The Sins of a District

by Alexander Whittle

“Something the matter Detective?” the woman asked as she stood up from behind her desk by the entrance of the room.

  “Nope. Just homework,” Ryan replied. He carried the last container out to his car and slammed the trunk door down. His next stop that morning was to his local library where he began to print news articles containing any information about the former district attorney turned City Councilman. Specifically, the cases that Walker tried which overlapped with Harry’s detective work, anything where they might have crossed paths.

  Ryan arrived home, journeying straight to his bedroom and taking down the mirror above the dresser. He grabbed the cork pinup board that he would write messages on from the kitchen and hung it on the wall. Then, as he emptied the contents of each file onto the cover of his unmade bed he grabbed a newspaper cut out of Eli Walker, accidently dropping the thumbtacks all over the floor creating a sharp minefield. Ryan picked up the picture from the pile and pinned it straight to the centre of the board. Ryan wanted to help his friend, he knew Harry was in deep with Walker for something bad and he was determined to find out what. The hours passed, and his intricate web of cut outs and information began to take shape, much more organised than Wayne Peterson’s, Ryan knew how to build a case.

  “Now if I could just find something that I can use and can take to Harry,” he muttered to himself as he stood ogling his new bedroom wallpaper.

  * * *

  Doctor Claire Daniels was conducting her own private investigation, but this was more information gathering, and she had the perfect source. As she drove down Massachusetts Avenue North west she was heading towards Spring Valley. It was where her aged father, the former Commissioner of the Police Department now resided. He had long been retired and living comfortably in one of the nicest suburbs just outside of the city area. Claire turned left on Quebec Street and was immediately surrounded by nice cars and lavish detached housing, the trees grew over the road and formed an almost deliberate canopy that provided shading from the hot sun. She parked in the driveway of her father’s house, noticing Alice’s car was also parked. Alice was a nurse that Claire had hired a few years before, she was a nice woman with a friendly face, although sometimes mistaken for a burglar and regularly questioned by Martin Daniels as to whom she was. Claire loved him more than anything, and it pained her deeply to see what he had become. Her father Martin Daniels had been slowly but surely deteriorating mentally in his final years and his nurse Alice was a way of comforting the once proud and revered man in his final years. Claire reached for her keys from the purse hanging over her shoulder. She could hear raised voices coming from the inside of the house. When she opened the door she was stunned to find her father donned in his favourite red silk robe, threatening the good nurse with a frying pan in the atrium of the house.

  “Who are you?! Oh good! Claire help! This strange lady is in my home!” Martin was bawling as she closed the door behind her on the way in.

  “Relax dad, this is just Alice, she has been looking after you for many years,” replied Claire in a calming tone as she approached him with her arms out. Martin lowered the frying pan slowly, which allowed Alice to lower her arms from up in the air also and back down to her side.

  “I don’t think your mother would approve of me having a house guest like this, she doesn’t even approve of me having my buddies over. Just you wait till she gets home we’ll see what she has to say,” said Claire’s father, he randomly placed the frying pan he was planning to use as a deadly weapon down on one of the carpeted steps of the staircase.

  “Dad...Mum’s been gone now for a long time, remember?” she said to him as she tried to jog his failing memory. As she spoke to him it was almost as if he was hearing the news for the first time. Claire could see the look of sadness and regret in her father’s eyes and quickly held his hand, meanwhile, Alice quietly retreated to the kitchen with her bucket of cleaning products in hand hoping to avoid another potentially threatening assault for the day.

  “I need to go sit down,” said Martin, he walked in to the living room area and sat down on one of the soft dark oak coloured faux leather chairs that he had owned for many years, a chair that was nearly as old as Claire was.

  “I need to ask you something from your days on the force,” she asked,

  “Shoot,” replied Martin,

  “Do you remember a particular cop named Harry O’Neill?”

  “Harry O’Neill?” said Martin as he tried desperately to think back through the years. “Oh yes I remember now, that little shit of a detective that stank out the break room every lunchtime with his nasty cigarettes?”

  “Yes, that’s him. He’s a district commander now and sort of a friend, I was wondering if you had heard anything about him? Maybe anything from the past that you remember?” said Claire as she launched into her frantic line of questioning. Martin just shook his head apologising that he didn’t know anything and could barely remember Harry’s face from the old days. Claire slumped back into her chair opposite and considered maybe there was nothing to know, and that Harry had just been drinking that day before he entered the morgue.

  “He was a gambler, that’s about it,” stated Martin all of a sudden much to the surprise of Claire, who had now lit up with curiosity about what her father had just claimed.

  “What do you mean he was a gambler? He told you this?” she asked him,

  “No, I saw him at the meetings,” he replied, “You’re forgetting I was once that sort of person, but never as bad as that kid though. He always seemed to be down on his luck in that department. He even asked me once if I could lend him some money, the kid seemed desperate, but I couldn’t help him out, who knows where that money would have went,” answered Martin. Nurse Alice entered the room cautiously with a prepared tray full of tea from the kitchen. Luckily for her he was going through one of his more lucid phases and recognised her face instantly when she walked in.

  “He asked you for money? Did he need it badly?” Claire asked, she continued to almost interrogate her mentally ailing father for information he could barely remember about Harry.

  “Just the once he did. Then the next time I saw him I asked about it, I had changed my mind and decided to offer it to him. Instead he just acted all odd and refused, claiming his father had paid off his bills and that I was no longer to worry about him and his problems,” replied Martin to the best of his abilities. He reached for his hot tea from the tray on the coffee table in front of him and began to drink slowly as he sat back in the chair still wearing his old and tatty red silk robe over his clothes.

  “That can’t be right, Harry doesn’t have a father. He was a foster child till he was about sixteen, he would always try to tell me the most horrifying stories but I never wanted to hear about them. I wonder how on earth he got the money then, maybe I’ll ask him or Ryan next time I see them,” Claire said as she grabbed her handbag and stood up to give her father a goodbye hug.

  “Ryan?” Martin asked, “Tell that boy I said hello, now there was a good kid.”

  Claire smiled at him, she knew he always thought very fondly of Ryan though she was never sure why, they never really spent much time together except when he was little and when he first joined the force.

  “How come you were always so close with him?” Claire asked,

  “Well I worked on his case when he was young,” her father replied,

  “Case? What case?”

  “Oh, nothing. Never mind I must be getting him confused with someone else,” he said not wanting to divulge information he clearly hadn’t already shared with his daughter about his mother’s gruesome death when he was a small boy in the seventies. “...And tell that other little shit Ellis that I didn’t say hello!” he shouted as Claire laughed grabbing her car keys, she left the house of the once upon a time Police Commissioner. She didn’t know quite what to make of what her father said, on the one hand he gave her no real information, while on the other she continued to wonder if it had anything to do with his gambling debts. Claire
quickly started to also think like Ryan, that Harry had gotten in to bed with some bad people in his past and it still haunted him to this very day. Whatever she thought, she knew she had to run it by Ryan first to see what he thought, little to her knowledge he already knew and had already commenced in digging deeper into his old partner’s past on the force.

  Chapter II

  Eli Walker and his daughter Christy were travelling to Gonzaga High School the next Monday morning as the weekend was now over. Eli was driving as per usual, while she rode along side in the shotgun position.

  “So what did you do?” Eli asked,

  “Nothing. We just had a little alcohol in our lockers that’s all,” she replied. Eli could see she was guilty about having to drag her father in to speak with the principal that morning.

  “Don’t you realise that this is the sort of thing that can have a negative effect on a college application,” Eli told Christy, she sat quietly in the passenger seat and didn’t care to offer a response. As they approached the school he parked his black BMW in one of the teacher’s spaces to the right of the entrance. Not caring in the slightest that someone who worked there could be along any moment, but that was the persona of Eli Walker, what he had was his and what you had could be his if he wanted. The crowds of people grew thicker and thicker as they walked up the steps of the entrance. It had been a long time since Eli was in a high school and lots of things had changed since the late seventies. One thing that hadn’t changed though was the strong and ever apparent stench of the janitors cleaning products all throughout the hallways early in the morning. Christy hastily ditched her father’s company,

  “See you later,” she shouted without even turning back. She was always eager to meet up with her friends, and the idea of people seeing her arrive with him could damage any reputation she may have had in a fickle place like a high school. Eli was then greeted by the stern looking face of the principal who was ready to bore at him with ideas and suggestions on how to raise his child more effectively. This was a pain which he would just have to sit through as he shook his hand and headed towards his office further down the young adult infested hallway. Upon arriving at the doorway to where his meeting would take place a particular man caught the eye of Eli. It was the back of a slightly balding and mildly overweight man, wearing a navy blue jumpsuit stepping out of the janitor’s closet.

  “Who is that man?” Eli asked, the janitor walked away in the opposite direction. Walker wanted to see his face, “I say who is that man over there?” he asked once again pointing towards the gentleman pushing a cleaning trolley.

  “Hmm? Oh him! That’s just Wayne, he’s our janitor and has been for a while. Shall we step into my office?” replied the principal.

  “Really? And tell me more about Wayne,” Eli said, he continued to burn holes on the back of his uniform with his glaring gaze as he walked away.

  “There’s nothing to tell really, he’s an ex-con that’s about it, one of those down on their luck sorts. He was sent to us a while back,” said the principal as he gestured his hand towards his office, attempting to finally coerce Eli into going inside for their chat. At that moment, Eli paused, before turning around and heading back down the hallway towards the exit of the school.

  “Mr. Walker? Mr. Walker where are you going?” the principal shouted after him. Eli gave no reply, and instead reached for his phone from his pocket. He was breathing heavily at the mouth and was panicked. It was understandable as he had just found out the man he was certain was threatening to kill his daughter was working in the exact same building where she went to school each and every day. This was access to Christy he was now terrified that he had. Desperately punching numbers into his phone and scrolling through his contacts he began to place a call to Harry O’Neill. It was ringing but there was no answer,

  “Listen whenever you get this I’m coming over to yours it’s time for you to do something for me. His threat is real,” said Walker. He left Harry a message in his voicemail and hung up the call. He slid his phone back into his trouser pocket and climbed in to the front seat of his car. Eli took a few short and calming breaths as he tried to regain control of himself and relax, before starting the engine, reversing out of the labelled parking space and speeding away towards his newly scheduled meeting with Harry. He felt awful leaving Christy there in case anything happened, but what could he do. He pondered entering her classroom and dragging her out in front of all her friends for the world to see, although big scenes in front of people where not Eli’s cup of tea. He figured his best bet was to now use his puppet O’Neill to deal with the problem, whatever Walker had on him was about to place Harry in a very awkward and potentially dangerous position.

  * * *

  Further across town at the precinct, Claire had managed to catch up to Ryan while he was down in one of the file rooms searching for something. What she didn’t know at the time was that Ryan was conducting a rather large investigation and he already knew what she was about to tell him. This happened to be the news from her father that Harry had mysterious gambling debts that vanished and that he was in a really dark place in his life nearly twenty years ago, she wondered maybe if it would help if he knew that. Claire could hear him shuffling around in the dark room but couldn’t see him, only the light end of a torch was visible. She reached over and flipped the switch on the nearby wall. At that point Ryan had appeared and quietly told Claire to keep her voice down and turn the light back off.

  “What on earth is going on?” Claire asked a very peculiarly acting Ryan,

  “Nothing I’m just looking for something. The file clerk isn’t in yet and she would go crazy if she caught me in here messing everything up, it’s a file I desperately need right now,” he replied as he mumbled to himself, “There’s nothing down here about Wayne.”

  “Wayne? Who the hell is Wayne?” asked Claire. The pair of them continued to whisper in the darkness of the file room and move around only by the slight glow of the torch. Ryan poured through boxes that were labelled from nineteen ninety-five but found nothing at all related to Wayne Peterson or his conviction that Harry set him up for. It was as if the files had vanished,

  “Where are they?” he mumbled again to himself as he had the torch dangling from his mouth allowing both of his hands to be free to search.

  “Look I have no idea what you’re looking for but we need to talk. I found out some info about Harry and why he may be acting strangely. Although it looks like it’s currently the norm around here,” said Claire, she struggled to step her way over the box ridden floor of the file room. Ryan looked at Claire inquisitively upon hearing of new information. His reaction however was somewhat subdued, he had known about Harry’s gambling for a few months, since their meeting at Dupont Circle that frosty evening but Claire was not to know that. Ryan eventually conceded, realising he wasn’t going to find what he arrived early to look for. He placed the boxes back upon the shelves and tried to tidy as best he could before leaving.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but what I just told you is pretty big news, I’m thinking that he may be in trouble with some people,” Claire told Ryan as they both walked up the staircase towards the first floor exit. Not acting completely rude and dismissive to an old friend he politely and facetiously informed her that it was helpful news, and that he would look into it and maybe have a word with Harry. This was all Claire needed, to know that she was being of assistance and that she didn’t in fact waste half a day visiting her father and pumping him for information while he wasn’t well. The two left the precinct and went their separate ways, neither of which included going back to work that Monday morning.

  Chapter III

  When Eli Walker arrived at Harry O’Neill’s house, he was stunned to realise that in his twenty year history with the man, he had in fact never stepped foot inside his home. Eli wasn’t much disappointed when he saw how Harry was living, it was nothing compared his own property. This was just a simple brownstone much like Ryan
’s, in Columbia Heights on Fairmont Street North west. It was amongst a row of other white homes all of the same upright and simple design. The stone steps out on the front of the house led up to small grass patch that could hardly be called a lawn just by the front doorway. However, it was still in a much nicer condition than Ryan’s home was. Eli knocked on the door and rang the bell but there was no answer. He grew tired of waiting and desperately needed to see Harry, he started banging on the front door with his open palm.

  “Open the door you piece of shit!” he shouted, he continued to bang his open palm on Harry’s door. An elderly neighbour of his was in the middle of reaching for her mail as she stood watching and eavesdropping on the events happening outside. When Eli turned and looked at the elderly lady with her magazines in hand he quickly shooed her back inside her house, where she then began to peel back the curtain and continue watching the drama outside her front door. Walker shook his head in disbelief as she could be seen clear as day watching what was going on. Realising he had no time to cause a problem with his neighbour, he chose to ignore her much to her delight and kept on yelling and banging on the door nearly fetching it from the frame.

  “What?!” Harry demanded to know, he opened the door finally. He was dressed in a white bathrobe, his hair was a mess, and he had barely slept and hadn’t showered. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and tired as it became apparent that a heavy night of drinking took place the previous evening and he still hadn’t fully recovered from the after effects. “Oh, it’s you,” he then said,

  “Nice to see you as well,” replied Eli, “You look like complete shit,” he added, stepping foot in Harry’s home without wiping his feet on the welcome mat. “Guess who I ran into today, well, guess who I saw today. Now working at the same school that my daughter attends.”

  “Who?” asked Harry,