Tin Men , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Mike Knowles

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140 pages

English

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A propos
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Description

Three crooked cops going straight after a murderer Woody was working on getting high when the phone rang. Dennis was on a date — it was a date he paid for, but a date all the same. Os had blood on his hands from a little extracurricular law enforcement. All three men picked up their phones because they were cops, and cops are never really off-duty — not even when they’re crooked. Detective Julie Owen was savagely killed in her own bed, and the unborn child she was carrying is nowhere to be found. The grisly crime has the brass breathing down the necks of the three detectives tasked with finding Julie’s killer. Woody, Dennis, and Os each shared a bond with Julie that went deeper than the blue of their uniforms and have their own reasons to want to find the person responsible for her murder. Secrets drive the investigation — secrets that need to stay buried long enough to solve the case.

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	10 avril 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773051918
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Tin Men
A Crime Novel
Mike Knowles

Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About the Author
Copyright

For Andrea. It could be for no one else.

1
Os was on his way to Sully’s Tavern later than he wanted to be. The piece of shit in the box had refused to crack. Os had sat across from him and let his partner, Woody, do the talking. As usual, Woody spelled it out. He told the guy what they knew for sure and what they would be able to prove in another day or so. Woody could almost always close the case; he never walked into the interview room without knowing all the angles. Most times, the suspect caved under the weight of the evidence amassed, and everyone got to go home on time. Tonight had been different. The little fuck was dead to rights. Woody showed him the images they got off the camera mounted inside the minimart across the street. The images were grainy, but you could see him assaulting the old woman, and Woody talked like they were nails in a coffin. Os watched the rapist sit ramrod straight and stare at the patch of wall between the two cops. He hadn’t said he wanted a lawyer, and Woody was doing his best to make him see that a confession was the only chance he had at any kind of a deal.
The bastard kept silent and listened without looking at either cop. It went on for hours, until the scumbag said his first word: “Lawyer.”
Os had walked back in just in time to hear the single word. The six letters plowed through the carefully orchestrated interrogation like a hand swiping pieces off a chess board two moves away from checkmate. Woody put his hands up, said, “Your funeral,” and walked out past Os and the two cups of coffee in his hands. He hadn’t given up; he had to pee. He had put down at least six cups of coffee during the interview and had asked for more the second Os moved his chair to stand. Os watched his skinny partner walk out. The rapist kept looking straight ahead.
“You should have talked,” Os said.
The guy actually smiled a little bit.
Os felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He wanted to run the rapist’s face into the concrete on the other side of the room—hit him hard enough to loosen teeth and break bones—but he couldn’t do it here. One room away, there was a television screen that other detectives used to watch the interview. Os had been in that room watching the small television more than he watched his own TV from his couch. He knew the angle of the camera and the less-than-clear image the television would display. Os had chosen the seat on the left; it allowed him to keep his back to the camera.
The camera had been set up with standard dimensions in mind. Os was at least a head taller and fifty pounds heavier than anything resembling a standard human. His non-standard dimensions meant the camera did not do such a good job observing the room when Os was the one seated in the interview chair on the left. Os was six-foot-six, and when he draped his suit jacket over the back of the chair the jacket hung to the floor. The XXL jacket made Os’s feet impossible to see. Woody had joked about it years ago; he said it made him look like Uncle Fester interrogating a witness. A bunch of detectives laughed and a new nickname was born. The name only lasted a week, but Os never forgot what the camera saw—and didn’t see.
Os put the two coffees down in the middle of the table, removed his jacket, and took a seat. “Guess the conversation had to end sometime.”
The rapist eyed the coffee. After watching his other interrogator down cup after cup, there was no way he wasn’t interested.
Os looked at the cups and then at the man on the other side of the table. He shrugged. “Go ahead.”
The man extended two cuffed hands and brought the malleable paper cup slowly to his lips. The coffee was extra bad and extra hot, and Os enjoyed watching the rapist learn it firsthand. The tentative sip burned the man’s tongue and he winced before putting the cup down. Os waited until the cup was an inch away from the surface of the table and then extended his leg. It took little effort to slide the criminal’s chair back a few inches. The movement was brief and left no trace in Os’s upper body. The rapist had been paying attention to the cup, and he caught on a fraction of a second too late. The rounded wooden edge of the table offered less support than an alcoholic single parent, and the cup toppled into the rapist’s lap.
There was a scream and the chair was knocked backwards as the man got to his feet and backed himself into the wall frantically pulling the fabric of his pants away from his body. Os got to his feet, too, and made a show of pulling napkins out of his pocket. He had spilled enough coffee on his suit to make a habit of taking a thick wad of the thin paper sheets every time he poured a cup. When the screaming man made no move to take them, Os pushed them into his chest and held them there.
“You need to be careful. Those cups can get really hot,” Os said in a voice loud enough for the microphone to pick up.
Not only did Os know what the interrogation room cameras could see, he knew what they could hear. Years of interviews inside the room revealed a dead zone that couldn’t pick up anything lower than conversational tones. Os was still holding the napkins against the rigid torso of the other man. With only a subtle movement, Os imperceptibly stopped holding the napkins and started digging his thumb into the rapist’s ribcage. A hand damp with cooled coffee landed on top of Os’s and tried to pull the invading digit away. With his head turned from the camera, Os said, “You better hope you get a shitty lawyer. The street is no place for a rapist. All kinds of bad things can happen.” The heavy tread of Os’s right shoe slowly eased onto the rapist’s flimsy Nike. The pressure increased with no recordable evidence other than a sudden gasp too quiet to be heard by the shitty microphone. “Now, apologize for spilling the coffee.”
“S—sorry.”
Os raised his voice so the microphone would hear him. “Accidents happen.”
Os lifted his foot and patted the rapist on the back and turned to get his jacket off the back of the chair.
“Sit tight,” Os said. “I’ll go see what I can do about getting you that lawyer.”
*
It was late by the time Os clocked out. He had hoped to get to Sully’s in time to watch the fight. Sully’s was never really busy, and the bartender had no problem changing the television to ESPN2 Classic Boxing when Os asked. Tonight was Cassius Clay versus Sonny Liston. Os always liked Liston. The former heavyweight champ was a leg-breaker for the mob before he turned pro. He was nothing but hard muscle wrapped around a black heart. Liston fought like he was mad at the world. Every punch was meant to hurt—even his jabs had dynamite behind them. Sure, Clay beat him, but Liston made him earn it; he walked out knowing he had been in a fight.
Os kept his head moving while he drove. Years in a patrol car and more years in the army never let him feel comfortable riding with eyes just on the road. He was speeding and not getting anywhere fast because some asshole city worker had timed the lights in such a way that no one could get through more than two greens at a time. He twisted the steering wheel of the Jeep in his hands and swore at the clock. It was 11:14; the fight was probably already over. He’d show up just in time to see Liston on his back, and then he’d have to sit through Ping-Pong from Korea while he finished his drink. The rapist and the missed fight had Os on edge, seeing the guy pissing against the side of a house sent him over.
There were three men loitering on the tiny patch of lawn that made up the front yard, waiting for the fourth guy to finish soaking the bricks. Os had kicked the front door of that house down twice before when he had been in uniform and someone had called in about the lowlifes squatting inside. The front door was still boarded up, meaning the four guys had enough sense to use the back door. Os pulled into a spot three houses up and got out of the car.
Os walked down the street with his head down. He turned up the collar on his pea coat and dug his hands into his pockets. The day had only gotten as high as minus five; the night saw the afternoon high as some kind of challenge and sent the thermometer down ten degrees just to show it meant business. Os’s clothes didn’t shout cop and neither did his skin. Most people never figure a black guy for a cop. Os didn’t give a shit about what most people took him for. Most of the time, he used society’s racism to his advantage; prejudice allowed Os to get much closer to a lot of shitheads. Didn’t matter if they were too stupid to think he was a cop—he was.
The four didn’t stop their loud conversation until Os left the sidewalk and stepped onto the snow-covered lawn. The brown snow resembled nothing on a Christmas card. The city spread a seemingly never-ending supply of sand and salt on the roads, and the snowploughs hurled the mess onto the properties along the street. The grass underneath the corrupted snow would only come back if someone put in a lot of time and a ton of water. Os guessed that none of the addicts could grow anything useful.
“Fuck you want?” The question came from a white guy who had decided to sit down on the front steps. His