King City

Chapter twenty seven

The King City Police rolled into Darwin Gardens, but not in the numbers or with the force that would have accompanied a search for cop killers and aroused the widespread interest of the news media.

Outside the Alphabet Towers, a special weapons and tactical team formed a defensive perimeter around Timo’s Escalade, and a police chopper circled overhead, to ensure the safety of the authorities processing the crime scene. Another SWAT team did the same thing at Headlights, though they need not have bothered. The residents of Darwin Gardens, and those in Duke Fallon’s direct employ, remained inside and out of sight, doing nothing that might provoke the police.

There was no media presence because the public didn’t care about crime in Darwin Gardens and the department didn’t make it seem like anything more than business as usual. It wasn’t newsworthy or surprising that the police sent SWAT teams to protect the officers who were cleaning up after yet another murder in that hellhole. It was common sense.

Chief Reardon certainly wasn’t going to reveal that the shooters of the two rookie cops years ago had actually slipped through the massive, and bloody, police offensive in Darwin Gardens that immediately followed the ambush.

Or that it was Tom Wade, the man who’d exposed widespread corruption of the MCU, who’d finally solved the case. Or that Wade had done so mere hours after capturing a serial killer that the department didn’t even know existed.

But with Clay Touzee and Willis Parsons, two of the cop killers, in custody and Friar Ted confessing to multiple murders, Chief Reardon wouldn’t be able to keep things quiet for long.

Wade was certain that the chief spent his afternoon huddled with the district attorney, trying figure out how to spin the facts so that, when they quietly came out, they showed the department in the best possible light and downplayed, if not completely eliminated, the roles played by Wade and his two officers.

Not that Wade cared. He didn’t want the attention or need the vindication.

It was satisfaction enough for him that the chief, the police department, and the people of Darwin Gardens knew the truth of what had happened.

It wasn’t until that night, after all the forensic evidence had been gathered, after all the bodies had been taken away, and after all the reports had been filed, that Tom Wade, Charlotte Greene, and Billy Hagen finally got together again at the station without anyone else around.

They sat at their desks, facing one another, exhausted by it all. But Wade knew it had been especially stressful for Charlotte and Billy. They’d just been through their first gunfight, and one of them had gut shot a suspect, enduring his screams of agony until the paramedics took him away.

Wade didn’t know which one of his officers had fired the shot, and he couldn’t tell from the expressions on their faces. They both looked emotionally and physically wiped out.

Billy gestured to the bloodstained tear on Wade’s right pant leg. “Did you get hit?”

“Just a scratch,” he said, though it was one that had required a few stitches to close up, but he saw no reason to tell them that. “Are you both OK with how things went down today?”

“Hell no,” Charlotte said.

Wade glanced at Billy. “How about you?”

“I’m cool with it,” Billy said. “We took care of business.”

Wade nodded and looked back at Charlotte. “So what was your problem?”

“You,” she said.

“What did I do?”

“You drove through the fucking door.”

“It gave us the element of surprise,” he said.

“It certainly surprised me,” Billy said.

“That’s the problem, Billy,” she said. “ They should have been surprised, not us. We should have known exactly what our leader was going to do and been prepared for it. But he couldn’t tell us his plan because he was making it up as he went along.”

“I told you I’d take the front,” Wade said. “And I did.”

“But you didn’t tell us you were going to drive your car into the middle of the club and come out shooting,” Charlotte said.

“You can do all the planning you want, but it doesn’t mean shit once you are out there. You aren’t in control of everything. Situations change and you have to be flexible. You can’t rely on the plan to carry you through. So I plan very loosely.”

“You don’t plan at all,” she said. “And that put you and the two of us at greater risk than we needed to be.”

Wade looked over at Billy. “Do you feel the same way that she does?”

Billy shook his head. “I was fine with everything but the screaming.”

So now Wade knew who’d shot Clay Touzee.

“It’s always difficult to see someone suffering,” Wade said. “But know this-you shot him because he was shooting at you. You didn’t cause his pain. He brought it on himself.”

“I’m glad he was hurting,” Billy said.

“You were?”

“The bastard had it coming,” Billy said.

“So it was just the noise that got on your nerves?”

“I shot to kill and I missed,” Billy said. “All that screaming meant that the son of a bitch still had plenty of gas in him to keep shooting at me, or you, or Charlotte.”

“But he didn’t,” Charlotte said.

“Only because he dropped his gun when he got hit and it landed out of reach,” Billy said. “If he hadn’t, things might have turned out differently. I let you both down.”

“No, you didn’t,” Wade said. “Neither of you did. I know you both have my back and I’m proud to have you as my partners.”

“If that’s true,” Charlotte said, “then you shouldn’t have gone to the towers alone.”

“It was the only way,” Wade said.

“You mean it was the only way for you,” she said.

“You just had to blow up Timo’s ride,” Billy said.

Wade shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“What do you have against cars?” Billy asked.

“Nothing,” Wade replied.

“C’mon, Sarge, you’ve been trashing them, shooting them, and blowing them up since you got here,” Billy said. “Did a car run over your dog or something when you were a kid?”

“I’ve only blown up one car,” Wade said.

“And you smashed your own with a tire iron,” Charlotte said.

“He did?” Billy said.

“Right out there on the street. Pete told me,” Charlotte said. “There’s definitely some psychological issue at work here.”

“It will give you something to think about at home,” Wade said and stood up. “Get out of here, both of you. We’re done.”

“Technically, my shift hasn’t started yet,” Charlotte said.

“And mine isn’t over,” Billy said.

“We’re taking the night off,” Wade said.

“What if something comes up?” Charlotte said.

“Nothing will,” he said.

“Duke Fallon could come gunning for you,” Billy said.

“He might,” Wade said. “But not tonight.”

He looked past them to see Mandy coming in the front door, holding a stack of three pie cartons.

“Dad and I thought you guys could use something sweet after what you’ve been through today,” Mandy said. “There’s a pie here for each of you.”

Wade wondered what the fascination was with pies in Darwin Gardens. They seemed to be a big part of the local culture. Between Duke, Mandy, Pete, and Mrs. Copeland, pie did heavy duty as a panacea, a metaphor, a token of affection, and even a currency of sorts.

“Thank you,” Charlotte said and took a carton off the top. “That’s very kind.”

She headed off and Billy stepped up, taking the next carton off Mandy’s hands.

“I’ve heard that your apple pie is an aphrodisiac,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Mandy said. “I’ve never needed the assistance.”

“I’ll take every edge I can get,” Billy said, nodded his thanks to Mandy, and left.

That left Wade and Mandy alone with their pie. She held the carton out to him.

“What about you, big guy?” she asked. “Do you need some help in that department?”

Wade stepped past her, closed the door, and locked it. Then he came up behind her, cupped her breasts in his hands, and whispered his intentions in her ear, all the things he’d wanted to do to her the other morning. She dropped the carton on a desk and leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder.

“No,” she said, her voice husky in his ear. “You don’t need it.”

Tom Wade’s second week in Darwin Gardens was far less eventful than the first. He and his two officers made a few arrests for tagging, possession, and sale of narcotics, and for lewd, drunk, and disorderly conduct, but there were no robberies, drive?by shootings, rapes, murders, or other major felonies to deal with.

Wade figured it was because the people in Darwin Gardens were in a kind of shock, uncertain how to interpret everything that had happened, all that had changed, and what it meant for the future.

Although he knew that Timo was thrown off the building on Duke’s orders, Wade couldn’t prove that it wasn’t an accident or suicide.

But everyone knew the truth.

The widely held belief in Darwin Gardens-according to Mandy, anyway-was that the startling brutality of Timo’s execution was intended to terrorize the community, to remind everyone of Duke’s power and his wrath.

Duke also couldn’t risk a police invasion or for detectives to get their hands on someone who knew so much about his operation.

More important, Duke had to do something big to firmly assert his position and relevance in the new neighborhood order, one that now included Tom Wade, who had managed in a few short days to establish his own authority and even win a measure of respect.

The people knew what Wade had done for them. They knew it because they’d seen it. His actions told them the kind of man that he was, not just by how he enforced the law, but in the way that he lived.

It also didn’t hurt that he’d stood up to Duke Fallon and walked away alive.

The big, unanswered question now was if it was possible for Duke Fallon and Tom Wade to coexist in Darwin Gardens without forcing people to declare allegiance to one of them and sparking a street war.

Wade didn’t have the answer.

He could only do his job and hope that everything worked out.

So he took advantage of the relative quiet, putting Charlotte and Billy to work with him repairing and remodeling the station. The rookies groused about doing “home improvement” instead of policing, but Wade thought it was important labor. He wanted them to feel that the station belonged to them and he hoped that sense of belonging would extend to the street outside as well. While the interior of the station was improving, he still hadn’t been able to get a window company down to replace the glass, and he was losing his patience.

Between shifts, Wade got a lot of sleep, some of it beside Mandy, and always in his bed, not hers. He didn’t even know where she lived and hadn’t bothered to ask, not that Mandy seemed the slightest bit offended by his apparent lack of interest in her life. If anything, his simple acceptance of her as she was and for whatever she was willing to give only made him more attractive to her.

It was a good week, and it went by quickly. Before he knew it, Saturday had come along. He turned in his rented Explorer, picked up his Mustang, now minus all of the Bullitt crap, and headed out to New King City to spend the day with his daughter.