Powers of Arrest

by Jon Talton

  “Guess where I am?”

  “Hope it’s more interesting than my life, sitting outside a cop’s house.”

  “Lower Price Hill. Buchanan drove over here. He parked and went inside a house.”

  “No shit?” Dodds thought about it. “Maybe he’s a secret meth head.”

  “Maybe.” Will watched a young man with mussed light-brown hair, hard-muscled in a wife-beater shirt, walk past giving him the eye. He ignored him. “It’s about the last place I’d expect him. You see anything around my place?”

  “Nope,” Dodds said. “I’m encouraging my hemorrhoids.”

  Will made a note of the address and waited. It took nearly half an hour before Buchanan stepped down on the crumbling sidewalk and walked purposefully to his car. He was wearing a light-blue shirt, tan slacks, and expensive tasseled shoes. His face was set in a hard look, and he didn’t even turn his head in Will’s direction. Then the expensive car’s backup lights flared and it was on the street. Will decided to stay.

  ***

  It was another half hour before Will saw movement at the door. First a bicycle tire, then the whole bike being pushed by a woman. She wore blue jeans and a Bengals T-shirt, but what you first noticed was her hair, vivid red and flowing down over her shoulders. She swung a leg over the bicycle seat and pedaled north. Will let her go for a moment, then started the car and followed slowly. Her hair caught the sun and wind, making a lovely orange sail.

  “7140, 7140.”

  He muttered a profanity and picked up the mic.

  The dispatcher came back: “Meet the officers, signal nine, Queensgate Playfield. We have a sixteen at large. Respond Code three.”

  “7140 responding.”

  It was a shooting with a suspect at large. He gripped the steering wheel tighter but stayed on the girl.

  She stopped at Meisner’s market and went inside, bike and all. Will parked in front.

  No more than two minutes later, she came back out, stuffing a red-and-white carton of Marlboroughs in her purse. She started to swing over the bike, when he tapped the horn. She looked him over and ignored him. He hit the emergency lights and she paid attention.

  He flashed his badge when she came to the driver’s side. “Climb in.”

  “What about my bike?”

  “Lean it against the front of the car where we can watch it.” For all he knew, it was one of the few things she owned in the world. As she did so, he tossed his cane in the back seat.

  Once she was in the car, he could see her more clearly. She was younger than he had first assumed, and her fiery hair framed a lovely face, the home to startlingly blue eyes. Her features were uniformly delicate and her skin was as flawless as Kristen Gruber’s. Put her in different circumstances on the east side and she would have worlds offered to her.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I didn’t say you did,” Will said. Time was running against him, even if the call location was close. If Fassbinder knew what he was really doing, all his dreams of revenge could be quickly visited on Will’s head. He kept the agitation out of his voice. “You had a visitor a few minutes ago, well-dressed man, middle-aged.”

  “So?”

  “So, are you a pro?”

  “No! I don’t turn tricks, don’t do drugs.” She pointed out the window at a passing man. “Why don’t you people do something about the niggers overrunning our neighborhood, instead of hassling me?”

  East side, west side, race was never far below the surface in Cincinnati.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jill.”

  He asked her to show him her driver’s license and wrote down the information: Jill Evangeline Bailey and the addressed matched the shabby place she had come from. She was nineteen.

  “You ever been in trouble, Jill?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a DUI?”

  She shook her head.

  “You have a job?”

  “I’m a waitress at Tucker’s. I ride the bus.”

  “So how do you know Kenneth Buchanan?”

  She hesitated and ran her hands though her hair.

  “Is that his name?”

  “That’s his name and you didn’t answer my question. This is a homicide investigation.”

  Her small frame went rigid. “I don’t know anything about any homicide.” Her voice became small and trailed off into silence. Finally, “He gave me some money.”

  Will waited a few beats. “Why would he do that?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” The blue eyes filled with tears. “I was raped last fall by one of these niggers and you people didn’t do anything about it. He dragged me right behind that church one night and raped me three damned times. Right there behind a house of God. This used to be a safe neighborhood. Now the white people can’t even go out at night. You people never caught him. You never even tried…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t think I wouldn’t be gone from this shithole in a heartbeat, but after my momma died that house is all I have. I don’t even have a car.”

  “Now you have some money from Mister Buchanan.”

  She stared out the window.

  “He wants me to get an abortion.”

  “How many months along are you?” She wasn’t showing.

  “Six weeks.”

  “And it’s his baby?”

  Again, her silence, and the clock tormenting him. He had to be an asshole cop. “Jill! Talk to me, right here, right now, or downtown and as long as it takes. I don’t care. You’ll only mean more overtime pay for me. Maybe your bike will be here when we get back, probably not. I guarantee you one thing: we’ll take as much time as we need to find out why you were screwing a big-time lawyer.”

  “It’s his son, okay? His son and I had sex. One time. I got pregnant. How insane is that? One time and I’m pregnant. Now he wants me to go away.”

  If it was the same son, Will thought of the foul-mouthed young man in the ball cap he had encountered at Music Hall.

  “You didn’t ask for money?”

  “No! I want to have this baby!” she yelled. “I won’t kill it.”

  “Sounds like a case of blackmail to me. That’s against the law. You won’t look so pretty after ten years in prison, Jill.”

  “His dad gave the money to me! I didn’t ask for anything! I didn’t want anything. I’m sorry I ever told Mike I was pregnant. After he found out, he never took my calls again. Then I started getting calls from his father. He threatened to sue me and take my house. He said I’d taken advantage of his son. As if! I was afraid.”

  Yes, he was an asshole cop. He had never seen a human being look more helpless. And here was Kenneth Buchanan cleaning up his son’s casual disaster. He thought about John and his own cleaning up, the knife that he had stashed in his dresser drawer.

  “How much did he pay you?”

  She stared into her small lap. “Ten thousand dollars.”

  He let her get the bike and ride off, then lit up his unmarked cruiser, turned east on Eighth, and accelerated to sixty, the big twin-turbocharged Interceptor engine sounding like a fighter jet closing in on its target.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Melissa spent three hours with Dodds and a police artist. More overtime for Fassbinder to bitch about. She kept protesting that she hadn’t gotten a great look at the suspect, that the bar had been too dim, but a sketch was produced. At five p.m., Will called all the television and radio stations, as well as the city desk at the Enquirer: a press conference would be held in an hour regarding the Gruber murder. That would be enough to draw a crowd. It was agreed that Will would conduct the briefing, the chief overruling Fassbinder’s objections. Will was the one the killer knew, the one he had threatened.

  Once again, the room at police headquarters was flooded with television lights. Will wore a dark suit and French blue shirt with a blue-and-burgundy rep tie. He was flanked by the brass and tried not to tilt or hold on too tightly to the podium.


  “Thank you for coming,” he began. Cheryl Beth sat in the front row and gave him a secret smile. “Tonight we want to tell you about a new development in the investigation of the murder of Officer Kristen Gruber. What’s being passed around is a sketch of a person of interest in the case. You can also see it on the screen to my right. He’s a white male, twenty-five to thirty years of age, at least six-feet-three inches tall, muscular build, and bald.”

  The room rustled with paper and whispers. He waited for it to die down. “Based on our investigation, witness interviews, and a profile of the murderer, I can tell you a few things. He’s a loner and has an anger-management problem that would be noticeable to his friends and family. He might have threatened them. This person might have been seen around the Seven Hills Marina last weekend. He might also have been on the Loveland Bicycle Trail.” He slowed down the next part: “This suspect is impotent and was probably sexually abused as a child.” Maybe those words would smoke him out. He heard a still camera clicking. “It is entirely possible that the person of interest shown in this sketch is our murderer. He is extremely dangerous. If you see this man, you should call nine-one-one immediately. We won’t be taking any questions tonight. Thank you for coming.”

  ***

  It was eight before they had dinner at Joe’s Diner on Sycamore. The old standby with its chrome walls and a neon sign had been revived from the riots. It was only a few blocks from home. The night was gentled by light rain, and the streets shone. Inside, they got a table without a wait and talked about the day over burgers, fries, and onion rings. “I’ll eat onion rings if you will,” she said, and it was decided. He praised her again for finding the witness and convincing her to come down immediately. She asked about his shadowing of Kenneth Buchanan, and he told the story.

  “Do you still think Buchanan did it?”

  Will took in a deep breath, took stock. “I don’t know. Sometimes in this job you have to avoid the hammer and nail thing…” She smiled widely, a beautiful thing. “When you’re the hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

  “I feel for that girl,” Cheryl Beth said. “But ten thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Not in Buchanan’s world. And, he wants her to go away. I wonder how many other times he’s had to bail out his son’s stupid mistakes.”

  He talked about John and the parallels.

  “You love him,” she said. The words made him uncomfortable in that context. He couldn’t say exactly why. It was something to do with the many separations and alienations of recent years: Cindy drawing apart, then a complete rupture, John’s sullen and difficult adolescence, and then the reappearance of his biological father.

  “I think my old man would have let me spend a night in jail to get my mind right,” he said. Comfortable in her presence, he talked about his dad. He wasn’t cruel or abusive, a typical father of his era. He didn’t want to be your buddy and you damned sure weren’t his equal. “We didn’t have a bunch of stuff. We didn’t go shopping for recreation. I don’t know. I see kids like John, or this Buchanan son, or the one who was piloting the boat on Saturday night. They’re ruined by money.”

  “I never got that chance,” she said.

  “I hear you.”

  He went on. “My dad really disapproved of me becoming a police officer. He wanted me to be a lawyer. ‘Something respectable,’ he’d say. I never understood why he devalued himself that way.” He felt safe enough with her to go on. “I was working the night he was shot. I was on patrol, District Five, up around Winton Hills. He was a patrol sergeant in District One. Could have been a captain, a fine detective. But he couldn’t stand the politics, he disliked the detectives, and he liked the street. So, that night was busy in his district. He was the first on the scene. A couple was mixing it up in the projects, dad went in and separated them, and the man came back with a gun in his hand and shot him. Once right in the heart.” He had to slow down. “And that was that.”

  She reached across and took his hand, holding it tight.

  The food arrived and Will let her take the first onion ring; she preferred the small ones. “A perfect match,” he said. “I like the big ones.”

  He lowered his voice. “If Buchanan’s not our guy, I don’t even know where to begin. Her two other boyfriends have solid alibis. They’ve found another guy she had an affair with a year ago. He moved to Denver last August, swears it was an amiable separation, he hadn’t heard from her since. He has an alibi, too.” He bit into the ring and soon the whole thing was gone. “Except for your witness, nothing’s going our way. If he doesn’t make a move against me, we’re screwed.” He sighed. “And here I am putting you at risk, too”

  “We’ve been through that,” she said. “I hope you don’t have that many girlfriends going.” She put a straw in her mouth and sipped Diet Coke.

  “Only one, but she’s really hot.”

  “So tell me how you tailed this guy, got an emergency call, and didn’t get caught.”

  He laughed loudly and any weight of the day or the past flew off.

  They were still laughing as they left an hour later. The rain had stopped so they did not get soaked as Will did his slow-walk with the cane to the car, which was parked in a lot across Grear Alley. One big building, once the School for Creative and Performing Arts, filled the view to the north. Sirens were yowling off to the west. He opened the door for Cheryl Beth and closed it. Then he walked around the car, making an inventory of their surroundings, touching the raindrops on the trunk and fenders. His right hand was hurting from holding the cane. A couple was fighting fifty feet away. A man yelled, “You think because you’re beautiful and men want to fuck you…”

  As he started to open the door, he felt something hard and cold right behind his left ear.

  “Hello Detective Borders.” The voice was low, barely audible. “Your friends aren’t tailing you tonight.” A small laugh. “I guess they went for donuts. You’ve been searching for Kristen’s gun. I thought I’d bring it to you.” The barrel tapped hard against his skull. The fighting couple got in their car and drove away. They were alone in the lot now.

  “Now don’t think about doing anything cute,” the voice said. “You’re going to do exactly what I say.”

  If Will were not crippled, he would teach this man cute. If Will didn’t yearn for a future with Cheryl Beth, and couldn’t take chances with her so near, he would give this a lesson. When somebody was holding a gun that close, it was possible to quickly step inside the reach of his arm, inside his firing radius, and disarm him. It was easier when done from the front, but he could do it. He once could have done it.

  The hoarse whisper continued: “The first thing you’re going to do is pull out your gun, left hand, please. Then toss it in front of you.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” Will decided not to attempt to turn his head and look at the man.

  “You’re going to do it, or I’ll shoot you now. Is that your friend, Cherry Beth, sitting there? She’s going to find out if I’m impotent like you said. I’ll fuck the little cunt in every orifice and then watch her die slowly. There’s nothing you can do about it. How does that make you feel, detective?”

  He almost looked back, stopped himself. Will was very conscious of each breath, how it barely seemed to fill his lungs. He could see Cheryl Beth’s legs and lap, but couldn’t tell if she could make out his predicament. He asked, “Why did you pick me to send your messages?”

  “Later. I may answer your questions, or not. But right now, quit stalling and pull out your gun with your left hand, toss it on the pavement in front of you.”

  Breath in, breath out. His right wrist was aching, his hand gripping the cane tightly. His gun was an impossible six inches away.

  “Agh!”

  Will heard this half-grunt, half expression of pain as the gun that had been behind his ear went airborne and landed a few feet in front of the bumper. Somehow it didn’t go off. A black-clad figure fell to his side and rolled.r />
  Another man yelled, “Motherfucka’, what you think you doin’?” Then he kicked Will’s assailant in the side. “This here’s an officer of the law. Don’t you be disrespecting the po-lice!”

  Will said, “Junior?”

  “I made bail. Glad to see me?”

  Indeed, it was the gang thug he had stopped from stomping the man beside Central Parkway on Monday. The shadow on the asphalt vaulted up and ran. Oh, to see a face, but there was none. And he had hair.

  “Yes,” Will said, drawing his service weapon, “glad to see you. Get down.”

  But big Junior was chasing the other man and blocking Will’s aim.

  “I’m gonna nail you, sucka’. Citizen’s arrest! ”

  “Get down, Junior!”

  Junior’s three-hundred-pounds made the chase last, at best, a third of the way across the parking lot. Then he was bent over, struggling to catch his breath. The time elapsed for the clumsy pursuit, with Junior’s huge body in the way of Will’s aim, consumed no more then ten seconds. But it was enough. The man in black was gone.

  Chapter Thirty

  Two hours later, the twenty marked and unmarked units that responded to Will’s broadcast had scattered. The suspect was gone. The unmarked unit shadowing Will and Cheryl Beth had been drawn off by a report of a shooting three blocks away. It wasn’t a shooting. Someone had rigged a fuse with a cigarette to a string of M-80s which did a good job of impersonating gunshots. By the time the unmarked car from Central Vice got back to the parking lot, Will had already taken off, searching for the man who had held Kristen Gruber’s gun to his head. And it was Gruber’s—the serial number matched.

  Now they cruised slowly through Over-the-Rhine. Cheryl Beth sat in the passenger front seat, Dodds in back. Nobody talked at first. She was certain that if she were hooked up to an EKG her heart would still show tachycardia. She blamed herself for those moments when Will was in mortal danger. The car had cloaked her from the threat he was facing. She couldn’t see what was happening until the gun flew in front of the car and the big black man was chasing someone. Will had given her gloves and told her to retrieve the gun, then, when she returned, he had revved the car across the parking lot, its spotlight sending a dazzling white cone against buildings and into alleys. After that, it seemed as if the entire police force had descended upon them.