Chapter 4 - Bloodlines and Dirty Badges
The morning light did not bring peace to the city of Riverdale; it brought the cold grey fog that rolled off the industrial canal.
At six in the morning, the emergency bay doors of Saint Jude Memorial burst open with the screech of emergency sirens.
Two private ambulances escorted by a county cruiser unloaded Dustin Miller and three of his training partners onto gurneys.
Dustin was strapped down, his right hand immobilized in a fiberglass splint, his jaw wired shut with temporary surgical pins, and his face unrecognizable under purple hematomas.
Behind the ambulances rolled a black Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows and city council parking permits displayed on the dash.
Councilman Frank Sterling stepped out of the vehicle onto the wet asphalt.
He was a man in his late fifties, dressed in a custom cashmere overcoat, with silver hair combed back with expensive pomade.
His face was carved from granite, cold, calculating, and accustomed to obedience from everyone in the municipal district.
Beside him walked Detective Raymond Harris, a veteran county investigator whose mortgage and gambling debts were quietly subsidized by Frank’s real estate holdings.
Frank did not look at the medical staff scurrying around his nephew; he looked directly at the main entrance doors of the hospital.
“Who did this to the boy, Raymond?” Frank asked, his voice low, gravelly, and stripped of all political charm.
“Gym cleaning staff found them at five in the morning, Councilman,” Harris replied, flipping through an incident notebook.
“Brock Vance is still in a medically induced coma with severe oxygen deprivation to the brain.”
“I asked you who did it, not what the cleaning staff found.”
“Dustin managed to write a name on a piece of cardboard before they gave him morphine.”
Harris held up the evidence bag containing a torn piece of supplement box.
Scrawled in shaky, jagged letters was the name: THOMAS VANCE.
Frank Sterling stopped dead in the middle of the corridor, his jaw tightening until the muscle bulged against his collar.
“The carpenter?”
“Her father, yes sir.”
“The quiet bastard who lives out by the timber mill and fixes antique clocks?”
“Dustin said the man locked the doors and went through four heavyweight fighters in less than three minutes.”
Frank scoffed, tossing his gold lighter from one hand to the other.
“I don't care if he was a ninja from the movies.”
“He put my sister’s only boy in traction two weeks before a two-hundred-thousand-dollar title fight on regional cable.”
“What are the charges, Raymond?”
“Aggravated assault, attempted murder, burglary, and property damage.”
“Then why is he not in a holding cell at the county precinct right now?”
“Because his wife is the head triage administrator on this floor, Councilman.”
“And?”
“She submitted a full forensic rape-and-battery kit on her daughter to the state attorney general’s electronic portal at midnight.”
Harris looked nervous, glancing around at the hospital staff who were watching them from behind the nurses' station.
“The daughter has three cracked ribs and severe internal trauma.”
“If we arrest Thomas Vance on assault charges right now, the local news will pick up the domestic violence report within an hour.”
“And that ruins Dustin’s marketability for the national promotions.”
Frank Sterling turned on his detective with eyes that could freeze boiling water.
“Do you think I give a damn about Dustin’s fight promotion right now, Raymond?”
“Sir, the state domestic abuse task force is monitoring the digital intake.”
“Then we take the old man quietly,” Frank said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
“We don't bring him to the precinct.”
“You bring him to the old loading warehouse on pier nine for questioning.”
“Under what authority?”
“Under my authority, which happens to sign the county pension checks that keep your mother in her nursing home.”
Harris swallowed hard, nodding slowly.
“I’ll take two unmarked cars out to the woodshop.”
While Frank Sterling was issuing his orders in the hospital lobby, I was standing in the kitchen of our suburban home, brewing black coffee on the stove.
Eleanor sat at the small breakfast table, her hands wrapped around a ceramic mug that had gone completely cold.
She had not slept all night.
Her face was pale, and every time a car drove down the quiet residential street outside, she tensed like a trapped deer.
“They are going to come for you, Thomas,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“Frank Sterling has the judges, the mayor, and half the police force in his pocket.”
“He has the local ones, yes.”
“What does that mean?”
I set the coffee pot down on the iron burner and pulled Dustin’s encrypted smartphone from my jacket pocket.
“It means Dustin wasn't just beating Evelyn because he has an uncontrollable temper, Eleanor.”
She looked up, confused.
“What are you talking about?”
“I spent two hours going through the cache files on Dustin’s phone before the battery died.”
I placed a small, silver thumb drive on the table beside her cold coffee cup.
“Evelyn was doing freelance digital bookkeeping for Frank’s logistics company to help pay off their mortgage.”
“She found the offshore accounts, Eleanor.”
“She found the shell corporations Frank uses to wash the money from illegal sports betting and drug distribution coming through the commercial river docks.”
Eleanor stared at the drive, the horror dawning in her eyes.
“That’s why Dustin tried to kill her.”
“He wasn't disciplining a wife,” I said, pouring hot coffee into my mug.
“He was trying to terrify her into handing over the master encryption keys before Frank realized she had downloaded them.”
Just then, the crunch of gravel outside the front window signaled the arrival of two vehicles.
An unmarked black sedan and a county patrol cruiser had pulled into our driveway, blocking my truck from behind.
Eleanor gasped, standing up so fast her chair screeched against the linoleum.
“Thomas, they’re here!”
I took a slow sip of the scalding black coffee, set the mug down, and reached into the hallway closet for my heavy leather work gloves.
May you like
“Let them come inside, Eleanor.”
“We have guests to entertain.”
