“Bartoni. I hate to harp on this but you really do need to take the captain’s test. The Commissioner keeps asking me what is holding you back. Look I know you like working the streets. Hell, I liked being in the thick of things but there comes a time when you have to realize you have talents beyond just chasing bad guys. You have an amazing record and an outstanding reputation. It’s time to put that to work for you.”
“Awe come on captain. How many times have we been over this? Yeah, I can get the felons off the street. I am pretty good at that. But bossing people around? You know how I am. I have no patience for people who are lazy or irresponsible. You put up with LeRoy and Farmington day in and day out and I just couldn’t do that. I would send them packing. I don’t mean anything against you but honestly I would send them down to work the beat or ship them off to someone else.”
“Bartoni, you learn that part. I was pretty aggressive when I first became a captain but you learn what is important and what isn’t. The picture gets bigger and you understand how it all works as you move up. Yes, LeRoy and Farmington are major screw-ups but I know exactly what to expect from them so I use them to the best of their ability and they don’t even know it. They never get the big cases. I use them for grunt work. Shipping them off? Would that be fair to another captain? He might really need someone that was a good detective and end up with the likes of one of them.”
“Then just send them down.”
“And fight with the union? Why would I want that grief?”
“See, that’s why I wouldn’t make a good captain. I can’t do that. I would end up shooting one of them.”
“All I am asking is that you take the test. If you can’t pass it, then no one will bug you again.”
“Not to be flippant but I’m pretty sure I could pass the damn test.”
“Don’t be so sure. It isn’t as easy as you may think.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“And Dan.”
“Dan? What about Dan?” I asked.
“He has been your partner for three, going on four years. We have new people that need help. I am thinking about splitting you up and assigning a new person to each of you. You did a fantastic job with Dan so I know he can help someone else the way you helped him.”
“No way Captain! Yeah we have been partners for a while now but I don’t want to start over. Hell you know how I am about that kind of thing. Don’t do this to me. I think you had better tell Dan what you are thinking before you really consider taking that kind of action.”
“I’ll mention it to him but Bartoni, I have to do what is best for the precinct,” he said as I headed out the door.
I was pretty upset when I got back to my desk. Dan knew it but just waited for me to say something.
“Dan, do you think you could train a new rookie detective?”
“Could I? I guess so. Why? What are you getting at?”
“McGregor seems to think we would help the department by splitting up and each of us taking a new detective under our wing.”
“Wait, you mean we wouldn’t be partners any longer?”
“Essentially that is correct,” I replied.
“No way. It took me almost three years to get you shaped up. I don’t want to start over,” he said.
“Oh-ho-ho. That is so funny I forgot to laugh. You were straightening me out. You were like a big lost puppy dog the first year. Hell you even slobbered in the police car and stuck your nose out the window.”
“Did not.”
“Did too, almost.”
“Well anyway I’m not about to change partners without putting up one hell of a fight,” Dan said.
***
“Bartoni, Roberts. Another shooting in the same general area as the others,” the captain told us.
“Awe man. Gang again?”
“Just a single person at 542 Biltmore Street.”
“On our way.”
“At least it isn’t a gang thing,” Dan said.
“Unless he happened to be the leader.”
“That would be so uncool.”
The usual gaggle of police cars, ambulances and TV trucks were already there. The infamous yellow and black crime scene tape was fluttering in the stiff breeze. The temperature had continued to drop and it was downright nippy.
I spotted the ME’s van on the way into the building. It was a rundown apartment building from what I could tell. It looked like it had been a large single unit dwelling but some slum lord had turned it into cheap apartments. The yard was full of trash and two windows were covered with plywood. Nice place. I wondered how much the owner was getting from each unit.
It was dark when we stepped inside and the hallway had a couple of baby diapers, beer cans, and other junk that people had just dropped along the way. I couldn’t stand to live like that for one minute.
“Second floor,” the officer inside the doorway told us, pointing to the stairs. Even the stair railing was missing a few pilasters and wobbled as I grabbed hold of it.
“Nice place,” Dan commented.
“I can’t believe the landlord gets away with this. I think I’ll notify the health and fire departments and put in a formal complaint.”
“You can’t save the world Bartoni,” Dan said stoically.
At the top of the stairs another officer was standing guard on the door to apartment 2C. I could see Sorenson stooped down looking at the body.
“Moving up in the world I see,” I said.
He looked around and replied, “Not much different than the lab I work in.”
“Come on, it smells pretty much the same but at least you pick up the trash.”
“Not me. I have minions for that kind of work,” Sorenson replied.
I stooped down and looked at what was left of the man’s face. Most of the left side was splattered on the wall. Pretty much the only thing attached to that side of his face was his ear. It was held on by a small piece of skin.
“Close range.”
“Oh yeah,” Sorenson confirmed.
“Those are shotgun pellets aren’t they,” I said pointing to a few black specks in the interior of the gaping wound.
“I’m afraid they are,” Sorenson replied.
“So you are thinking it was the same guy who shot the others. This is just his latest victim,” I said.
“Hell Bartoni, I don’t know. That’s what you are supposed to figure out. I can tell you it is consistent with what we found in the other victims but until I get the pellets under a microscope I won’t really know for sure.”
“And you’ll send them off to the FBI lab as well.”
“Well duh. Thank you for that valuable tidbit of advice. I would have never have thought of it on my own.”
“I know.”
“You know, a love life might improve your disposition,” Sorenson shot back at me.
“I’ll have you know I have a steady guy.”
“Liar.”
“Well, I could have.”
“Your job is your steady boyfriend.”
“I don’t have to talk to you about my love life. I’m doing just fine.”
“Enough about that crap. Go detect or something. By the way, there is a note addressed to you on the desk over there.”
“To me?”
“The last I knew, Bartoni was still your name, unless you changed it to go to ground over this case.”
“You are a real comic,” I said going to find the note.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Placed in the center of the desk was a plain white envelope with my name neatly written with a Sharpie or Magic Marker.
To: Detective A. Bartoni
No other markings. I carefully picked it up by the corner using my gloves and sniffed it. Nothing. Using my small pen knife I slit the envelope open and gently pulled out the note. It was just a single sheet of paper folded in thirds.
Detective Bartoni.
I would rather not make this adversarial in nature. I realize you have a job to d
o but the law simply doesn’t allow you the tools to get it done. I have decided to handle the issues that you can’t legally handle even if you wanted to.
This man is James Cauldron. He has been in and out of jail for most of his life for being a pedophile. He has since moved into this area and had never registered as a sex offender. There are twelve children in this apartment building alone. Over one hundred live within a five block radius. The courts are not going to do anything about Cauldron and it is just a matter of time before he ruins another child’s life forever.
I know you think that what I am doing is wrong but let me ask you, what would you have done to prevent him from molesting another child? I’ll answer that for you. Neither you nor the court system would have done a damn thing. Your job is to protect the citizens but you don’t really do that. All you do is come in after the fact and clean up the mess.
Once the job is done, you don’t have to see what the victims go through. You consider your job finished and move on to other things. Sorry, that just isn’t good enough. Maybe you can blank out what happened to those children and what kind of grief it cost the parents but some of us are unwilling to pretend the job was done.
In situations like these, the job is done when the person has paid the appropriate price. That is what I intend to do.
I am not your typical antagonist. I do not think I am smarter than the police and that you are all stupid. I have followed your career over the years and know you are an honest and dedicated detective but your hands are tied when it comes to making a real impact on crime. Mine are not.
Best Wishes,
I read through it twice and handed it over to Dan.
“Definitely different,” Dan replied handing it back, “From what I gather, he honestly thinks he is doing the city a service.”
“It’s more than that. He thinks he is righting an injustice. Taking a flaw out of the system. What he is talking about is getting some form of satisfaction for the victims and their families. He is right to some extent. Once we send them off to jail our work is essentially done and we move on to the next case. The victims and their family have to continue to live with it every day. Some never get over it. We simply move on to a new case,” I said.
“Doggone it; that is to be expected Angie. We are doing exactly what we are supposed to do. We catch the bad guys and turn them over to the courts,” Dan, replied.
“And he is saying that it isn’t enough. It isn’t justice for the victims that are left behind. I do understand where he is coming from but that doesn’t change the facts. He is not the judge and jury. For better or worse we have a system of justice and we can’t let any one person decide it doesn’t work and take matters into his own hands,” I reiterated.
“That’s all find and dandy but the question remains the same. How in the heck do we run him to ground? We are at ten dead and three more injured. We have to get this guy and pretty darn soon,” Dan replied.
“Here is something to think about. How did he know about this guy? I mean, if he didn’t register as a sex offender, how did he find him?” I asked.
“It isn’t that hard now days. You can go online and find out if a person has a prison record. Same thing for sex offenders.”
“Yeah, but this Cauldron guy didn’t register as a sex offender, so how did our guy know about him?”
“Now that is a darn good question,” Dan admitted.
I saw Sorenson getting ready to have the body removed. I slid over to have a few words with him.
“Anything I should know about?” I asked.
“You have his name and cause of death. By the way, he was shot at around 11:00 p.m. last night.”
“Wait. It wasn’t reported until this morning.”
“What can I say? He was shot at 11:04 p.m.”
“You are that precise?”
“I am when a piece of the pellet hit his watch and stopped it.”
“This is crazy. Why would no one call it in when it happened and then suddenly call it in the next morning? That’s just crazy.”
“All I can say is Bartoni, you are up to your knees in it and it is rising. This guy isn’t done yet. He is on a mission,” Sorenson said as they wheeled the body out of the room.
What in the world was going on here? I grabbed Dan and we started canvassing the apartment building. A root canal with no anesthetic would have been easier.
“Good morning. I’m Detective Bartoni. I would like to ask you a few questions about what happened last night,” I asked the scraggly looking woman with the red and purple hair.
“I don’t know nothing about it.”
“About what?”
“Whatever you are asking about,” she said.
“What am I asking about? Did something happen?”
“What? I don’t know. I didn’t hear a thing,” she insisted.
“Interesting. I didn’t mention anything about hearing something. So what did you not hear?” I asked.
“What? I didn’t hear a loud bang like noise,” she said.
“But if you did, what time would that have been?”
“While I was watchin’ the Late Show.”
“So around eleven?”
“Around there.”
“And you didn’t report it?”
“What? A noise? No I didn’t report it.”
“What about today? Did you call the police today to report the noise?”
“Nah. I forgot all about it.”
I was wasting my time. I did get her name and number in case we needed to talk to her again.
It went that way for the rest of the day. I took half of the building and Dan the other. Essentially, we came away with nothing. A couple people expressed the fact that they were glad the guy was no longer going to be living in the neighborhood. There was not a lot of sympathy for the deceased James Cauldron.
“There is a phone booth just around the corner,” Dan told me, “The call was made from there.”
“We need to listen to that 911 call. It may tell us something about who called it in.”
“Even so, it won’t do us much good.”
“Unless they saw more than they have told us so far.”
“Maybe the guy that did it called it in when it wasn’t on the news. After all, think about how bizarre this case is already. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out he waited to see if anyone would call it in.”
“You could be right but I still want to check the 911 calls. If it was him I will probably recognize his voice. If it was someone else then we have a starting place.”
***
You know how when you are watching one of the cop shows and the detective goes into IT and says he wants to hear a 911 call and thirty seconds later he is listening to it? That is a crock. First of all they are far too busy to just drop everything and be at your beck and call. Second, it takes time for them to locate the particular recording, queue it up and sit there and try to find what we are looking for. Instead of the thirty seconds they depict in the movies, it took close to an hour and a half.
***
“911. What is your emergency?”
“Someone was shot.”
“Shot?”
“Yes. I heard a gunshot and heard someone scream.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“A phone booth at the corner of Lyndhurst and Delmar.”
“Your name?”
“That isn’t important. You need to get someone over to 542 Biltmore, Apartment 2C.”
“Sir, I…..Sir? Sir?”
That’s all that is on the recording the IT told us, like we couldn’t figure it out ourselves.
“At least we know it was a man. I’m pretty sure it was our guy,” I told Dan.
“He sounded the same?” Dan asked.
“It’s hard to tell from the recording but yeah, the way he spoke was pretty much the same. I’m guessing he shoots the guy and when no one seems to do anything about it, he goes to a phone booth nearby and calls it in.”
“He had to be sure you found the note.”
“That would be my guess,” I agreed.
“Strange bird.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“So all we have is another piece of the puzzle. Cauldron was a pedophile and lived in the same general area as the other murders. He didn’t bother to register and our shooter, whom we think is intent on cleaning up that area, decides to take the guy out,” I told the captain.
“You know, he could have just as easily tipped off the cops and this Cauldron would have been arrested for a parole violation. He would have been sent back to jail.”
“He is looking for a more permanent solution. You already know he thinks the courts are nothing more than a revolving door for criminals. They go away for a while but before you know it, they are back on the streets committing the same crimes.”
“So he thinks the best solution is to knock them off?”
“That’s pretty much what he said in the note he left for me.”
“Has it been sent to the lab yet?”
“Of course, but I don’t expect to get anything from it. Look this guy is smart but he isn’t anti-police. He honestly thinks he is helping us. He sees us as victims of the established system. He feels he is helping to get the criminals off the streets.”
“That may be true but he is going about it the wrong way. Going around killing people is going to lead to his demise as well. Yes, he is taking out some of the scum that always seems to find a way to work the system but it still doesn’t make it right,” McGregor said.
“He knows that as well, but he thinks the risk is worth it.”
“Bartoni, Roberts, I want an all-out effort to get this guy off the streets. By all out I mean we are going to have to go outside the police department.”
“No way. Not the FBI.”
“Sorry, but I think we need to bring in a profiler.”
“Come on captain. What is the point? We know why he is doing this. We know he is smart. We know he is going to continue until we capture him. What could they really bring to the table? A general description? He is between five foot two and six foot one? Between one hundred pounds and two hundred and fifty? Between twenty-five years old and fifty? We have that already. Heck, we already know he is either black, Caucasian, Asian, Mexican, or from Mars. We have all of those descriptions so what would good would they really do at this point?” I said vehemently.
Victim's Advocate: Angie Bartoni Case Flie # 12 (Angie Bartoni Case Files) Page 8
