Black Cat Weekly #89

Chapter 5-6

The SUV never moves closer than three cars away and doesn’t slow down when Teague pulls into the parking lot. Back in their office, they discover that Forest-Mercado has already sent the reports of the other Stonebury police d**g raids to both their mailboxes.

An hour later, they look at each other. Jody has her notes in a separate file, and Teague writes on his trusty legal pad.

“You have to wonder if the same guy wrote all these reports,” Jody comments. “He leaves so much out he’s making it into an art form.”

Teague nods.

Kirk Donahue was in a raid in 2018 in which a suspect was killed after firing at police. Two other officers besides him returned fire, and all three were named. Their weapons were identified by ballistics, and Donahue fired three of the fourteen shots that struck the victim. Two other suspects were taken alive, and the cops found 24 kilos of h****n at the scene. Donahue showed up in another case in which someone was shot, but he apparently didn’t fire his weapon.

Robert D’Amato kicked in the door of another raid that uncovered a substantial amount of cocaine, and a suspect suffered a fractured skull. D’Amato may have been one of the men who hit him, but the testimony of the police in the report is vague…again. Lawrence Prentice was present on both raids, and he was the only other officer identified in any of the reports.

Teague rubs his eyes to erase the pixels dancing before them.

“Four incidents, and one of them looks so obvious you have to wonder why there was even an investigation.”

“The hostage shooting.” Jody runs her fingers through her hair and stretches in her chair. “No question the cops were right to shoot the guy.”

“Don’t do that,” Teague says.

“Get you crazy?” She gave him a look like a mischievous kitten.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She turns quiet for a minute. “Thank you.”

Teague looks at his legal pad.

“The raids. I only see three names that come up in all of them, and they’re all narcotics cops, so that makes sense.”

“D’Amato, Donahue, and Prentice.” Jody agrees. “And Pacyna gets his Union stuff into the record in all of them.”

Teague watches her lips move while she talks to herself. He finds himself scribbling on his legal pad, drawing lines between various items and trying to find a connection.

“If Mitt was right and evidence is getting stolen, it would stand to reason a d**g cop is doing it.”

“If it’s mostly drugs,” Jody agrees. “So?”

“I don’t know. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t help us with Mitt. There’s no connection between him and the drugs. Or the cops.”

“Except Gina Brinkley,” Jody says. “If she really was busted. Maybe the cops who busted her are some of the same narcs.”

“One way to find out.”

Jody stands. “My turn to drive this time.”

She slides one arm into her blazer. “You want me to hold your door for you?”

Detective Kirk Donahue’s face resembles a dinner plate with ears. His dark hair is an emery-paper buzz cut that doesn’t quite camouflage pattern baldness. Sitting on the corner of a desk, he gives off the vibe of an angry rottweiler.

“It was a righteous bust.” His voice unfurls from deep in his chest. “The CI said guns and meth, maybe other stuff, too.”

“A meth lab in that neighborhood?” Teague raises his eyebrows. “That’s not the best part of town, but it’s no trailer park, either. Wouldn’t a neighbor have noticed and complained?”

“We had the tip. We figured it was good intel, and we got the warrant.”

“That means your confidential informant had a track record, doesn’t it?”

Donahue’s eyes narrow even more. “That’s none of your business.”

“You went in with, what, twelve officers?”

Donahue looks at the papers on his desk.

“Broke in the front and back doors,” Jody continues. “Four guys with automatic weapons charged up the stairs and confronted Henry Langloise outside his bedroom. No weapon in sight, nowhere to hide one. Did you identify yourself as police officers?”

Donahue stands, three inches taller than Teague, and easily 40 pounds heavier.

“The Inspector General is investigating the case right now, and we’re co-operating in full. No question it will be cleared. If you have any more questions, you should talk to her and stop wasting my time.”

“We already have,” Teague says. “She doesn’t even have the names of all the officers on the raid. That’s your idea of cooperation? Like the Brinkley investigation.”

“Who?”

“Murder a week ago. We talked to Detective McInerney about it. We’re wondering if they’re related in some way.”

“We don’t see any connection.”

“Oh.” Jody c***s an eyebrow at him. “So, you do know her.”

do“Awesome,” Teague says. “Then maybe you can clear something up for us. When was Regina Brinkley busted for possession? Could you look that up? We think it was sometime in January, but it would make things a lot easier if we knew the exact date.”

“Forget that, Red.”

“Yeah, McInerney wouldn’t either. But if the woman was busted, it should have been in the report Homicide gave to an attorney a few days ago. It isn’t, so we wonder why.”

Donahue’s eyes sink deeper into his face.

“We’re through here.”

“Christ.” Jody barely reaches Donahue’s armpit. “Who are you protecting? You’re running an investigation like Dumb and Dumber, people are getting hurt, and you’re doing Jack s**t. If you bozos could figure out how to get your thumb out of your a*s, you’d use it to stir your coffee.”

Donahue’s face loses all expression.

“Have a nice day.”

Teague restrains his withering comeback and escorts Jody out of the office and back to her car. She slams her door and pouts at her steering wheel while she counts to ten in Spanish. She checks her phone for replies to her texts but finds nothing.

“I think you scared him,” Teague says.

“I hope he has nightmares.”

“Someone may have screwed up on the raid, but it’s getting even harder to believe that Regina isn’t connected, too. Mitt poked a tiger without even knowing it.”

Judy digs for her keys.

“Gina’s friends are still our best bet, but there’s no telling when Shirlee will read Tanya’s message and get back to us. Or not. If Shirlee doesn’t get back to me in a couple of hours, I’ll text Tanya again.”

She turns at the first light and frowns in the mirror. She turns left at the next light.

“We’ve got company again.”

“Which car?” Teague flips down the sun visor and checks the mirror.

“The black SUV four cars back. It might be the same guy.”

Teague can barely see the car past the others behind them. Jody moves into the left lane and turns so the SUV has to change lanes, too.

“I can’t tell if there’s only one person or two,” he says. “I think two.”

“Should I try to lose them?”

“If they’re following us, they know who we are and that we’ll end up back at the office eventually. Let’s give them a tour and see if they get close enough for me to see the plate.”

“Fat chance, Chico. These guys know their stuff.”

Chico.“I don’t want to lead them to St. Vincent. We’ve been showing them everything we’ve got, and maybe we need to stop doing that.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Jody zigzags through downtown Stonebury. The other car never allows fewer than two vehicles between them, but never more than four, either. An Outback, and the license plate bears the red on white of Massachusetts, but Teague can’t see the numbers.

“Out of state plate,” he says. “That’s weird.”

They’ve both left their guns locked in the office.

“Cops,” Jody says. “Gotta be. Unless there’s some jealous husband you forgot to tell me about.”

“No such luck.”

She turns onto North High, a main street that leads toward their office in the heart of the business district. Cars fill the curb on both sides and a few drivers slow down, seeking a parking space. Jody slows down, too, and they watch the SUV move into the left lane.

Jody glances at her side mirror just as the sound of a racing engine drowns out other traffic.

“Mierda.”

MierdaThe SUV pulls abreast of their car and eases right so the front fender nudges Jody’s Tercel. She turns the wheel against it, but the SUV is twice their weight, forcing them toward the parked cars. The car ahead of them grows huge in the windshield, and Jody slams on her brakes. She and Teague cross their arms over their faces as their front bumper slams into the rear of a blue Explorer.

The crash fills Teague’s head. His seatbelt digs into his chest and the airbag explodes, driving his arms back into his face. Jody lets out a string of Spanish. The crushed hood shoots up and smashes into the windshield, which spiderwebs but doesn’t shatter.

“Cabrón,” Jody bellows. “Hijo de puta.”

CabrónHijo de putaTeague wrestles the airbag down out of his face. He’s never thought about what a lyrical language Spanish is before, but Jody’s cursing lacks only a full orchestra behind it. She fights off her airbag, too, and they sit until they’re sure nobody will rear-end them. They push open their doors with the screech of tortured metal. A crowd already surrounds them, several people with cellphones to their ears.

The cops reroute two blocks of traffic to take measurements and photographs and pick up the glass and paint samples. Jody rescues her insurance card and travel mug from what’s left of her car before the wrecker loads the remains onto its bed. The friendly traffic cops drive them to the hospital for x-rays, then back to their office, where they stare at each other while the adrenaline wanes.

“Two dozen witnesses saw the SUV, but nobody got the license number.” Teague’s shoulders might have a steel bar running between them.

“They didn’t see if there was one guy or two, either.” Jody’s face looks a little puffy from the airbag and she sits as though her chair has turned to hot needles.

She goes online to report the “accident” to her insurance company and Teague opens the lockbox where they keep their handguns.

“I hate wearing a gun.” She rolls her head on her neck and Teague hears tendons and ligaments complain. “It makes my blazer look lumpy. Plus, it digs into my boob.”

“You have to suffer to be beautiful. It’s part of the contract.”

“I never signed that.”

“It’s in the fine print.”

Without thinking about it, he moves over and kneads his thumbs over the base of Jody’s neck. He feels knots bigger than chestnuts.

“Now we have to figure out who’s getting worried, the cops who raided Langloise’s house, or whoever killed Gina Brinkley.”

“Or both of the above.” Jody leans back into his thumbs and he moves across her back and down her shoulder blades. “That feels good.”