Absolution by Henry Hack

Author:Henry Hack [Hack, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2021-09-01T23:00:00+00:00

. . .

Four o’clock rolled around and my two sergeants, with Richie Paul and John Micena, were with me in my office. I said, “Richie, John, I have a job for you.”

They looked at each other, then over to the pronto file, and nodded. “That box represents a case that began many years ago, on June 16, 1957 to be exact. It is a legitimate cold case belonging to this squad. Ice-cold, as Harry said this morning. I believe it is partially solved. I believe a second perpetrator was involved, a young man, who would now be about sixty years old , give or take, if he is alive. I want you two to read the appropriate sections of the case – I marked them – to convince yourselves that a second perpetrator was indeed involved.”

“What if they don’t agree with that, Mike?” asked Charlie.

“I believe they will, but if they conclude otherwise, and can convince me of their conclusion, I will move this case from Open – Unsolved to Closed.”

“Do you want us to read this whole thing?” Richie asked.

“No, only pertinent sections as necessary. For now I want you to read the initial investigation and initial follow-up. Then we will put our heads together and discuss it tomorrow.”

“Boss, why now?” John Micena asked. “What’s so important about a forty-year old case?”

“Let me give you a brief summary of the crime and where it stands now. That should answer your questions.”

“It’s personal, isn’t it?” Paul asked.

“Oh, yeah. On June 16, 1957 at about one a.m. an intruder, or intruders, cut the screen door on a home in Cambria Heights and entered. The assumption was their intent was burglary, but no items seemed to be missing. In the master bedroom slept a young couple, both twenty-five years old. They had intentionally left the inside front door all the way open, as well as all the windows in their bedroom in the hopes of catching a cross breeze on this unusually hot night.”

“No AC back then, I remember,” Micena said.

“No, I wish there had been. A locked front door most likely would have saved their lives. The young man was a Nassau County Police Officer assigned to the Fifth Precinct which, as you know, borders our 105 Precinct. It appears the officer kept his off-duty revolver close by, and when the intruders entered the bedroom and flicked the lights on a shoot out occurred resulting in the death of the couple and one of the intruders. It appears the second intruder fled the scene in panic, empty handed.”

“If there was a second guy,” Micena said.

“I’m certain there was, but we’ll discuss that more fully at a later time. When the responding uniformed officers from the 105 Precinct arrived they immediately heard a baby crying from a bedroom down the hall from the master bedroom. When the police officer looked down at the baby, he smiled up at him and reached out to him.

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