Hollow Tree

by Ian Neligh

  After making a copy of the article, I made my way back up to the thirtieth floor and my desk, where I sat staring at my computer, trying to decide how to proceed. Whatever direction I decided to take, it was guaranteed to be ugly.

  The best thing to do, as usual, was to drop in unannounced on the police station. That way I could talk to Jeff Polar about the surveillance tapes, confront Calhoun about the murder in 1998, and hell, while I was at it, drop by the coroner’s office to see what the cause of death was on the John Doe.

  I knocked out the article about the nonsuicide victim from earlier that morning, made some calls, and filed the story.

  Picking up my phone, I checked Polar’s message from my deleted message menu. I had forgotten to jot down the time that I was supposed to meet him.

  It was for 1 p.m. I was about to hang up when my voice mail’s dispassionate female voice asked me if I wanted to listen to my other deleted message. Another deleted message? I was pretty sure I had only deleted the one. I punched in the approval and waited to hear what it was.

  “My name is Jonathan Sax. I’m the public representative for the special civilian crime fighter known as The Raven, among others. My client requests a meeting with you for the purposes of writing a story. As I assume you’re aware, this is rather unprecedented. Given the nature of his request, and my client’s strict need for secrecy, a meeting time and place will be arranged. Please give me a call, and I will be happy to give you further details.”

  I jotted down his number and saved the message. It seemed like “betrayal” was another word I could add to my vocabulary list of the day. And betrayal sounded a lot like that story-stealing rat-bastard Eddie Lamb.

  There is a special place in hell reserved for those who steal stories, and especially as blatantly as checking my voice mail and deleting the message before I got to work.

  I glanced over my desk to see his seat was empty. Good, that saved me from having to commit any random acts of violence. I picked up my phone and dialed the number.

  “Hello, this is Jonathan Sax,” came a voice.

  “Mr. Sax, this is Jack Norman with the Daily. I’m calling about the meeting with The Raven.”

  “Did you need to change the time for the meeting?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Can we meet this evening, say 11 p.m.?”

  “Sure, that’s only two hours earlier; I think my client would be agreeable.”

  “Great,” I said. “And can you remind me where we’re meeting again?”

  He read off an address in a nondescript section of the city, but it was to be on the roof. I guess when dealing with a man who dressed as a bird, that made a certain sort of sense.

  “Great, see you then,” I said, hanging up.

  Grabbing my coat, I headed for the elevator—happy I had screwed Eddie Lamb over properly. I wonder how many hours he’d wait on the roof before deciding he wasn’t going to get the story after all.

  On the way, I spotted the editor, Mr. Fernley, heading out of his office. I ducked down and made a beeline for the closing elevator doors, just sliding in before they closed.

  He would want me to give him an update on the alley murder. As I still had nothing, there was a good chance he’d take me off of it.

  This story was getting weirder by the moment and had more missing pieces than a circus clown caught up in the intake of a 747. I unwedged my car from the snowbank it was buried in and decided to drop by the coroner’s office.

  The morgue was like a tombstone in the government section of Municipal City. It leered above the other city service buildings.

  The guard at the front of the building stood off to one side putting out a cigarette. So, holding true to the motto “it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” I slipped inside. The city coroner was an old acquaintance of mine, and I was fairly certain he wouldn’t have me kicked to the curb or arrested for trespassing. But one could never be too sure.

  “I should have you thrown out,” he yelled at me from across his desk. I stood in the back of his office.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” I said, walking forward.

  After a moment the red from his face drifted away and he chuckled, offering his vicelike grip. “You know, you really should try to set an appointment. Security should never have let you just wander in here.”

  “I can’t be any worse than any of the other miscreants they let into this building,” I said, taking my hand back and wondering if any of my fingers were broken or just fused together.

  “Sure, wise guy, but those ones are usually dead. What brings you to the city locker?” He sat back down, straining his chair to the breaking point.

  “I just thought I’d drop in and see if you made any headway on that John Doe taken from the alley yesterday morning.”

  He didn’t even hesitate when answering. It was a sign that I found oddly foreboding.

  “The one with the head thing? No, not yet, but we should have it wrapped up by tonight. And before you ask, you should know, we haven’t been able to ID the body yet either.”

  “Was it murder?” I asked.

  “Like I said, we should have it done tonight.”

  “Okay.” I took the copy of the 1998 article out of my pocket. I didn’t want to add pressure like this, but I could tell when something was about to be swept under the carpet.

  “Fair enough. I just thought you’d like to know about this old story I came across earlier this morning.” I handed it to him. He took it from me with his gorilla hands and peered carefully at the text, like one does with the cryptic writings in a fortune cookie.

  It read there was a good chance of bad publicity in his immediate future.

  A Magic Trick

  The whole thing was starting to get messy. I left the coroner in his office and, to be quite honest, in something of a stammering state. He promised his people’s investigation would be, of course, accurate and forthcoming.

  It wasn’t a nice card to deal, but I seemed to be making it a habit these days. Not that I felt good about it—but then again, I didn’t really feel all that bad either. First Jeff Polar and now the coroner. I was burning bridges faster than I’d ever built them. The whole thing was taking on an “all or nothing” feel. I was finally coming into a decent story, my first in years, and I was determined to see it to the end.

  Knowing I was about to have a repeat performance, with even more spectacular results, I left the morgue, went east for a snowy block, and entered the police station.

  I was prepared to look like a fool about the security-tape deal, but I figured the article with the picture of Calhoun gave me some leveraging power. I spotted Jeff Polar leaving the administration side of the building. I walked up to him, my shoes squeaking on the green Formica floor.

  “Perfect timing,” he said, shaking my hand. We were standing above the embossed bronze seal of the MCPD. “Listen, I don’t know what you think you heard, but the department has had the tape since the very get-go. Sorry to burst your bubble.”

  He wasn’t waiting a second to rub this in my face. Nice. Next he would probably mention something about how stupid it was to think superheroes would borrow evidence from the department.

  “I appreciate you inviting me down to take a look at it,” I said as he buzzed us through into the law enforcement side of the building.

  “Well, it is unusual to let the press have a look at evidence for any ongoing investigation, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt, given your misinformation about us letting a cape have it,” he said. “Or vice versa.”

  There it was. I smirked and nodded at a group of uniformed officers listening to us as we walked by. He wasn’t letting me off the hook without taking a kidney first. I knew I had it coming; when you gamble with nuclear war you have to be prepared for fallout.

  “I went down and found the video in the evidence pool this morning,” he continued as we walked into a plain white room at the back of a sea of gray office cubicles. In it was a small foldout t
able decorated with fake wood paneling. There were also several small metal chairs. A man with severely buzz cut salt-and-pepper hair stood up as we entered the room.

  “Jack, this is Major Cooper. He was the incident commander,” Polar said.

  The detective and I shook hands. He was dressed in a cheap yellow polo shirt and cargo pants. He looked like the kind of guy who wore shorts as long as the weather would allow, which in my opinion had ended about four months ago.

  I imagined he did this to make himself look mellower. It didn’t work. The fact that he was a former Marine was practically tattooed to his forehead in magical fiery letters.

  “My detectives, Smith and Corman, turned this into the evidence pool yesterday morning,” Cooper said, sitting back down and queuing up a black-and-white tape.

  “Feel free to take a seat,” he said.

  But I was already seated, looking over his shoulder at the screen. I glanced behind me briefly as I heard someone enter the room. It was Calhoun. He didn’t make eye contact with me and opted instead to talk quietly with Jeff Polar.

  “The tape is on fast-forward; otherwise we’d be here for four fucking days,” Cooper said, pushing play. I nodded, looking at the small screen. The black-and-white image was from the front of the pizza parlor, looking out onto the street. The video showed the front window with its open/closed sign, a fake plastic tree, and the street scene beyond.

  From the camera’s vantage point one could also see the entrance to the alley where the body had been found and, presumably, where the murder had occurred. The image had a time code at the bottom.

  As it raced along, people washed in and out of the restaurant and along the street. The movement somehow reminded me of one of those time-lapse videos of something decomposing.

  “Here we are,” Cooper said, slowing the fast-forward down just a little. “This is our window: it’s from about 8

  p.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday morning when we arrived, after getting a call from an early-morning janitor next door.”

  The image showed a few customers leaving, then there was nothing. Rain began to fall, puddling in front of the door, then a police cruiser pulled up followed by another.

  I looked around at everyone else; they were all watching the video.

  “That’s all she wrote,” Cooper said as I turned back around. He stopped the tape with a stiff jab. No victim, no killer, no nothing.

  “Bummer, huh?” Calhoun said from the back of the room. “I guess no Pulitzers today, huh, buddy.”

  Of course, Calhoun just had to be here for this galactic embarrassment.

  “Well, if there’s nothing else, Jack,” Polar said, “I’ve got a meeting to run to. Here, I can walk you out.”

  Cooper slid back from the monitor and stood up.

  Everybody seemed to be waiting on me. I leaned back in my chair—and laughed.

  “You gotta be kidding me, right?” I asked, after a long moment. ”I mean—is this some kinda joke?”

  “What are you on about?” Cooper asked.

  “Oh come on, guys—you’re not serious?” I asked.

  Clearly they were. I caught Calhoun’s eye and took out my reporter’s notebook.

  “Calhoun, I’d just like to get a quick comment on the fact that your video evidence taken from a crime scene has been tampered with,” I asked. “Evidence that has been supposedly in police custody since being collected by two detectives yesterday morning.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, turning red. I happily jotted down his quote.

  “Major Cooper, could you indulge me by replaying the video?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you think you’ve found…” The man gingerly sat back down and started the video over in silence. Again it showed people moving in and out of the building, rain falling, and cops showing up.

  Nobody spoke until it was finished.

  “Okay?” Cooper asked.

  “You didn’t see it?” I asked. I turned around to look at Calhoun and Polar. “You guys see it?”

  I was rewarded with blank stares.

  I turned back to Cooper and asked him to rewind the video one more time and to show me how to pause it. When it happened again, I hit the button.

  “Did you see it?” I asked the room. The video showed the window, doorway, plant, and open sign, and empty street beyond.

  “What exactly are you seeing?” the detective asked.

  “The sign—it says ‘Open,’” I said, pointing to the video. I tapped it again and paused the screen. “Now it says ‘Closed.’”

  The video didn’t show anyone flipping the sign. It was like a magic trick. When it was finished, the room went silent.

  I leaned back as far as I could into my chair.

  “Someone cut out a chunk of video and added a false time line,” I said. “But the really, really big question is: How did the dead guy get into the alley? There’s only the one entrance.”

  And just like that everything went crazy. Before I knew it the room was full of officers in civilian clothing and the chief of police could be heard yelling at someone in the hallway.

  Anybody who wasn’t madly talking on a cell phone, or being yelled at, was analyzing and re-analyzing the video.

  Nobody noticed me as I stood in the center of the maelstrom, soaking in all that was around me and feverishly taking notes. I’d finally found my story. Now I just had to see where it went. I still had the article of the earlier murder stuffed in my pocket, and I wanted to get a second to talk to Calhoun about it. I tried to find him in the crowd, then gave up. It could wait until things calmed down a bit.

  Major Cooper, red-faced and as angry as a trucker’s hemorrhoid, stormed into the room and yelled at a group of detectives, “Get Smith and Corman in here pronto.” He then turned and stabbed a vicious finger at me from across the room. “And get him the hell outta here.”

  On the way out I spotted Calhoun in the hallway, waiting by somebody’s office. I hurried over, seizing the opportunity.

  “You know,” I said, taking out and unfolding the article for him. “This whole thing looks really similar to an incident in 1998.”

  He didn’t bother to look at it, before growling,

  “What, you think I don’t know that?”

  For a second I thought he was going to grab me and fling me up against the wall, then he snorted and walked away.

  Interesting.

  Secrets With Teeth

  Forecasters said a warm-weather front would hit Municipal City, and we could expect rain. Lots of it. What they didn’t say is that it would turn the city into a wet, freezing mess. Snow would turn into slush and dirt and would become mud. Like a tearful prom queen, it ran over the sidewalks, out into the streets, and down the gutters like so much cheap mascara.

  The sky was midnight black and full of hate. There was something ominous in the air.

  When I returned to the office, I had a cookie-cutter press release sent to me by the Adams PD. It briefly stated the body I had seen that morning on the sidewalk, which now felt like decades ago, was none other than MCPD Officer Jim Smith. Looking out the window into the sky above the city, I wondered if Officer Smith was the same as Detective Smith. I decided if it was a coincidence and one of the detectives connected to the tampered evidence was now dead, then I needed to find a new job. Like someone standing in front of an all-you-can-eat discount buffet, I was beginning to grow uneasy about the whole damn thing. The more I dug, the uglier it became. It didn’t feel like I was uncovering a story but exhuming a roadside grave. The more answers I got the more questions came crawling up to the surface with their dirty little fingers. Why would two detectives work with a cape? Police typically have an aggravated relationship with costumed vigilantes. What was the missing evidence hiding? Could the killer be in those lost tape frames?

  My story was due, but it was still missing the final piece. As it was, the fallout would be raining down on the MCPD for months, but I had to finish the story nonetheless. While I was sure some
pieces to the puzzle could yet be discovered by the department, the real story was still out there, hiding along the wet streets of the city. They were the secrets that came with teeth.

  Pushing away from my computer with disgust, I got up and headed for the elevator. My mind was busy playing the angles of where my next article would take me when the news desk editor signaled me over.

  “Someone just jumped off City Bridge,” he said, one ear cocked to the scanner. “They’re skimming the water for the body now. It looks like it was a cop.”

  Too Far to Fall

  Gripping the safety fence, I looked off the side of the city’s highest bridge to the turbulent water below. Spotlights still scanned the river and showed great green patches as they moved back and forth. With the body already recovered, emergency and law enforcement crews were checking to see if they had missed anything. They hadn’t—but maybe they were looking in the wrong place.

  If, as I had been told just moments before, Detective Michael Corman jumped to his death, then how the hell did he clear the ten-foot fence used to keep distraught lovers and businessmen from launching themselves off the side? Frowning, I looked it up and down, trying to figure out how it could be done. I grabbed the side and tried to pull myself up, only managing to hurt my fingers as I slipped back down.

  Taking several large steps back, careful not to get hit by passing traffic, I tried to get a better look. I saw at once the fluttering of fabric twenty feet up on the bottom side of a girder. There was a piece of a man’s jacket caught on one of the giant bolts that held the metal beam in place.

  “Solved,” I said, to no one in particular. “He cleared the fence by jumping twenty feet in the air, clipping himself on the other side of the girder before tumbling to the river below.” Either he didn’t know his own strength and really wanted to kill himself—or someone tossed him like a bag of trash over the side with too much force. I checked my watch; it was nearly time to meet the giant bird.