Good Cop Bad Cop (A James Harris Series Book 1) Read online

  Good Cop

  Bad Cop

  Richard Nesbitt

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  www.jamesharrisnovels.com

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  Richard Nesbitt Author

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  [email protected]

  Dedicated to Bill Shannon

  A great friend, a great mentor and a great man. Words cannot adequately express my thanks for all you did for me and all you taught me. I love you, cousin.

  Also dedicated to my parents who have always been there for me in every way possible. I love you guys.

  Good Cop Bad Cop

  1

  Emily Blumquist headed north on Blair Road. She admired the seasonal scenery as she drove beneath the blanketing canopy of trees which were bursting with burnt auburn, vibrant yellows and rich brown leaves. The large branches hung across the roadway like giant sentinels standing guard over the street. They were illuminated by the approaching dusk as the low sun gave off a shimmering orange hue.

  Having grown up in the affluent Oyster Bay section of Long Island, Emily was a strikingly beautiful girl with long brown hair and chestnut colored eyes. She had a natural glow which attracted people to her and she possessed a nurturing character which had led her to medical school. Her body was not gym hard but she kept in shape and was careful about what she ate. And of course, her wardrobe was what one would expect from a girl raised in opulent Oyster Bay.

  Fall was Emily’s favorite season and she’d looked forward to returning home all semester. Unlike the rebirth of spring, autumn brought with it the promise of a cleansing winter. The changing of the leaves, the crisp, cold air and the upcoming holidays added giddiness to everyday life. Thanksgiving, still a week away, had always been her favorite holiday, followed closely by Christmas. It was a time of family, a time when memories were created.

  Gripping the steering wheel loosely, she listened to the radio and hummed along with a popular tune. The song was interrupted as the phone rang through her car speakers. Emily thumbed a button on the steering wheel.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Emeeeeeee!!” A female voice squealed with excitement.

  A broad smile covered Emily’s face as she instantly recognized her friend Heather’s voice.

  “Heatheeeeeee!” she mimicked.

  “Where are you, girl!?”

  “I’m on my way. Should be there in five minutes.”

  “Well floor it, bitch! I want you here in two!”

  “Ha,” Emily laughed. “Guess whose house I’m about to pass?”

  “Whose?” Heather asked.

  “Trent’s.”

  “Oh my God,” Heather sighed. “How the hell did you ever let him get away?”

  “Oh I don’t know,” Emily replied sarcastically. “Something about New Hampshire and Florida being too far apart to drive on weekends.”

  “Well that’s your fault, you should have gone to Dartmouth with him.”

  “Hey, I wanted to go to FSU. I’m glad I went to FSU. It’s bad enough my parents still ride me about that, don’t you start.”

  “Oh, I’m just playing,” Heather laughed. “I know you wanted to put some distance between yourself and the Blumquist Empire. It’s just that damn, that boy was hot!”

  “Yeah, well anyway he’s in Yale Law School now.”

  “And you’re at Duke about to become a doctor. So, you showed him.” Heather laughed.

  “I guess.”

  “Just get over here! We already ordered appetizers.”

  “We? You mean Marie beat me there?! Miss perpetually late?!”

  “Yup, she was actually here first. Must have really wanted to show off the new ring.”

  “Oooh, put her on!”

  “I can’t, I’m standing outside. The reception stinks in this place.”

  “Well I hope you ordered some bruschetta?”

  “You know I did. Love ya, see ya in a few.”

  “Smooch. See ya. Love you too.”

  Thumbing another button, the phone was disconnected.

  Emily slowed to a rolling stop and, seeing the road was clear, made a right onto Cove Rd. She was heading towards The Landings, a restaurant bar on the cove’s waters, to meet up with her two best friends. You may lose old boyfriends, but the sisterhood was forever. The three had been inseparable since the age of five when they were all enrolled in Trinity School located in the upper west side of Manhattan.

  Widely regarded as one of the best prep schools in America, Trinity was founded in 1709 and boasted one teacher per every six students. And these were not your everyday, run of the mill, teachers. More than eighty percent of the faculty held advanced degrees. It was where the filthy rich and well connected sent their little darlings to be educated and groomed.

  Both of Emily’s parents fell into those categories. Her father, Sheldon Blumquist, was a real estate tycoon who owned several high end properties in Manhattan and elsewhere. He was a mover and a shaker and ran in the same circles as Donald Trump and other moguls. Her mother Sylvia was an up and coming attorney with a large and impressive New York firm. At least she was when Emily started in Trinity. Now, her mother held the lofty and powerful position as District Attorney of New York City, the first woman to do so. She had attained the position by being a shrewd and ruthless litigator for years as well as having had a lot of grease laid on the tracks of her career by her husband.

  Emily and her father had never been as close as she had wanted them to be. As she grew up she’d rarely seen him as he worked late hours and was constantly on business trips ferreting out a way to buy the rest of the world, Emily liked to joke. Her mother Sylvia was another story. Although she too worked ridiculous hours, she’d always made time for young Emily and the two enjoyed more than just a mother daughter relationship, they were true friends.

  Emily felt a rush of excitement as she neared the left turn onto Landing Rd. She hadn’t seen her friends since July and, to add to the mix, Marie had recently gotten engaged. Tonight was going to be a very special night. She eased her convertible Mercedes SLC into the left hand turn lane behind an old, white cargo van. The light was red. The Mercedes had been a gift when she’d graduated summa cum laude from FSU. The white, high end roadster and she had logged many miles, and turned many heads, together in the past two years.

  Emily noticed that the left turn arrow was green. She waited a few seconds out of courtesy and when the van still didn’t move she gave a slight nudge on the horn to wake the driver up. C’mon, she spoke to herself.

  Without warning, the driver’s door flew open and a woman jumped out. Visibly shaken, she ran towards Emily’s car. A short woman with dark, cropped hair, she wore jeans and a blouse that looked like it was purchased off the rack at Target. She looked Hispanic, maybe Spanish or South American. Emily’s first reaction was fear as she thought the woman was reacting in anger to having been honked at. Then she noticed that the woman was panicked, her eyes wide with terror, not anger.

  “My baby!” She screamed loud enough to be heard through the closed windows. “My baby is choking!”

  The woman ran around the back of her van and in front of Emily’s car. She was racing towards the passenger side of her vehicle.

  Emily froze momentarily and then reacted. She threw her car in park and, pushing her own door open, leapt out of the Mercedes. She followed, running quickly in front of her car and around to where the woman stood leaning into the vans passenger door.

  “Ma’am!” Emily yelled. “I’m a medical student! Let me help!” She was now behind the
woman who was still leaning into the van and fumbling with a child’s safety seat.

  Emily reached in to offer assistance when she heard the sliding side door of the van open abruptly to her left. Startled, she whipped her head around and saw two large men crouched low. They stared at her through ski masks pulled over their faces. In the surreal confusion of the moment, Emily wondered why they had their ski masks pulled down, it was not a particularly cold day. The Hispanic woman then spun around to face her, gone was the fear in her eyes, replaced with deadly intent. In her hand she held a black object and it was alive with a blue, crackling line that danced between two metal prongs. And then the thing was thrust forward into her chest. Emily gasped in shock and the last thing she felt before losing consciousness was two sets of strong arms grabbing her as she fell backwards.

  She didn’t feel herself being dragged backwards into the van nor did she hear the van door slamming shut. As the van sped off into the night, Emily’s ankles and wrists were shackled and duct tape was slapped over her mouth…but she didn’t feel it.

  Good Cop Bad Cop

  2

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Harris muttered under his breath as he stormed down the hallway. He went into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him with a loud crash.

  Heading straight for his dresser he pulled open the top drawer and grabbed his shield and gun. The back of the gold and silver badge had a metal belt clip and he slid it into place on the left side of his pants, through his black belt. Out of habit, Harris popped the clip from his 9mm and checked the magazine. It was full and seeing this, he shoved it back in place and quickly chambered a round. He put his thumb on the hammer and eased it back into the gun. After checking that the safety was on, he slid the piece into his shoulder holster which he also wore on his left. Harris then walked into his closet and grabbed a brown jacket.

  “And just what the hell was that?!” Bonnie screamed at him. She had come into the bedroom and now stood in the doorway of their walk-in closet. Her face was flushed and her eyes were ablaze with Irish anger.

  “Sorry,” Harris spoke in a low tone. Holding the jacket in a tight fist he walked out of the closet, brushing past his wife. He strode out of the bedroom, back into the hallway and made for the kitchen.

  “You’re always sorry,” Bonnie hissed, following him closely. “You’re never here and you’re always fucking sorry!”

  Harris stopped in the middle of the kitchen and turned to face her. At six foot one Harris was a good sized man with a body that showed off a lifetime of training and discipline. He had a square jaw and cold, blue eyes which gave off a steely presence. Harris was used to people avoiding confrontations with him but most people were not his five foot two inch Irish Catholic wife. She stopped in front of him, crossing her arms.

  “Are we really going to do this again?” Harris asked. “Seriously?”

  “Bullshit! Don’t you even try to say this is me! You promised! I even arranged for Danny to have a sleepover so we could finally have an evening out! And once again you ruin all of my plans! I am so goddamn sick of this!”

  “So I guess this is the part where I explain to you, yet again, that I have no choice in the matter, right?” He fired back. “Talk about being sick of something.”

  “It’s all the time, Jimmy! It’s all the time and that’s why I made you promise! We haven’t seen our friends in so long I barely remember their names! I specifically told you how important this night was to me!”

  “I do not have a choice, goddamn it!! Am I supposed to tell the Captain that dinner at the Olive Garden is more important than the crime scene I was just called out to?!”

  “Yeah, well you could grow a pair of balls and just tell that asshole to call somebody else!”

  “There is nobody else. You know that.”

  “Oh, bullshit!”

  “Yeah…bullshit! You think I’d rather work a murder scene than relax and have a nice dinner with friends? Jesus Christ, Bonnie, try to put yourself in my place!”

  “You want the truth? Yes…I think you’d rather work a murder scene.”

  Harris stared at her and said nothing. After a few moments, he slowly nodded.

  “Then maybe you should ride along with me and see one for yourself.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Yeah,” he spoke calmly. “I guess so.” He turned and grabbed his keys from the kitchen table. Walking to the front door he waited for his wife to get in another jab but it didn’t come.

  Opening the door, Harris stepped out into the chilly night air. He walked down the steps of his brownstone and to his car which was parked in the driveway. Traffic should be light, he thought, purposely trying to dismiss from his mind the scene he had just left. The drive from his Bronx home to Morris Heights in uptown Manhattan shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. He turned the ignition key and his 2012 black Camaro roared to life. Swinging out of the driveway, Harris headed north towards Interstate 95 where he would take the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over to the upper side. He passed a group of teenagers with hoodies and sagging jeans standing on the corner. They looked at him with quiet hostility. They knew a cop when they saw one, unmarked car or not. It was the same look he’d received from Iraqi civilians when he’d been an Army Ranger during Desert Storm.

  The war was more than ten years behind him but still it remained, always in the shadows of his psyche. He’d tried for years to either turn it off or to ignore it. The first year back he’d attempted to drown it with Jack Daniels but that only led to deeper feelings of resentment and anger. He refused to go to the V.A. and deal with it through a shrink or some kind of, hug it out, group therapy. Men who whined disgusted him. He had no problem with a man having weakness, there was nobody immune to shortcomings and frailties, but that didn’t mean they had to weep openly and run to others for help.

  Harris had been raised by a very strict disciplinarian who did not spare the rod. His father had been harsh, but fair. Modern day kids griped about the smallest things, blaming their parents for every failure, but he was glad that his dad had been so strict. He’d learned old fashioned and outdated values like service and respect. And his father had instilled in him a severe hatred of bullies.

  When he had been just fourteen years old, an incident occurred in the neighborhood that forever altered his destiny. Two fifteen year olds had beaten a younger boy and taken his bicycle. Over dinner that evening, his father had asked him whether he knew the thugs who did it. He told his father that not only did he know them, he had witnessed the attack.

  “You what?” His father had asked, with a cold and menacing tone.

  “I-I said I saw it happen.” Young James Harris had answered nervously. He knew his father’s mood had changed.

  “And what did you do to stop it?” His father asked, never raising his voice.

  “Dad, what could I do? There were two of them and they’re older and bigger.”

  Hi father flew from his seat, grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him up to his bedroom. He removed his belt and whipped the boy until his backside was red.

  “How dare you sit at my table and call yourself a Harris?!” His father roared as he whipped him.

  “Dad! Please stop!” He cried. “I would have gotten beat up!”

  “You let a weaker child get preyed upon by scum because you were too gutless to make a stand?!”

  “It happened so fast! I-I was scared!”

  His father shoved him to the floor and stood over him.

  “You listen to me, boy! I’ve watched men run into machine gun fire to get a buddy that they knew was already dead! That is just something that a man does!”

  His father paused, breathing hard from the exertion.

  “You acted like a coward,” He said, finally lowering his voice. “You let an innocent child get hurt because you were afraid of getting your nose bloodied.”

  “I’m sorry dad…I’m sorry.”

  “Listen and listen good. Tomorrow you will find tho
se two boys and you will lay into them with the wrath of God himself. You will redeem your young manhood and you will right this injustice. Do you hear me, boy?”

  “Yes…”

  “You will do it and I will watch you do it…or else.”

  “I will.”

  The next day with his father in his Oldsmobile trailing behind him, Harris found the two boys. They were standing in the doorway of a candy store, smoking cigarettes and trying to look tough. They saw him coming and walked out to meet him.

  “Hey Harris,” one of the boys spat. “You better not have said shit to anybody about yesterday.”

  “Yeah,” the other boy chimed in, a menacing scowl on his face. “Otherwise you’ll get the same.”

  Young James Harris looked slowly behind him and saw his dad watching from the car. He had pulled over to the curb. He saw the look on his father’s face and suddenly he understood. It simply clicked and he understood why his dad had been so furious. He turned back to face the two boys. With his arms still at his side he clenched his fists.

  “You aren’t going to do shit to anybody you gutless bastards,” he said coldly, unintentionally mimicking his father’s deadly tone from the previous evening. His fear was gone.

  Both boys were taken aback. They appeared startled at first and then they turned to look at one another and grin. When they looked back it had already begun.

  Harris stepped in and drove a right hook into the face of the largest boy. The kid dropped to the pavement. As he turned to confront the other boy, a blinding flash of white brilliance erupted in his skull and he staggered back from the punch that had caught him above his left eye. The boy who hit him rushed in and took him to the ground. The larger boy’s weight was in his favor but Harris quickly remedied that by clamping his teeth down on the kid’s right hand and biting as hard as he could. He tasted blood as the older boy screamed in pain. As he wrestled his injured hand away, Harris seized the opportunity and leaning in, drove his forehead into the bridge of the boy’s nose. A gusher of blood poured instantly from the broken nose, soaking Harris’ neck and shirt.