Dead of Winter

CHAPTER 34

Louis scanned the shelves beyond the grating. Somewhere in the evidence room was the throw-down but there was no way he was going to get it without Dale’s key.

He turned to face the chaos of the station. Ringing phones, anxious radio voices, the muted bark of dogs outside. Cords snaking over the floors, maps hanging on the walls. Suits, lots of suits. The smell of sweat, cigarettes and burnt coffee.

It was worse outside, the lot filled with state sedans and television vans, two from Detroit and one from Chicago. That morning, Louis had to fight his way through the knot of shivering reporters and cameramen. No one bothered to stick a mike in his face; they knew every Loon Lake cop was under a gag order. And they were waiting for Steele anyway.

Louis surveyed the room. No sign of him.

“Louis,” Edna called out.

He looked over to see her holding out the phone. “It’s the Lansing State Journal. She wants a quote.”

As Louis pointed to one of Steele’s aids, he saw Dale hurry in the front door. He was wearing his police parka, his face red from the cold. He spotted Louis as he pushed through the crowd to the locker room and quickly looked away. But not before Louis saw the distress in his eyes. The kid never even frowned; something was up. Louis followed him.

Dale was sitting on a bench, still in his coat, head in his hands.

“Dale?”

His head jerked up. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“What’s wrong?” Louis asked.

Dale ran a shaky hand over his face. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop him.”

“Who?”

When Dale didn’t answer, Louis sat down next to him. “Who?” he pressed.

“Jess,” Dale said. “Jess…he…I didn’t know how to stop him.”

Louis felt his stomach knot. “What happened? Where’s Jesse?”

“I don’t know where he is,” Dale said. “We went to Red Oak. The chief sent us, told us to do whatever we had to do to make Cole talk.” Dale drew in a breath. “I knew Jess would get rough, but I didn’t think — ”

“What did he do?”

“I don’t know. It happened so fast!”

“Dale, calm down, tell me.”

“Jesse slammed him around a little, you know, knocked him out of the chair. Cole just got madder and madder and started yelling at Jess, telling him he was next, that he was going to die special.”

“What else? What else happened?”

“Jesse kept shouting at him to tell us where his old man was, and Cole starting calling him stupid and…and…”

Louis heard a door open. Voices bounced off the tile. He leaned closer.

“Jess lost it, Louis,” Dale whispered. “He took his baton and swung it at Cole’s head like it was a baseball. Caught him in the mouth, I think.” Dale wiped his sweating face with his sleeve. “I saw blood, Cole spit out blood, and he fell over. Jess hit him in the ribs and his balls.” Dale took a breath. “I couldn’t watch after that.”

“What happened then?” Louis asked.

Dale looked at him. “He stopped. He just stopped and looked at me, like, with this look on his face, like, why the hell didn’t I stop him? Jesus, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t stop him!”

Louis pulled back. “Where is he?” he asked tightly.

Dale shook his head. “I don’t know. We got out of there quick. Cole was laying there, holding his balls. We got out of there quick.”

Dale’s voice caught and he looked as though he was going to cry. Louis went to the sink, wet some paper towels and brought them back.

Dale covered his face with the towels then looked up at Louis. “I should’ve done something,” he said.

“Jesse’s sick, Dale.”

“It’s my fault, I — ”

Louis cut him off. “It’s not your fault, damn it. It’s Gibralter’s fault.”

“The chief didn’t say to — ”

“He sent you and Jesse out there knowing exactly what would happen,” Louis said. “He knew what Jesse would do and he knew you couldn’t stop him.”

Dale was staring at him. Louis began to pace, shaking his head. “Chess,” he said. “It’s a fucking chess game to him and he used you and Jesse.”

The locker room door banged open again, letting in the voices and telephones. Two cops eyed Louis and Dale then moved to a different part of the locker room.

“I’m sweating like a pig,” Dale said softly, peeling off his parka. His uniform was pitted with stains and he rose, taking off his shirt.

“You going to be all right?” Louis asked.

Dale nodded, pulling a knit shirt from his locker and putting it on.

“Louis?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.” Dale changed into jeans and picked up his coat. “Well, I better get home.”

“Dale, hold on a minute.”

Louis waited until the voices at the other bank of lockers died and the door slammed shut again.

“I need a favor,” Louis said. “I need to get in the evidence room.”

“What for?” Dale asked.

“Can you just trust me on this one?”

Dale reached into his pocket and handed Louis the keys. “It’s the small silver one with the red mark.”

“Thanks,” Louis said. “Dale, there will probably be some fallout from this Cole thing. You know that, don’t you?”

Dale nodded.

“Just tell the truth. You’ll be okay.” Louis put a hand on Dale’s shoulder. “And stay away from Jesse.”

Dale nodded again.

Louis went back out to the office, making his way through the crowd to his desk. He drew up short. There were two German shepherds sitting obediently by the desk. They eyed Louis as he carefully reached between them to open a drawer and pull out a folder. Stepping back, he headed to the evidence room.

Unlocking the padlock, he slipped inside. He yanked on the light and turned to look at Edna. She was deep into her book and Milanos.

He scanned the shelves, looking for the evidence from the raid, finally spotting the box marked LACEY, JOHNNY/ANGELA. He hoisted it down to the floor and using a pair of nail clippers, cut the sealing tape.

The evidence log was on top. Putting on his glasses, he scanned it for the gun. It was listed, a 9-mm Beretta, but there was no serial number. Setting the log aside, he turned to the box’s contents. There was a sweatshirt, a brown-stained bullet hole visible through the plastic bag. He came across a small baggie holding a shotgun shell and a misshapen bullet that he guessed was the one taken from Angela’s chest. Finally, his hand touched something hard and he pulled out the Beretta.

He held the plastic tight, down against the barrel. Damn, the serial number had been filed off. Without it, there was no way to prove it was a throw-down. A lab might be able to raise the number but he knew that only Steele could make that happen now.

Louis poked his head outside the grating and scanned the room. It had thinned out some, the search called off because of darkness.

“Hey,” Louis called out to one of Steele’s aides. “Steele around?”

The man looked over. “Nope.”

“Where is he?”

The man glanced at his watch. “Probably at about 35,000 feet right now.”

“What?”

“He’s the keynote speaker at some banquet in Detroit. Starts at nine. He said not to interrupt him unless Lacey is either in custody or dead.”

Louis rubbed his forehead. His eyes drifted to the sweatshirt. He pulled it from the plastic bag, laying it across the open box, revealing the hole and brown stain just below the MACKINAC ISLAND lettering.

From the folder he had brought in, he pulled out the autopsy photo of Angela’s chest. The bullet hole was dead center in her chest but the one on the sweatshirt was lower. He moved the sleeve up, as if her arm had been raised over her head, and the hole in the sweatshirt fell into place, center of the chest.

He stared at the sweatshirt, his anger rising. How the hell had they expected to get away with this? And where had they gotten the throw-down in the first place? They wouldn’t use one of their own weapons and there was no easy black market in a location like this. The most logical answer was that the gun had come from another evidence bag that no one had reason to ever open again.

He started moving bags and boxes, searching randomly, trying to remember anything from the case files he and Jesse had gone through. His eyes scanned every name and number but nothing registered. Then he stopped, his eyes locked on a brown bag tucked far back on a top shelf.

HAMMERSMITH #75-88961. The dead motorcycle guy who had been arrested in Loon Lake eight years ago for drawing a weapon.

He pulled down the bag, slipped his finger under the dried, cracked tape and reached in. His fingers hit something sharp and he withdrew them. Cursing, he pulled out a broken beer bottle, set it aside and carefully patted down the bag. Nothing. No gun. It should have been there and it wasn’t.

He pulled the evidence log out of the bag. Hammersmith’s gun was listed, a 9-mm Beretta, serial number SYL61829.

SYL61829…

It was the number in Pryce’s notebook, the number he had written on the back of the legal pad.

Louis felt his skin grow cold. Pryce knew. He knew that Hammersmith’s Beretta had been used in the raid.

Pryce knew about what happened at the cabin and it explained a lot of things. It explained Pryce’s secrecy and his sudden desire to get out of Loon Lake. But why hadn’t he done anything with the information?

“Louis?”

He spun around.

It was Edna. She was standing just outside the grating. “The chief just called for you.”

“What did he want?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He just asked if you were still here.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Just wanted to know if Mr. Steele was here too.”

Edna gazed at him over the top of her cats-eye glasses. For several seconds she just looked at him as she munched on a cookie. “Want one?” she asked suddenly, holding out the bag.

Louis shook his head. She withdrew the bag, her eyes drifting down to the sweatshirt draped across the evidence box and then back up to Louis. She trudged back to the dispatch desk, shooting Louis a final look over her shoulder.

Louis let out a long breath. Had she told Gibralter he was in the evidence room? Had someone else seen him? No, no, he was getting paranoid. No one in the department could possibly know what he was doing. But why the hell was Gibralter checking up on him? Christ, maybe he was just trying to find out if he was with Zoe.

He was clammy with sweat and the small, warm room seemed to close in around him. It hit him in that instant, the gravity of what he was doing. He wasn’t just breaking the rules; he was breaking the code among cops. He was turning against his own.

Gens una sumus. “We are one family.”

Had Pryce had the same doubts? Had he come to the same choice? Is that why he hadn’t acted on what he knew? Had he simply decided to turn his back and get out? But there was no way to know what Pryce’s plan had been because it was cut short by Lacey.

Louis put the beer bottle shard back in the Hammersmith evidence bag. He hesitated then folded the log and slipped it in his pocket. Refolding Angela’s sweatshirt, he put it back in its evidence box but stuck that log in his pocket, too.

He picked up the plastic-wrapped Beretta, turning it over in his hands. With a look back at Edna, he turned his back and slipped the gun in his belt under his shirt. After putting the raid box back in its place on the shelf he left the evidence room, locking it behind him.

Edna didn’t look up at him. No one in the office did, as he went back to his desk. He stopped short.

The two German shepherds were staring at him. A trickle of sweat made its way down his back. Holding his breath, he reached between the two dogs for his jacket. Slowly, very slowly, he backed up, moving toward the door.