Sucker's Dance

By Bill Chipman

When washed up ex-police officer Cole Pierce finds a job with an insurance company investigating worker's compensation fraud, he is unwittingly set up as the fall guy for a murderous gang who have been using a construction company as their own private ATM. Pierce uncovers the plot, and is framed for several murders, finding himself on the run from the law and the real murderers. He joins with an executive from the insurance company, Walt McCallum, and his daughter, Katie, both of whom are also set up by the gang, to prove their innocence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Chipman
• Release date: Jun 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452451602

Bill Chipman

Profession: 22 years in Law EnforcementBachelor of Arts University of MA, AmherstMaster's Certificate Harvard Extension SchoolMaster's Certificate Project on Negotiation atHarvard Law SchoolMaster's Degree Public AdministrationHarvard Kennedy School

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Sucker’s Dance

Sucker’s Dance

By Bill Chipman

Copyright 2011 Bill Chipman

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Chapter 1.

Well before sunrise, I was sitting in my beat-up Explorer, watching a house through some shrubbery. It stared back at me in the near-dawn, devoid of life.

It belonged to a guy named Stephen Carter. He seemed fairly well-off. The house was a contemporary style, with lots of dorm ers and windows, on a cul-de-sac in Dover, a wealthy suburb outside Boston. There were horse farms lining the roads I drove to get there. It was a nicer house, in a nicer neighborhood, than you’d expect for a construction yard supervisor.

I was parked just around the corner, where I'd be harder to spot. My car looked terrible, the result of a bunch of minor accidents. But there wasn’t much money in my budget for fixing stuff that wasn’t necessary for getting from A to B.

Most burglaries in wealthy bedroom communities happen during the daytime, when everyone's at work, and I knew the cops would be on the lookout for suspicious cars, out of boredom at least. My car was suspicious.

I called Debbie at Delphi Insurance and left my cell number in her voicemail. I had a new prepaid cell phone, since mine had been cancelled months ago for lack of payment. I also asked to check on the status of the rental minivan they were arranging for me. My car was going into the shop now that I had an income again.

Lights started to go on in Carter’s house, and I started my car so it would be ready when he came out. The day before, I’d arrived later in the morning, and ended up waiting for a long time until he came home and took golf clubs out of the back of his car. It was an ‘ah, ha’ moment, leading to my arrival this morning at such an uncivilized hour.

The day before, my morning consisted of trying not to think about my life, resulting in an in-depth study of two feisty squirrels chasing and occasionally catching each other. I have no idea what they were fighting about, but it was a good battle, until one was declared the victor. Today I was early enough to catch him leaving.

The garage door went up, and when he walked out, he was carrying the golf bag. There was enough light for photos now, and I took some of him walking, and some of him swinging the clubs up and into the back of his Lexus SUV. He didn’t look disabled and unable to work. Maybe he was emotionally wounded.

He was medium height, and looked kind of soft, with a pot belly. The kind of guy you’d describe as skinny-but-fat. His legs looked tan and thin, though, consistent with the golfing, stuck down and out of his larger body. He looked a bit like a Popsicle.

It would be nice when I got the rental minivan, so I could wallow around in the back behind the tinted glass where people wouldn't be able to spot me. It was kind of uncomfortable huddled in the front seat, slumped down to avoid notice.

Off we went to the golf course two towns over, with me yawning and trying to keep a car or two between us so I didn’t get spotted. From the street outside the parking lot, I got some good photos of him on the first tee, and then later bending over to pick his ball out of the cup on the ninth hole, which was back near the clubhouse parking lot. His tee shot on the tenth sliced badly, into a stand of pines. That was going to be trouble.

I lost sight of him after that, and about a half hour later, a police car pulled up behind me in the street. He put his lights on, and I felt like everyone does when they get stopped by the cops, kind of embarrassed, like you walked into a party naked, and all eyes were on you. As he approached the car, I put both hands on the steering wheel, fingers spread, so he could see them and know they were empty as he walked up.

When the cop got close, I watched as his eyes ranged from me, down to the provisions and stuff in the seat next to me, then back up, removing his hand from where it rested on the butt of his gun as his eyes met mine.

Divorce, or Worker’s Comp?

Worker’s Comp. Pretty common, huh?

Relaxing a little bit, shoving his hat back on his head, he replied, We get it all the time.

Who called me in? I don’t think my guy’s made me. But I wanted to be sure.

Groundskeeper. Gesturing at the golf course. Said your car wasn’t their normal clientele. He probably wanted to make sure you weren't going to invade their lunch buffet. Who’s the guy you’re investigating? Taking out his notebook.

Name’s Stephen Carter. Lives in Dover.

Address?

I gave it to him.

He own one of those cars in the lot?

That one, the gray Lexus. He wrote it all down.

Then he took my license and went back to his cruiser for a while to check my name through the computer. My cell phone chirped, a message from Debbie with the confirmation on the rental car. When the cop came back, he was more business-like, less friendly, and his hat was pulled down low over his eyes again.

Mr. Pierce, you know that it’s a good idea to contact the local P.D. in the town where you’re doing an investigation, right? His tone was frosty.

I’m not a PI. It’s not a requirement, according to the law.

First of all, don’t YOU lecture ME about the law. You gave up that right. And unless you want to find yourself getting pulled over and investigated for every motor vehicle equipment violation I can think of every time I see you, you’ll pick up the phone and give us a call when you’re in town, you got that?

Yes, Sir. Biting it off, like I was back in the Police Academy, and there was some jerk of a Drill Instructor shouting at me for a frayed shoelace. There was no hiding from my past.

He flicked my license through the open window into my lap, turned on his heel, and was gone. At least he hadn’t slipped it into the window slot and dropped it inside the door.

Once the cop pulled away, I decided not to hang around the golf course anymore. I wanted more photos of him while he was finishing up, but it seemed like my car was going to cause problems.

I dropped my car off at a body shop in Everett, whose owner was friends with one of my brothers. Bobby, the owner, was out for the day, I finally gathered. The guy I left it with did not speak English well, and I made lots of gestures and pointed at other cars to try and explain what needed to be done.

I didn’t have all day, so finally, sighing with exasperation, I gave up and wrote a note to Bobby and left it on the dash, parking in the lot out back. Por Senor Robert, I told the guy, and he finally nodded and smiled in comprehension. Si, si, he replied. Yo comprendo. I called a taxi service that advertised on their punch board and went to Logan Airport to pick up the van.

After picking it up, I got some lunch, wrapped in foil, to eat when I had some down time, and went back to Carter’s house, hoping to get a few more pictures of him doing healthy things. I parked in the same spot, noting his car in the driveway, and got myself organized and ready.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Looking up from my mirror, I saw Carter walking down his front steps in a track suit. His walk was earlier today. I brought the camera up and started shooting. I got a few photos as he walked down the short street and turned. I lost sight of him and started wrapping up my stuff.

Catching movement out of the corner of my eye again, I glanced up to see a big, dark SUV, maybe a Suburban, pulling into the other end of Carter’s street, coming from the way he’d walked. It did a fast three point turn, chirping its tires hard at each stop, and then pealed out back towards Carter, accelerating hard and fast so I could hear its engine straining.

Watching, my stomach sank, and I hesitated briefly, wondering. I shoved the rest of my gear off my lap and away from the stick shift. I hoped it was my imagination, but I dropped it into gear and drove.

I heard the sickening, crunching thud through my open window as the SUV ran him down, and then another peal of tires on asphalt. I didn’t see it, but I knew what it was. I stomped on it and accelerated down the street, turning the corner without stopping at the sign. I had a cannonball in the pit of my stomach, and said, Damn, damn, damn, softly, as I looked for him, banging the steering wheel with my fist.

A man ran across the street in front of me, shouting into a phone, as a woman ushered two toddlers back into the yard. She was looking back over her shoulder with a horrified expression on her face, trying to keep the kids’ eyes averted.

I watched as the guy stopped by Carter’s broken form and dropped to one knee next to him. I could see one of Carter’s tan, popsicle-stick legs at an odd angle.

The neighbor was feeling for a pulse as I slowed and drove past. He was still shouting into his phone. Carter’s skull lay against the pavement, like somehow part of his head had sunk into the ground, surrounded by a spreading pool of blood. Almost like his head was in a pothole. But it was his skull that was out of shape, not the pavement. He’d gone for his last walk.

I saw the tail end of the SUV disappear at the next intersection. I accelerated hard, but the light turned red, a steady line of cars coming across with the green. I could smell heat and engine fluids burning under the hood. By the time I was able to cut someone off and get into the street to follow, the SUV was out of sight, and all I had to show for my effort was three or four middle fingers and one screaming tirade that I couldn’t make out; the woman was so angry she’d forgotten to open her window. I sped down the road for a bit just to see if I’d get lucky, but didn’t.

I turned around and drove back slowly, pulling over for an ambulance and police cruisers that raced past, lights on and sirens blaring. By the time I got there, the EMTs had Carter on the stretcher and were pumping his chest half-heartedly as they loaded him into the ambulance. Maybe they’d get some donor organs.

Four cops had shut down the road and another was beginning the process of measuring distances from the taped outline of the body to street signs and telephone poles, normal procedure for a serious accident.

I explained to one of the cops working the tape at the outskirts that I’d seen the accident and tried to follow the car that hit him. He waved me over to the side of the road and pointed to three uniformed officers who were talking to the neighbor who’d called nine-one-one.

I pulled over and walked towards them. The neighbor guy was practically shouting at them, waving his hands, and they were trying to calm him down, having seen it all before, and needing to get the information. One of them saw me coming and split off from the others, eyebrow raised.

He seemed indifferent to my story, asking me for my license and copying down the information. But then, while he was copying everything down, he looked at my license, then looked up at me again. He knew who I was.

I said, "Yeah. That Cole Pierce."

He nodded without saying anything and wrote some more.

Then he looked back up. Where were you when you saw this guy get hit?

I didn’t actually see him get hit. I heard it.

Oh. Rolling his eyes, like I was some creamer who just wanted to get involved for the excitement.

But I saw the SUV clearly when it turned around in the street over there.

Where exactly?

I pointed it out to him. There might be some tire tracks if he didn’t stay on the road.

Wait a minute. The truck that hit him turned around?

Yeah. It was coming from down here, then turned into the mouth of the street and went back after him.

If you didn’t see the accident, how do you know it went back after him?

I was watching Carter, the guy who got hit, doing an investigation, and saw the truck. That’s the way it looked to me.

What kind of investigation?

He was out on Worker’s Comp. The insurance company hired me to check him out.

Tell me exactly how this accident happened, from what you saw. His voice got harder.

I went over how I saw him leaving his house, walk down the street, and lost sight of him. Then I described the big SUV, how it turned around, and hearing the crunch while driving down to check it out.

He got a little more interested then. He wrote all of it down in his notebook.

No way was it an accident. That truck had turned around to go back and hit him.

He looked back up. Are you sure this was a deliberate act?

"I couldn’t say for sure, but it sure as hell looked that way to me. If I’d seen the truck hit him, then I could answer definitely one way or the other. But I’ve hit deer in a car before, and I know how it sounds."

He told me to wait for the detectives to show up, that they would want to talk to me, and then got on his cell phone and walked away from me so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I walked back to the rental van and rested my butt on the hood.

Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting there. I’d finished a granola bar and a bottle of water from the car, and was getting tired of waiting. The uniforms all pretty much ignored me, doing their thing, and two of them had left.

I peeled my pants off the now-cool hood and walked closer, catching the eye of the cop I’d already talked to as he stood by his cruiser, taking a smoke break. I raised my hands, palms up, and put a plaintive expression on my face. He nodded, held up a finger, and pulled out his phone.

He had a short conversation, waving me over as he finished. I trotted through the slow-moving traffic across the street and over to his cruiser. Detectives got tied up at another scene. Suicide, they think, but they got to go through the motions, and they were there first. You know how it is.

Yeah, sure, I said. Any way I can give you a statement or something instead? I’ve got work to do.

You gonna be home tonight?

Yeah.

They said they’ll come by your house. The address on your license accurate?

Yes.

Make sure you leave a note on the door if you run out for milk or something. They’re busy, no sense jerking ‘em around.

No problem, thanks.

He nodded as I turned on my heel to leave. By the time I got around to the driver’s side of my car and glanced back at him, he was pouring kitty litter on the street to soak up the blood.

Chapter 2.

I drove home slowly through the afternoon traffic, suddenly tired, and not feeling sick, but not so great. I’d seen bodies before, but you never really get completely desensitized, unless you’re a sociopath, and it had been a while for me. I hadn’t seen a body since my accident, but that one was a friend of mine, and the pain of loss is more acute than the discomfort of being in the presence of death. And at the time, I’d been pretty messed up and in a lot of pain, so it was a different effect.

I went over and over in my mind everything I’d done following Carter, trying to figure out if there had been any way I could have been made or anything I’d missed, coming up empty each time.

When I got home, I didn’t feel up to sitting around, doing paperwork, so I went down to the basement and did a workout with the old dumbbell set I had laying around. Exercise is a sure way to get your mind working, and I was trying to get back into shape. But I couldn’t get past the fact that there had to be more at stake than a guy faking an injury for Worker’s Comp.

I didn’t have enough information to see how Carter fit in, or what else was going on. The only alternative was that someone killed Carter for something completely unrelated to my case. A possibility, but a weak one.

Carter had been the supervisor at the Dock Yard, where Grady and Sons Construction had stored a large portion of the stock and supplies they were using on the Harbor Renewal Project. It was one of the large, publicly-funded construction projects that had made Boston the orange traffic cone and Jersey barrier capitol of the U.S. for the last fifteen years.

Delphi Insurance hired me to look into the large number of employees from the Dock Yard out on Worker’s comp. They did an audit of the Yard, and the first thing that jumped out of the books was the number of people with back injuries. The numbers were out of whack compared to industry standards.

In my prior life as a police officer, I’d worked as a detective for ten years. People rarely killed each other over insurance fraud. I couldn’t get over the feeling that there was something else going on.

When I was done with my workout, wound down, showered, and slightly sore, I turned on the TV to watch the news. Before I could get past a commercial, I heard a car in the driveway.

They rolled up in a blacked out Crown Vic with about seven antennas on it, just like the one I’d been driving when I had my accident. I opened the door before they rang the doorbell.

There were two of them, and one of them looked vaguely familiar. He was a medium-sized guy with a slight build, probably a runner. His hair was cropped close and he wore khakis and a blue button-down shirt, chocolate brown boat shoes on his feet.

The other one was a big, florid, overweight guy with a buzz cut and a goatee, wearing jeans and a collared shirt with a little horsey on the breast. His face seemed locked in a perpetual sneer, and when I shook his hand it felt like he was missing a finger, or part of one. He didn’t say anything except for his name, Mike Kennedy.

Pointing at the skinny one, I said, You look familiar. We ever work together?

That Drug Task Force case that ended up down the Cape, with all the Meth. I was a summer cop down there while I was in college and they pulled me to do some of the stake-outs with you guys. Mostly just running for coffee and stuff. I got on the Job up here two years ago.

We shook hands as I nodded, remembering. He’d been young and green, but pretty decent in spite of it. He’d kept his mouth shut except to ask questions. And his questions had been pretty good. He had to be pretty good to be a detective after just two years on the job.

We went into the kitchen and sat down around the table. The skinny one pulled out a pad. Mind if I call you Cole?

Sure. I can’t remember your name.

Bobby Westlake

That’s right, got you now.

He started out by going over what the uniformed guys had asked me. Then he asked me about Carter. What were you investigating him for?

He was out on Worker’s comp. I spent two days watching him golf and do yard work and take long walks. Definitely faking. I was just about done on him, was going to tie up my file tonight and submit it.

Who do you work for?

Delphi Insurance. One of my brothers got me the job, he works for them out on the West Coast.

Any idea why someone might want this Carter guy dead?

Not really. He looked up at me.

"I mean, he was the guy in charge, and there are some guys who were working for him who might be faking too, but that doesn’t seem like enough to want to kill him. Faking Worker’s Comp isn’t big enough to kill someone usually, and I can’t think of any other reason for someone to want him dead. I mean, what’re they making, like fifty grand a year? Maybe sixty or seventy, max? And they could still make that by going back to work, so what’s the big deal? They’d have to have known that they’d be going back to work someday. Killing him doesn’t make sense."

Does it ever? His head down, still writing.

Yeah, I know. I’m just going on the information they gave me. Carter had at least six guys working for him over the last five or six years that went out on questionable disability claims. Two were probably legit, the oldest ones, but the newer ones are suspect, just on volume. And then you add him, and the numbers start to jump out at you.

Kennedy asked, You don’t think one of these guys might have clipped him to keep their scam going?

"It just doesn’t feel right. Aside from that being such a weak motive, none of them even knew I was investigating him. So even if the guys he worked with were crazy enough to want him dead so they could stay out injured, they wouldn’t know that their scam was in jeopardy. I