Red Squad Ch. 01

Part 4 - The One That Got Away

I had given Helena a half day off, beginning at noon, so there was no warning when there was a knock on my door. It was FBI Special Agent in Charge Jack Muscone.

"Hey, Dog." said Muscone, then he caught himself and said: "Er, that might not be the right term this particular weekend."

"I'll excuse it." I said with mock severity. Then I had Muscone sit down and said "Wassup?"

Muscone said "I was asked to assist with the OPR investigation of Dominic Ellis for shooting you at that Press conference." (Author's note: 'Only Time', Ch. 04.) "So we can treat this either as my interview with you over what you thought happened, there; or we can have a private, off-the-record conversation where you steer me in the right direction."

"What I thought happened was that he shot me." I said levelly.

"Well, thanks for that." said Muscone. "I think we got that part figured out. The question is why."

"Before I say anything, what has the OPR found out so far?" I asked.

Muscone said "Dominic Ellis had a great career going. Top 10% in his Class at Quantico. Worked two years in New York City, then Chicago asked for him to help with racial and gang issues there, so he transferred. Really good career in the Windy City, working mostly on the Southside streets." I nodded.

"He was picked up by OPR," Muscone said, meaning the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, "which is like a Policeman being assigned to Internal Affairs. And of course being black, he was 'below the zone' for even better and more visible opportunities."

"Affirmative Action in action." I said.

"But he really was good and deserved opportunities." said Muscone. "I only mention his being black, as it may play into what happened the other day."

I nodded, and Muscone continued: "As you know, he was sent here last summer with the OPR team for the 'security review' for the USDOJ Civil Rights Division." (Author's note: 'Iscariot', Ch. 02-03.) "His colleagues and superiors were totally shocked when he went off the Reservation and tried to hook you up to a polygraph, and without your consent, no less. After that he was taken out of OPR and was back in Chicago, but on the anti-terrorism unit."

Muscone: "What we didn't know, until now, after he shot you, is that right after that incident with you in July, Ellis was contacted by Jocelyn Moran of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. DOJ. They had a number of telephone conversations, and we found out that they met in Chicago while Moran was ostensibly at a Civil Rights conference there."

Muscone: "That doesn't prove anything, of course, but we know Moran hates your guts and Daniel Allgood's guts, and we know that Ellis hated you enough to shoot you. He also fronted you during the Logan interrogation, which with 20/20 hindsight is now better understood."

"That fills in some gaps nicely." I said. "Okay, now for my off-the-record pointing you in the right direction." I tapped on my computer, then turned on my television monitor to Police HQ internal channel 2.

"Before I show this," I said, "let me give you some context. You may remember a story a few years ago in Dearborn, Michigan, where the FBI arrested a 21-year-old black man and charged him with plotting a terrorist attack with a radical Islamist group. He had been a good kid, standout basketball player on his high school team, and it was thought he might make it out of there and be okay as an adult."

"Then he dropped out of high school his Junior year." I continued. "It turns out that Dearborn, Michigan had a growing Muslim population at the time. The Muslim leaders there got his mother a job at Wal-Mart, and he left high school and went to a Muslim school... and to a Mosque that the FBI has on its list as a very likely place where kids are radicalized into militant Islam. Of course, if he had not complied, his mother loses her job, maybe is treated worse."

"All too common a story in some areas," agreed Muscone, "though you'll never hear the American Mainstream Media tell a word of it." I nodded vigorously in agreement.

"So," I said, "I'm going to show you my interrogation of Dominic Ellis last week, and I want you to watch it in the context of what I just told you. In the words of Bettina Wurtzburg: Roll tape!"

I pressed the button on the remote, and tape rolled. My interview with Dominic Ellis in Interrogation-1 came on. Patrolman Johnson was the Uniformed presence.

As I came into the Interrogation room, Ellis's face changed from bored passivity to deep, bitter hatred. As I sat down and re-read him his considerable legal rights, he stared at me through his eyelids with cold fury.

Me: "I'm trying to understand. Make me understand."

Ellis: "Simple enough, Cracker. I tried to kill you. I should've gone for a head shot."

Me: "But why?"

Ellis: "Ain't it obvious, Cracker? Because you're a racist. A White Nationalist."

Me: "You're calling me a 'Cracker', and then saying I'm the racist here? Do better than that."

Ellis: "You're white, you don't understand the abuse the black man goes through at the hands of racist cops like you."

Me: "Even if I was a racist, and I'm not, you're saying that because you think I don't 'understand', that gives you the right to try to kill me?"

Ellis: "It means I'm not going to try to explain why it's not racist to call you the Cracker you are."

Me: "Ahhh... so only whites can be racists. Only whites can commit hate crimes, is that it?"

Ellis: "That's exactly right! We are an oppressed people! We are fighting for our lives, here!"

Me: "And violence, shooting me, is going to make things better?"

Ellis: "If it takes one Cracker cop that beats black men with a crowbar off the streets? Hell yeah, it makes things better!"

I ended the tape and turned to Muscone and said: "Everything else was a variant of the same theme. Because I'm white, I can't understand the plight of blacks. And I get that point, I truly do... though I'm not really inclined to be in a listening mood when he's trying to put a bullet in my chest."

"So what's the context?" Muscone said.

"Ellis was an outstanding FBI Agent." I said. "But you just saw that tape. It looks like the stories of a lot of people who have been 'radicalized'... but not by Islam. By blacks with a deep hatred of all things white. Like Jocelyn Moran."

Muscone nodded. "I can see that, but it doesn't explain why he just tried to shoot you out of the blue."

I said "After I fronted Ellis on his tactics last July, he not only failed to get me, he was humiliated by me. Then he was reassigned, and probably blamed that on me. So he fronted me at County Jail, and I stood right up to him. So some of it was personal, too."

Muscone nodded again. "And in less than four months. I'd say you have a way with influencing people, but it's not a funny joke right now."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, "blame The Batman for the Joker killing people."

Muscone said "That really is what it is, you know. So Moran is behind this?"

"No." I replied. "She just 'radicalized' him, for lack of a better term. His losing it and shooting me was just the hatred in him. And I'll add this... unless you can find that Moran was in contact with Ellis before he was sent here last July, I would suggest that Ellis's time on the Chicago streets might've changed him... brought out some latent racial hatreds that he had buried inside him."

"Now that," said Muscone, "I can wrap my head around..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

4:00pm, Friday, October 25th. I was catching up on the mountain of paperwork on the Hospital bombing, and that mountain of paperwork seemed to be as high as the mountain of rubble that had been cleared from the Hospital.

"Come in!" I said in answer to a knock on my door. Looking up, I saw Paulina Patterson come into my office. Her face looked like grim death.

"Is Laura okay?" I asked, seeing Paulina's look.

"Yes. She's fine." said Paulina. "Your mom or Cindy's mom would call if there was a problem."

"So why the glum look?" I asked. "Oh, have a seat." Paulina sat down in the hot chair, and I could tell she was steeling herself to tell me something.

"Is Cindy here?" Paulina asked. "You might want to bring her in for this." I nodded and buzzed Cindy to come over. She did, and sat down in the other hot chair.

"I just came over from City Hall." said Paulina. "The pretext, if you're ever asked, is that I'm here to talk about that Jack Logan character you have in County Jail."

"Okay." I said. "So what is this really about?"

Paulina looked at me, then Cindy, then back to me. Finally, she said "I just found out that they're going to announce just before close-of-business (5:00pm) that all criminal charges against Kelly Carnes will be dropped." (Author's note: 'Casting Aspersions', Ch. 04, for Carnes's arrest.)

I felt like a bomb had been dropped... on me. "How can that be?" I gasped. Then my voice got harsh as I said "Is this one of Walters's bright ideas?"

"She's not really at fault. Let me explain." Paulina said. "There were Federal as well as State and local charges against Kelly and Stephen Carnes. The Feds assigned Richard Baldwin to be the U.S. Attorney for the case. Miriam assigned Savannah Fineman to it."

"That's 'strike one' right there." I said.

Paulina said "Don, please, give me a chance to talk, here." I could see she was getting exasperated with me. After taking a breath, she said "Stephen Carnes confessed to the money laundering, the campaign finance violations, all of it. He also said his wife didn't know about any of it, that it was kept hidden from her."

"Plea deal?" I asked incredulously.

Paulina replied "Supposedly the only deal was that if Stephen pled guilty and made a sworn statement that Kelly didn't know anything, Baldwin would drop the Federal charges against Kelly. No word on what Stephen's sentence would be. And Savannah rolled over and recommended the local charges against Kelly be dropped, as well."

"Wait a minute." I said. "Kelly and Stephen separated and were getting a divorce, and now he's falling on his sword for her and completely exonerating her? He's giving up a lucrative career as a dentist, possibly his freedom, and accepting a Federal criminal record... to exonerate her? Really? Am I the only one not accepting this at face value?"

"No, you're not." Paulina said. "And it gets worse. I brought that up with Miriam, and said we shouldn't go along, we shouldn't just accept Stephen's confession, that we had plenty to show that Kelly did know and was culpable. At first Miriam just said it was Savannah's call to make, but after Franklin and I both pressed on it, Miriam said that Stephen's confession created reasonable doubt, and she didn't think we'd get a conviction."

Seeing my face, Cindy interjected: "Don, you know that they're not going to push anything that might make Savannah look bad, like losing a prosecution against a local politician who will have the Press behind her."

I just shook my head. "I get it that they're scared of their political shadows, but this is ridiculous. I need to call Walters and tell her to fight this..." I began fishing my Police iPhone out of my pants pocket.

"It's too late." Paulina said. When I looked at her, she said "It's already been taken to Judge Nance's Court. He's accepted the guilty plea for the local charges, and has dropped all charges against Kelly Carnes with prejudice."

"We gotta appeal that." I muttered. "Especially the 'with prejudice' part, in case we find more proof than the solid case we already have..."

"Don," Cindy said, "it's a done deal. Even a friendly Appellate Court won't overturn that, since the D.A.'s Office supported dropping the charges. The fix is in."

I peered at Cindy, wondering why she was acquiescing so quickly to this. Then I remembered that Paulina had wanted me to bring Cindy in. Yeah, the fix was in, all right, I thought to myself.

I fell back into my comfortable Command Chair, and looked at the ceiling. "We were that... frickin'... close." I muttered. "I handed Walters that case on a silver platter, airtight, easy-peasy. And she and Fineman let Carnes off the hook. Didn't even try..."

Paulina brought me out of my mini-reverie by saying "Don, I know you don't want to hear this... but I can't blame them for this. Stephen Carnes took the full rap. If Kelly's defense lawyer, most likely Gwen Munson, puts him on the stand, any hope of convicting her blows up."

I sighed. "I should've looked into it more." I said. "I don't know what I was doing, trusting others to handle it."

"What could you have done?" Cindy asked. "What else could anyone have done?"

I locked my gray eyes onto her ice-blue peepers with as cold a stare as I could give, and said in a glacial voice: "For openers, those vaunted new D.A. Investigators could've been digging into why Kelly and Stephen filed for divorce, when staying together means they can't be obligated to testify against each other."

I ranted on: "And they could've dug into why Stephen is throwing himself on his sword like that... again, after separating from and divorcing Kelly, and he does this... when he could've made a defense of her being behind it, and him being the one blissfully unaware. I mean c'mon... am I the only one wondering what went on to get him to do that?"

"You think there was something behind this?" Cindy asked.

"We'll never know now, will we?" I said bitterly. "By the way, has Walters hired any Investigators yet?"

"Two." said Paulina. "Jackson Ripley and Gregory Mitchum. Ripley is black, early 30s, not tall. Southport Police background, solid record. Mitchum is white, older, as in early 50s, and almost a caricature of what an FBI was portrayed as in the 1950s: always wears suits, stiff as cardboard, straightlaced. He was an FBI Agent, good clean record."

"This was Walters's chance to show off what they could do," I said, "and she threw the opportunity away."

What was not going away was my pain. But seeing as there was no more to be said nor done, I said "Thanks for coming by and telling me. You bringing Tasha to the party tomorrow?"

"I'm not a football fan." said Paulina. "And Tasha's a bit young, and Carole will be watching the game with you guys. So Tasha and I might have a mother-daughter day tomorrow, just the two of us..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Where's Don?" Teresa asked as Cindy came out onto the outside deck of the Cop Bar at 7:00pm. Todd, Teddy Franklin, Cindy's gym partners Wanda and Ariel, and Wanda's husband Carl were also there.

"He said he wasn't coming." Cindy replied. "Laura's still recovering, and he's hosting the party tomorrow."

"Anything else?" Teresa asked.

"We'll talk later." Cindy said.

After helping the others demolish a large supply of beef nachos and beer, Cindy and Teresa went to 'powder their noses'. They stopped along the way at the bar in the back room, which didn't have a bartender and was just a place to sit.

Teresa said "So... Don."

Cindy said "He was very upset with the news about Kelly Carnes beating the rap on the campaign finance charges. I'm glad Paulina had me come in there; Don might've gone off on her before he realized what he was doing."

"That bad, huh?" Teresa said. "So that's why he's not in a partying mood today."

Cindy said "I guess so. What bothers me is that Don really is holding it against DA Walters and ADA Fineman. He muttered that he should've done more himself, that he can't trust anyone else to get the job done."

Teresa winced. "You know, I tried to leave him alone during the Hospital attack, so he could tend to Laura. And he and a lot of others gave me compliments about getting the job done without bothering him. I was hoping that would show him that he can trust others to get the job done... but this will kill that."

"You did do a great job." Cindy said. "And I think he does trust you completely, and trusts Tanya and the Detectives more than they think he does. But you're right in that this will create a rift with the D.A. On the flip side, Don very accurately brought it out that Walters has hired two new Investigators, and they sat on their asses and didn't investigate Carnes any further. He had a great point there."

"So," said Teresa, "do we root for Savannah Fineman to win the race for Solicitor? Or for her to lose?" Cindy just shrugged...

Part 5 - Game Day, Birthday

7:00am, October 26th. I woke up in my bed in the Mountain Nest. Sleeping in until this 'late' hour was the first gift of this, my 36th birthday. I got up and took a hot shower, then shaved and got dressed. You better believe I was wearing a red shirt today, along with khaki pants.

Going downstairs, I saw that Laura was still asleep on the sofa-bed. Not asleep were two outstanding dogs, waiting at the back door to be taken out. I put on a windbreaker and quietly opened the back door and walked outside and down the steps to the backyard, sitting on the metal mesh loveseat as the dogs went about inspecting their territories and doing their business in the chill of the Autumn morning. It was going to be a beautiful day, perfect for college football!

I heard the backdoor open and the pitter-patter of little de-feets coming down the stairs, followed by my firstborn child appearing in front of me in her pajamas and overcoat. "Happy birthday, Daddy!" Carole said excitedly as she handed me a booklet. It was authored by her and illustrated by Marie.

"Aw, thank you, Carole." I said. "But before I read it, I want another present: a big hug from you." Carole stretched out her arms and I picked her up and she gave me a biiiiiig hug, which I returned. The protests of my back warned me that Carole was getting too big to pick up anymore.

"So let's read this." I said as Carole sat down beside me. The dogs had returned, and hopped onto the loveseat on either side of Carole, bracketing her and pressing against her to keep her warm.

The book was entitled 'Taking Care of His People by Carole T. and Marie S'. On the front cover was a headshot of me, smiling a lot more than I usually do. Very well drawn, except my ears were too big.

"Okay," I said as I opened the tome and began reading the first pages, "Daddy takes care of everyone. He rescued Bowser and Buddy, and he takes care of them." The drawing showed me between Bowser and Buddy, all three of us looking very happy. "And Daddy feeds Tiger Mom, which is all she wants him to do." A drawing showed me putting out food for a very happy Tiger Mom, whose gray and black bengal stripes were very well drawn.

"Daddy takes care of all of us kids, and keeps us safe." the book said. A drawing of me surrounded by Carole, Marie, Tasha, Jim, Ross, Ian, little Pete Feeley, Doug Burke and Mike Burke, Daniel, Patricia... and Betsy and Greta... accompanied the words.

"Where's little Jack Burke?" I asked.

"We didn't want to put him in." Carole said simply. O-kayyyy, I thought to myself, and drove on:

"Daddy drove Bowser to find Marie." said the book. The drawing (by Marie) showed a perspective of Bowser looking down into the ditch, with me looking over his shoulder... the perspective Marie would've had from the bottom of that ditch. I'd thought Marie was unconscious. Was it possible she saw and remembered her rescue? I wondered silently.

"When kids were kidnapped, Daddy went and found them." the next page said. "Daddy went into an exploding building to rescue three kids. And then he beat the Slender Man to rescue more kids." Drawings showed me on the ground by an exploded building with three kids nearby, then one of me about to swing my red crowbar down and hit the Slender Man's featureless head as his tentacles lifted me off the ground. A small lightning bolt was drawn where my back's bad vertebrae were.