Brad Parks - The Good Cop

The newspaper scoop, meanwhile, has a certain immortality to it. Mashed pulp and indelible ink are used to note it, and it is entered into the permanent record, such that if anyone in future generations feels like checking in on this day in history, it will be there waiting for them. You just don’t get that online.

Or maybe you do. I know they call them “PermaLinks.” But still. I just don’t see it. One of these days, our paper is going to make the inevitable switch to being online only, and I swear, that’s the day I quit and go work for the Amish Times.

I was somewhere in the midst of that reverie-thinking of how I’d handle a story about one of those gruesome three horse-and-buggy tie-ups-when my phone rang.

“Carter Ross.”

“Hey, it’s Rogers. I called out to the Fourth. Captain Boswell out there wants to talk with you.”

“The captain? Why is he dealing with it?”

“The better question is why is she dealing with it. It’s Captain Denise Boswell.”

“Really? How enlightened of you guys.”

“Yeah, she’s been out there about six months now. She’s the first female officer we’ve had in charge of a precinct. I sent you a press release, but of course you guys didn’t run squat about it, because that’s positive news, and you guys aren’t interested in positive news about the NPD.”

I let him take his shot, then said, “Okay, now just to make it clear: I am not going out there to conduct an interview. I am going out there to offer information. But if she feels like making a statement after I’m done, I’m not exactly going to stop her.”

“I already told her you’d probably try to weasel your way into an interview and that she shouldn’t let you. But she’s a captain. That’s above my pay grade. If she feels like running her mouth, I can’t stop her.”

It was exactly what I wanted to hear. “I can live with that. When does she want to talk?”

“Right about now, from what it sounds like.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

* * *

Twilight was coming fast, what with the cloud cover, and it was a lights-on drive out to the Fourth. I thought about stopping by Uncle Bernie on my way-because, you know, I really could use some new All-Clad cookware-but decided I didn’t have time for the bartering or the bantering. I let the Malibu roll to a stop across the street from the Fourth Precinct, in front of a group of relatively new town houses that had been erected in the footprint of what had once been a blighted public housing high-rise.

It hadn’t been raining for several hours, but the front steps to the Fourth still had that wet, gritty feel and sounded like sandpaper as I trudged up them. I went inside and announced myself. Then I sat on a small bench that was designed for maximum discomfort and read the wanted posters. Some bad men stared back at me.

I was soon greeted by an old friend of mine: Officer Hightower. All six foot eight of him.

“You again?” he said. “Thought you didn’t have no story.”

“Yeah, I’m here to talk to-”

“I know. Come on.”

I followed him up some stairs and through the precinct, which had the kind of cramped feeling that obsolete buildings often did. It was dimly lit, which accentuated the fact that everything in it was either yellowish beige or bluish gray, and there seemed to be stuff-just stuff-stacked everywhere. It was basically clean, on a superficial level, but there hadn’t been cleaning products invented that could cut through all the grime accumulated from too many people toiling for too many hours across too many decades.

The door to the captain’s office was open, and Hightower preceded me in. Captain Boswell was a stocky African American woman in her late thirties with a mop of curly black hair that appeared to be extensions. She was dressed in a blue uniform with a neatly knotted black tie and sat behind a large, cluttered desk. When she stood to greet me, she didn’t get much taller. Her butt protruded in a manner that suggested it could accommodate a small shelf.

“Mr. Ross, thank you so much for coming,” she said, smiling and extending a small hand, which soon gave me a firm handshake. I had expected the first female precinct captain in Newark Police Department history would be a real ballbuster-you’d have to be tough to make it in that environment, right? — but Captain Boswell had a warm, friendly, almost motherly manner about her.

“Thank you, Captain. Thanks for seeing me.”

“Please have a seat.”

I settled into a wooden chair in front of her desk. Hightower had assumed a position in the back corner of the room, almost like a bodyguard. I didn’t realize I looked threatening enough to require such protection. The captain made no move to introduce him, or even acknowledge him, and seemed to pay about as much attention to him as she did to the furniture. She leaned back in her seat, quite comfortable in her little domain, and folded her hands across her round stomach.

“I just read your story about the photos,” she said. “It was very interesting. You reporters do have your ways of getting things, don’t you?”

“I guess we do, yes.”

She waved it away, like it was of little consequence to her, and started looking around the room with a crinkle in her brow. “I have to apologize for the state of my office. I generally try to keep it a lot tidier than this. Things have just been a little crazy the last few days, as you might imagine. Detective Kipps is … was … a popular officer. This has been very hard on everyone here.”

“Yes, I can imagine.”

“I know this runs counter to what you might think, because police work these days has become so data-driven and numbers-oriented, but we also do old-fashioned community policing here. It gives you the best of both worlds. And to me, part of that is creating an atmosphere in the precinct that’s like a family. I encourage my officers to support each other like brothers and sisters. So this has been like losing a family member for a lot of us.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I was aware Hightower was nodding in agreement, in the back corner of the room.

“Well, enough about our troubles. I understand you have some information for us.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And like Sergeant Rogers told you, I’m coming to you not as a newspaper reporter but as a citizen.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“It concerns Detective Fusco and Mrs. Kipps,” I said.

“Detective Fusco? Mike Fusco?” she said, like it surprised her.

“Yes, as I’m sure you know, Detective Fusco was close with Detective Kipps and … his family. And … he was also close with Detective Kipps’s wife, Mimi…”

I let my voice trail off for a second. I’m not sure why this was difficult for me to say. Maybe it was because Captain Boswell was so motherly. I felt like I was telling her one of her children was a naughty, naughty boy. At the same time, a mother needs to know certain things, so I continued:

“Yesterday, I was going to interview Mrs. Kipps when I saw her and Detective Fusco through a window. Mrs. Kipps was wearing only a towel, which I thought … a little odd. And then Detective Fusco began rubbing her shoulders, which I thought even odder. Then they started kissing, quite passionately. I didn’t see any more than that, but it looked to me like they were having an affair.”

“I see,” she said. She was listening intently, but her face gave no indication as to her thoughts on what I had just shared.

“Anyhow, that-along with the photos and everything else I’ve been able to learn about Detective Kipps-made me wonder if there was more than a simple suicide here.”

The captain was still silent, so I completed the thought: “It made me think this was some kind of love triangle gone wrong, and that Detective Kipps may have been killed because of it.”