Rough Riders by Charlie Stella

Author:Charlie Stella [Stella, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime fiction
Publisher: Stark House Press
Published: 2013-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Dale took the call from Emily outside the morgue. He ducked into an empty hallway and asked his wife to repeat what the caller had said word for word.

“Are you alright?” he asked when she finished telling him.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Do you want me to come home?”

“Eventually, yes,” she joked.

“Em, please.”

“It was just some asshole, I’m sure. I was frightened because I was alone. I’d just got out of the shower. I felt vulnerable. I’m fine now.”

“I want you to call the station and ask someone to come by.”

“No. I have to leave.”

“Em.”

“Dale, I’m okay. I thought you should know is why I called.”

“I should know. I can be there in ten minutes.”

“I’m already on my way. The library, remember?”

“Right, damn. I’ll call it in anyway.”

“Where are you now?”

“The morgue.”

“Yuck,” Emily said. “I have to go. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Dale said.

He returned to the morgue as a body was brought in on a gurney. Dale squinted at the sight. Paperwork from the Air Force base had identified the body as that of Tyrone Williams, the man Dale had arrested earlier in the week, but except for the tattoos and braided hair, there was no way of knowing that from the body on the table. The exit wounds had obliterated the dead man’s face.

“He took three shots in the back of the head,” said Dr. Thomas Olsen, touching the back of Dale’s head approximately where each bullet had entered Tyrone Williams’s skull. “At least two exited through his face, what caused all the damage. I doubt he saw his killer.”

“Or he wasn’t looking at him,” Dale said.

The doctor was confused a second. “Huh? Oh, yes, right. I guess.”

“What caliber?”

“Looks like a nine millimeter.”

“Can you tell how long he’s dead?”

“I can approximate and say a few days.”

“I arrested him for possession this week.”

“Then he was killed shortly thereafter.”

“Executed, looks like.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’d say. For sure.”

* * * * * * *

“What time is it?” Pavlik asked.

“We’ll be leaving soon,” Special Agent Mears said.

Pavlik was resting in the bed. His hands were loosely cuffed. The agents were seated on either side of him. They were watching an HBO movie on the television.

“Aren’t you worried the cuffs might leave marks?” Pavlik asked them.

Neither agent answered.

“You gonna leave money for sharing the room?” he asked next.

Again the agents remained silent.

“Did anyone call? Can you at least tell me that?”

“No one has called,” Mears said.

“You sure? You check messages?”

“The telephone would show it.”

Pavlik was grinding his teeth from frustration. He said, “If there’s any way I can prove this, I will. I’ll have both your asses six ways to Sunday. I’ll sue the shit out of the Bureau.”

The agents remained silent.

“We used to piss on you guys back in New York,” Pavlik said. “NYPD had you all figured for college boy sissies liked to wear sunglasses and suits.”

The two agents smirked at each other.

“One for me,” Pavlik said.

“Check this out,” Special Agent Feller said to Mears.

Pavlik looked up at the screen and watched as Morgan Freeman walked across water.

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