Interlude Ch. 09

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It still took a long time to get the truth that I needed out of Bounel, and it was dark by the time we were leaving. Cindy and Hugh left, driving the van back to Police Headquarters as if nothing had happened. I took Bounel through a labyrinth of hallways to the cafeteria service exit in back of the Courthouse building, swiftly getting him into a car that was being driven by, at my request, Officer Pete Feeley. Our eyes were watchful, and fortunately it appeared that we had not been observed and were not being followed.

We drove wordlessly north to the main road, then west along that main road for miles. It was all flat farmland on the west side of the railroad tracks and the river. Finally, almost at the County and State line, we pulled into what looked like a fenced-in junkyard. It was the police impound yard.

"Yes sir," the night manager of the impound yard said to me as Feeley removed Bounel's handcuffs. "Chevy Impala. Owner died in prison about six months ago, and he had no next of kin. We're gonna auction it at the beginning of the month."

"I'll save you the trouble. Just put in the paperwork that the car is being used for undercover work, and I'll handle the rest." I said. Taking the keys, I tossed them at Bounel.

"All right Barry, there's your ride. I suggest you head west, out of my County and the State. Drive straight to California, to San Francisco, ditch the car there, and make yourself disappear among your fellow fags out there. I know that I'll never see you again, Barry, because if you show your halfbreed ass in this State again, you'll be dead before I even find out about it.

"Fuck you too, bitch." Bounel said, angry to the last. He got into the old Impala and screeched out, heading west. I'd done all I could for him.

Part 20 - Puzzle Pieces

"So, Feeley, what are you going to do?" I asked as we drove back to Town.

"I'm going to Detective School." Feeley said. "I'll go to the Advanced Course also, but I want to stay on the Detective track. Tanya-- er, Supervisor Perlman said I should go for the leadership track and become a Sergeant, but..." he paused.

"She might be right." I said. "We need good leaders more than anything else, and you've got the potential for it. Immediate promotion to Corporal, consideration for Sergeant below the zone..." I said.

"But sir..." Feeley said, "I've always wanted to be a Detective... since I was a kid, it's all I ever wanted. When me and my best friend Marty were in the fifth grade, he said he wanted to be a Paramedic and I said I wanted to be a Detective. Well, he's an EMT now, and I'm going to be a Detective, no matter what it takes."

"Well, Feeley, that attitude just might get you there, in time." I said, "But don't rule out the Sergeant path. Hell, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, then I was going to be a scientist, an astronomer. Then I somehow ended up in ROTC, then at Airborne School jumping out of perfectly good aircraft while in flight, and now I'm here... but it's where I'm supposed to be. I never saw it coming, but it's where I'm supposed to be. You gotta be where you're supposed to be, Feeley, even if it sneaks up on you."

"Yes sir." Feeley said. "But being a Detective is where I'm supposed to be."

I chose not to debate that point at this moment. "Okay... speaking of good things happening, how are things going with Miss Perlman?" I asked, changing the subject. Even in the dark, I could see Feeley's face light up...

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Walking into the MCD room, I saw Cindy and Hugh talking with Angela Harlan. Cpt. Britt Maxwell of the University Police was also there, and she was looking incredibly hot and fine. She had been meeting Detective Harlan while waiting for us to get back.

"I made you guys some supper." Angela said as she picked up a plate half-filled with sandwiches and offered me to take one. Cindy and Hugh were already eating, and I didn't blame them.

"Thanks, Angela." I said. "Feeley, you want some chow?"

"Yes sir." Feeley said, gratefully accepting a sandwich half.

"Is the Chief still here?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, sir." Angela said. "He did say for you to go to his office when you got here, that was about an hour ago."

The room became uncomfortably quiet. Cindy was staring up at Angela. Hugh had an "oh shit!" look on his face while standing behind her. Britt was admiring a spider web on the ceiling. Feeley looked inquisitive.

"Sir," Cindy said, "I'll get her squared away on that."

"She's new," I said, "don't be too harsh." Turning to my new detective, I began instructing her. "Angela, there's two things you should strive to do while with our Department: first, always know if the Chief is here and if I'm here, and if you're working with Vice, if Captain Malone is here. I never go home until the Chief does, unless he specifically tells me to. Second, if the Chief ever tells you he wants me to come to his office, I should not even make it completely through the door before you've told me. Good or good?"

"Yes, sir." Angela said, her voice showing her chagrin.

"You guys can go home." I said. "See you tomorrow. Angela, study those procedures. Cindy, test her on them."

"I'm doing that with her, sir." Hugh said. I just nodded as I turned to leave the room.

"Before you go--" Britt Maxwell said.

"Come with me." I said, trying to wolf down my sandwich.

Going into the Chief's anteroom, Britt said "I got a call from the Nextdoor County Police today. They said that a University Police Officer named Delta had called and reported an accident on the main highway, but that when they went to find it they found nothing at all. They said it was definitely a police radio that called it in. I told them I'd check on it and get back to them."

"Yeah, that was me." I said. "Tell them that Officer Delta did make that call, and that he thinks the cars in the accident might have left the scene, but that Officer Delta has no idea why they'd do that. By the way, come on inside with us, just let me finish this sandwich..."

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"Damn, I fucked up." Angela said, her husky voice barely a whisper.

"Don't worry about it." Hugh said, trying to be comforting. "He's just molding you like he has the rest of us. But definitely tell him if the chief wants to see him. Ditto that for any of us."

"Is he going to take that food into the chief's office?" Angela said.

"Probably not." Cindy said. "Beyond what Don just told you, remember this: the Chief loves that man as if he were the Chief's own son. Don can do what he wants, but he's careful to show the Chief the respect he deserves."

Just then the Chief's voice came across the hall. "Dammit Crowbar, bring that food on in here instead of trying to swallow it in one gulp! Let's go, son!"

Everyone looked at each other.

"Ooo-kay, even Don can fuck up." Cindy said. "Well, I heard the man tell me to go home, and I'm scootin' before he changes his mind."

The room emptied.

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Entering the Chief's office, I saw Jack Muscone sitting in the chair next to the one intended for me. The chief bade Britt Maxwell and me to sit down as he took his chair behind his desk.

"Captain Maxwell." Jack Muscone said, very surprised to see her enter the office. "How much do you know about all this?"

"Most of it." Britt replied. "Dr. Fredricson told me most of it at the time Ned stole some of those drugs, back when Don and Melina came to Town for the first time. It is of course my business to not know too much about it, but it hasn't been hard to figure out.

"She's good. We can trust her." the Chief said, vouching for Britt. And that was a first: it was the first time a Town & County Police Officer besides myself had shown trust in University Police Captain Britt Maxwell. It did not go unnoticed by either Britt or myself as our eyes met briefly.

"So, Crowbar, how did it go?" the Chief asked, pretending not to see the look between Britt and myself.

"It damn near didn't." I said. "I have never seen a man so committed to lying as Barry Bounel was. But I finally got what I wanted out of the dipshit." I told them the story, which for brevity's sake I'll make a synopsis of here:

Bounel finally admitted that he'd received the two sets of syringes of drugs on the Friday night before we raided him... the night that Jack Burke and Marie Arruzio were murdered by Joe Arruzio. They (the drugs) were delivered to him by Skinny Beard, who said that someone would come to Bounel's room within 48 hours with a paper grocery sack. The person would say "I'm the jackrabbit, do you have something for me?" Bounel would receive the sack, which would have a sum of money amounting to the low five-figures, he would give the person the two sets of syringes, and the money was his (Bounel's) to keep for his trouble. Bounel did not know if the person would be a man or woman, though they talked in terms of it being a man. Skinny Beard had said that the vials contained deadly poisons, so Bounel should be careful with the syringes, but Bounel did not know anything else about the stuff. After sexually servicing Bounel, Skinny Beard left.

However, the pick-up person never showed up by the time Bounel was hired by Ned to go on the excursion to bring some pain to Bettina Wurtzburg and her informant, and it had been well over 48 hours. Bounel said that Ned had been the one to hire him for the Wurtzburg/informant attack, and didn't think the job was related to the drugs; Ned never mentioned the drugs nor the 'jackrabbit' code-word, he only offered Barry the chance to acquire a cop's gun and "get some fresh cherry ass" from the cop, and Barry had eagerly accepted the job. After stealing the gun, Barry had decided to use one of the sets of syringes to booby-trap the weapon in its hideaway location.

Skinny Beard was not supposed to come back until after the drugs had been transferred, and nothing was said when he did come back on Wednesday to service Bounel sexually. That's when we burst into the room on the raid and took the two sets of syringe vials as well as Bounel's big bag of cocaine.

Bounel said that after our raid he had hidden out in the City but had encountered no problems until just a couple of days before his arrest on the APB that I had put out for him. He said someone in a car fired at him and/or his group of about 8 people that were just hanging out. It was impossible to know at the time that he was the specific target, but after that he got wary and noticed strange cars driving around, apparently looking for him. He went deeper underground after that, but was betrayed by an informant to the City cops.

"So everyone was looking for him." Jack Muscone said. "If he didn't have the stuff, what did they want from him?"

"The same thing I did." I said, "the identity of the person that was going to pick up the drugs from him. They had no way of knowing if they had been delivered. They already had Skinny Beard and he'd told them he delivered the vials to Bounel. Only when Dr. Mays got a sample and started asking questions did they find out the drugs were in police custody."

"Who is 'they'?" asked the Chief.

"Take your pick, sir." I said. "Criminals, foreign spies, DEA, CIA, maybe even the FBI, Jack?"

"Could well be, though I doubt it. We generally don't step on each other's toes like the CIA does at times." Jack Muscone said, enjoying the opportunity to take a dig at the clandestine service.

"By the way," he continued, "when the FBI took custody of Santa Claus, Skinny Beard and Gruff, they turned them over to the Federal Marshals soon afterwards. That speaks of Witness Protection. All three vanished, but then I got an interesting little tidbit that the Marshals had given Santa Claus and Skinny Beard to someone else's custody, and had lost track of Gruff."

"Santa Claus, a.k.a. Keeler, is a 'wet boy' with the CIA, I'm as sure of that as I can reasonably be." I said. A 'wet boy' was an assassin, as everyone in the room knew.

"Gruff probably went back to the organization that he's been a part of for a while, which I don't think is part of this case at all." I continued. "That leaves Skinny Beard."

"What do you think happened to him?" the Chief asked.

"He was part of those drug projects that Dr. Heinz and my wife had been working on." I said. "Ned was part of that group, too... and went rogue. I suspect Skinny Beard went rogue, too; perhaps with Ned, perhaps not. But unless he got away from them, I suspect a sinister result for Skinny Beard."

"Okay, it's getting late, Crowbar, and my dinner is still in the food warmer at home." said the Chief. "So who was supposed to receive the syringes from Bounel?"

"Well," I said, "since the pickup was not made, it suggests that something happened to the 'jackrabbit', the person who was supposed to make the pickup.

((Dear Readers, you may wish to pause here and try to determine who the intended recipient of the syringes was, and why the pickup didn't happen. Continue reading for the answer.))

"You think the intended recipient was killed?" Jack asked.

"Yes, I do. And on that Friday night, two persons were murdered, and the third was held up for a while, then shot himself just after we made the Bounel raid."

"Jack Burke and the Arruzios..." mused the Chief. "So it was one of them?"

"I think it very likely." I said. "And the reason I think so traces back to some other things that happened recently--"

"The Arruzios?" Jack Muscone interrupted, flabbergasted, finally finding his voice. "You have got to be kidding, here." said Muscone. "Wasn't that just a domestic situation? Do you really think they were involved in all this?"

"Well, let me tell you the things you couldn't possibly know, Jack." I replied. "For one thing, when we recently solved the 'Swap' cases, two of my officers interviewed one Mr. Ward, of the Ward Harvester company. They found Ward to be full of hatred for me, particularly over the case of the 'Murdered Lovers'...he even told my officers that Marie Ward Arruzio was his sister."

"Oh. Ohhhhhhhhh..." said Jack Muscone, beginning to understand.

"Yep." I said. "He made an enormously huge mistake there, telling us that. We also know that Ward was interested in something at Tim Olivet's company, and now we have a possible link, through his sister, of wanting to get to these drugs from Dr. Heinz's labs. Ward keeps showing up on my radar as a 'person of interest', and not just because his building exploded in my face."

I continued: "I suspect that Ward is very upset with me not so much because his sister died, but because my raid on Bounel screwed up his plans to obtain the drugs. His original courier was dead, and before he could set up another pickup, I was in there recovering Ikea's gun and I just happened upon the syringe vials... and took them.

"Good grief." Muscone said.

"Yep." I said, understanding. "All of this, from the murder of his sister to the raid, was purely coincidental, but it all hit Ward like a punch in the gut. It was extraordinarily bad luck for Ward, but it does explain more rationally why he would hate my guts."

"So which one was it? The courier. Jack Burke?" asked the Chief, totally absorbed, having completely forgotten about his waiting supper.

"Well, we can make cases for and against any of the three." I said. "Let's take Joe Arruzio first. On the 'pro' side is that he was a University Regent and likely had some knowledge of the black ops research going on in Dr. Heinz's laboratories. He also had made drug deals in the past, and he needed money. On the 'con' side is that it doesn't fit his modus operandi very well. Also, when he left Dr. Wellman's house, he went back to the City instead of trying to make the pickup of the drugs.

"If you put yourself in his place and consider his actions, you'd see that if he were the guy, he likely would've gone to make that pickup no matter what, especially before we realized he'd left the Wellmans' home. And of course, if he'd made the pickup, the drugs would've been gone long before I got there.

"Last, but certainly not least: I doubt he would've murdered his wife and her lover at that particular time if he knew he had that drug pickup to make. Wow, think of the problems he would've been creating for himself..." I shook my head. "No, I ruled out Joe pretty quickly."

"Now, we can look at Marie Arruzio and Jack Burke. Marie was going to divorce her husband and may have wanted a bit more money. Though she was loaded, the money was in trust and only came to her in relatively small amounts at a time; she spent some of her husband's money and needed that income to be replaced.

"Also, she was Ward's sister, and he might have offered her money to make the simple pickup and get the vials to him. It is not clear to me if Marie and her brother were on good terms or not, but it hardly mattered when she came over all dead. On the 'con' side for Marie is that she was a very well-known, attractive and noticeable woman and would very likely be observed and remembered going into a University dorm for any reason.

"That leaves Jack Burke. On the 'pro' side would be that he was constantly in need of money. The word 'jackrabbit' would make one think of Jack Burke, n'est pas? And he may have been the courier for Marie; she would have him pick up the stuff, she'd pay him some extra cash, then she'd get the vials to her brother. She'd also be in his power, and that might have led to something wet happening to Jack Burke at a later point in time.

"On the 'con' side for Jack is that he never tried to acquire a lot of money. He could've gone home to his parents, they had cash. And Jack is the kind of guy who would've figured out something was going on and done something dumb, like take those vials for himself or even take the sack of money and disappear without making the pickup. Jack was a most untrustworthy servant for an errand of this nature. And there's another reason, related to his past, that makes me think he wouldn't go anywhere near those drugs nor that research operation. In any case--"

"Are you talking about that rape accusation against him?" Britt Maxwell asked. She did not like rapists.

"Not directly, Britt, though that past situation definitely affected Burke for the rest of his life." I said, not wanting to discuss that particular subject. "I think he had some fears of some people that kept him lying low all those years, but that's beyond the scope of this, in my opinion. And for all those reasons, I think Marie Ward Arruzio was the 'jackrabbit', and that her brother would've been the 'bunny hole' that those drugs would've disappeared into."

"Excuse me." Jack said, getting out his cell phone. "I need to make sure the stake is arranged for you to be burned at tonight. This is ridiculous how you're figuring this out." He was teasing me, of course... I think.

"So who tried to ambush you in Nextdoor County today?" the Chief asked.

"The same people that wanted the drugs, that put pressure on an SBI agent to get them, and then wanted the information out of Bounel." I said.

"Criminals, then, right?" Britt said. "Surely the CIA is not going to murder police officers just to get at Bounel?"

"You think that?" I said, skepticism and sarcasm dripping from my voice. "That makes one of us." Britt looked absolutely shocked, and I could tell that another thought had struck her.

Part 21 - A Matter of Evidence

At 2:00am early the next Saturday morning, I received a phone call from the Duty Sergeant to come down to Headquarters quickly. I did so and was directed to the secure basement area.

"He's in the Drug Evidence Room. The Chief is on his way in." Patrolman Morton said, leading me into that very chamber. Inside were the Evidence Room Supervisor, wearing his gray baseball cap, Daniel Allgood of Internal Affairs, Patrolman Rudistan, and Detective Teresa Croyle.