Linda Castillo - Sworn to Silence

“That had to have been a tough transition.”

She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Talk about a fish out of water. All I had to my name was two hundred dollars. I wore the dresses my mother made. I cut the hem, but . . .” She shook her head. “You can imagine. Anyway, I was broke. No job. No place to live. Didn’t know a soul. I was basically living on the street when I met Gina.”

“How did you meet her?”

“It wasn’t love at first sight.” Her eyes flicked down, then went back to his. “It was cold. I needed a place to sleep. She didn’t lock her car.”

“You slept in her car?”

“She got in to go to work the next morning and there I was.” Her lips curved into a wry smile. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“So did she call the cops, or what?”

“Threatened to. But I must have looked pretty harmless because she took me into her apartment. Fed me. The next thing I know, I have a place to live.” Another smile, amused this time. “Gina did all the bad things I’d been warned about. Smoking. Drinking. Cussing. She seemed very worldly to me. I don’t know how or why, but we hit it off.”

“How did you get into law enforcement?”

“Gina was a dispatcher with the Columbus PD. I finally landed a job waiting tables at a pancake house. At night, she’d come home and tell me about her day. I thought she had the most exciting job in the world. I wanted a job like hers. So I went back to school, earned my GED. A month later, she got me a job as a dispatcher at a substation near downtown. That fall, we enrolled in a criminal justice program at the community college. A year later, we were in the academy.”

He stared at her, realizing he was getting caught up in this. Getting caught up in her. Not a good frame of mind for a man who would be leaving in a few hours.

“What about you, Tomasetti?”

“I came out of the womb corrupted.”

Laughing, she reached for the pack of cigarettes. John wasn’t sure why it pleased him when she lit up. Maybe because it made her more human, a little less perfect and a tad closer to his own tarnished soul.

“So what did you do before you were a cop?” she asked.

“I was always a cop.” He rolled his shoulders to ease some of the tension creeping up the back of his neck. “I think this is where you’re supposed to ask me about what happened in Cleveland.”

“I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would.”

She didn’t look away. That impressed him. Probably more than he would ever be able to tell her. “How much do you know?” he asked.

“The media version. I know they usually don’t get it right.”

“It’s an ugly story, Kate.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

For the first time in his life, he did. Kate had given him something he hadn’t had for a long time: hope. Made him realize he might not need the alcohol and pills to get through the day. The time had come to lance the boil, let the demons out, start the healing process. “Do you know who Con Vespian is?”

“Every cop in the state knows about Vespian. Cleveland’s version of John Gotti.”

“With a little Charles Manson mixed in.”

“Narcotics. Prostitution. Gambling.”

“He had his fingers in a lot of pies, but he dealt mostly in heroin. Big time stuff, including murder when it was convenient. Worse when he wanted to make a point. Vespian and I go way back to when I was a street cop. I busted him twice. He got off both times. Every narc in the city had a hard-on for him. But he was one lucky son of a bitch. Dangerous, too, because he was half fucking crazy.”

“Bad combination.”

“He got off on beating the system. I wanted to be the one to bring him down. Somewhere along the line, it got personal.”

Her expression sobered, and John could tell she knew the story was about to take a dark twist. “My partner was an old-timer by the name of Vic Niswander. Great guy. Good cop. Funny as hell in a politically incorrect way. Just became a grandpa. Four months away from retirement. We used to kid around about it, but he wanted to get Vespian before he left.”

Remembering, John smiled. But as his mind took him through the nightmare that followed, the smile made him feel as if he’d just bitten into a rotten piece of meat. “Vic and I had a snitch inside Vespian’s operation. I don’t remember where we found this guy. Just some dipshit junkie by the name of Manny Newkirk. Couldn’t think his way out of a bag. He’d spill his guts for twenty bucks. One night I set up a routine meeting with him, but I got sidelined. Kid stuff—frickin’ basketball or something—and I couldn’t make it. Niswander went in my place.” He blew out a breath to ease the pressure in his chest. “Someone ambushed them. Sons of bitches doused both of them with gasoline and burned them alive.”

John didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. Not with those ugly images running through his mind. “Everyone knew Vespian was responsible, but we couldn’t prove it.”

“But why burn a cop like that?” she asked.

“Vespian wanted information. And he got it.”

“What information?”

“My home address.”

Her recoil was minute, but John saw it. She knew what came next. “He went after your family.”

He nodded. “They broke into my house when I wasn’t there. Vespian and a couple of thugs. They raped my wife, raped my little girls, then murdered all of them. Burned them alive the same way they had Vic.”

Reaching across the table, she laid her hand over his. “I can’t imagine how horrific that must have been.”

“Some of the details never made the papers. The bodies were so burned, there was little evidence left. I didn’t find out about the rapes until I got my hands on Vespian.”

He couldn’t talk about what he’d seen when he broke through the line the fire department had set up. He wasn’t a strong enough man to voluntarily recall those horrific images. “The brass put me on sick leave. Somehow I got checked into a hospital. Fuckin’ psycho ward.” He tried to smile, but didn’t manage. “To tell you the truth, I barely remember.”

“I don’t understand why the cops didn’t go after Vespian.”

“Oh, they did. You know how cops are. They pulled together. Went after him. But the son of a bitch was untouchable .”

“I can’t imagine what that did to you,” she whispered.

“Well, while all that is going down, I’m in the hospital drooling all over myself. One morning I’m in this One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest group therapy shit, and some crazy guy tells me all I need to get myself cured is a mission. I got to thinking about that, and realized he wasn’t as crazy as everyone thought.” He looked at Kate. “So I found a mission.”

“You went after Vespian.”

“A cop can make a pretty good criminal when he puts his mind to it.” John stared hard at her. “Do you want to hear the rest?”

She nodded. “If you want to tell me.”

“I started following Vespian, got to know his routine. Where he went. Who he spent time with. Every other facet of my life went by the wayside. I didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep. But I was never hungry or tired. That crazy guy was right. I fixated on Vespian and it cured me.

“He played poker every Wednesday night. Like clockwork he drove to this mansion in Avon Lake. He usually left around three or four A.M. One morning when he walked out to his Lexus, I was waiting.”

Kate stared at him, her expression braced. She knew what he was going to tell her next. It was like watching a train mow down a stalled car.

“I hit him with the taser. When he went down, I cuffed him, threw him in the trunk and took him to a warehouse I’d rented. Bad neighborhood on the waterfront. I tied him to a chair, and by God I got a confession. Got all the gory fuckin’ details on tape. Torture. Rape. Not just my wife, but my kids. Little girls.”