Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Sixty

Detective Clifton Allah knew what he had to do. He didn't like it. But solving violent crime sometimes meant getting in bed with the Devil.

He whipped out his smartphone and punched in ten digits from memory.

"Hey, uh, it's Clifton Allah. Yeah, homicide. Yep. Well, it's better if I didn't. Soooo, if you could do it for me, discretely, I'll owe you."

###

Three hours had passed since the accident reconstruction technician handed Lt. Gonzalez a small spiral notebook open to an inside page bearing a list of three license plate numbers.

The technician had also asked Gonzalez to take a peek inside the overturned green Jeep Cherokee.

"What am I supposed to be seeing here," Gonzalez, on one knee and shining a penlight on the SUV's interior, asked.

"You don't see it on the dashboard?"

"If I did, I wouldn't have asked you to tell me!"

The tech nodded as if Gonzalez's exasperation suddenly made sense to him.

"The VIN number plate is dangling by a thread," he explained.

Gonzalez gave him a look as if to say "So what? There was an accident. You'd expect a few loose parts and pieces."

"Well, that's what's strange about it. This was the car you asked about the driver for – like where was he or she."

Gonzalez interrupted the tech as he rose, brushing gravel from his knees. "That's settled. My guys got a full headcount, and the driver's in hospital. Last I heard, stable condition, a broken leg, sedated for sleep."

Now, it was the technician's turn to look exasperated. "That's what I'm trying to tell you, sir! Whoever is in the hospital must've been either a passenger in another vehicle or a pedestrian. Because this VIN number registers to one Blake Angelo Wilson. And before you say Mr. Wilson may have loaned his ride to a friend, his prints and only his prints are on the steering wheel. Also, sir, if the name sounds familiar, Wilson is a reporter for the Daily Midway. He writes a lot about the PD and sometimes that race stuff."

Gonzalez nodded. The name was familiar. He had also seen Wilson plenty of times at department headquarters – often arguing or standing toe to toe with the Chief and other members of the command staff.

As he recalled, Wilson had been dogged in recent weeks in his reporting on that triple homicide and what he thought was a sex-trafficking ring related to the killings and several kidnappings.

"One more thing, lieutenant," the tech said, bringing Gonzalez back to the present. "I wanted to introduce you to Keyonn."

Only then did Gonzalez notice a young man wearing a green and gold jogging suit and sporting pinned-up dreadlocks. He wondered if the man had been standing there the whole time he was being updated on the presence of Wilson's vehicle and the absence of Wilson.

"Go ahead, Keyonn. Tell the lieutenant what you saw."

The University of Chicago School of Medicine student, who had been out for an evening jog, proceeded to spin a wild tale that included one short man in a hoodie, with the hood up and cinched tightly, using a screwdriver to try to pry the VIN tag from the dashboard, until a much taller, much wider man in a polo shirt appeared.

"It seemed like the big guy scared the other one-off 'cause the little guy took off between those houses. And then the big guy reached in the driver's side and pulled out the driver like he was a rag doll. The crazy thing is he walked the same way that the little guy ran, carrying the driver like you carry a baby. But I swear they weren't together – the big guy and the guy in the hoodie, I mean."

It didn't take a detective to figure out that Wilson might have been kidnapped. But Gonzalez wasn't sure he could report it. Wilson was a grown man. And maybe this kid was lying or mistaken. Maybe the tech was wrong about the fingerprints. Maybe whoever pulled the driver – who may or may not have been Wilson – out of the car was an unorthodox Good Samaritan who took the driver to a hospital...where the driver simply hadn't yet been properly ID'd.

Gonzalez would catch a lot of heat if he rousted the cavalry to look for a missing journalist who was a thorn in the side of the police department, and it turned out said journalist had loaned his car to the mystery driver...who could already be hospitalized. Or maybe his car had been stolen.

"Did you tell anyone else about this?"

"No sir," the tech replied. "It seemed a little weird. Too weird, so I thought I'd bring it straight to you."

"You did good, my man. Thank you."

"Krycek, sir."

Gonzalez lifted his head. "Excuse me?"

"My name is Roberto Krycek. And for what it's worth, I was top three in my class at the academy two years ago. Really looking forward to my shot at getting on the street."

Gonzalez nodded but didn't address the hint. "I need this whole thing to stay between us for now. And I need a favor. Prove your chops as an investigator."

Krycek's eyes lit like fireworks and his mind raced with thoughts of carrying on like a spy, lurking in a bad guy's shadow before springing out and surprising him with an arrest.

"Anything, sir."

"Perfect. Run these plate numbers and call me and only me at this number when you find out who they belong to."

Krycek was crestfallen but did his best not to show it, as he punched Gonzalez's burner phone number into his own and strode away.

###

Gonzalez finally knew who he was looking for but not why.

One plate number came back to a 1994 Lincoln Town Car that had been reported stolen by the owner two weeks earlier. Another was registered to a late model Honda Civic whose owner suspected nothing amiss when Gonzalez phoned her, pretending to be an insurance adjuster. She insisted the car was in her garage. The third number belonged to a Chicago PD Interceptor.

Even with that knowledge in hand, Gonzalez was not certain how to proceed. He remained reluctant to officially open an investigative case beyond the incredibly complex multi-vehicle accident because he wasn't certain of what else was "wrong" or who might be to blame.

Further, the presence of a police car on the list that had been lifted from Wilson's Jeep complicated things. Maybe the reporter had uncovered dirt on cops. And if he had, Wilson's life wasn't worth the paper that list was written on.

So, Gonzalez turned to his bench players.

While they'll never appear in any police department contact directory, every officer worth his or her salt has street sources, unofficial "deputies" whom they recruit not to snitch, but rather to aid off the books in investigations and less formal inquiries – usually related to finding missing people or very specific pieces of evidence.

It took about ninety minutes but he'd rounded up his ragtag squad.

"I need to find one or both of these cars," he explained, showing the group computer printouts with photos of a white Honda Accord and Town Car, with the license plate numbers scribbled in magic marker at the bottom of each image. "The Lincoln is grey, dull grey. It's been primed but not painted yet. Y'all know the routine. A hundred on top of what you already got if I catch up to them too and get what I need."

With that, the street deputies melted into the backdrop of their neighborhood and went their separate ways to find what their benefactor was after.