To Protect & Serve (2 page)

The minute she said the words, she wanted them back. She’d said something very similar in that room with Keri three years ago and the response had been swift and emotional. She held her breath.

“I take everything personally. Otherwise what’s the point?” Keri tried for a flippant tone, but the criticism stung.

She caught a mental flash of the two of them staring across a table at each other during that unforgettable interview. Thankfully, she could hide her feelings better now and had learned to think before she opened her mouth. She wished she’d made a better impression, but the formidable lieutenant would not be easily impressed. Keri glanced down at her skimpy top. It was just her luck that she was dressed for a night on the town. She and her best friend had partied until early morning and she hadn’t had time to go home before work. She was going to change the subject but she realized they were still standing in the middle of the hallway in front of the elevators, oblivious to the people maneuvering around them. The steel doors were finally open. Alex was moving with the crowd.

“It was nice to see you again, Morgan,” she said as she followed a man into the confined space. “Keep up the narcotics work.”

“I will.” Keri stepped aside as the doors swished closed. She had no plans to ride the elevator jammed up next to Alex Troy.

Irritated, she hurried toward the stairway exit. It was almost time for lineup and she wanted to review the confidential file before her shift. She knew she shouldn’t have allowed Alex’s stoic attitude and criticism to get under her skin. She wondered why she cared what that woman thought. Hadn’t she lost all respect for Alex Troy a long time ago?

*

Alex stared straight ahead as the elevator ascended a few floors. She felt unsettled by the surprise encounter with Keri Morgan, and irrationally annoyed that Keri had avoided taking the lift at the last minute. Obviously she’d interpreted Alex’s comment as another criticism. Alex reminded herself that she didn’t have time to baby-sit an angry officer with a chip on her very lovely shoulder. Officer Morgan’s tender feelings were not her responsibility. Her intentions hadn’t been malicious, and if Keri could get over herself perhaps she would have seen that. All the same, Alex was reluctant to end their brief conversation on a sour note. Three years had passed. It was time for both of them to move on.

As she exited the elevator and entered the chief’s office, she made a concerted effort to clear Keri from her thoughts.
Glancing around the reception area, she marveled that instead of memorabilia of the chief’s career, the walls were lined with photographs of officers who had been recognized for their accomplishments. The collection continued into the chief’s private office.

Chief of Police Rudy Lancaster rose from behind his vertically enhanced desk, towering over Alex as he greeted her. Framed by the light pouring in through a bank of windows opposite the door, he seemed even larger than his six-foot-four. Alex liked this amiable African American man and had come to respect him as a boss since he took up the position a year ago.

“It’s good to see you, Alex.” He shook her hand and motioned her to a chair. “How are you holding up?”

Alex’s jaws clenched. “It’s still hard to believe they’re both gone, but I’m doing okay, sir. Thanks for asking.”

“If you need anything, let me know.”

His sincerity touched her. Blinking back tears, she said, “Thank you, Chief. How’re Carol and the kids? Do they like it here?”

“They love it. I wasn’t sold on the move, as you know, but Carol’s family is here. It’s convenient for vacations, too. Four hours from the coast and four hours from the mountains.”

Granville, North Carolina, was a midsized town with a small-town mentality. Alex had lived here since college and it felt like home. She’d attended UNC and had decided to stay on because of the know-your-neighbor feeling. And there was enough nightlife to keep an experimenting lesbian in playmates. The thought made her frown. She could hardly remember when she’d last enjoyed either. The occasional one-night stand made little impact. Her parents’ deaths a year earlier, coupled with the end of a painful relationship, had led to months of self-imposed solitude. To return to work without falling apart, she had exercised all the emotional self-restraint she was capable of. She still wasn’t back to full steam, and frequently skipped meals and restless sleep hadn’t helped her health or state of mind. But she’d accepted the personal price as a necessity.

The chief slid the family photos on his desk to one side and pulled a piece of paper toward him. “I don’t get to see much of you, but your name crosses my desk often. You and Wayne are doing good work.”

“We try, sir.”

Alex thought about her supervisor and mentor, Wayne Thomas. He and Alex’s father had been best friends, and when her parents died, Wayne had become like a surrogate father and kept her from falling apart, personally and professionally. She owed him so much and wanted to make him proud. But she was surprised he wasn’t here. It was unusual for him to miss a meeting with the chief unless something more important came up.

Chief Lancaster got to the point. Handing her a single sheet of Granville Police Department memo paper, he said, “Alex, I’ve got a special assignment for you. Wayne and I discussed it earlier and agreed on the basics.”

Alex scanned the memo and her pulse quickened. This was the opportunity she’d been waiting for ever since making lieutenant five years ago. When she looked up, the chief was smiling.

“I take it you have no objections to heading up a multijurisdictional task force to target our most notorious and elusive drug dealer?”

The multijurisdictional aspect sent a shiver up Alex’s spine and she took a deep breath. “I have no problem whatsoever, Chief. I’d love to make life hell for Sonny Davis.”

“I know I don’t have to tell you this, Alex, but the series of deaths recently from drug overdoses on college campuses has the community in an uproar. We’ve got five institutions of higher learning in this town. You and Wayne have been to enough of the meetings to know what the citizens are saying about—” Lancaster paused as the phone at his elbow rang. “Excuse me a second.”

Alex watched his brow furrow with what could only be bad news. He was silent for a few seconds before asking, “Any ID on the victim yet?” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and murmured to her, “Another overdose.”

They needed to get this creep off the streets, Alex thought. Sonny Davis had been on their radar since he ran a gang of drug dealers in high school, but he’d never been convicted of anything. He dealt every drug that came down the pipeline and often used brutality to keep his people in line. They’d sent several of his cronies to prison but Davis’s hands were always clean.

“Thank you for calling,” the chief said. “I’m going to send Alex Troy down there right now. She’ll be running the Sonny Davis task force, and I want her to take a look at what you have. Keep me posted.”

He hung up and turned back to Alex. “The MO’s not quite the same as the others. This one is off campus, but I’d like you to take a look anyway.” He scribbled the address on a piece of notepaper and handed it to her. “Come back by when you finish, if it’s not too late, and we’ll wrap up the task force details.”

“Will do, sir.”

Alex was halfway to the door when the chief added, “Whoever is bringing this poison into our town is turning it into a death trap for our young people. I want it stopped, Alex. Whatever it takes, make it happen.”

*

The drive to the crime scene in the low-income housing area of town took only five minutes. Captain Ted Joyner, the evening watch commander, met her in the parking lot of the complex, handed her a pair of latex gloves, and led her into a modestly furnished apartment.

“She’s back here in the bedroom. We still don’t know who she is, didn’t have an ID on her. We’re canvassing the other members of the group.”

“What group?”

“This girl was trying to help organize a community watch group in the neighborhood. Guests from half the complex were in the house and the backyard for a cookout.”

Alex worked her hands into the gloves on her way to the back bedroom. Dodging officers pretending to be busy, she stepped into the small space. The young woman’s body lay face down on the bed. Alex moved in for a closer examination. The body was in full rigor and the skin had an ash-gray tone that made it appear death had occurred days ago instead of hours. “Looks like she had some sort of seizure,” Joyner said.

“Help me roll her over,” Alex directed one of the paramedics standing by the bed. She took one arm and turned the body toward her.

As the victim’s face came into view, Alex froze. Time collapsed around her as she looked into the thinly clouded eyes of Stacey Chambers. Those haunting orbs of once-living human substance begged for help. The young woman’s mouth gaped open. Emesis had dried around her lips and nose. Alex wondered what words had died on Stacey’s lips as her last breath passed over them. A knot rose in her throat and bile churned in her stomach, threatening to escape.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Alex, do you know this girl?” Joyner asked.

“Yes. Stacey Chambers. She worked for me as an intern in Vice/Narcotics last summer.” Alex backed up to the door and grabbed the frame for support. “She just graduated from college.”

“You don’t mean Councilman Chambers’s daughter, do you?”

“Yes.” Alex couldn’t take her eyes off the lifeless form that once hosted the lovely and vibrant spirit she knew. Her breath came in staccato bursts. She’d seen more than her share of dead bodies, but never someone she knew, not even her parents. “She didn’t do drugs, Ted. This has to be investigated as a suspicious death. We can’t afford to leave any questions on this one.”

He nodded. “You don’t need to be here. Would you brief the chief? He’ll want to tell the councilman himself.”

“Of course.”

As Alex exited the room and hurried from the apartment, images of Stacey’s contorted features flashed through her mind over and over like a hiccup in an old reel-to-reel movie. Once in the confines of her vehicle, she allowed the hot tears pooling in her eyes to escape. The drive back to police headquarters seemed to take twice as long as the earlier trip.

Chief Lancaster was pacing in his reception area when Alex walked in. He motioned her back into his office and closed the door. “From the look on your face, I’d say you don’t have good news for me.”

“This one hit close to home, Chief. It’ll be in the papers before morning. The dead girl is Stacey Chambers, the city councilman’s daughter. She interned in Vice/Narcotics last summer.”

“Jesus.”

“She collapsed at—of all things—a community watch meeting in one of our low-income neighborhoods. It was called in as an overdose, but she had no drug history. It’s just not possible. I knew her. I worked with her. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

Alex had liked Stacey Chambers immediately and they’d formed a sort of mentoring bond. Stacey wanted to become a drug abuse counselor. Now all that potential was snuffed out. Gone. There was no way on earth Stacey would have been using drugs. Something was badly wrong and Alex planned to get to the bottom of it.

Lancaster wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll have to break the news to Councilman Chambers personally. I can’t imagine losing a child, especially like this.”

“There was no trauma to the body,” Alex said. “But Captain Joyner is handling it as a suspicious death for now. We’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report before we know anything definite.” She flinched at the thought of the state ME impassively probing Stacey’s body in search of clues. “It has all the signs of a drug overdose, but we’ll need to see a copy of the tox report before that can be confirmed.”

“The councilman and the mayor are going to want answers on this one in a hurry.”

“So far, we know the tainted ecstasy in our area is coming from a single source,” Alex replied. “And all our street informants finger Davis as the distributor. If we can link Stacey’s death with the others through the toxicology results, we might be able to follow the trail to Davis and build a case for negligent homicide.”

Chief Lancaster wiped his broad hand over his face again. “I don’t need to tell you how it looks for us when we have a bunch of kids ending up dead because we can’t nail this guy.” He paused. “Get this tied up in a neat little package and we’ll discuss a promotion for you.”

Alex didn’t point out that bringing down Sonny Davis wasn’t all about kudos and a pay raise. “None of those dead kids deserved an end like this. I’m going to find out who’s behind Stacey’s death and weave a chain of evidence so tight that Sonny Davis will never draw another free breath.
And
some of the asset forfeiture money from his holdings would go a long way in a small department like ours.”

Lancaster nodded. In a pensive tone, he said, “Quite honestly, Alex, I need a perspective like yours on my command staff, a vision beyond the ordinary, if you get my drift. A woman’s perspective.”

Alex’s enthusiasm rose. She couldn’t deny the part of her that was competitive. She wanted to be among the very best at her job, and a promotion would be her ticket to make some long-overdue changes in the department. Her anger boiled just beneath the surface as she remembered her less-than-ceremonious promotion to lieutenant. The good ol’ boys’ club worked hard to keep people like her and Lancaster “in their places.” The chief had struggled to diversify the force from the bottom up without much support. Many of the white male supervisors in the five-hundred-member department viewed him with distrust. It would really chap their asses if she made captain. Meantime, finding Stacey’s killer and putting Sonny Davis away came first. She would have plenty of time to think about getting the railroad tracks on her collar later.