Chapter 31
Beau Lee had taken the elevator from the lobby of Alvarez’s building to her office. He entered the room with a large box. “It’s here,” he said, setting it on Alvarez’s desk as Capes looked on. “The courier just dropped it off.”
Alvarez popped up from her seat, eager to dig into the records.
Beau Lee couldn’t hide his exuberance, either.
He was like a child on Christmas morning, hoping to have received the ultimate gift—evidence that would suggest Hollis’s shooting was anything but by the book.
If he could demonstrate that the officers had participated in racial profiling in the past or had a record of biased policing, it could be the leverage they needed.
“Man, that’s a big box,” Capes said. “Those records must go back decades.”
“Even with the three of us, it’ll take some time to go through all this,” Alvarez said, pulling out files. “Some of these look to be fifty pages thick.”
“That’s a good sign,” Beau Lee said. “It means these guys have long histories with lots of contact with the public.”
“Let’s just hope these records haven’t been tampered with,” Alvarez said. “CPD likes to cover for their own.”
Beau Lee’s phone rang; he pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and answered: “Officer Doyle. Please tell me you’ve got good news.”
“That’s Doyle?” Capes abandoned his task and listened in on Beau Lee’s phone call. “Please tell me he’s got something on Caruthers.”
“Counselor,” Finn said, “I’ve got Caruthers’s address, but I’m not sure if he still lives there. He mentioned bouncing after we spoke to him at the café. The listed address, which might be old now, is in Wicker Park. I’m ready to head over there to cover our bases. Just say the word.”
“Well, thank the Lord. How about you pick up me and Capes in an hour so we can head over to Caruthers’s place together?”
“Not a problem,” Finn said. “I’m just finishing some things up here at the precinct.”
“Should I ask how you got Caruthers’s information?”
“Nothing nefarious,” he said. “Turns out he’d put in for a transfer to Metra five months ago and was waiting for an interview. I just had personnel send over his application.”
“He did say he wanted to leave CPD,” Capes said.
“It could speak to issues in the department’s culture. Might even help show that what happened to Hollis was more than an isolated incident. Anyway, I’ll see you soon.”
Beau Lee ended the call.
—
Twenty minutes later, he shouted, “Bingo!” and pulled Jack’s file from the box.
“Let’s see what we have here.” It was, as anticipated, chock-full of citizen complaints.
Two of which were incidents involving improper use of force.
Jack had been required to attend anger management classes and undergo a psychological evaluation, the results of which were not included in the file.
His supervisor described him as an “exceptional officer who is an asset to the city and important in the department’s mission to reduce incidents of crime. ”
Over the years, Beau Lee had read numerous police files like Jack’s and knew how to separate the fluff from the smoking gun.
The citizen complaints painted a far more authentic picture than the commendations or a supervisor’s assessment.
Despite that, he also knew that the citizen complaints could be easily dismissed as retribution from disgruntled citizens who were upset over their arrests.
Next, he read Chaz Rossi’s file. As a new officer, he had little experience.
There were no commendations, and one citizen complained that he had aided Jack in pinning an elderly woman to the ground.
The woman had been suspected of shoplifting, and the arrest led to abrasions to her arms and legs.
However, an even more damning complaint stood out in which both Jack and Chaz were cited.
A man alleged he was arrested without cause and that Jack had stolen his wallet.
Beau Lee set the complaints aside to scrutinize later and continued sifting through the box.
He located four more complaints. Two for Rory Caruthers and two for Leonard Johnson.
Both stemmed from incidents in which individuals were being arrested while intoxicated.
One individual suffered a dislocated thumb while being arrested outside a bar he’d been thrown out of.
The other individual was an unhoused man who’d been arrested for public intoxication after urinating on the window of an upscale restaurant in West Loop.
It was noted that the urination occurred in full view of diners, including two city council members.
The man claimed that during the arrest he was struck multiple times by Johnson, resulting in injuries to his face and neck.
Beau Lee continued to dissect the files, taking detailed notes.
He was already drafting Hollis’s defense in his head, thinking of how best to present the blemished officers to the jury.
It wouldn’t be advantageous to demonize them all, as he was certain that Rossi and Johnson had arrived on the scene and entered a situation they didn’t fully understand.
Still, they weren’t without responsibility and needed to be held accountable.
But the ringleader, the man who had instigated the entire ordeal, was Jack Dunham, and there was something Beau Lee still wasn’t seeing…
something that seemed to exist just below the surface but had not yet been revealed, and he was convinced it would turn the case upside down.