Heat Check
Cal’s heart froze. Gasping slightly, he closed his eyes as a million thoughts galloped across his mind, before crashing together all at once in a thunderous stampede of ideas and emotions. What was that stack of money doing there? Why hadn’t the techs taken it out when they removed the rest of the cash and drugs the murderer left behind? Did everyone else just fail to notice the tiny corner peeking out from underneath the bed?
Cal supposed it was possible that the other cops had simply missed it, especially in the heady rush of discovery that would accompany finding stress marks on the frame and a fingerprint near the window. Although he’d only been a Detective for a few weeks, he had noticed that most of his co-workers weren’t much smarter than the guys he’d worked with down at Patrol. Usually, Detectives working a murder would start with a theory about the crime and focus on proving that’s how the crime happened with all their resources. Nobody had the time or budget for wild goose chases and once you had evidence that this was indeed how the crime was perpetrated, the tendency was to get sloppy and rush your way through the process to close the case. Frankly, in a city that could often boast of a homicide per day, Cal really couldn’t blame them; there was always another case to solve, another body to investigate, another murder to avenge. Everyone had probably been so excited to find the point of entry, that nobody had bothered walking into the exact corner Cal was standing in and looking down and to the left.
Naturally, once he’d surmised how he’d come to find a stack of fifty dollar bills under a dead drug dealer’s bed, the question was, “exactly what the fuck should he do about it?”
Overall, Cal thought of himself as basically a good police officer. Despite Anita’s protestations otherwise, he’d paid his dues both at the Academy and during three years service in the Patrol department. He’d also worked a bunch of crummy part-time jobs and accepted sporadic donations from his family just to make his way through community college. He’d busted his ass, living on pennies a day for a long time to set up his career; so Cal wasn’t about to blow it by taking a bribe from some two-bit weed dealer once he actually became a cop. He drank responsibly, didn’t care for the recreational drugs a Police Department would test for and he’d never been written up for beating up a suspect.
Of course, he had emptied the pockets of a few small time hustlers before releasing them back into the wilds of Detroit’s central west side. Mostly they’d been kids and addicts, small fry criminals not worth the effort to process back at the station. He did them a favor by letting them spend the weekend outside of jail and they in turn, made a donation to Cal’s retirement fund whether they wanted to, or not. While technically illegal, he’d seen other guys on the force do far worse and collect far better pay for it; with absolutely no repercussions whatsoever. Cast in the harsh light of reality, he saw nothing wrong with lightening the pockets of future gang-bangers; more importantly, he’d never been caught doing so by anyone whose opinion mattered to his career.
In fact, Cal’s spotless service record and his natural talent for investigative work was how he’d secured the transfer to Homicide in the first place; although there was definitely some truth to Anita’s opinion that Detroit was simply desperate for cops who’d work in terrible conditions, for less pay than they could make in the surrounding communities.
Staring down at the money now however, Cal found himself making the kind of mental calculations good cops just don’t make. Based on the size of the stack, he estimated that he was looking at roughly ten thousand dollars in cash; give or take a couple grand. Naturally, he’d have to take it out from under the bed and count the bills to be sure. This presented a problem because officially, he was supposed to call in a photographer to record the money as evidence. Once he so much as picked up the stack of bills, he’d already be far enough outside the law for an official reprimand.
That was assuming of course that Cal would get caught, which at the moment wasn’t looking very likely at all. Just from the case notes he’d read; he knew they’d taken more than enough drugs and cash out of Mitchell’s house to assume the investigation had uncovered all of it. Nobody was going to come looking for this money until Forensics came back tonight and hauled the bed out of this den; at which point, some lab technician who was far smarter than Cal would be up ten grand immediately.
As Cal bent down and reached his hand towards the stack of money, he felt a strange sense of physical disassociation. It was as if he were merely watching a film, about a man who looked rather a lot like he did, who was also flushing his career down the toilet for a few thousand dollars. In the eye of the moment, years of his downtrodden life flashed across his memory. The times when he and his family had struggled and scraped; while every rotten crook in town seemed to surge only further ahead, all rushed back at him in an instant. Cal remembered going to school hungry and the pain of being the poorest kid in the entire class. He remembered tromping around the neighborhood with three year old running shoes falling off his rapidly expanding feet. He remembered meeting his mother in the early hours of the morning to walk her home, after the convenience store where she worked a second shitty job had closed up for the night. He even remembered his grandmother arguing with the funeral director about the price of caskets, just after his father died.
Throughout it all, Cal had stayed true to his mother’s wishes and stayed away from the easy path. He’d had a plan all along, and no amount of suffering could stop him from accomplishing it. While his friends were making money running with gangs and dealing drugs, he’d scraped his way through school and onto the force here in Detroit. He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt remembering how proud his mother had been that he’d become a cop in their hometown.
“Your father was a security guard and gave his life to his work Caleb, but you; you are now a real Metro Detroit Police Officer. You’ve made your entirely community so proud” she’d told him with tears in her eyes.
As his hand clasped around the money and he drew it up to his chest, his silently thanked the Lord that his mother wasn’t alive to see what he’d just done. She’d always been a beautiful idealist, but reality was only willing to pay Cal just over fifty-thousand dollars a year to risk his life every day in the line of duty. By the time he’d paid taxes, benefits and union dues, he was making enough to eke out a modest existence with various girlfriends, leaving very little left over. Ten thousand dollars wasn’t going to set him up for life, but it would certainly make the next half-year’s worth of mortgage payments on his loft easier. After thumbing through the stack to confirm that it was indeed many thousands of dollars in fifties, Cal calmly slide it his inside jacket breast pocket and started towards the stairs. He’d have time to count the money after work, right now he had to tell Anita about the evidence around the window and help her find the missing bullet casing.
Passing through the foyer and arriving in the kitchen, Cal found his partner in the process of sealing up a small, warped copper tube in a plastic evidence bag. “So, I guess that means you’ve found the missing bullet casing then?” he inquired.
“Uhuh, my guess is that it bounced off the floor on discharge and rolled a few inches under that fridge over there. The lab boys woulda found it if they’d gotten on their knees and used a pencil like they teach at the Academy, but some asshole probably didn’t want to ruin his dress pants or something” Anita replied curtly.
“Well, I have some good news and some bad news Detective Jackson” Cal told her, while trying to remain as calm as he possibly could about the fat stack of cash hiding in his breast pocket.
“Gimme the bad news first Blondie, I hate surprises” Anita said playfully.
Without missing a beat, Cal quipped “the bad news is that we can’t solve this case here today, because of the good news. What’s the good news? I’m glad you asked Detective. The good news is that Forensics found the point of entry and what looks like a full thumbprint, some time before we arrived.”
Anita didn’t even chuckle. Her face was a mask of confusion and annoyance; so much so that for half a heartbeat, Cal was certain that she knew he’d found something else down in the basement. The moment quickly passed however and Cal realized he was calmly talking to his partner despite the dreadful fear that had just come over him.
“No, really, you can check for yourself if you like. There are photo tags all over the place and dusting powder on the window ledge and the wall. Come on, I’ll show you” he said while confidently striding towards the staircase once again.
It felt better to be moving, something about standing in front of Anita after having just committed a crime was highly unnerving, even if she had no idea what he’d just done. That probably explained why she’d been murder police for almost twenty years now he reasoned. As they descended the staircase, Cal warned her not to snag her clothes on the steel hooks along each side; a perfectly normal conversation for a perfectly normal moment he thought.
Arriving inside the den, Cal immediately pointed his partner towards the far window over top of Mitchell’s bed.
“That was the likely point of entry. The print is just off to the right of the window frame and if you look carefully you can see where the intruder squeezed some kind of shim under the pane. The wood shows signs of compression damage if you look closely” he told her as calmly as he could muster.
Anita simply nodded and carefully approached the frame for a closer examination. Cal’s visage remained calm, but inside he broke out into a silent panic. His heart beat nervously while his partner carefully examined the stress marks and the blue thumbprint marked out in dust along the wall. It immediately occurred to him that this had been a very, very stupid idea and now she was going to catch him removing evidence from a crime scene; valuable evidence at that. Each second that passed seemed longer and more excruciating than the last as he waited patiently in the throes of terror. It was only a question of time he thought; she’d have his badge any moment now. Finally, the moment of truth came and Cal watched in fascinated horror as Anita glanced casually down the aisle way, along the far side of the bed. Then without warning or mishap, his nightmare ended.
Anita sighed and turned towards him, asking “did you find anything else?”
Cal was nearly certain she could see the guilt on his face, but outwardly his courage held. ”No, nothing; the lab guys were clearly all over this joint” he replied quickly, before her suspicions could be aroused.
Taking once last glance around the room, Anita let out a long, slow breath and shook her head in frustration. “Well, it looks like we’re done here after all. I’ll meet you back in the car” she said flatly, walking back past Cal on her way to the staircase.
