‘But why would she stop? If she got through the hedge, why not keep going?’ asked Tomlinson.
‘She was in a blind panic, hence jumping through the hedge. A clearer minded person would have ran around, and after she fell, she was probably just exhausted or doped up on fear and terror. She maybe hoped that her attacker would show mercy or wouldn't have kept coming.’
Lance looked around at the outskirts of the green park.
‘And who would run into Park Lane? It’s pretty much a dead end unless you work in any of these four buildings’. The four buildings all had access to the park, by way of a small path.
‘So, why come in here then?’ asked the Chief, who by now was wondering if Lance Marshall’s story held water.
‘Well, either she was from out of town, or she worked in either of these buildings?' Lance thought some more and moved around the body a second and now a third time.
‘What is it Detective?’ inquired the Chief.
‘Well, it's either one of two things. Either he did indeed move her but then you have to ask why. Or she moved and positioned herself this way.’
‘And why in the hell would she do that?’ asked the Chief.
‘Look at each of her limbs. They are all stretching out. They are pointing. All of her limbs point to the four buildings outside the park. I think she is telling us that there is some connection to one of these places.’
‘Four buildings,’ The Chief stretched his right hand out and pointed away towards all of the buildings.
‘The Hospital, The Police Department, The Church, and a Retirement Home. Are you going to go down that road again Marshall, investigating Cops? Jesus Christ, that's our department over there in case you didn't already know,’ Chief Edwards walked over to Lance and whispered to him. ‘Maybe shouting out at a crime scene that there are cops involved isn't the smartest move on your part.’
‘I'm not saying there is Chief, and I was saying it could be anyone from any of these buildings or it could be random. Either way, that's where the investigation should start.’ Marshall said.
The Chief looked Lance Marshall up and down and quietly figured that this is the easiest way to rid himself of the detective, once and for all. If Lance investigated cops again, there is no way that he would survive in the force. He would be blacklisted and for good this time.
Martin Edwards massaged his chin and weighed the big decision and his options up. He had to allow Marshall to trip himself up, and it was the only way that he could win.
‘Ok then Lance, the case is yours, on a few conditions,’
He eye-balled the detective who stood to the side of him, and he viewed him through the corner of his eye.
‘One, you keep me in the loop with where you are taking this. Two, you do things by the book, and that means working with other detectives. Three, you use the full recording facility in the interviews you conduct, and that's an order. And four, if you even think about naming suspects from the station, you better have something concrete, or I will have your badge.’
Lance looked around at the crime scene investigators who by now, we're finally starting to do their job, and were unfurling yellow tape around the areas of importance. What the Chief had said, made sense.
‘Sure thing Chief, I can play along.’
‘Oh and just one more thing Marshall. Why are you even getting involved? It’s not like you have taken the lead on any other case recently.’
The detective smiled and replied. ‘I don't know Chief. I just wanted to prove your chicken shit theory wrong.’ He laughed at his police Chief, who promptly replied.
‘Fuck you, Marshall.’
With that, the Chief of Police began to walk towards the gate of Park Lane that led to the station house. His new toy, Tomlinson was on his heels and knew to be quiet as the Chief walked along, swearing loudly. The reckless detective’s day would soon be at an end, thought Edwards. He had just given Marshall enough rope, to ruin his career entirely.
Lance Marshall watched his Chief depart and hoped that he hadn't taken a case on just out of spite. Marshall looked at the face of Annie-Ann and felt that old familiar feeling, returning like a wave upon cragged rocks. Marshall took the soft piece of material from his pocket and looked closely at it. It was blood red, and felt like silk to touch, but it was immaculately clean. Something about the way it lay, undisturbed, had stood out, and drawn the Detective’s attention towards it.
He was going to do some proper police work, and try to find out who had hurt Annie-Ann. He looked at her pale skin and beautiful face, and figured her to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He just had all the wrong luck in life.
Like Annie-Ann.
It hadn’t always been this way for Lance Marshall.
He wore the seen it all, bought the T-shirt, and now, go fuck yourself, kind of expression like he was in the middle of patenting it. Deep down inside of him, he retained that urge to go back to his college football days. He wanted to step up to the forty-yard line once again and take that one and last, over-time throw to the wide receiver of the Columbus University football team.
Back when life meant something.
SAND AND BABIES
It was July 1990, and Iraq was threatening to invade Kuwait. New Kids on the Block had just released the hit song, Step by Step, and every boy in the country secretly wished that they were one of the band members. The tough jocks all wanted to be Donnie Wahlberg, and the sensitive boys pretended to swoosh around like Jordan Knight. Jeans and leather were high fashion, and the Donnie's, Joey's, Jordan's, Jonathan's and Danny's of Columbus University were strutting their stuff around campus.
One of the Donnie wannabe's with his gelled and bouncy brown hair, bounded his way to a locker outside the gymnasium. He walked with his best friend, Pete Brandt. A blonde called out to him, but Pete turned around the quickest.
‘Hey cutie, are you just going to run by like that and not say hello?’ She joked.
‘Oh hey there Samantha, I’m late for practice. I didn’t see you there.’
‘Like shit you did, Lance Marshall,’ replied the girl.
Everyone noticed Samantha Hollandale. She was just twenty years old, and already she had developed into the hottest girl in school. She was five-foot-six of California dreaming and had inherited her Swedish mother's blonde hair.
‘You noticed alright, and I don't mind.’ Said Samantha, as she twirled some blonde hair in her fingers and bit her upper lip seductively at Lance.
She noticed Lance too, every girl had. He was the star quarterback with the all-star looks that threw down as many touchdowns as straight A's.
Pete was sidelined, as happened with most girls that came by the pair on the corridors in school.
‘Well Samantha, I think we should go to the cinema later on. Coach doesn’t want us out late though. We have the all-state game on Friday.’
‘Sure thing Lance, I can have you home in bed before eleven,’ Samantha leaned into Lance's ear. ‘I just can't guarantee that it will be your bed.’ She backed her head away and looked at the quarterback with innocence personified.
‘Well I guess, we will have to see what happens then.’ replied Marshall.
Pete punched him hard in the shoulder, and the boys continued with their day. If ever he could describe a childhood sweetheart, then she would be it.
Lance had turned twenty-one by two months, on that day, that himself and Samantha went to the cinema to watch the movie, Ghost. The passion which encapsulated that movie, spread between the seats of the Odeon to every couple that took their place that night, and made its way back into the bedroom of Samantha Hollandale.
Lance would distastefully joke in the months ahead to come that his daughter’s conception was the result of a ghost who had taken his condom off. The truth was that he had not worn one. At twenty-one, it had not been the first thing he had thought about when Samantha had taken off her bra and shown Lance her full and tanned breasts.
Lanc
e was not to know that Samantha was pregnant when Columbus played that game on the Friday against Wellington Tech. His coach couldn’t bring himself to tell Lance that a scout from an NFL franchise was watching Lance specifically that night.
His cruciate ligament behind his right knee had ripped so badly that night that those spectators around the area where he fell, felt sickened by the cracking and popping sound from the young man's leg. Lance hit the ground and froze in white terror. The fans joined him in his shock, sitting silently as they watched him being carried away into the bowels of the stadium. Pete Brandt was there, throughout, and helped Lance as he recovered from injury.
For honesty’s sake, Lance’s life changed that night on the pitch. Without Football, he gave up on sports and soon after on his academic career. He joined the army with Pete, not long after his final college football game, and never looked back.
The Marshalls continued to live in peace and relative calm, until the morning of the twenty-ninth of April 1990 when Emma Marshall-Hollandale was born.
The relationship between Lance and Samantha had strained and relaxed over the nine months of pregnancy like molten metal, hardening without moving a budge and then flowing like water. Samantha watched as her belly grew and her boobs stretched beyond what she thought looked sexy.
Her friends gave up on hanging around her in places like the mall when she referred to herself in the earshot of others as ‘a sweaty, fat, fuckin' whale.' Lance, however, would take it in turns in going over her bump and freaking out Pete, when he asked him the one question that his twenty-one-year-old mind did not know how to answer.
‘Dude, what are you gonna do if your baby shits its pants? You know, you are the one that’s going to have to clean it.’
Pete suddenly didn't envy Lance as much as he once did.
All Lance's fears were soon dispelled as he cradled the pink-faced, blue-eyed daughter in his arms for the first time. He realized that not only would he be happy to clean that poop, but he would crawl through sandy deserts and smash through walls to do it. And he did, throughout the second Gulf War.
Lance had finally found some purpose in his life, other than throwing footballs, drinking beer and scoring girls.
Samantha spent the next few years in a mild depression. She liked Lance and loved the sex they still had, even though it was fearful and baby preventative. Sam was not beyond stopping Lance mid-thrust to check his condom. Soon enough though, the tears in that passion turned into rips that went through their lives.
Lance loved Emma but was not so sure anymore about her mother being a lover and a partner for life. The couples were good parents but lousy soul-mates, and in the spring of 1994, as the football World Cup came to the United States, Lance and Samantha began their first trial separation.
It was after that third separation attempt after the love of sex had driven them back together again, that Lance met another woman, a bar waitress. Jackie Esco not only took her tips home that night, the Nigerian born waitress, took Lance too.
From there began a type of tit-for-tat sexual deviant relationship for both Lance and Samantha, that would eventually tear them apart. They both upped the ante to make each other jealous and force someone's hand into telling the other how they felt. Lance in truth, made most of his conquests up and lied to annoy the mother of his child and he was reasonably sure that she did the same.
It was one episode of the tit-for-tat, which now sprang to the forty-five-year-old detective’s mind, as he began to wonder, where would he open his investigation?
He now remembered, back to the winter of 2002 and he had just arrived at Samantha's place after dropping Emma to Sam's mother's home to spend the night. The part-time couple engaged in passionate love-making, before collapsing under one another, asking dumb questions and making each other laugh.
Lance took that this as an opportunity for a post-coital game of truth or dare, so he made up a story of how he got off in a clothing changing rooms from a woman who was fitting him for a suit. It sounded absurd and untrue, but Lance thought maybe that it was the idea, the fantasy.
Samantha told Lance of her story of the man named Sean that she was with briefly, and there and then it seemed like that is all it was, just pure fantasy. She mentioned a similarly very public place and the fear of being caught, which was also the taboo that thrilled in both of their tales. They joked and teased each other and forgot about it all soon after.
Lance now stood outside that very place, at the doors of St. Michael's Cathedral in Metro City, one of the buildings from which Park Lane, could be accessed from, and the very structure that Annie-Ann Richards had been running from.
He took a deep breath, as the doors to the cathedral opened and the priest’s housekeeper peered his head out.
‘Hello, can I help you?’ asked a small, elderly Latino man.
‘Yes, I’m Detective Marshall,’ said Lance, showing his badge. ‘I would like to speak with the Padre, please. It will only take a second.’ Lance wondered was Samantha's story one of just pure fiction and as he now said the name of the man, out-loud to the emissary, who now paused in the doorway. He prayed in the awning that it was not true.’
‘Tell Father Sean O’Driscoll, that Lance Marshall is here.’
HOLY DOORS
Saturday, 2pm.
Lance walked through the sizeable ten-foot oak doors and saw the young priest standing awkwardly at the foot of the altar, anticipating his arrival. He looked fresh from saying mass and seemed to have been on some massive come down from addressing the masses and being the focal point of attention.
The thirty-five-year-old handsome messenger of God was drawing exceedingly large crowds to his masses. The edge of each pew had been lined with candles, and the inner sanctum of the church was silent, only for the fluttering of some flames.
Lance Marshall walked very deliberately through the middle of the center aisle to unnerve the priest. He thought of quenching a single flame with his fingers to signify some approaching evil, but even that was too dramatic for Lance. So he settled on making sure that his coat fluttered slightly as his arms moved back and forth by his side.
Father O’Driscoll was the first to break the solemn silence as Lance neared to within a few feet.
‘Now Mr. Marshall, this is a house of God, and no violence will be tolerated within its walls. I am not afraid of you.’ He spoke through cracked and quivering lips.
‘Father, my business here is strictly professional, I only wish the same conduct could be extended from within these walls to certain parishioners.’ Lance replied, goading the priest.
‘Well Mr. Marshall, maybe it would be best if we spoke then in a more private setting.’ Father O'Driscoll turned to his housekeeper and friend.
‘Jose, if you could see to leave yourself out, I would be most grateful.’ The elderly man looked to the priest and shrugged his shoulders, as he could not fully comply with the instructions.
‘Padre, I must say that I cannot, I must tend to the pews and prepare for mass. This I cannot do.’
The priest knew he would not dissuade his dark-haired friend so he instead motioned Lance to one spot where he knew they would not be disturbed. This place was where he could feel safe while talking to the detective but also somewhere where the awkwardness between the two men was born.
‘Detective,’ said the priest pointing across to a room in the left-hand corner of the chapel. ‘I think we can have some privacy over here.’
Lance stood open-mouthed as the priest walked past him and onwards to the place of sanctuary and peace.
‘You gotta be shitting me.’ whispered Lance.
He instantly regretted taking on this case.
The two men took their places in the confessional box and sat side by side with each other, neither looking ahead. Lances mind was a mess, and it was the first question he could think of. He needed to know, and he needed to ask to settle his account.
‘Is this where you banged my wife, Sean? Tell me it wasn't
in this exact confessional?’
‘Lance, I would rather not talk about things like this. Now you said that you had police business to talk with me.’
‘Jesus, Sean, in the confessional? You utter slimy bastard. I should go next door and kick your ass.’ Lance prepared to bust through the panel.
Father O’Driscoll faced his demon between the screen and pleaded.
‘Now Lance, the Bible teaches us of forgiveness.’
He was visibly shaking now and was beginning to feel his bladder and sphincter loosen considerably.
Lance sat with his hands in his balded head and kicked himself. The concept of his marriage had been over for a couple of years, and both had slept with other people in this time. Lance had been feeling defeated in regards to Samantha for quite some time but to come face to face with one of her one night stands was a whole different matter.
‘Tell me, Padre, was she good?’ Asked Lance, as he sat back against the wooden boards and rubbed his eyes. His mind was working into overtime about the permutations and combinations. Was it doggy? Did he take her rough because he had all of that pent up sexual denial?
‘Fuck!’ screamed out Lance. He reached inside of his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, hoping it would settle the images in his mind into something less visual.
‘Lance, you can’t smoke in here.’
‘Fuck you, Sean.' Lance said as he lit one up. There was no way anyone was stopping this cigarette. It was medicinal after all he had been through in his mind's eye. The priest relented and asked the detective as to his purpose of the visit.
‘So, what did you want to see me about Lance?’
Lance rubbed his brow, took a deep breath and blew it out succinctly.
‘You hear anything about the murder in the park?’
‘Well, yes, of course, some parishioners were talking about it this morning. The poor girl, I didn't know of her.’
Father Sean was happy that the conversation had changed the tone but wondered if the detective expected him to divulge confessional box secrets. In the circumstances, though of whom he was talking to, he felt it best not to mention confessional box privileges.
Marshall Law Page 2