Teamwork

            by H. Nathaniel Corrigan-Gibbs

 

            “How can you even think of letting that…that hoochie move into my mother’s house?” Anna screamed, standing up from the dinner table.

            “Anna, it’s not like that at all,” Patrick tried to calm her.

            “If that woman moves in, I will make life miserable for both of you.  Just think about that.”

            “Anna, please sit…”

“And don’t even come looking, because you’ll never find me!”

            Detective Patrick O’Conner winced as Anna stormed out of the house and slammed the front door behind her.

            He knew exactly where he could find her.  She would mope around town for a few hours, if that, then spend the night at her ice hockey-playing, beer-drinking boyfriend Tim’s apartment.  Patrick had been Anna’s step-father for close to three years and Anna’s sole parent since her mother died a year before.  Even after three years, Anna still treated Patrick like an unwelcome guest in her life, and would never forgive him for looking for a new love.  To spite him, Patrick was convinced, Anna ran away to Tim almost every month.

The phone rang in the kitchen, and Patrick moved to answer it.

            “Hello?”

            “Pat, how did she take it?” asked the familiar velvet voice on the line.

            “Not well.  She just left, probably for the night.”

            “Oh, you must feel just terrible.  I’ll be right over after work,” said the voice.

            Patrick hung up the phone and dialed another number.

            “Jack Anderson, LAPD,” answered Detective Jack Anderson on the first ring.  Jack and Patrick had been in the same graduating class at the police academy.

            “Jack, this is O’Conner,” said Patrick.  “Anna’s gone again and I need you to keep an eye out for her.”

            “Hey, no prob O’Conner,” replied Jack.  “I’ll let you know if anyone picks her up.”

            “I owe you one,” Patrick said.

            The line clicked silent and Patrick returned to his cold dinner.  He wasn’t hungry anymore.

           

            Marlene arrived an hour later, and had brought a heart-shaped tart to share.  She sat in Anna’s seat, across from Patrick at the small dinner table, as the two of them picked away at the dessert with spoons.

            “She just needs some time is all,” Marlene said.  “We should give her some time.”

            “I can’t believe how selfish she’s being,” Patrick responded glumly.  “Can’t she see how happy we are together?”

            “What’d Anna say when you told her?”

            “It doesn’t matter,” Patrick said, staring into the tart.

            Marlene stood, and walked around the table and put her hands on Patrick’s shoulders.

He turned around.  “It looks like you can’t move in until she’s in college.  I don’t know what else there is to do.”

            Marlene paused.  “Why don’t you get some sleep Pat?  You look like a wreck.”

           

            That night, a noise awoke Patrick.  Marlene had gone home shortly after dessert, so he lay in bed alone looking at the ceiling.  Was that the doorbell?  Patrick reached over to turn on the light, got out of bed, and began down the stairs to the door in his boxers and an undershirt.  Two fellow police officers, rookies, stood at the door in full uniform.

“Was she drunk at a party again?” Patrick asked, smiling as he opened the door.

            The rookies looked startled.  One looked at his feet.  The other cleared his throat slowly as if to reply, but then looked down to read off of a document he held, “Detective O’Conner,” he began.  The rookie’s voice was slow and unsteady.  “The City of Los Angeles regrets to inform you that your step-daughter, Anna Lewis, was found dead at 1:15 this morning.  Her death is currently under…”

            Patrick ran to the phone before the officer had finished.  He dialed with trembling hands and waited for the answer.

“Jack Anderson, LAPD,” the voice said through the receiver.

“Jack.  Is it true?” Patrick asked.

The line was silent.

“Please, tell me it’s not,” Patrick pleaded, as he swallowed the sobs that began to form at the back of his throat.  “Please.”

“I wish I could,” replied Jack quietly.

Patrick hung up the phone noiselessly, then picked up the receiver again.  He dialed Marlene and cleared his throat as he heard her answer the phone.

            “Marlene?” Patrick asked, his voice shaking wildly.

            “Is anything wrong, Pat?”

            “They found Anna.”

            “Oh Pat, I’ve been worried sick,” Marlene said, her voice as velvet as ever.

            “She’s dead.”

            Marlene didn’t respond, but it was understood, she would be right over.

 

            Patrick was given the customary two-week leave of absence in which, it was expected, he would prepare for his step-daughter’s funeral.  Instead, Patrick had Marlene work out those details while he drove around Los Angeles in the passenger seat of Jack Anderson’s black Crown Victoria.

            The Crown Vic was nosed up to a strip of yellow crime scene tape that flapped madly in the wind.  It cordoned off a grungy alley behind a high-rise apartment building.  The two detectives, Jack Anderson and Patrick O’Conner, stood next to a dumpster nearby.

            “The body was found in here, a few minutes after midnight,” Jack briefed Patrick on the murder.  “The autopsy showed that blows with a blunt object to the head induced brain hemorrhaging.  All in all it took less that five minutes.”

            Patrick inhaled sharply and looked up.  “Is that painful?”

            Jack pulled a cigarette out of his breast pocket and lit it.  “Why don’t you go home, O’Conner?  Get some rest.”

            “I told you,” Patrick began.  “I’m here because I want this done right.  I’ll get some rest when you’re a little farther along.  I might even take a vacation.”

            Jack shrugged.  “As I was saying, the blood stains on the street show the murder happened right here.”  Jack motioned with his lit cigarette to red spots on the ground that had been circled in chalk.  “Then the body got thrown in this here dumpster.”  Jack paused.

            “Security cameras?” asked Patrick.

            “Nothin’.  The cameras are all on the front of the building, and the tapes came up with zilch.  Anyone could’ve pulled a car up back here without being seen.”  Jack dragged on his cigarette and eyed the large dumpster, painted in chipping yellow paint.  “This dumpster is about five feet to the rim.  It’d take some muscle to get the body in here.  I’d say this job was a team effort.”

            “I dunno, Anderson, lots of guys can lift 140 like a piece of cake,” Patrick said, shaking his head.  “Football players, for example.”  Patrick thought for another minute as his eyes met Jack’s.  “Or hockey players.”  How had they forgotten about Tim?

            Jack and Patrick ran to the Crown Victoria.  Jack threw the door open and grabbed his radio.  “What was his name—the boyfriend’s name?” Jack asked, throwing his cigarette out the window.

            “Lakeland.  Tim Lakeland,” Patrick responded.

            “I need a full background check and warrant for the search of the residence of a Tim Lakeland.  L-A-K-E-L-A-N-D,” Jack spoke to the radio, as he started the car.  Then, the two detectives sped off to find their suspect.

             

Tim’s apartment building was a two-story pasty green building only a few blocks from the dumpster where the body was found.  Two uniformed officers met Patrick and Jack outside of the building, and the four of them ascended the outdoor staircase together to the door of apartment 211.  The lights were off and the door was locked.

Jack knocked, then spoke loudly to the door.  “Los Angeles Police Department.  We’d like to ask you some questions and take a look around.”

No answer.

“This is your last warning,” Jack said.  He nodded to the uniformed officer next to him, who easily kicked the flimsy door in with his heel.

Weapons drawn, the four cops entered the apartment.  Old posters of hockey stars decorated the walls.  Beer cans littered the floor.  Jack and Patrick put on latex gloves, then split up and set about searching the apartment, avoiding the many piles of dirty clothes.  It didn’t take long for them to find what they were looking for.

“Bedroom closet,” Patrick called out to Jack, who was in the other room.  “I found them.”

Inside the closet in Tim’s bedroom, Patrick examined a wooden rack that held three hockey sticks.  Jack entered the room with a flashlight and cotton swabs for blood evidence.  One by one, Patrick removed the sticks from the rack and placed them carefully on Tim’s sagging bed while Jack scoured each one for traces of blood.

Minutes later, Jack looked up.  “I got nothin’.  The lab might see something I’m not, but these look clean to me.”

Patrick turned back to the shelf.  “Wait,” he said.  “There’s one missing.”

Jack turned his flashlight back to the rack and sure enough, there were grooves in the rack where a hockey stick had been kept.  “Bingo.”

            One of the uniformed officers walked into the room.  “The background check came in on your boy Tim Lakeland,” he said.  “He left on a flight this morning for Norway.  He’s in some kinda hockey tournament over there.”  The officer shrugged.

            Patrick kicked the wall.  “Are you shitting me?” Patrick yelled.  “He bludgeoned her with a hockey stick, got on a plane, and now both our suspect and our murder weapon are in Norway?  I can’t believe this shit.”

Jack sighed.  “FBI can handle it from here.  We’ll bag and tag the rest of this stuff for evidence and we’ll be ready when the Feds drag his ass back here.”  He paused and looked to Patrick.  “Now can you take your vacation?”

 

            “Come on,” Detective Patrick O’Conner yelled up the stairs to Marlene.  “We’ll miss our flight.  I’m putting my bags in the car now.”

            Patrick took Marlene’s keys off the hook next to the door and walked out to her black Mercedes that sat in front of the house.  He opened the trunk by remote, and looked inside.  His eyes widened.

            Marlene walked out of the house with her bag.  She looked to see Patrick turn towards her.  He was holding a hockey stick that glistened with water droplets, as if it had just been washed.

“You were supposed to burn the stick,” he said.