In A Small Town (A Small Town Series Book 1) Read online

  I didn’t know Donny very well growing up since there was a four-year age difference between us. I remember watching him play football for Hutchville High School. He was the fastest running back I had ever seen. Everyone watched with anticipation every time a new college recruiter came to see Donny play. The whole town was surprised Donny never went to college. As a matter of fact, he seemed to disappear right after high school. My parents had told me he went back to Italy to live with his grandfather, but no one had direct knowledge of this. Everyone had a different opinion on Donny’s whereabouts and rumors spread like wildfire. Some believed he joined the Marines; others said he just snapped from all the collegiate pressure. Only Zia Maria knew the truth, but she would never speak of personal family matters.

  None of this matters now. My focus is on finding out who wants me dead. For the life of me, I can’t think of one person. With all the arrests and awards I have received during my career, you would think one asshole would stand out more than others. There was that one guy Donny and I arrested on a DWI collar right out of the academy. He did threaten to kill us, but that was a long time ago. I think he was a minister somewhere in New Jersey.

  I remember clearly walking up to the car which was impaled into a large maple tree on a horrible stretch of road. It was three o’clock on a beautiful Saturday afternoon; the odor of booze exiting the driver side window was intoxicating. My backup had not yet arrived but I was young, inexperienced, and anxious as hell to make arrests. My eyes were drawn to the smallest hint of silver bulging in his waistband. Luckily for me, the driver was passed out. Had he been awake, I might have been shot. I reached for the small piece buried in his belt surrounded by more than one jelly roll. The driver didn’t flinch. The small .38 caliber revolver was loaded with five hollow point rounds capable of a painful death. I didn’t feel calm until I unloaded it.

  A passerby in a Mercedes was beeping his horn because traffic was backed up but instantly became my biggest cheerleader after he saw me unload and safeguard the gun. The look on his face was priceless. My backup was just pulling up in the form of Donny Mello who was still on patrol at this point. As he exited the car, Donny shot me a look telling me that I should have waited for him to arrive, but seemed pleased that I was able to handle such a situation on my own. Donny peered into the impaled vehicle and noticed that the drunk was still fast asleep and slumped over the steering wheel. He quickly took over the scene and what happened next was worthy of reality television. Donny gently tapped him on the shoulder and awoke a psychotic beast.

  The driver, who was covered in tattoos on both arms leading all the way up to the thin straps of his red tank top, turned and looked at Donny with a look of complete insanity. I had never dealt with anyone in this state of mind so it was a learning experience for me to watch Donny at work. The driver, who was short and stocky like a bulldog, started screaming “Fuck you” by the dozens. I don’t think he knew any other word. Oh yeah, “Scumbag” was a close second. I can only imagine what it must have looked like from the interior of the cars desperately trying to get around the confusion. Donny handcuffed this guy who went ballistic. The fight was on.

  Donny and I lifted the little man out of the car, walked him across the street and stuffed him into the back of my patrol car. All the while he was spitting and screaming. In hindsight, I would have just called the ambulance and had him restrained to a gurney. It would have been so much easier than this spectacle. Donny and I laughed about this more than once through the years. Back at headquarters, when I was processing the drunk, he told me he was going to kill me several times and that he knew just how to do it. It was a little unsettling to see a Marines tattoo on his upper arm, knowing full well he was trained to kill.

  I had to tell him to settle down a few times, but his demeanor never changed. We waited till he sobered before remanding him to the Westchester County Jail. I wasn’t letting him out on my streets. The asshole even had the balls to ask for his gun back when we arrived at the jail. I have often wondered whatever happened to this lunatic. I always hoped that he got some kind of mental help seeing that he was so deranged. Maybe he found his way back to Hutchville, N.Y. for a little payback. However, I do have a hard time believing that this mighty old man would be wearing brand new white Reebok sneakers. He seemed much more like a “dirty old boots” kind of guy.

  Chapter Three: Thanks Franny

  August 24, 2007

  Someone’s knocking at my door. It’s almost midnight. Who the fuck is it? What do they want? I hope it’s Donny.

  Glock in hand, I move toward the door. The gun feels so light, so different since the shooting.

  “Who is it?” I ask in my best female voice.

  “It’s me you prick, open up.”

  I instantly recognize the voice. Great! The one person who can push me over the edge into an abyss. My little brother Francis Longo. Franny to those that know him. I look through the peephole. He is standing there in plainclothes, smile on his face from ear to ear, with a silver badge dangling from his neck and glimmering in the hallway light. My brother is as tough as they come. He had to be, growing up with the nickname Franny. He is a little shorter and leaner than me, with thick black curls and hazel-green eyes. The women go crazy for Franny, especially since he was hired two years ago at Hutchville PD.

  After only two years on the job, he’s already heavily involved in narcotics work. He was the only officer besides Donny who attended the New York State Drug Recognition course. He is twenty-five and able to tap into a surprising amount of intelligence about our local low-level drug dealers, most of them wealthy kids with an overabundance of allowance money.

  The high school at Hutchville is loaded with BMWs and Mercedes. The parents scurry to see who can buy their kid the faster car, not realizing that their teenagers are driving straight to the nearest drug dealer. We hammer these little junkies whenever the opportunity arises.

  “Come on Matt, open up! Mom made you dinner again.”

  I open the door slowly. “What’s up kid? Wow, don’t you look like an undercover,” I say, as Franny walks inside.

  “Thanks, you look like shit. What are you doing in here?” He gazes at my living situation. “Are you still in the same pajamas as Monday?”

  “How perceptive you are,” I shoot back. “You should be a detective.” The truth is that Franny is a much better cop than me right now.

  He starts in on me again. “What a dump. What a fucking dump. Why haven’t you called me back? Why haven’t you called Mom?”

  Yeah, you’re right. Go ahead let me have it. Always the same questions. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Doesn’t he get that? Maybe I don’t want to hear the same shit over and over again. Why haven’t I called Mom? Because I don’t want her to hear me like this.

  Franny comes at me one more time. “Well, Dad is pissed. You have to go see them. It’s been almost a month. What about work?”

  “What about it?”

  “Are you coming back?”

  Does he think he is talking about something new? My dad is always pissed. I have never known the man not to be pissed off about something. And, as for work—come back for what? To get killed before I collect one retirement check? I don’t think so. A mental disability retirement seems like a good fit for me right now. I think I can find a shrink who would say I am suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Franny grows quiet as he removes last week’s newspaper from the chair next to me, and eases down on the cushion. “Matt, the shooter is gone. It had to be a case of mistaken identity. I don’t think that bullet was intended for you. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I look at Franny with the same disappointed look I have been expressing to him since childhood. “Franny, you have it easy. You get to answer bullshit calls, drink your hot coffee, crap without worrying where, and go home after eight hours. The only reason you’re working in plainclothes is because Donny’s missing and I got shot. Oh yeah, did you remember your o
lder brother almost died? You don’t know what I have been involved in. It goes beyond our little town here. The Captain doesn’t even know, and I don’t think he cares!” Franny attempts to say something but his eyes quickly move to my apartment door.

  With that, the door creaks open and in walks Captain Phil Grassio. The Captain is young for his title, short and slim with a bushy goatee and a shaved head. He has on his usual business attire of Old Navy khakis and a short sleeve button down. He is handsome—early forties—but always wears this dreaded look on his face, like he expects Armageddon around every corner.

  “Hey Detective, how do you feel?” the Captain smirks as he walks towards my bed.

  I look at Franny with a scorned expression, knowing he set me up. I have known Captain Grassio for what feels like an eternity. He visited every day while I was in the hospital recuperating.

  “I feel pretty good, Cap. Did the wife throw you out tonight?”

  “Nah, your brother had a nice drug rip so I came in to deal with the press.”

  I don’t know how he does it. After twenty years in law enforcement, you would think the guy would be burnt out. I feel close to the breaking point and I have put in a lot less time.

  “Franny caught someone selling drugs. Wow,” I say, astonished by my little brother’s successful bust.

  Franny appears uncomfortable around the Captain, which is strange since they see each other often at headquarters. Especially now that I have been out of the place, Franny is all he has that actually produces arrests. I wonder if Franny is uncomfortable with the Captain because of their new close working relationship. The Captain asks how I am feeling and seems to be very interested in my day-to-day activities. I know, on the surface I must appear depressed, but in reality I am scared shitless. Doesn’t anyone realize I could have died? The shooter is still out there—maybe even stalking me. For the life of me, I have no idea who it could be, or for what reason.

  Captain Grassio had the entire shooting area searched for blocks in case some tiny shred of evidence surfaced. There was no slug casing at the site where I fell, indicating the shooter picked it up. If it was some junkie I locked up, they never would have been so careful. The cell towers were dumped and every cell phone number checked through a state database which yielded nothing spectacular. No known felons had moved into our community. Our New York State Investigators lent a hand, but everything turned up empty. Had I not been bleeding and my Kevlar vest full off buckshot, I don’t think anyone would have believed me. No witnesses, of course. A few people heard the gunshot but thought it may be traffic-related on a highly traveled road.

  The case is still open, and I plan on diving head first into it as soon as I get back. If I go back at all.

  Snapping back into reality, I say, “Hey Cap, you heard from Donny yet?” The look on his face answers my question. It is very strange not to hear from my partner for this long. The Captain’s silence tells me that he thinks it is strange, too.

  “You will call if you need anything, right Matt?” the Captain asks in what I can only assume is an attempt to move the conversation away from Donny’s whereabouts.

  “Cap, you know I am thinking about retirement,” I say, in case he hasn’t already figured it out.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Let me know what you need. I have Dr. Berger on standby whenever you need to talk. He really wants to sit down with you to see how you’re adjusting to life after your nightmare. Heal your mind and forget this shit. You can’t let it linger any longer, Matt. Find yourself a hot chick and bang the shit out of her. That will fix your head!”

  I laugh at the two of them standing in front of my bed while I lie there in my Miami Dolphins pajama pants. Captain Grassio continues his emotional rant, which is very uncommon for him. “Seriously Matt, I want you to think back to your patrol days and how easy it was for you at the start of your career. I want you to remember the good old days. Forget about all this investigative crap, the shooting, and think about when you were fresh out of the academy.” His words take me back to a simpler time.

  February 14, 1999

  The streets were covered in blackened snow and slush. This February seemed to be colder than most I could remember. I almost felt like we were headed into an Ice Age and there was no end in sight. I was working in downtown Hutchville as Patrol Car One and had just started my 4 to 12 p.m. shift. Glimmering Christmas lights were still on several front porches on this cold night. This always annoyed my father who was a Christmas light etiquette expert. My father’s house was lit up like an airport with every color of the rainbow. He labored for hours and cursed with every strand that had an electrical short, causing one bulb not to work. When Franny and I were kids, our knowledge of the profanity dictionary increased every Christmas from our father’s banter. I could only imagine how much time he would spend on his display when his first grandchild arrived. There was only a certain amount of time Christmas lights should be on after the New Year, but I forgot how long. My father’s lights had long been packed away for next year.

  “Headquarters to Car One.” My radio crackled and hummed.

  “Car One, proceed!”

  “Car One, head over to 35 Maple Avenue, on the report of an elderly female who is unresponsive.”

  “Ten-Four.”

  I got chills and started to sweat as headquarters dispatched the ambulance. The ear-piercing wail sounded off through my radio and startled me. I had begun to hate aided cases. It was where I spent most of my working hours. Each case seemed to blend into the next. I wanted some real action but was left to deal with petty bullshit. I pulled up to a white house and confirmed it was 35 Maple Avenue.

  I popped the trunk and grabbed my first aid bag and defibrillator. I kicked open the chain link fence and sprinted up the wooden stairs to find an elderly female, approximately eighty years old, wearing a blue sweater and black pants standing in the doorway. I was instantly relieved and asked her if she was all right.

  She looked nervous and older than I first thought—maybe eighty-five—and was swaying from side to side. I entered the home and sat her on a small brown chair in the foyer. The home smelled like something died in it, but this elderly lady was alive. I asked her name.

  “Mary.”

  “Well, Mary, the ambulance is on the way. How about I give you some oxygen?” This was all I could do for someone who was still alive. Part of me was pissed. I really wanted to zap someone with my defibrillator. Mary looked up at me with tears in her blue eyes and said her mother, Ann, was upstairs and Ann was the reason Mary called.

  My stomach dropped into my legs. The chills that were gone came back. Worse. I really didn’t need this today. Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day, Matt! I left Mary down in the foyer and ran upstairs with my gear in tow. At this point, all I had to do was follow the smell. It was becoming more apparent from the stench that someone or something was dead on the second floor.

  I knew exactly where I was going. The upstairs bathroom was easy to find in a traditional Dutch Colonial, the type of home I had been accustomed to working in this neighborhood for the past year. As I entered the bathroom, I couldn’t have dreamed up the sight I was about to lay my eyes upon.

  Below, the ambulance crew rushed through the front door. Mary’s voice faintly asked for help. I felt bad for her. The bathroom smell was almost unbearable. I was told while in the police academy that some people feel an urgency to use the toilet when they are about to die. I had no idea why or if that was really true.

  Ann was sitting straight up on the toilet, completely naked with her head resting back on a corner wall of yellow tile. She was obviously not breathing and had clearly expired. The smell of human feces mixed with death would have made anyone not accustomed to it vomit instantly. Brown feces were smeared all over the toilet seat and floor.

  I touched two fingers to her left arm. She hadn’t been dead long since she was still warm to the touch. I checked for a pulse in her neck and found nothing but warm skin. Her feet were covered in fece
s and her toenails were colored a perfect pink. Even though she was old, Mary’s mother took care of herself.

  I snapped on a pair of latex gloves, carefully lifted Ann off the toilet, and placed her on the cold tile floor, careful to avoid the human feces smeared everywhere. My defibrillator was open and I was ready to attach the electrodes. I placed one on her right chest above her breast and the other on the left side of her abdomen. The device checked for a heart rhythm in order to shock, but the display kept telling me to perform cardio pulmonary resuscitation, commonly known as CPR. Performing CPR on someone this old would definitely crack ribs, which could injure her even further, but the benefit of life outweighed the risks.

  I had never seen someone over a hundred years old naked before, nor did I ever want to see this sight again. Her breasts lay drooped over her arms. I tried to imagine what her tits would have looked like fifty years ago, but quickly regrouped and focused on helping Ann. Her skin was so pale, like the white snow outside. I could see so many blue veins all over her body it was agonizing. Her eyes were the bluest of blue and staring at me. They were quite beautiful and made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want her to look at me. I thought when people died their eyes closed. Shit! Why couldn’t they be closed? This would have been so much easier if they were. Seemed like she was looking straight through me into my soul. Her lips were pink.

  I started CPR but found myself wishing I banged in sick today. I knew it was going to be a nightmare tour. The first rib cracked under my palms as my CPR reps picked up steam. First aid week at the academy came back to bite me in the ass. Was it fifteen chest compressions and two breaths, or had it changed? We hadn’t had a refresher class since the current town board cut training for our department. Fucking politics at its worst.