the head of the Baker Sector table and Saylor stepped up to the podium. He addressed all three platoons.

  “Listen up,” he said, and the conversation died down. He handed several sheets of paper to one of the officers at the Adam sector table. “Here’s a few stolen vehicles and some fresh warrants that I’ll pass around. The main thing I want to go over tonight is the kidnapping of a little girl earlier today.”

  There was a low murmur throughout the room. Katie leaned forward and listened carefully.

  Saylor continued, “Some of you may have seen something about it on the news. At about 0830 this morning, six-year-old Amy Dugger was abducted from the area of 4800 N. Waterbury. The suspect vehicle was a full size blue or brown van. The driver was a black male, very large. The guy who grabbed her was a Hispanic male, jeans and yellow shirt. He wore a full face mask, had a Mexican accent and a tattoo on his right elbow of a spider web.”

  “There’s an original idea,” Kahn muttered loudly.

  Saylor looked up. “As of now, this little girl is still missing. There haven’t been any ransom requests made. We’ve teletyped all Western States police agencies and there’s been some news coverage already. Detectives Tower and Browning have been assigned the case. They would appreciate you stopping anything out there that resembles this description.”

  “That might ruffle a few feathers, El-Tee,” Thomas Chisolm said from the Charlie Sector table.

  “I don’t really care, Tom,” Saylor said. “There’s a little girl missing.”

  “I agree,” Chisolm said. “I’m just saying, there will be feathers ruffled.”

  Saylor looked out at the assembled officers. “Let me be clear. If you see a van matching this description, stop it. Be polite. Be professional. But you stop anything moving that matches this description and then let me and the administration worry about the fallout. Like I said, there’s a little girl missing.”

  There was a collective murmur of agreement.

  “All right. Carry on, then,” Saylor said. He left the podium and exited the roll call room.

  The sergeants began their platoon meetings.

  “If you have any problems like Chisolm mentioned,” Sergeant Shen told Baker Sector, “just call me. I’ll try to deal with it before it becomes a complaint. Like the lieutenant said, be professional and be polite. But dig. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Okay,” Shen said. “Make sure you read the stolens and warrants that are floating around and let’s hit the streets.”

  The group stood almost in unison to leave.

  “Katie,” Shen said. “I need to see you in the office, please.”

  Katie’s face flushed slightly. “Yes, sir.”

  Shen nodded and left the table.

  Battaglia made an “ooh” sound.

  “Think you’re in a wee bit o’trouble there, lass?” O’Sullivan half-sang.

  Katie ignored them and followed Shen.

  “Hopefully he’s going to talk to her about picking a goddamn seat and sticking with it,” Kahn said.

  In the sergeant’s office, Shen was already doing paperwork. He looked up when Katie entered. “Guys give you a razzing?”

  She shrugged.

  Shen smiled. “They like you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Katie shrugged again. She considered Westboard a friend, though they didn’t associate off-duty. Battaglia and O’Sullivan were like twins, but they seemed to tolerate her at least. Kahn definitely did not like her.

  “I’m serious,” Shen said. “Cops only tease other cops if they like them.”

  “Did I do something wrong, Sarge?”

  Shen’s eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. “Wrong? No. Is that why you think I called you in here?”

  She turned over her palms and shrugged.

  Shen shook his head. “No, you’re doing fine, Katie. I have a special assignment for you tonight, that’s all.”

  “What kind of assignment?”

  “It is part of the kidnapping detail,” Shen told her. “Officer Giovanni is assigned to the victim’s family. He needs to be relieved.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Being there in case there’s a ransom demand. Or if the family thinks of something important.”

  Babysitting, Katie thought. And who better to baby-sit than the girl on the platoon?

  “You look disappointed,” Shen said.

  Katie disguised her expression. “No, sir.”

  “All right, then,” Shen said, handing her the address on a slip of paper. “Go ahead and head straight up there to relieve Giovanni. He’ll relieve you at 0700 hrs tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Katie said and left the office.

  Down in the basement, she exacted some measure of revenge by refusing to tell any of her sector-mates what the sergeant had wanted, no matter how wildly they speculated. She stood waiting for a car to come in with her patrol bag at her feet.

  After a few minutes, the heckling died down. Westboard wandered over and stood next to her. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said sharply, and immediately regretted it.

  Westboard waited a few seconds, then asked, “Something the sergeant said?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Boyfriend trouble?”

  Katie glanced sideways at him, wondering if he knew about her and Stef. His expression was open, though, and without guile.

  “No.”

  “Family?”

  “No. Matt, I’m fine.”

  He nodded slowly, then asked, “Problems with the 1-900 phone line?”

  She gave a small laugh. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “I figured,” Westboard said.

  Swing shift rolled into the long basement sally port and parked in a line. The graveyard officers waited a few minutes for the swing shift officers to de-plane.

  “You wanna get coffee later?” Westboard asked her.

  “Can’t,” she said, picking up her bag. “I got stuck on a babysitting detail.”

  Westboard’s brow furrowed in confusion, but Katie ignored him and took the nearest vehicle. After conducting a swift pre-flight check, she strapped her patrol bag into the passenger seat and pulled out of the basement.

  Without thinking, she sound-checked the siren and air horn and checked the emergency lights. Everything worked fine.

  The drive up to the Dugger residence was a quick one. The after-work rush hour was long past and the traffic was thin. She pulled up behind Giovanni’s marked car and got out. As she walked up the sidewalk to the house, she saw Giovanni’s face peering out the kitchen window at her. He met her at the door.

  “Hey, MacLeod,” he said in a whisper. “Welcome to baby-sitter central.”

  2209 hours

  Thomas Chisolm drove slowly around the lower south hill neighborhood, watching for any blue or brown vans, whether moving or parked. Each time he came across one, he ran the license plate, then had the dispatcher check the registered owner. If the R.O. was a black male, he made a note of it. He planned to drop off the list to Detective Browning in the morning.

  After the third or fourth license plate, the dispatcher figured out what he was doing. After the seventh or so, she was sick of him doing it. Chisolm didn’t care. Dispatchers came and went. A little girl was missing.

  When he heard his call-sign come over the radio on the main south side channel, he was reasonab
ly certain that the data channel operator had told the south side operator to make sure he went to the next call.

  “Charlie-143, Charlie-145?”

  Chisolm clicked his mike.

  He heard Charlie-145, Officer Bill Lindsay, answer up with his location. As usual, he was far south and away from the crime-ridden areas of their sector.

  Chisolm shook his head in disgust. It wasn’t that he had anything against rich people getting a ticket-in fact, the idea somewhat appealed to him-it was just that whenever Lindsay was called, he was deep south. That meant that he wasn’t going to be there to back anyone up very quickly.

  “An unwanted guest, downtown at the State Theater,” the dispatcher said. “Complainant is the theater manager, who says a white male in his forties entered without a ticket and is refusing to leave. Description of suspect available.”

  “Disregard the description,” Chisolm said into the microphone. He considered going Code 4 and disregarding Lindsay, but decided against it. He’d let the lazy bastard drive downtown and do a little police work for a change. He was next up on the detective’s promotional list and would soon get made, anyway. Then he’d be able to duck work even more effectively.

  “Copy Charlie-143,” the dispatcher said. Chisolm imagined her and the data channel operator slapping a high five.

  There was a short silence on the radio. Chisolm knew Lindsay was waiting, hoping someone offered to go in his place or that Chisolm would go Code 4. After a short time, he came on the air.

  “Charlie-145, copy,” he said in a dejected voice.

  Chisolm smiled to himself.

  His smile faded as he headed downtown. He was reasonably certain that it was a drunken bum who had wandered in to the business. Downtown was full of winos, due to several outreach centers being located there. There were three competing churches that gave out sandwiches and bible verses on different days of the week. The transient population generally behaved themselves when they were in the outreach centers because to act up was to get booted out. However, once the doors closed for the evening, it was time to get liquored up and sleep in an alley or under the freeway. The luckier ones found their way into the Detox center, which was also conveniently downtown.

  He felt disgust for some, pity for others. Most claimed to be Vietnam vets and most were lying. As a veteran of that war himself, he took considerable exception to those false claims.