The Price of Greed

Chapter 14

The day dragged on slowly as Hood read through the file and the other detective's notes, making a complete list of his own with circles, exclamation marks and question marks sprinkled throughout the paragraphs.

He picked up the phone and called down to the technicians, asking for a printout of any calls made to and from Metcalf's room at the hotel. As an afterthought, he called back downstairs and asked them to include the tapes from the hotel security cameras. He would go over all the material at home, get Scott's plan for proceeding and then first thing Monday he would begin making his calls.

Any hope for his weekend was a dead loss and the department was still battling the hotel owners over tying up the entire floor of the hotel while they processed the crime scene—not making much headway.

Monday

Keith Hood folded up the newspaper and stuffed it in the recycling box by the back door of his two-bedroom bungalow. The house sat among several others of the same design on a bend on a quiet, heavily treed street, with the predictable park, playground and two and one half children per average household. It was a contribution to urban architecture made by a private builder back in the fifties when cottage roofs, small cement porches and wide lots were in vogue.

He had purchased the house in anticipation of enjoying it with his then fiancé, who after two years of joint planning and seeming commitment, ran off with an insurance salesman without warning of any kind, leaving him holding a ten-year mortgage on a house he did not need. That was four years ago, and in spite of the bills and maintenance, he had grown to like the place; it had become his island of comfort from the graphic realities of his daily work.

He went down the short hall to the bathroom, ancient slippers slapping dangerously on the hardwood floor, and brushed his teeth, blew his nose and sorted out his hair. Sunday he had combed through the phone records, and the security videos, neither of which provided much if any use, and had formulated a list of priorities to suggest to Scott.

One call made by the victim that really intrigued him was a call made to Brighton Investigations. The private agency was owned and operated by Jarlayne Brighton, a somewhat legendary personality among some of those at the cop shop. Her clever and swift solution to a number of cases, previously bogged down in the department and left on the, still open but not active shelf, brought the mixed admiration.

To some she was a super hero, able to go and do what regular cops couldn't. To others, she was a hard-nosed bitch that gave no quarter when it came to breaking her cases, regardless of who she upset. Hood didn't know which camp he was in having never met the woman.

It made him reflect on his own reputation, recently tarnished by his over the top actions in the capture and arrest of a hoodlum who had graduated to particularly brutal enforcement for a local pimp.

Hood had tracked the man to a shabby hotel on the city's darker side and found him in the middle of beating and cutting a prostitute who withheld a few dollars from her evening's trade. He had taken the knife from the man and in his own fit of rage, rammed it through the shoulder muscle of his arm, leaving it dangling uselessly, then twisted it around and cuffed it savagely to the other wrist.

When the patrol cars arrived with the Duty Captain, Hood was ripped for his behavior and dismissed from the case until Internal Affairs had questioned him. Guerrera, the hoodlum, lost the use of his arm and spent several weeks in hospital, traumatized by the event before being released on bail through the weaseling of his employer's lawyer.

Guerrera had sworn revenge and Hood was marked by the city's underworld for attention. Hood was sent home on suspension and stayed there until Captain Haggart finally called him back in for another chance.