Killing Down the Roman Line

by McGregor, Tim

  “I should snap your neck in two.” Lieutenant Vogel came up the hallway and looked down at Gallagher. He probably could too, one handed. Gallagher was solid and built to punish but the Lieutenant stood five inches over him and outweighed him by a hundred pounds. To Gallagher, Vogel always resembled that bad guy in the Spiderman cartoons. Not as dapper as the Kingpin of crime, but Vogel was a tank who could drop anyone. With or without the red sequined tights.

  “Once, just once, I want to find you in the hospital with your head stomped in. Not your partner.” Vogel‘s nostrils flared wide, something he did when he was mad. “What happened?”

  “Asshole tried to rabbit. Put Roberts down pretty hard.”

  “And you had nothing to do with it, izzat it?”

  “I was trying to collar the shitbag.” Gallagher looked back in on his partner. Former partner, whatever. Roberts looked old, hooked up to all those machines. “How was the party?”

  “Good. Too bad you missed it.”

  “We were on our my way when we spotted douchebag in the parka.” Gallagher looked back at his boss. “Did Papadops have a good time?”

  “He wondered why you were AWOL.”

  “I‘ll catch up with him later, say goodbye properly.” Gallagher chucked at Roberts. “What are you gonna do with him?”

  “What can I do? Bench him for the duration. Which he‘ll hate.”

  “Yeah, well. Life sucks.”

  Vogel felt his stomach turn to ice, that same feeling he used to get before he laid the boots to someone in the ring. “What the hell am I gonna do with you?”

  “Quit saddling me with partners. Let me work alone.”

  “What you need is a goddamn leash.” Vogel unwrapped a piece of gum, tossed it in his mouth. “And a psychiatrist to boot. When‘s the last time you talked to the staff therapist?”

  “Don‘t. I will eat her alive.”

  “How about early retirement? Think of it as a favor to me.”

  Gallagher chinned the nurse in Roberts‘s room. “What are the chances she‘s single?”

  THE PETTYGROVE BAR and Grill was on Stark Street, just off Second Ave. It had been a cop bar since the very beginning and that would never change. Situated two blocks from the site of Portland‘s first police precinct, the Pettygrove was the first watering hole a cop came across after a shift. The interior was dark, the wood mahogany and although smoking was verboten in bars since the nineties, the smell of it clung to the walls like a phantom cloud. The pictures on the walls were all of cops. Newspaper photos mostly, going all the way back to grim faced sheriffs in big moustaches.

  Gallagher came in through the side door and scanned the room. Papadopoulos held court at a central table, flanked by detectives who had ended their day early. Gallagher ordered a round for the table and paid up. As he waited, he looked over at the now retired homicide detective. Papadop had been Gallagher‘s first partner when he moved from Assault/Injury to Homicide and he remained a mentor after all this time. Papadopoulos had a gentle way about him, not the hard shell most cops had. Not like Gallagher either. People talked to Papadop, opened up and spilled the beans. The old man was genuinely interested in people and what they had to say, no matter what they‘d done. Their sob stories and their improvised justifications for their heinous acts. Gallagher couldn‘t stomach it but he learned from the old man that if you just let people talk, they‘ll gladly hang themselves on the rope you trail out to them.

  Jesus. He was gonna miss the old man.

  They‘d finished the round and Gallagher ordered again. Papadopoulos protested, saying he had to get home but yet didn‘t move when the drinks came in. Of the cops at the table, all of them had been schooled by Papadop and none wanted to see him go. Latimer and Bingham subdued when Gallagher sat down, the party mood dampening. They didn‘t like Gallagher and Gallagher just grinned at them, liking it that way.

  “You really know how to kill a mood, huh?” Detective Sherry Johnson had five years under her belt and she hardly ever smiled. Johnson never said a nice word about anyone, cop or crook. For this reason, Gallagher liked her. It didn‘t take much to wind her up and watch her tear on a rant about how she‘s up to her eyeballs in assholes and does anyone have a rope to pull her out.

  “We call that Irish charm,” Gallagher said. He distributed the drinks from the waitress‘s tray.

  “Irish charm? I thought that was being shitfaced.”

  “That too.” Papadopoulos lifted his drink. “Opa!”

  Gallagher looked at the old man. “You really going through with this? What are you gonna do with all that free time?”

  “Anything I want to. That‘s the point isn‘t it?”

  “You gonna leave me with these knuckleheads?”

  Johnson snorted and ordered him to go fuck himself.

  Papadopoulos laughed and said, “Don‘t be a hard ass, Johnny. You could learn something from these knuckleheads.” He mopped at a spilled drink with a coaster. “What happened with Roberts today?”

  Gallagher went into the story, exaggerating his actions as heroic and minimizing his own stupidity at violently provoking the perp in the first place. He wrapped it up by passing the buck onto the Lieutenant, claiming Vogel should know better than to anchor him with partners. Who needs them?

  “You do, that‘s who.” Papadopoulos leaned in, man-to-man like. “The best thing you can do is partner up with someone exactly opposite of you. They‘ll catch the things you miss. Make you a better cop too.”

  Gallagher rolled his eyes. “You‘re drunk.”

  “Yes sir.” Papadops leaned back, completely content. “But I don‘t have to go in to work tomorrow. Do I?”

  THREE

  DETECTIVE LARA MENDES stood inside Super Fast Travel, a tiny travel agency and wire transfer place on the 4300 block of Sandy Boulevard. Broken glass crunched under her foot no matter where she stood. The front desk was trashed, everything swept to the floor. Two smaller desks behind it were untouched. Lara scoured the floor for anything useful, anything left behind by the assailant. Her hair swung loose and she tucked it behind an ear but found nothing in the broken glass on the floor. She hadn‘t really expected to. She looked over at the woman sitting in the chair and wiping her eyes with a tissue. She had been assaulted, which was why Lara was here. Lara had worked the Sex Assault detail for three years now and although she hated to admit it, it was wearing on her.

  Irena Stanisic sat in a hardback chair that Lara had uprighted for her. Her left eye was beginning to swell and the blood on her lip was gelling. Four of her press-on nails had been torn off. She realigned her torn skirt, smoothing the fabric down under shaky hands.

  “This is my fault,” Irena said. “I kept meaning to upgrade the security, get one of those buzzer lock thingies for the door. But I kept putting if off, you know? And now look at this.”

  “This wasn‘t your fault, Irena.” Detective Mendes knelt eye level with the woman. “No way, no how.”

  “Can I go home now?”

  “Officer Rhames is going to take you to the hospital,” Lara said. “You need that eye looked at. And they need to run a rape kit too. I‘m sorry.”

  “God.” Irena shuddered at the thought of it. “I just want to go home.”

  “I know, but it just takes a few minutes. And we need it. Oh, and do me a favor, don‘t wash your hands until then. The nurse will scrape under your fingernails. Okay?”

  Irena looked at her hand. “What fingernails?”

  Lara patted the woman‘s arm and straightened up, feeling her knees click. Lara was thirty-six but days like this made her feel older. Eleven hours into her shift and she was bone tired but there was still work to be done. She stretched, trying to wring out the sore spot in her lower back.

  “There was a gun,” Irena said. She looked up at Lara.

  “The man who assaulted you had a gun?”

  Irena shook her head. “No, he took ours. We keep one in the drawer.”

  “What kind of gun? Make, size?”r />
  “I don‘t know. It‘s silver and shiny. My dad got it for me.”

  Lara perked up, hopeful. “Is there a permit for it?”

  LARA MENDES STEPPED out to the street, dinging the old fashioned bells inside the doorway. Two blue and whites were up on the curb, the uniforms talking quietly amongst themselves. The dusty Crown Vic she snagged from the motor pool was parked further down. Leaning against it was Detective Kopzyck, a Captain America type with a toothy grin and tattooed biceps. His sleeves were rolled up even now, yakking into the phone. Kopzyck was a pill who had zero talent in the empathy department. For exactly that reason, the Lieutenant had partnered him up with Mendes, hoping something would rub off. So far nothing had. Kopzyck was arrogant and mouthy but Lara tolerated him without complaint. She hated complainers.

  They did have one thing in common though. Both knew that Homicide Detail was hurting for active detectives and both wanted to cross the shop floor into that department.

  Detective Kopzyck saw Mendes coming out and ended his call. “You get anything more out of her?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Hop in.”

  Lara slid under the wheel, Kopzyck dropped into the passenger seat. She slotted the key into the ignition but didn‘t turn it over. “How did she describe her attacker?”

  “White male, thirty to forty” Kopzyck shrugged. “Twitchy, face full of meth scabs.”

  “He tossed the place after he attacked her. But there was little cash on the premises and less than twenty dollars in her purse.”

  “He‘s a methhead looking for money. Big news.”

  “He took a gun.” Lara looked out the window, her hand still on the key. “They kept one on site, he finds it and takes that. Why?”

  “So he can jack some other poor fucker for cash.”

  “Or he could just pawn it.” She looked at him now. “He‘s an addict on foot. How many pawn shops in the vicinity?”

  “There‘s one down Sandy, Lucky something. But the dude who owns it, he‘s straight. Hell, dude calls us when something fishy comes in.”

  “And the other one?”

  “That dump further south from the Lucky, near the Sally Ann. That dude will move anything. What‘s his name, Hair something?”

  “Herrera.”

  MARTIN HERRERA SAT behind the mesh cage of Magic Man Pawn Brokers. One hand on a Slurrpy, the other clutching a remote. Mounted to his left were a bank of monitor screens. One was a security cam, broken, and the others played daytime TV and cheap porn. Herrera never got rattled. It was a point of pride, a line in his personal sandbox. Even with two cops shooting dumbass questions at him.

  “I don‘t deal in guns,” He said, slurping on the straw. Bored. “You want a piece, the gun shop‘s round the corner.”

  Lara stood before the cage. Kopzyck behind her, fiddling with the camera equipment. She looked the proprietor to the junk piled even higher behind the cage. Some of it tagged, most of it not. “I‘m just asking Mr. Herrera. I have a suspect looking to pawn a gun he stole four blocks from here. Quick money.”

  Herrera shrugged. “Told you, nobody come in with a gun. In fact, no one ’cept you come in at all today.”

  “Look at me.”

  He dragged his eyes from the porn and tilted his head back to give the impression he was looking down at her. Mussolini used to do that, because he was short. He‘d seen that on the History Channel. “Yeah.”

  Lara leaned on the counter. She could smell the guy from here, rank sweat and stale clothes. “I can always get a search warrant. We‘ll come back and toss the place. God knows what we‘ll find then. It‘s up to you.”

  Herrera just smiled. “Good luck getting probable cause. Now if you don‘t mind, you‘re scaring away my business.”

  “Hey, does this work?” Kopzyck held a dusty Pentax.

  Lara held her tongue. She turned and headed out the door.

  Out on the street, Kopzyck caught up to her at the car. “You know he‘s gonna ditch that gun soon as we drive away.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  He held his hands out, palms up. “Where you going? Let‘s toss the place now and get what we came for. That fat fuck won‘t say shit.”

  “Don‘t start with that. Let‘s go.”

  “Jesus, Mendes. Unclench already. Sometimes you gotta get creative with the probable cause. Drop a dimebag on his floor and bingo. We toss this dump and find our popgun.”

  “And have it blow up in our faces when his lawyer smells a rat? No shortcuts, Chris. No dirty busts.”

  “Think outside the box, Mendes. For once. You gotta adapt as the situation changes.”

  Lara dipped back into the car. “No. I don‘t.”

  Chris Kopzyck pointed an index finger to his head and mimicked blowing his brains out. Lara lowered the passenger window and leaned over. “Are you riding with me or do you want to adapt your way back to precinct?”

  A WEIRD BUZZ thrummed through the fourth floor cubicles of Central Precinct. Lara felt it all the way back to her desk. She figured it was a good bust or maybe a clean confession issuing from the interview box. Maybe it was just another office party like the one yesterday, a retirement sendoff in Homicide. A retirement in Homicide meant there was a vacancy. She shook it out of her head and hunkered down to write up the incident report and witness‘s statement.

  Twenty minutes later Kopzyck buzzed her cubicle and asked if she could send him her report so he could sign his name to it and send it off. She said no and he started bellyaching about how much he hated writing them and her reports were always done so well. When she still refused, he went into a long complaint about time management and pooling resources. Lara couldn‘t take anymore so she packed up her work to take home.

  “You guys hear what happened?”

  Detective Latimer leaned an elbow on the cubicle wall, looking at them like a schoolyard kid with a big secret.

  “You got laid?” Kopzyck turned the page on his newspaper.

  “Roberts got hurt. He‘s in the hospital.” Latimer handed her a card. “Sign this.”

  “Is he okay?” Lara opened the card, saw the signatures crisscrossed everywhere and looked for an empty space to sign. “What happened?”

  Latimer told them what he knew and Lara passed the card on. Kopzyck shook his head and laughed. “Gallagher. What an asshole.”

  Latimer took the card back and moved on, hunting down more signatures. The floor was quiet, the lull before the shift change. Lara packed her homework and Kopzyck drifted back to his desk and they spoke no further. Both were thinking the same thing; one more drop in the unit. Someone‘s getting moved up to Homicide.

  Kopzyck headed out, not bothering to say goodbye. He wanted a drink at the Pettygrove. See who was there. Maybe he‘d learn more about what happened and if the Lieutenant had anyone in mind to fill the vacancy. He knew he had a good shot at it. Lara Mendes? Not a chance.

  OWEN COULDN‘T TAKE anymore. It had been two days since they shot that dog near the bridge. Two days since they saw that thing in the weeds. He had watched the news, listened to the radio and skimmed the newspaper. No mention of a body found by the river.

  Run. That‘s what Justin had said. Owen wanted to call 911 but Justin said no. Just get the fuck out of here. They didn‘t do anything wrong. This was not their problem. Somebody else will find it. Just book.

  Owen did what he was told. He didn‘t talk to Justin the next day nor did Justin call. He played PS2 and didn‘t leave the house. He kept checking the news, expecting the police to kick down his door any minute. He imagined the cops digging the bullet from the dead dog and tracing it, all CSI-like, back to him. He peeked out the windows, expecting to see a SWAT team creeping up to the house and bursting inside.

  But they didn‘t. Nothing happened and that was worse. Maybe the cops found it but didn‘t call the press. They were sneaky fucks like that. Maybe it was still out there.

  Owen got his bike and rode it down to the river. He just wanted to take a look. He rode
off the bike path into a dirt rut and glided into the shadow of the bridge. Everything was dark. No flashing lights, no cops, no yellow police tape.

  It was still down there. Waiting to be found.

  He turned around and pedaled home as fast as he could, as if that thing out there would rise from the muck and come after him. He shut his bedroom door, snatched up the phone and just held it for a long time. Justin would kill him. Fuck him. He punched 911.