Every Breath You Take
Page 35
Chapter 23
No new evidence turned up in the next number of days. The Sandman hadn't responded to the message they'd put on the Reaper website, and he'd gone dark when it came to responding to the e-mail message they'd sent from Bartolucci's phone as well. Pepper had spoken with Caruso about his encounter with Fragakos and the possibility of a leak in the department. The Inspector said he'd look into it, but nothing had come of that either.
They continued their surveillance of the professor, but nothing of interest turned up there either. The next time Pepper and Wallace had taken the night shift, the only exciting thing that happened was that the professor stopped and picked up some groceries and some bottles of wine on his way home. He never budged from his house that night, the white light shining from those covered basement windows for most of the evening.
With nothing breaking, the detectives had returned to the other cases in their workload, addressing those but still keeping an ear and eye tuned to the Redmond case and the Drummond surveillance.
It was a Tuesday morning in early April when a red-faced Inspector Caruso stormed into the squad room. "DiCicco, Harris, get your asses over here," he burst out as he stopped in front of the murder board, slapping his open hand noisily against Drummond's name.
"Yes sir?" DiCicco said as he and Harris walked up, the other team members watching from a distance.
Caruso was fuming, and Pepper thought he looked like an overheated engine about to blow. "What the fuck happened last night?" Pepper looked at DiCicco and Harris, knowing they'd been on stakeout at the professor's last night.
"Um, it seems as if the professor's on to us," Harris said quietly.
"Do ya think?" Caruso said, waving his hand in a circle impatiently. "Just tell me what the hell happened."
"Well," DiCicco said, picking up the story. "We were just sitting there in our car watching the house, when a car drove by slowly, and then turned around and parked across the street from us." He paused and looked over at Harris, both of them red-faced.
"And?" Caruso barked impatiently.
"This young guy looks over at our car, gets out, and comes over and taps at the window. When I ask what he wants, he looks down at a paper in his hand and reads off our licence plate number and asks if that's our car. When I tell him it is, he goes back to his car and comes back with one of those insulated bags and hands us a Pizza Hut box and a couple of Cokes."
"A pizza?"
"Yeah. We figured it was from Pepper and Wallace, until the guy read his note."
"What note?"
"After we took the stuff from him, he looks down at a slip of paper in his hand and says, "I'm supposed to read this to you. "Didn't want you guys getting tired and hungry out here." And then when I asked him who sent it, he looked down at his note and said, "All it says after that is: "From the man in the corner house."
"Oh man," McTavish said with a groan.
"You're kidding me?" Caruso said. Pepper watched as the Inspector wound his watch back and forth like a metronome gone haywire.
"Uh, no sir. Sorry." DiCicco looked over at his partner, Harris, who nodded humbly.
"Jesus Christ on a keychain," Caruso said, leaning forward and resting his hands on the desk as he slowly shook his head back and forth. "Well, the good professor is all lawyered up now. And on top of that, he's got Philip Robertson as his lawyer."
The team seemed to let out a collective groan at the name. No one knew how Philip Robertson had originally come by the nickname, The Screwdriver. Maybe it was his first name, maybe his last name, maybe both-or maybe it had been given to him by the first cop he'd put the screws to when he was tearing him apart on the witness stand. However he had gotten the handle, it was a fitting one. He was a son of a bitch who seemed to take pride in handling the big criminal cases in town. It was almost like his business card should have read 'No criminal is too guilty for Philp Robertson'. He'd been at it for almost thirty years, and the mention of his name alone made everyone in the police department cringe.
"I just got out of the Chief's office, and Robertson and Drummond were both there." He turned and looked at Chin and McTavish. "You're right-that Drummond is a smug bastard, isn't he?" The Inspector turned back and addressed the group. "The Chief listened to the lawyer go on and on about his client's rights as a citizen and all that shit. When the big windbag had blown himself out, Chief Dakin turned to me and gave me a blast, telling me to call off my guys." Caruso paused as the team looked at him warily. DiCicco and Harris looked down at the floor. "Once those other two left, the Chief told me to keep up the surveillance on Drummond, but to get our act together and not let the asshole know we're there. So let's be professional about this people. I don't care if you have to cover yourself with one of those Lord of the Rings cloaking shields, just make yourselves invisible to this guy. Maybe we'll give him enough rope to hang himself. You got it?"
"Yes sir," the team members all seemed to speak at once as they nodded in agreement.
"And you two," Caruso said as he turned to DiCicco and Harris. "I wish this was the army so I could have you guys shovelling latrines for the next six months. Right now, just get out of my sight." The Inspector shook his head from side to side as he walked away. "Fucking Pizza Hut," he muttered under his breath before storming into his office and slamming the door behind him.
The others all moved quietly back to their desks, none of them saying anything to DiCicco and Harris. They'd all fucked up at one time or another, and it was likely the professor had already been on to them. Those two just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wallace looked across at Pepper. "It's been about three weeks since the Redmond girl was killed, and over two weeks since we've had anything from The Sandman. Do you think he's done? Or left town?"
"We can only hope, I guess. But I don't know-it feels too much like unfinished business with this guy."