Vigilante Reloaded

by Jack Quaid

  He called for his detectives, and they assembled around him. There was Cooper, a beast of a man. Six foot five, size fourteen boots, and hands the size of dinner plates. He and Rayburn had been partners since they were both in uniform. Warren was smaller but in better shape. He didn’t smoke, drink, or curse. He had transferred in from SWAT three years earlier after he busted his ankles when a rope snapped while he was abseiling down the side of a building. Then there was Garcia, who had worked undercover before Rayburn recruited him. He was unassuming and plain faced. He used it to his advantage, and people opened up and told him all their secrets without realizing they had.

  After he was made CO, Rayburn put together a tight crew. The bosses had high hopes, although they never understood the inclusion of Con Taylor. As a man he was a pig, and as a police officer he was barely effective. The LAPD had been trying to bounce him for years, and at the time Rayburn recruited him he was just coming off suspension. Taylor followed him around like a sick dog, and most people believed that Rayburn didn’t have the heart to put him down.

  Winter had been called in from VICE and stood shoulder to shoulder with the other detectives.

  Rayburn paced and ran his thumb under the waistband of his trousers again. He shouted over the howl of the car alarm. ‘We’ve got innocent people dead. Bystanders, witnesses, security guards. We’ve got fifteen million dollars missing. Call your families, cancel your plans. Nobody goes home until we’ve got these dogs in cuffs. At 5:27 a.m.,’ he nodded back at the wreck, ‘truck 177 left the MGM Grand and headed out to deposit the night’s earnings. Somewhere between 6:07 and 6:20, some wannabe gangsters ran them off the road. They then proceeded to blow out the rear doors and execute the guards, as well as any passing bystanders. That’s three guards and nine dead witnesses as far as we know, though others might have fled to safety. If they exist, we need to find them.’ He pointed to badges, assigned duties. ‘You all know what to do, so do it well. And for Christ’s sake, someone turn off that fucking alarm.’

  The unit dispersed, and an obedient uniform rushed toward the Merc, leaving Rayburn and Sullivan alone.

  ‘What about me?’ Sullivan asked.

  Rayburn lit a cigarette, let the smoke leak through his words. ‘I want you to go home, get some rest.’

  ‘I don’t need rest.’

  ‘I need people who are on the ball, and you look far from that.’ He pointed to the gash on Sullivan’s head from the hit he had taken in the crash. ‘See a medic and go home.’

  He walked off as a news chopper swooped in and hovered a few hundred feet above them all. Half the cops on the street waved it away, but it was too late: the images were already in the lounge rooms of the world. The chopper disappeared into the skyline. The fading noise of its engine was replaced with a sound Sullivan had heard a thousand times and still hadn’t gotten used to. A woman in pajama pants and a puffy jacket broke the police tape and ran toward them, sobbing and wailing. Sullivan stepped forward, grabbed her. He buried her face in his jacket, hugged her close so she didn’t have to see the world for a while. Somebody she knew was dead.

  A medic waited patiently until she let go of him, then walked her away from the scene.

  ‘Fucked up, isn’t it?’ Winter kept her gaze focused on the cigarette she was struggling to spark up in the wind. ‘It always amazes me how they get here so fast, the loved ones.’

  ‘Would you take your time?’

  ‘I just meant—’

  ‘I know what you meant.’ Sullivan waved his hand to let her know it was okay.

  The Merc’s alarm fell silent, but echoes of it rang in everybody’s ears for a few moments longer. A uniform pulled his head out from under the hood with a look of achievement on his face as if he had just solved the entire crime.

  Sullivan’s gaze lingered on the Mercedes. Something about it had his attention. He made his way over to it with Winter in his wake. She was still talking, but although he threw in a mumble from time to time, Sullivan wasn’t really listening. Taking a lap of the Merc, he ran his fingers along the bullet holes, jamming his finger into each one as his thoughts swirled in a thousand different directions.

  ‘What is it?’

  Kneeling down at the rear of the car, it didn’t take him long to find the reverse camera that sat just under the licence plate. He followed its line of sight: a complete view of the crime scene.

  He looked up at the uniform. ‘Is the alarm disabled?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Sullivan scanned the street. ‘Give me your baton.’

  The uniform handed it over, watching nervously as Sullivan put it through the driver’s side window. Nobody noticed. They were all too busy with everything else that was going on. He popped the trunk and searched it.

  ‘When the alarm is triggered, the reverse camera automatically records.’

  Sullivan pulled the SD card and showed it to Winter.

  Chapter Eight

  The setup: Wide shot. Street. Twenty feet in each direction.

  Armored truck. Engine steam. Pole in the grill.

  Masked gunmen swooped the rear. A third relayed cash bags.

  Truck to car. Truck to car. Car nondescript. Can’t trace. Truck to car. Truck to car.

  Eyewitnesses. Footpath.

  Gunmen scanned the area. Professional. Machine guns.

  Guard. Hands up. Shit in his pants.

  The cash loaded. Gunmen fell back on the car.

  Guard made a move. Fell to his ankle. Came up. Weapon in hand. Got off a round. Missed. Panic.

  Gunmen opened fire. No hesitation.

  The guard hit the deck.

  The gunmen scanned the area.

  Witnesses. Children going to school. Men going to work. Woman in cars. Each and every one of them able to stand up in court and point a finger.

  Nobody got out alive.

  When the executions were over, the gunmen piled into the car and out of frame. Five in total. Identical clothing, identical weapons, and no identifying features. The whole thing was over and done within sixty seconds.

  Smart. Professional. Cool.

  Sullivan leaned back in his chair and drew on his cigarette. He was about turn the machine off, but in the final frames of the recording, a piece-of-shit Ford that looked parked and empty pulled away from the curb and trailed after the getaway car.

  A spotter. A lookout. Sullivan tapped the arrows on the keyboard and brought the footage back frame by frame. A hundred or so taps later, he leaned forward and peered at the screen.

  A licence plate.

  Sullivan wrote down the number, yanked the SD card from the computer, and left the room.

  Chapter Nine

  The Major Crimes had come to life. The phones rang; some were answered, some weren’t. Every desk was occupied, and those without one worked from the floor. The coffee machine was in overtime, and the guys whose shifts had ended hours ago stayed on for no pay, forced themselves to think outside of the four corners they were used to. A massacre like this didn’t happen every day, and it was every cop’s worst nightmare. Nobody cared about the overtime, nobody cared about the credit. They just wanted the motherfuckers behind bars.

  Sullivan wrote the licence plate number down and shoved the crumpled paper into a uniform’s hand. ‘Run this tag, then run who the vehicle is registered to. I want sheets, known associates, everything you can find. Bring it to me and only to me, you understand?’

  The uniform nodded. He had no choice and a second later was off and on his way to do the detective’s shit work and cursing under his breath.

  In the chaos, on a bench, quiet and alone, sat a woman. Waiting patiently with her handbag on her lap and a scrunched-up tissue in her hand.

  Sullivan walked over and crouched in front of her. ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’

  She stared back at him blankly.

  ‘Ma’am? Can I help you?’

  She started. ‘What . . . ? Oh, I’m sorry. It’s my husband; he’s a driver for SEC-Guard. I can�
��t get him on the phone. I’ve been waiting, but everybody’s so busy.’

  ‘What’s his name, sweetheart?’

  ‘Jamie Gale.’

  Sullivan patted her hand. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ Heading toward his desk, he picked up a victim list, scanned through the names. Then he made his way back across the office and sat next to her.

  He was never any good at this. No one is ever good at it, but Sullivan always struggled to find the words, which he knew always made it worse. His face gave the answer long before he opened his mouth.

  ‘His name was on that list, wasn’t it?’

  Sullivan nodded.

  ‘I thought so. I just needed somebody to tell me, to know for sure.’ She stood up and held out her hand. Sullivan shook it. ‘Thank you, Detective.’

  ‘Can I have someone drive you home?’ Sullivan asked.

  She shook her head, disappeared into the sea of activity, and was gone.

  That’s when the noise started from the elevator and rolled back in waves until it took over the entire room. Cheers, claps, and wolf whistles. Within a matter of moments, every badge was on their feet with their hands slapping together like a chant. Sullivan headed over to see what everybody was so happy about. Rayburn, Cooper, and Taylor barged through the office with shit-eating grins on their faces.

  ‘We got ’em,’ Cooper yelled.

  Sullivan didn’t know who they thought they’d got, because the two beaten-up bastards they had cuffed didn’t look like they could rob a blind man, let alone an armored truck. Everything Sullivan needed to know about them he could tell by their jailhouse tattoos, Adidas tracksuits, and oversized sunglasses. They were gangbangers, small-time drug dealers, fifty-dollar pimps at best. They were a million miles away from the crew he’d seen take down that armored truck on the SD card.

  It was complete bullshit, but that didn’t stop every badge whooping and cheering as Rayburn lapped it up. Cooper shoved the stooges over to a couple of uniforms and told them which interview rooms to let the poor bastards sweat in. When they were gone, Rayburn hushed the room and pointed at the clearance board.

  ‘We put up those names in red, and sometimes they stay in red. But today, due to the hard work of every cop on this team, today we can change those twelve names to black.’

  The room erupted. Fists were thrown in the air, and hands were slapped on sweaty backs.

  Rayburn gestured for quiet again. ‘Be proud. Enjoy this moment, but only for a moment. This thing is far from over. This fast and effective result is all due to good police work. Be proud of it. We still need all the evidence we can gather, and we still need confessions if we’re going to close this fast.’

  The audience clapped one last time and dispersed. When the badges parted, Rayburn saw Sullivan leaning against a desk with a crooked smile on his face. ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘They didn’t do it,’ Sullivan said.

  Taylor chimed in. ‘They have jackets for armed rob, they were found in the area. How do you explain that?’

  ‘Did you find the guns, the cash, anything?’

  ‘We’ll break them and get it in confession,’ Rayburn said.

  ‘There’s nothing to confess to, buddy.’

  ‘I thought I told you to go home.’ Rayburn was still smiling.

  ‘Don’t be more interested in looking like you’ve solved the case, rather than actually solving the case,’ Sullivan said.

  ‘What did you just say to me?’ Rayburn said. His back was up, and he was looking for a fight.

  His crew knew it. Con Taylor shot Sullivan a glance—it said back the fuck off.

  Cooper kept his voice low and dark. ‘Respect the rank.’

  Sullivan wasn’t a big one for respect. He held up the SD card. ‘I’ve got surveillance of the job. The shooters were trained. Those two fuckwits you dragged in don’t know shit from shit. Just have a look at it; that’s all I’m asking you to do.’

  Rayburn was about to tear Sullivan three new assholes, when Captain Wilson walked in. He saw their faces and their clenched fists and didn’t think twice about it. ‘Everything alright?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Rayburn said, his whole tone changing when he saw the older man. ‘We just picked up a couple of suspects. They look good for it.’

  ‘Good work,’ Wilson said.

  Rayburn took the SD card out of Sullivan’s hand. ‘I’ll take a look at it, but I want you to go home, get some rest, and think about becoming a team player.’ He turned to Wilson. ‘I want him out of here. At least for a few hours.’

  When they were gone, Wilson said, ‘They want to see you on the eleventh floor.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The chief.’

  Sullivan waited outside Chief Mackler’s office and watched silent back-to-back coverage of the robbery on the television in the corner of the room. He had been there two hours.

  The door to Mackler’s office opened, and Wilson poked his head out. ‘Come on in.’

  Sullivan scanned the room when he walked inside and saw Mackler standing behind her empty desk with her knuckles on the glass top and her cool eyes on him. Coming up a woman in the Detroit PD wasn’t easy. Rising to chief by forty required her to be more politician than cop. She was just over six foot, wore her dark hair down, and didn’t take any shit from anyone. She had the youngest senior staff in the history of the DPD and earned the nickname The Brat Pact by the cops who had made a career out of policing. They were young and hip, with their minds filled with university degrees and their hearts with ambition.

  They filled out the room, checking the latest news updates on iPads and phones, while Sullivan stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.

  ‘What have you got?’ Mackler asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘On Hailstrum? What have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve just spent the past two hours in the hallway waiting to see you,’ Sullivan said.

  Mackler’s eyebrow rose.

  ‘Look,’ Wilson said. ‘Everybody’s blood is high. What we need to do is work out where we go from here.’

  Mackler sat, swung her feet onto the desk. The room relaxed. ‘Well,’ she said with her palms raised toward the roof. ‘Where are we at then?’

  ‘The human intel we received yesterday from Roach Blacker checked out,’ Sullivan said. ‘There’s a network of corrupt cops in this department. Their leader goes by the name Hailstrum. There’s a strong possibility they’re behind this robbery.’

  ‘A robbery you knew about?’ One of Mackler’s staffers said without looking up from their phone.

  ‘A robbery we all knew about,’ Sullivan said.

  Mackler swung her feet off the desk. ‘But which you failed to stop.’

  Sullivan threw a glance at Wilson. ‘You need to let Rayburn in on this. He’s down there right now force-feeding a confession into a couple of nobodies,’ Sullivan said as he shifted his glance back to Mackler.

  ‘For now,’ Mackler said. ‘We need to play our cards close to our chest. I don’t want to run the risk of letting Hailstrum slip through our fingers.’

  ‘Then I’m going to need more manpower,’ Sullivan said.

  ‘I agree.’

  Sullivan relaxed his shoulders and smiled. ‘Good.’

  ‘So, you’re being reassigned to traffic and operations,’ Mackler said. ‘I’m putting Simons and Behan on Hailstrum.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  She motioned to the two young kids on her senior staff in tailored suits and manicured hair.

  Sullivan didn’t like what he saw. ‘They look like a couple of accountants.’

  ‘They’re extremely well educated.’

  ‘Their mothers must be very proud.’

  Mackler stood up and was about to unleash hell when Wilson interjected with, ‘I think what chief Mackler is trying to say is that we’re widening the scope of the investigation.’

  Sullivan took a breath and let the air out of his nostrils. ‘This is bullshit,’ he said.
<
br />   Chief Mackler sat back in her chair, her mind already on the next piece of business for the day. ‘You’re dismissed.’ She turned the television on; the continuing news story now had her attention.

  Sullivan looked at everybody like they were crazy and left. He pressed the button to the elevator in the hall as Wilson caught up.

  ‘Hell, I’m sorry, kid. She thinks education is more important that balls.’

  He pressed the button to the elevator a couple of more times, but it didn’t speed it up any. ‘I was there, Wilson. Just around the corner. I could have stopped it.’

  Wilson put his big hand around Sullivan’s neck, just like he used to when he was a kid. ‘More than likely, I think you would have been another body bag lining the street.’

  Chapter Ten

  The office was half empty. Not a badge of rank in sight. Down the hall, Sullivan heard a ruckus and headed in that direction. The observation room was a shitbox with no windows, no air, a couch, and a tiny black-and-white television connected to the interview room. It was rarely used, except by the odd badge who wanted to sleep off a shift. Today it was packed. Detectives huddled around the screen, watching Rayburn interrogate one of the stooges. Sullivan stopped in the doorframe and watched.

  The grainy image was poor, but clear enough to expose Rayburn’s people skills. He leaned over the table and shoved a finger in the stooge’s face.

  ‘Who else was in your crew?’

  ‘Lawyer.’

  ‘Was the plan all along to kill the guards?’

  ‘Lawyer.’

  ‘What about your cut? Do you think they’ll keep it in a savings account for you while you’re inside? Come on, give me a name.’