Sample Sunday: Excerpt: Dirty Little Town (River City Book 7) by Frank Zafiro

Please welcome author Frank Zafiro to the blog today with an excerpt from his new book, Dirty Little Town. This is the seventh book in a really good series that should be read in order. 

 

In Frank Zafiro’s Dirty Little Town (River City #7), times are tough for the police. They’re understaffed, facing a collapsing budget and layoffs, an upset public, and a tyrant for a new chief. Worse yet, a killer stalks the streets, targeting vulnerable women. Katie MacLeod is assigned to stop him. Somehow, she must put aside the distractions and focus on her job – to serve and to protect.

 

 

 

ONE

 

Monday, August 25, 2003

0716 hrs

Day Shift

 

“You’re being detailed.”

“What?” Officer Katie MacLeod stared at Sergeant O’Sullivan from her driver’s seat. The two of them were parked car-side on the fringe of the River City Arena parking lot. A small cluster of cars near the Park and Ride were the only other vehicles to be seen.

“You’re being re-assigned to the Investigative Division,” Sully told her. “You’ll be assisting Detective Browning on his case.”

Katie blinked. “He’s working the serial.”

Sully nodded.

“I thought they were putting together a task force for that.”

“Apparently not.”

“Why aren’t they?”

“Politics, I guess. I don’t know.” Sully shifted in his seat and tugged at his bullet-resistant vest. “Or maybe you’re the task force.”

“Very funny.”  She considered for a moment, then another thought struck her. “Why me? I’m not a detective.”

“That’s the other thing,” Sully said. “You’re getting a provisional promotion.”

A slew of emotions washed through Katie at once. Exhilaration at the promotion. Guilt for leaving patrol when the division was so short-handed. And confusion at the unfamiliar term.

Confusion won out. “I’ve been here for over twelve years and I’ve never heard of a provisional promotion.”

“Neither had I,” Sully told her. “I had to pull out the contract and look it up.”

“And? What’s it mean?”

“It means a few things. For one, you’re promoted to the vacant detective position but not necessarily reassigned.”

“I’ve seen that before. Officers get promoted but don’t move right away. They get the stripe and the pay bump but keep working patrol until the rookie that’s taking their place gets through training. But—”

“But this is the opposite. You’re not staying in patrol. You’re being detailed to Major Crimes. And…”

She stared at him. “And what?”

“And you’re not getting the pay bump yet.”

Katie shook her head. “You’re sure that’s in the contract? It sounds shady.”

“It’s there. I mean, technically we’ve been working without a contract for the last year-and-a-half, but the terms of the expired contract continue during the negotiation period for the following one.”

“That sounds like something you learned for the sergeant’s exam.”

“It probably was. Imagine that – something on a civil service exam actually being useful in the real world. ‘Tis an odd t’ing, isn’t it?” Sully lapsed into his signature faux Irish brogue.

In spite of everything – the strange news, how tired she was, all the turmoil going on around the police department – the rare appearance of the O’Sullivan lilt made her smile a little. It reminded her of their days together on graveyard patrol. She missed Sully since his transfer to Special Police Problems last year. He seemed happier, though, so that was good. And it wasn’t like she never saw him. With all of the staffing shortages, he’d worked day shift patrol three times this month to fill in.

“Point is,” Sully was saying, “it’s legal. They can do it.”

“But why?”

“I’m sure it all comes down to budget. Or contract negotiations, somehow.” He shrugged. “It’s not all bad. The alternative is not to make the promotion at all. Then the promotional list eventually expires and you’re back to square one. This way, at least you’re locked into the position. It’s just a matter of time until it gets finalized.”

She squinted, thinking. “Do you think Captain Saylor had anything to do with this?”

“Maybe. The mayor hasn’t given command a whole lot of leash from what I heard, though. Saylor and Reott are just steering the ship until we get a new chief.” He stroked his chin. Katie could see the slightest bit of stubble there. “Though that does sound like something he’d try to do, doesn’t it? Take care of his people, I mean.”

It sounded like it to her, too. But she wished the captain had thought to ask her about it. Abandoning patrol in the middle of a staffing shortage didn’t sit well with her.

“So, no extra pay, no stripe and I get reassigned?” Katie shook her head. “I don’t like it, Sully. Especially not when we’re so short out here. Even on day shift, we’re getting hammered.”

“I know.”

Katie punched up the calls waiting on her Mobile Data Terminal (MDT). “Eleven calls holding right now.” She hit another key. “And no other units clear.”

“Believe me, I know. But apparently, Investigations is even skinnier. That whole retirement protest stunt gutted them.”

Katie nodded grimly. Less than a month ago, a large swath of RCPD officers at all ranks retired en masse. The move was rumored to have been engineered by the police union to put pressure on the city during contract negotiations. She didn’t know how successful that ploy had been. The city was already hinting at laying off cops to balance the budget. And she didn’t see how the retirement protest helped them with a public that was already more than a little pissed off at the department, either.

Part of that is my fault, she thought, but pushed the idea aside. Now was not the time.

Regardless of the politics of it or its strength as a negotiating strategy, the immediate result that she experienced first-hand from the retirements was an already overtaxed patrol division suddenly thrust into a staffing crisis. Mandatory overtime and vacation cancellations were only the beginning, as sergeants scrambled to keep patrol shifts above the minimum staffing level. Concerns were initially about maintaining the same level of service delivery but reality quickly set in. The situation devolved into simply having enough cops on duty to answer the highest priority calls and for those working to be safe.

And now they want me to leave my platoon in the lurch?

“Do I have a say?”  she asked.

“I suppose you could turn down the promotion.”

Katie hesitated. Maybe she should.

“No,” Sully said. “You’re not doing that.”

“I…”

“No,” he repeated. “You’ve earned this promotion, MacLeod. And it’s not your responsibility to clean up this mess. It’s up to the people that created it.”

“Who’s that, exactly? The mayor?”

“Yeah. And the last chief. City council. The citizens of River City. The union. Whoever. But not you.”

Katie took a deep breath and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “This is not how I imagined getting promoted to detective.”

“You were thinking there’d be a cake and punch ceremony?”

“No, that’s for retirements. But… I didn’t think it’d be like this.”

“I hear you. But this comes down from on high. So saddle up, MacLeod. You report to Lieutenant Crawford tomorrow morning at zero-seven. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Sarge.”

“Good luck in the world of soft clothes,” Sully said. “Don’t get too fat for your uniform.”

“Look who’s talking. SPP is doing a number on you, chubs.”

Sully grinned at her. “Ouch, lass,” he said, affecting the Irish brogue again. “Ye go straight fer the heart, now, don’t ye?”

Katie rolled her eyes. Some things never changed. She took some small comfort in that.

Sully’s voice lowered slightly. “Seriously, though, watch yourself in Major Crimes. The dix office is already an old boys’ club. And Major Crimes is the circle within the circle. You’ll be the only woman.”

“So? It’s 2003, Sully. And I’ve been here twelve years.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Just saying. You haven’t been a rookie for a long time, and now you’re going to be playing in a league that thinks it’s the highest one that exists. There’s bound to be egos.”

Katie stared at him. “Is this what they taught you at sergeant school? How to deliver good news?”

“How’s this, then?” Sully grinned slightly as he put his car in gear. “Enjoy your last day on patrol,” he said. Then he goosed the accelerator and swept away.

Katie watched his unmarked patrol car zip through the lot and pull out onto Boone Avenue.

“Last day,” she mused quietly. “Last day in paradise.”

Then she turned to the MDT. It was time to start carving into the calls that were stacking up like cord wood.

 

0730 hrs

 

What an effete snob.

Captain Robert Saylor wasn’t impressed with Richard Sammael. The rail-thin man sat next to the mayor with his legs crossed in an attempt to appear urbane but only succeeded in coming across as arrogant. Despite the slight hunching of his shoulders, the way he cocked his head back ever so slightly gave the appearance that he was quite literally looking down his nose at them.

It was the man’s eyes, however, that told Saylor everything he needed to know. They brimmed with contrived sincerity, but he could see the cunning lurking behind that false front. It didn’t help that Sammael’s resting expression was a barely perceptible sneer.

“As I was saying,” the mayor continued. He’d been droning for the past several minutes, meandering through what Saylor could have said in two pithy sentences.

Thanks for minding the store, boys.

Now meet the new boss.

But the mayor was a politician. Any chance to talk meant a chance to talk a lot. So, Saylor sat and feigned an acceptable level of attention, waiting to see if either the mayor or Sammael himself had any bombs to drop in the midst of all this rhetoric.

He could feel Sammael’s eyes on him while the mayor spoke. More than that, he sensed the judgment, the appraisal, that came with that stare. It rankled him. Who was Sammael to judge him, or Reott, for that matter? The two of them had put in more than twenty years of service at RCPD. Sammael wasn’t even in uniform yet, opting instead for an expensive suit that Saylor highly doubted came off the rack. He didn’t deserve to pass judgment.

Saylor realized his face had tightened while the mayor spoke. He forced himself to relax. Deserve had nothing to do with it. Deserve was for poets and historians. He was a cop. He had to deal with what was. It was that simple. It is what it is, as the saying went.

What it was, though, was a jumbled mess.

Saylor glanced over at Sammael. The new Chief of Police had turned to watch the mayor blather. Saylor wondered if he’d only imagined the man’s stare a few moments before.

It is what it is, he groused inwardly. What a trite, useless phrase.  Saylor wouldn’t call himself an intellectual, but another sentiment came to mind that was far more appropriate to the situation.

How quickly the tide turns.

Less than eighteen months ago, he’d met with the chief of staff for the then-mayor. Over lunch, the chief of staff laid out a simple plan to Saylor. The chief at the time, a retired military officer who had just managed to make it to his four-year anniversary in that position, had bungled his last crisis. The mayor planned to fire him, insert Saylor as acting chief, and bring in an outsider to set things aright. Their preferred candidate was a woman who was a deputy chief in Houston.

Saylor knew that any chief was a roll of the dice, and doubly so an outside chief. He had never heard of her before that day. But his subsequent research left him optimistic.

He realized he was staring at Sammael while these thoughts went through his head. He glanced down at his watch before turning his gaze back to the mayor, who, to no one’s surprise, was still talking.

Another saying tickled the back of his mind.

Man plans and God laughs.

All of the then-mayor’s plans hinged on the belief that re-election was a foregone conclusion. Fire the chief, get re-elected, hire a new chief from Houston to heal the department. Instead, all that mayor managed to accomplish was the first step before either the tide turned or God laughed.

Saylor did his part, stepping in to steward the department through the brief interregnum that was supposed to last less than ninety days. Instead, the mayor’s upstart opponent capitalized on the growing dissatisfaction within the community toward the police, highlighted those failed crises, and pounded the drum so hard that the mayor actually lost the election.

The man who accomplished that feat finally stopped talking now to give Saylor and Reott a contrived, meaningful look. “I want to thank both of you for shepherding this department through the last fifteen months or so. I know I kept an active hand in things, but I was always confident in your ability to handle the day-to-day operations.”

Saylor almost laughed at that. The mayor had been a micro-manager from day one. He mistakenly thought he knew how to run a police department because he’d run a business, failing to see where the two did not overlap. Saylor had been tempted to flat out ask him if he’d been elected to mayor or chief of police but knew that would have done nothing but strip himself of any influence he might have with the man. When the mayor announced his long search for a new chief was narrowing, Saylor had been relieved. That was, until the mayor’s choice was announced.

The mayor turned to Sammael. “You can rely on these two captains, Chief. They’re good soldiers.”

Sammael’s lip twitched upward. “I’m certain.”

“All right,” the mayor said, “I’ve probably talked enough. Let’s get down to brass tacks.” He motioned toward Sammael. “Chief Sammael’s appointment is effective as of this morning. I’ll let him tell you what he expects from each of you, and this department.”

The mayor leaned back and folded his hands in front of his chest, looking pointedly at Sammael. The admiration on his face was plain.

“Thank you, Mr. Mayor.” Sammael spoke in velvety tones. He fixed his eyes on Saylor and Reott and affected a stern expression. “Captains, let’s be clear about a few things, right from the get. There are two kinds of chiefs in the policing world. There are healing chiefs, brought in to mend a department that’s been through hell. And there are wrecking ball chiefs, brought in to a disaster department to smash apart and then rebuild it.”

His lip twitched upward again.

“Make no mistake. I am the latter.”

Saylor’s jaw tightened.

Sammael noticed the reaction. “You don’t like that characterization, Captain Saylor?”

“Frankly, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because RCPD is a good department with good people.”

“Are you sure that’s why? Or is there another reason? Maybe something to do with your inability to turn things around during your time as acting chief?”

Saylor narrowed his eyes. “I was only acting for a few weeks. After the election, the mayor changed that. He took a more active role. Mike and I carried out the mission.”

“And yet, here we are, with a broken police department.”

“We’re not broken,” Saylor growled.

Sammael arched an eyebrow. “No? That’s not how it appears to the outside world.” He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them with the other leg on top. “Let me tell you what the outside world sees. They see a police department full of cops who won’t sign a fair contract, who want more money despite doing a poor job over the past several years. They see a police department that shot two kids not very long ago, one completely on accident and one that could have been stopped through other means. They see a department that is failing to meet a community’s basic expectations for police service. Do you want me to go on? Because that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“That’s completely unfair.” Saylor looked at Captain Michael Reott, who sat next to him, for support. Reott stared straight ahead, remaining silent.

“Who ever said life was fair?” Sammael shook his head in disappointment. “What matters is results. Outcomes. And here in River City, those have been pretty poor over the past several years. Longer, if you want the truth.”

Saylor knew he should cut bait. He’d spoken up with the last chief frequently and it resulted in a long, hard ride. Sammael seemed even worse. But he couldn’t remain silent. To him, leadership meant speaking up. When people didn’t speak, greater problems evolved than his own uncomfortable daily existence on mahogany row.

“As for meeting community expectations,” he said, “we are grossly understaffed at the moment. We’re struggling to respond to emergency calls during peak hours. Officers are being drafted on their days off to meet minimum staffing requirements for safety. We need to hire more police officers, but the budget—”

“Don’t swap cause and effect, Captain,” Sammael interrupted briskly. “The budget is what it is because of the poor job this department has done. Nobody wants to continue to pay for substandard service. And the staffing shortage is a direct result of that little retirement temper tantrum that the union orchestrated as a bargaining ploy.”

The chief wasn’t wrong but Saylor wanted to point out that the mayor was still considering layoffs, too. He bit his tongue and didn’t reply.

“There is one thing that this police department has done well over the past several years, however,” Sammael continued. “You’ve become very adept at making excuses. Every time something happens, every time you fail somehow, there’s always an excuse to trot out. Well, guess what, Captain? The public doesn’t care about your puny, pathetic excuses. The public cares about results. And so that is what I care about.”

He leaned forward, his teeth bared slightly in a hard sneer.

“Play time is over, gentlemen. The men and women of this department will perform in their assigned roles or suffer the consequences. No more free passes. No more excuses.” He leveled a finger at them but his eyes were on Saylor. “Starting with you.”

Saylor looked over at the mayor. “You can’t possibly agree with all of this, do you?”

The mayor only studied him in response.

“Don’t look to mommy for safety, Captain.” Sammael’s sneer melted into a thin, humorless smile. “Daddy’s here now.” 

 

Frank Zafiro ©2021

Frank Zafiro writes gritty crime fiction from both sides of the badge. He was a police officer from 1993 to 2013, retiring as a captain. He’s the author of over thirty crime novels. Frank hosts the podcast Wrong Place, Write Crime. He’s an avid hockey fan and a tortured guitarist.