Reynolds and Muffley both laughed.
"Come on psycho," Muffley said. "Let's go."
Muffley and the two uniformed officers led John Avellanos past the Dungeon's main cell block through the first security checkpoint, and up one flight of stairs. He scanned Avellanos's fingerprints, and told him to put his eyes up to the retinal scanner, after which he, Mitty, and Reynolds submitted themselves to the same process. The desk sergeant unlocked the door behind him and the three men proceeded into the long, almost always-deserted corridor that ran the entire first level of the basement from the north side of the Reagan Center to the south. The dust was palpable. They continued until they came to an impressive looking pair of wooden doors. Avellanos looked up at the Entrance and Exit sign, and noticed that one of the bulbs had gone out, leaving only the word "entrance" lit up in red. Muffley pushed him to the side and opened the doors, stirring up another cloud of dust that made Mitty go into a fit of coughing. The four men walked into the old courtroom, an impressive old place that, with its high, judge's chair, rows of wooden benches, and dusty marble floor gave a strong impression of the "majesty" of the law. They paused. That's when they heard the blood-curdling scream. Dan Grossinger, who had been hiding behind one of the benches, rushed at Avellanos, but he was pushed back by Mitty and Reynolds.
"Murderer," he screamed. "You fucking murderer."
Grossinger made a second rush at Avellanos. Mitty pushed him back. Reynolds made an attempt to grab him and restrain him, but he broke his grip and ran out of the old courtroom. Mitty brushed himself off while Reynolds made a move to pursue Grossinger into the hallway and arrest him, but Muffley restrained him.
"Don't worry about him," Muffley said. "He's only a little upset."
Reynolds laughed.
"A little upset. That's the understatement of the year. So what now, do we take the prisoner back to The Dungeon?"
"I doubt he knows about the holding cells in back of the archives," Muffley said, "and even if he does, nobody's getting down there anyway."
"Who was that?" Mitty said.
"That," Avellanos said, laughing bitterly, "was Dan Grossinger. Poison Springs finest investigative reporter."
"Maniac recognizes a fellow maniac," Muffley said. "Danny's always been a little excitable."
Muffley walked over and opened a plain wooden door behind the judge's chair. He indicated that Mitty and Reynolds should bring Avellanos inside what turned out to be a large vestibule with a big metal desk. On the other side of the vestibule, was a heavy, almost impregnable steel gate, the entrance to another long hallway that lead to the archives and the old holding cells.
"Would you look at that," Reynolds said. "I thought it was a closet."
Muffley took out his keys, and opened the steel gate. He indicated to Reynolds that he should take Avellanos into the hallway. Then he turned around and pulled the chair out from under the desk.
"Officer Mitty. This is security station one, your post. Make yourself comfortable. If Mr. Grossinger comes back, and somehow finds his way in here, you have my permission to arrest him."
He put a single key and a long sheet of paper on the desk.
"That is your key to this gate. In the unlikely event a mob comes through that door, just go inside, lock the gate behind you and call for backup."
"What's the list?" Mitty said, examining the long sheet of paper. "Who are these people?"
"That's a list of authorized visitors, the public defender, psychiatric professionals, and clergy. Paul Deneen should be here at six to relieve you. Pass on the key and list. There's only one of each. You don't have keys to the holding cells. Reynolds will not have keys to the gate."
"Safer that way I guess."
"You've got it. See you later."
"See you later Pete."
Muffley closed the gate behind him, and caught up to Reynolds and Avellanos. He led them down the hallway, stopping at a door on the right with a sign that said "Archives." Ahead, at the far end of the hallway, there was another heavy door with a window admitting a small amount of sunlight. Avellanos pointed.
"Where does that door lead?"
"Out to the street and 100,000 angry rednecks."
Avellanos ran ahead, sprinting up to the door, pressing his face to the iron grating.
Muffley laughed.
"Forget about it," he called out after Avellanos. "Godzilla couldn't break that door down."
Reynolds followed Avellanos, put his hand on his arm, and marched him back down to the entrance to the old Archives.
"I did see the sun."
"Last time," Muffley said. "In 50 years you'll still be dreaming about it."
Muffley opened a door across from the archives, and led Avellanos and Reynolds down a flight of stairs. There was a dank, musty smell, and a sweet sickly quality to the air. The only light was a dim fluorescent lamp high above on the ceiling. He led Avellanos and Reynolds down another staircase. When he turned the light on, it revealed a desk, with two big centipedes on top. They waived their legs at the three men before they scurried under the chair and out of danger.
"What is this place?" Avellanos said involuntarily. "Does anybody even know about it?"
"This is where we keep maniacs like you," Muffley said. "Officer Reynolds," he added, putting another long sheet of paper and a pair of keys on the desk. "This is security station two. Make yourself at home while I take psycho downstairs.
Reynolds pulled out the chair and sat down behind the desk. Muffley opened another heavy door, and motioned to Avellanos that he should walk. He pushed him down yet another flight of stairs, almost stepping on a dead rat along the way, opened another heavy steel door, and led him into a completely vacant bank of 4 cells. He uncuffed Avellanos, pushed him inside the smallest cell, and locked the door.
"Welcome to your new home."
"What is this place?" Avellanos repeated involuntarily, genuinely frightened by the grim, and isolated nature of the cell block. "There's no air in here."
He noticed a rat peek its head out of a hole near the floorboards, then tore the sheets off the hard, wooden bunk and stuffed them down inside. He stepped on two centipedes, and a cockroach.
"Jesus Christ," he said, violently patting himself down. "What is this place?"
Muffley laughed. He was happy.
"Don't kill your cellmates," he said. "You might get lonely. Maybe if you're a good boy I'll get you some clean sheets. Now let me ask you one more time. Do you want a lawyer?"
"Why?" Avellanos said, sitting down on the bunk after he recovered his composure. "I told you I did it all. I killed Quinn. I killed Cathy Chegoffgan. I killed the homeless guy. Get out your cell phone out and record this if you want. I, John Avellanos, being of sound mind and body, killed Steven Quinn. I killed Cathy Chegoffgan. I killed Andy Jackson the homeless man. I would have killed Michael Catalinelli if that undercover cop hadn't stopped me. So why not just strap me in the chair and fry me already?"
"They never use the death penalty in this state," Muffley said, "so you, young man, are getting life, and in a place much worse than this. Remember when I said you're never going to see the sun again? Do you believe me now? In 50 years, you're going to look back at this cell, those cockroaches, that rat, and those centipedes with fond, dreamy nostalgia. So enjoy it while it lasts. Who knows though? Maybe a good lawyer could get the judge to show some mercy. Maybe you'll get an hour a day out in the yard for exercise. One more time, do you want the public defender?"
"No."
"Too bad. He's on the list of visitors."
"I'll kill him too if he comes in here."
"Suit yourself," Muffley said. "See you later psycho."
Muffley opened the heavy steel door, went outside, locked it behind him, and walked back up the stairs. Reynolds had already made himself at home at the security desk.
"I filled Mitty in earlier," he said. "The goal is to keep maniac in there alive. You are to mistrust your fellow police officers as much as you are to
distrust members of the general public. The press, needless to say, is to be kept out, but after that little incident in the old courtroom, I don't think that will take much explaining."
Reynolds nodded.
"I mean it," Muffley said. "You, me, Mitty, Donahue, Carter, Pagnetti, and Deneen. We're not only maniac's jailers. We're his bodyguards. Psycho gets killed, a cop gets in here and exacts a little revenge, if that mob gets to him, that's the end of your career and it's the end of mine. So if you want off the detail, if you feel as you're going to have any trouble protecting a cop killer, tell me now."
"I'm good sir. You can't pick and choose which laws you're going to enforce.
Muffley checked the time on his cell phone.
"Donahue will be here at 6 to replace you. He will bring psycho's meal. You will bring the next meal when you come to replace him tomorrow. All of psycho's meals will be prepackaged, by me personally, so don't worry about the details."
He put his finger down on the sheet of paper.
"Here's the list of authorized visitors, the public defender, psychiatric professionals, and clergy."
"Clergy? A rabbi?"
"The rabbi's actually a shrink, so is one of the nuns. Maniac wrote for a communist paper in college. His father in Mexico City's a hard core Bible thumper. He founded the 'Cristero Institute for the Protection of the Unborn.' Maniac's going to hate all that clergy more than water boarding."
"I never cease to be impressed with the level of evil your mind is capable of," Reynolds said, the puzzled expression on his face erupting into a smile. "I want to be just like you when I grow up."
Muffley chuckled.
"Make sure psycho gets no reading material. We want him stewing in his own juices for a couple of days. Oh, and get this. The nun is named Sister Mary Elizabeth McCarthy of The Sisters of the Assumption Preparatory Academy. She knew Cathy Chegoffgan when she was a little girl. How's that for a mind fuck? Maniac's going to be howling at the moon before we're done with him. If he's not telling us anything now, we'll know in a few days."
He opened the door to the stairwell.
"See you tomorrow Pete."
"See you tomorrow."
Muffley walked up the stairs, then back out into the hallway past the archives. He opened the heavy steel gate, nodded to Mitty, and walked out into the old courtroom. He looked around warily for any sign of Grossinger, then continued through the door into the main hallway back in the direction of The Dungeon and police headquarters. He was in a good mood. In only one day he had gone from being a goat only a step away from getting fired to the lead detective on the most high profile murder case in the history of Poison Springs.
Chapter 50 - Hidden In Plain Sight
The sun had risen over East Poison Springs and Scahentoarrhonon Station. The youthful looking nun, sitting on one of the benches near the fountain, looked up at the clock tower over City Hall, and counted off the bells, tapping her foot subconsciously for each time they rang. She looked around. Even at 9 in the morning, the crowd was already twice as large as it had been the day before. She picked up her copy of the Winterborn Daily Post off her lap, and looked at the front page. There were three photos, the ever present photo of Cathy Chegoffgan at age 11 in the left corner and the ubiquitous and unflattering photo of John Avellanos, both of which made her frown. The main photo, however, made her laugh.
It was the photo Dan Grossinger had taken the week before, Michael Catalinelli holding up the photo of himself as a young man with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
"Hidden in Plain Sight," the title read, "The Secret Liberalism of Mayor Michael Catalinelli."
She began to read.
“Dan Grossinger," she said to herself, noticing the name of the writer. "That's the guy I met yesterday."
The young woman elbowed the person to the right and left of her in order to allow herself more room, then looked up at the fountain. The two waterspouts, shut down until the spring, glistened in the crisp, fall sun. She looked back down at the photos for a few seconds, then turned the page and started to read.
"The truth isn't out there. You don't have to look for it. You don't have to seek it. The truth is always hidden in plain sight. Nowhere is that more true than right here in Poison Springs. The last few days in this town have indeed been harrowing. It began with the death of the kind of man most of us rarely notice, or care about. Last week, Andy Jackson, a homeless veteran of the Gulf War, was murdered in the River Gardens section of town. Nobody paid much attention, partly because his body was burned beyond recognition, but also partly because we rarely notice what is hidden in plain sight."
"It turned out that Mr. Jackson had a secret about the son of a very prominent Poison Springs family. That son was not a son, but a cousin, not an all American veteran of the Iraq War, but a communist and a drug dealer, an invader from a foreign country who crossed our borders illegally. Because of his fluent English and Anglo Saxon appearance (so much for the idea that enforcing our immigration laws is racist), he played everybody he met like a violin. It was a deadly violin solo that ended in three deaths."
"As this writer has warned repeatedly, the liberal press refused to properly vet Elizabeth Felton and her connection to her aunt, Laura Felton, a woman presumed dead in the 1970s, but one who actually lived underground for decades. It took Steve Quinn, a decorated Poison Springs Metro Police officer to uncover the real truth. For that he died. The monster, fearing that Detective Quinn would point out the dark wings of death hovering above our town, snuffed out first the life of the brave detective, and then of the innocent girl who saw those same dark wings and was about to point into the sky and shout 'look.'"
"It is painful for this writer to admit, but Michael Catalinelli is not what he appears to be. At heart Michael Catalinelli is a good man, but he is no true conservative. Rather, he is a painfully naive opportunist who values his career above all things. Mayor Catalinelli's newfound celebrity has gone to his head. He is a physically brave man. But our Mayor is now looking beyond Poison Springs back to the time when he was a promising young liberal politician. For years, Michael Catalinelli was content to be the mayor of our dirty little city, to enforce our immigration laws, to keep down the cost of what would have otherwise been runaway government spending, but now he is once again looking at bigger things, senator, governor, president. He is willing to play ball with the big guys in Washington and their rich friends in other countries."
"We believe that Mayor Catalinelli is actively conspiring with the liberal administration in Washington to sneak the murderer John Avellanos out of Poison Springs into Federal Custody. If you doubt me, then ask yourself the following question: Why hasn't John Avellanos been indicted? Why has he been moved from the dungeon to a luxurious suite of rooms in another part of The Reagan Center? Why have undercover police officers from New York and Philadelphia taken up positions in and around Reagan Plaza to suppress the people of Poison Springs from exercising their constitutionally protected right to assemble."
"It is not this writer's job to tell you what to do, only to point out the truth, and to ask the right questions. What would our founding fathers have done? How would Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty have acted in the face of this kind of federal tyranny? Some may say this is sedition. So be it. If this is sedition, let us make the most of it. I know not what others may do. But as for me, give me justice, or give me death."
"Holy shit," the young woman said as she finished the article. "This town's going to go berserk."
She reached down and pulled a set of keys tied around her neck and held them in her hand.
"It might work," she said, clutching the keys. "Oh my fucking God it might work."
The young woman stood up. She put the keys back around her neck, then went over to the trashcan, threw the paper away, and walked up the path in the direction of City Hall, jostled by the crowd as she went along. There were now so many photos of Cathy Chegoffgan at the age of 11 that it was impossible to move three feet in any directi
on without seeing one. When she reached the sidewalk along Reagan Plaza West, two uniformed police officers pushed the crowd aside to let her go by.
"Let the sister go through," the first one said.
"There you go sister," the second added.
The young woman tried to walk up the steps but they were too crowded. She turned right, continued north on Reagan Plaza West, made a left turn onto Reagan Plaza North, and walked along the fence of the Poison Springs Metro Police parking lot, where the crowd began to thin out. She found herself alone in front of the gate. It was open. She looked inside. There were dozens of police cruisers. Further back, on the other side of the parking lot, 200 or so police officers wearing riot gear were drilling in a military formation. She took a very deep breath, and proceeded through the gate, walking briskly, head down, to the entrance that led to Poison Springs Metro Police Headquarters, expecting at any moment, to be challenged, and surprised that she didn't attract any notice. She walked inside, and continued briskly down the hallway. She stopped, circled around, and hid herself behind a thick beam near the entrance to The Dungeon. She grew more nervous when she heard footsteps behind her and positively froze in terror when she heard a voice. She turned around to see officer Mitty.
"Hey," Mitty said. "Hey."
"Hello," the young woman said, her hands shaking.
"Are you here for John Avellanos?" Mitty said. He had just gotten off the 3 AM to 9 AM shift. "Did they put you on the list of approved visitors?"
"Yes I called and put myself on the list. But I seem to be lost."
"Are you Sister Mary Elizabeth McCarthy of Sisters of the Assumption Preparatory Academy?"
"I am."
"You knew Cathy Chegoffgan the murder victim in grade school?"
"I did."
"What was her nickname in grade school?"
"Squirrel."
"Why was that?"
"She liked to climb."
"Come right this way sister," Mitty said. "He's in a cell on the other side of the old courtroom. They had to move the little creep. The feds have a special guard on him."
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