Arctic Fire

by Stephen W. Frey

  “I knew it,” she snapped, recovering from her momentary shock at his answer. “Sex is all you guys think about,” she muttered with a disgusted groan.

  “No, it’s not.” He’d spotted the flash of a grin tucked into the left corner of her mouth. She was trying to make him think she was angry, but she wasn’t really. She knew he was kidding. “We have one or two thoughts a day that don’t involve sex.”

  “At least you can admit it.”

  “I’m actually better than most guys. Some days I have three or four thoughts about other things.”

  “Whatever.” She gave him a quick talk-to-the-hand wave along with a little neck jive. “Like I said, at least you can admit it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t resist. I’m just kidding.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

  He hesitated. “Do you want me to be?”

  “Not telling. You’ll have to find out.”

  She was cool. She could take it as well as she gave it. He liked that.

  As they made it to the top of a steep hill, the Blue Ridge Mountains appeared in the distance. “So, why’d you decide to be a cop?” he asked as he admired the view.

  “I grew up in a house full of men,” she answered as she gazed at the mountains too. “My mom died when I was little, and I’m the youngest of five. I have four older brothers.”

  Jack whistled. “Wow, four older brothers. And I’m sorry about your mom. But what does that have to do with—”

  “My dad’s a cop, and three of my older brothers went into law enforcement,” she explained. “I wanted my dad’s attention when I was growing up, but it was tough to get with all those boys running around doing crazy guy things he could relate to. Being a cop seemed like the best way to get that attention in the end. I mean, he didn’t care that in high school I was a cheerleader or captain of the dance team. But that wasn’t his fault,” she added quickly. “Mom died real suddenly, and Dad wasn’t ready to be a daughter’s father when she did. He didn’t know how to raise a girl or appreciate her. So I had to be the fifth son, I had to do something he didn’t expect. You should have seen him when I graduated from the academy,” she said, shaking her head nostalgically. “He couldn’t believe it. It’s the only time I ever saw him cry.”

  “That’s nice,” Jack said, thinking about how much he’d always craved Bill’s attention as a kid. But it seemed like nothing he did ever topped Troy’s achievements. And it wasn’t Troy’s fault. It wasn’t like Troy was trying to excel. He was just that good at everything. “He must have been really proud of you.”

  The image of Bill crying in his office yesterday drifted through Jack’s mind. That was the only time he’d ever seen Bill break down. At least Karen’s father had been crying tears of joy.

  “He was proud,” she said quietly, “for a while, anyway.”

  “What happened?”

  “I resigned a year ago.”

  Jack appreciated that Karen wasn’t dodging his questions. This had to be a sore subject for her, but she wasn’t shying away from it. It was another sign that she felt comfortable with him. “You mind telling me why?” he asked gently. He didn’t want to push too hard.

  She inhaled and exhaled deliberately.

  As if she had to gather herself to answer this.

  “It was a really rough time for me,” she began. “I’d just gotten back from Alaska, from trying to find out about Charlie. I’ve never been so depressed in my life.” She shook her head. “That’s when it happened.”

  “What?”

  She took another deep breath. “So I’m on patrol with my partner in the prowler the second night back, and we get a call about a robbery in progress at a store in East Baltimore. It’s like four in the morning, and we’re the third car to respond. By the time we get there, three other officers are already interrogating this guy. One of the first two cops to get there was shot and killed, and the unsub got away.” Karen closed her eyes tightly for a few seconds. “The cop who was shot is facedown in a pool of blood in the alley behind the store, and the other three cops are going after this guy who they claim is the unsub’s accomplice. I mean they’re really going after him. They have him jacked up against a brick wall, and they’re beating the hell out of him with their nightsticks.” She shut her eyes again. “They’re beating him in the arms and legs, you know? Nothing deadly, but I know it’s still hurting like hell. I mean, he’s screaming bloody murder.”

  Jack could tell by her expression that though it had been a year, the scene was still incredibly vivid for her.

  “They start beating this guy in the chest and back when they can’t get what they want out of him. He’s begging them to stop, and they yell at him that all he has to do is tell them who the other guy is.”

  Jack winced as he imagined the attack. It must have been horrible to watch.

  “The guy finally gets down on the ground, but they don’t stop. In fact, it’s the worst thing he could do because now they start hitting him in the head.” Karen put a hand to her mouth. “I try to help him, I try to get to him, but my partner holds me back. I mean he literally holds my arms behind my back and won’t let me go. He’s a big guy and I can’t break away. I can’t do anything.” She swallowed hard. “Then the guy goes still,” she whispered. “One second he’s screaming and yelling and begging for mercy, and the next second he isn’t doing anything even as they keep beating him.”

  “Was he dead?” Jack asked in a low voice.

  “Yeah, they’d literally bashed his skull in. I could see his brain.”

  “Jesus.” Jack could taste the bile in his throat. “What happened after that?”

  “They dump his body in the harbor,” Karen answered. “Then they tell me and my partner if we ever say anything to anyone we’ll be in trouble. They say they’ll kill us, and they actually use the word kill. And let me tell you, we believed them,” she said, nodding with her eyes wide open. “They were crazy. They were all guys who’d been around for a while, and they didn’t operate by anyone’s rules, especially when one of their own was killed. It was nuts. My partner and I even talked about how those guys had crazy reputations inside the department as we were going to the scene. But we never thought it would be that bad.”

  “Wow,” Jack said quietly when she was finished. “I guess I was wrong. I guess the cops on your force aren’t trained very well either.”

  “No, no.” She spoke up firmly. “Most of the officers on the Baltimore force are good people. They’re fair and honest and they’re doing their best to protect law-abiding citizens. This was just a bad crew. My partner was a good guy, but he didn’t want to screw with these guys either.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t blame him.”

  “So, you resigned?” Jack asked.

  “Two hours later, and maybe I was wrong,” she admitted, looking off through the passenger side window. “Maybe I should have fought those guys.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it, Karen. Sounds like you would have ended up in the Baltimore Harbor along with the other guy. Your partner too.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell your dad why you quit?”

  “No, I made up some crap about burning out even though it had only been a year. I could see how disappointed he was and how he thought I was a quitter. But I couldn’t tell him the real reason I ditched. He was old school all the way. Cops were never wrong as far as he was concerned, no matter what they did. And you never outed one of your own under any circumstances. It was an unwritten rule written in stone, and anyone who broke the rule had it coming. That was how he and his friends saw it, anyway. He told me that right before I graduated from the academy. He would have told me I was dead wrong if I’d snitched on those guys.”

  “You wouldn’t have been wrong,” Jack said firmly. “Cops can’t be allowed to do things like that. It’s ridiculous. Today it’s a killer’s partner, but tomorrow it’s somebody who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it’s
you or me. Citizens have to be protected, even if they end up being guilty. We have to let the system work. Everyone has rights for a reason. Even people who we think are guilty of terrible crimes have rights. I know some people think that’s bullshit, but it’s the only way.” He paused. “And there’s no excuse for torturing anyone, like those cops were doing to that guy. I’m sorry, but I can’t accept allowing torture for any reason.”

  “I agree,” she said somberly. “You couldn’t be more right. And it sounds like you’ve said it before.”

  So she’d picked up on that. “Why?”

  “It sounded like a sermon. One you’ve been preaching for a while.”

  “Well, I guess I—”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it.”

  “Oh?” Something in her voice told him to press. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it turned out the guy those cops beat to death was innocent. He was a homeless guy, and it was exactly like you said. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had no idea who shot the cop. He was passed out when the gun went off.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Awful, right?”

  “But how do you know? I thought you said everything got swept under the carpet.”

  “A week after it happened, my partner was in the locker room after his shift and he overheard a couple of other cops talking about how this homeless guy they used to help out had disappeared. I guess they gave him food and stuff when they were on the beat because he was a nice guy and they felt sorry for him. And because he was helpful when it came to telling them what was happening on the streets. You know, he gave them inside stuff on who was dealing drugs, who was pimping girls, who was running the numbers. Stuff like that. Well, this guy had a big scar over his left eye in the shape of a hook.” Karen bit her lower lip as she glanced down into her lap. “The guy they beat to death had a scar in the shape of a hook over his left eye. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I’ll never forget looking at it as he begged them to stop beating him.” She let out a long breath. “My partner and I had lunch a few weeks after I quit, and he told me what he’d heard in the locker room. I tried to convince him that we should do something, but he was still completely against it. He was still worried about what could happen to us if we did.”

  “And he was right,” Jack agreed quietly, although he couldn’t help feeling a tiny seed of doubt about what she hadn’t done. The weak needed the strong, and sometimes the strong had to be crazy brave if the weak were going to get a fair shake. “He was right,” Jack repeated, more firmly this time as he thought about it again. Maybe it wasn’t fair for him to judge Karen that way. It would have been a terrifying situation, and there was no way for him to really understand it without experiencing it himself. Maybe she wouldn’t be sitting here next to him in the car if she had tried to do something.

  Karen looked over, and they stared at each other for several moments before his eyes finally flashed back to the road.

  “Why did those guys show up out of nowhere last night and start shooting at us?” she asked. “They didn’t even try to arrest us first. I mean, I don’t know what they would have arrested us for, but my point is that they tried to kill us without even talking to us. Why?”

  The same thing had been bothering Jack, but he didn’t want to get into it with her. “If you aren’t a cop anymore, Karen, why do you still carry a gun?”

  “Don’t ignore me, Jack. Answer my question first.”

  He’d been afraid of that. She didn’t seem like the type who’d let something slide. “I was going to ask you the same thing, Karen. Why did those guys show up out of nowhere?”

  “Come on, Jack!”

  “Why’s it my fault all of a sudden?” He glanced over and saw those dark eyes flashing angrily at him. “Maybe it was those cops coming after you. Maybe they heard you were talking to the higher-ups in the department.”

  “No way. I haven’t gone anywhere near anyone in the Baltimore Police Department since I had that lunch with my ex-partner. That was almost a year ago.”

  “Well, you told me you were being watched. Maybe it was those guys who showed up at your door asking questions.”

  “No way. Look, you show up at the restaurant out of nowhere. You call me by my name even though I don’t have a name tag on and I haven’t told you what my name is. You chase me like a maniac—”

  “I get it, Karen,” he acknowledged stiffly, “but that doesn’t mean I—”

  “And right after you catch up to me,” she interrupted right back, “two guys jump out of a black Escalade and start shooting. Call me crazy, but I think there’s a direct connection between you running me down and those guys showing up with their guns on fire.”

  As far as Jack knew, only three people in the world—Bill, Cheryl, and Karen—knew he was going to Alaska. What bothered him so much about Cheryl knowing was that she seemed so frightened of Bill finding out that she’d come to the apartment the other night to give him the cash. Jack had never seen her so scared.

  And, apparently, Bill was involved with Red Cell Seven—as Troy and Charlie had been. Maybe for most people the way three men were standing in a few photographs wouldn’t be proof positive of their co-involvement in a covert government intelligence operation. But it was enough for Jack.

  As he gazed across the Maryland landscape, he thought about that white van barreling down Broadway through a red light. The near miss had happened only minutes after he’d left Bill’s office, and Bill had been so completely against him going to Alaska. It seemed too coincidental.

  And it still made no sense to him that Bill had accepted Troy’s death so passively. The old man had clearly been devastated by what had happened, but he hadn’t shown any interest at all in getting the details of Troy’s death or questioning the captain’s account of the accident. Some months the old man didn’t accept his residential electric bill at face value, for Christ’s sake.

  Jack shook his head. He just hoped the answers to those questions were waiting for them in Alaska. Along with what had really happened to Troy.

  “Talk to me, Jack,” Karen said. “Why do you think those guys showed up when they did? And why were they so hell-bent on killing us?”

  It was a clear, crisp morning, and everything in front of them was bathed in bright sunshine. They were only a few miles from the mountains now, and as Jack stared at the peaks he knew he had to tell her everything. What lay ahead could end up being even more dangerous than what had already happened, so he had to treat her like a true partner. After all, he was the one who’d asked her to come with him.

  “My father’s name is Bill Jensen,” he told her. “He runs one of the biggest banks in this country.”

  “First Manhattan,” she said. “It’s huge. I know.”

  Jack nodded, impressed. “How?”

  “Troy told Charlie and Charlie told me. Troy and Charlie told each other a lot. More than they were supposed to, I guess. He told Charlie a lot about your family. Not just that you were his brother.”

  “Oh.”

  “They were really good friends.”

  It was silly, but Jack was starting to feel a little jealous. “Troy never mentioned Charlie to me.”

  “I’m sure Troy never mentioned Charlie or Red Cell Seven to anyone outside RCS.”

  “Charlie mentioned it to you.”

  “I was Charlie’s fiancée.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Charlie and I told each other everything, and I mean everything.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm. “He knew I’d never say a word to anyone. While he was alive,” she added softly.

  Jack winced. Charlie’s death kept coming up. “Still, I think Troy would have—”

  “Have you ever been engaged, Jack?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t understand.”

  Jack glanced over at her and nodded slowly. “I guess.”

  “It’s just different.”

  He didn’t
want to push this. He was tired of making her sad. “OK.” He could see she knew what he was thinking.

  “According to Charlie,” Karen said after a few moments, “Falcons aren’t supposed to tell each other about their personal lives. But Troy told Charlie about your dad and how he ran First Manhattan. Troy never said as much because he seemed like a modest guy, but it was obvious to Charlie and me that your family’s really well off.” She paused and gave him a warning look. “I’m working class all the way, Jack, and I’m not trying to be rude, but I’ve never had much luck with rich people. I hate arrogance more than I hate anything else in life, and it seems to me like a lot of rich people are really arrogant.”

  “Am I arrogant?” he asked directly.

  He’d never asked out that blonde on the trading floor because he hadn’t wanted her finding out that he wasn’t really a Jensen and then dumping him for it. Not that he thought she was that kind of person, he just hadn’t wanted to take the chance. So he understood exactly where Karen was coming from.

  Of course, now he knew he was a Jensen—halfway, at least. But he was still sensitive about that other half being an outsider.

  “No,” she said quietly. “But I haven’t known you for very long.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  “We’ll see, I guess.”

  “You just said Troy was a modest guy,” Jack pointed out.

  “I said he seemed to be. I didn’t know him that well.”

  “Look, I didn’t tell you about my father to impress you,” Jack said. “I told you about him to warn you.”

  Her eyes raced to his. “Why?”

  He could tell he’d gotten a hundred percent of her attention in that instant. “I think Bill’s involved with Red Cell Seven too.”

  Her mouth fell slowly open. “Really?”

  Jack nodded down at her purse. “Take a look at that picture of Charlie you showed me last night.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, will you?”

  She pulled it from her purse and held it up. “So?”

  “Look at the way Charlie’s holding his hands with his thumbs tucked into his belt.”