Who's Who in the 4th Precinct Detective Novels

Supreme Judgment

 

Detective Jeremy Roberts has been a detective on the Miami Police Force, 4^th Precinct, for almost five years.  He has earned multiple citations for bravery and conduct above and beyond the call of duty.  Tall and athletic, he has a well-deserved reputation as a fine detective who will use his brains as well as his service revolver.  He loves his job, though he has considered finding something else to help allay the fears of his wife, Elaine.

 

Elaine Roberts fears for her husband’s well being each day that he leaves for work.  His reputation means that he is assigned many of the toughest cases in the precinct.  Elaine is a compassionate, caring person who is trying to understand her husband’s love for his job.  She is supportive and honest with him, even after he is partnered with an attractive rookie detective.

 

Detective Lori Ashburn has just been earned her detective promotion.  She is young, athletic, headstrong, and attractive.  She earned her “stripes” working undercover in the drug and alcohol unit where her she was frequently in the line of fire.  The Force’s only concern with Detective Ashburn is her fiery temper.  She has overcome her lack of size by graduating first in her self-defense class at the academy.  Single and career-oriented, she considers herself “one of the boys”. 

 

Virginia Heberling is a 44-year private investigator, working for well-known trial lawyer Jonathan Sanders.  She spent over 20 years in law enforcement and investigations.  After graduation with a degree in Criminology from UCLA she spent 4 years as a small town police officer, and then was promoted to a junior grade detective level that gave her a taste of her true passion.  She then took a job in Seattle and quickly became one of their top detectives, handling many of the department’s toughest assignments.  Detesting the rainy weather in Seattle she jumped at an opportunity to join the San Diego police department.  At 35 she became the lead investigator for the drug trafficking section of the force and it seemed that her future was unlimited.  Her career was cut short when her knee was shattered in a gun battle. 

 

Jonathan Sanders is a 54 year-old well-known trial attorney.  He has spent most of his legal career as a prosecutor, known for seeking maximum penalties and eschewing plea bargains.  Now, at the request of two college friends, he was defending someone he had never met.  Known as a “stuffed shirt” but a brilliant legal mind, Jonathan had his doubts about the innocence of his client.  But his loyalty to his old friends outweighed them he defended Norman Angsley to the best of his ability.

 

Norman Angsley is a man with a murky past.  He spent 22 years working for the Agency in overseas operations.  But the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war severely reduced his usefulness.  He had since been used in a few Asian operations and some penny-ante domestic jobs that were not really considered to be in the Agency’s jurisdiction.  Norman was man with talents that were going to waste, until an old friend contacted him.  Now he was on trial for the murder of Juan Cardenas, an internationally known drug baron.

 

Steven Charles had a plan.  He also had friends.  Some of them were important; others were unknown but perhaps even more useful.  Known as “brains” by his closest associates, Steven was 54 years old and, unknown to his partners, was suffering from cancer.  He declined chemotherapy and radiation and was treating the symptoms with drugs acquired illegally from Mexico.  Still, his doctors were giving him only 3 to 4 years to live and he desperately wanted to live to see his plan carried to a successful conclusion.

 

Paul Lando was 49 years old and in excellent shape.  He had made a living in undercover operations most of his adult life, having been recruited into the Agency while still in law school.  At 5 foot 6 inches he was the smallest member of the group, but when he spoke there was no question that the others listened.  He was a 13-year veteran of the Agency and some of his exploits, especially those in Asia, were legendary among the few members who knew of them.  He was a skilled marksman and was adept at the use of explosives.  He also spoke French, German, Russian, a number of Chinese dialects, and Japanese.  His wife had been killed in a car jacking in Baltimore nearly 11 years before and he had been unattached ever since.  The mental scars of the tragedy, and of the total failure to bring the killer to justice, had grown heavier over the years. 

 

Don Mapes was a tall and likable man.  He was also a skilled tactical fighter who had excelled in covert operations in Russia during the cold war.  Now 56 years old, he was not as physically active but he still had steady hands and nerves of ice.  He had known Paul Lando for many years and respected him as a man that could be trusted completely.  Now, however, he and Paul were having the worst disagreement of their friendship. 

 

Mark Napier was a ghost.  A phantom.  You could see him, and then not remember he was there.  It was his talent.  And he used it to the best of his ability both for his employers, and they varied often, and for himself.  Napier had a secret.  It was a secret that had been hidden for years behind the bars of the iron curtain.  Now working for Steven Charles, it was hoped that Napier’s particular idiosyncrasies could be controlled and that his talents could be harnessed.  They were, for a while.

 

Gregory McCullough was a relatively new member to the group.  But he was trusted and had excellent contacts within the United States from his work with the Agency.  He spent 8 years with battling international drug runners before becoming discouraged at the way their investigative hands were tied in fighting the Columbian drug traffic.  He was an expert on the cartels operating out of South America and knew the way they operated, and the structure of their leadership.  He then moved to the Agency for 5 years before marrying Steven Charles’ daughter.  Though he was their President’s son-in-law, there was no hint of nepotism.  He was much too respected for that and both Lando and Mapes felt that his inclusion on the Board was appropriate.

 

Doctor Josef Mueller was a cosmetic surgeon that was almost totally unknown to the public.  Until 1985 he had worked in East Germany for the KGB.  With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the secret police in Germany he was a man with a special skill without a home.  The CIA had known about Doctor Mueller for some time and Steven Charles had been directed to recruit the young doctor into the fold.  Josef was only 30 when he left Berlin and flew to Washington, DC.  Now, at 45, he was again under the spell of Steven Charles. 

 

Ilya Georgikov was a well-groomed man who took pride in his appearance.  He was also a patient man.  Now working with Interpol, Ilya had been a long time KGB agent in the now-defunct Soviet Union.  While there he had been assigned to a case that had been covered up by the highest offices in the Government; the serial murder of scores of young soviet women in the very heart of the Russian capital.  Ilya had nearly captured the man then, only to see two of his closest friends killed in the capture attempt.  This could be his last chance to rid himself of the guilt he felt for their deaths.

 

Mike Ricks was the least known, but best informed, law enforcement officer in the State of Florida.  He was a 16-year veteran of the Agency, and had served as liaison officer at Langley before requesting, and receiving the transfer to the desk in Miami, which was also his hometown.  He had developed a close friendship with Jeremy Roberts three years ago after they were involved in a major drug bust together.  Now, Ricks would have to walk a fine line between the loyalty to his friend, and his oath of secrecy to his employer.

 

 

Ice on the Track

 

Detective Jeremy Roberts has been a detective on the Miami Police Force, 4^th Precinct, for almost five years.  He has earned multiple citations for bravery and conduct above and beyond the call of duty.  Tall and athletic, he has a well-deserved reputation as a fine detective who will use his brains as well as his service revolver.  He loves his job, though he has considered finding something else to help allay the fears of his wife, Elaine.

 

Elaine Roberts fears for her husband’s well being each day that he leaves for work.  His reputation means that he is assigned many of the toughest cases in the precinct.  Elaine is a compassionate, caring person who is trying to understand her husband’s love for his job.  She is supportive and honest with him, even after he is partnered with an attractive rookie detective.

 

Detective Lori Ashburn is young, athletic, headstrong, and attractive.  She earned her “stripes” working undercover in the drug and alcohol unit were she was frequently in the line of fire.  The Force’s only concern with Detective Ashburn is her fiery temper.  She has overcome her lack of size by graduating first in her self-defense class at the academy.  Single and career-oriented, she considers herself “one of the boys”. 

  

Ilya Georgikov is a well-groomed man who takes pride in his appearance.  He is also a patient man.  Now working with Interpol and based in Oslo, Ilya had been a long time KGB agent in the now-defunct Soviet Union.  While investigating multiple murders in Florida that seemed to mirror murders in the Soviet Union, Ilya became friends with detectives Roberts and Ashburn.  Georgikov succeeded in stopping the serial killer who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, and is now ‘investigating’ the possibility of a long-distance relationship with Detective Ashburn.

 

Detective Chuck Stevenson is a stocky, muscular man who carries himself with confidence and delights in practical jokes.  At 31 years old and standing five foot ten and almost two hundred pounds, a van dyke beard and dark piercing eyes, Stevenson cuts an intimidating figure with suspects.  Stevenson has never married and, to his colleagues’ knowledge, isn’t seeing anyone special.  They know little of his background in New Jersey, and they would be surprised to learn that he had been engaged.  It was an engagement that had ended badly and, ultimately, led him to relocate to Miami.

 

Detective Lynn Gregor is thirty-nine years old and one of the senior detectives on the force.  He is still in great shape and he works out every day.  He is a native of Miami and has been on the force since graduating from Florida State with a criminology degree.  He graduated from the academy at the top of his class.  A good detective, Gregor is not always liked by his comrades.  During an investigation he can be grating and overly critical of other detectives.  Still, his skill as an investigator, and at reading suspects during interrogations, is much respected.  Some in the Department believe that his partnering with Chuck Stevenson is a powder keg waiting to explode.

 

Beth Crull is finally enjoying life.  She is a petite woman, standing barely five feet three inches tall and tipping the scales at 105 pounds.  Her job with Greyship, Incorporated has allowed her to relocate to Cape Town from Southampton after her marriage fell apart due to abuse.  She hasn’t seen her ex-husband, Frank, in over two years and she wants to keep it that way.  She isn’t even sure that he knows where she is.  Since there are no children from the marriage, she has no reason to inform him. 

 

Frank Crull is a large man, with burly arms.  He had been a dockworker in Southampton but labor problems in the large port caused him to have frequent periods of unemployment, which, for Frank, translated into frequent bouts with the bottle.  Unfortunately for his ex-wife, Beth, Frank would then take out his drunken frustrations on her, both physically and mentally.

 

Jake Landry is fifty-nine years old, compactly built, and sports a full head of salt and pepper hair that is cut short.  He has been racing dogs in the Miami area for over twenty years.  During the past six years he has expanded his racing business to cover the lucrative racetracks in South Africa, New Zealand, and even the prestigious ‘champagne’ races on the St. Moritz Lake in Switzerland.  Entry into the St. Moritz races has moved Jake Landry into a higher echelon on the social ladder. 

 

John Lamont is only thirty-nine years old and has been working for Jake Landry for over eight years as first a dog handler at the track, and now as his general manager of operations at Flagler.  He stands a solid six-foot tall and weighs in at a muscular 180 pounds.  He has deep, green eyes and his hair is white.  Snow white.  It changed color while John was still in his early thirties.  At first he was concerned that he was prematurely graying.  But soon he realized that, for some reason, his hair was turning a bright white.  Many people tell him that he looks distinguished and John likes that. 

 

Rutger Yost is forty-one years old and has been on the provincial police force, Cape Town district, for almost sixteen years.  A native of the German industrial region near Essen, he is from a blue-collar family.  His father, and his father’s family, have all been employed in the factories that dotted the Ruhr Valley.  Rutger saw what the years of factory work did to his father and watched as his two older brothers followed in their father’s footsteps.  He was determined not to fall into the same rut and when the opportunity came to visit South Africa with his mother’s brother, an investor in the South African mining industry, he jumped at it. 

 

Kendra Liu is a petite young woman who has just celebrated her twenty-second birthday.  Her father is from Singapore and her mother is from the Netherlands, giving her a very exotic look that is at a premium in her “business”.  Her long, dark hair has the appearance of silk when she styles it for her appearances and it falls gracefully down her back to her hips.  She is barely five foot tall and her small features often make her appear younger, an illusion that Kendra often builds on with her choice of outfits for her shows.  The guys that frequent Cheetahs seem to get a particular thrill from seeing her dance that way although Kendra has never understood why they enjoy fantasizing about schoolgirls.

 

Victoria Black is tall and slender with auburn hair that cascades down her shoulders.  She is twenty-five years old and has been dancing at Cheetahs for almost three years.  She is good at what she does and she enjoys it.  The attention, the fans, and the money all seem too good to be true for a girl from a small town in the Midwest.  She came to Florida to go to school but soon realized that she didn’t care for the structure of college and she wasn’t interested in any particular subject.  She started dancing on a dare from an old friend who was also staying in Florida at the time.  Her friend left after only a few months, but Victoria remained and is now headlining some of the weekend shows.  Her fatalistic view of men will change when she meets Chuck Stevenson.

 

Lindsay Lee Malone is a small girl with platinum blonde hair and hazel eyes.  Her smile can light up a room and she is just as popular socially as she is professionally where she dances under the name “Cherry Lee”.  A native of New Jersey, Lindsay relishes the reactions she gets from others when she uses her “Joisey” accent and swears like a sailor.  But in truth she is a good-hearted soul who can be counted on to help her friends in a pinch.  She is twenty-seven years old and has been “in the business” for almost five years.  She worked a number of smaller, lower class clubs before being hired by Cheetah’s almost three years earlier.

 

Johnny ‘Pots’ Navarro is the son of Alfonso Navarro, boss of the Navarro family.  The Navarros run a string of gentlemen’s clubs up the East Coast, concentrated in Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey.  Johnny is now living in Miami and no one knows why.  A regular at Cheetah’s, he has a habit of spending wildly and hosting weekend-long parties at his Miami Townhouse.  He is the only resident of Miami who knows Chuck Stevenson’s past.

 

Jimmy James is known as “Jingles” because of the way he always shakes the change in his pockets.  He is the manager of Cheetah’s Gentleman’s Club.  James is tall and thin, clean-shaven with a few scars on his right cheek.  People always wonder if they are a result of a gang-fight, but in reality they are acne scars, though he never tells anyone different.  Jimmy is only twenty-eight years old but he has been involved with Cheetah’s since its opening seven years earlier.  His uncle is the owner of the club and he brought Jimmy into management as a trainee, working for the first manager, who is now serving a five-spot in the state penitentiary for promoting prostitution.

 

Jurgen Preslow is fifty-six years old and the Chief Operating Officer of DeBeers Mining.  He has overseen an expansion of the international market for De Beers.  Through a subsidiary of De Beers, Debswana (De Beers Botswana Mining Company) and through the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, De Beers now controls over eighty per cent of the world’s diamond trading.  Married and with four children and two grand-children, Jurgen enjoys the high-pressure world of the cartel and diamond trading, as well as the engineering aspects of producing diamonds more efficiently.  He wants to retire after four more years, but his wife and oldest child have become accustomed to a lavish lifestyle and he is afraid that his debt position will not allow it.

 

Kurt Schaffer is a lean man of small-build.  He has the Aryan features of his homeland, having been born forty-five years earlier in the Bonn area in Germany.  He’s been employed by De Beers for seventeen years.  He has been the Security Officer for the past four years having been named to the position by Jurgen Preslow shortly after Jurgen’s own promotion to COO.  Schaffer is married to a woman from Johannesburg.  Her parents are major stockholders in the Venetia diamond mine located in Messina in the Northern Province.  The marriage has opened up new opportunities for the young Schaffer and over the past thirteen years they have built a comfortable life together for themselves and their three children.

 

Deirdre Kay appears to be at least ten years younger than her forty-six years.  She is of medium height and build with coal black hair and hypnotic, green eyes.  Deirdre had been a dancer in her time, one of the best in the Miami area.  She now watches over the twenty-eight girls who work full and part time at Cheetah’s.  Those who meet her have no doubt that Deirdre could still make a living as a dancer.

 

Jim Finnegan is a large man.  He stands over six feet, four inches tall and weighs nearly two hundred and eighty pounds.  His head, formerly covered with bushy red hair, is now shaved and the tattoos on his beefy arms make him look even more menacing.  Finnegan has a history of trouble starting in his early teens.  He has struggled with his large size and even bigger temper and has done multiple stretches in Juvenile Hall.  His troubles seem to have ended now that he has found a way to make some money by putting his huge frame and aggressive nature to work.  Now, at twenty-four years of age, Finnegan wrestles on the semi-pro tour in the South East Wrestling Federation.  Regulars of the SEWF know Finnegan as “The Trucker” and he routinely wrestles in jeans, boots, and a t-shirt, although he is sometimes known to use the tire iron that he often brings to the ring with him. 

 

Carter Jones was raised in poverty on a small farm in South Carolina and he started wrestling when he was seventeen years old.  He is soft-spoken and he struggled with his shyness as he attempted to move up in the wrestling business.  He met a promoter while wrestling in Charleston, South Carolina.  It was a turning point for Carter.  The promoter had connections in the regional federations and he saw something in Carter that peaked his interest.  Carter is large enough at six foot two and two hundred and forty pounds, but he is also agile and gifted gymnastically.  Carter’s wrestling method was modified to one of a high-flyer and he was coached in crowd interaction.  Gradually Carter has become a crowd favorite with his in-ring acrobatics and his out-of-the ring antics.

 

Lenny Griffin is a technology geek.  He is also brilliant, hard working, and dedicated to his craft, which, in this case, is working in the Crime Scene Investigative Division of the Miami Metropolitan Police Force, specializing in forensic investigation.  Griffin could easily be typecast for his job.  He wears thick glasses with heavy black frames that seem to constantly slide down his long, thin nose.  Lenny’s personality is the opposite of the nerd that he appears to be.  He is outgoing and friendly and not at all shy and he invariably beams when someone he knows enters his office lab that he treats as a second home.