Missed Connections (29 page)

It seemed enough to bring a bright smile on the man's face. As if Sam being moody was expected and the world was set right again. He rolled his eyes while the twenty-something started to go on and on about his case without showing Sam the file. At some point he even extended a hand to get the folder, maybe see some photos, but the hand was neatly avoided by the young detective who kept telling Sam about what the crime scene investigators discovered. 

"Objective view? Anyone?" Sam asked sarcastically. Finally the young man, whatever his name was, shut up. His ear tips reddened. Sam just continued, "What's your name?" He rolled his eyes when the answer wasn't immediately forthcoming, "You know what, it's… never mind. Now, will I have to hunt down the file and possibly hurt you for it, or will you just hand it over?"

The young man handed the file over, his eyes wide and possibly frightened.  "Johnny," he barely managed to whisper the word, presumably his name.

Sam's eyebrow rose at Johnny's newfound self-preservation, but Sam’s hands were already working at opening the file and thumbing through the papers to reach the photos. They often contained enough of a clue to give him a starting point. Naturally, that didn't happen with Reeds, because the bastard was something most criminals weren't—smart.

The first shot was of a man slumped against a nice, dark desk, with what was obviously a large caliber bullet hole somewhere near his temple. There was a picture from the other side, of course, but it was rather graphic and he didn't think brain matter would help the case much. There was something on his neck. Did someone try to strangle him?

Lifting his head from the file, Sam looked for the nearest source of light. He found it in the shape of a dirty window filtering in murky sunlight, but it would do. Unfortunately, said window was behind the young detective, Joey, Johnny or whatever his name was, and when Sam moved towards it, he was assaulted with a near panicky question of, "Where are you going with my file? Come back."

Sam wondered if that even worked with anyone, ever. He gave 'Johnny' a scowl and leaned against the window to see the photograph better. What was that? Someone tried to strangle the victim with his own necklace?

"Oh, you were just trying to see better. Yeah, I understand. No need to let me know or anything. I totally didn't think you were going to run away with my file," Johnny rambled. And what kind of name was that? When somebody asked for a name, at least in a police department, he wasn’t waiting for a first name. Not Sam, anyway. Certainly, he wasn't waiting for a nickname. But that's what Johnny had offered. Sam satisfied himself with the filthiest 'you are an idiot' look he could manage, cutting off the rambling and continuing to peruse the morgue report in blessed silence. He was especially interested in whatever pictures or indicators there were about the victim's neck.

There it was: no ligature marks on the anterior part of the neck. It was as if someone had ripped the chain from the vic's neck—which took a lot more power than people thought it did—then put it back on with clasp on the wrong link because it was damaged. Sam leafed through the rest of the report, but this wasn't his case and he didn't enjoy doing other people's work.

"You concluded that this wasn't a robbery," Sam began, hedging around the issue until he had Johnny pinned down.

"Yes, sir. I mean, no," Johnny looked really uncertain for a moment. "I mean, nothing was stolen. We established that." Johnny was obviously wondering what he had overlooked. Good, that meant he wasn't stupid. Just young. The kind of young that made Sam feel really old, although he was only thirty-six. Although to be fair, youth had nothing to do with age, since he sometimes felt he was only just beginning to sort things out when compared with a certain twenty-seven year old smart bastard. Whom he was going to catch, Sam vowed silently.

"Well, it seems you were wrong, Detective 'Johnny'," Sam paused, letting the red ear tips make another appearance. "There's a bruise on the vic's neck which doesn't reasonably correspond with him being strangled or garroted because there was no bruising on the other side. You know, the side you actually try to damage when you strangle or garrote somebody. The side with the windpipe. On second thought, this could be important. You should take notes," Sam offered magnanimously and with sarcasm clinging to every word. So much so that even Johnny noticed it.

Johnny told him his last name in a voice that let Sam know that his intellect was the only reason Johnny was still a part of the conversation. Too bad for him, now he was Detective Johnny in Sam's mind. Congratulations kid. Also, Detective Johnny wasn't the only one who only talked to Sam because of his usefulness in solving cases; there was a whole precinct that did the same.

With his teeth bared in a wolfish grin, Sam continued. "There was a key of some sort, something the murderer wanted access to, on the necklace around the vic’s neck. It was ripped away, taken, and then the necklace replaced. Look," he pointed to the man's neck in the photo took at the scene, "it was replaced damaged. Wrong link, see? Bit of an oversight for a man with the vic's money. Not his idea."

Detective Johnny squinted at the picture, regarded Sam with something akin to wonder and then Johnny thumbed through the papers until he reached the morgue report. He pushed back with the finger he had put as a bookmark at the photo, studying it. Sam saw an idea strike Johnny and his eyes gleamed with sudden insight as he leafed through the file so he could see the inventory of things found at the scene and, finally, he returned where he started, at the picture.

"How did you see that?" Johnny asked with something that sounded a lot like horror.

"Experience," Sam said and turned. He had a certain smug bastard to catch with his hand in the cookie jar, just so Sam could get the asshole’s fingerprints. He managed to hear Detective Johnny mumble about cranky geniuses and a small smile appeared on Sam’s face. It died a fast death, however, when he realized that the genius he was said to posses hadn't been able to help catch Reeds.
Yet
, Sam reminded himself. He hadn't been able to catch Reeds
yet
.

"Hey, thank you," Detective Johnny said quietly to Sam's back.

Without turning Sam simply stated, "What are you thanking me for, kid? I didn't find the key. The case is yours, not mine; find the key and your murderer." He could practically hear Detective Johnny thinking as Sam walked away. Johnny would be okay at this job as long as he made the effort to actually comprehend, not just look or observe. Hopefully, Sam had managed to give Detective Johnny a new perspective.

Now, Sam had slyer fish to fry. Such was his life: amusing himself with bad puns. But if only he managed to fry this particular fish, there would be the satisfaction of years not being wasted. Scratch that. The bastard fried or injected, or whatever they were doing to them on death row now, was all the recognition Sam would ever want.

*~*~*

Sam agitatedly blew hair out of his face as he waited yet another day for the Captain. It annoyed him, but what with the whole catching Reeds scheme he was planning over the last few months, Sam felt it just wasn't worth the time to groom himself. He needed to be wholly concentrated on the task of capturing that evil smug bastard. And he was so close. 

Having been there every day for close to two weeks, Sam rather thought he deserved his Captain sticking his neck out for Sam on this one tiny favor. It was one tiny, barely-legal favor for the Captain to sign off on and Sam would get Reeds's fingerprints. The bastard would surely have a file, priors,
something
, under different names or under nameless suspects. No one got so good—or bad, Sam supposed—without any kind of practice. And practice, he had learned, didn't come without a price. Sam knew that better than anyone. 

Sam remembered every cocky wave, every boyish grin and every innocent shrug he had received when he paraded various associates of Reeds's right by him, but failed to capture the man himself. Sam would get him, he promised himself that. He would get the bastard as soon as he found out what Reeds’s name truly was. And Sam would have the last innocent shrug and the last cocky wave and the last boyish grin. He would have the last derision-filled laugh as they loaded Reeds up in a van towards a maximum security prison.

The Captain's door opened and out walked Detective Johnny with a glow of pride about him, preening for the adoring public. So, the kid had caught his murderer. Yippee. Unfortunately for him, there was no adoring public and his glow kind of made him look fat. Sam supposed it was his jealously talking, directed at the unfairness of the world. Not that it changed anything. Detective Johnny had somehow managed to get in the Captain's office without an appointment. Then again, Sam tried to keep in mind, no one really understood his quest or why it was so important to catch Reeds. It had gotten to a point where even his Captain was dodging him. This made it all… inconvenient, but it didn't stop Sam. These days few things did. Maybe his plan was… less than fair, maybe that was not how the police worked, maybe the others around him didn’t see the danger as he saw it, but he
would
be the one laughing at the end. He hid a small smile of satisfaction.

The Captain called from his office, "Detective Riff."

"Thanks for seeing me, Captain," Sam returned politely.

"Take a seat, detective." The Captain, it seemed, had his own way of setting the playing field. "What can I do for you today?"

Sam took a deep breath, "Sir, I may have a way to catch Reeds." When that didn't have the expected result—his Captain shouting with joy—or even a lesser reaction—an eyebrow being raised, Sam continued, "We know he has to have priors, right?"

A moment of silence. The Captain looked suspicious, as if only by agreeing he fell into some sort of trap. "Yes," he prolonged the word to buy himself some more time. "And?"

"We only have to get his fingerprints!" Sam said in an overly cheerful voice.

The Captain sighed, "What's the catch, detective?"

"Well, he isn't as… willing as ordinary citizens to leave his finger prints," Sam hedged.

"What does that mean, exactly?" the Captain narrowed his eyes.

Sam let out a loud sigh and slumped a bit in the chair. "That without an arrest we can't get his fingerprints. The man doesn't throw anything in the trash, doesn't open doors with his hands which are usually busy with a cup of coffee or tea and his phone, doesn't have a car and any of the other usual ways are a bust, basically. We just can't get his fingerprints." His captain opened his mouth, so Sam hurried to go on, steamrolling over the—possibly—justifiable objections. "But, his insistence to not leave fingerprints tells us that he doesn't want us to have them. He's hiding something. Some sort of secret he's afraid we'll uncover." 

The Captain just looked at him pityingly. "Or maybe he's afraid of germs." He shook his head. "We don't have cause for arrest. You know as well as I do: innocent until proven guilty. And even if that weren't true, what has the guy done, really? He's a pilot fish swimming with the sharks. I'm not saying he's innocent, nobody who walks in the same circles he does ever is, and we should get him if the opportunity arises, but he hasn't done anything worth mentioning. That's on the families, on the real mobsters, not him. You don't want to risk your job over him." The Captain was persuasive. A good negotiator, all in all. 

Unfortunately for the Captain, Sam knew what he was doing and why it was so important. "It's the smart thing to do, going after him.
Chasing
him. The families are the pilot fish and he's the great white shark moving with them, hoping he'll get lost in all the stripes. But he's the dangerous one, the smart one. Think about it, who do we know could get in with not only one, or two, but three mob families? I mean, think about how dangerous, ruthless and overall insane you'd have to be to even say hello to these guys. For those people to know that he works for several families and be cool with it. That's…" he made an ample gesture with his hands, "unimaginable."

"Maybe. I admit that is pretty rare, but maybe he's a sign of a different connection between the families."

Sam shook his head. "It isn't. I went over everything."

The Captain shrugged, "Then maybe—"

They were interrupted by another detective, one who dealt mainly with cyber crimes, poking her head in. Seeing Sam, she only said, "The Feds' bait got hit. We have him. Rolling at the scene, now." Then she disappeared, but the clipped tones she used were enough to give Sam a sense of urgency, like something unexpected was happening. He was sure that the Captain was going to supervise the takedown and sure enough, the Captain almost immediately abandoned his seat.

"Listen, we'll talk about this another time, but Detective Riff," the Captain paused, his voice becoming gentler, "Sam, it's not worth risking everything you've ever done as a cop. Trust me."

The Captain then moved with a sure and quick step towards the ops room, leaving Sam in his office, bitterly analyzing another failed opportunity to make his case. The Captain wasn't going to risk anything for Sam. That left him disappointed and in a bit of a jam. But, as he'd learned during his career, better to ask forgiveness then permission anyway.

*~*~*

Paul—no, Joe was the name he was going by now, Joe Reeds—walked down the street, playing on his phone something stupid and thoroughly addictive. It pinged with a new message. The Coratoni family: they'd heard about Joe from the O'Briens, were very happy that he hadn't gotten arrested along with a big part of the Irish family, and needed him for a thing. He frowned, sipped his coffee and did a quick Google search on Coratoni. Mob family, naturally, more on the traditional side, articles about busts here and there, mainly for beating people when they hadn't paid their gambling debts, very few had stuck. All in all, dirty enough to be clean. He texted them back, suggested a time and a place, and was pleased.

It seemed like he had yet another job. This day didn't seem like such a bad one, after all. He had his coffee, black and strong, just the way it was supposed to be drunk, the weather was pleasantly crisp, and with a new job on the horizon, everything was alright. He stepped off the curve along with about fifty other people, crossed the street and was about to be on his way, when a car stopped in front of him. Detective Riff-raff stepped out.