Deception (9 page)

By Monday morning, everyone
has calmed down and things have gone back to the way they were before. No one has spoken of the incident, if that’s what you want to call it, and we work on preparations for the next phase of the plan. Alicia is distant, which I’m sure is a combination of the realization of what she has gotten herself into and her trying to come up with a way out of it. What she doesn’t know is that there is no way out, not alive anyway. She’ll figure that out sooner or later.

Alicia has essentially moved in with Frank and me as a way for me to keep her under my supervision. She has to earn back my trust before I’ll let her be that far away from me now. It’s difficult for me to let her go into work this morning as usual, but it’s a necessity to progress everything forward. I drive her into town for 8:00 A.M. and drop her off a couple of blocks away from City Hall. We need to keep things as normal as possible to avoid people trying to snoop around and blow everything up, so it needs to look like she’s still walking into work. I don’t watch her walk up the steps and go into the building, but I call the office every few hours during the day and hang up at the sound of her voice just to make sure she’s still there.

At 4:30 P.M., I drive back into town and park the van in front of her apartment complex. I arrive a few minutes before 5:00 P.M. and wait for her. She needs to gather some more personal items from her apartment if she’s going to be staying with me, she told me, which I find to be a reasonable request. After twelve minutes of waiting, I finally see Alicia approaching the complex as I peer in the mirror outside my window. We make eye contact as she walks past me, and I wait five more minutes before exiting the van and entering the building behind her.

Inside the building I buzz her apartment, number twenty-three, and she unlocks the security door without saying anything over the loud speaker. I open the door to a long hallway and make my way up three flights of stairs which sit to my left. The hallways are all carpeted and are home to numerous stains and tears. The stairs are soft and rubbery like those in a high school, and the soles of my shoes squeak with each step as I climb them. A single fire hydrant hangs on the wall about halfway down each hallway, and the air is stale. As I reach the third floor, I can smell someone burning their dinner behind one of the locked doors. The building lacks care, as evident by the strong aroma of Indian food that fills the entry ways.

Number twenty-three is the last door on the left. There is another door which is held open by a door stop just past Alicia’s door, which leads to another staircase on the other end of the complex. I stumble over a pair of children’s sneakers as I walk past, which prompts me to kick the pair halfway down the hall. With my knuckle, I lightly knock on the door where the crooked two and three hang, and I expect the three to fall right off the door. It doesn’t. Moments later, footsteps approach behind the door and I can feel an eyeball looking at me through the small peephole. The dead bolt disengages and the door is cracked. I push it open the rest of the way and slide inside.

Alicia’s apartment is small and nearly empty, but it’s orderly. It has a tiny bedroom and bathroom that are attached to the eat-in kitchen, which has outdated finishes and appliances. One of the linoleum tiles on the floor has cigarette a burn in the center. There is no nice way to put it, the place is a piece of shit.

“It’s not much, I realize,” Alicia says, her tone implying I have a look of dissatisfaction on my face, “but it’s cheap and close to work. It was only supposed to be temporary.”

I nod and try not to laugh at the ever-worsening cosmetics, but I can’t resist. I burst out laughing and toss saliva all over the kitchen. I lean forward and place my hands on my knees to help my balance. Most people would be offended at my lack of self-control, but Alicia soon joins in and starts to laugh too. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile like this, and it’s the first time I’ve laughed so hard since my father died. It helps to release some of the unspoken tension between us. We take turns pointing out the flaws of the place, everything from the ceiling fan with a missing light bulb, to the busted sliding door that barely covers a ripped screen. It’s a good laugh that feels great, and it’s needed. I wipe the tears from my eyes as I regain myself and my composure.

“What is it that you needed again?” I ask.

Alicia wipes her face as well, although much less aggressively than I as to avoid smudging her makeup. “Just the rest of my clothes mostly.”

“Show me where they are, I’ll grab them.”

She walks across the linoleum and into the carpeted bedroom, leading me to a pile of clothes that are on plastic hangers and neatly stacked on the bed. I brush past her and haul the clothes from the bed, tossing them over my shoulder. I quickly turn around and nearly bump right into Alicia, who is standing much closer to me that I thought. Our faces are close, although hers significantly lower than mine due to the height difference, and we hold the position for a moment. Her chilled breath steadies against my neck and it makes me tingle. I wonder what she is thinking at this moment, and I’m hopeful she has put George right out of her mind. A part of me wants to toss the pile of clothes back on the bed, throw her on top and tear hers off, but I resist. She’s still trying to wrap her mind around all of this, and I really need to get her back on my side if this is going to work. There will be a time for me to make my move, but now’s not it, despite the desires that reside within me. Instead, I smile at her with sincerity, which she returns with the same.

“Ready to go?” I ask. 

Alicia nods.

With the pile of organized chaos draped over my shoulder, I follow Alicia down the long hallway and into the same stairwell that I entered from earlier. We pass a group of black teenagers on the way out the door, and all four of them look her up and down. She pretends not to see them as she makes her way to the van. Based on her reaction, I wonder if they’ve had some sort of altercation in recent days, perhaps they tried to come on to her and she rejected them. I catch the eyes of the tallest one with acne scars and we stare at one another as I walk past.

Without a confrontation, I make it safely to the parking lot and join Alicia near the van. She opens the back doors and I toss the clothes inside, disregarding the mess that covers the floor. She hops in the passenger’s side and buckles herself in, then I hop in the driver’s side and do the same. I catch the eyes of the same kid one more time before I pull away.

“How did today go?” I ask as we pull up to a four-way stoplight.

“It went fine. Everything’s in place, just as we planned. I have the deed in my purse.”

---

I pull the van
into the driveway and park it in the center. I grab Alicia’s clothes from the back and lead her into the house. I bring the pile of clothes into my bedroom, which will continue to be hers for a while, and toss them on the bed. Alicia has the small stack of papers already prepared on the table when I re-enter the kitchen. I take the pen from her hand and sign Sheriff Jack Hearns’ name on the lines after the x’s. I flip through the stack and try to make the signatures as clean and as consistent as possible in case it’s audited. I’m not authorized to sign for anything on behalf of the Police Department, and someone would certainly recognize my name if I did.

You can add forgery to my soon to be lengthy list of wrongdoings.

It’s common knowledge around town that my father was the Sheriff and that his son of the same name didn’t follow in his footsteps after he passed. I guess that’s one of the negatives of having a well-respected man for a father and having certain expectations to live up to. The truth is, I never wanted to follow in his footsteps and pursue a career in law enforcement, but with no plan and constant nagging, I begrudgingly obliged and went to the police academy when I graduated from high school. I did reasonably well in the classroom and was at a near expert level with the accuracy of a firearm, and it was good enough I guess.

Shortly after I graduated, a veteran officer retired in Topeka, so naturally, my father offered me the position and I’ve been there ever since. The local news loved the father-son heartwarming story initially, but it soon dissipated and I basically fell off the radar. I had a few questionable arrests when I first started, and my father had to make more than one deal with the prosecutors so they wouldn’t sue the entire Police Department. Most officers would have been fired certainly, but my situation was different with my father being the Sheriff and all, so I was just assigned to basic traffic duty for much of the last twelve years instead. It was only in the last two when I started doing some actual police work and moved inside and off the streets.

I only scan the
documents for keywords as I sign: Grantor, grantee, notary, deed, Topeka Police Department, State of Kansas. I’m not a lawyer, but the documents look official enough to me. I’m going to give Alicia the benefit of the doubt and trust that she knows what she’s doing. Frank enters the room just as I finish signing the Sheriff’s name on the final page.

“What you guys doin’?” Frank asks.

“We had to take care of some administrative things,” I say, brushing it off.

“Like what?”

“Just some paperwork, boring stuff.”

He looks at me like he is expecting more, but I plan to end it with that.

Alicia jumps in, “We just had to get the property transferred over so we have access to it.”

Frank nods.

I glare at Alicia, who pretends not to notice. Frank knows the plan as he was awake and semi-engaged when we were going over it, but he doesn’t know specific details. The fewer details he knows, the better, as it reduces the chance of a slipup.

“What do we do now?” Franks asks.

It’s a good question.

I look to Alicia and wait for her to respond, as this is one of her parts of the arrangement. 

“I’ll complete the property transfer in the system in the morning and we’ll be good to go,” she says. “I’ll intentionally misfile the documents just to be sure, which will buy us some time.”

“Tell me again,” I begin, “what are the chances this gets back to the Sheriff?”

“It will eventually, I have no doubt about that. The city has over 125,000 people in it though, and property tax time is just around the corner, so that’ll keep everyone busy for a while. I’m sure the City Administrator will find it and question it during audit time. She’ll ask the Sheriff about it and then an investigation will ensue. The Mayor will likely get involved too. It’ll be a big mess for the city.”

“How long is a while?”

“Three or four months anyway, minimum. Audits are typically done quarterly, so it could be longer than that before they actually figure out what happened. But by then, we’ll be long gone.”

I nod and smile. “Corruption in City Hall.”

“And in the Sheriff’s Office.”

“Where we goin’, boss?”
Frank asks as Billy drives through the night streets. He sits alone in the front while Frank and I ride in the back. “Hey, boss, where we-”

“I heard you.”

Frank looks like he wants to ask again, but he thinks better of it. It’s not long before Billy pulls up to the Topeka Police Department. Frank catches a glimpse of the illuminated sign hanging on the brick building and panics.

“Woah! What’s goin’ on, boss? What we doin’ here?”

“Relax, stay in the van,” Billy says as he turns off the engine and slides out the door. He creeps around the side and opens the rear doors. He points to me. “Come with me.”

Inside the station, we casually stroll past the empty desks and offices and slide into Billy’s cubicle. He waves to a couple of graveyard shift officers as they sip coffee in the office adjacent to his cube. He turns on his computer and we wait for it to power up. Billy’s cubicle is nearly empty and is impersonalized. There are no pictures of his family, no cute dog calendar, and no dirty coffee cup. The office necessities are lined up in a straight line, evenly spaced and dust free. The phone on the corner of the desk is blinking with a new message or two.

“What are we doing here?” I whisper.

“Don’t whisper, it’ll bring attention to us,” Billy responds. He enters his password when prompted and logs into a database from the icon on his desktop. “Ah fuck, he’s coming over.”

I slide up in my chair and peek over the top of the cubicle wall and see a uniformed officer walking toward us.

“Billy! How goes it, baby?” the officer says as he approached. He’s youthful and high on caffeine and clearly doesn’t have an issue with working the night shift.

“Hi, Dave, how are you doing tonight?”

“Doing good, man, slow out there tonight. What are you doing here?”

Dave slips his thumb into the front of his pants behind his belt. He holds a cup of steaming coffee with his other hand and blows on it. The aroma of freshly roasted hazelnuts makes my mouth water.

“I’ve got to take a look at my notes on this case I’ve been working.”

“Now? It’s one in the morning, man.”

“Yeah, I know. You know what it’s like when you have a breakthrough.” Billy smiles.

Dave takes a long sip of his coffee and nods his head in agreement. “Hey, I thought I heard you were off for a few days?”

“I was. I’m back now.”

Dave nods and takes another sip of his coffee. “Well, welcome back then. Have a good night.”

“Thanks. You too, Dave.”

Before leaving, Dave acknowledges me by giving me a subtle nod in which I gladly return. Billy turns his attention back to his computer and begins typing in the search bar in the database that has finally loaded on his machine.

A few minutes go by and he still hasn’t offered up any details on what he’s looking for. He has the torn up piece of paper from the safe on his desk and he types the numbers in different combinations in the database. I can tell by the way he holds his spot on the paper with one finger while typing one character at a time with another on the opposite hand. I do the same thing.

“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?” I finally ask.

Billy leans back in his chair, puts his hands behind his head, and sighs. He hands me the paper. “What do you see?”

I study at the paper. “What are you asking?”

“It’s not a trick question, what do you see when you look at it? What’s your first instinct?”

I study the paper again, not sure what I’m missing. “I don’t know. A code or something. Five numbers, two letters.”

“What has seven characters? I’ve scanned the entire police database for every license plate combination with these numbers in the whole fucking county.”

“And?”

“Nothing, fucking nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing useful. There was one Ford pickup that had six of the numbers, and a Volkswagen Beetle that had all seven, but not in the same order.”

“Okay, maybe that’s something to work with. The Volkswagen, I mean.”

“It’s registered to an 18-year-old girl, that’s not it.”

“What about the truck?

Billy enters a combination into the database and reads back the results, “1989 Ford F-250, registered to a Reginald Washington, 89 years old and white. Unless you think Snake is tight with an 89-year-old white guy, he’s not our guy.”

Point taken.

I lean back in my chair and try to come up with something else, but draw a blank.

We bounce ideas back and forth for nearly an hour, things like partial VINs, dates, and other personal references from Snake’s lengthy file. We scan through all of Snake’s known aliases, previous cellmates, family members, and his known associates for any link to the number combination.

Nothing.

We’re exhausted, out of ideas, and can barely stay awake anymore, so Billy gathers up all the files he can find and compiles them in a box to sort through again later. With the files in hand, we walk out the back door to avoid getting stopped and questioned by another officer. We make our way around the front of the building and slide into the van. Frank is passed out in the back, snoring like a buffalo. I sit down on the bench across from him and lean my head back as Billy reverses the van into the empty street. The plan is to just rest my eyes until we get back to the warehouse.

When I wake up it’s morning.