Rose City Free Fall

by DL Barbur

  Winter stepped away and a young cop I didn't know slid in behind the wheel. He kept his mouth shut and so did I.

  It was interesting to watch the process from the other side. I was taken to East precinct, mugged, printed, stripped of my belt and shoelaces. I'd done it to people a thousand times. Once I got to the station everybody was dryly professional. There were too many eyes around to be otherwise. The precinct seemed busier than usual like everyone had found some reason to just happen to pass through the area where I was. I felt like some kind of caged animal on display.

  I overheard them talking. Portland's prisoners usually went to the Multnomah County jail, but I was going to Clackamas County, standard procedure when we arrested one of our own cops.

  The same young, silent cop drove me down to the jail. I sat in the back of the car, sweating and smelling the funk of hundreds of prisoners that had taken similar trips.

  Of all the things I had to worry about, the one that preyed on my mind the most was Audrey's car. I knew it would get towed off the street, and she’d have to pay the impound fees. She depended on it to get around to her gigs and lessons.

  We pulled up to the sally port at the jail. They were apparently expecting us. Two deputies came out and met us. The booking room was deserted of other inmates. I was stripped, searched, and given a pair of faded orange coveralls. Everyone was curt and professional, but like East Precinct, a lot of people were standing around watching, watching another cop get treated like just another prisoner. I felt like I should be selling tickets.

  They put me in segregation, the place for all the prisoners who couldn't quite get with the program and for people who might be in danger from other prisoners. That suited me just fine. I was solitary by nature and the last thing I wanted to do was hang out with a bunch of inmates.

  The cell was small. Just long enough for me to lie down, just wide enough for my fingertips to brush either wall. The walls were featureless cinder block and high up was a single light fixture behind a grill. There were no pipes, conduits or anything else a person could use to hang himself. The only thing in the room was a mattress that smelled strongly of disinfectant and faintly of piss.

  The door was heavy and metal, with an observation slit cut into it. Other than the hum of the light overhead, it was silent inside.

  I flipped the mattress up against the wall and lay down on the floor. I ached all over from the beating I'd taken.

  I crossed my hands behind my head and lay there, staring at the light up above.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I don't know how long I was there. There was no way to keep track of time in the windowless, featureless cell.

  At times I heard footsteps in the hallway outside and low, murmured voices, but that was it. Every now and then a face would pass by the slot in my door, a pair of eyes checking to make sure I wasn't trying to kill myself in some creative manner.

  I passed the time by thinking about music. I used to do that in the Army, crammed in the nylon web seats of an Air Force transport plane waiting to jump out the back.

  The door slid open and I raised my head blinking. I must have fallen asleep. A big deputy stood there, hands as big as canned hams hanging by his side. His ponderous gut spilled over his old-school leather duty belt.

  "Up."

  I stood without arguing. He cuffed me quickly and professionally, manipulating me into positions where I was always off balance, right on the verge of toppling over but not quite. I knew if I made a move against him, he would have put me on my face and started having a boot party on the back of my head. I guess you learn a thing or two doing this for a living.

  Winter was waiting for me in an interview room. He had his uniform on. I'd only seen him in it a couple of times. His badge was nice and shiny.

  I sat down across from him. My chair was bolted to the floor. He had a folder full of papers and a fresh legal pad in front of him. I wondered what was in the folder. Surely he didn't think I was stupid enough to fall for the blank papers in a folder trick.

  Winter looked at me, letting the silence build, waiting for me to say something. I felt a prickle of irritation. Sitting there silently was a technique you used on dumb street maggots.

  Finally, he said something. "Well Dent, I guess the good news is that she's not dead."

  "Who?"

  He measured me for a minute and I had two thoughts. One was that there might be more going on here than I thought. The second was that there might be more to Winter than I gave him credit for.

  "I'm talking about Mandy, Dent," he said softly.

  That took me back for a second. "Mandy? What about her?" He leaned forward, and I saw some steel in Winter. It had been buried under years of bureaucratic ass kissing, softened by desk jobs and admin postings, but it was there.

  "How about if you cut the shit, Dent? You caved in the back of your partner's head. We have you at the crime scene because you passed a delivery truck driver on your way up to her apartment. What were you doing, Dent? Were you going to try to talk her into your side of the story?"

  Somewhere behind me, I heard the jaws of the trap snapping closed.

  "Then," Winter continued. "Bloem sees you fleeing at a high rate of speed, and you tried to take him out."

  He looked at me for a second, his nostrils flaring. It was either a hell of an act or he believed it.

  "The only chance you've got to save your ass is to come clean with me right now and hope your partner's brain doesn't swell up so much she dies. So how about you tell the truth, Dent?"

  Nice. Floor me with the accusation, then try to get me to admit to it. There was an art to getting people to do things against their own self-interest, like confess to crimes, whether they'd done them or not.

  I leaned forward across the table, lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  "Ok, Dan. Here's what I've got to say."

  He leaned forward.

  "I refuse to answer any questions without an attorney present." I leaned back in my chair.

  His face turned red and for a second I thought he was going to come across the table at me. That was when I knew he wasn't in on it, that he was a true believer. He really thought I had tried to kill Mandy. I wasn't sure if that worked for me or against me.

  Winter got control again, set his face into a mask. He got up without saying another word, just took his folder and his legal pad and walked out. After a minute or two, the same deputy took me to a deserted cafeteria, put a tray down in front of me. He sat across the room with his arms folded as I consumed a sandwich with gray mystery meat on it, chips, a few carrot sticks. I wasn't hungry, but I made myself eat anyway.

  When I was done he took me back down to my cell.

  I lay back down on the floor, shoving the thought of Mandy being hurt out of my head.

  I don't know how much time passed. Eventually, it must have gotten dark outside. I couldn't tell because the light in my cell never stopped burning. I lay there thinking about guitars and amps and tones, endlessly flipping different combinations around in my head, steadfastly pushing any thoughts of Mandy, Audrey, my job out of my head. The walls of the cell were heavy cinder block, just the thing to break your fists on, or maybe your head, if you got too wound up.

  At some point it was morning. This time another deputy came, younger, leaner, but no less competent. Some guys liked to talk trash about corrections officers, considered them inferior to "real" cops. I have to admit that I'd done it myself because I'd run into some real dirtbags working in jails, but the guys I was seeing now were impressive. Maybe they'd called out the A-team for me.

  The young guy cuffed me up, then led me to the cafeteria. The food line was almost empty and the trash cans almost full, so I figured they were letting me eat after all the other inmates. Five minutes after I was done I couldn't even remember what I ate but my burps tasted like bacon.

  Back in the cell, I resumed my position on the floor. The food churned in my stomach and I lay there, smelling my own ga
s and looking at the ceiling.

  A face kept coming to mind: the big bald guy I'd seen at Central Precinct.

  The more I thought about it, the more I was sure he had been in the van with Marshall when I passed him outside Kelly Point Park.

  The door to my cell rattled open. It was the young guy again. He motioned me up and I cooperated, standing passively while he cuffed me, careful not to do anything he would interpret as hostile. I wanted nothing more than to break somebody right now, but this guy was just doing his job.

  He marched me back to the interview room. I was a little surprised to find Bolle and Al sitting there. I remained silent as the deputy sat me down and un-cuffed me. Al's face was impassive the whole time. I ignored Bolle.

  The deputy left and I took a deep breath.

  "I didn't do it," I said to Al. "I didn't hurt Mandy."

  He gave me a small tight smile. "I know," he said softly.

  For a second I couldn't talk. My throat felt almost swollen shut and my eyes blurred with tears. For the first time since I'd put my gun and badge down on that conference table, I felt like things might be alright. Al believed me. I had a short list of people that mattered, and Al was near the top of it.

  I almost didn't care if I went to prison just then, didn't care if the world thought I was a dirty cop. Al believed me.

  Al looked down, pretended to read the papers he was shuffling while I put myself back together. Bolle brushed some imaginary lint off the lapel of his suit. I pushed the lump in my throat back down, swallowed the tears. There would be time for this later.

  Bolle looked up. "But it may not matter what we believe. You have a big problem and I'm wondering what you are planning to do about it?"

  Bolle was good. He had a reserved, almost effete air about him, but when he fixed me with those eyes, I could tell there were some layers to this guy.

  I stumbled for an answer. What was I going to tell him? That I'd spent the time since I'd been arrested fantasizing about different electric guitars? Ask him if he thought Sea Foam Green was a better custom color for a Stratocaster than Fiesta Red? I could be a real dumbass sometimes.

  "Mandy," I managed to croak. "How is she?"

  Al looked up at me. "Unconscious. Her brain is still swollen and she's in intensive care. She could still die, Dent."

  I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again. God. Mandy was such a nice kid, would be such an incredible detective some day.

  "She can't die." I refused to accept that outcome. I couldn't accept it.

  Bolle shrugged. "Well, she is certainly the key. If she wakes up, and if she's capable of speech and normal brain function, she can testify that you didn't attack her. I'd be very interested in knowing what she has to say."

  I fixed Al with a look. "Who is the big guy, bald, looks like a shark in a suit. I saw him at Central Precinct, right before Lubbock suspended me."

  Bolle nodded, looked long and hard at me as if appraising me anew. He shuffled through the folder in front of him, pulled out a stack of 8x10" photographs. They had the flattened look of shots taken through a long lens.

  It showed Gibson Marshall, sitting at an outdoor café. Across from him sat the big bald guy, in a different suit than the one he'd been wearing when I saw him, but definitely the same guy.

  I shuffled through the photos. They looked like they'd been taken a few seconds apart. The two men looked like they were arguing. Gibson's hands were animated, his mouth open wide. The other guy looked more restrained. His hands were folded in front of him.

  "Those were taken just a couple of hours ago," Bolle said.

  "Gibson Marshall is out of jail already?"

  Bolle sneered. "Gibson Marshall was being let out of jail while Lubbock was suspending you and your partner. A judge heard his petition for bail at five that morning and released him into the custody of this man." Bolle's finger tapped the bald guy in the photo.

  "His name is Rickson Todd. He's a business associate of Gibson Marshall's father. He's got an impressive background, former Army Special Forces, a stint in Delta Force before he got sent over to CIA. After a couple of years of that, he supposedly went private. He dropped out of sight for a few years before he reappeared as Cascade Aviation's director of operations."

  I looked at the surveillance photos again. "Where was he yesterday when Mandy was attacked?" I felt cold all over. I was imagining a sight picture, first on Todd's chest, then on Marshall's.

  Bolle and Al both shifted uncomfortably, and for a long moment, neither one of them spoke. Finally, Al cleared his throat.

  "We had them under surveillance yesterday. Todd and Marshall were together. They broke our surveillance right before Mandy was attacked. That was about half a mile from her apartment."

  The room was silent for a minute.

  "I'm sorry, Dent," Al continued. "We didn't put it all together until later. We assumed you would be the primary target. We didn't even know Mandy lived in the area until later."

  I closed my eyes again, trying to force it out of my mind. That's how it happened sometimes. The facts were staring you right in the face, but you didn't put them together until it was too late. It had happened to me more than once.

  "These bastards are slick,” I said, trying to sound more forgiving then I felt. “They work quick."

  Al and Bolle both nodded. "You have to remember something," Bolle said. "We are working against a very potent combination. Todd has incredible skills and experience. He also has access to a fortune. He could blow several million dollars on an operation like this and Gibson Marshall's father would barely even blink."

  I was silent for a minute, processing all that.

  “But I think we may be able to help you," Bolle said.

  "How?"

  Bolle leaned forward across the table. "You do realize that Todd will be looking to kill you now? He’ll make it look like another inmate did it, someone with a grudge against the police, or perhaps a suicide. It will stink to high heaven to anyone with any common sense, but all Todd cares about is what people can prove, not what they know. As long as he muddies the waters enough so that the younger Marshall doesn't go on trial for murder, he's a success."

  I felt a chill down my back. I suddenly realized that my isolation at the jail not only protected me from a random shank in the ribs from a passing inmate but also set me up for a more organized, more professional hit. If I was found hanging in my cell, a victim of my own despair, heads would roll. Prisoners weren't supposed to be able to kill themselves. But maybe that vast fortune of the Marshall family could smooth some of that over.

  I had that feeling of being in freefall again, like everything I'd always taken for granted was gone and I'd been shoved out the door of the plane, unable to even look over my shoulder and see if there was a parachute strapped there or not.

  "I need to know something else, Al. Is it all just a joke? Being a cop? Do people really get away with this? Murdering a girl and framing the cop that's investigating it? I know we've always had a few bad eggs at the Bureau, but is it all just a front? Is the place just rotten?"

  Al didn't answer for a long time. He looked older, deflated somehow, like a man who'd had seen a little too much, been disappointed a time too many.

  "I know if I wanted to go bust black kids for selling crack on street corners, I'd get funding and support all day long."

  His eyes took a far-away look that I recognized as a man looking into his past and maybe not liking what he saw.

  "When Alex first started college, I got a hint, the barest whisper, that a guy I'd busted for fraud, an accountant at a big developing firm here in town, had maybe been innocent, that maybe he'd been set up by his boss because he knew where the dirt was on certain projects involving big chunks of city money. The accountant hadn't gone to jail, you basically can't go to jail on white collar stuff these days, but he was ruined professionally. I started snooping just a little, very quietly.”

  Al fidgeted in his seat, not meeting my eyes. Then he cont
inued.

  “I couldn't bear the thought that I'd put an innocent man through the justice system, got him labeled a criminal, but I knew I had to be careful."

  He was silent for a minute, rubbed the side of his chest like it hurt.

  "Anyway, one day I opened my mail. There was a big envelope. Inside was a copy of the case file on the accountant. There were some pictures of Alex outside her dorm at the college. Copies of her enrollment paperwork from the college, floor plans of the dorm room. And a bunch of newspaper clippings about young women being attacked on college campuses. Date rapes, abductions, homicides, that sort of thing."

  He was quiet again for a few seconds, rubbing his chest.

  I remembered Alex when she was in college. I went to Al's house frequently in those days for card games, barbecues, the occasional mentoring session when I was stuck on a case. She'd breeze in and out of the house on summer vacation, spring break. She'd been pretty then, in a slightly awkward, post-adolescent way. But back then, I'd thought of her as a kid. It wasn't until later I started thinking of her in other ways.

  "What did you do?" I asked softly.

  "I took the envelope I got in the mail and locked it in a safety deposit box," Al said. "Just in case. Then I forgot about the accountant and went back to planning operations where we busted black kids for selling crack on street corners."

  The ground was coming up fast, and there was still no sign of a parachute opening. I looked at Al anew. He'd always seemed untouchable to me, a square-jawed hero like something out of a legend.

  Bolle leaned forward. There was a strange fire in his eyes, a light that I'd come to associate with true believers, guys who would give everything they owned to one church or another, or maybe even strap a bomb to themselves and blow themselves up for the greater cause. I hadn't seen that light in the eyes of too many cops. Maybe that was why we were losing.

  "I need men like you, Dent, people I can trust. Most cops never even see the bigger picture, they just keep busting those kids on street corners selling crack and telling themselves that's what matters, or they just coast their way to retirement, doing as little as possible, or they become dirty, become part of the problem."