The Snow Angel (18 page)

That notion revolted Bell.

But, then he reflected on his own drinking history. Who was he to judge? Booze was the granddaddy of all drugs. He was blessed that Vera had stood by him, with the help of a loyal and steadfast support group. Without that woman, God only knew where he would be now.

On the television, Mosely continued talking about the Childress investigation. There were no leads on the suspects, he said, despite round-the-clock efforts of more than a hundred police officers and FBI agents. A businessmen's group had raised a $25,000 reward.

The announcer then said Darryl's grieving parents were too distraught to appear on camera. But “Morning in the City” had its own “exclusive”:

With that, they played the video that Stephen Childress had taped for the searching police, while the boy was still alive. They played the whole thing, unedited, the parents' anguish on display for the whole world to see.

“We…We just wanted you to know a little about the kind of boy Darryl is, and why we miss him so much,” the father was saying again.

Bell was sickened.
He made that tape for us, and now these maggots are using itforfucking ratings!
He muted the sound.
The vultures can't get to the parents, so this whore Mosely gives them the fucking tape!

“Daddy?”

Startled, Bell turned around. There, in her pajamas, stood his daughter. “Cassie, what are you doing there?”

“I've been standing here. You didn't hear me.”

Bell took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. He beckoned for her to come to him. She crawled up in his lap. “How much of this did you see?” he asked gently.

“Did something bad happen to that little boy?”

“You heard about it?”

“Daddy, what happened to him?” She was near tears.

Bell closed his eyes tight, wishing this weren't happening. He bit his lip.
I can't lie. If I could protect her by lying, I would. It's right there on TV.
“They
killed him, sweetheart.”

Cassie just stared at the television, not comprehending. “Why? Why did they do that? Why would someone kill him?”

“I don't know yet, Cassie, but we're going to find out.” He stroked her hair. “There
are
bad people in this world, baby. It's why I'm a policeman.”

“Are you going to catch the bad men?”

“Yes, baby. We're going to catch them. But we don't know how long it'll take.”

Cassie put her arms around his massive neck and held on tight. “Please hurry. I don't want them to hurt Ikey.”

Bell held his daughter, rocking her, hoping she couldn't see the fury on his face.

Ralph Kane did not read a newspaper or look at television this morning. Nor did he shave. He did not take a drink, smoke any weed, or plan to kill himself. He had only a minor hangover. That was remarkable, considering yesterday's excesses. He resolved not to drink at all today. He wanted a clear head for the business at hand.

Instead, he sat at the only table in his room, cleaning and oiling his Beretta. He prayed to a God he didn't believe in:
Let me get these bastards. Let me be the one.

His cell phone rang. The readout said it was a private number. “Kane,” he answered.

“Morning, Ralphie, it's Eric Klemmer.”

“Don't call me Ralphie. What do you want?”

“Come see me. I have something. You know, that little memorial to your brother?”

Kane brightened. “Tell me now.”

“No. I need to see you face-to-face. Sort of to cement our little agreement.”

“How specific is this? It's a long drive.”

Klemmer laughed, the maniacal laugh of a true psychopath. “What's the matter, you think I'm setting you up or something? We have a deal, remember? You coming or not?”

“We're going to be busy today. I don't want to waste my time if this
is bullshit.”

“I'll meet you halfway. There's a survival store in Danville, just off the Interstate.”

“I know the place.”

“Be there at 8:30. I'll meet you in the parking lot.”

“Sure thing, Klemmer.”

“Eric. Call me Eric.”

“You know, if you don't mind, I'll call you Klemmer. You know, until we get to know each other better?”

Klemmer laughed. “Suit yourself,
Kane.
Too bad about the nigger kid.”

“I figured you'd be heartbroken.”

Kane hung up the phone and sucked in his gut.
Yeah, too bad.

Just be there, pukeface. And if you arne. wasting my precious time, I'm going to drop you in the river…

He finished the job on the Beretta, wiping off the excess oil. He reloaded it, strapped on his shoulder rig, grabbed his mackinaw and headed out to the Pontiac.

B
ell's Ford crept along in bumper-to-bumper expressway traffic. The sun had risen bright this morning. It looked as if the city might indeed enjoy a pleasant day for a change.

But Bell barely noticed the sun. He was brooding about Cassie's reaction to the murder. These monsters had done more than destroy a little boy and his family. They had damaged the innocence of his own daughter. And how many other children across this godforsaken city? He would gladly kill these savages up close and personal, the way he twice had done in Vietnam.

But the men I knifed in ‘Nam weren't savages. They were soldiers serving their country, just like me.

He remembered the surprising ease with which he had dispatched those soldiers, both on dark trails in the jungle. His training had kicked in; he simply pulled out his K-bar knife and killed them with no reservation, and certainly no hatred. Now, whenever Bell thought of those men, he
prayed for their souls.

But Darryl's killers—these assholes are different.
Bell relished the possibility of being their executioner. He couldn't help himself. What would Scripture say about feelings like that?

As his car inched along, Bell momentarily regretted his return to Christianity. His religion robbed him of the opportunity for pure hatred. He could not legitimately entertain this desire for revenge. So he caught himself saying a perverse, involuntary prayer:
Lord, if vengeance is yours, let me be the instrument of it.

Bell started to light a cigarette but again fought against it. How many times had Cassie and Ikey challenged his smoking? How much had it hurt Vera?

For the last couple of days, his wife had pretended not to notice the smoke on his breath. Bell knew she was pretending. She loved him too much to badger him while he was working on such a heinous case. But he knew how much it worried her.

In addition to the rage he felt toward Darryl's killers, he now grew angry at himself for hurting his family. In a sudden burst of commitment, he rolled down the window and flung the cigarette pack out onto the expressway. The moment he rolled the window back up, a feeling of relief came over him. It was as if something had been lifted from his soul.

He recalled a similar sensation the day he'd finally surrendered his drinking. It was over. That was all there was to it. It was over and done with. The desire to drink was just
gone.
That had been some kind of divine intervention, he believed, a manifestation of grace.
So, is this how it happens with cigarettes, too? Will it be like that again, with this addiction?

Bell vowed to get back to his meetings. His sobriety was too important to jeopardize. And, more than anyone he knew, Isaiah Bell needed to witness the redemption of others to sustain the hope that it could happen to him.

Flashing lights half a mile ahead suggested the reason for the traffic jam. Bell switched the department radio from Tac Four over to the Motor frequency, but all he heard was irrelevant chatter. However, an “eye in the sky” helicopter hovered overhead, from the local all-news station. Bell switched back to Tac Four and turned on the AM radio.

The chopper reported that an eighteen-wheeler had plowed into a compact car at the Harbor Breeze interchange. The car was pinned under
the truck, the driver trapped inside. The fire department was performing an extrication. It was going to take awhile.

Bell was annoyed by the delay but corrected his thinking.
That poor bastard in the car…

The AM station cut away from the helicopter back to the studio. The police department was reporting more good news this morning. The crime rate continued to decline. Overnight statistics now showed a full thirty-six percent drop over the same period last year. Christmas crime had not been this low since 1965.

To what did the police attribute the drop? “We believe it's due to the added police presence throughout the city, in the wake of the horrible Childress case,” the squint Dunsmore was parroting. “This proves our contention that additional police resources do make a difference in public safety. That's why Chief Mosely is asking the City Council for an increase in the department's budget next year.”

Oh, bullshit…

The department radio beeped twice. “CP to Unit 2742. Come up on Tac Four for the command post.”

Bell picked up the mike. “Twenty-seven forty-two, go.”

“Call the CP on a land line, code two.”

“Roger.” He opened his cell phone. Roberta Easterly answered personally. “Inspector, this is Ike Bell. What's up?”

“Do you know a Tyrone Jones?”

“Yeah. By a different name.”

“He wants a meet with you, right away.”

Startled, Bell hesitated. “He does? Where?”

“The Pizza King at Fremont and 127th, in an hour.”

Bell thought for a moment.
Is this a setup? And why is that asshole Malik using his slave name again?

Easterly noted the slow reaction. “Is there a problem?” she asked. “Do you need backup?”

“No, I'll handle it.”

“All right. Call me as soon as you're done.”

Bell hung up, nervous about the call. What the hell does this asshole want? Maybe he should have asked for backup. But he didn't want to tie up another officer. At the same time, he was grateful for Bobbie Easterly's concern for his safety.
Now that woman, she's a cop.

E
asterly was indeed worried about Bell's safety. She returned to her office and asked Jablonski to run a discreet computer search of all suspects named Tyrone Jones. While she waited, she reviewed the Homicide file on Darryl Childress. Now the case belonged to her, no question about it. The FBI was out of this caper.

The file was thin, mostly duplicates of interviews conducted when the crime was still a kidnapping. The lab had found nothing of evidentiary value. The morgue reported only that the wound was a small caliber—a .22, mostly likely, or possibly a .38—and that it was “through-and-through.” No slug had been found. Darryl had been killed somewhere else and dumped in that alley.

Still, reading the file gave Easterly an odd sense of relief. She had spent five years in Homicide as a young detective. There was something about the clinical nature of a murder file that distanced the investigator emotionally from the victim. A killing thus mutated from an atrocity to be deplored into a puzzle to be solved.

Easterly began sifting through McEwan's notes on the tips coming in. Already five dozen people had called the hot line. Several were the usual head cases—the Elvis sighters and conspiracy theorists—and a couple were clearly just trying to grab the reward. Many more tips had come from well-meaning citizens who thought they might have seen something. The latter would have to be checked out, of course, but none looked promising. This was shaping up to be a tough one.

The phone rang, the Seventh Precinct watch commander. A stolen gray Chevrolet Malibu had been set afire near the railroad yards. It fit the description of the kidnap vehicle. But arson investigators called it a total loss, with any evidence inside destroyed. The fire had been a hot one, fueled by an accelerant, most likely gasoline.

Damn it,
Easterly thought,
why can't we catch a break?
She told the watch commander to impound the Chevrolet. She'd have the crime lab search it again, such as it was.

After fifteen minutes Stan Jablonski returned with a hard copy of the computer run. Past and present, there were sixteen known felons named Tyrone Jones in the metro area. One name leaped out. A hardcore drug-dealing Tyrone Jones had joined the Black Liberation Family in Statesville Prison. Now his alias was Malik Karanga.

”I wonder if this is the same guy Bell talked to,” she said. “If so, why is he calling now?”

“You want me to get Sammy Grimes down here?” Jablonski asked. “He should know Ike's customers.”

“Not necessarily. The BLF isn't a street gang. They would fall under OCI or Anti-Terrorism.”

“And those cloak-and-dagger types don't even talk to each other,” Jablonski said.