a Jonathan Thorpe novel

by Gary Neece

* * * *

Amazon Edition

* * * *

This book is a work of fiction, names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright ©2013 by Gary Neece

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Perthshire Press

garyneece.com

Second Edition: June 2013

For other titles by Gary Neece, visit Amazon

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For my parents,

whose only want was for their children

“All the old knives that have rusted in my back,

I drive in yours.”

–The Phaedrus

Plato

Monday

February 5

Early Morning

SERGEANT JONATHAN THORPE BROUGHT HIS eyes down from the desolate highway to the soft green glow of his dashboard lights. Five minutes till four. Up early, rather than out late, he enjoyed this time. The hours before dawn brought a ghostly peacefulness to the city, a serenity disturbed only by fellow cops, hooligans, and the few unfortunate souls finding their ways to work. Most of the one million or so who made up Tulsa’s metropolitan area slept peaceably in their beds. Those not at rest resembled the Rapture’s left behind, if Thorpe still believed in such things.

Shrewd criminals had long since retired from public view. They feared the slew of uniformed officers on duty, all of them bored and searching for someone, anyone, to pull over. “Big dope,” as Thorpe referred to large quantities of narcotics, was mostly transported and sold during business hours when the cop-to-citizen ratio was much more favorable to the bad guys.

Thorpe’s attention wandered. It’s a trait those with driving experience share, though his autopilot had adapted a few additional skill sets. While he efficiently operated his vehicle—feet working pedals and hands the steering wheel—with little conscious effort, he also checked for tails in all three mirrors, looked for suspicious activity in his peripheral vision. He stamped passing cars and faces into his short-term memory. With each landmark passed, his random thoughts burst with a kaleidoscope of memories. Every street corner elicited visions of arrests, shootings, fights or foot pursuits.

While this activity fluttered in recesses of his mind, he considered the fellow “citizens” with whom he kept these early hours: the junkies, prostitutes and small-time drug pushers—too ignorant to get off the streets. Dealers lurked in darkened doorways and urine-steeped alleyways. They roamed side streets with small amounts of dope destined for motel whores and twenty-dollar crackheads.

He’d encountered every kind. Cagey dealers swallowed the drugs as soon as cops laid eyes on them. Later, they retrieved their cellophane-wrapped wares in the privacy of their own bathroom. The patient ones awaited nature’s call. Those unwilling to postpone deliveries might introduce fingers to esophagus, subsequently plucking their illicit treasures from steaming gastric acid and last evening’s meatloaf. Others were less cautious, keeping their products on them during the stop, concealed in the car or on their person. Often they kept the drugs under their tongue and only resorted to swallowing when their secret was discovered. An officer might grab a suspect’s throat to prevent the destruction of evidence. Meanwhile, passing motorists were subjected to yet one more crooked cop choking the shit out of another “innocent” citizen. Then there were those who thought themselves particularly clever—believing they’d hidden the contraband where one would never look, let alone find it. Disgustingly, their fetid fingers usually gave them away. Maybe that’s how crack really got its name.

On this morning Thorpe was after one of the smart ones, smart by crack dealer standards at least. As the supervisor of the Tulsa Police Department’s Organized Gang Unit, Thorpe knew the difference. He pulled himself back to task as he made his way across the south end of the Inner Dispersal Loop (IDL), a network of highways ensnaring downtown. Free from the commuters’ version of an oval track, Thorpe took a series of side streets before turning north on Country Club Drive and cutting through the middle of a sprawling, government-assisted “community.”

Thorpe thought about his tax dollars at work here. Yes, he was a cop but had to pay taxes like everyone else, and often replied he was self-employed when dipshit citizens told him they paid his salary. Government assisted housing; free rent for freeloaders. Thorpe knew his thoughts were unfair; he’d met decent people who had to live in places like this. He felt sympathy for the innocents because animals of the two-legged variety mostly controlled the complexes.

Country Club Drive and its bifurcated housing complex shared a fence with Tulsa’s Country Club golf course, which occasionally hosted the LPGA. Thorpe doubted many lady pros would jump the fence and enter the apartment grounds to retrieve an errant ball—to do so would imply their balls were bigger than those used in golf—and therefore wouldn’t be needing the L preceding PGA. The entire complex was scheduled to be razed and rebuilt in a couple of years. For now, it was a good place to buy dope and get robbed—if that was your thing.

Thorpe exited the north end of the complex turning west. Several blocks later he approached Waco Avenue and looked north toward his target’s home. In the distance, he could see Marcel’s gold Cutlass parked on the west side of the street. Thorpe continued on before turning into the Greystone Condominiums. The condos were encircled by a black iron fence and an electronic gate to which Thorpe already had the code. He punched in the numbers from memory, pulled into the complex, and parked in a relatively low-lit area.

Garbed in dark blue coveralls, a hoodie, and full-face ski mask, Thorpe examined the area through deeply tinted windows before exiting his vehicle. The frigid conditions ensured his clothing wouldn’t garner unwanted attention and disguised the fact he was the only Caucasian within a square mile. Taking a winding route through the complex, Thorpe exited a pedestrian gate on the northeast side of the condos. Heading east, he resisted the urge to jog and remained alert for movement in the still morning. Except for his breath rising in the cold, nothing stirred. He passed Marcel’s street once more and continued east another twenty-five yards before encountering a private drive that led north into a wooded tract of approximately five acres.