The two men sat in silence for several moments, smoking and thinking.
Finally, Crawford said, “Tower wants to put together a task force.”
“We should.”
“Investigations or Patrol?”
“Both,” Reott answered. “You run it. Tower will be lead investigator, but use patrol officers to flesh out your numbers.”
Crawford nodded, recognizing the wisdom in Reott’s decision. Using patrol officers kept the Patrol captain’s hand in the operation. Crawford’s boss, the Investigative captain, was generally considered second only to Lieutenant Hart in the dipshit category. The presence of patrol officers in the operation kept Reott involved. Between the two of them, they could fend off any goofy ideas Captain Dipshit came up with.
“We should get some information out to the public, too,” Reott said.
“Not about the task force?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. Just some general personal safety information.”
Crawford drew in a deep drag of the cigar. He let it out in a billowing blue cloud. “That’s probably way overdue. I imagine people are getting jumpy out there.”
“They are.” Reott took a large puff of his own cigar. “I met with a downtown business group over lunch today. They’re worried about their families and their female employees. And the Chief told me on his way out of the office that the Mayor called him twice today. Apparently, a large number of people are calling City Hall.”
“It’s the goddamn media,” Crawford said. “They go and call this freak The Rainy Day Rapist and all of the sudden everyone is scared.”
“You have a wife, right?”
Crawford paused in mid-puff. “You know I do.”
“You want her going out by herself right about now?”
Another puff. Then, “No.”
“There you go.”
“Fine,” Crawford said. “I see your point. But mine still stands. The media fans the flames.”
“Maybe. But we’ll get some personal safety information out there in the short term. Meanwhile, you fire up your task force. Get the Prosecutor’s Office on board, too.”
“You want me to let a lawyer get involved? Mike, you want us to catch this guy or just sue him?”
Reott waved his comment away. “Just get him involved. It’ll mostly be for show this early on. But when we catch the guy, having a prosecutor ready to step in will streamline the process. Might not be a bad idea to have him help Tower with any search warrants, too.”
Crawford sighed. “All right. You’re the boss.”
“Don’t forget it,” Reott said, but his voice was mild.
“How can I, what with you throwing your authority around all the time?”
“Captain’s Prerogative,” Reott said. “And here’s one more thing-I’m going to use Pam Lincoln at the newspaper for the personal safety stuff. If she’s game, I also want you to give her some background on the case. See if she wants to cover the task force from the inside.”
Crawford gave Reott a wide-eyed stare. “Well, why don’t we just send out a flyer to the guy? With the newspaper reporting every step we make-”
Reott leaned back and put his feet up on his desk with a weary sigh. “Try to keep up, huh?”
Crawford fell silent. He thought for a moment, drawing smoke and blowing it forcefully toward the open window. Then he said, “You think she’ll hold the story until we catch him?”
“Of course she will. It’s an exclusive.”
“I don’t know…” Crawford said, trailing off in a doubtful tone. “I think that might be going too far.”
“She’s an honest woman,” Reott told him.
“She’s also a reporter,” Crawford replied. “A reporter with bosses. And from what I’ve seen down at the River City Herald over the past twenty-some years, they’ve got such a thing down there called Editor’s Prerogative.”
It was Reott’s turn to fall silent. He smoked and thought.
Crawford waited.
Finally, Reott sighed and shrugged. “She’s never screwed us over yet. I should at least keep her updated ahead of the rest of the crowd.”
“Okay,” Crawford said. “That’s fair, I suppose. But I don’t know how long she’ll be able to hold out if we don’t nail this guy.”
“Then I guess your task force better get the job done.”
Crawford gave Reott a mock salute with his cigar hand. “Yes, sir.”
Graveyard Shift
2334 hours
Thomas Chisolm sat in the dim light of his living room, staring at the dark television. He’d cracked open a Kokanee shortly after an evening run and sipped it in the bathroom while showering and drying off. Once dressed in his rumpled boxers and gray Army T-shirt, he flopped on the couch, hoping that the beer and television would help him find sleep.
Instead, he’d sat staring at the dead screen, the remote untouched on the small coffee table. He stared at the shadowy figure of himself reflected back at him. Every so often, he took a pull from the bottle of beer until it was empty. Then he rose and opened another.
Back on the couch, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He wanted very badly to sleep, but knew it was a virtual uncertainty. Not when the ghosts wanted to visit him. Not when they wanted to cry out to him, accuse him.
He thought briefly of Sylvia, the woman whose picture remained taped to his refrigerator despite the fact she’d gotten married to someone else almost two years ago. Why couldn’t he let her go?
He knew why. Because she could see him. She understood him. That is why he had loved her so much.
And that was why she had left him.
Chisolm took another long drink of Kokanee. He pushed back against the pain, muttering to himself.
“Pussy,” he said. “Mooning like a fifteen year old boy in love with a cheerleader.”
His words fell flat in the silence of his home, so he followed them up with some more.
“Here’s to you, T.C.,” he said, raising his bottle. “The one person in the whole world who truly understood you decides she doesn’t like what she sees. What does that tell you?”
Not everyone can handle the ghosts, that’s what it tells me.
“Bullshit,” Chisolm muttered unconvincingly, but he knew it wasn’t. People just wanted to live in their pretty little worlds where everything is easy. They didn’t want to see the hard side of things. “They don’t want to see the ugliness,” he said aloud. “And when they do see it — ”
He broke off, because the answer was too plain. When people saw the ugliness, they reacted by blaming the ones who were confronting it. That’s what happened in Vietnam. That’s what happens every day in police work. And that’s what happened with Sylvia.
Chisolm drank again, then lowered the bottle to his chest.
“Fuck that,” he whispered.
He pushed against the memory, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling.
But there were other ghosts in his mind that would not be still. When he forced Sylvia away, another set of eyes came forward.
Young eyes, but hard.
Eyes that did not blink. They only stared.
Pleaded.
Accused.
“It was just another direct action,” he said huskily, staring at the twisting texture of the ceiling. “Some fucking NVA colonel that military intelligence had pegged as an up-and-comer. We go in, Bobby Ramirez and I, to this little village in the middle of nowhere. Our job is to take the guy out, quick and silent.”
He stopped. Sipped his beer.
“We did,” he said, his breath whistling across the bottle mouth.
That’s not all, though, is it?
“No,” Chisolm whispered. “It isn’t.”
He’d ducked into a hooch inside the village to avoid a roving guard. There, he’d interrupted an NVA soldier raping a young woman.
Mai. You know her name is Mai.
“Mai,” he whispered.
He’d killed the NVA soldier without a second thought. Then, in what he now remembered as a moment of incredible arrogance, he kept her calm by pointing to the subdued flag on his shoulder. He remembered how her fear seemed to diminish when he’d smiled at her, then slipped out of the hooch and back into the night.