THE BUTLER

by Bill WENHAM

  “No, Chief, that’s not what I want. He would see us coming a mile away in one of the regular unmarkeds. Just about every crook in the City knows what we drive. I guess having a fleet of them, all the same, kind of gives the game away a bit, doesn’t it? No, Chief, I want something any other guy like me might be driving.”

  He looked a little bit exasperated at my comments. He didn’t like criticism of his police force.

  “You’re looking for a lease then, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yeah, Chief, you’ve got it. A lease.” I said, hopefully.

  He pursed his lips and frowned at me.

  “Any preference?”

  “Well, I guess a Jeep would be nice,” I said and waited.

  He thought a moment or two to run that around his mind a bit.

  “Okay, Sandy, I’ll arrange it,” he said finally.

  “No, Chief, you approve it. I’ll arrange it.”

  “You? Why?” he asked, surprised.

  “Because there’s a goddamned leak in our system somewhere. It’s either here in the Precinct or our cars are bugged. That’s why we’ve failed so miserably so far. All along this Butler has known everything we’ve said and done. If we’re to succeed in this thing, Ellie and I need to do everything, make all our arrangements ourselves. We have to - otherwise we’ll be no further ahead.”

  “You trust her then, Sandy?” the Chief asked, a little dubiously.

  I just glared angrily back at him.

  “Enough to marry her, if she’ll have me.” I growled at him. “But you didn’t hear me say that, since I haven’t asked her yet. I will though, just as soon as we nail this guy.”

  The Chief chewed that over for a minute.

  “Seems to me it is a good job I didn’t hear a lot of the things you’ve said to me recently, Lieutenant. But this time you’re right and I agree with you. So, okay, you two do your own thing but be really careful, right? Now there was something else, wasn’t there, about Crawford?”

  “Yeah, Chief,” I said, “If we’re going to do this properly, and although much as we’d like to, we can’t watch out for Wayne as well. I didn’t realize until this morning just how really badly traumatized he is. I believe he really needs medical and probably mental help and that may just be his salvation as well.”

  I was pleased the Chief was already nodding his head in agreement so I pressed on.

  “I was wondering if you could arrange to get him into a private hospital, or a sanitarium even, while we get this sorted out. At least he’d be safer there and could be treated at the same time.”

  “Quite a speech, Doctor Spicer,” the Chief said, smiling now. “you really care for the guy, don’t you?’

  “Like a brother, Chief. We’ve been partners now for a long while. He’s saved my life a few times too, over the years. Its payback time, Chief.”

  The Chief nodded as he said, “I’m sure it wasn’t all a one way street either, Sandy. You two were a great team and of course, I’ll arrange it.”

  I said, “And Chief, can you make any arrangements in private, not from here in the Precinct?”

  “I can do better than that, Sandy. I’ll do it in person this morning,” he said. “I’ll have Barrett keep an eye on him while I’m out and I’ll deliver him myself to the hospital today. Can you drop his stuff over here at the Precinct after lunch?”

  “Sure, Chief, and not a word to anyone in here where you’re taking him please, okay?”

  “Sure, Sandy.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I owe you one.”

  “If you can catch the Butler, Sandy, we are all going to owe you one. A big one. So go get him, guy.”

  “Thanks, Chief, I’ll be in touch,” I said and got up to leave his office.

  “Oh, Sandy, just one more thing…” he called as I went out of the door.

  I stopped and looked back.

  “No Ferraris, okay?” he grinned.

  I put a serious look on my face, “Well, of course not, Chief,” I said, and then paused. “There’s too long a waiting list for one of those things. I’ve got my eye on this nice little red Porsche though instead.”

  He looked shocked, thinking of his budget.

  “Kidding, Chief, just kidding. A Jeep will be fine. The Porsche would be too but we want to be inconspicuous, don’t we, so you’re in luck.”

  “So are you, Lieutenant. You’re getting to keep your badge,” he said in his usual loud voice. “Oh, yes, Lieutenant,” he added, even louder, “If you break it, you’ve bought it. Don’t you even scratch it. You just remember that.” Then, once more for the benefit of listening ears and knowing everyone would hear him, he bellowed, “It’ll come out of your salary, not out of my budget, you got that? Remember, your badge is on the line here, Lieutenant, and now get to hell out of my office.”

  We both smiled, out of sight of the listeners, and I left to return to my office.

  As I walked through the duty room, I caught the shocked looks on the faces of some of the staff. They’d been right. They hadn’t seen his smile but they had heard his last comments, especially about my badge. The Chief had hauled someone up on the carpet!

  On the way back I rounded up Eddie Barrett. After telling Eddie, in a very low voice, barely above a whisper, what we wanted him to do, we went into my office.

  Eddie took Wayne over from Ellie and Wayne looked at us both vaguely as I shook his hand and Ellie kissed him on the cheek. It was heartbreaking to see him like that and Ellie started to cry as I took her arm and escorted her out of the building.

  Outside, I hailed a cab.

  “What are you doing?” Ellie asked. “Why are we getting a cab? Where are we going?”

  “To get ourselves a new set of wheels, lady,” I said. “I’ll choose the car and you can choose the color, okay?”

  She smiled faintly and wiped at her eyes.

  “Did you make some arrangements for Wayne too?” she asked.

  “Uh, huh. He’ll be very well looked after until this is over. By then I hope he’ll be back to normal again. Long before then in fact.”

  “And does that mean that we’ll have the apartment all to ourselves again now?” she asked coyly.

  “Uh, huh.” I said looking her up and down lecherously, as a cab slid into the curb beside us.

  “Oh, my, lover boy,” she said, grinning now. “Oh, what possibilities. But of course, if you want to go off looking at big boy’s toys instead, I guess that’s up to you. What I had in mind for us to do can wait, I suppose.”

  “I would have thought you’d noticed,” I said as I helped her into the cab, “that I already have my favorite big boy’s toy, and I’m sure the dealership will be open later on anyway. Or tomorrow. Or the next day or whenever.” I added, as I gave the cabbie my apartment’s address. Ellie sat beside me, like a Cheshire cat, grinning all the way home.

  The Butler was both puzzled and angry. Neither of his bugs seemed to be working properly. The new one was still operational but he was only getting general Precinct office chatter on it. He hadn’t heard any of the final three’s voices on it now for some time.

  Several weeks before he’d shot Crawford’s bride, he’d gone brazenly into the Precinct, posing as a repair technician for the coffee service company that had installed it. No one had called to say there was a fault with it, he was told. I know, he’d said, smiling, this is just a routine call to make sure there are no faults with it. It had been easy enough for him to change the bug. It had been quite a while since he’d installed it and, good as these things were, they didn’t last forever.

  He hadn’t expected to be recognized either, since he’d grown a full beard and moustache for his theatrical road tour, and he’d decided to keep it. It was as good a disguise as any.

  He’d considered trying to change the bug in Spicer’s patrol car as well, until he realized a different team was now driving it.

  No one even mentioned Spicer and his two teammates in th
e office chatter now either. He’d left a couple more of his usual taunting messages for Spicer, but had received no reaction at all from them. It annoyed and worried him.

  This was a turn of events he neither liked nor had expected. If he didn’t know what his hunters were doing, he no longer had control of the situation, and that was unthinkable to him.

  After we finally had emerged from the apartment, Ellie and I had gone over to the Chrysler dealership, where I’d leased a Jeep Grand Cherokee ‘Laredo 4x4’. It came fully equipped and was just like thousands of others in the City and therefore nicely inconspicuous. Ellie had chosen the color, as I had suggested she do, and I realized, with a grin, the color she’d chosen was one she thought I’d like. After all, a nice girly pink isn’t really the appropriate color for this kind of boy’s toy.

  I’d arranged with the Chief, in person, for any further messages that came in for me from the Butler to be relayed to me from his own home phone. He would call my now unlisted number and leave me a recording of the Butler’s message.

  Our system was by no means foolproof but I was fairly confident by doing it this way, it was good enough to prevent any unwanted eavesdroppers.

  I was puzzled too, at the Butler’s abrupt change of M.O. All along, he’d been a knife man and a very effective one at that. Now he’d proved himself to be an excellent marksman as well. The shot that had killed Jan hadn’t been a difficult shot. Not with a scoped rifle, but from across the park, it had still been a good one.

  The single shot had hit Jan dead center in the heart and I was sure her heart had been his exact target. It wouldn’t have been good enough for the Butler to shoot her just anywhere. The heart was the source of both her love and her life. A shot anywhere else would have been completely unacceptable to him.

  Okay, then, I thought. The guy is good with both knives and guns. His expertise with knives suggested close in, hand to hand, fighting. Fighting, yes, but not gang fights, not street fights. This guy’s expertise suggested military training. And very specialized training at that!

  Had he been in an infiltration unit? A search and rescue unit? Or even undercover, covert action of some kind. His use of weapons wasn’t something learned in a City back alley somewhere.

  I asked Ellie what she thought and she agreed with me. Both of us had received basic and advanced police training but none of it covered what we thought the Butler had been taught. Basically, in terms of weapons handling, we could be like two amateurs up against a skilled professional. It looked as though, somehow, we had to outsmart him, especially if we couldn’t out fight him.

  Had he volunteered, we wondered, or had he been drafted? In either case, had it been under his own name? Were our Emilio Cervantes, and his background, buried in the files of the Military somewhere?

  When I’d last spoken to the Chief, at his home, he’d advised me to all intents and purposes, Ellie and I were off the active Precinct strength and payroll. It was almost as though we’d both been fired, which confirmed the office theories nicely.

  He’d hastened to add, an account had been opened for each of us at a downtown bank to cover our salaries and expenses. The accounts were to be accessed by number only. The deposits were to be numbered also. No names were to be used at all by the bank or by ourselves and no statements were to be mailed. It was an unusual arrangement but a very necessary one.

  Ellie and I were to operate in deep cover. As far as the City’s police force was concerned, apart from the Chief himself, neither of us existed any more. Neither did Wayne. He’d been squirreled away in the middle of the night and was apparently recovering slowly but well, out in the country somewhere.

  Like us, he was a nameless numbered account and would no longer exist at the Precinct either until further notice. Ellie and I no longer lived in my apartment in the City now either. We’d moved ourselves and our base of operations out to the suburbs. A few days later, after our move, I’d been both saddened and furious when Ellie and I had driven up to the cabin for a couple of day’s private rest and relaxation.

  We’d been met by the still smoldering remains of my little bit of heaven on earth. The fire that had destroyed it hadn’t been caused by lightning or any other natural cause either. The smell of gasoline still lingered faintly, along with the smoke, in the still morning air.

  A message had been scrawled on an old piece of plywood with a black permanent marker. The plywood had been nailed to a wooden stake which had been driven into the ground just beyond the reach of the flames.

  It read;

  ‘A bride killing cop used to live here.’

  The question on both of our minds now was, had the Butler discovered this place before or after we’d attempted to make ourselves anonymous? Looking at the ruins of my cabin, built by my father and my Uncle Pete, we felt more vulnerable now than ever.

  Although we were the hunters, we were also very much the hunted as well. We now wondered how much he knew about our present situation and whereabouts. Was our new home safe? Somehow I doubted it, but I didn’t say so to Ellie.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jan’s funeral was a very sad occasion, even sadder than most, perhaps. It is maybe insensitive of me to say such a thing but the very circumstances of her death saddened all of us.

  The funeral was attended primarily by Jan’s immediate family, friends and her parent’s neighbors. Some close friends, like Ellie and me, couldn’t be there for her at all. We weren’t allowed to be. We’d been directed not to attend by the higher ups.

  What made it even sadder was that Wayne couldn’t be there either. One reason was that he had to remain hidden away for his own safety’s sake. The other was, on the day of the funeral, he still had no idea at all what was going on around him. It is doubtful if he was even aware who Jan was or even who he was either.

  Once again, the Chief attended and gave Jan a wonderful and sensitive eulogy. He’d also assigned a squad of uniformed cops to be her pall bearers. Probably everyone present at the funeral was fervently praying there would be no further incident to mar the day. But with the Butler very much at large once again, the cops were also there as a deterrent.

  The service was held in the picture postcard perfection of the white painted, tall steepled wooden church in Jan’s home town. It was a small scenic place, not much more than a village really, and set in a very tranquil part of rural New England.

  The day of the funeral was warm, sunny and bright, just as Jan’s wedding day had been. It seemed so very wrong somehow for the sun to shine so brightly on such a day. The sky should have been filled with towering storm clouds, ablaze with lightning and dropping torrential rain on top of the gathering. The sky itself ought to have been echoing the mourner’s protests at having this lovely young woman taken from them in the prime of her life and in such a violent manner. Most of the mourners there had also been wedding guests a few days earlier as well.

  Both the Mayor and the Police Commissioner had naturally declined to attend in person. Instead they sent meaningless messages of condolence and large floral wreaths.

  Neither of them wanted to be within miles of any function where cops or cops relatives were to be gathered. There were far safer photo ops that could be arranged for them in other places.

  The event received a quite adequate coverage by the local T.V. station, since it was not only the funeral of a well known local girl, but her murder had received considerable coverage by the national media as well.

  Mr. and Mrs. Langham, Jan’s father and mother, bravely endured the ceremony and the burial of their eldest daughter, in a tearful daze. They both stood, heads bowed, holding hands and crying quietly as the coffin of their beloved daughter was lowered slowly into the ground.

  As soon as that was done, and without waiting for the traditional throwing of a handful of dirt on the coffin lid, they were both led away by concerned and supportive relatives.

  Eddie Barrett had attended, not as a pallbearer, but representing the rest of us. He gave us a ful
l report by phone later on from the Chief’s house. Eddie had been made up to acting Lieutenant in my absence, and with Wayne safely tucked away, he now looked after another squad at the Precinct.

  Ellie and I, although not present at the funeral, decided to wait until it was over before getting back on the Butler’s trail. We’d felt that a day or two wouldn’t make much difference and for once we were right.

  The only thing that had happened during those two days was the Butler had sent another message to the Precinct. His message told us he’d indeed been within viewing distance of Jan’s funeral, as we’d suspected he might have been.

  He was there just to make sure everything went well and that she’d a nice day, his message said. Such a lovely day for a funeral, wasn’t it, he added, and said he hoped ours would be just as nice when the time came. He was really looking forward to it, he told us.

  Ellie started to cry again when she heard the recording the Chief had relayed to us. I didn’t blame her since I felt like doing the same thing.

  We both suddenly realized, almost at the same time, we were making a mistake. It was fine to give ourselves anonymity but by doing so we were in danger of losing contact with the Butler and him with us. We had to figure out some way to draw him out into the open and very soon. We wouldn’t be able to catch him by avoiding him.

  In this little game of his, we knew we were the bait. It was time for us to cast out our line with ourselves on the hook and see what we could reel in.

  Emilio and Raphael Cervantes, brothers, were born two years apart. As they grew into adulthood, with their dark, classic Hispanic good looks, the difference in their ages was not nearly so apparent. They were alike enough to be thought of as twins, and were often mistaken for each other. Also, as brothers, they were almost fanatically loyal to each other.

  After the police killing of his bride, as Emilio considered Rosetta’s death to be, Emilio had confessed his intention for revenge to his brother. Raphael had initially been horrified at the methodology of it, but gradually, as his brother worked to convince him, he became accustomed to the idea and had accepted it.