Alex Ankrom - [Gabriel Carter 02] Read online

  Locke nodded her head, but she wore a disappointed look on her face.

  When she turned toward her cubical, he opened the door and stepped into the room, slamming the metal barrier shut.

  The man looked at Carter. “Oh Christ Carter, am I glad to see you.”

  “The fuck happened, Rak?” Carter took the steel bracelet off his hand.

  “He was beating my little girl,” he said, rubbing his wrist.

  “Who pulled the trigger?”

  Jerry Rakowski sat silent.

  Carter shook his head. “If you want me to help you, you’re gonna need to tell me what happened.”

  “I did it,” Rakowski said.

  “You did what? I need to hear the words.”

  “I shot him. He was beating my baby. So I shot him.”

  Carter stared Rakowski in the eyes. “How’d Alisa know Councilman McCullough’s kid?”

  “I don’t know. How ever kids meet people these days?”

  “You ever meet him?”

  “No. She said she was seeing someone, but you know how kids are.”

  Carter sat across the table from his friend. “Okay then. What happened?”

  “I’m sitting at home watching the Phils get their asses kicked on the tube when Ali called. She was crying and scared. Said she locked herself in the bathroom, but she didn’t think it would hold. I could hear the banging coming through the phone. Asshole busted through, and he just started screaming. I dropped the phone, grabbed my old backup piece, and hauled ass to her place.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “I have the spare set of keys.”

  “Okay. What happened when you got there?”

  Rakowski’s lip quivered. He looked away from Carter. “He was hitting her. And I-I wasn’t even thinking. I just drew and fired. Fifteen years patrolling this city, ten more in Narco, I never once let one loose. Not once. But when I saw that, I just kept pulling the trigger until it went click.”

  Carter bit his tongue and shook his head. “I’ve known you how long now, and you gotta lie to me like some fucking yo.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Carter stood from his seat. “Fuck you, Rak. I grew up in the goddamn country. I know what fucking bullshit smells like.” He turned his back to him and walked toward the exit. “I get lied to all fucking day. I gotta get lied to by my friends now.”

  “I’m telling you, I killed that kid.”

  Carter stood at the door. “I’m gonna go see what Ali has to say about this. So how about when I come back, you lie to me with some goddamn respect.”

  FOUR

  Susan Locke waited at her desk and pretended to do paperwork. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this case was going to end badly. As Carter approached, she glanced up from her desk. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing much. But he didn’t lawyer up yet.”

  “What do you say we rattle the daughter’s cage? Or do you want me to sit out on that too? I am primary, you know.”

  Carter didn’t say anything. He just walked toward the second question room. At the entrance, he stopped and looked back at her. “You coming?”

  She jogged to the doorway.

  “I know you want to pounce, but let me go in there first and lay some ground work. Weaken her defenses a bit. Then you show up with some coffee, or some food, and we do the whole bait-and-switch thing. I’ll leave and you pull the old Jedi mind-fuck on her. You understand that?”

  “You’re the Sturm und Drang. And I’m Florence Nighingale? “

  “What? “

  “Good cop, bad cop.”

  “Yeah. Good cop, bad cop. She won’t know what hit her.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Now, when you talk to her just watch her body. Rule number one: everyone lies. She’s not going to tell us anything with her words, so don’t listen to what she says, but pay attention to how she says it.”

  Locke nodded and then walked toward the break room. She stopped three feet into the area, because the empty glass bowl glared at her from where it sat in the coffeemaker. Nothing was more infuriating to a police than when someone broke the true cardinal-fucking-rule of the station: you kill the pot, you make another. The department depended on the precious black sludge. She wanted to shout, but she would have been the only one to hear it. So she cracked her knuckles and set to the thankless task.

  FIVE

  Carter leaned against the back wall of the box for a few minutes, watching Alisa sleep. Her head lay on the table’s cold aluminum surface, hair covering her face. He walked to her side and brushed the brown mess away. She had a bruise on her cheek, another on her forehead, and swelling around her neck.

  Carter nudged her shoulder and said, “Alisa, wake up. I need to talk to you.”

  She blinked a few times and yawned. Her eyes were puffy. When she saw Carter’s face, she smiled. “Gabriel.”

  Kneeling down beside her, Carter held her hand. “Okay, Ali. We only have a few minutes, so I need you to tell me everything. And don’t lie to me. I can only help you if you tell me the truth. Okay?”

  Alisa slowly nodded her head. She looked as if she were about to start crying. “Should I ask for a lawyer?”

  “No,” Carter said. “Just talk to me. Someone else comes in here asking you questions, you just give them the screw. Now what did I just say?”

  “Only talk to you.”

  “Only talk to me. It’s gonna be okay. Now was this the first time he hit you?”

  Alisa looked away from him. She rolled up her left sleeve, exposing a batch of fading black and blue finger marks on her forearm. Then she pulled the collar of her sweatshirt to the side to show more old bruises.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Who was I gonna tell? You? My dad? You guys would just go off an do something stupid.”

  “Well, it’s a little too late for that, now ain’t it?”

  Alisa’s eyes watered, and she held her breath.

  “Okay, calm down. Just tell me what happened. You tell the truth, and you’ll be okay.”

  Alisa looked down at her hands. “He’s waiting for me when I get home. I put the key in the lock, and he comes up behind me and pushes me in. He starts screaming holy hell. Calling me this and that, and saying that I’m a slut. Then when he’s too out of breath to yell, he hits me. At first, he’s like shocked that he hit me that hard. I don’t want to wait around to see how hard he hits me next. So I run to the bedroom and lock the door.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, I guess that kinda pissed Ricky off, ‘cause he broke the door in. He didn’t even look human. His eyes were black. He was breathing heavy. I tried to run past him, but he grabs me. And he-” She closed her eyes. “And he starts choking me. I’m thinking there’s nothing I can do. That I’m just gonna be one of those victims you read about in the morning paper. But then I stomp on his foot and I break loose from him for a second, just squirt through his grasp, and I grab a lamp. And I hit him as hard as I can with it. It doesn’t knock him out or nothing. I guess that only happens in the movies. But he fell on his ass. It gave me enough time to get the shoe box from under the bed.”

  “Shoe box?”

  “When I moved out, dad gave me his backup from his patrolling days.”

  “So you had the gun with you?”

  Alisa bit her lip and nodded her head.

  “You shoot him?”

  Alisa didn’t get a chance to answer, because there was a knock at the door.

  SIX

  Locke stepped into the interrogation room, holding two cups of coffee. “I thought you might like some caffeine. It’ll help you stay awake.”

  Locke looked at Carter with a grin plastered on her face. This was the part of the job that she loved. There was nothing more fun than breaking a person. “I don’t know how you take it. Me, I like it with sugar. And when I say sugar, I mean sugar. There isn’t enough unless the spoon can stand up on its own. Right?”<
br />
  Locke snorted out a chuckle. “But looking at you, I’d guess you were a cream, no sugar gal. Am I right?”

  Alisa raised her eyebrows and cracked a slight grin.

  “See, I still got it. Used to work in a diner back in high school. I could guess the way a person drank their coffee just by looking at them. I was right about ninety percent of the time, too.”

  Alisa laughed out loud.

  “What?” Locke asked.

  “Nothing,” Alisa said, shaking her head. “I just find the thought of the daughter of a US Senator working a diner funny, is all.”

  “Oh.” Locke couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  “I guess it’s not as strange as the Senator’s daughter becoming a police, though, huh?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “They had a picture of you in the Alumni newsletter.”

  “You went to UPenn, too?”

  “Class of ‘09. Go Quakers.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I saw that graduation photo you had in your bedroom. You know the one I’m talking about? The one on your nightstand with you and your dad. You two sure looked happy.”

  “It was a happy day,” Alisa said.

  “So then how are you doing this evening, Miss Rakowski?”

  Alisa pushed out her jaw and gave an expression that only a true Philadelphian could give. “How do you think?”

  Alisa glanced at Carter and shut her mouth so quick that it was as if he had told her to, but when Locke looked at her partner all she saw was him standing from his seat and heading for the exit.

  When Carter closed the door, Locke said, “You should hold yourself lucky though. Most of the time in that situation, it would have been you that was cold slabbed and toe tagged. But just speaking as a woman, I’d like to tell you that you did a good job. That’ll show the bastards who think it’s okay to beat on a woman.”

  Alisa picked at her fingernails.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Locke asked. “I’m sure by the end of the tale I’ll be giving you a standing ovation. I mean, he gave you a simple choice: him or you. It’s not like you did this out of malice. Not with premeditation.”

  Alisa sighed and looked toward the concrete block wall.

  “What? You don’t want to talk to me, anymore?”

  Alisa took a sip of the brown bile.

  “Okay. Just give me the satisfaction of knowing that the bastard didn’t think you had the balls to pull the trigger. He was standing there, telling you all the things he’s going to do to you when he gets that gun away from you. And all the while you’re standing there chuckling inside your head, because you’ve got him dead-to-rights. You’re looking at a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet. It was like you were his personal God. You held his life in your hands.”

  Alisa yawned.

  “What did he do when you let off that warning shot off? Did he laugh at you? He think that instead of being gutless, you were incompetent? Did he think you didn’t know how to shoot? And then when he said something about the broad side of a barn, you just let him have it. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.”

  Alisa’s eyes met Locke’s. She looked as though she were about to unleash the hounds, but she calmed and leaned back in her seat.

  Locke smiled, knowing this girl wasn’t going to break easy. But that was okay. It was more fun to break a challenge.

  SEVEN

  Carter entered interrogation room one. Rakowski was pacing. “What did she say?”

  “Sit down,” Carter said.

  He did. “What did she say?”

  “She did it.”

  “What?” He slammed his palms on the table. “I did.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “She tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to.”

  Rakowski closed his eyes.

  Carter sat across from him. “So, let me tell you what really happened. You were sitting at home watching the Phils game when Alisa called you, I believe that. But when you get there McCullough’s already leaking from five holes. You think he’s dead. Hell, I would too.” Carter yawned and scratched his head. “So you and Alisa start working out your story. But there was one big problem: son of bitch ain’t dead yet. Now this is the part that I can’t figure out. Which one of you blew out the fucker’s cerebellum?”

  “Does it matter?” Rakowski drew in his eyebrows. “Way I remember it, Brutus stabbed Caesar first and Cassius stabbed him last, but they’re both burning in the hottest ring of hell.”

  “Freezing,” Carter said.

  “What?”

  “The hell for traitors is frozen.”

  “Freezing, burning, whatever. They’re both in hell, right?”

  “Yeah. Your point being?”

  Rakowski breathed in and let it out slowly. “But if nobody saw Brutus holding a blade on that March day when a cap was thrown into Caesar, then Cassius would have taken all the heat his own-damn-self.”

  “You’re not asking me, what I think you are asking me?”

  “She ain’t gonna make it in prison.”

  “And you are?”

  “Better than her.”

  “You can’t do this, we can call it self-defense.”

  “You think Councilman McCullough is gonna let that story fly?”

  Carter shook his head. “How can you ask me to do this?”

  “How can’t I?” He tilted his head to the side. “I mean, what would you fall on your sword for? If not this? If not for your family? Then what?”

  Carter stood from his seat. “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure, you can. It’ll be simple. You don’t have any witnesses. The evidence you got can be matched up to me. The gun’s in my name. It’s got my prints on it. So do the shell casings. You got my confession. The only thing that might throw it is the GSR.”

  “You want me to tamper with evidence?”

  “No, it’s not tampering if there’s no evidence to find. It’s not tampering if you don’t get caught. I forgot to tell her to wash her hands at the apartment. You can remedy that.”

  Carter shook his head. “How can you ask me that?”

  Rakowski leaned back. “Easy. You fucking owe me.”

  “I don’t owe you this.”

  Jerry Rakowski stood from his seat and lifted his shirt over his head. He pointed at a large, jagged scar stretching across the left side of his stomach. “I believe you do.”

  EIGHT

  Locke finished her coffee. The Rakowski girl hadn’t said a word in almost fifteen minutes. In her frustration, Locke asked, “Do you like the coffee, at least?”

  Alisa took a sip, and then shook her head. “Not really. What flavor is this?”

  “I think the bag said it was Hazel Nut.”

  “When did they stop making coffee-flavored coffee?”

  Locke laughed, not because the joke was funny, but because she thought that this could be the opening she was looking for. She didn’t get the chance to attack though, because there was a knock at the door. Locke looked over her shoulder and saw Carter rapping on the window with the ring on his right hand. Carter nodded his head at her, and she exited.

  Once the entrance was shut, Locke said, “Holy crap. She did it. She’s the shooter. I would have placed money on it that it was the dad, but I’m convinced that she’s the shooter.”

  “No, she isn’t. The father just confessed.”

  “What? No way in hell. I’m telling you, the girl’s our shooter.”

  “No, she ain’t. GSR will prove he’s our guy.” Carter walked to his desk and took something out of the top drawer, but Locke couldn’t see what he grabbed. He then crossed the room.

  “No,” Locke said, chasing after him. “I’m telling you. She’s the shooter. He has to be covering for her. I know it. I know it in my gut that she did the deed.”

  Carter continued on his path without looking at her. “Just fucking give him the test, okay?”

  “I’m the goddamn primary on this ca
se,” Locke said, not knowing where Carter was headed. She tried to follow him, but she stopped when he pointed to a small, blue sign that said MEN’S next to the door he was going through.

  Carter disappeared into the room.

  Locke scanned the office; it was empty. “Screw this.”

  She pushed into lavatory.

  Carter stood at the middle urinal with his back arched, his left hand between his legs, and his right holding a single-serving bottle of scotch over his open mouth. When he finished the alcohol, he tossed up a hook shot toward the trash receptacle; it hit the front lip of the can, bounced a few inches into the air, and landed on a bed of used paper towels.

  “Nice shot,” Locke said.

  “The hell? You get lost or something?”

  Locke crossed her arms against her chest. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were screwing with my investigation.”

  “What’s your problem? I got you a confession. I cleared your red ball. And you get to take all the credit.” Carter finished his business, shook, and zipped up.

  “You got me a bullshit confession. Where’s the justice in that?”

  “Justice? This case ain’t about justice. It’s about turning a red name to black. That’s what we’re doing here.” Carter washed his hands. “If we found some nobody with five fucking holes in him in an obvious domestic-gone-bad, you think we’d be having this conversation? Huh? You think we would give a shit about any of this? Secretly we’d say to ourselves that justice was already served. We’d call it justifiable homicide, and we’d both be home by now. Well, at least, I’d be home and you’d be doing the goddamn paperwork.”

  “But it wasn’t some abusive douchebag that got dead. “

  “Exactly, that’s the whole point of this fucking mess. It was Rick McCullough, Jr. So the Councilman wants his fucking pound of flesh. We’re gonna give it to him. He’s gonna like it. And this is all gonna go away. And then we’re gonna sit by the phone and wait for the next body. Maybe this time we’ll get a real victim.” Carter wiped his wet mitts on the legs of his jeans and buried his empty airplane bottle deeper into the trash.

  “So what? You’re making up your own rules now?”

  “Fuck, what would you have done in that girl’s situation? Let the fucker choke you to death?”