Summer Knights

Part 1:

Homecoming

Chapter 1: The Summer Knights

When Diane Montes made detective, she was proud, even if she was still stuck in the Massachusetts suburbs. She knew she had made it to the big time, or that she was within earshot anyway. She was thirty, almost to the day, and the Boston gig was becoming less of a long-term goal than an immediate certainty. One, maybe two years tops of handling small time crime in Bristol County and then they would move her over to Suffolk for the big job. That was the dream, anyway; make a difference and make a name doing it. While so far, the job hadn’t exactly lived up to the hype, it still had its perks; not least of which was showing up to a crime scene, flashing your badge and having everyone get the fuck out of your way.

That was exactly what she did when she arrived at the scene of a fatal shooting which took place in the back lot of a popular local pizza place.

However, like any job there were still drawbacks. Being the new kid on the block, as was the case anytime there was a promotion, especially for a young woman in law enforcement, she was going to need to grind to earn the respect of her peers. Bitching about the way the male officers ogled her ass in her pantsuit or whispered about her behind her back wasn’t going to win her any favors. So, she kept to herself and decided she would do what she had always done; outwork everyone. This included her temporary partner and gun-toting babysitter, Detective Richard Falco.

Diane had laughed the first time she had heard the name, it sounded like something an eleven-year-old boy might name themselves during a round of laser-tag at the arcade. But Richard Falco was his real name and while he had the sense of humor of an eleven-year-old and the same emotional complexity as far as Diane could tell, he was her superior by way of seniority.

Richard had managed to amass a shockingly lackluster career for someone who was so highly touted. When she was assigned to Bristol County, Diane had heard numerous stories about the talented and dashing Detective Falco. But no matter how many times she asked, no one could give her a straight answer on how someone as supposedly talented as Richard Falco could be nearly forty and still working in Bristol County. In the end, she learned through observation. Rarely did people supply you satisfactory answers upon request and when they did, they were often lying. Diane had learned a long time ago to trust her eyes and her instincts over the words of others. It was a practice that hadn’t earned her many friends, but which had proven useful in forwarding her career.

Falco clearly did not share her sentiment, nor her youthful ambition. It took no more than a single day working with the chain-smoking, gutter mouthed detective for Diane to see the problem. He had never made it to Boston, or anywhere else for that matter, because he never wanted to. Though he was reticent by nature, Diane saw through her superior’s guise of inappropriate jokes and playful cynicism.

He was a modest man who liked his job, his home and didn’t want to move; not even for opportunity.

Whenever a homicide case came up, as few and predictable as they tended to be, there was always a faint smile on Falco’s face. What may have been morbid to most, was invigorating for the small-town detective. It seemed to Diane that Falco found a bizarre charm in extraordinary horror befalling an otherwise ordinary town. The night of May 3rd, or more accurately the early morning of May the 4th, was no different.

Flashing blue lights atop the many cruisers and undercovers greeted Diane Montes and Richard Falco as they pulled into the local and moderately successful pizza joint at 248 Mansfield Avenue.

A group of local police were semi-circled around the back corner of the building by the dumpsters. As they approached, they saw the body, laying haphazardly against the brick wall, at least three gunshot wounds in the abdomen. Montes watched as Falco took the lead.

“You found him like this?”

“Yessir.” The officer replied.

“When did you get the call?”

“Roughly 2 a.m.”

Another local officer flipped open a pad and read from it.

“The call was received at 2:08 a.m.”

“Okay.” Falco said pinching his chin and examining the body with a tilt of the head. “The call was in response to gunshots?”

“That’s right.” Replied the first officer who was trying his best to not stare at the striking female detective standing just behind Falco.

“So, 2 a.m. would be the time of the murder and likely the time of death.” Montes said.

“Precisely.” Falco said. “Always nice when we can take the guess work out of it.”

He knelt close to the body and gently brushed the black windbreaker aside, discovering an entry wound on the left oblique.

“Interesting.” He said to himself.

Montes leaned over his shoulder for a closer look, the other officers took the opportunity to get a better look at the woman in uniform while she was distracted before they stepped forward and pretended to comprehend what was so interesting about a fourth entry wound.

“Tell me what we’re looking at Montes.” Falco said with a smug grin. He had a tendency to quiz her on her investigative acumen, as well as music on the radio, movie lines and any other trivial information. Falco found pretty much anyway he could to turn cleverness into a friendly competition.

Montes did not hesitate.

“This was the first shot.” She said; earning a satisfactory nod from Falco. “The muzzle burn on the shirt tells us the gun was pressed into the victim’s side when fired. Coupled with the three other shots all packed into the chest, this shot was the first, the next three were to make sure he didn’t get back up.”

“Very good.” Falco said as he stood up.

The other officers nodded as if it were all very obvious and retuned to the difficult business of keeping their tired eyes off Diane Montes.

“If we ask the witness who called what exactly they heard, very likely they’ll say that it was one shot, a delay, followed by multiple shots. If so, we’ll know we’re right.”

Montes nodded, “So, our shooter gets in close. Bang. Victim falls, perp steps back. Bang. Bang. Bang.” Diane acted out the shooting as she spoke, pointing her finger at all the places on herself which mirrored the entry wounds. “And the shooter does this behind a popular pizza joint, across from a Cumberland Farms where we got the call, and a trailer park full of potential witnesses. Why? Who the fuck would be dumb enough to execute someone fifty feet from a main road?”

Falco smiled. “Good question.”

Tilting his head, he examined the corpse again. The corpse had been identified via his wallet as Shayne Douglas. He was a twenty-three-year-old attending Bristol Community College, a well-liked townie with no prior criminal history. Falco’s grin deepened as his eyes fell on the right hand of the victim. It was cracked and bleeding slightly, the knuckles were purple and bruised. Following his eyes, Montes saw it a second later.

“There was a struggle.” Montes said.

“Damn right.” Falco said, kneeling back down to get a closer look at the deceased’s right hand. “By the look of his hand, it was a one-sided struggle until our shooter pulled the gun.”

“Jesus.” Montes said as she crouched to examine the bruises and breaks. “Whoever our shooter is, he must have one hell of a shiner. Our victim really let him have it.”

Nodding, Falco looked at the corpse of Shayne Douglas with admiration. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

He stepped away and lit up a cigarette, taking a drag as he stood in place, pensively putting the pieces together.

Diane stayed crouched as she put it all into words.

“They get into a fight… over what? We don’t know. Our missing shooter is losing, bad. He pulls the gun, shoves it into his side and pulls the trigger then realizes he’s already gone too far. Figures, better to leave behind a body than a witness.”

Falco said nothing, just stood thinking it over.

“We know the what, the how and the when…” Diane continued, “Now we just need the who and the why. Any thoughts?”

Falco frowned. “A couple. Just theories though, nothing concrete.”

Montes put her hands on her hips.

“By all means, enlighten us.”

He looked at the streetlights which lit the dirt lot behind the pizza joint, examining the way the light carried over to the dumpster and beyond. Mixed with the light from the 24-hour Cumberland Farms gas station across the street, even without the accompanying police cars and flashlights, the lot would have been relatively well-lit all the way until morning. No one would be around, but those who were so inclined would have no problem meeting up here in the late hours of the night.

“It’s a drug deal gone wrong, but its more than that…” He began.

“You sure it’s a drug deal?” Asked the cop who escorted them to the body. “We haven’t found any narcotics on the body, or in the lot. Just used cigarettes and garbage.”

Montes almost stepped in, having figured it was a drug deal from the start, but Falco continued.

“It’s 2 a.m. on a Thursday night behind a pizza joint that closed four hours earlier, yes I’m sure it was a drug deal.” Falco’s tone oozed sarcasm and Montes couldn’t hold back a smirk. “That much is a given. The question is what the hell went so wrong that our victim would attack the dealer and ultimately get himself killed?”

“Shitty product?” Posited one cop.

            “Junkie, didn’t have the money.” Another one interjected.

Montes rolled her eyes and answered with authority.

“Maybe they knew each other. Maybe our victim never came here to buy anything.”

The two other cops looked at each other confusedly, but Falco turned toward Montes with his finger pointing at her. He was impressed.

“Let’s run with that. Elaborate.”

Montes looked down and to the left. Not looking at anything in particular, just trying to place herself in the shoes of the victim and, if need be, the shooter.

“Well, he might have known that the shooter was a dealer and that he dealt here most nights. Or, he could have set the meeting up, acted like he was interested in buying. Either way he was coming here, not to make a deal, but to confront our missing shooter. For things to get this out of hand, to get this violent…” Montes shifted her eyes to the blood seeping through his white shirt and the bruises on his knuckles. “It must have been personal.”

Falco was biting his lip as if something was right on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite find it.

“Fuck…” He muttered, then he snapped his fingers at the officer furthest from him with his arm leaning against the dumpster. “Did the victim, Shayne Douglas, did he have any siblings? A sister maybe?”

The officer looked over his notes and then nodded in surprise.

“Yes. One, Shannon Douglas, twenty-one years old, deceased. She died… going on two months now.”

“Yes! Bingo!” Falco punched the sky in celebration. Montes watched him in smirking bemusement. “She OD’d. They found her with the needle in arm at her boyfriend’s apartment. I remember. They rushed her to the hospital, but she was DOA. The shit she took was laced with fentanyl; it wouldn’t have been a problem, but she had been clean for a while. She fell back in, took too much, then died shortly after.”

While what Detective Richard Falco was saying was both morbid and tragic, you would never have known it from his animated excitement. Montes, more excited than saddened herself, admired how open he was about his zeal for the job.

“You mean this is her brother?” One of the cops said. “Fucking hell, they’re parents must be devastated.”

Neither Montes nor Falco heard the officer as he tried to humanize the lifeless corpse laying cold and dead against the brick wall. Both of them were handling the situation in their own ways and neither of their methods involved sympathy for the young man’s parents.

“So, there it is… motive.” Falco concluded as Montes nodded in affirmation.

“He came here to confront the man who killed his sister.” Diane said.

“Probably didn’t even have a plan beyond that.” Falco pressed. “If he came here with the intention to kill him, he would have brought a weapon. Something, anything. A knife or a bat maybe. He saw him and lost control.”

“Our shooter acted in self-defense. At first, anyway. Then executed him.” Diane concluded.

The two detectives stood in agreement. Both admiring the other one’s capability with modest glances. The rest of the officers at the scene watched them with a mixture of distaste and curiosity.

Finally, the first officer spoke up again.

“Hey, Rich?” He said; referring to Falco who pulled his eyes away from Montes to acknowledge his long-time colleague. “College kid attacks drug dealer and ends up getting shot. You don’t think it could be…?”

“No.” Falco cut him off emphatically. “No, I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with; Who we’re dealing with. This is, for now, unrelated.”

The officer put his hands up apologetically but prodded once more.

“Just saying. You always used to say we would end up finding one of those kids like this.”

Montes watched with piqued interest at the conversation. Falco’s past had largely been kept unknown to her. He spoke very little about previous cases, usually too wrapped up in the here and now to bring it up. Diane, possessed by her own ambition, could hardly imagine anything of real interest happening out this way, so she rarely asked. But whatever this was about, there was an alluring mystique to the way each of these lawmen talked about it. In particular, Falco’s uncharacteristic desire not to talk about it.

“I did.” Falco admitted. “But this isn’t that. He isn’t one of them.”

“How can you be sure?” The cop asked.

“Because Mark, I am.” He ended the conversation forcefully then took another drag on his cigarette. “They were never this sloppy.”

“Who exactly are we talking about?” Diane asked.

The Officer looked at Diane as if it were obvious before turning back to Falco.

“You didn’t tell her?” Officer Mark Peters asked in surprise.

“Tell me what?” Diane couldn’t hide the intrigue bubbling beneath her words.

Officer Peters went to answer but Falco stopped him.

“Nothing. Just some stupid ghost stories these guys love to talk about. I can tell you in the car. We’ve got everything we need concerning this.”

“You sure you don’t wanna stick around?” Peter’s asked sarcastically.

“Nah, that’s alright. But you guys have fun. Be on the lookout for an armed drug dealer with a busted face.”

“Gee thanks!” The other cop called out to him.

With a casual wave to the other officers, Falco marched out of the dirt lot toward his car. Montes followed, looking back to find the others staring at her as she walked away. They were huddled together snickering like a bunch of high schoolers who heard their friend had gotten a blow job under the bleachers. Just a bunch of children who never grew up, playing dress up, playing cops and robbers.

Falco got in the car and flicked his cigarette out the driver-side window. Montes dropped into the passenger seat beside him and eyed him with a probing grin.

“You going to tell me what that was all about? Or am I supposed to solve this one on my own?” She asked.

“It’s really not as interesting as they made it sound. I promise.”

“But you won’t talk about it?” She asked mockingly. “I’m sorry, but with all the useless bullshit you go on and on about, finding something you won’t talk about is pretty damn interesting in my book.”

He turned and looked at her. At first serious, but then melting into a smile at the beaming curiosity in her eyes.

“Okay, okay. You would’ve figured it out soon anyway.” She appreciated the modest compliment. “Best you hear it from me, because Peters would butcher it and anyone else is going to exaggerate.” He put the car in drive and pulled out onto the main road. “It was two years ago, when we last saw them, or saw what they left behind. Prior to that, there had been only a handful of incidents the previous year.”

“What happened?”

“The Summer Knights.” Falco said.

“The what?”

“I’m getting to that.” Falco said with gentle impatience. “Let me lay the groundwork first.” Diane rolled her eyes but nodded. “It was strange enough, receiving courtesy calls to come pick up drug dealers who had been bound and gagged with their supply on them and their stash left out in the open for us to confiscate. It was stranger that each of them was left with a note, white paper with black felt pen, usually naming victims of drug overdose who passed in the recent weeks.”

“Damn, you’re talking about vigilantes.” Diane said in mild amusement.

“And thieves.” Falco said. Diane cocked her head to the side. “Wait it gets stranger,” Falco assured her. “Every guy we cuffed and every dealer we found gave us the same story. It was four, sometimes five, guys in ski masks and all-black outfits. Black hoodies and black sweatpants. Race unknown, age unknown, but they were strong, and they were armed. Almost always it was two shotguns and two handguns. But, despite the heat they were packing, they never fired a shot, and no one was ever hurt beyond a few bruises and the occasional broken nose. No one could give us any names or individual aliases, but we did have a gang name; The Knights.”

Falco fanned out his hands as if announcing the title of his upcoming book.

“The fuckers would actually tell the dealers to remember who rolled them. Told them to tell anyone they knew that if you peddled dope, rocks, or H in this neighborhood or any surrounding it, then the Knights would come knocking. They got so cocky by the end, they started writing a fancy little “K” on all the notes they left behind.”

“Doesn’t sound like you were their biggest fan.” Diane said.

“I wasn’t.”

“Why not? I get that you need to arrest them, but aside form the occasional gem, most hardcore dealers are shitbags. Sometimes a little street justice is nice.”

“Because.” Falco said, sounding like a frustrated child. “I didn’t like them because I could read them clear as day, because they weren’t who they were pretending to be, because this isn’t the streets it’s the suburbs…”

“Because you couldn’t catch them.” Montes cut him off as the car came to a halt at a pointless red light in the town center. No cars in any direction, yet Falco obeyed the light.

“Yes.” He said. “But also, because they were full of shit. Or, at least, whoever called the shots was. They took every cent from every crime scene. You can imagine after about a dozen of these hits, even split four ways, that’s a decent amount of money. They wanted everyone to think they were heroes fighting back against the narcotics ravaging their communities, but they were just common criminals. A bunch of thrill-seeking kids with nothing better to do. They had half the Massachusetts police department rooting for them.”

Montes watched the light turn green against the opaque midnight sky of a sleeping suburbia, feeling confident she would have been tempted to root for the young vigilantes herself. Even if her partner loathed them.

She spoke without thinking.

“Why did you say kids? How do you know that they were young?”

“Well that’s the kicker. They went by The Knights, but we all called them The Summer Knights. See, they only cracked down on the drug trade in the summer, specifically from mid-May until late August, then they disappeared. Going underground until next summer and occasionally they would pop up during the holidays, but that was rare. So, what does that tell you?”

            Falco glanced at Montes, keeping his eyes on the dark empty road but still quizzing her. Diane put the pieces together quickly as he suspected she would.

            “They’re college students.” She said, finding the awe in her voice to be both telling for herself and Falco. “They only operate when they come home for break.”

            “Precisely. Then they head back to the University of Street Justice and we lose their scent.”

            The bitterness in Falco’s words was apparent and Montes didn’t mean to be indelicate as she put it into words.

            “Shit. That’s pretty fucking interesting.”

            Her attention shifted to the neon lights of a McDonalds which was open 24 hours and coming up on the left side. She didn’t notice Falco as he looked over at her and assessed the situation.

            “You hungry?” He asked

            “Starved.”

            “Okay. I’ll pull in.”

            “What about our missing shooter?”

            “We can start kicking tires after we eat; see if anything swollen and ugly comes crawling out. Our best chance is probably to ask around come morning.”

            “Sounds like a plan.”

            They rolled up to the drive-thru and both detectives were sitting in silent appreciation of the story. One with bitter remembrance the other with a hopeful anticipation. It was May now and Diane Montes hoped that, with any luck, maybe something interesting could happen in the middle of New England suburbia.