Got Your Six

Chapter 19

Captain Bennett

"Sir?" Officer Gonzales stands in the doorway to my office, waiting to gain my attention.
"What is it, Gonzales? I'm kinda busy here," I tell him. It isn't completely true, I'm just not in the mood to be bothered by anyone today.
"A body was found down at the quarry," Gonzales informs me.
Just like that, I'm standing up and giving him my full attention. "Let's go," I tell him and let him lead the way into the parking lot.
"Who found it?" I ask him once we're in a patrol car, moving towards the scene of the crime.
"Just some random pedestrian that lives nearby. I guess she was taking a morning walk and found the body. She said she called it in right away," Gonzales informs me as he moves the vehicle down the road.
We're not in any hurry. There's plenty of officers already on the scene. But being as I'm the Captain, I see it as part of my job to show up to serious cases, and finding a body is almost as serious as it gets.
"Do we know who it is?" I ask him, intrigued to know if it's anyone on our watchlist. Not that I want to find anyone on our watchlist dead, I'd rather be able to put them in jail, but curiosity is hard to keep under control in a time like this.
"An ID hasn't been called in yet," says Gonzales.
He stops the vehicle on the corner of Cleveland and Eighth Street, right where the dirt road into the quarry begins. There's two patrol cars blocking the entrance and several more lined up down Eighth Street. Gonzales follows me under the crime scene tape and down the dirt road, towards the big gathering of officers and detectives. The body is still lying in a small patch of grass, right where the road splits into two directions.
"Who is it?" I ask to anyone who might answer as I get closer to the body.
Just as someone beside me says the name, I recognize the person lying lifeless on the ground, a single bullet hole in the center of their head.
"Manny Delacruz," says someone with a camera.
I look back to Gonzales who seems to register the name at the same time.
"Do we have any leads?" I ask, again directing my question to anyone who has an answer.
"Not yet, sir," I turn to see Detective Tucker standing beside me with a notepad in hand. She started out under my leadership and quickly climbed the ranks. She made detective within two years of being on the force.
"Well, what do we know?" I ask her.
"Single gunshot wound to the head. One bullet casing found belonging to a nine millimeter pistol. Not much to go on, sir. There's not too many cameras around this area," Tucker informs me. "My guess is whoever killed him probably knew that."
"Just keep looking, look into everything you can. Someone had to have seen something," I tell her before walking off, dragging Gonzales with me.
What are the odds that someone so close to Gavin shows up dead? Let alone his right hand man, as he put it the night of the drug bust. There's something about this happening the very next day after I let Jenkins come back to work that bothers me. He's not the type of person to just go rouge and do something like this, but something just doesn't seem right about the whole situation.
"What is it?" Gonzales asks, noticing my puzzled look after pulling him off to the side, making sure no one else is in earshot.
"I wanna know everywhere Jenkins was last night on patrol," I tell him. I really hope this gut feeling turns out to be nothing.
"You think Jenkins did this?" Gonzales asks me, his eyebrows rising as he looks past me at the body lying on the ground and then back at me.
"I hope not, but it's all we have to go on right now. Manny was there that night, driving for Gavin. If Jenkins was able to find him..." I pause, disturbed by just the thought of what could've happened, "...who knows what his emotions might have caused him to do. Let's just hope I'm wrong about this."
Gonzales doesn't say anything, he just looks at me with shock until I make my way back to our vehicle. He follows me and hops in the drivers seat, pulling away from the commotion. I wasn't on the scene for too long, but the officers there know what they're doing. I've got to make sure it wasn't one of my officers who did this before anyone else turns up dead.
"I don't want anyone else to know that we're looking into Jenkins. It doesn't look good on us if anyone finds out we're looking into one of our own officers. Just keep it between us for now until we know more about this," I inform Gonzales when we pull back into the station.
"Yes, sir, what do you need from me?" He asks before getting out of the vehicle.
"Go find out from dispatch everywhere Jenkins' patrol car went last night. Don't tell them why, just tell them I requested it. I don't know, tell them I'm doing some random evaluation or something. Just get the report," I order him and then swiftly exit the vehicle, making a b-line towards Jenkins' desk.
Everything looks plain and ordinary. I can't find any paperwork pertaining to Gavin's case on Jenkins' desk. At least that's a good sign to start off with. Maybe I was wrong about this after all. I can't stop there though, I need to be sure. His computer comes to life with a single tap on his keyboard. He didn't leave anything open at the end of his shift but it also looks like he didn't clear his search history. The history log shows that he made several searches in the criminal data base for nearly everyone involved in Gavin's case, including Manny. The doubt begins to seep back in. Could Jenkins really be responsible for killing Manny?
Before I can make my own conclusion, Gonzales joins me at Jenkins' desk and hands over two pieces of paper. The one on top is a map of everywhere Jenkins' patrol vehicle went last night. Having GPS trackers on every vehicle really comes in handy in times like this. Luckily, these times don't happen very often. It's not every day that I have to look into one of my own officers. If it was, I probably wouldn't have a squad anymore. The map doesn't show his vehicle going anywhere around the quarry last night, another good sign for his sake. The other paper Gonzales handed me is a log of everywhere his vehicle was stopped for more than five minutes at a time.
"Is this all they gave you?" I ask Gonzales.
"Yes, sir," he responds.
"Okay, thank you," I tell Gonzales, taking the papers back to my office to look into them.
The log of Jenkins' GPS shows him stopped at a few random locations scattered throughout the city. I'm sure if I looked them up, they'd match up with the tickets he wrote last night. I'll make sure to double check on that later. One location that really sticks out to me is 'Riverfront Park'. The same location of the attempted drug bust on Gavin and where Jenkins lost his brother. There's another address it shows his vehicle stopped at before the park for nearly twenty minutes on the East side of town. Not recognizing the address, I grab my keyboard and punch the address into my computer. It's a rental home leased out to non other than Manny Delacruz. That right there is enough evidence to take some action.
"Let's go," I order Gonzales, catching him by surprise as he works on a case at his desk.
"Yes, sir," he says obediently, getting up from his desk and following me.
I grab the keys to an unmarked vehicle and toss them to Gonzales. It's best we don't use a marked patrol vehicle for this. I don't want to attract too much attention. Gonzales follows me back into the parking lot and slides into the drivers seat of the unmarked car.
"Uhh, where are we going, sir?" He asks me once I slide into the seat next to him.
"We're going to get Jenkins," I say in a calm voice.