by Ri, Xesin
“No, no. He hasn’t done anything. He said that he wanted to sleep soundly in the cemetery tonight, to talk to my brother. Did he buy anything in the last couple of days from the pharmacy or anything like that? Anything odd?”
“Oh! I think he did. Yesterday, he went out and got a few things. He said he was just buying some Band-Aids and things like that because he was sure Mary would scratch him up for talking over her shows the night before. So he’d walked over to the store.”
“Officer Ryan will escort you back to your house. You are the landlord there, right?”
“Yes, yes. I don’t—yes, I’ll take the officer into his room for the medication.”
“Okay, we’ve got to have it. It will help save his life.”
“Come on,” said Officer Ryan moving quickly to his car.
The pastor quickly got to his car and both were fast gone down the street.
Randy wheezed. Whatever a death rattle might be, Officer Reingold heard it coming from Randy.
The ambulance’s sirens were closing in.
The rain fell all at once like a million overturned buckets.
The ambulance was there.
Randy was still alive.
“I need you take good care of him. He’s a good guy. Officer Ryan is trying to find out what he mixed with his alcohol right now.”
James couldn’t help but feel like he was losing another person. His father had always told him that he was smart not to do what his little brother Austin was doing because James had stayed in a quiet small town rather than going into the army and looking for action. “Things happen in small towns,” his father had assured him, “but you can still get bored as a small town cop.” But there were drugs in small towns. There were guns, knives and thugs to use them in small towns. Enough kids. A few bad parents. A weak economy. Some towns only have thriving unemployment. Bad, bad days. These things were enough to make a small town cop’s life livable if you believed the stories some tell.
The medics were fast. The two young men, who looked to be in their early twenties, were both very strong too. James wondered if someone knew Randy as a patient and made sure to send the right people.
Despite the hard rain, they got Randy up and into the ambulance in just a few seconds without much trouble. Randy lay flat like a warped board. Questions were being asked of him, but he was staring off into space. The other man was trying to find something in a drawer. The driver asked if they were ready. The doors were shut, and the ambulance was off.
James went to his car. He got out his rain jacket and pulled it on. He grabbed most of the 24-pack and the empties. He took a quick look into the little plastic bag Randy had been carrying, his empties bag. Inside, were some bent cans and a crumpled yellow piece of paper. James pulled the paper out and put the bag and the beer into his trunk.
James got into his car. He shook his cap dry and then took a good look at the bit of paper. It was a receipt, but it was just a receipt for the beer and nothing else. Randy was working hard against them. It was just another day that Randy wanted to die; so for James, it was another eventful day trying to keep Randy from doing what he wanted. For another person a life and a moment like this would have led to introspection and questions about the nature of the mind and of life—but Officer J. T. Reingold was a police officer and his own brother hadn’t even been buried a full year yet. “Things happen,” was the notion that crossed his mind.
“Jimmy, hon? Jimmy?”
“Yeah, Hazel. I’m here.”
“Hank wants you to come back to the station. He’d like to talk to you in person about something.”
“Right now? I’ve got three hours left.”
“It’s alright; Hank wants you to come back, Jimmy.”
“Alright, be there in five minutes.”
“Sounds good, hon.”
James took a moment to make sure his car was in order. He took off his jacket and placed it in the passenger seat.
“Shit,” he said. He knew the audio recorder was always on, as was the video recorder that stared straight out from the windshield.
He drove back to the station then, pulled his car into its spot, assumed he wasn’t going to be in it again today and got out with Randy Cass’s beer and trash.
James stood in the locker room.
James had changed from his uniform into his civilian attire. He felt uncomfortable not being in his uniform while his shift was still on. He took his bag and left the locker room wondering whether Randy was alive or not.
“James,” said Urs’s Police Chief Henry Lowe, “I don’t want you to think of this as being pulled off your beat, but I heard Hazel say that you finally got your package from Illinois regarding your brother; and I know what they said in the papers might be in that report too. I know you’ve tried hard to help out Randy Cass, God only knows why, but I think maybe you should take it easy. We’ve got things covered, and I’m going to need you this weekend; two of the downtown bars are having big name music acts. One is that pot-smoking rapper jackass, and the other is the hard-drinking hard-fighting punker or whatever the hell that music is that brings out all the tough guys and wannabe tough guys. I have a feeling we’ll need a few boys like you to handle the crowds. There may even be bonuses if things run long.”
“Alright,” said James.
“Okay, good. Take care of yourself and be ready on Friday. And if there is anything in that paperwork you got from that sheriff, over there in Illinois, you don’t hesitate to talk to me about it. Let me know. Keep me informed. Like any good policeman, I don’t like surprises. You have any questions, you come to me and we, and I mean the Township of Urs, will help one of our own.
“And, if you have any issues with journalists getting out of hand, calling or showing up, you can come over to my house with your family; or if you need to be by yourself, get away, you just let me know. Just remember that they are looking for something, anything, and they don’t care about your brother or you or the law or Urs or anything—they care about their story. Got that?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks, Hank.”
“Alright. Keep me informed if there’s anything interesting in those files.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright,” said Hank.
James nodded as the chief left him.
Hazel smiled. “You are rather popular, hon. Two packages.” Hazel held up a box of gloves. “Better safe than sorry?” she said.
“I don’t think so. I was expecting them.”
“The second one isn’t from Illinois, and its return address has been worn away during travel.”
“Okay, maybe I’ll take the gloves.”
“Better safe than sorry, hon,” Hazel said as he took a pair.
“See you Friday,” said James.
“Not just yet. You’ve also got three phone messages. I told you you were popular.”
James reached out for the notes.
“How do you say this name?”
“Ray Synad,” said Hazel. That’s how he said it. Said he needed to talk with you directly. He said he was sure you’d want to talk to him. Thought he was Jewish at first; I don’t think he is though.”
“What else? How did he sound?”
“Oh, like a businessman, real sure of himself. An accent from Anywhere, USA.”
“Anything else, nervous?”
“No. If he was anything, he was not nervous, could have been ordering his favorite pizza.”
“Huh, odd,” said James beginning to leave.
“Bye.”
“Bye, Hazel,” said James walking through the glass doors at the front of the station.
He took a sharp right once he was down the concrete steps out in front of the police station. He walked to his Ford Focus. He got inside and sat down. He took his brother’s dog tags out and put them up on his rearview mirror. He rolled down the windows and sat there in the small white Ford pointed towards a coffee shop where some of the motorcycle guys, mostly older farmers, gathered when they had some s
pare time.
He ripped open the report from Illinois first.
The report was from Sheriff Douglas’s office directly. The investigators had written up a report a little worse than the things the media were saying. Then there was seeing twenty different pictures of his brother’s motionless, partially burned, blown-up, and shot body, which wasn’t even the worst of the file. He’d gotten to see his brother’s body at the funeral. He’d talked to other officers who knew Deputy Reingold and respected him. The worst part was reading how stupid his brother seemed in the report. Apparently, he had been running his mouth like a young fool. Climbing up to the top of a silo with little to no idea what might be inside. Even if it hadn’t been a trap, it was still a dangerous, enclosed space that hadn’t been secured. “Overzealous” showed up again and again in the report. It didn’t fit with how he thought of his brother. How many family members look back clearly on a lost loved one? His brother had been to Afghanistan when he was an army grunt, hadn’t he learned anything over there?
Pictures of the dead migrant workers stuffed the folder making it heavy and fat. The men were clearly Mexican, but why they would arm themselves, ambush the police, and do it at such a location was in doubt. It seemed like they weren’t dealers, at least there was no evidence at the time or after that they were. However, the investigation suggested that they were dealers and weren’t simply armed because of some irrational fear that they would be deported, yet none of the men had any criminal file in their homeland.
James looked over everything in the file. He looked at all the pictures of all the dead, including Deputy Rightendale. Rightendale had been described by the men who knew him as an upstanding straight shooter. They didn’t say it, but it sounded like he was a real stickler, a by-the-book-sort, a boy scout. Why would he have followed a fellow deputy into an area like that, and one that was obviously so dangerous as an old corn silo filled with highly combustible h. h. corn grain?
Feeling more confused than before Off. Reingold opened the other package. Inside was a series of pictures and a small memory card for a digital camera. The hard copy pictures were a group of people in a mall. It looked to be winter the way everyone was bundled up.
The last picture was a black and white repeat of the picture just before it in the sequence. On it, someone had taken a red marker and circled and named the people and dated the moment. It said: January 2011.
“The future,” said James with a smile.
A young man was named “Mr. Lund (a.k.a. No-bit).” There were others too, including a “Mr. Yewstone” and a “Mr. Orr,” who was holding an ice cream. And there was “Ray Synad” looking right into the camera with a smirk on his face while seemingly pointing at the face of “Mrs. Loretta Dean (a.k.a. Raewyn Alistair)” with an outstretched index finger from a hand on his hip.
“Shit,” said James.
James stared at the unmarked color version of the same photo. It was definitely Mrs. Dean. It looked like whoever had chosen the picture had even purposefully chosen one that seemed to show Mr. Synad’s knowledge that he was being filmed.
“Like a little Donald Trump,” said James.
James looked through the pictures and noticed that the man identified as Ray Synad was even flicking off the camera in others, from a multitude of angles, almost like he knew where the cameras were.
“Is he doing that on purpose?” wondered James aloud.
James, overcome with anticipation about what might be on the memory card, grabbed for his camera from the glove box. Pictures of a missing woman who stole sensitive ADD documents and the owner of the farm where his brother had died was an absolute find, someone was letting him know something.
He got his memory card out and put in the one he’d just gotten.
The card did have pictures on it.
The pictures were from a farm.
There was a picture of a double-banded silo.
And there was a picture that stopped him. It was Al Duncan walking by a barn flanked by h. h. corn. In front of the barn were a group of tough-looking Mexican migrant workers.
James grabbed the file from Sheriff Douglas’s office. The bodies were wearing the same clothes, and even on the tiny LCD screen shining from the back of his camera, he was certain they were the same men. There had been no ambush. His brother didn’t even appear to be on the scene yet. One picture seemed to be from inside the police cruiser. These pictures were dated right. The time stamp was just moments before the Sheriff’s Office’s report said they’d all arrived. This had to be from Deputy Rightendale’s own camera. And since both Deputy Rightendale’s car and the sheriff’s had been damaged after the blast, this was the only footage of the site before the explosion.
James thought about the fact they might be fake. But the time stamp was right. The corn was the right height in the background. The shadows and colors all looked right. The men were all the same men.
Who would fake Ray Synad flicking off cameras in a mall?
Who sent him this?
What was remaining of the address simply suggested an unnumbered PO Box in Indiana.
James put all the files down and shut off his camera. He sat back and looked at the messages Mr. Synad had left with Hazel. Synad wanted to talk with him directly and personally.
James grabbed his phone off the armrest and dialed.
“Hello,” said a woman’s voice.
“Hello, who is this?” tried James.
“You don’t know who you are calling?” asked the woman.
“I do. I just don’t know why you didn’t identify yourself or your organization.”
“I’m just casual that way,” said the woman. “Why don’t you identify yourself?”
“I am Officer James Reingold. I’m looking for Mr. Synad.”
There was a long pause.
James rolled up his window.
“Hello, Officer Reingold,” said a man’s voice. “I’m Ray Synad. I’m glad you called me back.”
“Is this your work number?”
“Yes, why?”
“Who was that before?”
“That was Peg, my secretary.”
“Don’t you mean executive assistant?”
“Yes, but they mean the same damn thing. I’ll use the shorter one because I don’t care much for changing names and titles just because people get bored by the old ones.”
James thought about whether this might be a prank or not. However, he’d heard Mr. Synad was a character, and maybe, he was just like this.
“Hello, Officer Reingold?”
“Yes.”
“Thought I’d lost you.”
“Mr. Synad, why did you call me?”
“I called you because I had a visit by the FBI just a few days ago. They were looking for a Mrs. Loretta Dean. Are you familiar with Mrs. Dean? She went missing in your town.”
“Yes, I am familiar with her. Do you have information about her whereabouts?”
“Well, no,” said Mr. Synad. “What I do have to say, though, is of interest because of a series of odd occurrences and the FBI leaving me a file about her disappearance and the final results of the investigation into what happened out at my farm—interesting read, those files.
“There was a deputy killed on my farm. His last name was Reingold too. You were family?”
“He was my brother.”
“Small world,” said Mr. Synad.
“Did you know Mrs. Dean? Did you ever meet her?”
“Never. That was why I was so surprised about the FBI visiting me about her, but they mentioned the ties she had with Mr. Dean and his employers, the ADD Corporation, and I could understand. They thought I had sent her to spy on them that way. Quite a suggestion. Almost a threat.”
James heard Ray Synad’s laugh. It sounded like the canned laughter of a sitcom television audience.
“Are you sure you didn’t meet her? The FBI isn’t in the business of wasting taxpayers’ money.”
“I agree, but in this case, they did.
I know because they showed me some pictures of her. I would remember a pretty girl like that. Even if she changed her hair and the way she dresses, I think I would be able to remember that picture and say, ‘Yes, I do know her.’ But I don’t know Loretta Dean.”
“What do you want?”
“I have been under a great deal of scrutiny. I was wondering if, like me, you have been getting any number of unsolicited meetings or packages from anyone like I did with the FBI?”
“Why?”
“I believe the FBI is watching ADD because my competitor has been doing some rather suspicious things. I believe there may be insiders, perhaps in the FBI, who are working on behalf of the ADD Corporation in an attempt to destroy my company, in effect, to destroy me.”
“That’s a hefty charge, sir. That goes way above what I can help you with. Maybe you should get yourself a lawyer? I’m just a small town cop, and I’m in Iowa if you didn’t know that.”
“Fair, but you can help me. You see, I figured for a moment that you might be working with ADD—“
“What?”
“Hear me out. Then I realized your brother was killed. That wouldn’t make you happy. If you are working for ADD then you may know where Mrs. Dean is. If you aren’t then you are like me and have no idea where she is. Either way, it would be a pretty cold-blooded thing to ignore, the people who killed your brother.”
“How do I know you didn’t? Mr. Synad, you owned that farm, and you may be playing some murderous game. So you tell me, why didn’t you do it?”
“Sheriff Douglas, to this day, has never exonerated me or my company from your brother’s death. A civil suit is still very much a possibility with a good lawyer and the will to do so. Some believe I have been in league with the Mexican drug cartels for years. Some plot to ship cocaine and marijuana into the states from Mexico using my connections. I want to know who killed my workers, Deputy Rightendale, and your brother. Officer Reingold, I want to know who is responsible for this mess. That is what is in it for me. I want to know who is responsible. One of my competitors has to be behind this. And with the consolidation of farms beginning to cause nationwide panic for h. h. growers, it has to be someone pretty powerful.”