Ipso Facto

Cop Max reopens a personally painful cold case when a supposed unrelated assignment rekindles his resolve.

 

                Stodgy Max the cop remains set in his ways. Max believes in performing his police duties the same old way he has in his thirty-odd years on the force using good old shoe leather, in-person fact checking, and the occasional rough treatment of perpetrators. Max sticks to his routine, but he recently noted a discouraging change at the station. Troubled, he looks around and sees that all of his coworker cops are much younger than him, they all have psych or criminal justice degrees, and to top it off, they use computers to work their investigations. They don’t even drink coffee instead drinking Monster energy drinks that Max knows must be poison. Along with his distressing observations, Max realizes they sometimes insinuate his waning mental acuity, his working only low-profile assignments, and his total lack of political correctness and social media awareness. At slack times, they even strive to besmirch Max by making fun of his outdated approach to police work; but really hitting Max close to home, they scoff at his preferred work desk, a large vintage heavy metal beast that always displays a panorama of scribbled research notes, typed reports, mug shots, and suspect sketches. As evidence to Max’s long-practiced habits, many of the documents exhibit brown coffee rings made by his preferred brand, Eight O’clock.  

In amongst the desk’s disorder, a single picture frame sits in a clear spot that serves as a reminder to Max of the case he doesn’t want to be reminded of. In the frame, a yellowed New York Times clipping bears the headline: “Cop Missing in NYC Subway in Search for Lost Girl.” Even though it sits right there, Max can never quite bear to reflect on it; nevertheless, he thinks of the case often enough where he lost his partner while chasing clues in hopes of finding that lost little girl. During the intense investigation, mounting circumstances had split up the partners during a mad chase after an unknown suspect through the subway system. Sadly, neither the little girl nor Max’s partner were ever found. The cold case remains a department disgrace and to Max, a personal failure.

Max performs all of his job “by the book,” so he has learned to accept that a few crude cops bully and chastise him. Tougher to take is the degree of irritation delivered by his commanding officer, Captain Dolorous White, a dragon who rules the department with an iron fist. She and Max do not see eye to eye on most serious cop issues and minor issues such as his methods and his appearance. Max considers her and the other cops around him as small and their comments inconsequential. Even though he remains “old school” in his methods, his mind had proven time and again to be fast and fastidious on hard-to-solve cases except for that one hurtful failure. As a matter of his long-standing routine, he engages informants out around the city, each like a mite able to get into those dirty underworld places where a cop can’t go. In various insignificant ways, Max helps those who help him, and he deals with the vagrants on a daily basis. The other cops think they are gross and keep them at arm’s length. Max has few off-duty pastimes though his passion remains hockey; however, his personal ability in the sport had long ago proven to be a joke.

One day, Captain White strides up to Max’s desk and tosses down yet another petty assignment.  This one supposedly came down the pike from headquarters with rapid action stamped on it. Expressionless, he looks up at her as she stares down at him with hands on her hips. Not one to start a pissing contest that early in the morning, he flips opens the assignment. Incredulous, he couldn’t believe it. He needed to certify the placement of a parolee. The only reason it had rapid action on it was because the parolee happened to be the captain’s nephew. Indifferently, he takes a noisy slurp from his coffee cup acknowledging neither the captain’s presence nor her request. For a moment, Max contemplates a mixture of possible filed away overreactions and decides to go for the pissing contest after all; he slams the folder closed adding a token splash of coffee, bolts to his feet, turns, and prepares to light into the captain, but all he sees is thin air where she stood a second ago. He simmers down and settles into his squeaky chair to think. He scans the folder.

Max sees that the little rich jerk parolee only spent a month in the slammer for an offense that usually got three years�"minimum. It’s all about who you know or who you’re related to as in this case, Max thought. Considering the piddling magnitude of the assignment, he decides to falsify the certification seeing the little dork was being placed in his parent’s mansion which promised to be a real tough probation. It was just another maddening example of affluenza in this chic ostentatious part of the city. For some reason, the certification sparks his memory and for the first time in a while he stares at the saved clipping. Max averts his eyes though recalls the base offense of the cold case which he recognizes at the very onset to be the same offense as the little perp’s. Max has always perceived himself as possessing a gift of providence in his cop work, so he decides on the tickling hunch to do a bit of research and see if there is somehow a link between the two far-flung cases.               

Pulling the file box that holds the cold case of his missing partner and the little girl, he scans the material with a fresh eye while keeping the other eye peeled for the dragon lady. She would never tolerate a delay in the certification of the poor little rich nephew perp parolee without some sort of repercussion.  Despite the temptation to jump to conclusions, Max demonstrates temperance in this late hour reassessment.

Two issues jump out at Max: First, the old case had a housebroken incident, as does the rich kid’s case. The second bigger issue was that the kid’s father had been investigated in connection with the little girl’s disappearance way back when. Even though stuck in his old ways, Max does see the value of some technology, so he slides over to a police terminal and does a search on the father. Lo and behold, the father had perpetrated a quartet of offenses though all charges were dropped, no big surprise there. Max muses that big bucks can buy a permanent “get of jail’ card pretty readily, and the cop saying “like father perp like son perp” applied in this case. Max recalls something about the man’s nasty divorce, but he deems the issue unimportant.

Max ponders a bit about the rich father and son trying to read between the lines with those other things that weren’t and wouldn’t normally be filed about the cases. By Max’s perspective and recall, the father had been foolhardy in his personal and business dealings using gads of money to buy celebrity while the son from Max’s POV seems to be a younger version and even less of a savory character. Max leans back to further contemplate, but as he sits there slurping his cold bitter coffee, a name on the file jumps out at him. Something that he never normally needed to look at is the recording detective signature block.

Max wheels up to the file to take a closer look in the event he read it wrong. Detective Dolores White had investigated the rich father in connection with the missing little girl and compiled the case files when it went cold. The captain in her younger days had been in another station but involved in the case; why hadn’t he caught that earlier? Why didn’t he remember? Max slides back to the terminal and types in Dolores White. Of course he finds her record locked against the release of personal information so all it reveals is her service record. Max lets out a sigh of discouragement as he glimpses down her assignments; he had to admit her record proved quite sterling. Before signing out, he notices that White took a year LOA when she was a young detective. Now completely out of ideas and to shake his sudden frustration with himself and angst over an indistinct possibility of collusion, Max decides to go on an expedition to reassess the elder rich perp. Because of his intended destination, he now had no excuse to not fulfill the captain’s request and perhaps, after all, it gave him a reason to show up unexpectedly on a well-heeled doorstep.  

In front of the mansion, he must hover for some time before anyone came out to the secured wrought iron gate. A rather stiff, impeccably dressed man, obviously not the rich owner and probably a guard, comes to the gate and tersely yet politely asks the nature of Max’s business.  When Max introduces himself, the guard turns rather hostile toward him refusing his access to both the father and the son. On an impulse, Max pulls out his cell. The man demands to know who Max plans to call. When Max mentions Captain White’s assignment, the man surprisingly becomes compliant. He opens the gate and gestures Max inside.

Suddenly, a stranger to the guard but not to Max approaches; a scruffy informant who Max had prearranged to hide in a nearby hedge sneaks up and tries to slip through the open gate. When the guard attempts to troop the informant back out the gate, Max heads for the rear garden. He then forcefully makes his way into the mansion by way of a service entrance.

The intrepid cop quietly and systematically makes his way through the mansion trying to find anything that might lend evidence to his investigative quest. Fifteen years is a long time to find evidence to crimes that allegedly didn’t even occur at the residence, but Max harbors a theory concerning rich asses with overblown arrogant egos.  In the master bedroom, Max bee lines to the man’s sock drawer, the number one favorite place of all underhanded lowlifes to hide contraband. Way in the back of the drawer his fingers grasp a cool flat metallic object. His nape prickles as he sucks in a hard sharp breath. Max hears low voices and echoing footsteps on the fine hardwood floors.

Max glances about for a place to hide. Hiding in a closet is a Hollywood cliché in Max’s book and so making sure the coast is clear, he steps lively and lightly down a short hall and into the gourmet kitchen, he spots a door. Without making a sound, he steals into the pantry and gently eases the door shut. Soon, Max perceives the voices and steps coming into the kitchen so he doesn’t dare release the door handle. Shocking him, the conversation held outside Max’s hiding space apparently is the rich owner referring to the other as “Dolores.” She wonders aloud if Max had been there to certify the son’s parole. When he says no, she thinks it odd and wonders what the “old priggish cop” is up to. The rich man asks her if Max might find out too much by her assigning the certification to him. She replies that Max doesn’t have the smarts to put one and one together to make two so thinks it was a prudent decision.  With his fury percolating like his favorite old Mr. Coffee, Max hears whispers back and forth and then strange repetitive smooching sounds. Max considers his future in the force with his superior officer’s personal involvement with this family, and he wonders yet knows who the judicial system would side with in his thorny quandary.

With the hourglass running low, his hand begins to cramp from holding the door handle against its spring tension. Using just a sliver of daylight coming in from under the door to see, Max scans the spacious pantry. He eyes a twenty-pound bag of Gold Medal flour just out of reach on the shelf. Max sucks in a breath, shoves the door open as he lets go of the handle, he hugs the bag, flies out the door, and glimpses the two in an embrace that causes him the slightest hesitation. Max reels the bag back and heaves it directly at the couple. As Max bolts, he sees them take defensive ducking postures against the incoming flour bomb, and it detonates into a hoary dust cloud. A muffled, coughing shout goes up to alert the guard as Max bursts through the kitchen door in a shower of shattered glass.  As best as he could, Max sprints for the front gate hoping his informant plant managed to keep it open. It is.

Max manages to make it through the iron gate just as it begins to squawk close. He hears dashing footsteps closing in, but he doesn’t look back. An engine revs and tires squall. Careening around the corner, Max’s derelict Dodge sedan heads right for him with Homeless Horace at the wheel and Toothless Tom riding shotgun. As the car approaches Max, the back door flies open as the sedan screeches nearly to a stop, and Max tumbles into the back seat. They roar past the guard with Horace and Tom wearing huge snaggle-toothed grins while pointing out the direction of the sky with four middle fingers. The guard pulls out a shiny pea shooter and fires off BBs until it is empty. The shots barely puncture the sedan’s thick rusty sheet metal as the unlikely threesome roar down the well-to-do neighborhood street.

 As they cruise along, Max turns the badge over in his hands while pondering.  Under the clasp, he finds a folded subway stub. He unfolds it. The location on the stub immediately perturbs Max because that subway section wasn’t where they had assumed his partner vanished. He tells Horace to head in that direction. Near the subway portal, Max drops the two off at one of their favored dirty back alleys leaving each with a ten-spot for their trouble and time. Horace and Tom are ecstatic with their apparent raise for services rendered. Max parks the dimpled derelict Dodge and makes for the subway, though he has no preconceived notion of finding anything useful or telling at the late hour.

Normally, Max avoids the subway disliking the screeching brakes, the static zaps, the crush of people, the confined space, and most of all the memory, but he forces himself to go anyway. Making his way down to the tube and standing on the platform, he experiences a dreaded déjà vu. He checks the section’s length and schedule finding that he has about eighteen minutes between trains. After the four forty-six pulls away, he warily jumps down to track level eyeing the third hot rail with concern just as he had fifteen years ago. Max strides down the tracks with two passengers peering down the tube with another man skulking down to the platform.

***

The next day, the headline reads: “Cop investigating 15-year cold case missing in NYC Subway.” The police station buzzes with the news, the likelihoods, and whispers over how much of a reckless old fool Max had been. A team scours the subway tubes for any sign of Max, but so far�"found nothing.  Max hadn’t told anyone what or where he was investigating, and the two persons who suspect his whereabouts are not about to tell. Meanwhile, Horace and Tom inform one of the old beat cops of what they know, primarily the mansion incident. Later, a pair of young cops go there to ask questions.  

When no one answers the gate intercom, they obtain a search warrant. Returning and circling the mansion, they spy the broken glass door and the other door where Max had broken in. They freeze and draw weapons when they hear loud voices inside. On further investigation, Max announces his presence and assures their safety. The duo finds Max sporting a black eye and crusty blood on the back of his head who proudly introduces the rich man who is tied to a chair. He, in turn, has a bloody lip and a few visible bruises.

Max informs the duo that after he gained the upper hand in the subway tube, he brought the suspect back to the mansion for some “persuasive questioning” and exhaustive “fact checking.” Max goes on to say that since then he has bided his time until the man confessed to killing his partner all those years ago. He explains that the chase and murder of his partner had occurred days after the man disposed of the little neighborhood girl who “had seen too much” of him and his undisclosed lover back when the man had been married.

 When the man attempts to deny it in front of the young detectives, Max presents the recorder he had planted on himself. Much to the distress of the rich man, Max grimly tells the two detectives that after all those years grisly evidence remains stashed behind subway access panel number 357. After a moment, he wipes his cheeks and digs into his pocket. He pulls out his partner’s badge and a small baggie of white powder. The tied up man’s eyes grow big, and he pleadingly cries that Max had promised that his son wouldn’t be implicated in another ongoing drug-related murder case if he, the father, came clean on the cold case.

Max hands over the pieces of evidence to the detectives and adds a suggestion that when they catch up with the son they should compare his DNA with Dolores’s. The tied up man lets out another tortured groan.

Asked how he managed to put all the pieces together to solve the cold case, Max simply said, “I just did some good old solid police work.”