Collateral damage, p.1
Collateral Damage, page 1
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For Robert Hamilton, my favorite Bone Doc
PROLOGUE
ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 7:30 p.m. (CST)
At seven thirty on Halloween evening, 2017, Danielle Lomax-Reardon was still at work. She felt guilty about not being home to see her two boys, Dan and Andy, head out for trick-or-treating in their carefully constructed Star Wars costumes, but she knew Luke would take an armload of pictures, ones the whole family would share while nibbling away at whatever goodies the boys collected in their jack-o’-lantern-shaped buckets.
This was the job-versus-family tug-of-war every working mother had to fight on a daily basis, and on this occasion, Danielle’s work obligations had won out.
Hearing a murmur of voices coming from down the hall, she cleared her desk, left her private office, and made her way down the hall to the main conference room. It was a bare-bones kind of place furnished with nothing but a collection of mismatched chairs and a refreshment table, but Danielle knew it was a place of hope and new beginnings for many of the people who had ventured inside, and these Monday night support-group meetings were an integral part of the process.
This shabby gathering place had once been the posh front parlor for one of St. Paul’s grand old mansions. Now it was the centerpiece of the Madeline Dahlke House, a shelter—both residential and drop-in—for victims of domestic abuse, and named in honor of Sophie Dahlke’s long-suffering mother. Outsiders might have been surprised to learn that the shelter’s executive director herself often facilitated this Monday night support-group meeting, but Danielle felt it was important to be there in person. When it came to domestic abuse, she, too, was a survivor.
The desperate women who finally ventured inside the shelter often felt trapped and hopeless, believing there was no way out. Many turned up in clothing meant to hide the bruises on their arms and legs and wearing layers of makeup designed to conceal the fading but still visible marks on their faces. Unfortunately, the room’s cheap fluorescent lighting usually undid their attempts at physical camouflage. For Danielle, who had once walked in their shoes, it was easy to see through their equally futile efforts at concealing the damage to their souls.
Several of Danielle’s clients had confided that, upon meeting her for the first time, they had almost turned and fled. To them it had seemed unlikely that the poised, stylishly dressed, confident woman reaching out in welcome would understand where they were coming from. How could she possibly have anything in common with their own horrific realities? Facilitating Monday night support-group meetings gave Danielle an opportunity to address those erroneous assumptions.
Not only had she once been a victim of domestic violence, so had her best friend. Alysha Morgan had suffered through months of unrelenting domestic abuse from her boyfriend, Zeke Woodward, in a relationship that had eventually ended in homicide. At the time, both Danielle and Alysha had been working as exotic dancers in a strip joint in Pasadena, California. Late one night an enraged Zeke had turned up in the parking lot and fired six close-range shots into Alysha’s body. Danielle had been the sole eyewitness to that horrific event, and her presence that awful night had inevitably led her to the life she lived now and to her work at Dahlke House.
Sometimes, during group sharing, Danielle told her own story and sometimes she didn’t. At the beginning of any given meeting she was never sure which way things would go, and that was the case that Monday evening as well.
As she entered the conference room, Danielle was greeted by a small burst of laughter from a group of women gathered around the refreshment table. Danielle regarded laughter as a good sign—it showed the beginnings of recovery, of people beginning to find ways to embark on paths to new lives. Three of the women at the refreshment table were Dahlke House graduates, ones who had spent six months or more in the shelter’s residential treatment program. Their continued participation in support-group meetings benefited their own recoveries but also offered encouragement to newcomers.
What was now Dahlke House had once been the fashionable residence of Henry Gottfried Peterson, a railroad baron considered to be one of the city’s business titans. Outside the walls of their stately home, Henry and his wife, Madeline, had been greatly admired members of the city’s high society. At home, Henry had been a monster, bullying and abusing both his wife and daughter, with his son, Alfred, eventually mimicking his father’s abusive behavior.
Sophie, the daughter, had grown up in that toxic family dynamic where what went on in public was the opposite of what went on at home. Determined to escape, she had married her high school sweetheart, Steven Philip Dahlke, weeks after they both graduated high school. Months later, Steven was shipped off to World War II, never to return. He perished in the Battle of the Bulge, as did Sophie’s brother.
By age twenty-three Sophie was a childless widow, living at home with her parents and doing what she could to protect her mother from her father’s increasingly angry outbursts and drunken rages. The abuse only ceased when he suffered a fatal stroke. By then Madeline was a shadow of her former self, living out the remainder of her life as a reclusive invalid. Sophie, living in a private suite of rooms inside the mansion, functioned as her mother’s primary caregiver. After her mother’s death in 1958, the stately home that had once belonged to her parents became Sophie’s alone.
In the early sixties, with the onset of the women’s movement, Sophie learned to her surprise that many of her contemporaries, also members of the city’s high society, had grown up in similarly challenging circumstances where the specter of physical violence lay hidden behind a thin veneer of wealth and respectability.
As the reality of their mutual histories gradually emerged, the women were shocked to realize that if their privileged mothers had been unable to exit abusive marriages, what chance did those less fortunate have? With that in mind, several of them banded together to do something about that very issue, offering support for abused women trapped in similar situations.
As a founding member of this fledgling organization, Sophie happily opened both her pocketbook and her home. While she continued to occupy her upstairs apartment, the ornate ground floor morphed into office space and public meeting rooms for women in need. When Sophie passed away in 1978, she left the mansion itself as well as the remainder of her fortune to the organization that now officially bore her mother’s name. Over time, the mansion had been remodeled to include several residential units, and Dahlke House remained at the forefront in the battle against domestic abuse not only in St. Paul itself, but throughout the Twin Cities area.
As the organization’s executive director, community outreach became Danielle Lomax-Reardon’s primary focus, and that was at the forefront of her mind when she entered the conference room that night, greeting attendees she recognized and introducing herself to first-timers.
One of those was a quiet-spoken Muslim woman dressed in traditional garb who seemed poised to flee at a moment’s notice. Seeing the woman’s sorrowful, downcast eyes, Danielle suspected there were black-and-blue marks hidden beneath her hijab and long-sleeved burka. Danielle went out of her way to greet the reticent newcomer and put her at ease.
“I’m so glad you could join us tonight,” Danielle said with a welcoming smile, taking the woman’s slender but clammy hand in her own. “My name is Danielle. And yours is?”
“Baan,” the young woman whispered. “My name is Baan.”
“I hope you’ll come again, Baan,” Danielle said, and it was at that moment she decided that this was one of those times when she would share her own story. Some of the women in attendance might have heard the tale before just as she had heard theirs, but that was all right. Danielle had learned that there was often something new to be learned from each retelling.
The version she told that night was a short one. She related how she had dropped out of high school and fled an abusive household, choosing to live on her own at a very young age. She went on to tell about going to work as an “exotic dancer” and of taking up with a married man, a cop named Frank, who had beaten her senseless on more than one occasion.
Eventually Danielle told about witnessing her best friend’s horrific death and about her interactions with the caring homicide detective who had interviewed her that awful night. The tears she’d shed in the aftermath of Alysha’s death had washed away Danielle’s makeup. At the end of the official interview, the detective had inquired about the telltale bruising on her cheek, and in a moment of utter despair, she came clean about the crooked cop boyfriend who was her own tormenter. It was that conversation that had changed the arc of her life forever, leading her out of that abusive relationship and into a brighter future and eventually to her work at Dahlke House.
“It just doesn’t get any better than that,” she finished, “but sometimes you have to let go of the bad in order to find the good.”
After Danielle told her story, several others shared theirs as well. Throughout the proceedings, Danielle noticed that Baan said nothing but listened intently. Being able to share her own story might come l ater, but for now Danielle was grateful that by coming tonight Baan had taken a tiny baby step forward on her own behalf. Everyone had to start that difficult journey somewhere.
“Do come again,” Danielle said, catching up with Baan as the younger woman darted toward the exit. “You’re always welcome.”
Baan replied with a nod of her head, but that was all.
It was ten thirty before Danielle finished putting away chairs, emptying the coffee urn, and shutting off lights. Wearing a light coat and with her purse slung over her shoulder, she stepped outside into the crisp fall nighttime air, pausing long enough to lock the door behind her.
As she turned to go, she noticed the shadow of a male figure silhouetted against a nearby streetlight and barring her path to the sidewalk. Without warning, a barrage of bullets slammed into her body, propelling her backward. As her body slid to the floor of the porch, it left behind a bright red stain on the shelter’s oaken door.
Danielle lived long enough to see her attacker turn and disappear into the distance. She tried to call out but couldn’t. Lights in other nearby houses and buildings came on as alarmed neighbors tried to figure out what had just happened, but Danielle Lomax-Reardon knew it was too late. She would be dead long before help arrived.
In those few moments as her lifeblood drained away, although Danielle had no idea who had pulled the trigger, she understood who was responsible—her former boyfriend. Frank Muñoz had sent someone to kill her, and why wouldn’t he? After all, he was in prison in California, and she was the one who had put him there.
CHAPTER 1
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Wednesday, January 1, 2020, 8:00 a.m. (PST)
Frank Muñoz’s first New Year’s Day out of the slammer was a quiet one. He got up, made coffee, and had a bowl of cold cereal—Frosted Flakes—for breakfast. His mother, Lupé, had never bought Frosted Flakes back when he was a kid. She claimed they were too expensive. “Have a tortilla,” she’d always said. “They’re better for you than all that sugar.” Of course Frank realized now that a steady diet of tortillas wasn’t very good for you, either.
After breakfast he switched on his flat-screen TV and settled in to watch the Rose Parade. His moderately priced, fully furnished apartment on Shadow Lane was only a stone’s throw away from Las Vegas Metropolitan Police headquarters. Having lived in lockup for the past sixteen years, being in this clean and comfortably furnished apartment was like living in the lap of luxury. His choosing to live within walking distance of the local cop shop made it appear as though he had nothing to hide—which was exactly what he wanted people to believe.
Frank watched the parade from beginning to end, not so much to see the floats but to catch glimpses of the city of Pasadena itself. Living in self-imposed exile here in Vegas, Frank still missed the place where he’d gone to work fresh out of college. And being occupied with the parade meant he wasn’t keeping an eye on his watch and wondering what was going on. After today, he’d be one step closer to achieving his goal—three down and one to go. By the end of the week, once all four of his tormentors were out of the way, his job would be over, and his score would be settled.
Melinda, his younger sister, called just as the parade was winding down. “Are you coming over to watch the game?” she asked. “Menudo, tamales, and tacos—all homemade and all you can eat.”
He understood why she was calling. Melinda was the baby of the family. Although much younger than Frank, she was incredibly bossy and felt morally obliged to look after him. The problem was Frank didn’t really like her, and he could barely tolerate her husband, either—his brother-in-law, Ricky. But when Frank had been coming up for parole, Melinda and Ricky had suggested he consider moving to Vegas, and that’s why he’d asked to be set up with a parole officer there—to be close to family. Melinda had provided a plausible excuse, but the real reason for Frank’s wanting to settle in Vegas was far more complicated.
Years earlier, and two days before his trial had been due to start, Frank had sat in a jailhouse interview room with his attorney and a US prosecuting attorney who was there to pitch a plea deal.
“We’ve examined your financials,” the prosecutor said. “We know for a fact that you’ve been receiving substantial amounts of hush money from the people behind BJ’s, and we have witnesses who are prepared to testify to your having subverted an upcoming vice raid, which allowed ample opportunity for the illegal gambling operation to disappear long before officers arrived.”
That was all true. Frank had been a longtime regular at a local strip joint called BJ’s, but he was also a cop. He had noticed that many people who came through the place exhibited zero interest in the dancers. They all went directly upstairs to a room marked PRIVATE. AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY. Frank recognized a good number of those folks. They were well-known locals, respected politicians and businessmen, whose reputations would suffer irreparable harm if they were caught up in a raid on an illegal gambling den.
One afternoon in the locker room while preparing for his shift Frank had happened to overhear two of the vice guys discussing an upcoming operation—a planned raid on BJ’s. The owner, Betty Jean Parmenter, was a tough old bat who, back in the day, had been a well-known stripper herself. While still in her prime, she had managed to marry into the mob. Her long-deceased mafioso husband and his pals had provided the start-up funds that launched BJ’s originally, and for years it had operated as both a gambling den and a mob-friendly money-laundering establishment.
The very day Frank overheard the vice guys’ discussion, he had shown up in Betty Jean’s office unannounced and sounded the alarm. Once he did so, she had examined him with a disturbingly intense look.
“We know you’re a regular,” she said finally. “We also know you’re a cop. How come you’re telling me this?”
Frank had shrugged. “Just thought you should know is all,” he replied.
He hadn’t known if she’d pay attention to his warning, but when the promised raid occurred, that private upstairs room had been wiped clean as a whistle. The next time Frank stopped by the club and it was time for him to pay his tab, he didn’t have one. Instead the barkeep handed him an envelope with his name on it. Inside was a cool $10,000 in cash.
That Christmas Frank had used his unexpected windfall to play Santa in a big way. The kids at home had all gotten everything on their wish lists, and he’d found a pair of one-carat diamond earrings for Danielle, his sweet little side dish. He’d given her the earrings while they were dining at a fancy restaurant on a night when he’d had a bit too much to drink.
“These are lovely,” she said, “but how can you afford to be so generous?”
With the booze loosening his tongue, he’d told her the whole story. Sitting in the interview room that day, Frank knew Danielle Lomax had to be the one who had fingered him.
“What we’ve got you on so far,” the prosecutor continued, “is enough to put you away for the next twenty years, give or take. We’re willing to cut that down to ten if you’ll agree to name names.”
William Banks, Frank’s supposedly pro bono attorney, had been in the room at the time, ostensibly taking handwritten notes on a legal pad. When the prosecutor’s spiel ended, Banks spoke for the first time.
“I’ll discuss your plea offer with my client,” he said. “We’ll let you know.”
Once the prosecutor had left the room, Banks slid the legal pad over to Frank so he could see what he’d written there:
We are prepared to pay $500,000 in cash due upon your eventual release if you don’t name names.
Obviously Banks didn’t believe the audio/video feed in the interview room had been turned off once the prosecutor left the room, and neither did Frank. What’s more, he didn’t have to think twice about the offer.
Thanks to that little bitch Danielle, he was for sure going to prison. As a former police officer, once inside Frank would automatically be on an endangered species list. As for the people making this very quiet counteroffer? They had every reason for wanting him to stay silent and he suspected they were good for the money they were offering. If they somehow reneged on the deal after the fact, he could always come after them. The statute of limitations might have run out on some of their current illegal activities, but by the time he got out of the joint, there were bound to be more where those came from.
