The inner struggle 1, p.48
Key Man, page 48
They Know How
They Know Why
They Just Don’t Know Who’s Next
KEY MAN
A Novel
By
Allen K. Huffstutter
Copyright © 2021 Allen K. Huffstutter
All rights reserved.
Hardback: 978-1-7369004-0-6
Paperback: 978-1-7369004-1-3
Ebook: 978-1-7369004-2-0
Dedication
To Sandra
Best wife, best friend, and best editor
Chapter 1
Strolling out of the elevator, Henry took his time crossing the lobby. He thought of his wife and smiled. He’d be home from work before 8:00 pm and, even though it was New Year’s Eve, Molly would think that his coming home this early meant something was wrong.
“Evenin’ Mr. Watson,” called Manny, the security guard, from behind the reception desk. “Good evening Manny,” Henry responded, proud that he was still able to remember every one of his employees’ names down to the last clerk and janitor. “Hope you have a happy New Year,” replied Manny. “To you as well” said Henry, adding “Let’s all hope 1999 is as good a year for Watson Enterprises as 1998 has been.” “I’ll drink to that,” answered Manny, “… but not ‘til I finish my shift.”
As he did every evening, Henry exited the building, turned, and briefly scanned the Watson Towers. After all these years, Henry still hadn’t decided what he loved best, the sheer substance of the structure, the rosewood and hunter-green lobby that stated in no uncertain terms that “men work here,” or his office, which was clearly where the “Big Dog” kept watch.
As always, his nearly new Mercedes was the only car left in the executive lot, just off to the side of the main entrance to Watson Towers. Even though he reserved other choice spaces for the up-and-comers in his organization ... the number 1 space was his daily reward.
He lowered his six-foot-four-inch frame into the driver’s seat, closed the door, inhaled the leather fragrance, and paused in the stillness. Not a creak, not a rattle, not a sound.
Normally, everything in Henry’s life hummed. He was keenly aware of sounds. Once the workday started, his building was a Babylon of noise. When he was alone at work, there was the background buzz of the fluorescent lights, the soft whir of his computer.
At home there was the constant racket his two boys generated. Even in bed, Henry Watson was enveloped in a cacophony of sounds, the beating of his heart, the ringing in his ears left over from those damn earaches he had as a kid, the rustle of the sheets as Molly shifted from her back to her side.
But in his tightly engineered, sound-proofed Mercedes, it was as quiet and still as a coffin. Henry settled into the stiff leather seat, leaned over to check his hair in the rear-view mirror, turned the key, and ceased to exist.
II
Samuel Siemen and Askeia Johnson had only been working cases together for a couple of months. While they got along fine, there were still a few kinks to work out in their relationship. Then again, with Samuel, there were always a few kinks.
Sam to his friends, Sperm behind his back, Samuel Siemen was the veteran of the two-man team. Sam fancied himself a Bogart look-alike but, in reality, he was just short ... a rather plain-looking man in his late forties whose most distinguishing characteristic was an unsuccessful attempt to cover his bald spot with a classic comb-over.
Sam was the kind of guy who reminded people of someone they had met before. Later, if he wasn’t in the room, he became almost impossible to describe.
Sam had been a detective for as long as anyone could remember, but his career to date had been uneven and undistinguished.
On the other hand, Askeia Johnson — Ski — was a black twenty-something whiz-kid who seemed to have made detective right out of the academy. Ski could have been the poster child for an anti-stereotype campaign. Over six-foot-five and weighing in at a slim 185 pounds, Ski didn’t get his growth spurt until he was in junior college and, while he was somewhat athletic, couldn’t play basketball worth a damn.
In keeping with his name, Ski liked to ski. Downhill, cross country, anything up in the mountains, out in the snow. In fact, Ski once had visions of becoming the first black to compete in the Nordic-combined in the Winter Olympics. But his late seven-inch growth spurt took care of that.
Ski had grown up in a sheltered environment in Grass Valley, California, not far from the recreational areas surrounding Lake Tahoe. The only child of the local postmaster and an elementary school teacher, Ski enjoyed an uneventful childhood. But, being the only black man on the ski slopes, Ski realized that racism was still alive and well. Nothing overt, but the whispers, lack of eye contact, and the wide swath cut around him gave constant reminders that he was different from the “normal” ski crowd.
Maybe it was the subtle racism he experienced on the slopes, maybe it was just his quiet nature, but Ski preferred on-line conversations to face-to-face interaction. On-line, it’s intelligence that counts, not the color of your skin, how tall you are or aren’t, or the accent you bring to the conversation. Ski loved almost everything on-line, but most of all he loved chatting with people he knew he’d never, ever, meet.
Soft spoken and articulate, Ski, without fail, surprised people who had only talked to him on-line or by phone, when they met in person. But once people met Ski, they had no doubt that, unlike Sam, they had just met someone who was unforgettable.
III
Because of Sam’s seniority, Sam and Ski didn’t normally pull the swing shift. But, Joey and Bill, Mel and Frank — the night shift teams — had all requested shift swaps so that they could drink themselves silly at this year’s version of Joey’s infamous New Year’s Eve extravaganza. Neither Sam nor Ski were party animals, especially with other cops, so they were filling in for the night.
The homicide load was usually light at the beginning of the New Year’s Eve shift since the shootings and stabbings that spawned from parties gone bad usually occurred well after midnight, and they were not classified as homicides until the next morning. The extra pay was nice. And for a day or two after the shift, no one at work, or at home, expected much.
So Sam was reading the Thin Man for the umpteenth time and Ski was on-line, chatting, when the call came in. As was his habit, Sam carefully marked his place and reached for a scratch pad and pencil before he picked up the receiver.
“Homicide, Detective Siemen, what’s up? ... When? ... Where? ... How many hurt? ... How many dead? ... Bomb squad’s already dispatched? ... How big a blast? ... Give me that address again ... OK, we’re on our way.”
Sam started to set down the receiver but had a second thought. “Hey, one more thing. Could you get a message to the bomb sweepers? Ask them to try and not disturb the crime scene any more than they need to ... Hey, I hear ya, I wouldn’t be in their shoes for a million bucks. But I’m the one who has to reconstruct the crime ... Yeah, tell ’em I asked, just as a reminder.”
Turning towards Ski’s desk, Sam hung up the phone and reached for his coat, “Grab your note pad, detective. Big-time car bombing downtown. At least one dead and four injured. Bomb squad hasn’t hit the scene yet, so we don’t know if there are any more explosives on site.”
As they quickly made their way to the parking garage, Ski rattled off a string of questions. Sam, having already shared all the information he had, just answered with his own string of “Don’t know ... don’t know ... don’t know.”
It was quiet on the streets, with most parties already underway. Traffic was light so Sam decided not to use the siren. That was fine with Ski, who still hated the sound and had come up with even more questions that Sam couldn’t answer.
Turning the corner from Mill Street onto 4th Avenue, the detectives were greeted with a night sky illuminated by pulsating orange and red strobe lights from the dozen or so police and emergency vehicles that had descended on Watson Towers. Sam eased his vehicle into the first available parking space and turned off the engine.
The blast that had instantly consumed Henry Watson was so powerful that it shattered nearly every pane of glass on the first three floors of Watson Towers. The two mammoth plate glass doors that marked the entrance to the building, while still intact, had been blown completely off their hinges. In the parking lot, near the entrance to the building, in the center of what looked like the remains of a giant collegiate homecoming bonfire, were the twisted remains of Henry’s Mercedes.
Still trying to impress his new partner with his powers of deduction, Sam turned to Ski and stated flatly, “Going to be a bitch piecing this puppy back together after all these folks get done traipsing through the crime scene. I see one big footprint after another on every piece of evidence out there.”
Without much field experience or the slightest idea of what Sam expected to find at a blast scene, all Ski could say was, “Yeah, footprints ... all over our evidence!”
Despite the vehicles, personnel, and pulsating orange and red lights, Sam and Ski emerged from their squad car into an almost surrealistically quiet night. There was the occasional crackle of a police radio, but otherwise everything was still. Everyone was standing quietly, eyes glued on the office building.
Sam led Ski to the command car and, in a whisper, asked “Bomb squad inside?”
Officer Mitchell whispered back, “Yeah, cleared the car and the lot but just entered the building. Looks like they’ll be in there for a while.”
“Did forensics beat us to the scene?” Sam asked.
“Yeah” Mitchell replied. “They picked up a few scrap s of possible bomb material from the blast site. Not much to work with. They said they’d tackle the building tomorrow.”
Sam indicated with a gesture that he and Ski were going to take a look at what remained of the Mercedes. Officer Mitchell nodded his OK and added in a still, soft voice, “You’ll have to come back tomorrow if you want to poke around inside the building. I can leave a note for tomorrow’s duty officer to let you know when forensics signs off on the building if you want.”
Ski whispered his thanks and Sam just nodded as they turned and headed toward the smoldering hulk. Sam, with Ski following, approached the remains of the car through a series of tighter and tighter concentric circles, Sam on the lookout for any shred of evidence.
Ski had quickly concluded that nothing useful could be found outside the car itself. After participating in Sam’s slow dance for a couple of minutes, he started to head for what could have been the driver’s side of the pile of wreckage.
“Don’t touch anything!” shouted Sam, shattering the silence.
“Don’t touch anything,” Sam reiterated in a loud whisper as heads that had been focused on the office building turned to see why their bomb squad vigil had been interrupted.
With all eyes now on him, Ski tried to look cool, and, with a wide sweep of his hand, gestured around the parking lot and said to Sam in a reserved voice, “Nothing here but broken glass. If we’re going to find anything useful, it’ll be in the car.”
“What’s in the car, will still be in the car ten minutes from now,” retorted Sam flatly. “What’s out here, if there is anything out here, will be gone as soon as more people start working the scene. Maybe there’s something out here, maybe not. But I can guarantee you we’ll never know unless we take the time to look. So, slow down. Show a little patience. And, let me finish out here before you start yanking things out of the car. OK?”
With all eyes now back on the building and all thoughts on the bomb squad, Ski was able to slowly back away from the car without embarrassment.
Sam painstakingly completed his investigation of the area surrounding the smoldering wreckage. “Nothing,” he finally declared.
“Nothing,” repeated Ski, who added, “But, at least we know.”
“Yeah,” replied Sam, “At least we know.”
It was impossible to tell that the charred remains were once a luxury automobile. It would have been hard to tell it had been an automobile at all, if it weren’t for the tell-tale wheels and axles that had survived almost intact. Everything else was just charred, twisted, jagged metal and a fine dust of blistered paint and pulverized safety glass.
Every stitch of the luxurious leather interior had been consumed in the inferno that followed the blast … a fire so intense that there wasn’t a crematorium in the city that could have done a more thorough job of reducing Henry Watson’s remains to ashes.
“Jesus, Sam” whimpered Ski as he got his first look inside the remains of the Mercedes.
“This guy must have really pissed somebody off,” mumbled Sam, as much an observation to himself as a reply to Ski.
As Sam was about to begin a new slow dance immediately around the Mercedes, which had become its own junk yard, he instructed Ski to check back with Officer Mitchell and see what information he had about the bombing.
“I think his first name is John, but it could be Jim,” offered Sam. “Can’t remember for sure, been a long time since we shared a shift.”
Ski hustled back toward John Mitchell, or Jim Mitchell, glad to retreat from the gruesome wreckage that was once Henry Watson and his new Mercedes. As it turned out, Officer Mitchell introduced himself as Jack.
Jack Mitchell was born to be a crime scene officer. A large, fit man, he had a distinct bearing. Jack projected a gravity that was inappropriate for most circumstances but created an anchor for a crew forced to deal with death and destruction.
As the senior officer at the crime scene, it was Jack Mitchell’s responsibility to appear bored and in-charge, at the same time. The appearance of boredom was the signal that everything was under control. No need for panic. No need for alarm. See, everything’s so calm here that those of us in the know are already bored.
The appearance of being “in charge” saved everyone else from having to deal with the endless unanswerable questions that swirled around a crime scene. Best to have all the babble directed at one individual instead of scattered around, interfering with the real work that was required to secure the site.
As he approached the command car, Ski introduced himself. “Detective Johnson, everyone calls me Ski.”
“Jack Mitchell ... see you got teamed up with Sperm.”
“Sperm? Oh yeah, Sam,” responded Ski, somewhat surprised at the irreverence, given the situation.
“Yeah, Sam ... Sperm, whatever ... little guy gets pretty dramatic around a crime scene,” yawned Officer Mitchell.
“Yeah, he’s a little intense. Just doesn’t want to overlook anything that might be helpful later,” replied Ski, in defense of his partner.
“Well there must be about ten billion pieces of evidence blown to bits around here, so he ought to be in hog heaven tonight,” said Officer Mitchell, punctuating his statement with a broad sweep of his hand.
To move off the subject of his partner’s quirky behavior, Ski asked, “Do we know anything about what went down here?”
With that opening, Jack Mitchell took a couple of steps to his right, reached through the side window of his patrol car, and retrieved a note pad.
“Here’s what we got so far. Dead guy’s Henry Watson.”
“How did we get an identity so quickly?” asked Ski.
“Night watchman, make that ‘Building Security,’ saw Watson leave the building and head for his car just before the blast.”
“Did this guy see the explosion?”
“No, had his back turned.”
“Did he see Watson get in the car?”
“No, but Watson was the last guy in the building, other than the janitorial staff. His car was the only one left in the parking lot. The night watchman, make that ‘Building Security,’ watched him exit the lobby and head toward his car. And the next thing he knows, he’s been blown off his feet by the blast. Now there’s a dead guy in the burned-out hulk over there and my best guess is that it’s Watson.”
Starting his own notes, Ski asked flatly, “But Building Security didn’t actually see Watson get in the car?”
“Right ... Building Security, make that the night watchman, didn’t actually see Watson get in the car,” Mitchell replied sarcastically.
“What else do we know at this point?”
“Watson must be some big shot ‘cause he owned all this.” offered Mitchell, with another prolonged hand-sweep.
“Owned what?” asked Ski.
“Building, business,” answered Mitchell matter-of-factly. “This is ... was ... Watson Enterprises. Everyone we interviewed from the building confirmed that Watson was the big cheese.”
“Do we know anything about Watson Enterprises?”
“Nope, just that the dead guy’s name was on the building and the survivors said it was his business they worked for,” answered Mitchell, getting a little annoyed at being treated more like a witness than the duty officer.
With his eyes still focused on his note pad, Ski charged on, “How many survivors?”
“Four. Night watchman, a janitor and two cleaning ladies.”
“And where are they now?” asked Ski.
Officer Mitchell’s tone improved as he decided he might as well be helpful. “Sent them all to Good Samaritan. The night watchman was pretty nicked up ... took a lot of flying glass in the back. Looked like he’d been run over by a rototiller.”
“Is he going to make it?” asked Ski with genuine concern.
“Oh sure,” replied Mitchell, “Cut up pretty bad. But he took the brunt of the shards in the back. Had on one of those thick cotton, you know, canvas-type jackets, which helped. No arteries cut and his bleeding was starting to coagulate by the time the ambulance made it to the scene. From what I saw, I’m sure he’ll be OK.”
Ski steadied himself after his knees buckled slightly at the thought of being sprayed with flying glass. He took a deep breath then continued. “What about the others?”
