Death Before Coffee

Acknowledgements-3

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Bridget snapped at Mike as she stopped at the door to the offices, the knot of stress that had taken up residence at the base of her neck over the past few days unraveling slightly.

“We need to talk,” Mike said. There had to be a way to suspend the trial until he could find the piece that would tie Gregory Sanderson into a much darker world.

“What? You pregnant and your parents kicked you out? Is that why you look like a bum?”

“No.”

“Phew! Oh, and make sure you put on plenty of cologne before you go in to work tonight. You reek of booze.”

“Yeah, well,” Mike’s shoulders slumped as he looked away, “it was a long night.”

“Or morning came rather quickly, you mean?”

Mike bit his lower lip and looked around the near-deserted hallway.

“Oh, Christ,” Bridget said, smiling slightly as she shook her head. “How the hell did you do so many years in undercover with a tell like that?”

“I was much younger then. And things were different.” Mike paused, not sure where to start. “Bridget, I think there’s more to Sanderson than meets the eye.”

“I don’t have time for a crime novel now, Mike,” Bridget snapped, mechanically punching in the numeric code on the door, the knot in her neck tightening again. “Cut to the chase.”

“I think he is or was part of the crew that murdered Sal.”

“Let it go, Mike. Not your investigation. Homicide has it. I’m sure—”

The door clicked as she turned the handle.

“No, Bridget, listen. He was grooming her. There’s no doubt in my mind. Except he knocked her up. Or who knows? Maybe thought he could make more from her as a preggo—”

“Stop!” She pushed the door open. “Sounds like one helluva longshot—”

“Not a long shot. Happens all the time. Daddy likes little girls. Knows other guys who like little girls. Daddy likes his little girl first, then figures other guys will, too, and—”

“Mike—” Bridget interrupted, a shiver catching the knot in her neck.

“I know. There are hundreds…thousands…of guys involved, but I’ve got a feeling—”

“No, Mike!” Bridget rotated her head, releasing a tiny bit of tension as she leaned against the open door. “Feelings are great. So are hunches. So are instincts. Save them for your cronies in the pub.”

“Really? That’s what you think I’m all about?”

Bridget looked inside the open-concept office at the clerks hurriedly photocopying bits and pieces of cases while her colleagues’ ears were glued to phones, their fingers tapping on keyboards, words filling the screens in front of them. “We’re not going there. Not your job any more.”

“Like f**k,” Mike muttered.

“It’s over, Mike. Let the young guys who are in the JPTF now do their thing. And Homicide has the murder investigation—”

“Has had the investigation, you mean,” Mike corrected. “For thirteen f*****g years. Cop killer. Name known. Description known. Last direction of travel known. All the resources on the f*****g planet at their disposal and—”

“Mike, for Christ’s sake, you’ve done your bit.” Bridget slumped against the doorframe, the weight of her own life bearing down on her. “If you’re that sure, forward whatever you have—”

“Into the vortex?” Mike shot back at her.

“Listen,” Bridget continued, “we are lucky to have coppers like you. I’m lucky to have you—dedicated, smart, strong, not bad-looking—but you know how these things go. We can’t mess around with it now, not when we’re so close. We need to focus on this trial to put Sanderson behind bars. That’s our job. They’ll know where to find him if he is tied in with anything else, and you know we have special Crowns to prosecute those cases if and when they arise, but…”

God, she is such a lawyer, Mike thought, and not as a compliment.

“…there is absolutely no way in hell that I will suggest to His Honour that we suspend the trial for a fishing expedition. It won’t fly, and you know it.”

Mike sighed, any colour left in his tired face draining away, the laugh lines in his cheeks deepening as his jowls drooped. At that moment, he felt as if he had aged about twenty years.

“Listen, Mike. I’m not saying you’re wrong. Nor am I saying that this isn’t worth pursuing by the appropriate unit.”

“f**k that.”

“What I am saying is that you need to suck it up. There is a protocol in place, and I need you to be solid for this trial.”

Bridget moved out of the doorway as a clerk popped out, whizzing past Mike, a piece of paper in one hand, coffee mug in the other, rushing down the hall muttering to herself.

“I need you,” Bridget continued, deciding it was now time to pull out the big guns.

“I’m not one of your fan-boys,” Mike squawked, much to his own surprise. “I mean, I know what has to happen here, and I know how to get it done—”

“Oh, do you? I’m practically blushing, Detective.” She tilted her head just enough and placed one hand on her hip.

“You’ve just made my day.”

“The bar was pretty low, let’s be honest here,” she replied, giving him a reassuring squeeze on the arm. She stepped back.

“You’re not blushing, are you, Detective O’Shea? Big tough copper like you? Come on. It can’t be that easy.”

“Did you just call me easy?”

“You are many things, Michael O’Shea, but easy is not likely one of them.”

The tired cop looked down with a smirk at his glistening shoes as the crown attorney stepped into her office.

“Oh, and Mike?” Bridget called over her shoulder at him. “Don’t forget: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for tomorrow morning. No wild parties. No visits from Mr. Jameson or any of his other ne’er-do-well friends. And please, don’t be late. This judge already hates me and would love a reason to tear a strip off me.”

She winked as the heavy metal door closed behind her. Mike stood in front of it for a good minute or two before glancing down at his watch. Damn, he was going to be late for his first shift with the man who had once saved his life.

He hustled down the courthouse steps, beginning to take stock of the thoughts floating around in his still-throbbing head. He smirked in spite of himself.

Bridget. Prettier than she was smart, and she could run legalistic circles around her colleagues blindfolded. Unfortunately, her true abilities were seldom showcased in the run-of-the-mill criminal cases she was assigned. The senior Crowns—all men at this downtown courthouse—took the sexiest cases.

The case Mike desperately wanted to pull together wasn’t sexy. It was stale. Old news. As old as a case of a pimp-turned-cop-killer could be. f*****g Homicide had dropped the ball. Was still dropping the ball. And the JPTF? A bunch of clubbing pretty boys living out some gamer fantasy better suited to teenaged boys who played videogames on their laptops late into the night than to the hardcore investigators they were supposed to be.

Not like when Mike and Sal were there.

Fuck. Bridget was likely right. The best he could do was drop a dime—another dime—to the Ds in charge of Sal’s murder investigation. Maybe they had something. Maybe they’d want something. His hopes weren’t high on either count.

He settled himself behind the wheel of his old pickup truck, one of the few things he refused to give up or change for Carmen. Thank Christ.

Then he looked down at his watch. f**k. Late. Too late.

“Five minutes. Just five f*****g minutes of peace to enjoy a good f*****g cup of coffee,” Mike muttered. “Is that really so much to ask?”

Chapter Five

4:35 p.m., Thursday, August 23, 2018“Body in a laneway. Might be a homicide, might not be. Either way, we have to attend,” Ron Roberts advised as soon as Mike walked into the 6th District detective office. “I’ll go get the printout of the call from the front desk if you want to get the car.”

“No ‘Hello, welcome to the platoon, Mike. Can I buy you a coffee?’”

“Oh. Right. I’m not good with this partner thing. We work alone in Traffic. I miss that. Always will. Even after five years of working as a district D.”

“Which part to you miss: working alone or doing traffic enforcement?”

“Both.”

*****Mike popped the top button of his shirt, loosened his tie, and folded himself into the driver’s seat of the unmarked police car, ignoring the man sitting quietly in the passenger seat. Despite now working in the same district out of the same office, both he and Ron Roberts had actively avoided one another. They had been on opposite shifts, so their paths had had no reason to cross again. Just as well. Bad memories for both of them. Nothing to talk about. Best left alone.

And now the cop whose partner had been killed almost fifteen years ago and the cop who had shot two people later that same night were working together. Mike’s situation—and where he would end up—had been the subject of constant speculation and Monday morning quarterbacking amongst the rank and file for years, but too many other incidents had occurred to keep his fate at the top of the pile. And Ron’s? First kill was clean: no issues and no gossip. The second—the girl—was not at all clean and was resurrected by the media every time there was a questionable police shooting. So was Sal’s murder. Mike wondered if Ron ever thought about the girl. He himself never stopped thinking about Sal. Or Malcolm.

Mike wished he hadn’t transferred to B platoon to work with Roberts. He wished those fuckers in Homicide had done their job back then. And he wished that Carmen had come home last night. But here he was, and there they were. All beyond his control, or so he had to believe.

Mike thought again about the Sanderson case. With or without any new revelations, it was much more challenging than he or Bridget had anticipated, and his working the two-to-midnight evening shift for the next seven days wasn’t going to make things any easier. It wasn’t the 2 p.m. start that was the problem. It was the shift ending at midnight, a lie for detectives like Mike who actually did their jobs. Their shifts finished when the investigation was complete, not when the clock struck twelve. And with a body in a laneway to start the shift, there was no telling when this day would end.

But Sanderson. Was his theory just a long shot? Mike wondered. Was he obsessed? Or was this asshole somehow tied into the ring that had murdered his partner? And if so, who knew about it? Who cared?

Mike’s thoughts blocked out any chance of conversation that might have taken place between him and Ron, the new partners sitting twelve inches from one another for the first time since that night. Not that Mike had anything to say to Ron.

Ron Roberts hadn’t initiated any conversation either, suggesting that the silence suited him just as well.

Mike navigated the car out of the packed lot behind the station, only now becoming aware that Ron was staring out the passenger window. As he pulled onto the otherwise residential street, a man walking his dog looked over and gave Mike the stink-eye.

Bridget’s right. Let’s just get this conviction and see what happens from there. It’s still anyone’s game.

Chapter Six

4:50 p.m., Thursday, August 23, 2018Mike dropped the engine into park in front of the closest coffee shop. He breathed an audible sigh of relief, suddenly aware that he’d been clenching his jaw for the whole goddamned day.

“Why you don’t just use the drive-through?” Ron said, uttering the first words spoken since the men had gotten into the car together fifteen minutes earlier. “It would be a lot quicker.”