All the Forgotten Yesterdays: River City, #14

By Frank Zafiro

Detective Katie MacLeod must contend with secrets from the past.

 

2010. River City, Washington. Detective Katie MacLeod is already working a pair of burglaries involving a suspect who cuts window screens to enter homes and steals money and drugs from elderly victims. Then she gets handed a cold missing persons case that comes with political pressure.

 

Katie must balance finding a dangerous burglar with discovering the fate of a woman who disappeared five years ago. As she digs into both cases, she finds frustration in one and a slew of secrets in the other.

 

How far will someone go to keep their secrets? Detective Katie MacLeod is about to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Zafiro
• Release date: Oct 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224118984

Frank Zafiro

Frank Zafiro was a police officer from 1993 to 2013. He is the author of more than two dozen crime novels. In addition to writing, Frank is an avid hockey fan and a tortured guitarist. He lives in Redmond, Oregon.  

Book preview

All the Forgotten Yesterdays

Frank Zafiro

A River City Novel

All the Forgotten Yesterdays (A River City Novel)

Frank Zafiro

Copyright © Frank Scalise 2023

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright owner(s), except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Code 4 Press, an imprint of Frank Zafiro, LLC

Redmond, Oregon USA

This is a work of fiction. While real locations may be used to add authenticity to the story, all characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover Design by Zach McCain

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

Author’s Note & Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books by Frank Zafiro

For Jeff McCollough,

One of the best cops I ever knew in the real River City

Yesterday is a box,

(a secret,

a whisper),

a lie dashed upon the rocks.

Yesterday is a door,

(closed and locked,

a truth),

upon which a familiar stranger knocks.

Rebecca Battaglia

September 2010

River City, Washington

ONE

Monday, September 6, 2010

0956 hrs

Taking a civil service exam was at once the most boring and most stressful event so far in Detective Katie MacLeod’s career.

The material itself was the boring part: criminal law, ever-shifting case law, policies and procedures about everything from training requirements to HR to medical privacy. Some of it was so obscure she hadn’t even known the rule existed before reading the study material. That obscurity still didn’t make it interesting—all of it was as dry as bone dust.

And yet, the test still somehow stressed her out.

That was saying a lot, she thought as she stared down at the empty bubbles on her answer sheet. She’d faced armed suspects, impossible situations, and crushing sadness during her time on the job. But those moments seemed to pale against what she was experiencing now.

The test shouldn’t have been stressful at all. She didn’t really care if she ever got promoted to sergeant. Didn’t even think she wanted it. She was only taking the test out of habit. Her mentor, Officer Thomas Chisolm, had long ago instilled in her a hard and fast rule of River City Police Department culture – always take the promotional exams, every cycle. The only exception was in cases like his own—if the person was one hundred percent settled on remaining in their current position for the remainder of their time on the job. Chisolm was a career patrol officer, much like Detective Browning was never leaving Investigations. For the majority, though, taking the exam when it was offered was a ritual few spurned.

Part of the reasoning was, the cycle only occurred every two years. Lots of things could change in two years, Chisolm maintained. It was good to have options. You can always say no to the promotion, he said. But if you don’t take the test, you don’t even get the choice to say no. And who knows? Maybe you’ll want to say yes.

And he’d been right, as Katie discovered. Burned out on graveyard patrol, she’d transitioned to day shift. But that proved to be a different flavor of the same dish, and the frustration she’d been feeling, the weary grind of it all, hadn’t diminished. Luckily, she had taken the detective’s exam when it cycled around, as per tradition. She took the promotion when it was offered, and was grateful for the change. That was six years ago.

Katie liked detective work. And she was good at it. So, why in the hell was she taking the sergeant’s exam?

Habit.

Or dress it up and call it tradition. Either way, she learned to always heed the advice Chisolm gave her, even if she had to re-frame it to fit her own life. That habit—or tradition—had led to her sitting here in a large conference room with a hundred or so other RCPD members, filling in bubbles on an answer sheet, and wondering why she was suddenly so stressed.

She tapped the eraser of her pencil on the desktop while she stared down at her answer sheet. From nearby, Officer Randy Cartwright shot her a look of irritation from beneath his bushy eyebrows. She stilled her pencil and turned back to the question booklet.

The question galled her. It was confusing and drilled down into such policy and procedure minutiae as to be the equivalent of trivia. She imagined, if she were a sergeant and somehow needed to know the answer to this question, she could simply crack open the policy manual and find it. It wasn’t the kind of knowledge she’d need to make a split-second decision with lives in the balance.

But it bothered her that she didn’t know it. She’d read all the books on the test bibliography, because she was a firm believer that if she was going to do something—in this case, take the sergeant’s exam—she was going to do it right. But now she was at a loss for the answer.

It was stressing her out.

Now that she was here, she wanted to do well. None of the cops in the room came to the test wanting to be at the bottom of the list when the results came out. And while she was vaguely aware there was a second stage of the process that included an interview board, writing exercises, and more, the initial written exam carried a lot of weight. Everyone wanted to do well, herself included.

She eliminated one answer she knew was wrong, then narrowed it down to the two most likely answers. Since there was no penalty for a wrong answer, other than not getting a point, she followed her gut and filled in the bubble for ‘B’.

The only sounds in the room were the scrape of pencils, some bodies shifting in their chairs, and the occasional cough. And the clock. She swore the big analog clock on the wall was loudly clicking off every second. She glanced at it, then over at the digital timer the test proctor had set on the table at the front of the room.

Nineteen minutes remaining.

She had seven more questions.

People had been rising and leaving the exam room for the last twenty minutes. At first in ones and twos, now a more frequent stream. But she’d always been a slow and methodical test-taker, so that didn’t bother her.

The nineteen remaining minutes for seven questions did.

Tick, tick.

Make that eighteen minutes now.

Katie turned back to the question booklet. The next two questions were criminal law and recent court rulings, something she stayed abreast of as a job necessity. Search and seizure laws and rules surrounding interrogation were always being affected by the courts. Since a flawed search warrant or an improper interview could destroy a case, she was on top of those changes the moment they happened.

Five more questions.

She got the one about supervisory responsibilities in an officer-involved shooting easily enough. Not only had she reviewed it while studying, but she’d been on the receiving end of that situation often enough to know how it went.

There was a question about on-the-job injury paperwork requirements that was worded in a tricky fashion, but she was pretty sure she interpreted it right, and filled in the small circle with her answer.

Then came another long one about an obscure court ruling related to civil forfeiture.

Katie almost groaned. Why was this on the test? Civil forfeiture was handled by lieutenants and captains. When would a sergeant ever deal with it? Worse yet, the question was convoluted in such a way that it took her nearly a minute to figure out what it was even asking. Each answer was a short paragraph as well.

She skipped it and went on to the final two. The first was straightforward, asking what class of felony residential burglary was. If she didn’t know that one by now, she should turn in her badge on the way out the door.

Katie filled in the bubble. Then she glanced up at the clock.

Less than two minutes remaining.

A light shot of adrenaline coursed through her now. She checked the final question, another procedural one regarding notification when a landlord evicts a tenant pursuant to the nuisance ordinance. Katie was pretty sure she knew the answer and marked it.

Then she returned to the forfeiture question. Her eyes danced across the printed words again, making sure she understood what was being asked. Then she considered the possible answers. The first was wrong, but the remaining three all seemed possible. She looked for some element in each that might make it false, trying to eliminate—

The buzzer sounded at the front of the room.

Hurriedly, Katie filled in the bubble for ‘C’.

Pencils down, said the proctor.

She put down her pencil and looked around. About half of the original test-takers were still present in the room. Katie rose from her chair and shuffled toward the front of the room along with the rest of them. She was suddenly very tired.

At the proctor’s table, she put her answer sheet on the stack and made her way outside. No one was waiting in the hallway, a change from the way it used to be. Until recently, a second proctor was set up just outside the doors of the testing room. As each person finished the test, they’d go into the hallway and hand their answer sheet to that second proctor. The proctor then ran the answer sheet through an automatic reader that marked the wrong answers.

Katie remembered sitting in the test room as the first few finished the test. Hearing the accusatory rat-a-tat as the test reader slapped red marks on the answer sheet. The crowd gathered at the end of the hallway, watching and listening as each person exited and had the test score loudly proclaimed for everyone to hear. Not the exact score, to be sure, but close enough. Every cop dreaded hearing machine gun fire as the sheet scrolled through the reader. Worse yet, only a tap or two, which drew glares of envy from the assembly down the hall.

Privacy rules eventually did away with that ritual, something she was grateful for. While the immediate feedback on her test score was appreciated, the rest of the experience was not. Now, she had to wait up to a week for her raw score and list ranking. But it was worth it to avoid the spectacle of the test hyenas.

Katie left the city conference room and headed to her car. The slight breeze cooled her and highlighted how much she’d been sweating during the exam. Her steps were lighter, and she was surprised at how much relief she felt now that the test was over.

She turned her mind back to her most pressing case and headed back to the station.

At her desk, Katie pulled two case files from her left-hand drawer and plopped them down on the desktop. The noise caused Detective Ray Browning to stir where he was seated at his own desk. The slender black man looked up at her from the report he was reading. Half-lens reading glasses were perched on his nose. She noticed how gray-white his goatee had become over the past few years. Even the dark, flat moles sprinkled across his cheeks seemed lighter now.

How’d the exam go? Browning asked her.

If Katie thought she could get away with a grunt, she’d have done so. But she knew Browning wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Like a good detective, he’d follow up. Fine, she said instead, aware that answer was just as likely to result in the same response.

That’s a non-answer, Browning said. How’d you do?

They don’t run them through the scoring machine right away anymore.

No? Browning arched a brow. When’d they stop doing that?

Katie shrugged. Last cycle, I think. Browning hadn’t taken a promotional exam in over two decades, so it didn’t surprise her that he wasn’t entirely up on the process.

How do you suppose you did, then?

Katie sat down in her chair and let out a long breath. Some I knew, some I guessed.

Sounds like sergeanting to me.

She grinned slightly at that. Browning’s decision to be a career detective came with the luxury of being disdainful of most of the brass. In that way, he was very much the same as Chisolm, who remained in patrol for his entire career. Both men had contempt for poor leaders. The difference was her old mentor preached the value of good leadership, even if it wasn’t a role he was willing to fulfill, at least in an official capacity. He believed in it enough to preach the tradition of always taking the exams.

And I obviously believe in it enough to take the stupid exam.

I guess you’ll be following in Tower’s footsteps soon enough, then, Browning said in feigned disgust, though Katie wasn’t entirely certain it was one hundred percent fake.

Her grin shifted into a smirk. She’d heard this routine before. It started when Detective John Tower, a long-time fixture in the Major Crimes Unit, started studying for the sergeant’s exam during the previous testing cycle. It didn’t end with Tower’s eventual promotion and his assignment to day shift patrol, either. The frequency of Browning’s lament may have lessened for a while but, when the new test cycle came around and he found out Katie signed up for the exam, it became an everyday thing again.

Why anyone would want to leave the best job in the world is beyond me, the veteran detective said.

Best and the worst, Katie corrected.

Browning didn’t argue the point. Instead, he said, Plenty of jobs in police work that only have the worst part. At least we get some of the best.

And our worst is the very worst.

Sounds like you’re ready for those stripes already.

Katie waved her hand. No, I love it here. I only took the test because… well, you know.

Because that’s what you do. Browning shook his head. A slave to culture.

It doesn’t matter anyway, she said. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up middle of the pack, outside the promotion range. So you’re stuck with me, Ray. I get to keep doing the best job in the world.

Browning pursed his lips. I’ll say one thing about you, MacLeod.

What’s that?

You’re smarter than Tower.

She scoffed. Low bar, she teased.

You smell better, too.

She tilted her head. "You been sniffing me, Ray?"

Naw. Just catching the jet wash when you walk by. Hard not to, all that foo-foo perfume you wear.

I barely— she began to protest.

Don’t argue with an old man’s nose, he interrupted. Then he gestured toward her case files on her desk. What do you have there?

Katie’s eyes flicked to the two folders. Screen cutter. Targets old people. Goes in through the window and steals money and scrips.

Burglary? How’d that end up in Major Crimes?

Lieutenant Crawford cherry-picked it from the GD after the second one. The GD—General Detectives—was another term for Property Crimes, the entry point for all new investigators.

Who’d he take it from?

Katie shrugged. Dow, I think.

Browning reached up and scratched his goatee. She’s smart. Why pull it from her?

He thinks it’s a serial.

Might be. But she could handle it.

Katie thought back to the brief, brusque conversation she had with the lieutenant when he handed her the two cases last week. Vulnerable victims, he said, she told Browning. And the off chance this is the same guy who did that rape back in March. The one Finch and Elias worked.

"He did cut the screen, too, murmured Browning, smoothing out his goatee. Then he dropped his hand. Doubt they’re connected, though."

I agree. But I think he’s right about these two new ones being the same guy.

Well, score one for the Crawfish.

Browning’s sarcasm was muted. Despite his mild disdain for anyone who didn’t do the noble work of solving murders, Katie knew he at least marginally appreciated some of what the unit commander did. Crawford often sheltered them from public and political pressure, choosing to absorb it himself. This included media interaction, something both she and Browning loathed. While she was grateful Lieutenant Crawford took on that role, she also believed he secretly enjoyed seeing his name in print and his face on television.

Dow get anywhere on it before Crawford took it from her?

Katie shook her head. No. When I talked to her, she said she’d barely had time to review the file and talk to the victim.

How about you?

Pretty much the same. There aren’t any prints at the point of entry or inside either victim’s house. None of them saw him or even knew he was in the house when it happened. He hits at night, so no witnesses from the neighbors, either.

You’re making the assumption it’s a male suspect, then?

Katie shrugged. Playing the odds until I know.

Browning tilted his head slightly with an expression of acceptance. All right. And he’s taking money and prescriptions?

Exclusively.

Targeting narcotics like Oxy?

She nodded. That, and anything else that has street value. So I don’t know if he’s an addict looking to score, or a niche burglar. Or some of both.

That’s rough, Browning observed.

Thanks for the encouragement.

He shrugged. Sorry. I’ve got my own messes.

Katie looked at him questioningly. River City was no longer a city that felt like a small town, and the murder rate reflected that. But there hadn’t been a homicide for several weeks, so she knew Browning must be talking about an older case.

Sharon Kopriva, he said, answering her unspoken question. From last year.

She frowned. That was a case she was glad had dropped on Browning’s desk and not her own. She had a complicated history with Stefan Kopriva, the victim’s son. A former cop who found plenty of trouble after he left the job in disgrace, Kopriva now worked as an informal investigator for Joel Harrity. Harrity was the number one defense lawyer in the city, and a thorn in the side of both the prosecutor and the police department.

But that wasn’t the biggest reason she was glad Browning was assigned the Sharon Kopriva case. Her relationship with Kopriva had ranged from friend to lover to… what? Something very cold and distant now. To make matters worse, he was currently dating another cop, fulfilling the adage that the police department was sometimes as much soap opera as it was law enforcement.

I thought you resolved that. She’d assisted him on the investigation but didn’t know every detail. That was the job of the primary detective on any case.

I’m ready to clear it, Browning said. Patrol shot the main suspect. I don’t have enough to charge the other one.

Then what’s the problem?

Lieutenant Hart.

Katie’s frown deepened. Lieutenant Alan Hart of Internal Affairs. If he wasn’t the most sanctimonious person on the planet, she didn’t know who was. He’d been that way since she came on the job. Back then, he was a day shift lieutenant who never failed to find fault with the reports coming in from graveyard shift the night before. Both she and Thomas Chisolm were frequent targets of this. More than once, Chisolm had slapped him down publicly, putting him in his place in a way that was always just shy of actionable as insubordination. She imagined some of Hart’s vitriol toward her came due to her close association with Chisolm.

Once Hart was transferred to Internal Affairs, things got even worse. The man seemed to be on a personal crusade to catch cops doing something wrong. She supposed that would be fine, if his definition of wrong was normal. But in Hart’s estimation, most of the normal and necessary activities police officers did on a daily basis was wrong. He seemed to search for the evil in every action.

What’s his issue? she asked Browning, hearing the contempt in her own voice.

He’s still investigating the patrol shooting.

Katie’s eyes narrowed. The prosecutor already cleared that.

I know.

It was as straightforward as it can get, Katie protested. The guy came around a corner and pointed a gun at those two cops. Not to mention, he fired shots inside the house and was chasing… she trailed off, not wanting to say Kopriva’s name.

I know, Browning repeated. Cartwright and Bowen were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. But Hart is convinced they violated policy somehow. He’s also trying to work in some kind of demeanor beef against Cartwright. Something he said to Kopriva afterward.

What’s that got to do with your murder?

Browning held up his hands. Lieutenant Crawford won’t let me close the case until I.A. clears the related investigation. But there’s nothing left for me to do, so I get to have this big ugly open file until then.

Is that all? She shrugged. When Browning mentioned the problem, she thought it would be something more substantial. Set it aside and move on, Ray. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is I have an open case file that should be closed. Browning leaned forward and looked at her intently. Details matter, MacLeod.

I know, but—

Lieutenant Crawford’s burly frame appeared nearby, passing their desks without slowing.

MacLeod, he growled. My office.

Katie and Browning watched him go past and disappear behind a cubicle wall. The odor of Aqua Velva and cigar smoke drifted past Katie’s nose.

Browning sniffed the air. See? he said to her. Jet wash.

Lieutenant Crawford kept his office bright. In addition to the overhead fluorescent lighting that existed throughout the Investigative Division, he had two standing lamps in both corners behind his desk and another one on the desktop itself. The brilliance made Katie think of the stereotypical interrogation room tactics. She wondered if the intention was the same.

Then again, Crawford was getting old. She saw it in his sagging skin and heard it in his voice. His thin hair remained inky black, slicked back and plastered to his scalp, though she was relatively sure that color came from a bottle. And while his eyes were sharp with intelligence, she wondered if all the light was because they were failing him when it came to vision.

He cut her contemplation short by thrusting a case file toward her. Work this, he said.

She accepted the file with some surprise. When he’d called her into his office, she assumed it was for an update on the screen cutter case. News of the two burglaries had yet to hit the newspaper but she figured the lieutenant wanted to be prepared when it did. A new case so quickly on the heels of the previous one wasn’t at all what she’d expected.

Katie glanced down at the tab on the file. It read MIS-PER, the code for a missing persons case. Her eyes narrowed, perplexed.

You’re probably wondering why we got the case, Crawford said.

I was, actually.

Unlike property crimes—which were investigated by General Detectives—or robberies, assaults, and homicides—which were assigned to Major Crimes—a missing persons case didn’t necessarily have an automatic landing pad. Breaking situations were handled by patrol. Longer term cases would usually end up in the GD. If there were special circumstances, however, such as a potential kidnapping or murder, MCU got the file.

This one has a little political heat, Crawford told her.

How so?

The missing woman is Carie Nichols. Carie with one ‘R’. She’s twenty-eight years old… He paused, then shrugged. Or would be, if she’s still alive.

We think she’s dead? Katie asked.

"We don’t think anything. Her mother, Dorothy Nichols, is convinced that is one possibility, though."

Is there any evidence of murder?

Lieutenant Crawford reached into a cigar box on his desk and removed a cigar. He contemplated it, looking almost as if he were considering firing it up right there in his office. Katie knew he wouldn’t, though. She had seen this play out many times. It was part of the lieutenant’s odd process.

Do you plan on reading the case file, MacLeod?

Of course.

Then don’t ask me questions about what’s in it.

Okay, she said slowly. "Then how about you tell me what isn’t in it."

He smirked and pointed the unlit cigar at her. It bobbed in his hand as he spoke, providing emphasis. Now, that is the smart question. You’re learning, Detective.

Katie took the compliment in stride, absorbing it just as she had the rebuke that preceded it. She said nothing, only waited for Crawford to proceed.

The lieutenant eyed the cigar wistfully. Without looking at her, he said, Mrs. Nichols decided to attend a community meeting last Wednesday night. During the Q and A near the end, she went hard at the Neighborhood Resource Officer, Virgil Gilliam.

Katie nodded along. The role of Neighborhood Resource Officer (NRO) wasn’t a position she experienced during her time on patrol. The NROs did important work, though, working directly with the community of a designated neighborhood to solve both criminal and nuisance problems.

Crawford shook his head. Apparently she made quite a scene, saying how her daughter has been missing for five years and RCPD hasn’t done anything about it.

Five years? Katie asked. She glanced down at the tab on the case folder again. The year designator on the report number began with 05.

She sat back slightly, confused. Since when was she on cold case duty?

Crawford didn’t react to her interjection or her puzzled expression. "Officer Gilliam told her he’d look into it. Apparently, he didn’t do so quickly enough to satisfy Mrs. Nichols, because the