Hostile Witness (Sanctuary, Inc. #1)

Chapter 15

15

T he chief’s administrative assistant leaned her head into his office. “There’s a woman on line two waiting to speak with you. She insists you are the only person she can talk to about whatever... ”

Carson gave her a sideways glance and a nod. He reached for the phone, propped it under his chin, and pushed the button as he tossed a stack of reports onto his desk and prepared to review them. “Chief Carson here, what can I do for you?” He thumbed through the folders while waiting for a response.

“Chief, thank you for taking my call this morning.” The voice on the other end was sweet. “My name is Mabel Hawkins, and I’m married to retired Colonel Arnie Hawkins. We live over on Bay Street.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hawkins, how are you today?” Carson frowned when he opened Earl Thompson’s report and a smattering of neon sticky notes greeted him.

“I’ve been better. I must speak to you about one of your young officers.”

“Oh? Tell me about it, Mrs. Hawkins.” Carson sighed, leaned back in his chair, and yanked on his tie to loosen it a bit. Hopefully the cadets weren’t speeding again.

“The other day, an officer in an unmarked car stopped my Arnie and me.” Her voice trembled with emotion. “The officer said my husband was speeding, driving thirty-five miles per hour in a twenty-five mile-per-hour zone. Well, of course, Arnie hadn’t realized he was speeding, and he apologized to the officer and told him he’d be more aware next time he drove through that shortcut. He was very respectful to the officer. We were shocked because neither of us has been stopped by a traffic officer since the nineteen eighties. Nowadays, we wonder if we are driving too slow, because people are always passing us.” She chuckled.

Carson took a swig of his tepid coffee and waited for Mabel to get to the point.

“Well, to make a long story short, that young officer insisted Arnie get out of the car. Arnie has bad arthritis, and it takes him a while to stand up straight after he’s been driving me around doing errands. But my husband complied, and when he was standing up, the officer grabbed Arnie by his jacket and shoved him face down against the hood of our car. And then he used his nightstick to hold mu husband down at his shoulders while searching his pockets and lecturing him about the speeding laws in town. Arnie was hurt, and furthermore, he had already apologized to the policeman.”

Carson sat forward in his chair. This didn’t sound like a routine traffic stop. His officers didn’t carry nightsticks anymore and seldom asked people to vacate their vehicles unless they suspected drugs, drinking, weapons, or a serious offense. “Then what happened, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“The officer told me to shut up because I was crying, and I thought Arnie was going to punch the officer when he spoke to me so harshly. He let my husband go after ten minutes and a second tirade. Poor Arnie was so humiliated. He’s never broken a law in his life, and my wonderful husband fought in Vietnam for six years. He shouldn’t be treated poorly by any person, especially an officer of the law.”

“Mrs. Hawkins, would you go get the ticket or warning the officer gave you and read the number in the right-hand corner to me, please?”

“Well, that’s the thing, Chief—the officer didn’t give us a warning or a ticket. I never even got his name. He has a streak of mean in him though. I don’t ever want to see him again. Arnie doesn’t even want to drive to bingo this afternoon. I can tell he’s nervous about encountering that cop again.”

Carson rubbed his neck. He asked Mrs. Hawkins for her address and phone number and the location of the traffic stop while promising he would get back to her as soon as he’d located the officer who had initiated it. “I’m very sorry for the way your husband was treated. Just sit tight, and I’ll gather more facts from my end.”

He was already searching his computer for traffic stops in the general area she spoke of when he hung up the phone. He pushed the intercom button, and his assistant answered.

“Yes, Chief?”

“Please locate Detective Kelley and tell him I need to speak with him as soon as possible.”

“Sure, I’ll find him right away.”

Carson moved from one program to the next looking for the encounter Mrs. Hawkins had described. There were no records of any stop in the past two weeks in that area. Then he looked up Arnie Hawkins’s license plate number and endeavored to trace the traffic stop from that angle. Nothing. According to the database, Arnie Hawkins hadn’t been stopped since the late nineteen nineties, and that was for a burned-out brake light. What the hell was going on?

Mabel Hawkins reminded Ethan of his grandmother with her gray bouffant hair and pearl earrings and necklace. He carried the silver tray laden with china coffee cups and fixings to the living room to set it on the glass table for her as Colonel Hawkins muted the baseball game between the Orioles and the Nationals.

“You know, Detective, I don’t think I was speeding the other day. My Mabel chastises me all the time for driving like an old person. It upsets her that the younger generation passes us on the road every chance they get. But I had enough of driving fast in Vietnam. Sometimes, the situation in the jungle would change so fast we’d hightail our asses out of there with guys hanging off the vehicle. It was life or death back then. Nowadays, I like to take my time on the road—I’m not as quick as I was in my seventies.”

Ethan joined the conversation. “Speaking of getting places, would you and Mrs. Hawkins like it if I drove you to bingo? It starts in a half hour, and on behalf of the department, I’d like to drive you there and home again. No sense staying here and missing the fun events you enjoy, when you have a chance to ride in the cruiser with someone else doing the driving.”

“Well, I don’t mind missing bingo once in a while, but Mabel here, she enjoys it so much I’d hate to see her miss it. All of her girlfriends play, and their husbands, too. What do you think, honey pie? Shall we let this nice officer drive us to bingo?”

“I’d love to go, Arnie, as long as you come with me,” she said, and took a sip of her coffee.

“Okay, it’s settled, then. Let’s get the photos of my bruises done, and we’ll make like a ripe coconut and split.”

Mabel giggled at his less-than-stellar comparison.

Ethan helped Arnie remove his shirt and took photos of the bruises on his chest and back from his encounter with the mysterious policeman. After returning the silver tray to the kitchen, he turned the lights off and locked the door as the Hawkinses made their way to his car.

He pulled over and parked the cruiser at the exact location the colonel said the traffic stop occurred, got out, and walked around looking for tire tracks. Yesterday’s rain had washed the evidence of any imprints into the gutter. He leaned in the driver’s-side window he’d left open. “You’re sure this is where you were stopped?” Ethan inquired.

“Absolutely, Detective. You want me to get out and look with you?”

Aw, please no, it took ten minutes to get you in the car and comfortable. “No, Colonel, that’s okay. I’m going to spend a minute or two and take a look around.” Ethan walked up to the intersection and back again.

What an odd place for a police car to pick off speeders. The department never used this location as a speed trap. It would be silly. The retirement community was only two blocks west, and the neighborhood was among the quietest in the area. The only calls they ever received out here were from elderly people who needed medical attention. According to Chief Carson, there hadn’t even been a fender bender this way in over a year.

Ethan climbed back into the cruiser and headed for the bingo hall.

“He didn’t wear a black armband like you have on. I suppose that’s to honor Lieutenant Plante, right? Lovely woman she was. I only met her once at the VFW hall. She was standing behind the buffet line cutting the prime rib.”

Ethan turned the fan down. “Excuse me, sir? Would you repeat what you just said?”

Arnie fiddled with his hearing aid and raised his voice. “I said Margie was a lovely woman and the officer who stopped us wasn’t wearing a black armband like you have on. That’s another thing he should be reprimanded for when you figure out who he is.”

That’s what I thought you said. No black armband. How could an officer forget to wear his armband? They were standard issue for the next three months in honor of Lieutenant Plante’s lengthy service to the people of New York. The cadets had even put a couple of extra armbands in each cruiser glove box in case an officer left his home. Carson had also made sure there was an extra box of armbands in the locker room. There’d be no excuse for not wearing one. Hell, if someone showed up without it, they’d be busted at roll call.

So then, who was out there stopping the public for traffic violations?