by James Hunt
Cooper remained quiet for a while, watching her sister, the file, the clock on the wall. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you. But Jesus, Beth, you’re a grown woman! You have a husband and kids. And I have this.” She gestured to the office and its scattered mess. “And I’m sorry that I don’t feel the same way about learning about the man who is our biological father.” She pointed to the folder. “This isn’t something I want to be a part of.”
Beth snatched the folder off her desk. “It doesn’t fucking matter. This was a mistake.” She shook her head, stuffing the papers back into her purse and putting on her jacket. She laughed an exhausted chuckle. “I don’t know what I was expecting. We would see each other, hug, and tell how much we’ve missed one another.” She stopped and turned at the door one last time, her expression stoic. “I just thought you’d like to know where we came from. But I should have known you wouldn’t give a shit. Just like when Mom died.”
The pictures on the wall lifted from the rush of wind that accompanied the slammed door, knocking a few of them down. She sat silently, her eyes glued to door. She massaged her temples and focused on lowering her heart rate. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but Hart snapped her out of the stupor when he stepped inside. “What?” she asked, absentmindedly.
“Who was that?” Hart looked back down the hallway from the door.
Cooper exhaled, trying to recalibrate her thoughts and return her focus to work. “What’d you find?”
“Kate Wurstshed’s employer was closed because of the storm, but I left a voice mail.” Hart gestured to the papers in his hand. “I heard back from the department of corrections. Zane Marks never checked in with his parole officer.”
Cooper jumped from her chair, heading out into the hallway, with Hart close behind. “Put out an APB on Marks. Let’s find the bastard.”
Chapter 5
A car sped past, and Cooper resisted the urge to hunt them down for going twenty over the speed limit, focusing her attention on the decrepit house settled in Baltimore’s projects. They’d already poked around the neighbors, confirming that Zane wasn’t home, so they parked across the street and waited for him to show up.
“You really think he’ll come back here?” Hart asked, leaning his head against the window. “It seems like a stupid move to make after knowingly missing his parole check-in.”
“Rape is stupid, but he managed to do that. Twice.” Cooper popped another piece of gum in her mouth and fiddled with the wrapper between her fingers. She rubbed her left eye, dry and irritated from the staring contest with the door. “And right now we don’t have anything to do but wait. DNA tests are still at the lab, Barnesby’s secretary hasn’t gotten back with us, and Kate’s work is closed. Right now this is the strongest active lead we have.”
A blue sedan turned onto their street from down the road then slowed as it neared Zane’s property. It was a modest car but a stark contrast from the run-down vehicles that occupied these streets. A woman sat behind the wheel, and she stopped right in front of Zane’s home. Cooper smacked Hart’s arm. “Run those plates.” She scooted forward in her seat, trying to get a better look.
A man exited the passenger seat wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, making his face unrecognizable, but he headed straight for Zane’s door the moment the sedan pulled away. Cooper waited until he was inside then flung her car door open. “Let’s move.”
Cooper and Hart glided swiftly across the street, keeping low. Cooper placed her right hand over her pistol and hastened her speed, and Hart mimicked her motions. She stopped at the front corner of the house, which rested twelve feet from the front door. Two windows separated her from the entrance, and she searched for another way inside.
Hart kept his voice low as he radioed dispatch. “Requesting officer assistance at twenty-six South Hampton Street.” He clicked the radio off and leaned in close to Cooper’s ear. “We need to wait for backup. We don’t know if he’s armed.”
The heat of the afternoon already caused both Cooper and Hart to break out into a sweat. The storm that passed through the night before had left a heavy moisture that lingered in the air. Cooper wiped her brow with her sleeve and glanced down the road, where the sedan had disappeared. “We don’t have time. If that sedan circles back, we’ll have missed our chance, and this will turn into a highway chase.” She looked up to the second floor and saw an opened window. The fence that ran close to the building’s perimeter stretched close to the bottom of the balcony’s ledge. “Watch the front door.”
“Cooper, what are you—”
But by the time Hart realized what was happening Cooper was already at the fence. She hoisted herself up, the tip of her boots scraping the splintered wood as she struggled to gain traction. The old pieces of lumber wavered under her weight as she balanced on the support beams that ran along the inside of the fence.
Once she had reached the fence’s highest point she stretched for the balcony, her legs shaking with the fence. She grazed the iron poles of the balcony’s banner with her fingertips and nearly lost her balance. She inched a little closer, shuffling across the rickety fence, and reached again, this time firmly grabbing hold of the banister’s poles.
The muscles along her arms and shoulders burned as she pulled herself up. Sweat dripped from her reddened face as half her body dangled from the second story. She felt her hands grow slick, and when she tried to reposition she slipped. The harsh jerk popped her elbow as she dangled from her right hand, clinging onto the balcony’s banister. Her pinky and ring finger slid from the pole, and she dangled with only three fingers gripped around the banister. Just when she thought she’d fall something stabilized her feet.
Cooper looked down at Hart, who kept her legs steady then hoisted her higher. The lift provided her the needed momentum to regain her grip, and she pulled herself over the iron banister. She tumbled onto the balcony less gracefully than she would have liked, but the noise was minimal. She looked back over the railing, red faced, and nodded to Hart, who retook his position near the front door. She approached the window carefully, raising her service pistol, checking both sides of the window before entering. Once she determined the bedroom was clear, she entered.
The room was dirty and bare save for an unmade bed on the floor with no box spring surrounded by empty beer cans. Most of the rust-red carpet was stained, and what wasn’t was covered in dirty clothes. The walls were lined with posters, and the atmosphere was more akin to a college dorm room than that of a man in his early fifties.
Two thuds echoed from downstairs, and Cooper shifted her eyes to the bedroom door. Once out of the room she crept quietly to the stairs, the thumps growing louder. The muscles along her arms, shoulders, and back tensed as she steadied the weapon and took her first slow step down the staircase. She kept close to the wall, letting it guard her back on her descent.
Halfway down the staircase a shoulder came into view, then old VHS tapes and magazines being stacked in small piles. A few more steps down, and Cooper nearly had a look at the man’s face, but the next stair moaned as she applied her weight, and the man jerked his head up. The sunglasses had been ditched, and his eyes grew wide as he stared down the gun’s barrel.
“Freeze!” Cooper screamed, but Marks already had one foot out the door. She cursed and took chase. She squinted into the sunlight once outside and watched Hart sprint after the suspect around the back side of the house. She followed, reaching for her radio. “This is Detective Cooper. We are in pursuit of Zane Marks. Suspect is on foot, possibly armed, and should be approached with extreme caution. I need all units in the area to respond. Suspect is heading north along South Hampton Street.”
Cooper crashed through the fence door and saw Hart darting behind another house down the road. She paused and glanced at the zigzagging maze that was made up of the side lanes between homes, knowing it would slow them down. She sprinted in the opposite direction, heading back toward the main street.
Cooper glanced down the alleyways she passed, catching brief glimpses of both Hart and Marks as they darted through the side yards of the run-down houses in the neighborhood. She kept a straight path, looking ahead to the cross street to cut them off. Sharp stabs ran up from her heels that pounded into the sidewalk, and her legs and lower back stiffened in the prolonged chase.
After a few houses she finally passed Hart, and three more after that she had caught up with Marks. The cross street was only another twenty yards away, and Cooper dropped into another gear, burning what was left of her energy.
Fire filled her lungs, and her body whined from the exertion. She rounded the street corner without breaking stride and pulled her pistol. A quarter way down the road the suspect emerged from between two homes, and Cooper discharged her weapon. The bullet sprayed a cluster of grass and dirt less than a foot away from Marks’s left ankle, and the distraction caused him to slow and turn around, which provided the extra time to close the gap.
Cooper tackled Marks to the pavement, and the two rolled, elbows and knees smacking against concrete. She winced from the harsh scrape of road burn but managed to land on top of Marks, her pistol still in hand. “Put your hands on your head, now!”
Hart emerged from between the homes and cuffed Marks while Cooper caught her breath. She holstered the weapon and forced the rising vomit back down her stomach. Once she finally composed herself she radioed dispatch. “We have Zane Marks in custody. Notify the Maryland DOC. We’re bringing him in.”
***
Through the entire car ride to the station, the booking process, and even after being questioned in the interrogation room, Zane Marks never said a word. He wore his apathy like a shield of armor, and the icy, blank stare refused to crack, no matter what Cooper threw at him.
“Things will go a lot easier for you if you cooperate, Zane.” Cooper slouched lazily in the chair across the table from where Marks was cuffed. “You answer my questions, and it’ll go a long way with the parole board. It’d be a shame for you to have to go back on the inside for something like this.”
Marks grimaced, and Cooper leaned over the table, finally touching on a subject he didn’t like. She rubbed her hands, shaking her head sympathetically. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you in there. Surrounded by big, overaggressive men, not a single helpless woman in sight. It must have been so hard.”
Marks finally made eye contact with Cooper. “I want my phone call.” His voice was deep, and he strained against the chains that kept him in his seat. But even with the few feet between them, Cooper could smell the stink of his breath.
“You get your phone call when our lines get back up and running,” Hart said, his arms crossed as he stood in the corner. “It could be a while, though.”
Cooper smiled, impressed how the rookie had handled himself in the room. His size and clean-cut appearance gave him the look of a federal agent, and he’d mastered his interrogation stare, though Cooper wasn’t sure if that was intentional or not. She leaned back in her chair. “Sounds like we have some time to kill.” She picked at one of her fingernails lazily. “You do know that since you broke parole you’ll be summoned to a hearing. And the arresting officer is always called to testify.” Cooper cocked her head to the side, scratching her temple. “I wonder what I’ll say?”
Marks rolled his eyes and straightened himself in his chair. “I was away on vacation.”
“Where?”
“Out of the city. I didn’t have cell reception, and the day we were supposed to drive back down was the night of the storm. When we got in this morning the cell’s battery died, and power was still out in most of Baltimore. I was going to call and explain to my parole officer what happened.”
“You know you’re not supposed to leave the state, right?” Hart asked, stepping from the shadows. He pressed his knuckles into the table, staring Marks down. “That’ll land you back in county.”
Marks smirked like an adolescent child who thought he could one-up his parents. “I didn’t leave the state, asshole. I was up in North Point, camping.”
“You said we,” Cooper interjected. “Who went with you?”
“My girlfriend.”
Cooper raised her eyebrows. “And this girlfriend of yours, she’s aware that you’re a convicted rapist? Or did you choose to leave that detail out on your match.com profile?”
“She fucking knows, all right?” Marks slammed his back into the chair, rattling the chains, the cool demeanor he displayed earlier erased from his features and replaced with the irritated annoyance of a criminal who’d been caught.
“Why’d you run?” Cooper asked.
Marks kicked the leg of the table but only hard enough to slide it forward an inch. “What the hell would you do if someone sneaks into your house with a gun pointed at you?” He matched Cooper’s sarcasm with an added bite and yanked at his chains in frustration. “I didn’t fucking do anything! All right? I ran because I didn’t want Rose to see me hauled away in handcuffs. That doesn’t exactly breed trust in a relationship that’s already walking on eggshells. Fucking Christ. It’s hard enough to meet someone with a record hanging over my head.”
“Yeah, it’s such a tough racket for convicted rapists.” Cooper’s overexaggerated face matched the sarcastic tone that dripped from her lips. “I’m sure you have everyone’s sympathies.”
“If you let me call Rose, she can explain. She was with me the whole trip. I even got my parole officer to sign off on it.”
“Why didn’t he record your trip in the database if he knew about it?” Cooper asked.
“How should I fucking know? Do I look like his supervisor? Maybe he got backlogged with paperwork, maybe he forgot?” Marks shifted uneasily, the color and rage draining from his body, and his tone shifting to a whine. “Look, just let me call Rose. Let me speak with my parole officer. We can get this figured out.”
“I want a DNA sample.” Cooper thrust her right index finger into the table. “And we want to keep you here until we have it analyzed.” She walked to the door then paused and glanced back at Marks before she left. “Then you can get your fucking phone call.”
Hart followed her out of the room, and the two watched him sweat from the view of the one-way glass. “You think he’s telling the truth?”
“Check the tags on the sedan that dropped him off. See if they belong to someone named Rose, and see what she has to say about Mr. Marks.” Cooper tilted her head to the side. “I think there’s something in his apartment that he didn’t want us to find. Let’s get a tech in here to swab the DNA sample then get a unit over to Marks’s residence and comb the place. It shouldn’t be difficult to get a warrant for that. We’ll compare his results to the samples from our other victims, see what matches up.”
“If he did it, you know he wouldn’t submit to a test,” Hart said.
“Well he did something. And this will at least narrow the field of suspects.” Cooper headed back to the office while Hart borrowed one of the empty desks in the bull pen. On the way, the normal chaos of the precinct was interrupted by a woman’s shrieks. Heads turned at the sight and sound of the woman struggling against three officers as she barreled her way through the halls.
Cooper hurried past the gawking stares and intercepted the woman’s path. Her face was beet red, the vein along her forehead throbbed wildly as she screamed at one of the officers. “What do you mean I can’t see him? I know he’s here.” She waved her phone in the air, pointing to it. “I just got off the phone with his parole officer! Let me speak to him now!”
Before the woman used the phone as a projectile weapon, Cooper stepped into the line of fire. “It’s all right, Jim. I’ll take her back.” She reached for the woman’s arm, but she pulled it away.
“Where’s Zane? What is he doing here?” The woman’s large hooped earrings dangled wildly as she shook her head back and forth. “I want to see him!”
“You’ll speak with him soon,” Cooper said, gesturing down the hall. “I ju
st need to ask you a few questions. The quicker we do this, the quicker you can see Zane.”
The woman tapped her foot impatiently, but when she realized that Cooper wouldn’t budge she rolled her eyes, and walked down the hall. Cooper opened the door to one of the spare rooms on the opposite side of where Marks was being held. Once inside, the woman stood by the table, again tapping her foot. “Well?”
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Cooper gestured to the chair and sat down first. “I promise this will only take a few minutes.”
Rose eyed the chair suspiciously but eventually sat down. She set her purse on the floor, and the silence gave Cooper a few minutes to look her over. Her hair was greyed, and she had plastered her makeup on thick in an attempt to hide the age lines, which were only highlighted by her attempt to conceal them. Her fingernails were painted though chipped and discolored from the original hue.
“Ms. Steeves, are you aware of Zane Marks’s background? His past?”
Rose shifted in her chair, unfolding her arms, her mouth twitching with irritation. “He’s not like that anymore. He’s changed. That’s why they let him out. That’s why he’s on parole.” Her Jersey accent was faded, but enough remained to connect its origins, giving her voice the sophistication of a high schooler upset with the principal.
