by B D Grant
The metal stairs squeaked as they hurried up the steps. With large windows on all sides of the apartment upstairs, it would have been easy to make an escape, but they were a good twenty feet up, so Susan hadn’t been worried enough to mention it. A brisk pound on the door as the cop announced their presence was all the warning they gave before busting in.
The foul odor that had smacked them in the face as the doors gave way would have ruined anyone’s day. Susan was well aware that only one thing gave off that level of rank.
Susan tears the page from the notepad, not wanting to look at the church any longer as if it were somehow responsible for her train of thought. She balls it up with her left hand and tosses it into the trashcan next to her desk, sitting back in her chair and tapping the eraser of her pencil against her desk absentmindedly. She’d expected to be in Doherty’s office by now, and the wait is starting to get to her. The woman who had stopped Bill and Susan from entering Doherty’s office together must be with the council. Doherty wouldn’t allow just anybody in his office during a debriefing. In fact, Susan’s only ever been in debriefings with Doherty and the other detectives who were on the case. A detective like them, especially a new one to the crew, wouldn’t have the audacity to boss Susan and Bill around. Being newer to the team herself, she’s never worked with any Seraphim council much less the Supreme Council, but she knows enough about them to understand that they are the top of the food chain in the Seraphim world. With the council in the building Susan knows that Doherty and his people are effectively nothing more than the help now. Bill and her had received separate emails from Doherty the day before they had made it back to headquarters informing them of the council’s arrival.
Anytime another agency gets involved in the middle of an investigation, at least in Susan’s experience, it tends to slow everything down for a while. Susan tosses the pencil on her desk and stands. If she’s going to wait, she’s at least getting some coffee.
As she lifts the glass coffee pot from the coffee maker the bottom of the pot sticks dragging the machine an inch out before the base lets go of the pot. She pours it into a cheap styrofoam cup she has out next to the coffee maker. She pulls a napkin out of the dispenser hanging on the wall and runs over the bottom of the coffee put before replacing it on the machine. A dead roach is visible from where the coffee machine had been hiding it. It’s on its back, tiny legs in the air. The pastor had been in a similar position when they’d found him.
Everyone entering the garage apartment was holding their breath as they stepped inside. The smell still makes Susan’s stomach turn as she stirs three sugar packets into her coffee. They had walked into the open floor plan no longer holding their guns up, ready to shoot—no one had to go far. Stepping over the threshold brought them right into the living room, where the television and couch were front and center. The living room fan spinning above the couch did nothing besides spread the aroma. One of the cops refused to enter the apartment choosing to stand at the back steps as a guard to the scene. Bill kept his hand over his nose and mouth the remainder of his time in the apartment. Pastor Dave had died on his back. His left arm had fallen off of the couch and his knuckles were resting on the floor. His face had been as bad as the smell.
His mouth was open and it appeared that his tongue was so engorged that it was forcing it open even farther since his body was well past rigor mortis. Judging by decomp, it had been days since Pastor Dave’s heart last pushed blood out to his extremities. It was only days later that the coroner informed them that he had used prescription sleeping pills mixed with booze to end his life. Susan and Bill had checked for any clues, but all they found was a pot full of ashes sitting on the tiny stovetop. Susan watched as Bill, still one handed from covering his nose, used the pen from his chest pocket to sift through the ashes. From the looks of it the pastor had burned several pages of paper before he killed himself. The few tiny scrapes of charred paper mixed into the ashes gave them nothing to further their investigation. Susan left a message on Doherty’s voicemail informing him of their findings.
There hadn’t been time to speak with the landlord until the coroner was removing the body. The elderly man wasn’t too torn up when he learned that his tenant had passed. “Davey paid for three months up front,” the old man told her from under his back patio where he had been watching the officers since being served with the search warrant as the apartment was being searched. “Usually they pay for one and stay for three,” he’d said, giving her a smile full of dentures.
Susan glanced at the apartment and back at the old man. “I’m happy to hear that because if you got anything left over you’re going to be spending that on cleaning supplies for the apartment.” The old man nods knowingly looking down at the ground. He stays that way long enough that Susan worries that she’s upset him. “The arthritis in my knees won’t let me take the stairs anymore,” he says before still staring down, letting Susan know that it’s his knees he’s looking at with a frown.
An old Ford truck pulls up to the garage apartment. The man that steps out is wearing a jacket with coroner written on the back of it. “I’m sure the police have some numbers I can get you for a cleanup crew,” Susan offers.
The old man looks up at the coroner taking two steps at a time to get to the apartment. “That’d be nice. What about that other fellow? I don’t want to have to be the one to tell him Davey’s passed.”
Susan turns from watching the coroner entering the apartment with a handkerchief over his mouth to dip her head closer to the old man’s. “What, other fellow?”
“A relative I suspect,” he’d said, moving to the rocking chair. As he sits the cushion on the seat of the chair sends puffs of dust out the sides. “He helped him move in. The evening I saw him, he was carrying a cardboard box upstairs. The last time I saw him was the last time I saw Davey, three or four days ago. He didn’t even bother to return my wave when he drove past the house.”
“Did Davey tell you his relative’s name?”
“I never talked to Davey about him.”
“What about the make and model of the car he was driving.”
He rocked in the chair, giving his head a brisk shake. “Some crummy car, nothing that interested me.”
“Did you get the color at least?” Susan asked, trying not to look annoyed.
“Dark blue, maybe.”
“I’ll go try to get you that contact information,” Susan had said, excusing herself before her temper got the best of her. She had been so relieved to find the pastor dead that finding out that there was yet another mysterious guy to track down she’d wanted to scream.
After the coroner was finished, Bill collected all of the rental information from the landlord that he’d gotten from Davey. Then, everyone returned to the police station.
Laramie’s chief of police, Gregory, was a gruff man who didn’t seem much for conversation, so when Susan entered his office, she was surprised by what she saw. There were pictures of him with various heads of state including President George W. Bush covering the walls. She hardly recognized the bright eyes and big smile in each frame. He had multiple frames propped on his desk as well, only a few of which she could see. Gregory had a large family judging by the visible family photos. One was of four men and three women smiling big at the camera with a 2017 Gregory family reunion banner hanging behind them were. The police chief was the second in from the left. The men all favored each other just like the women did. Siblings, Susan had thought to herself noting the grays around all of their temples. Another photo was of the police chief on a pitcher’s mound pitching a plastic ball underhand to a three foot tall little girl. The man squatting down behind the little girl playing the role of catcher had the profile of a twenty year younger version of the police chief. Father, son, and granddaughter, she’d thought. Maybe his gruffness was for her and Bill’s sake—what an honor. After all, police reveled in throwing their weight around in front of federal agents.
Well, she’d thought, might as
well speed things along. “Impressive,” she’d said, eyeing the photos on the walls. Her eyes stopped on Bush’s face. “I’ve never met a president before.”
“My oldest son worked on his election campaign here in Wyoming,” he told her with such forced nonchalance that she nearly snickered.
The reason Gregory had called her to his office, she’d soon learned, was to show her a video clip from a local gas station close to the garage apartment. As he started the video on his laptop he told her, “An old retired cop friend of mine who takes his morning jogs in the neighborhood noticed a car driving around with out-of-state tags and then saw it again parked at the apartment.”
It had taken a second to digest this. Susan knew it had to be the same guy the landlord had told her about. It couldn’t have been the pastor’s car. The garage below the apartment had been empty.
“There it is,” he’d announced, pointing the chewed-up end of his pen at the laptop screen as a car pulled into the gas station. “That’s the car my buddy saw at the apartment.”
“How did you find this?” Susan asked, looking at him out the corner of her eye. They’d just found the body, and Susan was pretty sure every cop showed up to the apartment once that call went through. How did he have the time to go through footage and locate the car?
The police chief had sat back, resting his hands on his round stomach as he gave her a smug grin. “I’ve had some guys working on this since your boss asked us to watch the garage. Figured whoever you were looking for was long gone, though. So I asked around, found out about the car, and then had my boys search for it.” The police chief eyed the footage of the car. “He pulls out of the gas station heading in the opposite direction from your dead guy’s apartment. I think he was heading out of town.” She hadn’t responded, knowing that there was no way he knew where the suspect was headed if this was the only footage he had of the car.
Susan watched the grainy video a couple times rewinding it over and over to watch the driver got out of the car trying to see if she could pick up on anything. “You seen him before?” Gregory asked, the third or fourth time she watched the suspect get out of the car and walk to the gas tank. He was in his late thirties, early forties with heavy facial hair, most likely to conceal his features, and wore dark sunglasses. “Nope,” she told him.
“Keep watching,” he’d instructed. He pointed again when the car pulled out of the station, giving them a view of its rear bumper. The right brake light was lit, but not the left.
Susan leaned in to get closer to the screen. “I can’t make out the license plate number.”
Gregory paused the video. “I couldn’t either, but it’s a Texas plate for sure.” Susan nods in agreement. She’d seen several of the white Texas plates with all black lettering in her short time working in south Louisiana. “I’ve got a BOLO out for the vehicle’s description, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”
This case needs as much luck as it can get, Susan thought to herself. “Can you email me a copy of this video?’
Once back at her laptop, she’d shown Bill the surveillance footage from the gas station. “What about that?” Bill had asked, pointing at the license plate as soon as the back of the car was visible.
Susan squinted at the license plate. “You can make out the license plate?”
“No, I’m talking about the license plate holder.” Sure enough he was right. The license plate holder was from a rental company. A quick search online and they found that they had a location in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
They jumped on the lead, Bill contacting the rental company to confirm that the car was one of theirs. He had to text the guy he was on the phone with a screen shot of the car from the gas station footage since he didn’t have the license plate. The guy told him that it looked like one of their cars, and it that had been returned to the Cheyenne location the evening before. There were no security cameras for them to pull footage from, but Bill had them fax everything they had on the man who rented the car.
The information they got back from the rental company on the suspect was all farce. “What do you mean this is the right rental contract?” Bill spat at the phone. He had been nice to put the call on speaker phone so that Susan could listen along.
“Look,” manager of the rental location in Cheyenne told Bill. “She copied the driver’s license and got a credit card as a second form of identification.” The female employee the manager was talking about was the woman who wrote up the rental agreement with their suspect. She had gotten a copy of a driver’s license but there’s no way she looked at it, because the photo on the license was a woman, not a man. It was of a very masculine female, Susan gave them that, but it was still clearly not a man, therefore most definitely not their suspect. If she hadn’t been so hopeful that this would lead to identifying the suspect she would have laughed when Bill had handed her the faxed copy of the license.
The name, Jimmy Thimes, and the remaining information on the license was also a dead end.
“I assure you that we are implementing more intricate training courses for our employees to prevent this from ever happening again,” the manager told them. Susan and Bill exchanged a frustrated glance before Bill picked up the phone to take off of speakerphone.
“Do not under any circumstances rent that car. We are sending a unit to check the car for prints.” Bill rolled his eyes. “Then you better move it to the back of the lot and hide the keys until our people get there because if that vehicle is vacuumed I’ll have them arrest you for tampering.” Bill smiled as he pulled the phone away from his ear as Susan could hear the man on the other end shouting orders at someone to get the car to the back post haste. “That’s better,” Bill said in the phone, “the unit should be getting there shortly.
And so, without any other leads, Susan and Bill had decided to head to Cheyenne to ensure that the guys Gregory had sent to the rental agency went over the car thoroughly.
It wasn’t until they were getting out of Buford that the police chief called. Their bearded suspect had been spotted west of Cheyenne on interstate 80 by a state trooper. If it was really their guy, he must have stayed the night somewhere around Cheyenne after dropping off the car last night before doubling back toward Laramie today. Susan’s mind raced as she thought of possible explanations as to why he’d stuck around. The chief had been told that the car was pulled over for failure to yield, and the trooper let the guy go with a warning. The trooper hadn’t run the driver’s license nor had he ran the license plate, which judging by Gregory’s colorful language really ticked him off. Susan put the call on speaker for Bill to enjoy the police chief’s anger over the situation. And, just as she thought, every curse word Gregory spewed as he explained what happened made Bill’s grin deepen as he pulled the car over to the side of the road.
“It wasn’t until the suspect was long gone that it dawned on that sonofa… that maybe he shouldn’t have let him go so easily.”
Bill’s eyebrows shot up. “Tempero,” he had mouthed to Susan. Susan wasn’t so sure. Why would a Seraphim be working with the pastor who had planned attacks on Seraphim. It didn’t add up.
“He called in the man’s description and the car’s and plate number once I’m sure he’d wasted even more time thinking about it.”
Bill and Susan immediately agreed it was worth checking out since there was no denying that it sounded like the trooper had pulled over a possible Tempero.
“He didn’t follow protocol,” Bill had told her once she’d gotten off of the phone call. “And the deputy didn’t get his wits back until after the guy drove off. Classic reaction to a Tempero not wanting to get a ticket.” The phone rang in Susan’s hand before she could begin the all the reasons why it couldn’t be a Seraphim. It was the police chief. She accepted the call pressing the speaker button.
“They got him!” Gregory said exuberated.
“Yes!” Bill said from the driver’s seat.
“Not exactly,” Gregory said. “He isn’t pulling over this time, but th
ey’ve got all cars responding to the chase. He’s still on interstate 80 headed west between Cheyenne and Buford.”
“He’s coming straight to us,” Bill said, whipping the car back onto the interstate.
“Thanks,” Susan spouted, before hanging up on Gregory. She head on to her seatbelt as she watched the needle on the speedometer zoom upwards of ninety, the interstate racing past. “Bill?” No reply from the driver’s seat. Her stomach clenched. “Bill!”
“What?” he asked, leaning closer to the steering wheel as if they weren’t going fast enough.
Susan began to see the haze of flashing blue lights on the horizon. Her nerves disappeared. “Faster,” she’d told Bill. Just as Gregory said, the chase was heading towards them in the opposing traffic lanes. On the other side of the median construction on the outside lane had the inside lane nearly bumper to bumper for the last quarter mile. The median between them and the chase was wide and Susan could see that it dipped in the middle. “What’s the plan?” she asked Bill. Their vehicle was only a two-wheel drive, and even if they could get across the median they didn’t have any stop sticks to aide in the chase.
The lights from all of the police cars grew brighter as they drew closer to the traffic steadily backing up from the road construction.
Bill slowed, and then without warning, he cut across the median. Susan grabbed for the handle on the roof above her door with both hands.