‘As I am sure that you are all aware of now, there has been a third killing in the Park. The victim is presumed to be a male, but as of yet, there has not been a positive ID of the body,’
He paused, reading the room.
‘There is a killer out there, and he is taunting each and every one of us. We have to assume that the killer is not operating alone. He has infiltrated, almost every surrounding building and gateway that leads out onto the Park. He knows everything about how we operate, and he is laughing at all of us. Make no mistake, these killings are happening on our watch,'
Heads bowed, and pride was being swallowed.
‘If you thought, that the responsibility of finding this killer was solely on my shoulders, then you are wrong. If you dislike me, then bring me a suspect and make me look like an idiot for not bringing the same one to you,’
Heads raised.
‘If you don’t like my work, then work the scene yourself and make me look like an idiot,’
That received a smattering of laughter.
‘Most of you interviewed and questioned potential witnesses, under the supervision of Detective’s Johnson and Brandt. How many followed up this morning with Johnson and Brandt?’
Pete held up a fist, made into a big zero.
‘None. That’s right. Because it’s all on me, right? Fuck me, that’s right?’
Louder laughs now.
‘Fuck Sean O’Riordan, or his son, or the Richard’s family,’
Everyone went quiet.
‘Because when you fail this case and your procedures, you are not touching me. My career is over, no matter what. The Chief has his big eye on me, and I am done, I know it. But don't fail these victims.’
Lance Marshall looked the assembled Police Men and Women in the eye and noticed that he couldn't see Officer Tomlinson among them.
‘When you all, throughout your career, can look back and say that you followed the evidence, wherever it went, then come and stand in my position,’
Lance had gripped the podium with one hand and had clenched a fist with the other, sticking out a finger, but was pointing at no one in particular.
‘I believe in God, but I will not hesitate to go inside the House of God and question someone about a murder. I believe in law and order of Metro City, and in the sanctity of this building, but I will not hesitate, not for a second, to question every single one of you, 'Lindsay Dawn sat back and remembered this version of Lance from many years back, before Cop on Cop.
‘So get back out there. Shake your trees and question the Goddamn cat that falls out of it. But bring me some suspects. Briefing over. Dismissed.’
People stood, some making noise by kicking some chairs back, while others quietly filed outside. They moved, and the tension walked with them, murmuring and looking at one another, like horses at the coral. Lindsay and Pete got up and walked to the top of the room.
‘What, no one left any apples for the teacher?'
Brandt excoriated Lance for the lecture.‘I just needed them to know that it’s their futures that are on the line, not mine.’
Pete didn’t say anything else. He knew what everybody’s opinions had been of Lance.
‘So what now? Hopefully, you stirred the storm in the ground crew to bring in some suspects, but after that?'
Lindsay was right down to the facts, and it didn’t look good, with another body for the morgue.
‘I need you back in the Park, Lindsay, trying to find out how the victim gained entry. He didn't just materialize out of thin air.’
Brandt asked, ‘And what about me?’
‘I am going to the hospital myself to ask some questions. It is the tallest building and has more vantage points on the Park. It has to hold the key to cracking this thing. Ed will be with me for the morning. I need you in here, keeping an ear on things. I need to know when O’Riordan and his mob are on the march.’
‘Keep in touch?’ Lindsay asked of Lance.
‘Emails, like we always do. Keep a record of everything. Oh and Lindsay, keep an eye out for Tomlinson. We don’t want him in the wind, causing us any more troubles.’
Lance walked away, but what Lindsay had just said, kept repeating on him. The missed calls that he didn’t get and the emails that people were not receiving. There were bugs in the system and a devil on the street.
MEAT ON THE BONE
The Angel of Mercy Medical Centre, was a hospital, by any other means, but it hasn't always been. Concerning real estate, everything that surrounded the Park, had been built much more recently, and the more recent of all had been the hospital.
It had begun its life, as a collection of stately homes, Georgian in appearance, but very different from each other inside. Over the years, before 1940, the buildings had flourished and become the central point for a very well established and upper-class Metro City party scene. After the war, however, things changed. The owners had allied themselves with interests that were anything but American, and as the war ended, in 1945, the bourgeois elite of the area, came to find themselves ostracised from the rest of the flag-waving City. The house began to see itself more or less abandoned, and none had seemed willing or able to buy it in the leaner years that followed. The City eventually purchased the property, through a highly complicated lease agreement, for a pittance, hopeful to sell it on again, but after the war years, felt so cash strapped, that minor repairs were left unseen too, and eventually led to the significant degradation in the structure of the building itself.
Various parties stepped in and attempted to revive the area and the building and a brief resurgence in the late 1980’s, led to the entire building being destroyed and built back up again by a Hotel chain, eager to make a profit in a weak market.
The old facade, once facing onto the Park, was turned around completely, and every window was then taken out.
The rooms had then been gutted, and converted into much smaller spaces, with en-suite bathrooms for each bedroom. The downstairs kitchen was completely ripped out and replaced, like for like, with much more modern equipment, and drainage systems. To add the front of house reception, a series of back offices were then connected, by demolishing the interior plasterboard walls and making it appear like one large floor space. To complete the immense task, the entire ground floor and exterior, at the old rear of the building was gutted, making way for a glorious front entrance.
The Hotel chain, feeling rightly proud of their achievement, opened its doors on the fifth of February, 1992, and watched as the people walked on by, almost trampling themselves to get the building away from their collective eye-lines. The area had long since changed, since the time of the upper class partying days of the 1930s, and the locals now only remembered the rumors that swirled around and were passed down of how they all had secretly embraced the ways of the Nazi party.
The Hotel saw three exceptionally lean years before calling it quits and selling the building back to the City, who remembering the complicated lease, decided to turn the unhelpful inheritance into an opportunity and turned the building over to the healthcare authority, charging a rent, which would eventually allow them to break even.
The community embraced the Angel of Mercy Medical Centre, no thanks in small part to a smart naming strategy, and the building remained unchanged until now. The only aspect of the structure, which hadn't changed in over sixty years, was the small gate that stood at the back, at the entrance to the Park.
Detective Lance Marshall climbed over the two-foot high gate and walked towards the hospital, eager to find out more.
It was an entrance, much like the Police Station had, and the Church, but very different from the Nursing Home.
Here, everything was open and accessible.
Lindsay Dawn was speaking to the Cops all around the entrance and James McIntosh, the CSI, was dusting everything for prints, except but the birds in the trees.
‘Any luck with the body yet?’
Lance asked, pointing towards a big blue tent that had b
een placed around the remains of the third body.
‘Won’t be anything for a while I should think. Bit of a mess there, at the moment. Lots of blood, massive impact injuries. The body is sitting in a crater. It’s like they just fell from the sky.’
‘Do you think anything came through here?’ asked Lance of James McIntosh.
‘There are a few prints about, probably of our own crew, but I cannot see anything more recent than that,’
McIntosh looked up from the ground.
‘I cross-matched footprints with any partials that I might have come across, and nothing came up.'
‘Who owned the prints?’
‘I got a list of a couple of people who have been inside the Park in the time frames before the murders, from Ed Johnson. They were mostly family members of people who had been visiting the mortuary. But I just found out now, that one came back as a staff member.’
Lance was glad that someone seemed to be working.
‘A Doctor?’
McIntosh seemed surprised.
‘Yes, a Dr. Rahham. How could you possibly have guessed that? I only just received the call.’
‘That’s the kind of luck that I am having Mc.’
Lance walked towards the door that everyone would have had to pass through. It was typical, he thought, that potentially his biggest lead seemed to be out of the country
The door ahead was old and made of a thick Oak, and it had large black bars placed across it, but blended into the wood and it made the door look like it had been put together over a century ago. There was no way that the murderer had forced this door.
Marshall clenched a fist and banged hard upon the big door. The door groaned from within, and while being opened, a small head appeared at the height of the keyhole and stared out.
‘Can I help you?' A voice spoke in clear tones but covered in shadow and base.
Lance moved closer, seeing the person more clearly now. He wore small and very particular spectacles and seemed very affected by the light.
‘My name is Detective Lance Marshall, and I need to speak to you, about who comes and goes into this Park, through that gate.'
‘Come in.’ he said, and opened the door just a touch more, to allow another person to pass the threshold alongside where he now stood.
Lance walked through but found his vision trying to adjust to a pitch blackness beyond the door.
‘Can you turn on a light please?’
The small man firmly closed the door and shut out any remaining faint light, and then quickly passed Lance, brushing him as he did so.
‘The lights, now.’ Lance ordered.
‘Just a moment.’ The voice spoke, now further away, and moving, by the sounds of the carry of his small steps.
Lance placed a hand on his Glock and drew it, leaving it by his side, but sidestepping, away from the door, but hopefully to a wall, where nothing could come up behind him. He hushed a shout from within himself and tried to creep, attempting not to give away his position.
What seemed like a bucket but felt like a bomb, dropped in the corner and caused Lance to raise his gun, and almost set a bullet into the darkness to search for his captor.
The lights came on, and Lance saw to his right, his immediate reason, the spectacled man, standing close enough to strike at him. He raised his hands but moved his head closer to the weapon.
‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot.’ He said, in rapid succession.
Lance saw how much that he had frightened the man, and holstered his weapon. He was paid to analyze threats, and there was no threat here.
The little man, frail and old, shook from the knees and blinked excessively at the bullet he expected to be fired at him. He coiled up, bringing a knee to his hip and whimpered.
‘Easy. I’m not going to shoot. Relax,’ Marshall opened out his palms.
The little man stayed coiled into a standing ball, but opened his eyes from time to time.
‘Relax, I’m not going to hurt you. There is a killer on the loose ok? You had me worried.’
The man dropped his leg and arms and opened his eyes.
‘A killer?’
Lance looked into his eyes and wondered if the old man knew of anything of what went on beyond the walls of this mortuary.
He sat the man down at a table at the edge of the now lit room and told him everything.
The room was ample space, with two closed doors on the East and West Walls, and a small table by the door by which Lance had come through. Beside the table, lay a large stick that looked like a shotgun. Marshall looked at it, and then at Alfie.
‘I have a licence for it. Don’t worry about that. Only keep it for emergencies, and it’s never loaded. I don’t even think it’s real.’
Marshall looked at Alfie, and again at the weapon and figured that it looked plenty real.
The men sat at the larger desk, which ran alongside a portion of the Western Wall. Two doors, with two unknowns behind them, and it was where Lance kept all of his attention, even as he talked.
As it turned out, the evil killer in the mortuary had turned out to be octogenarian, Alfie Simmons, who was entirely blind without his very thin-rimmed, but thick eyepiece glasses. They looked too heavy in the center, and he often adjusted them, as though they were burdensome upon his slender face. He sat in silence, as he contemplated the loss of three lives, seemingly unknown to him.
‘I don’t think that I have ever met someone by those names Detective. I would remember.’
Lance had no doubt that he would have, but never the less tested him.
‘What about the people who last accessed the Park in the last few days? Do you remember who they were?’
Alfie looked away for a moment, thinking, and then turned back.
‘One was a parent, a father, who had come to pay his last respects to his son before he was made ready, and the other was an Aunt, of a different man.'
‘Made ready?’
‘When a patient dies in the hospital, we bring them here, to sometimes dress them in their suit, or a dress, or sometimes to hold the body, while the family decides what they want to do.’
He looked humble, as if anyone could do the job that he did.
‘What else can the family do?’ Lance wondered, and thought about the family members of those two deceased men. Could they be suspects?
‘Some prefer to bring the bodies to their own funeral person, or others have wished to bring the body home before a funeral. It all depends.’
‘Do you have many other people that work with you, Alfie?’
He looked around.
‘Just myself, and two secretaries and the hospital attendants, who help to transport the bodies to the mortuary.’
‘And in the past few days, who has had access to this door, apart from you and those secretaries?’
‘Nobody. I have been here on my own. I alone hold the key to that door, and I alone decide who goes out for moments of reflection. People are not permitted to just walk out on a whim, Detective.’
Lance leaned forwards.
‘And Dr. Rahham? Who gives the Dr’s permission?’
‘I do. The Doc was inconsolable after the death of a patient, the young man, whose father had accessed the Park at the same time.’
‘So, they went together?’
Alfie sat forwards.
‘Of course. And I saw them for the entire time, they never walked far beyond the gate.’
Lance looked pensive.
‘Detective. I know what you are thinking and let me tell you, the Dr. is a good person. They all are. They care enough to be here, and that tells me everything.’
Lance saw in Alfie Simmons eyes, an understanding that comes from being around death. For sure, it was the best alibi that Dr. Rahham would ever have, and for the moment, Lance ruled him out.
‘Does anyone sign in or out, when they access the Park?’
‘Of course. I do everything by the book, so to speak.’
Alfie
stood up and began lifting papers from papers and books from on top of books. He raised a stack of pages, and caused another pile to topple over.
‘Look, just get one of your secretaries to copy the entries from the last few days and send it over to the precinct, marked for my attention only.’
The head of the mortuary nodded and then relaxed, appearing to enjoy the relaxed nature of the request.
‘That’s no problem Detective, Alice, my usual secretary will send that over later today.’
Lance thanked the man and made to walk towards the door at the West wall when he was held back.
‘That is the door to an extraordinary room, where the bodies are kept. I am afraid that you are not permitted to enter that room.’
Lance noticed a real feeling of sincerity in the eyes of Alfie and turned towards the East wall. Opening the door, he turned back to the man who stood, away from him, and towards the desk once more.
‘I beg your pardon Alfie, but should you not have retired yet?’
He took no offense in what the Detective said.
‘Retirement? And do what, exactly?’
Lance was smiling.
‘Like to sit on the beach, play some chess, go to some museums, ya know? Like retirement.’
‘Could you do any of those things Detective?’
Lance looked through the door, and then back again towards Alife.
‘The only thing that I am good at is what I'm doing, right now.'
‘And in a City this big, I am the only person who wants to be here, staying with the dead, before they go on. What do you think that says, Detective?'
‘That you are the best at what you do Alfie, and I for one, am glad that you are here doing it.’
Lance closed the door and wondered if there was still hope for Metro City, that only one man was so comfortable being around dead bodies.
DEAD ENDS
Lance walked around five corners, left and then right, and then right again, that he felt assured, that if it came to it, he would not be able to find his way back to the mortuary. He climbed small stairs and went out onto a bustling Hospital lobby. Looking around, he noticed no other Cops, apart from the one that he was sure, should be on the front door, that he walked to the front desk, unbothered.
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