Seldom did a quiet period with little to do arrive in the laps of Niles Gule and his partner Mariella Cruz. The pair worked the nightshift as detectives for the Baltimore Police Department. Lately, however, perhaps due to Covid lockdowns, cases had been scarce. So they’d been assigned to a series of cold cases. When a hot case–albeit a minor issue about drugs found in a car–dropped in their laps, the two pounced. At least with the drug case, they faced a chance of closing it, unlike the ten cold case files their boss had handed them to work on.
The case itself was remarkably simple. A woman, Jonesha Cartwright, had been found with fentanyl in her car. Like probably every other driver ever caught with drugs in their possession, she’d insisted she didn’t know how they’d gotten there. The uniformed officers on the scene arrested her, took her to the precinct, and booked her. The next day, her husband, a prominent businessman, bailed her out but the case was pending. Nothing about the arrest required the talents of a skilled detective like Niles, but since he was bored with the cold cases and he’d taken a liking to Jonesha Cartwright, he’d decided to do some digging.
“So this is interesting,” he said to Cruz.
They sat at their desks in the silence of the detective’s bullpen, alone as the only people who worked at night. The building was hushed with only the sound of the heating system clicking and the whoosh of air moving through ductwork to relieve the quiet. Occasionally, someone would pass by in the hallway, their feet slapping on the linoleum. Otherwise, the pair had the place to themselves.
Cruz chewed on the end of her pen while she scrolled through missing persons reports in search of information on one of their cold cases. “What is?”
“The Case of the Middle-Income Drug Mule,” he joshed. He tended to give their cases fancy names to make them easier to track.
Cruz dropped her pen with a clatter and languidly picked up her coffee mug for a sip. “Yeah? I thought that one was pretty cut and dried.”
“It would be,” Niles replied, “except things don’t add up. Cartwright has a ten-year history of working the after-school program for August Fells High School.” He gestured with his pencil at some papers on his desk. “No reprimands. Only glowing reports from parents and school authorities alike. The complaints from that mother Farrendale are the only ones Cartwright has received during her tenure.” He nudged papers around. “Her husband runs an auto parts franchise with seven locations in the county. The couple belongs to the country club, Rotary, and the Knights of Columbus. Both are as squeaky clean as you can get.”
Cruz shrugged. “Doesn’t mean Mrs. Cartwright doesn’t have a drug problem. Rich people do, you know.”
Niles could not disagree. “True. However, I can find not a single whisper of a rumor that either she or her husband do anything nefarious. In fact, Mrs. Cartwright is known for having started the after-school program not for the money but simply to help kids.” He flicked a photo with his pencil. “The couple’s fifteen-year-old son was killed in a drive-by eleven years ago. Mrs. Cartwright thinks that if the kids who’d shot him by mistake had been offered something better to do with their evenings, the shooting might not have happened. So she started the after-school program herself.”
“Also allows her to adopt a bunch of kids to fill the void,” Cruz offered in sympathy.
“It does.”
“Doesn’t mean she’s not into drugs, though,” Cruz added.
Niles gestured with his pencil. “Except for this.” He cued up a recording on his computer. “I obtained the phone call made to the school that triggered the police response.”
He hit play. Voices spoke from the pair of speakers on his desk. A 911 operator asked for the emergency. A male voice with something that sounded vaguely like an Indian accent answered that he was following a car towards the high school but that it was driving erratically. He then stated he saw the driver, a Black woman, toss something that looked like a bag of pills into the back seat. When the operator asked for his name, he stumbled a bit, then declared himself Ravi Vikransingh. The call ended.
“That had to be the worst rendition of an Indian accent I’ve ever heard,” Cruz exclaimed. “That was a white guy trying to pass as an Indian.”
Grinning, Niles rose from his desk. “I’m going on an excursion.”
Cruz twisted in her chair as he sailed past her. “Where to?”
“To the source of that phone call.”
—
Two hours later, Niles returned with a smile that told Cruz he’d eaten the cream. He dropped into his seat behind his computer screen and stuck a thumb drive into the computer.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he chortled.
With a push of her feet, Cruz sent her chair rolling around to his side of their combined desks.
When she was in position, Niles cued up the short bit of video.
“I traced the source of the call to a hotel over on Carey Street. Seemed like a strange place for such a phone call to have originated from considering the caller claimed he was following Cartwright’s car at the time he made the call.”
“He called from five blocks away,” Cruz murmured.
Niles smiled. “Indeed.” He hit play.
The video was standard security footage from the lobby of the hotel. Just before the time of the phone call, a white man entered the hotel and walked directly to the business center located off the lobby. He remained for only about five minutes before he exited the way he came.
“He went to a hotel to make that call then immediately left,” Cruz said.
“Yep. He probably figured the call couldn’t be traced, or if it was, no one could pin it to any particular person given it’s a public phone in a hotel business center.” Niles tapped the screen with a talon. “And would you care to guess who that man is?”
Cruz lifted her brows.
“Mr. Barnabus Farrendale. Married to Cartwright’s stalker parent.”
Cruz sat back in her chair with a hiss of breath. “Mrs. Farrendale, furious that all her cases against a woman she perceives as an enemy have failed, decides to plant evidence on her. She must have slipped the fentanyl into Cartwright’s car while it was parked, unlocked, in front of the Cartwright home. Then, knowing the drugs were there, Mr. Farrendale sicced the cops on poor Jonesha Cartwright, figuring that would cook her goose. Who’d believe some woman when she proclaimed those drugs weren’t hers? The police hear that ten times a day.”
“Exactly. But it gets better.” Niles couldn’t stop himself from grinning so widely, his fangs showed. “I pulled in a marker over at trace. Asked them to run a quick fingerprint match on the bag the pills were in. Unfortunately, the bag had been wiped clean. But,” Niles held up a finger, “not the pills inside. Trace pulled up a set of prints. They aren’t either Cartwrights’. They belong, in fact, to one Maureen Farrendale.”
Cruz gazed at her partner in amazement. “You, Niles, are a wonder!”
The vampire shrugged. “No, just hardheaded and determined. I couldn’t believe Jonesha Cartwright was stupid enough to bring drugs to school. Didn’t seem the type. Turns out, she didn’t.”
Cruz raised her hand to give Niles a high five. He slapped her hand and wrote up his report.
—
Two weeks later, a package arrived on Niles’ desk. Attached to it was a note written by Jonesha Cartwright thanking Niles for his work in freeing her from the charges. She was thrilled he had not only cleared her of the drug charge but had landed both Farrendales in jail. The couple had turned on each other and were accusing their opposite of planning the entire caper.
Cruz waited eagerly while Niles unwrapped the box. With a cry of horror, he dropped it onto his desk and backpedaled away from it. Cruz grabbed it, wondering what had disturbed her partner so badly only to find it was a box of mixed chocolates from Rhebb’s.
She burst out laughing.
“Poor thing! She didn’t know chocolate is like heroin to vampires.”
Niles rattled a talon at the box. “Keep that away from me.”
Jonas Williams had sauntered into the room at just that moment. Seeing the box, he shoved a giant paw inside and extracted a handful of truffles.
“Nope,” he grunted. “These you can’t eat. Or we’ll find you a second time buck naked running around New Jersey.” He laughed. “Once was enough.”
© 2022 Newmin
Niles comments: Another true story. Amazingly, the Farrendales are both attorneys. You’d think they’d know better.