RCC02 - Heroes Often Fail Read online

  “Well, I don’t know how else to say it. She had very large breasts.” Kopriva waited a beat, then asked, “Now, sir, I need to know something. Did you see that woman in any way in connection with that van you saw yesterday?”

  There was no hesitation. “I sure did,” Reptile said. “She was the one driving the van.”

  Kopriva hung up the phone.

  0711 hours

  In the lobby of the police department, Lieutenant Alan Hart held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Now, Bishop, there’s no need to speak to the Chief about this.”

  Bishop Hughes crossed his arms theatrically. “And what mighty white man are you to make this decision?”

  Hart’s eyes widened slightly, but he lowered his hands and answered. “I’m Lieutenant Hart. I’m in charge of Day Shift Patrol.”

  “It doesn’t sound to me like anyone is in charge of any shift of patrol,” The Bishop shouted.

  “Oh, I can assure you, my men are under control,” Hart told him. “They listen to me.”

  “So you’re responsible, then?”

  Hart paused. “Uh...”

  “You’re responsible for this assault on the civil liberties of the black people in this city?” The Bishop continued, waving his arms. “You orchestrated this monstrous –”

  “No, no, no!” Hart pleaded, punctuating each protest with the palms of his open hands. “I’m just saying that my men follow orders.”

  The Bishop’s eyes flew open. His eyebrows rose in delight.

  Officer Will Reiser’s jaw dropped. He resisted the urge to bring the palm of his hand to his forehead.

  “Following orders?” The Bishop nearly screeched. “Following orders? Is that what you said?”

  “I only meant—”

  “So the jack-booted storm troopers of the River City Police Department should be forgiven because they were only following orders from the master?” He waved his arms in dramatic sweeps. “And I suppose you’ll tell me next that all black people need to report to relocations camps? Or would you prefer death camps?”

  Hart tried to mouth a word, but no sound came out.

  “Unbelievable!” The Bishop scoffed. He turned to the small but growing assembled group and appeared to notice the camera for the first time. He drew himself up and stared directly into the camera. “I’m glad the citizens of this town are seeing this police department for what it really is. A man of my stature can’t even get in to see the Chief of Police over a matter of Constitutional violations against an entire race of people. Instead I have to stand here and be threatened by one of his minions!”

  Hart cleared his throat. “I...I didn’t threaten you.”

  The Bishop whirled back to face him. “Oh, you most certainly did. And on camera, no less.”

  Hart glanced at the news camera and swallowed in a gulp.

  “What’s the matter, officer?” The Bishop asked. “Nothing to say now that a little sunshine has been brought down upon your evil deeds?”

  “Evil...deeds?”

  “What else would you call stopping everything that’s black and moves? What else would you call interfering with the right of free travel by free men? What else –”

  “A...little girl was kidnapped,” Hart stammered.

  “And I am truly sorrowful for that,” The Bishop intoned, “but that does not give you the cause to mercilessly infringe upon the rights—”

  “The suspect was black.”

  The Bishop grinned. “Officer, the suspect is always black. Don’t matter if he –”

  Hart found his voice and raised it. “It’s Lieutenant,” he snapped. “And the suspect driving the van was black! We didn’t decide he was black. He was black.” He shook his head. “Jesus, it’s not like we’re targeting you people or something.”

  “What?” The Bishop asked. “What did you say to me?”

  Lieutenant Hart blinked. “I, ah, I said...”

  “Did you just say ‘you people?’”

  Hart glanced at the camera and back to The Bishop. “What I meant was...”

  Officer Will Reiser turned toward the Senior Volunteer who helped man the information desk, intending to ask her to go and get the Chief immediately. He’d have gone himself, but he had a feeling he’d need to stick around and keep Hart from getting lynched by the mob that was forming in the lobby.

  But when he looked to his right, the seat was empty.

  0728 hours

  “Anything to report?” Gio asked Katie.

  She shook her head sleepily and turned on the coffee maker. “Nope. No media vans in the front yard yet.”

  “They’re all down at the Public Safety Building.”

  “Press conference?”

  “Almost a riot, from what I heard. Bishop Hughes came to see the Chief and brought along a posse.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Too many black guys getting stopped in vans last night,” Gio said.

  Katie gave him an incredulous look. “Wasn’t that the description? A black driver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then who did he want us to stop? Eskimos?”

  Gio shrugged. Politics was politics and he didn’t like to even waste the time thinking about it.

  “Besides,” Katie said, “I thought he and the Chief were friends or something.”

  Gio shrugged again. “I think everything would’ve been fine, but when Will Reiser called for a lieutenant, it was Hart that was on duty. He stepped all over things and made a mess before the Senior Volunteer in the information booth had the sense to go get the Chief.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I called radio and asked Trisha.”

  Katie gave him a knowing look.

  Gio raised his hands defensively. “It’s not what you think, MacLeod…”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “No, it’s not. I just called her to find out what was going on in the lobby. They sent two units, then disregarded them.”

  “So if I asked you where you spent the night last night, the answer wouldn’t be at Trisha’s house?” Katie asked.

  “That’s right. I was not at Trisha’s house last night.”

  Katie eyed him for a moment, smiling. “You’re such a slut, Gio. If a girl acted the way you did…”

  Gio shrugged. “And if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.”

  Katie sighed with exasperation. “Well, at least then she wouldn’t have to worry about her reputation being sullied on the job.”

  Gio laughed. “What are you worried about, MacLeod? Your rep is secure.”

  “What rep is that?”

  “Lesbian.”

  Katie hit him on the shoulder. “The definition of a lesbian on River City PD is any woman who hasn’t slept with you.”

  “Exactly.”

  She shook her head. She thought about asking him about the few women on the department who really were lesbians, but was certain that he’d answer up with some platitude about how they were just waiting for the right man to turn them back, or at least make them bi-sexual. It was an idiotic sentiment she’d heard on several occasions.

  Gio swept the arm in the general direction of the rest of the house. “How’s the mother?”

  “In the living room, asleep on the couch. Hopefully, she’ll get some shut-eye. She needs it.”

  “Were there any phone calls?” Gio asked, meaning ransom calls.

  Katie shook her head no. “Just the husband. He’s still trying to catch flights back from the east coast.”

  “Any family come by?”

  “No. They don’t have a lot, I guess, and they’re spread out across the country. She said the woman whose daughter was with Amy came by yesterday.”

  “Jill,” Gio said. “She brought a casserole.”

  Katie nodded. “I ate a bowl last night. It was good. Onions were a little strong, though.”

  Gio and Katie stood in silence for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. The sounds of the coffee maker hissing and gurgli
ng filled the kitchen. He was thinking about Trisha the dispatcher. Katie was thinking about the lonely night Kathy Dugger had spent wrapped in her daughter’s blanket.

  Finally, Katie clapped Gio on the shoulder. “I’m going to go home and crash. I guess I’ll see you around eight or nine tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  Katie walked out the door and he locked it behind her. Then he returned to the kitchen and watched the glass coffee pot slowly fill up.

  0904 hours

  “What is that, oh-for-seventeen?” Tower asked Browning.

  “Why do you bother keeping track?” Browning said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then don’t.” Browning’s tone wasn’t sharp, but the rebuke hung there in the air between them.

  Tower shrugged. “Just keeping score, coach.”

  Browning didn’t reply. He pointed to Tower’s list.

  Tower drew a line through Marty Heath, who had been convicted of holding a little girl in his apartment for four hours against her will while doing all sorts of sordid things to her. They’d visited him at the apartment he’d taken since his release from prison last November. It looked like it was suspiciously close to the nearby elementary school. When Tower had commented on it, Marty quoted him the exact distance. It was forty feet beyond the statutory limit. The smug smile on Marty’s face settled into Tower’s stomach and burned.

  “Next up,” Tower told Browning, “is an oldie but a goodie. Francis Djurgarden.”

  Browning rolled his eyes. “He’s still alive?”

  “Apparently,” Tower said and rattled off the address. “I imagine it’s also about forty feet beyond the restricted zone that the law requires.”

  “Francis is an old hand,” Browning noted. He started the car and headed toward the address Tower had given him. “He’ll find a way to be within ten feet of the legal limit. But I thought he was back in Shelton.”

  “Last I heard, he was.” Tower shook his head. “If two falls don’t teach a guy a lesson, why do we even bother with any more? I mean, after that second fall, I think we ought to just go with the one-hundred-eight-six grain solution.”

  Browning allowed himself a small smile. The forty caliber round they carried on the River City Police Department measured one-hundred-eighty-six grains.

  “Why do we even bother after the first time with child molesters, anyway?” Tower continued. “It’s not like they’re curable or something. They never have been. Any of them who are honest will tell you that.”

  “True.”

  “Once they’re released, it’s not a matter of if they’ll re-offend, but when. And there’s no way we have the resources to watch over them well enough to stop them.”

  “You’re not superman?” Browning teased lightly.

  “I just work the cases that come in. I don’t even keep track of these guys. That’s their probation officer’s job. And those poor mopes have about a hundred cases a piece.” Tower snorted. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Browning didn’t argue.

  Tower noticed that and asked, “You don’t care about this stuff?”

  “Course I do.”

  “You don’t look too concerned.”

  Browning glanced over at Tower, then back at the road. “How long you been on this job, John?”

  “I came on in ’83.”

  “So twelve years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how long have you been a detective?”

  Tower shrugged. “About three years, I guess. What’s that have to do with it?”

  Browning looked over at him again. “You’ve got some fire in your belly, John, and that’s great. But you have to control it or it will burn you up.”

  “So just don’t care?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. Just control the caring, that’s all.”

  The two men rode the rest of the way in silence. Tower thought about Marty Heath and the sour feeling the molester’s smug grin gave him in the pit of his gut.

  Browning changed the subject. “How’d Stephanie handle the overtime call?”

  Tower frowned. “She wasn’t happy. How about Veronica?”

  Browning shrugged. “She’s a cop’s wife,” he said and pulled to the curb a few houses away from Francis Djurgarden’s house.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Tower muttered. “Let’s go talk to sick bastard number eighteen.”

  1011 hours

  The jangling of the lock at the front door surprised Gio. He had been reading Cosmopolitan in the kitchen while Kathy Dugger watched television. He’d convinced her not to watch the news, but even the harmless sit-com was hard for her, he could tell. He supposed it was seeing the family on the show, with kids and parents together. But she sat there nonetheless, so Gio figured she was either going to tough it out or she wasn’t watching anything and was lost in her own thoughts.

  Either way, he left her alone.

  When the noise came from the front door, Gio started. He put down the magazine and strode out of the kitchen and to the entryway. He arrived just in time to see a man in his forties wearing a business suit step through the door.

  Surprise registered on the man’s face for a brief second. Then he saw Gio’s uniform and his mouth tightened.

  “Where’s my wife?” he demanded.

  Gio pointed toward the living room.

  The man stalked past him, brushing shoulders with Gio as he went by.

  Gio stood in the small entryway for a few seconds. Then he returned to the kitchen to wait. He knew men like Mr. Dugger. They were in positions of power in their career and they disliked the fact that the police might somehow have power over any part of their life. To compensate, they always strove to assert their civilian authority over the police officer, because, as they were swift to remind the officer, “my taxes pay your salary.”

  Knowing what he knew about men like Mr. Dugger, he also knew what was coming.

  Jesus, Gio, he thought to himself. Give the guy a break. His daughter’s been kidnapped.

  Gio took a deep breath and let it out.

  Their voices were subdued from the living room, though his arrival brought fresh sobbing from Kathy Dugger. He spent all of ten minutes with his wife before he came to the kitchen to talk to Gio.

  “I’m Peter Dugger,” he said, without offering his hand. “I’d like an update on the situation.”

  Gio said, “I can only tell you what I know, sir. My assignment is to be here in case there is a ransom call in your daughter’s case.”

  “You don’t receive updates from your commander?”

  “Not really,” Gio admitted. “I update him, not the other way around.”

  Peter Dugger grunted.

  Gio waited, knowing he was going to end up calling for a lieutenant.

  “Do you have any idea what the plan of action is that you people have put into effect?” Dugger’s voice was laced with condescension. “What are you doing to find my little girl?”

  “I’m sure they’re doing everything they possibly can,” Gio said.

  “But you don’t know.”

  Gio shook his head. “Let me ask you this, sir. Would you want them to stop their efforts just to update me?”

  Dugger cocked his head as if to sniff out the sarcasm in Gio’s voice. Gio waited, keeping his face neutral.

  Finally, Dugger leaned forward and whispered harshly, “I’ll tell you what I would want them to do. If they haven’t found my daughter, I goddamn well would want them to keep her parents informed of what was going on. Have you seen my wife in there? Do you see how stressed out she is? Did you hear her sobbing in the other room? Or are you too busy drinking my coffee and reading my wife’s fucking Cosmopolitan magazine?”

  Gio stared back at Dugger for a long moment. Then, he replied, “I thought she needed her space. That’s all.”

  Peter Dugger responded with a small snort.

  Gio reached for his portable radio. “Adam-257,” he said, “I need
a supervisor to my location.”

  “Copy. Is this in regards to a Signal 8?”

  Signal 8 was the code for a telephone call. Gio realized that she was asking him if there had been a ransom call.

  “Negative,” he said. “The male half here has returned and would like an update on the case.”

  “Copy. I’ll notify L-143.”

  Gio copied the transmission and looked back at Peter Dugger. “A lieutenant will be en route to update you,” he said.

  Dugger nodded. “Fine. But he should’ve been here waiting for me. I don’t know what kind of outfit you guys are running—“

  “He’s on his way now, sir,” Gio said, overriding Dugger’s voice. “If you’d like to wait with your wife, I’ll let you know as soon as he arrives.”

  Dugger opened his mouth to argue, but decided not to for some reason.

  “I’ll be in the living room,” he said. “But I want to know the moment your boss arrives.”

  Gio nodded that he understood.

  Satisfied, Peter Dugger turned and stalked out of the room.

  1014 hours

  Captain Michael Reott sat behind a wall of paperwork which stood on top of his desk. He found most of it redundant and all of it dull. When Lieutenant Crawford entered his open office door without knocking, he pushed aside the stack he was working on with gratitude.

  “Good news?”

  Crawford shook his head and settled heavily into the chair opposite Reott.

  “Bad news?”

  “No news,” Crawford said. “None of the stops patrol made panned out to be anything. Browning and Tower struck out with almost twenty registered sex offenders. That Kopriva kid has been on the phone all day, but there’s been nothing.”

  Reott sighed. “Nothing except almost having a race riot in our lobby.”

  “Well, you can thank Hart for that,” Crawford said in disgust. “He’s the one that went out there and got that entire group of people riled up. Another coupla minutes and they woulda torn the lobby apart.”

  Reott shook his head. “Hart’s an idiot.”

  “He’s the reason our line troops have no faith in leadership,” Crawford said in agreement. “I swear to God, Mike, I’m not going back to patrol as a lieutenant. Not ever. Can you imagine having to follow up his act? It’d take a year to get the uniforms to have any respect for you.”