Witch House (34 page)

Dominic sidestepped into the center of the
street, triangulating our setup. “Drop it!” he ordered, his voice
cracking with emotion. “Drop it and get`ja hands up where we can
see`m!”

Our suspect froze, but for a second. He
flinched in our direction, thought twice, turned and then started
away in a sprint. He took only a few steps before Carlos popped out
from behind a tree, leveled his weapon in a shooters stance and
hollered, “FREEZE!”

Surrounded, the suspect dropped his crowbar,
braided his fingers behind his head and spread his legs wide.
Carlos moved in, his arms extended and locked, his weapon trained
on our hooded suspect with laser-like precision. I motioned to
Dominic to cuff the prisoner while I watched his back. Once that
was done, we dragged him into the light, as we had with Powell, and
pulled back his hood.

“Kemper!” Carlos announced, perhaps more
surprised than anyone.

Dominic said, “Landau’s lawyer? Wow, he is a
lot shorter than I thought.”

I tagged Kemper on the arm. “So what is it,
you killed Landau because he wouldn’t tell you where he hid the
money?”

“No,” he said, sounding offended. “I didn’t
kill anyone.”

“Ha,” said Carlos. “Where have we heard that
before? Oh, yeah, when Powell said it ten minutes ago.”

“It’s true. I never hurt a soul in my
life.”

“Then why are you here?” I asked. “Are you
going to tell us that you weren’t trying to break into Spinelli’s
trunk? We caught you red-handed.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand. It’s simple. You killed
René Landau and you got rid of the gun, but when you saw the eleven
o’clock news, you thought we had found it. That’s why you came here
with a crowbar, isn’t it?”

“But it’s not what you think. I saw the six
o’clock news. They showed the gun. I saw that it looked like a
police issued .38, the kind my nephew carries.”

“Tarkowski?”

Dominic said, “It’s starting to add up, isn’t
it?”

“Wait, you thought your nephew shot
Landau?”

“That’s right. Frank told me about the money.
He said he knew that Landau stashed it somewhere and he thought he
could get him to tell him where it was.”

“But he didn’t, so Frank killed him. Is that
it?”

Kemper shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s
what I thought. I mean I knew he was in a hurry to leave town.”

“Did Frank say anything to you to make you
think he killed Landau?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly come out and admit
it, but like I said, I know he wants to leave town in a hurry. I
thought if I could do this for him that he might….”

“What, share the loot with you? Listen,
Kemper, this does not look good for you. If you think….”

“Tony.” Carlos nudged me and gestured toward
the street. I looked out in a frozen stare. The backup we called
for had rolled to a stop next to Spinelli’s car. Officer Brittany
Olson, one of the finest, most decent officers serving the Second
Precinct, stepped out and made her way toward us. As she
approached, I found myself slipping into a state of surreal
retreat. I began thinking about a period in my life when I had come
to question everything I thought I knew about my profession and
myself. It was after an especially trying case, one involving a
young kidnapped victim named Leona Diaz. It seemed that everything
about that case had spiraled out of control. Suspects became
victims. Victims became suspects. One man hanged himself in my jail
cell. Calamity and chaos became synonymous with rise and shine. In
the end, about the only ones left standing were Carlos, Lilith and
me. We did eventually rescue Leona. For that, I was grateful,
though I never fully accepted or came to terms with the untidy
outcome of the case. The weeks and months following found me
stressed and disoriented beyond explanation and eventually lead to
my voluntary retirement from the force.

That is when Brittany came into my life,
providing me comfort and reassurance and keeping me from having a
near fatal meltdown. The captain assigned her to watch over Leona,
and by extension, I guess, over me, too. That is when things got
interesting between us. Shortly afterward, I moved to Florida. I
don’t know; I suppose I just needed to put everything behind me for
a while. I know it was not fair to her or to Leona, but that was my
choice at the time and I had not attempted to contact either of
them the entire year I was gone. Of course, that was before my
return to prime, and though I am with Lilith now, I sometimes think
about what might have been. I smiled at Brittany and offered her my
hand.

“Officer Olson,” I said. “It’s good to see
you.”

She smiled and we shook, her thoughts
threading the past as she tried recalling my name. “Have we
met?”

“Marcella,” I said, and my heart skipped a
beat when I thought she recognized the old me behind the new face.
I beamed a guilty grin, hoping to dilute her memory. “I’m Tony’s
kid.”

“Oh, sure, I see the resemblance.”

“Yeah, my father talks about you all the
time.”

Her smile faded, and I guessed she abandoned
her unlikely suspicions. “Does he?”

“Yes, all the time.”

She shook her head lightly, as if denying my
ruse. “I’d have thought he forgot about me.”

I felt her hand slip from mine, and with it
the end of an era that I had never completely let go of. “Yes,
well, maybe not so much these days, but….”

And like that, we were strangers again,
separated by generations, and worlds apart. She glanced passed my
shoulder at Kemper. “What do we have?”

“A killer,” said Carlos.

“I didn’t kill anyone!” Kemper argued.

“Save it,” I said, and I handed him off to
Olson. “Take him downtown, read him his rights and book him on
attempted burglary of an unoccupied vehicle.”

“He’ll be out by morning,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.” I looked to Carlos and
Dominic. “This proves nothing, what are we doing out here?”

Carlos said, “We’re stirring the waters.”

I laughed. “Muddying the waters is more like
it.” I waved vaguely to dismiss Kemper. “Go on, get him out of
here.”

Olson began leading Kemper off by the arm. I
called back to her to wait up. She turned around, and in the glow
of the streetlight, I thought she had never looked more beautiful.
“Yes?” she said, holding her head high.

I stepped out into the street, meeting her
halfway between Spinelli’s car and hers. With Dominic and Carlos
looking on, I leaned in close and whispered to her, “I’m sorry,
Britt. Forgive me?”

She pulled back and smiled warmly, as if
reconciling her previous suspicions. Then, brushing my cheek with
the back of her hand before slapping it gently, she whispered back,
“Of course, Tony.”

I stood silent, awash in the amber
streetlight, feeling the old man within me watching through a young
man’s eyes. She loaded her prisoner into the back of her cruiser,
boarded without looking back and then drove away. Only then did I
realize that I had not told her my first name, yet she called me
Tony. Behind me, Carlos and Dominic chattered like hens, no doubt
the former advising the latter about my personal carnival of
relationship disasters preceding my near emotional meltdown. They
stopped only after I turned back to face them. Both straightened up
and found focus elsewhere. I strolled to the curb and stepped up on
the sidewalk.

“Are we done here?” I asked.

Spinelli said, “I don’t know. We seem to be
getting our share of nibbles tonight. Maybe we should stay out
some.”

Carlos shook his head. “No one else will
show. We’re done here.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No reason. I just have that feeling.”

“Huh, you’re out of snacks, aren’t you?”

“No.” He reached into his pocket and pulled
out a Snickers Bar. “I still have this.”

“Good. That should hold you a while. Let’s
stick it out for a couple more hours.”

“I’ll do fifteen minutes,” he countered.
“That’s twice what it takes to eat a Snickers.

“An hour.”

“A half-hour, and we count the five minutes
that we’ve been out here arguing about it.”

“We’ll give it forty-five minutes,” I said,
“and then we will all go home and get some sleep. How’s that?”

“Forty-five,” said Spinelli. “Fine.”

Carlos agreed grudgingly.

We piled into the van once again, and this
time Spinelli called shotgun, sticking Carlos in the back of the
van with his wounded pride and injured spirits. I thought his
sulking might continue for the duration of the stakeout, but after
only ten minutes, I spotted another mysterious figure moving toward
Spinelli’s car. “Holy shit, I don’t believe it.” I pointed out the
window. “We have another one!”

“I told you,” Spinelli said in a hushed
shout. “They’re coming out of the woodwork.”

“All right, guys, it’s showtime again.” I
tagged Dominic on the arm without looking. Listen, why don’t you
sneak around the back like you did before and come up from behind
him? We’ll give you a fifteen seconds head start while we call for
back up.” To Carlos I said, “You take the left flank again; I’ll
take the right. Close in on him at will and take him down.”

“What if it’s a woman?”

“What?”

“You said close in on him and take him down.
What if it’s not a he? What if it’s a she?”

“You mean what if it’s Stiles?”

“Well, yeah.”

I gave Spinelli a push. “Go on, Dominic.
Carlos, let’s just play it by ear, shall we?”

As Dominic slipped out the door, I keyed the
radio and called for another unit to roll in silent. Then Carlos
and I eased out, melting into the shadows and moving with stealth
toward our target. From half a block away, I could tell that our
suspect was not Stephanie Stiles. Indeed, from a stature standpoint
I knew we were closing in on a man, six foot four or five,
two-sixty or better and armed with a dent puller. Our suspect used
the device to pop the lock on Dominic’s trunk, and while hunched
over and sifting through its contents, the three of us moved
in.

“FREEZE!” we hollered, our voices overlapping
in staggered echoes. “POLICE! Drop it! Drop it!”

We closed in with weapons leveled, exacting
perfect extensions of our arms. Our suspect dropped the dent puller
into the trunk and raised his hands over his head. Spinelli came
around the car on the driver’s side, closing off any escape route
along the sidewalk. I crossed the street opposite him, completing
the squeeze play, while Carlos closed in from behind. He holstered
his weapon and cuffed the man before patting him down.

“He’s clean,” he said.

I stepped in, snagged our suspect by the
collar and ushered him into the light. “Okay, let’s just see who we
have here. I’m betting it’s—”

“DeAngelo!” said Dominic, which impressed me,
as he had only seen the man’s picture once. He looked at Carlos and
then at me, his grin bigger than his now inflated ego. “Look, Tony,
it’s the warden.”

“Yes, Dominic, I see that.”

“You were right about him.
He
killed
René Landau.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” DeAngelo insisted. “I
know what you’re thinking, but that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh?” Carlos crowded DeAngelo back against
the car’s fender. “You saying you didn’t come here to steal the
handgun?”

“No! I mean, yes.” DeAngelo tried
sidestepping out from Carlos’ shadow, but Carlos would not have it.
“I mean that is not why I wanted the gun. I swear. See, I saw
Detective Spinelli’s interview on the six o’clock news and I
thought—”

“No, let me guess. You thought you could come
here tonight to steal the gun so that you can give it to the real
killer. Is that it?”

“Yes, exactly!”

“A likely story, but we’ve heard that one
twice already tonight.”

“It’s true, I swear!”

I stepped in and eased Carlos off DeAngelo
with a gentle push. “All right then,” I said, “tell us who
you
think killed René Landau?”

He dropped his head and shook it. “I can’t
say.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

“Sure it matters. If you can’t, it’s because
you’re afraid for your life. That means you’re trying to help
someone like Chief Running Bear or maybe Sergeant Powell. If you
won’t, then that almost certainly means you’re afraid you’ll
implicate someone you love, like Stephanie Stiles.”

“No!” he said, but in his voice I heard, yes.
“I came here on my own account. I wasn’t helping anybody, so you
might as well arrest me now.”

“It’s Stiles,” Dominic said, pointing an
accusing finger. “You can see it on his face. He’s in love with
her. He wants to get the gun back to save her ass, hoping that
she’ll dump Tarkowski and take him back.”

“And she would have!” DeAngelo spat, “if you
hadn’t gotten in my way.”

“Save it.” I gestured toward the approaching
squad car rolling up to the curb. “You can call your lawyer from
downtown and talk all you want from there.”

I handed the prisoner off to the arriving
officer, instructing him to read DeAngelo his rights before booking
him on charges similar to those leveled against Powell and Kemper.
I did not suppose any of them would be there in the morning after
posting bail on what amounted to relatively minor charges.
Burglarizing an unoccupied vehicle typically carries a bail of five
to ten thousand dollars. Ten percent of that is an easy check for
any of them to write to a bondsman.

As I watched the cruiser pull away with
DeAngelo in the back seat, I heard Carlos say, “Ho, boy, what are
the odds? Three suspects come here to steal a gun to save three
other suspects from prosecution.”

I shook my head and laughed at our pitiful
luck. “That is if we can believe any of them. You have to remember
that everyone who came here tonight had motive, means and
opportunity to kill Landau, and all of them know that we are
looking at everyone else just as closely as we were looking at
them. If I were in their shoes, I would say the same things that we
heard here tonight to save my skin.”