by Neal Arbic
Jack fumed, “Just wait a minute!”
Jack disappeared into the bedroom, then rummaged through the living room. Forensics and photographers jumped out of his way grumbling and protesting. Everyone stopped and watched Jack. Dirk watched with amusement. A young detective snickered. Jack went into a bathroom.
Dirk taunted, “Jack, be sure not to disturb the evidence in there too.”
Jack called from the bathroom. “Dirk!”
Dirk stepped into the bathroom.
Jack pointed to the waste basket. “Look”
In the basket was a bloody page from the Bible. “It’s from the Apocalypse. Just like at the other murders.”
Dirk shrugged and walked out into the living room.
Jack followed. “Don’t walk away from me you sumbitch. That’s a bloody page from the Bible, it’s the same MO!”
“Jack, it doesn’t mean anything.” Dirk turned on Jack. “I don’t see the telephone lines cut!”
“The bloody pages from the Bible!”
“Jack, that was in every paper! It leaked Monday! Everyone in LA knows that by now and that’s why the killers thought they could copy-cat their way out of this!”
Jack stood stunned.
Dirk caught Jack’s confused expression. He mocked in a loud voice that silenced what little chatter there was left in the room, “What, Jack? Don’t you the read the papers?”
Jack turned. The whole room was watching: forensics men, detectives, patrolmen, photographers.
Jack turned back to Dirk. “Wait a minute. That detail is out?”
Dirk’s voice was a mix of frustration and mockery. “Yes, Jack, on every front page of every paper in the city!”
There were snickers among Dirk’s team. Delware, watching from the kitchen, dropped his head, embarrassed.
Dirk enjoyed the lost look on Jack’s face. “You don’t read the papers? Jack, what’s the matter with you?! Christ, it’s the case you’re assigned to!”
Snickers spread throughout the room. Jack went red with embarrassment.
Dirk grinned. “The only case you’ve worked effectively on this year is…is a case of scotch!”
The room burst into laugher. Jack looked around. The young men laughed, an older detective gave him an uncomfortable look of pity.
Jack fumed and turned on Dirk. “Every last detail is out! You’re head of the investigation! It’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen. So you just fucked us big time and you’re fucking laughing!”
Dirk hissed. “Every reporter in the country is jumping on this investigation. How can you expect-”
“How can we know if we have good leads now?! If every detail is public, how can we confirm anything! You’ve completely fucked us!”
“Jack!”
Jack flushed redder. “You stupid, goddamn punk. You call yourself a detective!” Jack shoved his finger in Dirk’s face. “It’s your goddamn job to keep shit out of the fuckin’ papers!”
“I didn’t-”
“You didn’t do your job! Do you even fuckin’ know how to handle a big case, you stupid fuckin’ moron! Now we can’t rule anything out. You’ve left us in the goddamn dark!”
Dirk jumped in Jack’s face. “Fuck you, you’ve never been a part of this investigation, old man! Pat’s letting you play private dick for your last few months before retirement to keep you outta the way! With a partner no one in the Department even wants to touch, f’christsakes! If it wasn’t for Pat, you’d be on skid row! When was the last time you solved a case, old man!”
Jack turned and stormed towards the door. Dirk fired a parting shot. “When was it, Jack? That last time you solved a case? Good thing Pat keeps you in Watts, where no one important dies!”
Jack halted at the front door. He saw the face of eight year old Gwynette Sanders, her missing-a-tooth smile, his old sergeant: “-just another colored girl - she’s not important, Jack.”
With those words ringing in his head, he spun around. Jack sprang at Dirk. No one had time to react. His reflexes from decades of police work made him a dangerous man. Jack drew his gun, turned it in his hand, and smashed the butt into Dirk’s face.
Dirk went down like a rag doll, unconscious before he hit the floor. He laid motionless, blood trickled from his nose and ear. The room stood motionless, not believing what they had seen. Like another body, Dirk was out cold on the crime scene.
Jack bent over Dirk and hissed, “They’re all important!”
***
Jack burst out of the front door, almost knocking it off its hinges.
Delware followed him across the lawn. “What the fuck, man! What the hell were you thinking? Do you know what you’ve done! You just fucked us!!”
His ranting was only on the fringes of Jack’s consciousness. Jack’s head was boiling with rage, his stomach sinking into a bottomless pit of foreboding. He had not fully formulated it, but his gut knew he had just torpedoed his own ship.
Frustrated that Jack would not even acknowledge him, Delware stopped and shouted, “Do you ever stop to think of what it’s like to be a goddamn Negro in this Department?!”
That word, ‘Negro’ pierced Jack’s mind. He turned to his partner and did not recognize him. Never could Jack have imagined the word Negro coming from Delware’s mouth, but before him was another Delware, one he’d never seen before: a scared, twisted face, a wretched man who had just lost everything.
“I have to work twice as hard as any white man to earn half his pay. Now I’m going down with you. Another Negro in blue, out on the street!”
As his adrenalin and anger subsided, Jack felt his age. His years came on, weighing him down. Delware’s voice echoed down the street. Cops came to the windows. The street stared.
Delware could barely keep his feet on the ground. “You square, up tight mothafucka! Everything you did that was any good was twenty years ago. So what?! So what that you’re even fuckin’ right about this case? What the fuck does that even matter because you’re still going round in circles. Cause you’re OLD! You just don’t dig it, man. You don’t read the newspapers, you don=t watch TV! The whole world is changing, everything is changing, except you! You may have been great two decades ago, but now you’re too old to be any good to anybody!!”
Delware stood panting, his hand on his holster, waiting for Jack to go for his gun.
But Jack just stared. Turning his old eyes towards the bloody red sunset in the smog, he saw its fleeting light sweeping back from LA, sinking into the ocean. The last of its rays scattered across the sky.
Jack walked away.
Delware watched the Packard speed off.
Two detectives watched from a window. One turned to the other, “You know, I like Delware. He’s alright.”
***
Jack burst through the door of his home, grabbed the framed glossy of his wife off the wall and tossed the picture across the room. The glass burst into shards. Grabbing a fresh bottle of scotch from the kitchen, he sank into his chair. He took a swig. He sat. Evening fell slowly. The phone rang many times. Never moving, he knew it was Pat and then the Chief of Police. They were going to throw him off the case and then dismiss him from the Department. There might be charges, even jail time. Jack sat. Even the bottle remained untouched. The living room grew darker still. Not reaching for a light, he let the darkness fall.
Finally, in the pitch black, he let out a long, sad sigh.
Slowly standing, he walked into his grease spattered kitchen. He turned on the light. The bare bulb illuminated a small room, faded floral wallpaper peeling off the walls. The pantry doors were open, revealing bare shelves except for a few dusty cans of corn and beans. The dishes were gone, they were heaped high and dirty in the sink. Jack surveyed hundreds of unwrapped newspapers piled about his feet.
Searching the stacks, he found the one he wanted. Grabbing the pile with both arms, he poured it across the kitchen table. Jack picked through the tightly wound papers until he held the one he wanted. Slowly, he slipped
the rubber band off. Newsprint unrolled across the table. The bold headline:
RITUALISTIC SLAYINGS
Sharon Tate, Ten Others Murdered.
The page featured an aerial shot of the Tate mansion paired with a crude blueprint of the mansion with Xs representing each victim. Page 2 had more pictures. He mulled over the articles and then opened another paper. Finding the follow up stories, he was surprised the press was connecting the evidence as he had. Jack wasn’t consoled. Newspapers were famous for wild speculation - laughed at by detectives – always proven wrong. Now, he fully understood how foolish he had looked that afternoon.
He sat still and silent. Numb.
An hour later, he began systematically opening up every newspaper.
There before him in print and pictures was a decade he had done his best to ignore: the Vietnam War, anti-war demonstrations in every major city across America. 250,000 marched on Washington in protest, burning draft cards and the American flag. There were protests from coast to coast: blacks, women, gays marching in the streets of America demanding equal rights.
Page after page saw a country in conflict. A protest at Columbia University escalated into an invasion of the Dean’s office, three school officials taken hostage. A picture showed a confident longhair in the Dean’s chair, his feet up on the prestigious mahogany desk, smoking one of the Dean’s cigars.
There was a week’s worth of pages and pictures of Detroit in flames, a seven day riot by blacks, sparked by police brutality. 43 people dead, 2,000 injured and 5,000 left homeless.
On the steps of the Oakland courthouse, Black Panthers donning large afros, black leather and dark sunglasses escorted their leader Huey Newton to freedom with shotguns cocked on their hips.
Chicago Democratic National Convention: the surrounding streets were full of turmoil and confrontations between police and hundreds of anti-war protesters chanting, “The world is watching!” Mayor Richard Daley gave riot police instructions: “Shoot to kill.” Cops moved in with clubs, beating indiscriminately, clobbering tourists, newsmen and people on their way home from work.
An April paper showed the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. shot dead on the balcony of a Memphis motel. The papers that followed showed reactionary racial violence in cities nationwide.
A June paper had a picture of Robert Kennedy shot down just after announcing his victory in the California primary. A nation mourned him as they had the assassination of his brother, JFK, five years earlier.
In New York, gays and lesbians outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village rioted and marched in violent demonstrations against police brutality, openly protesting their persecution as homosexuals.
A September front page featured a picture of a young woman with a placard: Cattle Parades are Degrading to Human Beings. The headline: Miss America Beauty Pageant Waylaid by Women's Lib Movement. Millions of viewers were shocked as the live national broadcast was interrupted for 10 minutes. A banner was unfurled from the theater’s balcony proclaiming “Women’s Liberation,” stink bombs and chanting of “Freedom for Women!” “No More Male Chauvinism!” and “Stop the Oppression of Women!” followed. The paper claimed protesters outside burned their bras.
An August paper had aerial photos of 500,000 hippies gathered at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival. The larger than expected crowds turned the three day open-air concert into an impromptu city with National Guard helicopters bringing in food and medicine. Smaller photos showed open drug use by performers, naked fans sliding in the mud and more awe-inspiring shots of a half a million longhairs.
Jack wandered to the living room and stared at his console black and white TV. He dropped to his knees and reached under for the plug. Once in the socket, he stood and wondered if the set still worked. Cautiously, he turned it on and walked back to his seat. Slowly, the tube hummed, flickered, then popped on.
NBC was broadcasting a special report on the Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre. 109 defenseless Vietnamese civilians in My Lai had been murdered by US troops. The footage was graphic: huts burning, scores of women, children and infants lying dead in dirt roads.
A British reporter came on the screen. “Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families which huddled together for safety in huts or bunkers were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered. Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature “C Company” carved into the chest. By late morning word had got back to higher authorities and a cease-fire was ordered. My Lai was in a state of carnage. Bodies were strewn through the village.”
They flashed back to The Tet Offensive. Viet Cong forces launching a series of surprise attacks in South Vietnam, even taking the U.S. embassy, two thousand US troops killed in a single day.
Jack stood up, walked over to the TV and reached behind it. He pulled the plug and the TV went silent. The picture blinked off.
He looked down at his hand holding the plug. It trembled.
***
The door hung crooked, its aged, faded wood covered in dust. In the dark night, in the dim hallway, Jack stood before it. Delware had always wondered about this door, the one no one was allowed to enter, not even Jack.
His aged eyes stared at the rusting, dented doorknob. He had lost everything. The full realization was sinking in. He could almost hear his dismissal being typed up in City Hall. Desperation pulled at the muscles of his face.
A sweeping desperation moved Jack’s hand towards the handle that had not been turned in eight years, but stopped before it touched. His hand hung there in the silence of the night.
Then he consented and surrendered. Clutching the cold handle as if it would unleash demons, his hand turned. The knob creaked. The door swung open.
Jack stood in the doorway; a shaft of dim living room light fell onto the floorboards. He stared at the darkness beyond. Stale air and the odor of mothballs hit him.
Stepping inside, his eyes widened, searching in the dark. Vague outlines emerged: a bed, a bare mattress - the sheets gone with its occupant.
Jack did not visit the grave at the back of the cemetery, the black stone with her name on it. Because his wife was here, silently waiting for him.
Stepping deeper into the room, he felt her presence again, the last good thing in his life. The only person he knew who had nothing to do with murder and crime.
Objects slowly came into focus: frilly drapes over the window, a framed mirror over a make-up table, neatly arranged perfume bottles, a round pearl hairbrush – all covered in thick dust. A pair of faded pink slippers with matching bathrobe draped over a chair; on the wall, framed black-and-white baby pictures of their daughter, a young smiling Jack and Martha on a ship’s deck on their honeymoon, Jack looking slim and sharp in his Air Force blues.
A tear formed. It swelled and rolled along the deep, mean wrinkles around his eye.
Sitting on the musty bed, it squeaked beneath him. The shaft of light from the doorway fell on his legs, but the rest of him was a dim silhouette in the dark room.
Bowing his head, his fingers felt the bed, longing to touch her, to feel her as real - not just a memory.
He let out a whimper as he remembered her embrace. The lone tear fell from his face. His chest heaved, emotion shook him as it had when she was beside him on dark nights like these.
The words heaved from him. “It’s over, Martha.
“There’s no way back. I’m leaving as a failure.
“The Department tried to put me out to pasture. They had no right to do that. No right. But I hung on and I was going to break the case…”
He turned to the mirror hoping to see her face reflected there as it had been so many times before, but only his shadow appeared in the frame. He was still alone. “We’re losing our country, Martha. M
en look like women; women act like men. Can’t even take a walk down our street no more - homos, coloreds, hippies everywhere. There’s no order to things. No one’s got any respect for authority. They don’t want any rules…any laws.
“It’s just not America anymore. All my buddies in WWII, dying on the beaches, Holland, the Ardennes…for what? So those longhairs could make America a communist haven?
“And guys like me. We’re the enemy - they used to call me officer, now they call me pig. Those longhaired bums got no respect.
“Why?
“Is it my fault?
“I did everything my country asked: when it went to war, I went to war. When my city needed men to take bad guys off the streets, I signed up. I did everything to take them down. I did my job! I defended my country! And now they call me pig.