Cherry Beach Express

by R. D. Cain

  Lister put his gun away and shouldered the door open. There was a loud crack as the jamb split followed by the thud of the door swinging into the back wall as the officers, led by Jen, exploded into the apartment shouting, “Police, search warrant!”

  Shouts of “Clear,” or “Nothing here,” came from the officers as they fanned out through the apartment. From a back room one of the uniform officer shouted, “Hands up! Get your hands up!”

  Nastos turned from the back washroom and headed for the shouting officer.

  Nastos recalled how people always say that responses to stress are either fight or flight. This, in his experience, was totally inaccurate. Anyone who has ever gone on YouTube and watched civilian responses to terrorist bombings, ever witnessed a car accident happen right in front of them, or even been startled by an evil niece or nephew from behind a door, never reacted by punching the first person they saw nor by running full speed in a random direction. No, what they do is what everyone actually does in such an instance: they freeze in place, staring wide-eyed, and in that time of hesitation police are trained to charge aggressively.

  Harper was standing in a back laundry room with his hands over his head. As scared as he was, he was also pretty scary. Tall and broad with long greasy hair, forearms sleeved-out in faded prison ink — he almost certainly had hepatitis. Harper obviously hadn’t bathed in a few days and he stank of stale cigarettes. In fact, the whole apartment stank of stale smoke, Nastos now noticed. There was no need to check with the photo in his back pocket.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” he said.

  “I think he tossed something out the window,” the officer said, not taking his eyes or gun from the man. Nastos shoved past Harper, pushing him against the wall, and peered out a small half-open window covered with a dingy blind. He keyed the mic to his radio again. “Hey, Post, you see anything fly out this window?” He stuck his hand out and waved it around.

  Through the radio he heard Post say, “Yeah, some dvds and a memory stick. We’ll pick it up and meet you upstairs.”

  Sergeant Lister walked into the small room. Having put away his gun, he had two hands free, so he grabbed Harper, turned him around 180 degrees and handcuffed him as painfully as he could. Harper made no effort to resist. His eyes were wide open, pupils as big as dinner plates. He was breathing quickly but was trying to slow himself down.

  Harper’s voice cracked. “What the hell is this, who the fuck do you people think you are? You’ve got no right to come in my home like this —”

  “I don’t need to take any bullshit from a child molester,” Nastos interrupted. “If you had any brains at all you’d close that hole in your face till I read you your rights.”

  Harper said, “You lay one hand on me and I’ll sue your ass off.” It wasn’t very convincing.

  Nastos turned to Lister. “On second thought, Sarge? Can one of your guys read this guy his rights in here? I want to have a look around.”

  “Sure thing, Nastos.” Lister pointed to one of the officers, then followed Nastos out of the room.

  They searched the apartment, going through cupboards, drawers, laundry baskets. Nastos went over everything again, this time searching jacket pockets in closets, the toilet tank, the freezer — everywhere idiots think you’re too dumb to check. When Jacques found that the home computer was turned off he unplugged it and started packing it up. “I love when we can take their stuff,” he said to Lister. “It’s just so satisfying.”

  Lister replied, “I’m happy enough just seeing their faces when we smash their shit to pieces right in front of them.” He smiled.

  “Yeah, it must be how firemen feel when they rescue drunks with the jaws from fender benders.”

  Jen had a uniformed officer following her around as she took pictures with her digital camera. “Hey guys,” she called out to everyone, “continuity is key, gentlemen, so if you hit a jackpot, let me photograph what you found in place before you move anything. And who’s the rookie so I know who is getting screwed with the property reports?”

  An officer got Nastos’ attention. “Check this out here, Nastos, I think I’m going to puke.”

  Nastos walked into the room and found a cop flipping through Polaroids. Looking nauseous, he handed them over to Nastos. Nastos began flipping through the pictures, his hands moving slowly away from his face as he lost the strength to make himself go through any more pictures. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t bear it. His hands dropped down to his sides; he took a deep breath. He put all but one of the pictures in his jacket pocket. Nastos shouted to the officer with Harper.

  The officer came into the living room, guiding the prisoner in front of him by the elbow. Nastos rotated the photograph he was holding so Harper could see it.

  “Tell me who these guys are with you in this picture.”

  Harper evaded eye contact and ignored the picture. “No, I don’t know.”

  Nastos moved closer to Harper, close enough that he had no choice but to look back at him. While there was every sign of fear, all Nastos saw was a deranged man. He probably tells himself that he really loves them.

  “Can you follow me while I take him down to my car, officer?”

  “Sure thing, Nastos.”

  “And can you ask Jacques to deal with things here?”

  “No probs, boss.”

  3

  THE AIR WAS COOL AND FRESH and after the day he’d had, after the disgusting apartment building, not to mention his current company, it was like a cool bath on a smouldering hot day; he welcomed it into his lungs. Outside, it had begun to darken and in the slow mist, streetlights cast cone-shaped, amber pools of light on the sidewalks below. Nastos directed Harper into the back of his caged, unmarked police car, secured the door, then got into the driver’s seat. Nastos turned the car on and cleared the mist from the windshield with the wipers, leaving them on a slow intermittent scrape.

  He pulled the car away from the curb and entered the sparse city traffic. Brake lights refracted through the moisture on the windshield, collecting like blood splatter before the wipers glided across the glass, scraping it clean for the time being.

  “I’ve never been arrested before,” Harper said, breaking the silence. He tried to sound confident, but he had a long way to go.

  Nastos made eye contact with Harper in the rear-view mirror. He spoke in a neutral tone. Some people just needed to be treated with respect. Playing Harper the right way was critical in getting anywhere with him. Nastos wanted the other men in the picture who shared Harper’s disease. I’ll ask a few questions, he thought. Harper won’t know it, but he’ll be telling me what has to happen next to get him to talk. Is it going to be good cop, bad cop or worst cop?

  He checked the roadway, then glanced back to Harper through the rear-view mirror. The man was nearly shaking with fear. Pale, taking deep rushed breaths, with sweat pouring down his forehead, it was like he’d had a hit of acid and was on a seriously bad trip. Harper’s gaze met his. As the car’s mirror vibrated, the narrow slit revealed something more. Nastos knew this happened to him. He knew that he projected evil onto the offenders he arrested. It made what was coming easier.

  He saw the dark, sunken eyes of a sexual sadist strobing to life under the passing yellow streetlights. Officer Friendly checked out, leaving something behind that more closely resembled Frankenstein’s monster. “Who’s in the picture with you?” Nastos asked.

  “I don’t know who he is — I already told you that.” Harper looked away from his reversed image. Nastos had no sympathy for Harper, who squirmed vainly to get comfortable in the cramped back compartment of the car. Poor guy had to turn his feet sideways because of the intrusive metal cage that divided the car in two. He couldn’t lean back into the seat without crushing his twisted wrists in the handcuffs. Nastos drove slowly, allowing the imposing environment to become part of his psychological warfare. Let the pain burn into
your memory, Harper. You just made your first mistake. Two guys in the picture but you say you don’t know who he is? You know one of them. That’s a good start.

  “Well, I’ve got to say, Sean, you do some pretty disgusting things with complete strangers. You know, I have a daughter about that age.”

  Harper shrugged. “Wish I could help, sorry.” He chewed his bottom lip then tried to get comfortable by leaning his head against the fogged window.

  The Impala smoothly drove past the Gardiner Expressway, south on Cherry Street. Nastos turned left, following a sign for Cherry Beach Park. Away from the streetlights, on the north side of Lake Ontario, a person can look south and see not much of anything but open water. Although there was a tree line about a mile south of shore from the Toronto Islands, the combination of thickening mist and blackness from overcast skies erased any contrasts in the black of night. It was as though nothing existed beyond a fifty-metre radius.

  “I don’t recognize this part of town — where are we?” Harper asked.

  Nastos put the car in park, turned the lights off and sat there. The outside world had disappeared. The detective turned and spoke to Harper in hushed tones. “Listen, I’m going to make this really easy for you. Tell me who those two guys are in those pictures, the pictures where you’re raping that little kid.”

  Harper let out an awkward laugh with a this guy is kidding me, right? expression on his face. Then his twisted smile froze as he wondered what was going to happen next. This was about the time they all did that. “My lawyer’s going be all over this guy if he touches me,” he said, barely audibly, as if ready to confront the fear signals his body was no doubt sending him. More forcefully, Harper said, “Get me my lawyer. Take me to the police station so I can make my call.”

  Nastos nodded his head to himself gravely. He turned off his cell phone and put it in the glove box, from which he grabbed something else, a small hand-held device that he slid into his pocket. He got out of the car, closed his door and approached the back window; Harper’s face wore a mask of pale fear.

  In one motion, Nastos pulled the door open, grabbed a fistful of hair from the back of Harper’s head and began dragging him out. Harper dropped onto the cold ground in a heap, face first, getting a fist-sized wad of sand in his mouth. He kicked and squirmed, trying to bring his knees up under him as he tried to spit and clear his mouth, but the cuffs held his hands behind his back and the sand choked his breath. He took as deep a breath as he could through his nostrils, vainly trying to suck in air.

  Nastos took the hand-held device out of his pocket and engaged it. A rapid-fire series of loud clicks burst through the air as he drove the taser’s electrodes into Harper’s testicles. Harper bucked and squawked as if his throat had been squeezed in a vice. He spat most of the dirt from his mouth in a strained puff, gagging. By pulling a knee up, he was able to roll partially onto his side and there he tried to use his teeth to scrape the filth and sand from his tongue.

  Nastos spoke calmly. “I need to stop those other guys, Sean; who are they?”

  Harper’s guts rolled audibly, as if the contents of his stomach were churning with filthy clothes during a washing machine’s spin cycle. Harper’s forehead found a cool smooth rock. He tried to lean against it and ignore the detective, but Nastos would have none of it.

  “You like raping defenseless little kids, Sean. It stops now. You’re going to talk. Do it now rather than later and save yourself a lot of misery.” Nastos kicked Harper again, this time in the stomach. Harper, in turn, immediately spilled his guts all over the ground, then rolled away onto his back. Using his legs, he wiggled back and actually pulled himself into a sitting position.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Harper sputtered. “There’s no way you can get away with this. Those other cops saw me, they’re witnesses.”

  He stood in front of Harper, about six feet back, and engaged the taser. Neon blue electricity rattled between the terminals, with a sound like a million sets of insect teeth gnashing on flesh. Nastos’ voice remained calm. “I don’t want to leave any marks. You’re probably not going like this part too much.”

  Harper shouted, “Wait — wait — wait!” then felt a hot-cold convulsion rippling throughout his stomach. Muscles twisted and contorted, contracting so hard he couldn’t breathe or speak. Then the pulsing stopped. He gasped in a long full breath and collapsed onto his back.

  “Make a mental note of how good you feel right now, Harper, ’cause in about five minutes, you’ll be begging to feel this good again.”

  Harper’s head rolled around. “Please stop,” he said between laboured breaths.

  “You know the price to get off this ride. Who are those two other guys?”

  Harper’s head darted around like he was lost. The fog remained thick at the water’s edge, only the slightest of waves from the weakest of wind differentiated where the land ended and water began — tones of black on black.

  “You ready to start helping me, Mr. Harper?”

  Harper wasn’t exactly Navy Seal material; they both knew that. It was just a matter of time. All Harper had to do was figure out that Nastos wasn’t going to give up until he got an answer. No one in their right mind would endure this for two hours, or even ten minutes, then cave in anyways.

  “Okay, okay,” he began. “One guy is my brother-in-law, George. The other guy I met on the internet. He lives in town. I don’t know his name, but I have a phone number, a cell.”

  “See, that wasn’t so tough, now was it? Where does George live?”

  “He has a photo studio; he lives in the upstairs.”

  “Okay, the other guy, what’s his number?”

  “It’s on my cell, under the initials W.G., W.G. for weird guy.”

  Nastos figured that whatever Harper had decided was weird was something best not pondered. “Let’s get you back in the car,” he said, helping the man up to his feet.

  Harper collapsed into the soft leather back seat. The air was still warm from the heater. Nastos dampened a rag with lake water and, after cleaning Harper up, threw it into the lake. Harper reacted to the cool, clean water by exhaling deeply. He obviously felt a lot better with all of that bullshit behind him. Nastos watched periodically from the front seat as Harper sat emotionless, reflecting on what had happened. He probably wondered what he had done to deserve such violence and pain. Even the worst of animals were heroes in their own stories. Harper was trying to decide if he was still a hero, or if maybe he had that coming. Nastos could have told him how the taser would leave only minor marks and no lasting damage, but he chose instead to remain silent, to let Harper stew in his juices. Harper sat hunched forward with his knees apart, trying to comfort his aching balls.

  Nastos hadn’t kicked him full force, just enough to get his point across. And whether that moment was past by a tenth of a second or a million years, it was just as gone, just as irretrievable. Nastos wished he had kicked him harder.

  “You know, Detective, in places like Thailand it’s basically legal. Even in western cultures, girls got married at thirteen only a hundred years ago.”

  “Things have changed, Harper; I guess you’re just not a man of the times.”

  “Yeah, I was just born a hundred years too late.”

  “And too close to me.”

  NASTOS STARTED THE CAR AND CIVILIZATION returned with lights from the dashboard and sounds of talk radio ragging on the mayor about something. Nastos said, “You may not know this right now, Mr. Harper, but I just did you a favour.”

  “How’s that?”

  “That kick in the balls, that pain will go away. You got a little scared but that was all I tried to do, scare you, and you’ll get over that too. What you should remember here is that you did the right thing by stopping those other guys that you helped identify. You’re protecting other people’s babies.”

  Harper slumped forward. He was mak
ing laboured snotty noises, like he was trying to suck back some tears.

  “How you feel right now is how those little kids felt after you raped them. And now you have felt a little pain so they don’t have to feel pain anymore. Now, you can tell everybody that I beat it out of you — no one will believe you anyway. When we get into the police station, you can just tell your story and try to reclaim some of your dignity. You must have done some good things in your life, Sean, surely; let’s try to get something positive out of this too. Learn to control and suppress this small part of your life. Don’t let that be the only thing that defines you as a person.”

  Nastos tried to ignore the irony of what he had just said and Harper wasn’t yet convinced that the cop had done him a favour. “People will want me dead; my picture is going to go everywhere.”

  His concerns were probably justified, but Nastos wanted to minimize them. “Sean, you’re going to be a flash on the screen. This is a big city with big city problems. You won’t even make the six o’clock news. It’s time you reinvent yourself and leave the monster someplace like the Dark Ages.”

  Harper’s gaze dropped to the floor; he appeared lost in thought. The car pulled away from the river’s edge, turned around slowly then moved toward the city lights of Toronto.

  4

  September 6, 2011

  NASTOS RELUCTANTLY RETURNED TO THE reality of the courtroom. He was still sitting next to Carscadden; Dewar was just across from him. The judge’s voice brought him out of his digression.

  Judge Ryan raised his hand to stop Prosecutor Dewar mid-sentence.

  “I’m sorry, did you say the accused is a police officer charged with murder?” Ryan picked his glasses up from his desk and reviewed a piece of paper.