Fact digestion time for the two law dogs. Brewster recovered faster.
“But why was Ferko Nyilas murdered?” he asked.
“The men didn’t come to kill him,” Pamela kept talking about the tea and crumpets. “They probably showed up to escort him to a place where some far more important scumbags could talk with him.”
“The all-girl squad was there and Ferko was caught in the crossfire,” Lisa mumbled. “Why was there a firefight if his life was in danger and both sides wanted him alive?”
“Stupidity,” Pamela replied. “Give any group of people guns and then surprise them, stupid shit happens – I apologize Cael.”
“I don’t buy that,” Brewster said. “They simply started shooting at each other – no.”
“Okay Horace, let me break it down for you. The ladies were told to go there and guard the guy without being told why. The men who showed up were most likely told to grab Ferko without knowing why either.”
“That makes no sense,” Lisa protested.
“Congratulations. That is why Cael can’t talk to you anymore,” Pamela smirked. “This is the sort of crap he has inadvertently been caught up with – no fault of his own. If he did any of this on purpose, I’d kill him myself.”
“He is some poor schmuck who only wanted a 7-5 job, to make tons of money and bedding a different girl every night,” Pamela teased me. “He’s no criminal mastermind, or even a convincing criminal. If he has a failing it is that he tends to merely beat up people who deserve to have their spleens ripped out instead. I’m training him to be smarter than that.”
“Who are you?” Brewster gawked. Pamela gave a sinister smile. Lisa looked at me.
“I’ve fought a woman with a twelve foot stick with a pointy bit of metal at the end with little thought to my personal safety. This lady (Pamela) scares me. She is with me because I have no means of stopping her and I put saving others a great deal of pain and suffering over my own unsettled nerves.”
“Do you really think you are that good?” Lisa half-turned around to face Pamela.
“Do you want your gun back?” Pamela offered up a police issue Glock-22, grip first. My kind of gun. How sad. I was too depressed to seduce Officer Lisa. Brewster reached around to check is firearm. It was still there, much to his relief.
“How did you do that?” Lisa wondered as she retrieved and inspected her weapon. Pamela tapped Brewster’s shoulder with the man’s magazine. Brewster was aghast. She’d stolen his gun, taken out the ammo and returned it without him noticing.
“I found it on the floor. The truth is a bit more expensive than you are willing to pay at the moment, believe me,” Pamela grinned.
Why had Pamela showboated? She was buying me some mental respite. She was also exhibiting to the two police folks that there might be some truth to her outlandish tale of criminal conspiracies. Unlike the other Amazons, Pamela knew we had to maintain friendly relations with some part of law enforcement if I was going to bury my Father.
(The Medical Examiner’s Office)
So much happens in life we rarely put the timespan of events in context. Talking with a person in line who turns out to make your day better/worse, become a friend and/or a date. In a matter of a few seconds your life has been altered. Two minutes later and you would have missed getting the concert tickets where you meet your future – whomever.
Two minutes sooner and you get caught in the ‘speed trap’ instead of the other poor sap who you drive past as they sit on the side of the road keeping the patrol officer company. His/her insurance rate goes up while you have that extra money for later. Had we arrived two minutes earlier to the morgue – disaster aborted. Two minutes later would have equated to a frustrating mystery.
Life was not so kind. It was the same group as before; Detective Lisa, Investigator Horace, Rachel and I. We had just added an Assistant Medical Examiner who was going over information garnered from the autopsy with the two cops. Pamela was ‘checking things out’, whatever that meant. The key to it all was Rachel being Rachel.
Security Detail are more than simply elite fighting-women. They are also bodyguards, security specialist and normally stack a third specialty into the mix. When Rachel spotted five armed people in the hallway right outside the Medical Examiner’s autopsy room, her alertness spiked. Only one was a uniformed police officer. Rachel was still gun-less.
The two EMS personnel rolling an occupied body bag out on a gurney shouldn’t have had on their heavy jackets on a late June afternoon. The other two men were chatting about something. That wasn’t unusual. Where they were standing was – to Lisa’s experienced eye. Rachel’s heightened anxiety made Lisa double-check everything.
Horace didn’t know what was wrong yet when Lisa’s hand came to rest on her piece, he put his hand on his Ruger SR45.
“Excuse me,” Lisa called out. No one stopped moving. “Excuse me,” Lisa demanded in a louder voice. “I am Detective Lisa Capella, Chicago Police Department – Homicide Division. What is going on?”
That was a reach. Bodies exit the morgue all the time. The two people with the body made sense. The two ‘odd’ fellows weren’t breaking any law. In cop-talk, this was called ‘gut instinct’. She produced her badge. There was a quick look by the two ambulance folk to the farther of the two ‘talking’ men.
That group were rather competent, just not competent conmen. The two EMS guys turned and tried to give Lisa a causal look.
“What can we do for you, officer?” the designated diplomat asked nonchalantly.
“Whose body is that?” Lisa inquired.
“I’m not sure; all we do is pick ’em up and take them to the appropriate funeral home,” he shrugged.
“Take ten seconds and show me the release order,” Lisa gave a chilly command. The cop at the far end of the hall – the one with the door that lead to the loading/unloading area, was starting to clue in that something wasn’t right.
“Oh, by the Great Pumpkin, this is bad,” Brewster muttered under his breath like a thousand other fathers who engaged in the daily struggle to not curse at work so they wouldn’t curse around their children.
“Of course, Detective Capella,” the diplomat nodded. “Is there a problem?” He carefully pulled out his smart phone and handed it over.
Lisa wasn’t born yesterday. She handed the phone to me instead of looking at it herself. She was keeping her eyes on the guys with guns. They really did have an order to transfer my Father to a mortuary. Apparently I had requested this be done – without my knowledge.
“Cael Nyilas requested his father be taken to the Green Meadows mortuary in Cicero,” I informed Lisa, Rachel and Horace.
“I need to talk to Mr. Nyilas,” Lisa informed them. “If I can’t talk to him, I can’t let the body leave this building. This is an ongoing investigation.” The ‘diplomat’ was worried yet Lisa had given him an out. After I returned his phone, he called his off-site boss, who gave him a number which the diplomat gave to Lisa. Lisa called ‘me’ without my phone ringing.
Even so, ‘I’ confirmed the authorization. The four gunmen relaxed as Lisa hung up.
“One more question,” Lisa pulled a ‘Columbo’, “was this a rush job, or are you all ‘not ready for prime time players’?” The ‘diplomat’ made one last lunge at deception.
“Detective Capella, our work order is legitimate,” he shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“Funeral homes have their own uniforms; they do not dress as EMS,” Lisa deconstructed their illusions. “The bodies of murder victim are not released by the Medical Examiner until a cause of death is known and that information is released to the homicide detective assigned to the case – that would be me, if there was any doubt.
Your two buddies down the hall could have read and critiqued the Magna Carta in the time it has taken for you to do your ‘song and dance’,” Lisa pointed out. “Oh, and the real Cael Nyilas is standing next to me. Whoever talked with me on the phone is going to jail too. Now I suggest the four of you face the wall, put your hands over your head, palms against the wall and no one will get hurt.”
Darwin check time – they drew their guns. Of course they drew their guns. Why would they not draw their guns considering the farthest enemy was all of 4 meters away and the only immediately cover was my Dad’s horizontal corpse? Gurneys tend to be lightweight and mostly empty space.
The quickest on the draw was one of the two ‘talkers’. He whipped out a . 357 Magnum revolver and popped two shots into the police officer next to him – right in the center mass at less than 2 meters – ouch. Rachel was next, making a diving front roll between the two cops, toward the two fake EMS guys. I was right behind her, except my plan was to vault Dad’s body and get at the second talker. I was not acting sanely.
The second talker went in the next split second. He had brought a sawed-off automatic shotgun to the fight. His first salvo blew a chunk out of the wall next to Lisa’s hip. She was less than an eye-blink behind as she put two slugs into the ‘diplomat’s’ armored chest. He was kind enough to drop his Mac-11 from his twitching fingers and into Rachel’s hands.
Less than a single heartbeat later, the ‘diplomat’s EMS buddy revealed his own Mac-11. His mistake was not shooting his first target – Brewster. He was tracking Rachel and me instead, hoping to catch us together in a spray of lead. The general feeling was that, for all his law enforcement experience, Investigator Brewster had never actually shot at anyone before.
His cop instincts kicked into overdrive. The perpetrators appeared to be wearing body armor and possessed a small arsenal of illegal weapons. His aim tweaked up, he pulled the trigger and a . 45 ACP round effectively decapitated his target – our first confirmed casualty. My encounter with the Latin Kings had been a lesson in poor tactical flexibility.