Drexel said, “Yes.”
“Good.”
Drexel stood and left the room.
* * *
At his desk, Drexel pulled up the felony complaint form on his computer. He let his gaze return to Sobieski sitting in Victor’s office, the door closed. Drexel drummed his finger on his chin as Kendall squinted at her computer monitor and Doggett closed his flip phone and grabbed his coat. He looked over at Drexel and shook his head.
Drexel drifted back to the form. “(Complainant’s Name Printed or Type) complainant, now appears before The Circuit Court of Cook County and states that (Defendant) (Address) has, on or about (Date) at (Place of offense) committed the offense of” and so on. Drexel typed in his name as the complainant. He paused. He typed in Kara’s name for the defendant, and he leaned back, tasting bile. Something felt wrong about this case, about Sobieski’s decision to force an arrest of Kara, like he had a grudge against her. She could be guilty, but this rush to arrest, to make sure somebody was arrested without regard to evidence was wrong. Kara was not going to flee while the syringe was examined.
The first flicker of a plan floated through Drexel’s mind. Partial—if that—but it just might afford him the chance to protect Kara and remain on the case until it was truly solved. But he had to act.
He completed the form and sent it off electronically as he grabbed his coat. The judge would sign it with an electronic signature. He estimated that he had an hour or two before the warrant hit the beat and patrol cops, but he would need all that time to save her from arrest.
Drexel told himself he was doing this to prevent a wrong. He told himself that.
* * *
Ton shook his head. “This is crazy.”
They sat in the small office at the back of Pawn Corner, which Ton had long ago said he built it to avoid spying by electronic surveillance. How he accomplished this and why Ton felt this need, Drexel had never bothered to ask. He accepted it as a quirk from his conspiratorial-minded friend.
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. This is nuts. What’s she got on you?”
Drexel shook his head. “I didn’t say that. We just can’t arrest her. Not yet.”
“She’s innocent?”
“I didn’t say that, just that she probably is. But if she’s arrested, it’s over. I don’t know how to explain it really. Sobieski’s out to make an arrest, and we’re not there yet. We’re just a day away from key evidence. His jumping the gun means it’s over. Will be over for her. She’ll never escape the taint if she manages to clear her name. She’s been threatened. Her boyfriend was screwing around on her. A hard childhood. She deserves better. Better than what this city can do.”
Ton sighed. “I have to ask. You sure you want to do this?” He looked at Drexel, squinted a bit as if trying to validate Drexel’s wishes. He nodded, and his friend continued, “Okay. Here’s the stuff.” He pushed two items toward the detective. “A fake driver’s license. The image is close enough it should work, and it’s an Illinois license, so most people won’t look twice at it. Also, a pre-paid credit card. Has enough cash for her to get around, buy some food, get a burner phone, that kind of stuff. But she’ll have to lay low.”
Drexel nodded and placed his hand on the table and pulled the driver’s license and credit card toward him. He looked at Ton. “Thanks. I appreciate you putting your neck on the line.”
Ton scratched his ear. “You need this. You say it’s needed. I’m good with that. Make sure she comes here immediately. She can’t go shopping or anymore fights or anything.”
“Right. And the other thing?”
* * *
When Drexel arrived at Trump Tower, his desire to run in and to Kara’s hotel room was hard to push back, but any untoward attention would bring scrutiny to him if CSIs reviewed the video footage. He was bound to be spotted, so he needed his actions to match his story explaining his presence.
After entering the main doors, he bypassed the lobby and went up the elevators to the forty-eighth floor. The ride up was both infinitely long and impossibly short. As the doors slid open, he stepped onto plush, tan carpeting. He walked down the hallway until he reached her door. He knocked.
Kara opened the door. She wore navy exercise pants and a Northwestern University t-shirt. Her eyes opened wide when she saw Drexel. She started to say something, but he stepped into the room and shut the door behind him so quickly she did not have a chance. The room was one of the six suites at the hotel that filled the forty-eighth floor. A small foyer led to a large sitting area. A small bathroom was to his immediate left.
Drexel looked at her and gripped both her shoulders. “Run.” He heard his desperation.
She jerked back in shock. “What? Why?”
“You’re now wanted for murder. I’ve no time to explain. Just run.” He shoved the driver’s license and credit card into her hand. “These won’t last long but long enough to get you to my friend Ton’s place and for a few days. Here’s the location. He has a place to hide you until I figure this out.”
Kara turned as if to pack.
Drexel grabbed her wrist, and she turned back around. “No time. Just go. My friend Ton, he can get you food and basics, and we can meet there. But you’ve got to get out now.”
She nodded.
“And one more thing.”
She looked at him. “What?”
He pushed a Taser, the civilian version, into her hands. The other gift from Ton. “Shoot me. It’ll incapacitate me, but if you don’t, I don’t have a cover story, and I won’t stay on the case to clear this up.”
She nodded her head, took the Taser, and raised it, aiming at Drexel’s chest. He gave her a look that it was okay. She lowered it, walked the three steps to him, and leaned toward him. “Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek and stepped back.
He said, too low to know if she heard him, “Run.”
The flash of pain, the burst of confetti, and the sensation of being punched over the whole body at once. He went rigid and then fell forward. He wanted to move, to put his hands out to catch his fall, but he arms would not respond. He had been tased before but only with the five-second burst of standard police Tasers. This civilian version would last thirty seconds. He saw her feet and then heard, “Sorry,” as she sprayed pepper spray at him. The sound of her parting footsteps. He knew the pepper spray would take its time. As the Taser’s cycle ran its course, he began to cough and gag. He could not open his eyes if he wanted to. A flush of heat rushed into his face as he regained control of his body.
Chapter 21
Sobieski, his black tie loosened around the neck, the gold tie clip askew, snapped his fingers in front of Drexel’s face. “Let me get this straight. Let’s be crystal clear. I want to understand what you’re risking your career on. You arrive at the hotel room to arrest her because you think she needs some special protection.”
The light of the interrogation room was extra harsh, auras danced around in Drexel’s eyes. He lowered his chin and rotated his head around, letting the neck bones crack. After four hours, his eyes still burned. They did not even let him wash the pepper spray from his face. “Don’t make shit up. I was in the neighborhood, so I attempted to arrest her. That’s what cops do.”
“Sure. Sure.” Sobieski flipped Drexel off. “Anyways, you arrive and she has a taser and pepper spray?”
Drexel hoped he calculated the thin line between lie and omission carefully, enough so no one could confirm that he had aided and abetted a criminal. So far so good. “What’s the saying, ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’? I just didn’t think she’d have something like that.” He pressed around the edges of his eyes. “Caught me off guard.”
“She’s a murderer.”
“Yeah, one who killed her boyfriend. Over money or jealousy. That’s about passion. The fact I’m alive means she didn�
��t have any motive to kill me. My point is I had no reason to suspect her to be dangerous towards me.” Behind him, on the other side of the wall, Drexel guessed Victor was observing.
“What?” Sobieski blinked rapidly.
“I mean, cops sometimes don’t get the drop on their target.”
The commander stood up, walked over to Drexel, and grabbed his neck with his right hand. “Listen to me you stupid shit. I don’t believe anything you’ve said except for the stupid stuff.” He raised his hand and motioned through the video camera for someone to join him. “You’re talking so much bullshit.”
The door opened and Victor stepped into the room, but Sobieski did not look at him. “Your detective here has fucked up. Let his dick get in the way of the case.”
“Fuck you.” Drexel glared.
The punch sent Drexel falling over onto the floor along with the chair. Sobieski came over, stood over him, and stared. “Let’s make this clear. I do whatever the fuck I want. Other commanders may have let things go, but I won’t. I changed the manual. Sorry I forgot the memo.”
Drexel raised his hands to his eyes to block some of the light as Sobieski stood over him.
Sobieski backed away. “Get up. If this weren’t so god-damned high profile, I’d lock you away forever. But this must be contained. God-damned embarrassment.”
Drexel stood up. Victor was standing across the table and giving him a steady but hard look. Sobieski looked back at the captain. “So what’s the verdict? How much of a liar do we have? My money is on all lies.”
Victor continued to give Drexel that hard look. Sobieski turned to Drexel and smiled, almost laughed. Victor said, “I think he’s telling the truth.”
* * *
The cold air felt good. His head still shimmered with a headache, his left cheek ached, and his eyes were puffy and tender, but outside on Dearborn Street, and in the breezy, cold January air, he could not have asked for a better prescription.
He knew Victor would track him down sometime this evening, and he had some explaining to do, but this brief reprieve was nonetheless welcomed. When those words had left Victor’s mouth, Sobieski had whipped his head around and stood up so fast that it was a whirl. Sobieski had even left Drexel on the case, much to his surprise. The commander had stormed out of the room with a curt dismissal. Victor had said, “Go home.”
He had rubbed his eyes, nodded, and walked out of the interrogation room and down to the lobby and out. He stood on the street. Not so much as an act of contemplation but of simply getting his bearings, feeling his feet under him as Zora would have said, though she would not have approved of his actions. Her world was one of order and doing the right thing always, even if it cost her. His a bit more ambiguous. Being a cop, being a detective ingrained over time a moral flexibility. It was the job. After seeing broken human beings destroyed by other broken human beings, sometimes in the worst possible ways, colored the world, altered it. Some accepted it, some got lost in it. Others seemed fine, able to go on for years until one day, it was over, not unlike high altitude climbers avoiding pulmonary edemas climb after climb until that one time. And the law was—at times—relentless to the point of blindness in its efforts at objectivity, sharing no concern about lives destroyed because they became entangled in a world out of Kafka’s The Trial. Zora would have told him his boss ordered him to arrest Kara, so do it. Let the system do its work. Optimism. And she would have maintained that optimism, that light at the end of the tunnel. But Drexel knew the system, both its good and its bad. Skepticism.
Someone bumped into him and brought him back to the street and the present. He rode the L to his apartment. Victor’s statement had been an order, not a suggestion. Once he got to the apartment, he would settle a bit and then contact Ton, but he needed to avoid Pawn Corner. No sense helping CPD find her. Sitting on the train, he fell asleep.
* * *
The first thing he did when he walked into his apartment was pour a whiskey before retreating to the bedroom. He took off his stale clothes and put on jeans and a dark green pullover with a tall standing collar. In the kitchen, he swallowed two Advil with the whiskey. He poured another whiskey and for good measure took two more Advil. The buzzer blared, and Drexel let in the caller. He opened the door to the hallway, and then grabbed another glass from the kitchen, which he filled a quarter full with whiskey.
When Victor entered—closing the door hard behind him—Drexel could see he was furious, but over the years, they had come to trust each other, and he was relying on that now. His captain saw the whiskey glass, took it, and drank it in one gulp. He sat down and held out the empty glass. “What the hell? Have you gone off the rails?”
Drexel poured more whiskey. “I know it seems like that. But Sobieski wanted to arrest her just to get an easy collar. Damn the evidence.”
“I know, but there’re channels for this. Your job is to arrest someone. It stops there. If the boss wants somebody arrested, we do it. And the evidence against her isn’t that weak.”
“Normally, yes, but this is bullshit, and you know it. This is about him rising up. This is about him.” He bit his lower lip and shook his head. “Channels wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“I know, damn it, that everything is about Carl when dealing with him. And what you did doesn’t do a thing about that. You’re only bringing a shitstorm down on yourself.”
“Look, I can’t explain it other than to say she’s innocent and by arresting her we let the real killers escape. If we arrest her and she’s innocent, she suffers and suffers bad. You know I’m right. And this is my case.”
“Knowing and agreeing are two different things.”
“She doesn’t deserve a prison cell. Not with what we have, and I’m not participating. This case needs to be like any other case.”
The captain breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. “All you’ve done is make her a fugitive. I don’t want to know how you did it, but you’re an accomplice. Cops treat every encounter as potentially lethal, and you’re too good of a cop to have gotten bested by her.” Victor raised his hand to his chin. He shoved his empty glass toward Drexel, who poured him some more. “You should’ve talked to me first. I wouldn’t have shut you down. You know that. But we would’ve come up with something better. Something.”
“I know.” Drexel tapped the side of the glass. “Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I did what I did not to protect Kara, but to protect what we do. Kara is the beneficiary. But if she did it—if we can prove that she did it—I’ll bring her in myself.”
Victor chuckled. “Damn it Pierce, you’ve put yourself in a bind. You can’t decide if she’s guilty or innocent. You want to follow the evidence, but the evidence leads to her. Tell me, who do you think did it?”
“Right now, I think Tunney has more reason to see the Bull dead than she does.”
“So you think this is mobbed up?”
“This is about money and protection. Tunney used the Bull as a source of cash and as protection against the heat coming down on him. Tunney engineered the Bull’s election—”
“Hold on. Where’d you get that?”
Drexel downed the whiskey. “I don’t have any evidence about the election, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. The only thing that gives Tunney leverage on the Bull. The Bull wanted out. Tunney took care of it.”
Victor clenched his jaw and shook his head. “It’s as thin as the evidence that Kara isn’t guilty. This is messed up. You’re putting our careers at risk. I’m less interested in losing mine than you seem to be about yours.”
“I know I put you in a bad spot. But from here on it’s my problem. I need to continue to investigate this case, and where the chips fall, I’ll go with it. I want to catch the killer.”
“If you don’t get the murderer fast, you’ll be sent to the property room at best. And regardless of who the murderer is, that girlfriend bette
r turn up sooner rather than later. And I’m your captain, so I sink with you.”
“Right.”
Victor looked at him and patted him on the shoulder as he stood up. “Look, I’m pissed as hell at you, but we’ll leave it at that. Sleep and then find something that gets us to the end.” He poured a splash of whiskey in his glass and drank it. “You better hope that girl didn’t do this.”
As the apartment door closed with a thump and click, Drexel felt he was being entombed. He rolled the last drops of whiskey in his glass, staring at its gold color shifting in tone by how much light was hitting it. How long he stared at it, he could not say, but after some time, the buzzer went off. Drexel walked over and pressed the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Ton.”
Drexel pressed the unlock button. Ton was shaking and rubbing his head from the moment he entered.
“What is it?”
“Kara never showed up.”
Chapter 22
Drexel sat in his office chair and stared at the murder board, holding a cup of coffee going cold. Why had Kara not shown up? He had thought on this question most of the night, and he still had no answers. None that made sense.
Doggett walked over. “Hey shithead.”
Drexel lifted a hand and turned away from the board to face him.
“Let a murderer go, I hear. You know we catch them here, right?” Doggett let out a bellicose laugh that had his head jerking.
Even Darrell smiled and chuckled.
Drexel said, “Yeah, yeah, asshole. Leave me alone.”
Doggett patted his shoulder and walked away, laughing.
He leaned back in his chair, waiting for the forensics on the syringe. Impatience and frustration getting the better of him, he left. He knew Cosma Neruda, the lead fingerprinting analyst well.
The three-story brick building in University Village serviced both Chicago PD and Cook County Sheriff needs, along with other police and sheriff departments in Illinois. Drexel showed his badge to the receptionist, passed through the security lane, and, on the first floor down a series of halls, found Cosma in the fingerprinting lab. Two other technicians stood at stations amongst the steel cabinets, boxes of nitrile gloves, and bottles of chemicals. Next to a large computer monitor, a large two-liter of Coke half full. Cosma, dressed in a blue lab coat and with her black hair tied back in a pink band, looked up and said, “No patience.”
The Shattered Bull (Drexel Pierce Book 1) Page 18
