26. Not Yet
TWENTY-SIX
Not Yet
Harry
“M aybe your deputy might want to step out,” Stormy said irately when Sean and Harry walked into his office at the tire store later that morning.
Harry took in Storm’s angry face, he looked to Sean, he guessed what this was about, then he said low, “Just for a few minutes.”
Sean’s alert eyes went between Harry and Stormy, and he replied, “Right outside the door.”
He then stepped out, closing the door behind him.
Stormy didn’t make him wait for it.
“If you’re going to finally pull your thumb out, dip your toe back in the pool and find yourself some, leave Lillian out of it.”
“Think you know me better than that, Stormy,” Harry said, with practiced patience, keeping his calm.
Storm looked out the grimy window behind his desk, and Harry took in a man who fucked up and only recently realized it.
“I know you know about me and Lillian, do you know about her parents?” Harry asked.
“Yeah,” Storm grunted. “Word’s all over town.”
“We got a problem here?” Harry kept at him, and Storm looked back his way. “Because I hope we don’t. Lillian told me you two were together. She understands it wasn’t the right time for you, and she doesn’t hold any ill will. But that’s then, this is now, things have changed, and she doesn’t need anyone giving her anything else to be upset about.”
Like her fucking ex-husband.
“I wouldn’t hurt Lillian,” Stormy asserted.
“Then we’re good.”
It took him a beat, then Harry watched the tension leak out of Stormy’s shoulders before he said, “I was happy to see you at Doc and Nadia’s the last few parties they threw, Harry. It’s good to see you out of uniform and having a life. And you’re right. I know the man you are. I just hope you know where your head is at and don’t set your sights on Lillian until after you’ve knocked off the dust and want to get serious, brother. And I say that also saying, if you do that and it works for you two like it didn’t work for us, honest to Christ, it’ll suck, because straight up, I still have feelings for her. Angelica did a number on me and Lillian paid for it. But I’ll back your play because you deserve a good woman, and she deserves a good man.”
“I’m not knocking off dust with Lillian, man,” Harry replied, focusing on that, instead of all the rest Storm said, and losing hold on his patience.
“I know that too, and that’s why this fuckin’ sucks. Because I’m happy for you, for her, and I fucked up. Now she knows what’s happened to her parents?—”
He abruptly stopped talking.
But fucking hell, Harry got where this was coming from, and he felt him.
“You can still be there for her,” Harry advised. “The services are Saturday. Come to them. It’ll mean a lot.”
Storm looked to his shoes and muttered, “Yeah.”
Harry gave him some time.
Stormy took it, then, still muttering, “Angelica did me so fucking dirty, got the best thing in the world out of it, but until I heard about you and Lillian, heard what happened to her parents, I didn’t realize the number she did on my head.” He turned again to the window. “You don’t want to hear this, but fuck me, I didn’t think I could get more pissed at Angelica, but I am, since, because of her, I didn’t recognize what I had with Lill, and now I’m out.”
He was so totally out.
Harry said nothing, even if he felt more for him, because Harry got it.
Holding on to his grief meant he didn’t even notice Lillian until she was right in front of his face.
Years, he’d lost. They’d lost.
But he was in a way better place than Stormy.
He gave the man more time, before he requested, “Can I call my deputy back in?”
Stormy looked at him. “Yeah.”
Harry opened the door.
Sean entered and closed it behind him again.
“We’re here about Muggsy Ballard,” Harry told him and watched Stormy’s dark brows shoot together. “He worked for you, yeah?”
“Yeah. Worked for me, and he was a friend.”
“Tight?”
“Everyone who knew Muggsy was tight with him. He was that guy,” Stormy replied.
“He was working for you when he died,” Harry noted to confirm.
“Yeah,” Storm said.
“Good worker?”
“Absolutely. He’d do anything for you. Was in early. Would stay late. Pissed me off because he never wanted to let me down, so he came in once with a flu, then half my guys got the fuckin’ flu and called in sick for a week. But that was how Muggsy’s mind worked. First thought, don’t let a brother down. The rest of the thoughts didn’t occur to him.”
Harry glanced at Sean to give him a chance at the floor.
Sean took it.
“Close to his death, did he seem to have any issues?”
Storm shook his head. “I’m no psychologist, but Muggsy took a lot of falls in his life, most of them by his own design, but he always got up. Never knew a man who could dust off the seat of his pants and get on with it like Muggsy could.”
“We’re now aware that Muggsy didn’t commit suicide,” Harry told him.
For a beat, Stormy froze.
Then his irritability came back, tenfold.
“You are fucking kidding me,” he bit out.
“I wish I was.”
“Dern fucked that up?” Stormy demanded.
All Harry would say was, “We flagged his case in the audit. There were some inconsistencies. We’re treating it as a homicide now.”
“His ma know?”
That was the last stop they had made, and it went a lot better than Harry imagined it would, simply because she was beside herself someone was finally taking her concerns seriously.
“She knows,” Harry told him. “So, again, I’m going to reiterate Sean’s question. Was he having any issues when he died that you know of?”
“He was pretty certain he was gonna come into some big money, but then again, Muggsy was always certain he was going to come into some money.”
“You know what that deal was about?” Sean asked.
Stormy shook his head, but a ghost of a fond smile was on his mouth. “That was Muggsy. He was such a fucking goofball. He’d be all about these sweet deals he was convinced were so sweet, he never said dick to anybody about them, because he didn’t want anyone to horn him out of the action. Then nothing would come of them, or he’d lose his whole fuckin’ shirt, and his pants, shoes, and boxers. But nothing stopped him. He was the eternal optimist.”
“Do you know if Muggsy owned a gun?” Sean kept at it.
The gun was a thing, since Muggsy didn’t have one registered to him, and the one found at the scene had not been sufficiently processed, and making matters worse, they had no idea where it was.
“If he did, he’d have sold it,” Stormy said. “Man worked hard, but he was an idiot with money, so he always had money problems.”
“We’re cobbled by lost time, Storm,” Harry reminded him. “Anything you can remember, even if you don’t think it’s a big deal, anything that might give us a lead, you call me or Sean at the station. Yeah?”
Storm jerked up his chin. “I’ll think about it. Got some men who are still here that worked with him. I’ll pull them in, you can talk to them before you go.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Harry said, and he and Sean moved out of the way so Stormy could get to the door.
He stopped in it and looked at Harry. “Around the time he died, he was pretty pissed Cheryl had moved on.”
Cheryl had been Muggsy’s wife.
“Pissed? Not upset? Depressed?” Harry asked.
“Fuck no,” Stormy answered. “Totally not. She’d hooked up with a dude Muggs hated. Don’t think you were best buds with him either.”
Harry’s body twitched. “I know him?”
“You worked with him. He was a deputy. Karl Abernathy.”
Harry heard the crash of the shoe dropping, he just didn’t know what it meant.
What he knew was, he didn’t talk with men in Dern’s camp, mostly because they didn’t talk to him.
But Harry actively detested Karl Abernathy.
He wasn’t just a shit cop, he was a shit individual.
Harry kept his voice carefully modulated when he asked, “She was with Karl?”
“Not with him anymore, as far as I know, but she was then. As you know, as well as the rest of us, Karl was one of Dern’s goons. Got his jollies by fucking with people. Muggs wasn’t the only one who hated him. If they knew him or had the misfortune to run into him, pretty much everyone hated him.” Storm’s gaze thinned on Harry. “This pertinent?”
“Since we’re reopening an investigation seven years down the line, everything is pertinent,” Harry hedged.
Stormy kept staring at him. When Harry gave him no more, he left the office.
Harry looked to Sean. “We need to talk to Cheryl Ballard ASAP. And we need to track down Karl. He quit the minute Dern was out. He was before your time, but you heard of him?”
“You got skin my color, or you have female parts, you knew all about Karl Abernathy, and you avoided him.”
Goddamn fuck.
“Don’t know what to say, Sean,” Harry said.
“Nothing for you to say, Harry,” Sean replied. “Not you who’s a racist piece of shit with a badge.”
No, he wasn’t, which begged the question why no one said anything to him about this.
But that was victim blaming. They probably thought Harry was as powerless to do anything about it as they were.
Until girls started dying, then Harry’d had enough.
“You know anything else about him?” Harry asked.
“Know he’s a bigot. Know he was a dirty cop. Know he had his nose far up Dern’s ass. Know he expected, as in demanded, the cop discount anywhere he went, that being getting food and coffee and donuts and shit for free. Most of the schlubs that were tight with Dern were just lazy, liked playing cops and robbers but didn’t spend much time being actual cops, but they still got a paycheck for it. Abernathy was the worst of the lot. Not even sure Dern knew what garbage he was. Just doubt, even if he knew, he’d care.”
At least Harry knew all of that.
But he’d been powerless to do anything about it.
“The female parts thing you said?”
Sean shook his head. “I don’t know. Just rumors. The thing is, Harry, if he busted our chops, pulled us over driving while Black, if he took it further, he’d have to deal with you. So he just busted our chops. Being fair about this, he’d dick with anybody if he felt like it, and it didn’t matter the color of your skin. Women, though…”
“What?” Harry pushed.
“I have no proof of this, but heard word, BJs extorted for getting out of tickets.”
It took Harry a lot longer than it normally did for him not to lose his fucking mind.
“I thought you knew,” Sean said quietly.
“I did not fucking know,” Harry returned furiously. “He was the first one to quit.”
“I see it. You the boss, man, if you learned of his shit, he’d be so fucked, he wouldn’t get himself unfucked for years. But he might get a whole lot more fucked in ways he really didn’t like in prison.”
“He wasn’t one of the ones women came forward to report when we went through that shit when Dern was ousted,” Harry pointed out.
“You and me both know, women hesitate or don’t come forward at all. Someone like Abernathy, I could see they’d be shit scared, even if he wasn’t a deputy anymore. The man had one serious mean streak.”
“Christ, get on the phone with Polly,” Harry ordered. “I want Cheryl in my station, and I want Karl in my station. And if they have to arrest either one of them to do it, then they arrest them.”
“For what?”
“We’ll start with obstruction of justice, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
“You think they know something?” Sean asked, pulling out his phone.
“I think Roy and Karl were friends. I think Muggsy Ballard didn’t like his ex-wife with Karl, and it doesn’t matter what a nice guy everyone says he was, they also say he did stupid shit all the time. I think Karl would put up with his girlfriend’s ex giving him grief for about five seconds before he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do about it. And I think he was a cop back then, a cop who thought he could do whatever the fuck he wanted at all times. I think that might have gotten out of hand, Karl called Roy, they figured a way out of it, and if anyone asked questions, they set Dern up to take the fall. That’s what I think. What I can prove, though, is nothing close to that. Not yet.”
Sean nodded and got on his phone.
Harry pulled his out too, and he made a call.
Dern didn’t pick up, and again, Harry was good with leaving a voicemail.
“So, in less than a day pursuing our homicide investigation, we’ve learned that Muggsy Ballard’s ex-wife was dating Karl Abernathy. I’m sure you remember Karl. I’m sure you remember Karl and Roy were tight. So now it seems like two of your boys set you up to get fucked over. You got something for me that might help us figure this shit out, you might think of making a return to Misted Pines. And maybe you do that before that return becomes mandatory.”
He ended the call and looked out Stormy’s grubby window.
They were so fucking neck deep in Dern’s incompetent shit.
Harry just had to hope he could keep their heads above it.
Or they’d drown in it.