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“Pretty good. Still tryin’ to figure out that hit-and-run the other night. Nothing about it makes sense to me. I know that’s why you’re here. Code called and asked me to pull the records on those two cops from Atlanta.”
“That’s our Code,” grinned Ian. “Anything?”
“Not a damn thing,” said the man, standing and pointing to a private room. They took their seats, and he shut the door. “Listen, sometimes a cop’s records are sealed because they served time undercover or they were a critical witness in an internal investigation, something like that. Not these two.”
“Then why are their records sealed?” asked Ghost.
“You want my honest opinion?” asked Blanchard. The two men gave him a strange look.
“Of course, we want your fucking honest opinion,” growled Ghost.
“I think they were dirty cops. Not only that, but I also think they covered for other dirty cops, and to ensure they didn’t do time, their records were sealed, and they were guaranteed a way out. These guys both did forty years with the department. Usually, we retire long before forty. I damn sure hope I can. They were in the same academy class together, graduated together, and worked together. Forty years. Forty is a long time.
“Yet neither one had moved up in rank. They were both Sergeants. Detectives in homicide. They didn’t want promotions. They didn’t want to move on. They chose to stay right where they were. Don’t you think that’s odd? I damn sure do.”
“What was their solve rate?” asked Ian.
“Around eighty-eight percent. That might not seem very impressive, but in a city like Atlanta, it damn sure is. The only thing I did find was something that came across the wire here twenty years ago. It was asking about a case involving a man named Reginald Booker. He’d been accused of raping and murdering a white woman in Buckhead. Except Reginald didn’t live anywhere near Buckhead. He was at least thirty miles away when the murder happened.”
“Why did it come here?” asked Ghost.
“Reginald was found with a knife in his car. A knife that was in our evidence room used in a murder here. Now, someone want to tell me how a knife in the NOPD evidence room gets from here to Atlanta and implicates a man who was thirty miles from the crime scene?”
“Blanchard, what the fuck? What’s going on?”
“That’s what I wanted to know. I found the paper trail of communication between the D.A. in Atlanta, the lawyers, and our own team here. No one even knew that the knife was missing. They knew it was a murder weapon because there were previous dustings still on the handle, where they searched for prints for our killer locally. No one even bothered to wipe it off.”
“Yes, but how did it get from here to Atlanta?” asked Ian.
“Booker’s niece was a secretary here. No evidence could ever be found that showed her taking the knife or even going to Atlanta, but that’s damn sure what the jury heard during testimony. Booker died in prison three years ago, still proclaiming his innocence. The shit of it all is that he was innocent.
“With improved technology and our ability to clean up security footage, the Atlanta PD took another look at the woman’s home video camera footage. The man who broke into her home was a twenty-five-year-old Hispanic male. Not a fifty-two-year-old black male. That man spent almost twenty years in prison for no reason. Now he’s dead.”
“How do these two cops fit into all this?” asked Ghost.
“They were assigned the case. They came to New Orleans on the pretense of speaking to the niece.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” mumbled Ian. “And no one ever made that connection?”
“Oh, I’m going to bet that they absolutely made that connection. They just didn’t make the effort to explore that connection. They came here long before the knife was brought into the conversation. A few weeks later, low and behold, they find a knife in Booker’s car. The knife that was here in our evidence room.”
“What did Booker do to them? Was there something there?” asked Ghost.
“Booker worked part-time at a restaurant in downtown Atlanta. The Shield. It was, and still is, a cop hangout, and everyone knew everyone else. His niece said that he quit because he felt uncomfortable with some of the discussions the men were having.”
“Shit,” muttered Ghost. “Code? We need to find out if the kid that was murdered in Atlanta when Serena was there worked at the same restaurant.”
“Bearer of bad news. Again. It was the same restaurant.”
“Damn. Send the name and address to Nine and Gaspar. Maybe they can pop in for lunch and make some folks uncomfortable.”
“I think Booker and this kid heard something in that restaurant they weren’t supposed to hear. These two assholes have been allowed to do whatever they want, and no offense to their intelligence, I don’t believe the two of them could pull all this shit off by themselves. Someone else is involved, and I want to know who,” said Ghost.
“But why target the women at the home? What’s to gain from that?” asked Ian.
“Money,” said Blanchard. “You and I both know that it’s usually about money. The thing you guys have to figure out is whether or not they were involved in some money scam in Atlanta and how many other innocent bodies did they put in prison.”
“What we have to figure out?” smirked Ghost. “Last time I checked, brother, you were the one with the badge and the gun.”
