Dream within a Dream Ch. 01

I didn't say anything... but I knew Cindy had just stated an epiphany to me...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Back in the present, I was doing my research on my secure-line computer. Every one of the names on Angela's list was coming up all gold and roses, as far as getting evidence was concerned. Their banks all had associations with Gresham & Mason law firms and/or their attorneys. And many of the banks had accounts for 'Victory Christian Ministries' or other groups with Christian-sounding names...

Part 3 - Desperate Chase

The heat of the summer day only served to add to the stillness and the quiet of the air. I looked out over Reservoir Lake, not even bothering to throw my fishing line into the water, just watching as the man sitting beside me flicked his line with the expertise of a practiced hand.

"So Chief," I said to Chief Griswold as we (really, just he) fished in the lake behind his house, "what's bothering you?"

"You're good, but not that good." Griswold replied affably. "My wife talked to you, didn't she?"

"You once told me that a magician should never reveal his tricks." I replied. That got a smile from the old Chief. But he was right.

Earlier in the day, I had been working in my office when Helena buzzed me and told me that I had a surprise visitor... Mrs. Griswold. I had her come into my office.

"Something is really bothering him." Mrs. Griswold said to me. "He won't say what it is, but I know... it's that execution that is going to happen tomorrow. I think he knows something about it, something that isn't right. Could you come and say hello later today?"

Of course I said I would, and here we were in the early evening, fishing.

"Well, she's right." Griswold said. "She can read my mind. Happens after years of marriage; can't keep a secret from that woman. You'll find out that about your wife after enough years."

"She already can read my mind. My wife is trained in secrets of the highest order." I replied. "Thankfully, my dog Bowser runs interference for me." Griswold chuckled again.

"Well, we both know that you are the one who the darkest secrets dread the most." he said. "But you're right, something's bothering me. And it's that execution in Jacksonville tomorrow night."

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Let me make a short story long and tell it to you." said Griswold. "A few years before you came to the Force, just after the merger and just after I'd become Chief, I came into contact with Lance Priemus. On the outside, he appeared to be a respectable businessman. Behind the scenes, he was a con artist, fraudster, and was using his business as a backdoor pipeline for drugs."

"Captain Malone was in charge of Vice, and the investigation dragged on for some months." said Griswold. "I began realizing something was wrong; it was my first real thought that Malone wasn't on the up-and-up. So I had a few of people I trusted, including Harold Bennett, then-Lieutenant Charles, and our new rookie Detective on the Force, Tanya Perlman, do a quiet investigation. They came up with plenty of evidence to arrest Priemus, and I went to then-A.D.A. Krasney with it. He was willing to bring the case to the Grand Jury, but he gave me another idea instead."

Griswold continued: "I went with Charles to see Priemus. We showed him what we had, we arrested him and took him through booking, but instead of the interrogation rooms, I brought him to my office. We made him a deal: if he became a C.I., and helped us bust the people behind the pipelines, including the dirty cops involved, then his case would be quietly dropped, or we might even give him immunity if he would have to testify against someone big. We'd have five years under the Statute of Limitations to bust him if he turned on us, so that was hanging on his head, too."

"He agreed to do it," Griswold went on, "and for a year we amassed a huge amount of information. Didn't quite get to Malone, but we found names of suspect Uniformed officers, we found a distribution link, we were getting close to the funding. And on top of it, Priemus was becoming aware of someone behind the organization, and gave me the first hint of what you now call the 'Shadow Man', though I didn't know that at the time. We thought we were about to make a major, major bust. And then... it all came apart."

I could see the pain on the old Chief's face as he continued, looking out over the lake: "Priemus was busted over in Westphalia. The story went that he and some friends had been drinking and partying near the City. They apparently drove down to Westphalia, where they were stopped by a black police officer. They got the drop on him, took his gun, put his own handcuffs on him, then forced him into their car and drove him to his own house."

"There, the two men took turns raping the cop's wife in front of him while the woman in their group taunted the cop. Then the cop and his wife were both murdered, and it was a pretty grisly way of doing it, from what I remember."

"Yes." I said. "I heard some details of that."

"Yes," said Griswold. "It was very, very bad. Multiple non-fatal but painful stab wounds over time, causing intense pain, then their throats slit. The crime lab over there came back with DNA from a semen sample, and it was only one guy: Priemus. Apparently the other guy used a condom, and Priemus was too inebriated to notice.

"That didn't come for few days, though; they got Priemus because the cop had radioed in the license plate when he stopped them, and it was Priemus's car tag number. The cop did not have a camera in his vehicle, by the way."

"So," said Griswold, "everything Charles and Bennett and Perlman and I had been doing was shot to hell. I realized then that I'd violated a cardinal rule of confidential informants: when you develop one, develop another for corroboration... and replacement, if need be. We had nothing."

"To shorten this up: Daniel Allgood joined us in Internal Affairs, becoming the head of it over time. Perlman wanted to keep investigating, but it was clear she was too good at crime scenes to be allowed out of MCD. So you, Don, were not the first to try to corral her into the CSI group." said Griswold. I smiled at that one.

Griswold said "And Malone saw what was going on, and backed off. I got about twelve potentially dirty cops off the Force, cleaned up a lot of the 'soft' stuff going on, like taking bribes to not give out a ticket or to look the other way at a small-time drug transaction in one of T-Square's clubs. Things calmed down for a while."

"So why is this bothering you?" I asked.

"It's twofold." said the Chief. "First, there were some real anomalies in the Priemus case, anomalies that would never stand up to Iron Crowbar scrutiny. First, the car tags called in were Priemus's... but it wasn't his car being driven. It was the car of the woman who was with them. The car that was pulled over was light blue; Priemus's car, a different make and model, was black."

"Ooooooo..." I said. "Wait a minute. The officer that pulled them over and called it in... wouldn't the radio dispatch have given him that information? He'd see the discrepancy and be more cautious? Maybe call for backup? Certainly he wouldn't be susceptible to being ambushed..."

"See?" Griswold replied. "It already is not standing up to your scrutiny. But let me go on: after finding the police car abandoned on the road, the Westphalia County Sheriff's Department sent deputies to the home of the officer and his wife, where they discovered the bodies. They then went to Priemus's home and found him there, passed out, and I mean passed out to the point they couldn't really revive him. They took him to the hospital, where he slept it off with an I.V. to rehydrate him, then they arrested him."

"Upon interrogation, Priemus did not remember anything past being at a nightclub with his friends. He said he did have plenty to drink. The nightclub cameras showed him and his two friends, then later showed them in the parking lot getting into the woman's car... with her license plates on the back."

"The two others, the man and woman, were found and arrested. The woman turned State's evidence, and then the other man also took a plea deal." said Griswold. "They said Priemus was the leader; that he'd ambushed the cop, that he was a racist and had the idea to violate the black wife in front of the black husband, and that's what they did."

"Wow." I said. "Did the Westphalia Crime Lab do any toxicology, any blood tests on Priemus?"

"Yes." said Griswold. "But it only shows Priemus was legally drunk. No other drugs."

"Yet he was so passed out the officers at the scene could not revive him and took him to the hospital." I said.

"You're already catching on." said the Chief. "It gets more strange. Priemus's lawyer contacted me right after the arrest, and said Priemus wanted to give me some information. Wouldn't tell the lawyer what it was, he would only tell me. So I went over, saying it was related to a case in my County in which Priemus was involved. But the Police there wouldn't let me talk to him."

"And it wasn't a refusal, but excuse-making." Griswold continued. "Stuff like 'oh, he's in with his lawyer right now'... 'oh, he's in his cell for lunch'... then finally they said he was being transferred to a more secure facility... which was the Men's Prison near Midtown, and once he was in there, I was flatly denied access. Always seemed to be the same guard, too, but I didn't realize that until long afterward."

"Channeling your inner 'Crowbar', I'm sure." I said.

"Yes." said Griswold. "And as the case went on, I could see that it was being expedited... and to the point that Priemus's rights were being violated. You remember the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma City bombing?"

"Sure." I said. "He allegedly said he didn't want appeals, and it was the fastest time from arrest to execution at the Federal level that I can remember."

"Exactly." said the Chief. "Some criminals are on Death Row for twenty years, go through layers of State and Federal appeals. But not McVeigh, who they said didn't want and thus refused all appeals. Well, it was the same for Priemus. One of his lawyers told me it was the worst abuse of the appeals process he'd ever seen by the Courts at every level. So Priemus is going to be executed tonight, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Anyway," continued the Chief, with a sigh, "I told the lawyer that I'd been denied all chances to see Priemus. He said he told Priemus, but that Priemus still wouldn't tell him anything, and said to just forget about it. And all I could do at the time was keep working here.

"I knew something was wrong, but just could not get to it. I'd get leads on crimes, have my people go after it, only to find it'd already happened and we were too late... or nothing would happen, that we'd been found out and the crime called off. I don't mind saying that I knew it was too much for me."

"So I hired the best people I could find and put them to work. Perlman in MCD wanted to keep working on things, but there would always crop up a case taking her attention. Malone was making some spectacular, really spectacular busts in Vice, but stuff was always just getting through. Of course Malone had Ikea and Geiger working for him, then Croyle came along and I thought she was honest but was being used as a front. It took you to figure out what Malone was up to, favoring one gang over the others."

Griswold then began to grin as he continued: "And then, against all advice, I hired this young woman who'd been a physical fitness guru. I hired her for her physical abilities, to help Tanya if anything went down, but I could tell she had a lot more in her head than she was being given credit for. Malone bitterly opposed her hiring, said he thought she was a dyke-- a lesbian, I should say, to be politically correct-- and I said I had no evidence of that and hired her anyway. That one has worked out very well."

"I daresay." I said, knowing how well Cindy Ross had done.

"But that wasn't my best hire." said the Chief. "When Campus Police Lieutenant Maxwell told me about a certain redheaded guy that had brought in his nephew for drug crimes on campus, had figured out some things they never had any idea about, and who'd been a Captain in the Military Police in the Army Reserve... well, I didn't have to be a psychic like Harvey Eckhart to know I needed you in my Police Force."

"And I appreciate you taking the chance on me." I said. "I wouldn't have missed this for the world. We are getting close to busting one of the greatest criminal operations in history... literally."

"By the way," said Griswold, "Britt Maxwell also told me that from the day you walked into Dr. Fredricson's office, the celebrated sex professor was looking at you as if she was hopelessly in love with you. That's worked out, too."

"Yes, love at first sight... and the feeling was mutual." I replied. "So Chief, why didn't you tell me about this Priemus business before?"

"I didn't connect the dots for a long time." said Griswold. "And then you got onto this Shadow Man's scent, and it was kind of in the back of my mind but you were rolling and Malone was gone. In hindsight, I should've remembered and should've said something."

"No biggie." I said, knowing that things like this happened. "In fact, I just came across some old evidence that I had no idea would be so helpful when I first saw it." I told him about Angela Harlan's list of bankers.

"Well, Chief," I said as I got up, "I probably can't stop this execution, but I'll see what I can do about getting information from Priemus. I have a feeling he knows something that can help us."

"Good luck, Crowbar." the Chief growled. "Good luck."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"He is growing like a weed." I said as I held baby Peter Donald Feeley. I had called Tanya, then come over to her house. Officer Pete Feeley's mother Pamela had retired to her own room to give me a chance to talk to Tanya.

"So what do you know about that Priemus case?" I asked.

Tanya said "That's one of those cases where I wish we'd had you with us then. He was a C.I. for us, then got busted on the other side of the State. It looked weird from the get-go, but we had our own stuff to worry about and we didn't have an SBI Reserve then. So we had to move on."

"Anything that he gave you then, that you didn't understand then but think it might be helpful now?" I asked.

Tanya thought about it. "No." she finally said. "We were using him to get information on drug pipelines. And we got good stuff and made some good busts, or at least Malone and Vice made the busts. But Captain Malone is gone now, so I don't know if there's anything Priemus had that could help us now."

"Did Priemus have any weird habits that come to mind now?" I asked.

"The only thing I can remember that struck me," said Tanya, "is that he always went to church. If one didn't know better, one would think he was as religious as Joanne Cummings is now. I always thought he was trying to weasel into the church's confidence and scam them, but who knows..."

"Which church?" I asked.

"Oh, First Baptist." said Tanya. "Priemus was good friends with Thomas P. Cook, who was a deacon then, I guess 'deacon' is the right word, and also Perry Richards."

That name struck a chord. "Who's he?" I asked. "I don't think I know him."

"Oh, he worked at the County Regional Bank down in Coltrane County for a while." said Tanya. "But he lived up here. He was a handsome man, married but working through several married women in the church. Nothing new there; ask your mother or Elsie Gringer about how much adultery goes on amongst the members of First Baptist and First Methodist churches. Anyway, Perry had a full head of hair, could've been a politician with his made-for-TV looks."

"Sounds like you knew him very well." I said with the merest hint of true understanding.

Tanya grinned her cherubic grin as she said "What can I say? I like sex with handsome men, present company included. Anyway, Perry moved to the Dallas area to work with another bank. Coltrane County is boring as hell, of course, and he really jumped at the chance to go to a bigger city like Dallas."

"I see. Someone made him an offer he just couldn't refuse." I said. I tickled baby Pete under the chin, making him laugh. "Well, I better go so you can put this little man to bed. I'll see you in the morning..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Two o'clock in the morning, Tuesday, August 25th. I was furiously working on my laptop computer. I had just finished looking into the files Susan Wexler had secreted on the chip in the DVD jewel case. Sure enough, a woman's name was showing up as a C.I. for Susan, but she had been even more...

My researches were interrupted as my wife came down to the den. "It's late, darling." Laura said. "Can't it wait until the morning?"

"No, honey." I said. "It's about Lance Priemus, who is scheduled to be executed at 11:00pm tomorrow-- actually tonight, now. So time is of the essence."

Laura disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a tall glass of ice-cold sweet tea. I expressed my gratitude, then drank it down thirstily. That, of course, gave my sneaky wife time to look at my computer screen and see what I was working on. Good 'Company' agent, she is.

"Finding anything?" she asked.

"First, look at this." I said. "It's the medical examiner's report of the black wife that was raped and murdered. Notice anything strange?"

Laura read the report. "Stab wounds to the breasts, nipple cut off, stabbed in her anus with the knife, extensive vaginal damage from the rape... grisly stuff. So what's the issue?"

"The vaginal damage. Think two men would do that much damage taking turns a couple of times?" I asked. "And here's Bettina Wurtzburg's medical exam that was part of the evidence file on her. She was gang-raped by at least four men, multiple times."

"Pretty similar damage." Laura said, looking at the information. "So yes, you have a point there. Unless one or both of the two men are really well-endowed, that is pretty significant. But I'd have to actually make an examination myself to see for sure. So, anything else on this Lance Priemus?"

"He had a connection to a Perry Richards from the Dallas area." I said. "An investigation was opened by the Texas Rangers and the FBI on Richards for money laundering, but they couldn't get anything concrete on him. By the way, you get one guess who gave them the tip on Richards."

"I'm stumped." Laura said, not really wanting to play the game at this hour of the morning.

"One Detective Angela Harlan, who was working down there at the time." I replied, then said as I went into a near-reverie, "You know... Harlan may have been onto the whole Oldeeds child smuggling ring down there, or at least tugging on some threads. She had some involvement in investigating Sharples, who himself was investigating Oldeeds, and she had a list of bankers or insurance people that all are panning out as possible connections to the Superior Bloodlines web."

"Too bad she went bad." Laura replied.

"Yeah." I said. "Laura, I've been meaning to ask you... we've been cutting back on me taking those 'gray viagras' since Wargrave had me put through that brainwashing process... are there any side effects to the pills, or to withdrawing from them?"

"What do you mean?" my wife asked, fully attentive now.

"I've been having... weird dreams. Almost like visions." I said. "Just at odd times, odd hours, usually when I'm tired."

"What kind of visions?" Laura asked in her professional, professorial voice.

"Just... well, it's like someone is talking to me, telling me things." I replied. "Then I follow what the voice said, and a good lead shows up."