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Authors: Solomon Jones

Ride or Die (12 page)

BOOK: Ride or Die
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MacAleer followed Lynch's eyes to his crotch and zipped his pants.
Lynch moved closer to MacAleer and pointed toward the alley.
“Your partner walked right past that Buick over there. Any cop who's worth a damn checks out an empty car with its doors open on a street like this. But I get the feeling neither one of you ever checked out anything. What do you do, take a cut of the hookers' money to let them work the strip?”
Lynch looked down at a crusty white stain on MacAleer's uniform pants. “Or do they give you something else besides money?”
“Lieutenant, you've got it all wrong. I wouldn't—”
“Internal Affairs is gonna be giving you a call, Officer MacAleer. And then they're gonna be giving me a call. If I find out you were screwing some hooker while your partner was being shot, it won't just be your badge. You're going to jail.”
As a stunned MacAleer stumbled for a response, Lynch turned and walked over to the crime scene.
Passing by the yellow tape that stretched across the end of the alley, he knelt down and pulled back the sheet that covered the slain police officer's body. His brow furled as he examined the exit wound in back of the officer's head, and the gun that sat just a few inches from his outstretched hand.
There were two bullet casings nearby. They'd already been circled in chalk by officers from the Crime Scene Unit.
Putting the blanket back in place, Lynch moved further down the alley to take a look at the other dead man. But before he could do that, he saw something that piqued his curiosity. There was a smear of blood on the brick wall, and what appeared to be pieces of rolled-up skin. It looked like someone had scraped against the wall and gotten an abrasion.
“Come here for a minute, Sergeant,” he said, calling out to one of the Crime Scene officers.
The sergeant put away the tape measure he was using to
measure the space between bullet casings. “Yeah, Lieutenant, what's up?”
“Did anybody get this?” he asked, pointing to the skin and blood against the wall.
The sergeant moved in to get a closer look. “No, but I'll get somebody on it.”
“Thanks,” Lynch said, already looking down the alley at a freshly broken branch on one of the overgrown weeds.
As the sergeant waved one of his men over to bag the blood and skin sample, Lynch took a quick look at the other body. Then he walked past it to finger the broken branch.
He removed his gun from its holster and walked through the weeds, following the trail of trampled trash and leaning weeds until he came to the broken back door of the factory.
Something inside him pulled him toward that door. He walked inside, and when he heard the muffled grunts from across the factory floor, he knew that his hunch was right.
The naked prostitutes were huddled in the corner with their bonds tied tightly around their hands, feet, and mouths. They looked up at him with eyes stretched wide as he approached them through the dim light.
He reached out and removed the strip of cloth around the tall one's mouth.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
“It was a guy and a girl,” she said. “He had dreadlocks and a gun.”
Lynch bent down to untie the rest of her makeshift bonds as the sergeant from the Crime Scene Unit walked in through the broken factory door.
“What about the girl?” Lynch asked, reaching over to untie the shorter one.
“It was hard to see. But she looked young.”
“Did it look like he was forcing her to do anything?”
The shorter one rubbed her wrists when he undid her bonds. “He ain't force her to do shit,” she said bitterly. “She was with him 'cause she wanted to be.”
“It must've been Keisha Anderson,” the sergeant said as he walked up and stood behind Lynch.
“Maybe not,” Lynch said hopefully.
“There's no maybe about it,” the sergeant said, handing a plastic bag to Lynch.
Lynch looked inside and saw a photograph encased in plastic, with a string attached to it so that it could be worn like a necklace.
“That was in the Buick that was parked by the alley,” the sergeant said. “It's her work ID from Strawbridge's. It must've fallen out of her pocket when she got out of the car.”
Frank and
Marquita, dressed in the jeans and hoodies that Frank's men had provided, were safely hidden behind the tinted windows of a Mazda MPV.
They'd been sitting there, in a parking space on Market Street near Fifteenth, for the better part of a half-hour.
Marquita didn't know why they were sitting there, in the shadow of City Hall. She only knew that her dream of making love to Frank Nichols had rapidly disintegrated into a nightmare.
She'd gone from savoring his passion to tasting his wrath. And now, rather than lying down with him in pleasure, she was sitting up with him in pain, and reflecting on how it had come to this.
She remembered the way Frank had looked at her when her mother introduced them over a year ago. It had intrigued her. But when she went back to her college dormitory in upstate Pennsylvania, she forgot all about it.
Two days later, when she returned to the dorms from class, her room was filled with roses. The card contained two words: “Look outside.”
When she did, she saw Frank Nichols, standing next to a black Mercedes, beckoning for her to come down. She did, and that was the beginning of the end.
For months Frank played the patient suitor, never pushing her to do anything she didn't want to. And as her feelings for him developed, the fact that he was her mother's man became less significant.
As time wore on, their secret meetings grew increasingly sexual. Marquita knew that she would eventually relinquish her virginity to him. What she didn't know was that in doing so, she could end up giving up her life as well.
Marquita glanced over at Frank. Now, instead of holding her body, he was holding a gun. And in between his frequent glances out the van's windows and mirrors, he kept looking at his cell phone, as if he could will it to ring.
He hadn't told her who he was waiting for, but she knew in her heart that it was her mother. She also knew that whatever Nola had, it was something that Frank wanted very badly.
She shook her head and sighed at her own stupidity. After all the time she'd spent wanting Frank Nichols, the only thing she wanted now was to escape from him.
Looking out the tinted windows at the throngs of people passing outside on the city's busiest streets, she contemplated screaming or running away. Then she thought better of it, knowing that Frank wouldn't hesitate to use the gun.
But while the gun could control her movements, it couldn't control her heart. And in her heart, she hated him for the way he'd abused her body and her mind.
The question now was, what could she do about it?
“Frank,” she said softly. “Can I ask you something?”
He turned his intense stare on her, and waited for her to speak.
“Why don't you just turn yourself in? I mean, you couldn't have done what they think you did, because you were with me when it happened.”
Frank laughed. “That's the problem with you,” he said, smiling at her naivete. “All you see is what you see. You don't take the time to look underneath it, and see the truth.”
He became deadly serious. “Ain't none o' this about what I did or didn't do,” he said. “If it was, I would do what I always do—beat the case.”
“What's it about, then?” she asked, though she was afraid to know the answer.
Frank bored his eyes into her. “Same thing everything else in life is about—money.”
 
 
Lynch returned to police headquarters, knowing that it would take a while to sort through the evidence they'd found at the scene of the latest shooting.
He headed to the third floor carrying the file he was compiling. The murders of a commissioner and an officer in a single day had made the case the most high-profile he had ever handled.
Walking briskly through the halls and into the department's executive offices, Lynch smiled sadly as Commissioner Freeman's longtime secretary waved him inside.
He slowed down and looked at pictures from a career that spanned decades, trinkets from a life that had touched many, and an aura in the room that would not soon disappear.
After seeing and feeling all those things, Lynch walked into Freeman's old office with a forlorn expression and sat down opposite Acting Commissioner Dilsheimer.
“It's not easy, is it?” Dilsheimer said, leaning back in his chair as he watched the lieutenant.
“What's not easy, Commissioner?”
“Losing a man like Freeman,” Dilsheimer said, rounding the desk and sitting down next to Lynch.
“I worked with him for a lot of years, and I'm going to miss him,” he added in a melancholy voice. “But I know he understood the risks we take as cops. And I know he would've wanted us to do our jobs, no matter what.”
“I understand that, sir,” Lynch said while fingering the file in his lap.
“Good,” Dilsheimer said, settling back into his chair. “What've we got so far?”
“We're still running ballistics on the bullets from all the shootings, and waiting to see what that tells us,” Lynch said. “In terms of what we know, Reverend Anderson and Nichols apparently had a long-running feud that blew up when Keisha Anderson was assaulted.
“Now, we've got three bodies, including the old woman, the commissioner, and a Twenty-fifth District officer.”
“Do we have anything connecting Frank Nichols to any of this?” Dilsheimer asked.
“Other than the fact that he ran when we caught him at his girlfriend's house this morning? No.”
“What's this girlfriend's name?”
“Nola Langston.”
“Was she there when he escaped?”
“No, sir. Nichols was there with the girlfriend's daughter.
When he ran, she did, too. We haven't seen either one of them since. But we're still looking.”
Dilsheimer nodded. “And this Nola Langston, she's not talking, even after Nichols got caught with her daughter?”
“No, sir. She claims she's worried about her daughter, and that she doesn't know anything about Frank Nichols's business. But there's something fake about her. She knows more than what she's saying.”
“And where is Ms. Langston now?” Dilsheimer asked.
“I've got a tail on her,” Lynch said. “He checked in with me a few minutes ago and she's still in the Center City area. It's just a hunch, but I'm thinking she's gonna lead us to something we couldn't get just by asking.”
Dilsheimer looked thoughtful.
“Okay,” he said. “I'll trust your judgment on that for now. But if we don't get anything soon, I want you to bring her in for questioning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep me posted on Nichols, too,” the commissioner said, standing up to pace the floor. “If his son is the one who kidnapped Keisha Anderson, I'm willing to bet Frank Nichols is behind it.”
“There's just one problem with that, Commissioner,” Lynch said, his tone grave. “Keisha Anderson may not have been kidnapped.”
Dilsheimer was confused. “What are you talking about?”
“After that last shooting, Keisha and Jamal took some clothes from a couple of prostitutes, tied them up, and walked away together.”
“How do we know Nichols didn't force her to go with him?” Dilsheimer asked.
“We don't. But if you believe the hookers, Jamal didn't force Keisha to do anything. And I've gotta believe that by the time they left, there were enough cops around that if she wanted to call for help, she could've.”
“But why would she go with him?” Dilsheimer asked, his tone dubious.
“I don't know,” Lynch said with a weary sigh. “But if I were a betting man, Commissioner, I'd say this thing is probably a little more complicated than it looks.”
 
 
Ishmael ran the razor across his scalp, dipped it into the water-filled basin, and swiped it over his head again. Then he scooped out a handful of water, splashed it against his face, and looked at his reflection.
He didn't recognize the bald man who stared back at him from Aunt Annie's bathroom mirror. His smooth face and head gave him an almost angelic look that he found amusing.
Reaching up toward the door, he dressed quickly in the suit that had been there, at the house, since the day he'd come there from the halfway house two years before.
After tightening the knot on his red tie, he donned reading glasses and looked into the mirror again. The transformation was unbelievable. He looked like more like a preacher than a killer. And that would serve him well.
He knew that he wouldn't get many more opportunities to do what his lover had asked him to do. And he knew that she would leave him if he didn't accomplish the mission.
The thought of living without her was painful enough. But nothing could be worse than disappointing her, and watching tears stain her beautiful face.
He'd seen her cry only once. And that was when she'd told him of all the things she'd endured at the hands of her tormentor.
She told him of rapes and beatings, humiliation and torture. She recounted the time he'd branded her like an animal with a hot poker, then bound her and held her captive for days on end. And then she told him that he'd threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone.
The moment she shared that with him, the thought of her death flashed before his eyes. The sight of it, even in his imagination, was unbearable. So he offered to kill him for her.
At first she told him that he couldn't, that he shouldn't. But he would hear none of it. The man who'd done these things would have to pay with his life. And Ishmael would be the one to take it from him.
Picking up the briefcase that carried his pistol, he went down the steps and into the garage.
He walked past the motorcycle, took a set of keys from the wall, and got behind the wheel of the old Chrysler.
The plan she'd given him was perfect, he thought as he pulled out into the bright sunshine. But now it would have to be altered.
 
 
Nola Langston watched the gray Mercury pass by her as she walked on Walnut Street. It turned onto Eighteenth and parked illegally, in a handicapped space.
A minute later, as she traversed Rittenhouse Square's high-end retail and restaurant district, stopping occasionally to look in store windows, she saw the car's occupant—the curly-haired detective she'd seen at her house—trailing her on foot.
Nola knew that she was being followed. And she knew that she had to elude him if she was going to do what she'd planned.
Walking into the jewelry store on the corner of Fifteenth and Walnut, she browsed for a few minutes before trying on a diamond necklace. Bending down at the small mirror on the counter, she looked over her shoulder and saw the detective waiting across the street, in the doorway of the cigar store.
Nola took the necklace off and handed it to the salesman. “I'd like to put this on my American Express card and have it delivered to the usual address,” she told him.
“No problem, Ms. Langston.”
Nola wandered around the store while the salesman ran the card. Then she nodded to the guard, who buzzed her out.
She left the store and walked leisurely toward Broad Street. From the corner of her eye she could see the cop across the street, following her.
She crossed to the other side so she could be closer to him. As she did so, the salesman came running out of the store.
“Ms. Langston!” he shouted. “You forgot to sign your receipt!”
Nola screamed and pointed at the plainclothes detective. “He's got my purse!”
The guard from the jewelry store ran outside, drawing his weapon and aiming at the cop. The cop pulled his as well.
“Police!” he shouted. “Put it down!”
“I don't see a badge!” the guard yelled back. “You put yours down!”
Two women screamed when they saw the guns, and people on the crowded street began to panic. Shoppers dived for cover. A bus was rear-ended by a car. Commuters pushed against one another in an effort to get out of the way.
And Nola Langston ran as fast as she could toward Broad and Walnut. There she disappeared down the subway steps and
melted into the network of walkways that ran beneath the city's center.
As she walked north in the passage underneath Broad Street, she looked behind her to make sure she hadn't been followed, and moved quickly until she was beneath City Hall.
She walked in the open passages under the courtyard, past the manmade waterfalls, and crossed into the tunnels that led to Market Street. By the time she emerged from the stairway at Thirteenth and Market, she knew that she'd lost the tail.
BOOK: Ride or Die
2.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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