I got the TV news on and there’s some big-hair blonde going off about the minimart holdup. She’s all excited, but they don’t have shit on who the bad guys were. Po-lice “working several solid leads.” Yeah, right. The gas station and the minimart burned to the ground. Three confirmed DOAs: the clerk, and the two civilians in the van. Little pickup, possibly white, seen “fleeing the scene.” Got that shit right. But, shit, if all they had was a possibly white pickup truck, we were good to go, man. Had to be a thousand or so of those around Manceford County, right? So… too fucking bad about the civilians, but, you know, sometimes shit just happens. Bad shit for them, but good shit for us-no wits, right? So that was the good news. The bad news was that we got jack shit in the way of money out of this whole goat fuck, so we were definitely gonna have to go hit another one, and, like, pretty fucking soon, man. I was so glad I hadn’t ditched that fucking TEC, man. Hid that puppy outside.
And then, while I was, like, sitting there, just trying to think, you know? Where we oughta go, what the fuck we should do next-the whole fucking world fell in on us. I’ve got my breakfast beer in the air, man, when the door fucking explodes backward off its hinges and about a million armored cops blast into the room. This huge fucking deputy comes right at me and flat-arms my skinny ass right off the bed. Then the rest of the meat, all of ’em these huge dudes with fat red faces, helmets, lookin’ like fucking Star Wars storm troopers, man, they just pile on, twisting my arms behind my back to get those cuffs on, an’ all the time screaming at me to “ get down, get down, get flat, don’t fucking move,” like I could even twitch with all that sweaty meat on me.
Then this really big dude gets right down on the floor with me, and he goes, “You the mother fuckers torched the gas station last night?”
By now I’m, like, seein’ red spots in front of my eyes and my arms feel like they’re coming right out of their sockets, and even with all the noise, I can hear Flash cryin’ again. I can’t see shit, Flash is makin’ like a fucking sheep, and there’s ten dudes sitting on me. So anyway, the big cop grabs my chin, and he asks again, “You the man, asshole?” I mean, he’s so close his spit’s sprayin’ in my face. My fucking arms are making popping noises now, so I think, Fuck it, they flat got our asses, right? So I go, “Awright, yeah, we fucking done it, okay? Now let me breathe, motherfucker!”
Civilians, man. You know this has to be all about those fucking civilians. Night clerk in a minimart? Dude’s gotta know what the game is, what kinda shit can go down. And it’s not like I meant to take ’em out or anything. But fuck: You see two dudes coming through the front glass at eleven o’clock at night with a machine gun? You don’t sit there and fucking watch, man, you put your ride in fucking reverse and you get the fuck out of there, man. Like, every body knows that. Fucking civilians.
Say, man, you got any extra smokes?
3
It was late may, and the building-management gnomes who decided such things had turned off both the heat and the air-conditioning to save money, so the courtroom was unusually stuffy. Steven Klein, the local district attorney, was droning through the motions hearing on the minimart case, while Lt. Cam Richter and Sgt. Kenny Cox of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office tried to stay awake in the back of the courtroom. The case was pretty much a slam dunk, what with the confession and the submachine gun, but with Justice Bellamy presiding, one never knew what was going to happen. And sure enough, the judge raised a hand to interrupt Klein. Cam knew that Steven hated that, and it showed immediately on the DA’s face. What came next got everyone’s undivided attention.
“Mr. Klein, I’ve been looking at the arrest reports for these two defendants. I see a problem here. A big problem, actually.”
“Your Honor?” Kelin said, pulling his reading glasses down his large nose. He was in his forties, abundantly fed, and still annoyed that the judge had interrupted him.
“You’ve stated that Mr. Kyle Simmonds, alias K-Dog, confessed to the minimart holdup at the time of his arrest in the motel room. But I notice that his Miranda statement was not executed until the SWAT team had both defendants back at the district station. This was what-forty-five minutes after taking them into custody?”
“They were Mirandized verbally at the scene by the arresting officers, Your Honor. They signed their paper once the deputies got ’em back to the district office.”
“Which arresting officer in particular Mirandized them?”
“Uh,” Klein said, looking sideways and behind him at Detective Will Guthridge. Will had been the supervising detective sent out by the district office when the SWAT team went in to take down the two robbers.
“The deputies who hooked him up, Your Honor,” Guthridge said. “It was a SWAT takedown. Really noisy in there.”
“Which specific arresting officer gave them their Miranda warnings, Detective? As in, a name, please?”
“I’ll have to find that out, Your Honor,” Guthridge said, popping out a flip phone and punching up his phone list. Cam looked sideways at Kenny Cox, his number two on the Major Criminal Apprehension Team. Kenny had his eyes closed and was shaking his head slowly from side to side. Oh shit, oh dear, Cam thought. Guthridge was bent sideways in his seat, talking earnestly, probably to someone in the Special Operations section. Cam leaned his head toward Kenny. “Who was the honcho on SWAT that day?” he asked.
“McMichael,” Kenny muttered. Cam groaned quietly. Then K-Dog took the opportunity to throw some shit in the game. He spoke up from the defendants’ table. “Nobody said shit,” he offered helpfully. “They knocked us on our asses, told us to stay down on the floor about a million times. They was all yellin’ and shit.”
“Ms. Walker,” the judge said to K-Dog’s court-appointed defense attorney. “Please instruct the defendant not to speak until I ask him to speak. Detective, what are your people saying? You understand I’ll want a live arresting officer standing tall, right here, under oath, stating that he gave the appropriate warnings, right?”
Guthridge nodded vigorously at the judge and kept talking. Cam nudged Kenny and asked him if he could call somebody and get this thing right. K-Dog’s motel room confession was all they really had on these assholes, because the fire at the gas station had eliminated both witnesses and any physical evidence. The crooks had also been smart enough to wipe down and then stash the TEC-9 behind an AC unit in the motel parking lot, so even though they could tie the gun to the crime scene, they could only tie it circumstantially to the two mutts. Even the probable cause to send the SWAT team in the first place had been something of a Slim Jim.
“They don’t love you at Narco-Vice just now,” Kenny said as he pulled out his own cell phone and hit a button.
Well I know, Cam thought. He saw Guthridge hang up his phone and turn around to look back at him. His expression begged for some cavalry on this one, which was definitely not an encouraging development.
“Detective?” Judge Bellamy was a good-looking woman in her forties, with snapping bright eyes and a notoriously healthy suspicion of cops and all their works.
“Still working on it, Your Honor,” Guthridge said, punching up another number on his phone. Cam realized that too many Manceford County irons had gotten into this particular fire. If no one stood up, they were going to have a real problem.