Work Text:
RAPE, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
I was heading down to the evidence lock-up to review some of the facts in the Gunderson case, when I got a surprise from the sergeant at the desk. "Hi Captain," she said as I picked up the pen to sign in. "You come down to help Sandburg with this extradition thing?"
"Excuse me?" was all I could say. I didn't even know Sandburg was in the building. Ellison was out checking a murder scene; why wouldn't Sandburg be with him?
"That bitch who drowned Sandburg back in May. He said you're trying to get her extradited from South America. So he's going over some of the evidence in the case."
"Oh," I said slowly. "That case." Alex Barnes was in a federally run mental hospital in California; there was no question of extradition. So what was Sandburg really up to?
He'd been a little weird over the past few weeks, and I wondered if it had something to do with his research in Sierra Verde. Had he learned something new about Barnes while he was studying the temple?
He'd seemed happy enough when he got first back from the month-long expedition. So had Jim; in fact, giving Jim a month off to play in the jungle was the best decision I'd made in a long time. My temperamental detective had come back looking almost as brown as Joel Taggert, and just as mellow. A solid veteran, he made a perfect training partner for the new detectives in my division -- calm, assured, and in complete control of his senses.
Sandburg had returned a little less tanned (I gathered he spent most of his time inside that musty temple, while Jim was running around outside), but just as relaxed. He was spending more time at the university these days, but he still made it in to work with Jim whenever he could, and to joke with the rest of my men.
Then during the last week or two, something changed. Sandburg got more tense. He kept coming in nights to work on something without Jim; it seemed to involve mostly paperwork and computer records. I wondered about it, but decided not to press him. I hadn't been able to get Sandburg the paid consultant position I promised him a few months ago, but I still wanted him to feel like a member of the division. Even without a badge or training, Sandburg was a better detective than some of the rookies I'd just picked up -- so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Now I was thinking it was time to find out just what the hell he thought he was doing.
"What evidence is he looking at?" I asked carefully.
"The tapes from the Oberon robbery." The sergeant looked a little embarrassed. "I told him he couldn't sign them out without you or Ellison to countersign, but he said he just wanted to check out a few details. He's in the viewing room now."
The `viewing room' was little more than a glorified supply closet, with a TV and video cassette player tucked in among the paper towels and boxes of soap. It was technically outside of the evidence lockup, but the only door was within sight of the sergeant's desk.
"I'll just go see how Sandburg's doing," I said sweetly, and reached for the doorknob.
Sandburg was pacing back and forth in the tiny room with both hands raised to his face. He froze and looked up as I stepped in, and his eyes glowed with --
Fury?
Sandburg?
Then he latched onto the front of my shirt with a strangle hold and pulled me down towards him. Definitely fury.
"Did you know about this?" he snarled in my face. "If you knew about this and let it go on anyway, I'll, I'll --" He sputtered into silence. Apparently, whatever it was exceeded even Sandburg's imagination.
I pried his hands loose from my silk shirt. "Know about what?"
"That!" He waved at the blank TV screen in the corner. "That, that -- ugh!" And he threw up his hands in a wordless gesture of disgust.
Puzzled now, and definitely worried, I checked out the VCP. There were several tapes, still in their cases, sitting on top of the machine: the labels identified them as Oberon security tapes. But the empty case sitting to one side was different. Phelps Productions, it said. It rang a bell, but I couldn't quite place the reference. The evidence label was dated 1992.
I checked that the missing tape was actually inside the machine, then rewound it a little to make sure I caught whatever Sandburg was ranting about. I hit play, and as the static cleared, Sandburg sank onto the folding chair across the room, his face in his hands.
The screen showed an empty room with a bare concrete floor. There were two figures in the slightly fuzzy picture -- two naked figures. I recoiled as I realized this was a porn video. "Sandburg, what . . ."
But it was more than mere porn. The person in front, struggling to climb to hands and knees, was male. So was the person behind. Just as the passive party was about to get up, someone else came in from the side of the screen and kicked him hard in the ribs.
The man collapsed with a groan that was only too familiar. "My God," I breathed.
It was Jim.
The guy with the nasty kick -- who was dressed, and wearing boots -- helped push Jim into position, and then the man behind went into action. Forcefully.
"Oh, my God," I repeated, feeling sick.
Jim was pleading hoarsely for them to stop. The picture wavered, focus going in and out. The camera tried to zoom in for a closer shot, but whoever was in control of it didn't really know what they were doing. For a moment there was a perfectly clear shot of Jim's outflung hand, scrabbling frantically on the barren floor. In combination with the desperate cries coming from off-screen, that empty clutching hand was horrifyingly poetic.
Then the camera got straightened out for a detailed closeup of things I did not want to see. I hit buttons frantically, trying to stop the thing. I got fast-forward instead, long enough for me to see other people joining in on the beating and the rest of the action.
At last I got the thing turned off, and I stood there panting, trying to get my stomach under control.
The Phelps case. I remembered now. A porn studio that specialized in child `actors,' rapes on film, and the occasional snuff video. Jim had gone undercover to get evidence against them, but his cover was blown, and he barely got out alive. It was his last Vice case, the one that had convinced him to request a transfer to Major Crime. I hadn't been involved in the case itself, but it had gone to trial shortly after I took command of Major Crime. I remembered the fantastic strain Jim had been under. The day he testified in closed court, Pendergrast had asked for time off to take Jim out and get him drunk.
"He said he was unconscious," I said; it was one of the few details I knew about the case, which had been kept as quiet as possible. "He couldn't remember, because he was unconscious."
"They got him in the head with a baseball bat," Blair said dully.
I had seen the blood on Jim's blurry face in the video. But he was clearly not unconscious. "He sounded . . . slurred."
"They drugged him with something," Sandburg said. "I saw the hospital report. A lot of alcohol in his blood, even half a day later."
"He went undercover drunk?" I couldn't believe it. Jim had an attitude problem when I first met him, but he was never suicidal.
"No, they forced it on him. It was probably laced with something else. Maybe Rohypnol; it was on the streets by then, but not very common. The hospital didn't think to test for it. But the alcohol brought Jim's testimony into question."
I swung around. "How the hell do you know all this?"
"I've been calling up the old files."
"Those are need to know."
"Well, I needed to know, so I figured out how to get them."
I shook my head. "Sandburg . . ."
"I had to know, Simon!" He exploded off the chair. "He's my partner, and my friend. I'm trying to look out for him. And look what I found. They've been keeping this damn tape in evidence years after the damn case was closed! These guys are in jail now -- what do we need the tapes for?"
"There are parole hearings . . ." I began.
"Not for the guys who ran this operation; they got life. Anyway, this tape was never part of the evidence used to convict. The main charges dealt with the snuff videos and child molestation. They never charged Phelps and his pals with the assault on Jim, mostly because Jim's memory was so unclear. And it never went to jury trial anyway; they pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty. The DA agreed because the publicity would have been such a mess, and the death penalty would mean years of appeals." He rubbed a hand over his face. "So what are they keeping this tape for, huh?"
"Sandburg, you know we hang onto a lot of evidence just in case --"
"No," he whispered, coming closer to me. "I'll tell you why this is still in evidence. You want to know?"
I just stared at him.
"Because those bastards in Vice, the scum that pass for detectives down there, they like to sign this out and watch Jim getting fucked --" His voice broke and he turned away.
"How do you know?" I said.
"I saw the records! It's how I found this damn thing. Do you know how many times it was signed out in the month after Jim got Officer of the Year? Those shitheads probably have parties watching the damn thing --" He gasped for breath. "And they're passing the tradition on, too. You know who was the last to sign it out? Margolis. He wasn't even with the department when the Phelps case went down!"
"My God," I whispered again, staring at the video player in distaste. IA would have to know about this. It was long past time to get rid of some of the corruption in Vice. But then Jim would learn what was going on . . . "This will destroy Jim," I realized out loud.
"No," said Sandburg firmly. "He is not going to find out about this. He doesn't even know that tape exists. The DA kept it from him when they found out his testimony didn't match. He really believes he was unconscious through the whole thing, and he's not going to hear any different from me."
"How the hell do you think you can keep this a secret?"
"Get rid of it," the kid murmured, unzipping his backpack.
"Sandburg, it's evidence. Whether it's needed or not, it's still been entered. The sergeant may have let you carry it this far, but she is not going to let you walk out of the building with that tape. And if you don't return the same number of tapes you took out, she'll notice --"
"So I'll return it," Sandburg muttered. "No problem." He hit the eject button and carried the offending tape over to his other stuff. He pulled something black out of his backpack.
"What, you're going to replace it with another tape? That won't work. Those bar-code labels don't come off without tearing. You --" I froze. "Sandburg, what the hell are you doing?"
"Degaussing it," he said, plugging the electromagnet into the wall and running it over the tape. He used a pencil to wind the tape back a little bit, and wiped some more.
I noticed in astonishment that he had put on rubber gloves before he ejected the thing.
He glanced up at me. "You didn't touch this, did you?"
"I . . . no, just the case."
"That's probably safe. It must have hundreds of prints on it."
"Sandburg, what the hell are you planning to do?"
"I'm thinking that Margolis was the last one to sign this tape out, and his prints are probably all over it. All I have to do is get it back on the shelf in the right place, and eventually someone will try to sign it out again. That's when they'll find out Margolis has been destroying evidence."
"You can't expect to get away with it," I said uneasily.
"They'll probably figure it was an accident," he went on calmly, still working on the tape. "He had it at home, he pressed the record button by accident, and he didn't want to fess up. I wish I could get him into more trouble than that, but maybe if we're lucky, someone will start asking why the hell he was signing out evidence in a case that had nothing to do with him anyway."
I swallowed. "Do you think any of them made copies?"
Sandburg paused in his degaussing. "I hope not. It might be copy- protected -- but even if it isn't, I'm betting that the video quality was too poor for decent copies. Otherwise, why would they have bothered signing this damn thing out again and again?" He wound a little more tape through, reaching the beginning. "There."
"Sandburg . . ."
He looked up, cold and grim. "Are you going to turn me in, Simon?"
I sighed. "No."
"Are you going to tell Jim about this?"
"Of course not! I can guess what it would do to him. But I still don't think you can get away with this."
"You leave that up to me," he said darkly. "Now, I have a class to teach in an hour, and after that I'm suppposed to meet Jim to help with this new case -- so I'd better get these back where they belong." He slid the wiped tape back into its case, buried it in the middle of the stack of Oberon videos, and shucked off the gloves. Then he unplugged the degausser and slipped it into his backpack.
Sandburg's damn smooth, I'll give him that. We walked out of the room calmly and presented the tapes to the desk sergeant for counting. He opened each case so that she could see the bar-code label on the tape. She didn't scan them, since they were never actually signed out, and Sandburg's hand conveniently covered the typed label on one case that showed it wasn't part of the Oberon evidence. He told the sergeant sadly that he hadn't found anything useful, gave her a few seconds to commiserate with him, then offered to shelves the tapes himself so that she'd be free to deal with her next customer -- me. She warned him not to take his backpack into lockup, and he flirtatiously promised she could frisk him when he was done.
And to think I'd once told him he was a terrible liar.