King City (25 page)

“One small act of decency,” Ted said.

“Or shame,” Charlotte said.

“But here’s the odd thing,” Wade said. “They all had traces of olive oil on their heads. The kind of oil you use when giving last rites.”

“Not me,” Ted said. “I preach God’s word, but I’m not a priest.”

“But you anointed them anyway,” Wade said, taking a step toward Ted, invading his personal space, “because there wouldn’t have been much point in killing them without making that last effort at their salvation.”

Charlotte turned and looked at Wade in astonishment.

Ted’s jaw tightened, as if he’d just been given a Botox injection in his cheeks, and he held the Bible to his chest.

“You’re accusing me of the worst imaginable sin,” Ted said.

“Yes, I am,” Wade said, and he’d been dreading it since he woke up that afternoon. “If you want to be forgiven for it, you’ll confess.”

“You aren’t a priest either,” Ted said.

Wade tried to stare him into doing the right thing, but Ted held his gaze.

Charlotte stepped up beside Wade and pointed to the men on the cots. “Everyone ignored you when you read from the Bible. Do you know why, Ted?”

“Because they are faithless and craven,” he said.

“Because you can’t save them, or anyone else, when you’ve deprived yourself of God’s grace,” Charlotte said. “You’re carrying a horrible sin. They can sense it. That’s why they don’t hear you; that’s why they don’t believe. Anything you do here is meaningless and ineffective without his forgiveness. You know it’s true.”

Ted’s shoulders sagged and he lowered his head in shame.

“Where’s the gun, Ted?” Wade asked softly.

Ted swallowed hard. “In my room in the back, under the mattress.”

Wade nodded to Charlotte, who went off to get the gun. He took out his handcuffs.

“You’re under arrest, Ted,” Wade said. “Put the Bible down and your hands behind your back.”

Ted set the Bible down on the chair. As Wade handcuffed him and read him his rights, Ted could see that he finally had the full attention of everyone in the room.

“She was right,” Ted said.

“Excuse me?” Wade said.

“May I minister to them for a few minutes?”

Wade saw everyone looking at them. “About what? The wages of sin?”

“I was thinking the blessed sanctity of forgiveness,” Ted said.

“Works for me,” Wade said and took a seat.

____

Wade let Ted preach for thirty minutes, his hands cuffed behind his back, to a rapt audience before taking him away.

During that time, Charlotte found the gun, as well as a vial of holy oil, in Ted’s room. But before collecting those two items and putting them in evidence bags, she took detailed photographs of the room and made an inventory of everything that was in it. She also searched for anything else that might tie Ted to the crime scenes.

They brought Ted back the station and in through the back door without any of the fanfare or notice that Gayle Burdett received when she was arrested. But Wade was certain that news of the arrest would spread quickly through Darwin Gardens and that, by morning, everyone there would know about it.

Wade locked Ted in the cell, and then he and Charlotte sat down to write up their reports, which they did mostly in silence. After an hour or so, Charlotte gave Wade a copy of her paperwork and stood behind him, waiting for his reaction.

“That was quite a speech you gave to Friar Ted,” he said.

“I knew all those years of Sunday school would come in handy someday.”

“I’m not sure he would have broken without the push you gave him.”

“He was already broken,” she said. “He just had to be reminded, that’s all.”

They stayed at the station the rest of the night. Wade took a can of paint outside and covered over the obscene graffiti on the plywood, although he knew it was a futile effort. He decided that he’d get a window company down to replace the glass before the end of the week, even if he had to do it by force.

While he was glad to have solved the killings, he wasn’t happy about the likely consequences. Mission Possible, without a passionate and devoted leader like Friar Ted, would probably close, putting a lot of homeless, hungry, and desperate people back on the streets.

And it would make it much more difficult for the next person who opened a shelter to establish credibility, much less trust, in the neighborhood.

The arrest of Friar Ted would just reinforce the rampant cynicism and distrust of institutions and authority that already existed in Darwin Gardens, especially toward anybody who came there professing a desire to do some good.

Including Wade.

At daybreak, he sent Charlotte downtown to book Ted into jail, and then he ambled over to the Pancake Galaxy when it opened to have some breakfast and a chance to flirt with Mandy.

She had a stack of hotcakes and a slice of pie waiting for him at the counter when he came in. Pete was at the register, puffing on a cigarette, his oxygen tank a few feet away.

“If I keep eating like this every day,” Wade said, “I’ll be the fattest cop in the department.”

“Live a little,” Mandy said. “You caught two murderers in twenty‐four hours. That’s some fancy police work, Columbo.”

He took a seat at the counter. “I have my moments.”

Mandy leaned close to him. “And not just in bed either.”

“Thanks for getting the word out for me that I was bringing in Glory’s killer.”

“I didn’t,” Mandy said and gestured to her father. “There’s your publicist.”

Wade glanced at Pete, who was holding his cigarette and coughing. Each stabbing cough was deep, hard, and cutting.

“I owe you one,” Wade said when Pete’s coughing subsided for a moment.

“You sure like to be noticed,” Pete said.

“I just want people here to know that I’m working for them.”

“You’re assuming they give a damn.”

“You’re right,” Wade said.

“Then you’re not half as smart as I thought you were,” he said, taking another puff on his cigarette and sparking a coughing jag even worse than the one before.

Wade looked at Mandy and saw the pain on her face. It was as if she felt each cough herself.

The bell above the door jangled and Charlotte came in, carrying a manila envelope. She seemed troubled as she took the stool beside Wade.

“Did everything go OK at central booking with Ted?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did you make sure that all the paperwork reflected where the arrest was made and which team of rookie police officers closed the case?”

“Absolutely.”

“So why are you looking so glum?”

She sighed. “When I was in the academy, they told us the story about those two officers who pursued a stolen car down here and drove right into an ambush.”

Pete snubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “They took more bullets than Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Our instructors ran us through a re‐creation of that situation as a training exercise at the academy,” she said.

“What did you learn?” Mandy asked.

“To stay the hell out of Darwin Gardens.”

“I guess you flunked,” Pete said.

“Things aren’t going to change for you overnight,” Wade said. “It’s going to take a lot more than one case, and certainly not this one, to impress someone in headquarters enough to transfer you out of here.”

“That’s not it,” she said sharply. “Give me a little credit.”

“OK, sorry,” he said. “So what is it?”

Charlotte slid the envelope over to him. “While I was downtown, I got the ballistics report on those guns you had me take down to the lab on my first day.”

Wade opened the envelope and began to read the report, but he need not have bothered, because Charlotte already had.

“Four of the guns were used in that ambush,” she said. “One of them was chrome plated. They ran the prints and came up with some names.”

“Timo was one of ’em,” Wade said.

“Timo Proudfoot,” Charlotte said.

“No wonder he only goes by his first name.”

“The others are Clay Touzee, Thomas Blackwater, and Willis Parsons.”

The names meant nothing to him, of course. He needed faces.

“They’re not going to let you take them without a fight,” Mandy said.

“Seems likely,” Wade said.

He finished his pancakes and moved on to the pie. As possible last meals go, Wade couldn’t have asked for a better one.

“This is insane,” Charlotte said, trying to keep up with Wade as he marched across the intersection back to the station.

“Arresting bad guys is what we do.”

“But we can wait,” she said. “This is big. The crime lab will surely notify the chief about what they’ve found. And he’ll see past whatever enmity he has toward you and send a tactical force down here to seek justice for those two dead officers.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Because you want to bring down Timo yourself.”

Wade stopped on the sidewalk and faced her. “Because it will be the equivalent of a military invasion. A lot of people who had nothing to do with that massacre will die on both sides.”

“It won’t be our fault,” she said.

“But it will ignite so much hatred that no one in King City will ever put a human face on Darwin Gardens again and it will make it impossible for a cop here to ever earn anyone’s trust.”

“And that matters to you?”

“This is my home,” he said.

“It wasn’t a week ago,” she said.

“It is now.” Wade turned and burst into the station so suddenly, and in such a hard‐charging manner, that he startled Billy, who was in the midst of opening a package of Oreos. Billy ripped the package wide open and the cookies went flying.

“What the hell?” Billy asked.

“Grab a shotgun and extra ammo,” Wade said to him, then pointed to Charlotte. “Get us pictures of the guys who match the fingerprints on those guns.”

“What are we doing?” Billy asked as he went to the gun locker and Charlotte went to the computer on her desk.

“We’re arresting Timo Proudfoot and the other assholes who gunned down those two rookies here a few years ago,” Wade said.

“Hot damn,” Billy said and tossed Wade a shotgun, which he caught with one hand. “I love the day shift.”

“Where do we find them?” Charlotte asked. The pages with photos of Timo Proudfoot, Clay Touzee, Thomas Blackwater, and Willis Parsons spit out of the printer behind her.

“We’ll start at Headlights, Duke’s strip club,” Wade said. He took several clips for his gun and a handful of shells and stuck them in his pockets. Billy did the same. “We’ll go in three cars. They won’t be expecting us, so that’s one advantage.”

Charlotte joined them at the gun locker, handed out the photographs, then took a shotgun for herself and some extra ammo.

Billy glanced at the pictures. “Four desperados, wanted dead or alive.”

He hadn’t seen them before, but Charlotte had, outside of Headlights the last time she was there. Wade glanced at the photos too, and recognized them all from his encounter on the street.

“What’s the plan?” Charlotte asked.

“I’ll take the front,” he said. “You two take the back.”

She nodded, pocketing her extra clips. “Are you sure you aren’t overthinking this?”

But her words bounced off Wade’s back. He was already heading out the door to the patrol cars.

____

Wade sped down Weaver Street, Billy and Charlotte following right behind him like they were in a parade.

He took out his cell phone, asked directory assistance for the number for Headlights, and then had the operator connect him at no additional charge.

A man answered. “Yeah?”

“How’s business this morning?”

“It’s nine thirty. How many people you know go to a tittie bar for breakfast?”

“So I’d have no trouble getting a table,” Wade said.

“What the fuck you want?”

“I’d like to speak to Timo, please,” Wade said. “Tell him it’s Tom Wade.”

The man set the phone down and called out for Timo. Weaver Street ended in a T intersection with Curtis Avenue. Headlights was on Curtis, facing Weaver. Wade could see it right in front of him.

“What do you want?” Timo asked.

“You there with your buddies, plotting mischief?”

“We’re taking turns with Brooke,” Timo said. “She’s on the floor. Her legs are spread and she’s begging us for more in every hole she’s got. Like she does for her daddy.”

Wade stepped on the gas. “I know you killed those two cops a few years back.”

“Then you know what I’m gonna do to you as soon as I’m done with her.”

“Are you going to surrender?” He steered the car so the front door of Headlights was in the center of his grill and closed in fast.

“Fuck you,” Timo said.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Wade drove through the door like a wrecking ball, taking down most of the front wall in an explosion of wood, plaster, and glass. His car plowed through tables and chairs and into the stage, snapping the strippers’ poles.

The bar was to his right. Wade got out of the car, his gun at his side.

Timo popped up from behind the bar with a shotgun, let out a furious wail, and simultaneously fired both barrels at Wade, but the car took the hit.