Looking Into Darkness

  LOOKING INTO DARKNESS

  A Moseby and French Mystery

  by

  BILL CRAIG

  Dedication:

  To the brave men and women in law enforcement, as well as to all first responders everywhere

  and to my children . . . with love.

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Chapter One

  The night time temperature had fallen below seventy degrees and there was no humidity for once. Patrol officer, Charlie Mendez had his windows rolled down in the squad car as he rolled quietly through the predawn streets.

  It had been a quiet night since the bars had shut down at two in the morning. Not even a domestic complaint to keep things interesting. Just a nice quiet boring night. Charlie didn’t get too many of those. He was hoping December would be a quiet month after the way the summer had gone. At least the election was over. It had made folks even crazier than usual.

  Mendez was headed from Davis Boulevard to Bayshore Boulevard when his night went to hell. Flames exploded on the street in front of him and he slammed on his breaks, reaching for the radio mike, but then the front windshield exploded into a million sharp fragments of glass, driven back into the vehicle under a hail of copper-jacketed bullets.

  Mendez ducked, keeping his head below the dash, feeling the glass fragments slice over the skin on his face, neck and arm. He reached over, struggling to unbuckle his seat belt and draw his service pistol. The gun fire stopped, and he drew his Glock .40, raising his head just enough to peer over the dashboard of his now ruined patrol car. All he could see were flames flickering in front of the vehicle.

  Charlie pushed open the driver’s door and slid out onto the street in a crouching position. He was reaching up to key his radio-mike when more automatic weapons fire erupted out of the darkness, the bullets ripping through the air around him, tearing holes in the car and blowing the tires. Charlie scrambled around to the back, the radio once more forgotten and he tried in vain to spot the shooter.

  Something came flying out of the darkness. Charlie flinched before realizing that it was another Molotov cocktail until it shattered on the roof of the squad car covering it in flames. Charlie Mendez had no choice. Now he had to move before those flames hit the fumes from his leaking gas tank.

  Charlie gathered his legs under him, his right hand still gripping his Glock and took off for the nearest building. He hadn’t gone four steps when another hail of bullets ripped into him, cutting him to pieces. Charlie hit the pavement before he even knew he was dead. Silence descended on the intersection once more. No sound except that of the flames eating at the shattered police car. Then, the gas tank ignited with a loud boom that lifted the car into the air and sent it crashing down once more to the ground. Shortly, the sound of sirens filled the air as police and fire trucks responded to calls about the explosion . . .

  *****

  “I don’t like this,” Sergeant Garrett Moseby said, as he looked over the scene.

  “Because it’s a cop?” Sergeant Lucy French asked, walking up beside him.

  “That’s not my top priority, despite what Captain Stanley might think. I knew Charlie Mendez. He was a squared away cop with a clean record,” Moseby said.

  “I heard that, too. But, what if he wasn’t?” Lucy looked at him.

  “You really think that Charlie was dirty?”

  “I guess not, but there were times that I did wonder.”

  “Charlie wasn’t dirty. He and I had a connection. There was no way he would have turned criminal. I don’t care what you might have heard.”

  “Why would somebody kill him then?” Lucy asked.

  “In this current political climate? With domestic terrorists like Black Lives Matter calling for the murder of police officers? You really have to ask that?” Garrett Moseby looked at her.

  “So, you think it is politically motivated?” Lucy French asked her partner.

  “To be totally honest, you don’t?” Moseby asked her.

  “Honestly, I wish that I knew,” French replied.

  “We need to look at the big picture, put our preconceived impressions aside. Somebody murdered a police officer from ambush. The most important question we need to ask now is why?” Moseby sighed.

  “There could be any number of reasons,” Lucy said.

  “Yes, there could. But why at this particular moment? The election is over with, so I don’t see any kind of political motive,” Moseby told her.

  “I get that, Garrett.”

  “I know that you do. But what do you think?”

  “I think that some bad shit is about to go down. I don’t know why,” Lucy told him.

  “I don’t either, kid. But I don’t believe this is a one of. Whoever did this is going to do it again.” Moseby told her.

  “I know that, too. So, what do we do?”

  “We do our jobs and find out who did this. It won’t be easy, but it is what we have to do it.”

  “I know that. I don’t like this, Garrett.”

  “I don’t either. I don’t like cop killers. Something about this doesn’t feel right. It’s an ambush kill. That much is obvious, the question is why?”

  “That is what we need to find out,” Lucy French sighed.

  “Then, I guess we had better do what we do. I’m going to look at Charlie’s body first. You walk the perimeter and talk to any witnesses that the blues round up,” Moseby told her.

  As he walked, Moseby pulled out his digital recorder. He used it to record his initial impressions of a crime scene. Usually a standard murder of some sort. But this was different. This was an execution, the execution of a cop. Why had Charlie Mendez been singled out? Moseby didn’t know, at least not yet. But he would find out. One way or another.

  Moseby didn’t like cop killers as a rule. Hell, no sane person liked cop killers. But he especially didn’t like cop killers that targeted his friends. He would get this guy, one way or another.

  Lucy French watched her partner walk towards the body and shook her head. She wondered if she would ever figure out Garrett Moseby. Lucy headed over to talk to the few people gathered behind the police tape that the first unit on the scene had strung up.

  Lucy was worried about her partner. She had been worried about him since they had managed to clear the Tampa Slasher Case. That one had seemed to take on personal connotations for her partner, and not just because she had been personally targeted by the guy. No, there was more behind it than that.

  She had a bad feeling about this particular cop killing. Charlie Mendez was a good cop. She knew that, even though there had recently been rumors that he was not as squeaky clean as his brothers in blue thought. She knew that Moseby and Mendez had been close. Was that enough to cloud her partner’s judgment? She wished that she knew.

  As far as she was concerned, French was keeping an open mind. She had heard the rumors, but there was no factual evidence to back them. But Moseby didn’t believe them for a minute. She wished that she knew who to believe.

  “Based on the way the scene looks, this was an ambush. The ambushers used Molotov cocktails and military grade assault rifles with a fully automatic setting. One cocktail to stop the car, another after it was stopped to drive Officer Mendez out from cover and into their field of fire. The big question is why? Was this a random killing? Or was Officer Mendez targeted specifically?” Moseby spoke into the recorder.

  Chapter Two

  Moseby frowned as he knelt down next to Charlie Mendez’s body, searching the surroundings. Charlie had been a good cop. If somebody had targeted him, there had to be a reason for it. What was that reas
on? He was pretty sure that it had little to do with police work. So, what did it have to do with? That was the big question.

  Had Charlie been on the take? Moseby considered the question. He had never seen anything that might indicate it. Yet, what the hell did he know about Charlie? They had been friends, yes, but how well did he actually know him? It came him in that instant. He didn’t.

  There hadn’t been any recent police shootings that might have acted as a trigger for this. So, what was it? Charlie might not even have been the target. It could be totally random and that would make it harder to find out who had done it.

  Moseby stood. Charlie wasn’t going to tell him anything. He needed to get a look at the whole scene, the big picture. Down here by the car and Charlie, he was too close. He needed some perspective.

  “You okay, partner?” Lucy French asked, softly. Moseby turned his head to look at her.

  “No, I’m not okay, Lucy. A cop was killed here tonight. One of our brothers. What I am is mad. I want to know why it happened,” Moseby said, his voice coming out as a low growl.

  “I know that, Garrett. But I know we need to keep a cool head while we look at this,” Lucy said.

  “Lucy, I need to go up on the bridge. I need to look at the big picture. I need to see the whole scene. This is more than just an assassination of a street cop.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so,” Moseby told her.

  “How?” French asked.

  “My gut,” Moseby said.

  “I trust your gut,” Lucy told him.

  “Good to know.”

  “This is just the beginning, Lucy. I don’t know how I know, but I know,” Moseby told her.

  “I trust you, partner,” French told him. Moseby nodded. They finished up and headed back to the station.

  *****

  The morning headlines screamed a story that was more innuendo than fact as they described an ambush in response to a recent police shooting up in Michigan. A long way from Tampa.

  Lucy French had beat him to work, something that was rare, and it caught Moseby off guard. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair before sitting down. “Anything new?”

  “Not yet. Nobody is taking credit for it. Of course, the papers are trying to stir stuff up,” Lucy took a drink of her coffee.

  “The media is good for that.”

  “Yes, they are. How do you want to handle this?”

  “We handle it like an isolated incident, until we have reason to handle it different.”

  “That sounds like a plan.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Garrett, are you sure that you should be the one to handle this case? You and Charlie were close.”

  “We were. Charlie was one of my best friends,” Moseby told her.

  “I know that,” Lucy told him.

  “What do you think I should do, Luce? Should I let it go and have another team take it over?”

  “That’s not what I am saying, Garrett,” Lucy told him.

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we need to tread carefully,” Lucy told him.

  “You think this has to do with the Black Lives Matter movement?” Moseby asked.

  “I can’t say that I don’t,” Lucy confessed.

  “I don’t buy it, Luce. Charlie was a good guy. He didn’t see color when he was on patrol. He saw people.”

  “That may be right, Garrett, but the shooter might not have known that,” Lucy said.

  “He may not, but I don’t get the feeling that this is racially motivated. Charlie was black, for God’s sake!”

  “So, what do you think that means?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think that this is a diversion,” Lucy said.

  “For what?” Moseby asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Moseby sighed.

  “Let’s go look at the scene again in daylight. Maybe we’ll see something we missed last night.”

  “Good idea, partner,” Moseby told her. Together, they headed for the door. Going back over the scene wasn’t an uncommon thing for the investigators. The road was still closed due to the damage caused by the burning police car. So, it would still be relatively intact. The ride to it was filled with comfortable silence between the two detectives, both wrapped in their own thoughts.

  *****

  Claude Dahmer frowned as he looked out of the hotel window into the morning sun. He wasn’t especially happy about Cristo’s plan, but there was little he could do about it. Solomon wasn’t happy either, but he had deferred to Cristo. While Claude had no love for cops, killing them wasn’t high on his list of things to do if you wanted to stay alive.

  But, Cristo was the boss. He had been their squad leader over in the sandbox. His plan, so they followed it, didn’t matter if they liked it or not. Dahmer hated shooting up that cop. The guy was out on the street, trying to do his job and they had just blown him away. Dahmer didn’t like it, didn’t like it one damn bit. But Cristo had promised them a payday. So that was why he was still hanging around. That and the fact that Cristo would kill him if he tried to leave.

  *****

  Lucy French was worried about Garret Moseby. He was taking this case far too personally. She had to wonder about that. So far, her partner wasn’t talking yet.

  Lucy sighed as she brushed her bangs out of her eyes. She wondered if maybe all his years of looking into darkness were starting to get to him. She had seen it happen to a lot of cops. They saw humanity at its worst every day, day-in and day-out, until finally they felt like they had no soul left. She hoped that Moseby hadn’t reached that point yet.

  No question it was a troubled time to be a cop in the United States. Between groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, they were slaughtering cops at every opportunity allegedly in response to cops profiling and killing black teens. President Obama hadn’t helped matters either, by standing with BLM and blaming the cops for doing their jobs. The man had done his best to divide the country before he had left the Oval Office, and now President Trump was faced with a battle from people who hated him because he was rich and white and a political outsider.

  French shook her head. She fucking hated politics, which was probably why she and Moseby had never risen above the rank of detective sergeants. Neither of them were political animals. They were both blue collar detectives that worked the cases they were given and closed more than they didn’t.

  They reached the ambush site and Moseby pulled their unmarked car to the curb. They climbed out of the car into the simmering heat of morning. The heat and humidity slapped them in the face and forced the sweat out through their pores. Her silk shirt was instantly sticking to her skin. The burnt out remains of the police car had been removed, but the bubbly tar atop the asphalt remained as a grim testament to what had gone on the night before. As did the brown stains from where Charlie Mendez had bled out. French took in a breath and let it our slowly before glancing at her partner.

  Moseby had gone pale under his tan. His eyes were blinking rapidly as he fought back tears. French looked away and stepped forward, giving him his time and space to grieve for their fallen brother. Her eyes swept the scene, looking for anything that the CSI’s might have missed.

  She walked over to the wall underneath the overpass. She hadn’t seen it last night, but now in the light of day it was obvious. The bridge had been tagged alright. “Garrett,” she called, as she pulled out her cell phone and activated the camera and snapped photos. She heard her partner walk up beside her.

  “What have you got?” Moseby asked, more in control again.

  “Take a look,” Lucy sighed.

  “Kill the pigs, Black Lives Matter,” Moseby read.

  “So much for it not being racially motivated,” Lucy sighed again.

  “Why would they kill a black cop?”

  “I
don’t know, Gar. I just don’t know,” she said.

  “I don’t buy it, Lucy.”

  “Why not?”

  “What you said earlier, about how maybe this is just a diversion, to get us looking in the wrong direction.”

  “I remember.”

  “What if you were right?” Moseby asked her.

  “Then you think this was a diversion as well?” Lucy French asked.

  “It makes more sense than the perps signing their work. They would know that this is going to bring even more heat down on their movement,” Moseby said.

  “Good point. So, how do you want to handle this?”

  “Call CSU and have them send out another team to see what else they might have missed last night. Then, we start taking a hard look at Charlie.”

  “You sure that you’re up to this?”

  “Yeah,” Moseby replied.

  Garrett Moseby felt rejuvenated. He didn’t buy the BLM tag at the scene, it felt staged. He wasn’t sure if Lucy believed him or not, even though it had been her idea. The tag was just too convenient. It played into a narrative that made no sense. Would BLM target a black cop? That seemed to defeat their purpose. He might have bought it if it were a white cop with blemishes on his record. But not Charlie Mendez.

  Sure, there had been rumors that Charlie was on the take, but nobody dared say it to his face. His arrest record spoke for itself. He knew that IAD was already looking hard at the man and his family, but they just wanted to prove that he was guilty of something. That wasn’t what Moseby wanted, however.

  His job was to find out who had killed his brother officer. He’d let the district attorney figure that part out.

  Chapter Three

  Charlie Mendez’s widow met them at the door of the small house near Ybor City. It was a rough neighborhood to be sure, though historical, but everybody had to live somewhere, even cops. Carly Mendez gave Moseby a hug as he offered his condolences. Then she ushered them both inside.

  “Can I get you anything?” Carly asked.

  “Maybe a glass of water?” Lucy asked, with a smile. She could tell that Carly was nervous and scared.