“You’re under arrest, Ted,” Wade said. “Put the Bible down and your hands behind your back.”
Ted set the Bible down on the chair. As Wade handcuffed him and read him his rights, Ted could see that he finally had the full attention of everyone in the room.
“She was right,” Ted said.
“Excuse me?” Wade said.
“May I minister to them for a few minutes?”
Wade saw everyone looking at them. “About what? The wages of sin?”
“I was thinking the blessed sanctity of forgiveness,” Ted said.
“Works for me,” Wade said and took a seat.
Wade let Ted preach for thirty minutes, his hands cuffed behind his back, to a rapt audience before taking him away.
During that time, Charlotte found the gun, as well as a vial of holy oil, in Ted’s room. But before collecting those two items and putting them in evidence bags, she took detailed photographs of the room and made an inventory of everything that was in it. She also searched for anything else that might tie Ted to the crime scenes.
They brought Ted back the station and in through the back door without any of the fanfare or notice that Gayle Burdett received when she was arrested. But Wade was certain that news of the arrest would spread quickly through Darwin Gardens and that, by morning, everyone there would know about it.
Wade locked Ted in the cell, and then he and Charlotte sat down to write up their reports, which they did mostly in silence. After an hour or so, Charlotte gave Wade a copy of her paperwork and stood behind him, waiting for his reaction.
“That was quite a speech you gave to Friar Ted,” he said.
“I knew all those years of Sunday school would come in handy someday.”
“I’m not sure he would have broken without the push you gave him.”
“He was already broken,” she said. “He just had to be reminded, that’s all.”
They stayed at the station the rest of the night. Wade took a can of paint outside and covered over the obscene graffiti on the plywood, although he knew it was a futile effort. He decided that he’d get a window company down to replace the glass before the end of the week, even if he had to do it by force.
While he was glad to have solved the killings, he wasn’t happy about the likely consequences. Mission Possible, without a passionate and devoted leader like Friar Ted, would probably close, putting a lot of homeless, hungry, and desperate people back on the streets.
And it would make it much more difficult for the next person who opened a shelter to establish credibility, much less trust, in the neighborhood.
The arrest of Friar Ted would just reinforce the rampant cynicism and distrust of institutions and authority that already existed in Darwin Gardens, especially toward anybody who came there professing a desire to do some good.
Including Wade.
At daybreak, he sent Charlotte downtown to book Ted into jail, and then he ambled over to the Pancake Galaxy when it opened to have some breakfast and a chance to flirt with Mandy.
She had a stack of hotcakes and a slice of pie waiting for him at the counter when he came in. Pete was at the register, puffing on a cigarette, his oxygen tank a few feet away.
“If I keep eating like this every day,” Wade said, “I’ll be the fattest cop in the department.”
“Live a little,” Mandy said. “You caught two murderers in twenty?four hours. That’s some fancy police work, Columbo.”
He took a seat at the counter. “I have my moments.”
Mandy leaned close to him. “And not just in bed either.”
“Thanks for getting the word out for me that I was bringing in Glory’s killer.”
“I didn’t,” Mandy said and gestured to her father. “There’s your publicist.”
Wade glanced at Pete, who was holding his cigarette and coughing. Each stabbing cough was deep, hard, and cutting.
“I owe you one,” Wade said when Pete’s coughing subsided for a moment.
“You sure like to be noticed,” Pete said.
“I just want people here to know that I’m working for them.”
“You’re assuming they give a damn.”
“You’re right,” Wade said.
“Then you’re not half as smart as I thought you were,” he said, taking another puff on his cigarette and sparking a coughing jag even worse than the one before.
Wade looked at Mandy and saw the pain on her face. It was as if she felt each cough herself.
The bell above the door jangled and Charlotte came in, carrying a manila envelope. She seemed troubled as she took the stool beside Wade.
“Did everything go OK at central booking with Ted?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you make sure that all the paperwork reflected where the arrest was made and which team of rookie police officers closed the case?”
“Absolutely.”
“So why are you looking so glum?”
She sighed. “When I was in the academy, they told us the story about those two officers who pursued a stolen car down here and drove right into an ambush.”
Pete snubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “They took more bullets than Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Our instructors ran us through a re?creation of that situation as a training exercise at the academy,” she said.
“What did you learn?” Mandy asked.
“To stay the hell out of Darwin Gardens.”
“I guess you flunked,” Pete said.
“Things aren’t going to change for you overnight,” Wade said. “It’s going to take a lot more than one case, and certainly not this one, to impress someone in headquarters enough to transfer you out of here.”
“That’s not it,” she said sharply. “Give me a little credit.”
“OK, sorry,” he said. “So what is it?”
Charlotte slid the envelope over to him. “While I was downtown, I got the ballistics report on those guns you had me take down to the lab on my first day.”
Wade opened the envelope and began to read the report, but he need not have bothered, because Charlotte already had.
“Four of the guns were used in that ambush,” she said. “One of them was chrome plated. They ran the prints and came up with some names.”
“Timo was one of ’em,” Wade said.
“Timo Proudfoot,” Charlotte said.
“No wonder he only goes by his first name.”
“The others are Clay Touzee, Thomas Blackwater, and Willis Parsons.”
The names meant nothing to him, of course. He needed faces.
“They’re not going to let you take them without a fight,” Mandy said.
“Seems likely,” Wade said.
He finished his pancakes and moved on to the pie. As possible last meals go, Wade couldn’t have asked for a better one.
Chapter twenty six
“This is insane,” Charlotte said, trying to keep up with Wade as he marched across the intersection back to the station.
“Arresting bad guys is what we do.”
“But we can wait,” she said. “This is big. The crime lab will surely notify the chief about what they’ve found. And he’ll see past whatever enmity he has toward you and send a tactical force down here to seek justice for those two dead officers.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Because you want to bring down Timo yourself.”
Wade stopped on the sidewalk and faced her. “Because it will be the equivalent of a military invasion. A lot of people who had nothing to do with that massacre will die on both sides.”
“It won’t be our fault,” she said.
“But it will ignite so much hatred that no one in King City will ever put a human face on Darwin Gardens again and it will make it impossible for a cop here to ever earn anyone’s trust.”
“And that matters to you?”
“This is my home,” he said.
“It wasn’t a week ago,” she said.
“It is now.” Wade turned and burst into the station so suddenly, and in such a hard?charging manner, that he startled Billy, who was in the midst of opening a package of Oreos. Billy ripped the package wide open and the cookies went flying.