Nickel City Crossfire Gideon Rimes Book Two Gary Earl Ross Contents Gideon Rimes Series Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 About the Author Acknowledgments Gideon Rimes Series Gideon Rimes Series Nickel City Blues Nickel City Crossfire Nickel City Storm Warning SEG Publishing invites you to visit our site! Join our newsletter and receive a free short story in the Gideon Rimes Series. Copyright © Gary Earl Ross 2020 The right of Gary Earl Ross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted per the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1976. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Cover design by Steven Novak Published by SEG Publishing For Colleen, Timothy (Robin), David (Rebecca), Cody, and Madelynne (Brian) From Dad with Love and In Memory of Amrom Chodos, supportive early reader, honest critic, wonderful friend. 1 Balding and brown-skinned, the Reverend Oscar Edgerton was a big man who dwarfed the client chair facing my desk. A chaplain twice retired, once from the army and once from the Georgia department of corrections, he had massive hands with well-kept nails. Beneath his thick salty mustache was a genial smile born of self-assurance. I had met him in October through Phoenix Trinidad, before Phoenix and I became lovers. The Friday before Thanksgiving we had seen him and his wife Louisa at a fund-raiser for Hope’s Haven, the women’s center where Oscar worked part-time as a security guard and where Phoenix served as legal counsel. She had called me last night—Wednesday—to tell me that Oscar would be bringing a friend in need of help to my office in the Elmwood Village this afternoon. “I don’t know what his friend needs,” Phoenix said, “but Oscar thinks you’re good people so be nice if you have to turn them down.” The man in my other client’s chair was half Oscar’s size but appeared to be around the same age, in his early to mid-sixties. His name was Winslow Simpkins. He was caramel-colored, with loose skin below his chin and thick gray hair in an arc above his forehead. He wore horn-rimmed glasses that did nothing to hide the sadness in his eyes and a topcoat that looked decades old. He had begun to tell me about his daughter Keisha, thirty-four, a nurse who served as the secretary for Sermon on the Mount, one of the city’s most prominent black churches. Lower lip trembling, he had stopped when he came to the event that led to her disappearance. For a time, the only sound was the distant hum of washers and dryers in the laundromat downstairs. “It’s okay, Win,” Oscar said finally, patting his friend’s arm, trying to smooth the gravel in his own voice. “Take your time. Better you tell it, the better Brother Rimes can help you.” Winslow nodded, his eyes filling. “I didn’t even know she was usin’ drugs. I mean, I wouldn’ta been surprised if she smoked a little weed now and then. Lot of us did that back in the day, y’know.” He glanced at Oscar, who nodded. “But me and Mona—that’s her mama—we never seen nothin’ to say she was even doin’ that.” He dropped his right foot to the carpet and tilted his head. “Her supervisin’ nurses and all, the last thing we woulda expected was heroin.” “Heroin,” I said, no surprise in my voice. As I took notes in my small leather-covered notebook, I leaned forward on my left elbow to relieve my right shoulder from the pressure of the chair’s back. I’d had a small-caliber bullet removed six weeks earlier and was nearing the end of physical therapy. My shoulder still throbbed from time to time. “You had no idea?” He shook his head. “Didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout it till they called from the hospital in the middle of the night.” Winslow closed his eyes and was quiet for a time, maybe trying to organize his memories of that night, maybe just reliving it. “Friday after Thanksgiving. She was out with the man she been seein’ for almost a year, Odell Williamson. Nice fella, I thought. Taught sixth grade. Somebody found them in a car on Jefferson, outside Wylie. Tried to get high together and they both OD’d. The cops used that nasal spray—” “Narcan,” I said, recalling a Buffalo News photo of a Mazda SUV at the edge of the Johnnie B. Wiley Pavilion. At the corner of Jefferson and Best, Wylie was the inner-city high school athletic field built over the remains of the Rockpile—War Memorial Stadium—where the early Bills and Bisons had played and where Robert Redford had filmed The Natural. I had read about the double overdose over breakfast one morning. Over several days, the initial surprise that a much-loved teacher had died of a heroin overdose was gradually replaced by outrage and calls for greater scrutiny in the hiring of teachers after three informants stepped forward to reveal that Odell Williamson had been a mid-level dealer who laced his product with fentanyl. “Narcan,” Winslow said, nodding. “Yeah. It worked on her, thank God, but it was too late for him. She went to the ER at ECMC. He went to the morgue.” He swallowed audibly and tried to steady
