The Light In the Dark

by Craig A. Smith

  “What’s up?” she asks.

  “I’m seeing shit,” he says, “my mind ain’t right.”

  “Yeah,” she says, “uh duh, you are tripping on acid.”

  “This is fucked up though,” he says, “I had no idea I would be feeling like this when I took it.” Stacy laughs.

  “Amateur,” she says, “What are you seeing?”

  He looks into her dilated eyes and excitably states, “The lunch meat is breathing girl, like a chest.”

  Stacy takes a look at the lunch meat and doesn’t see anything. “Wow, I’m just getting tracers,” she says.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” Tyrone says as he shuts the refrigerator door.

  “Do you wanna go back in the bedroom and crash or do you wanna party some more?” she asks.

  “Party some more, for sure,” he says, “and then I’m gonna give you more than ten seconds.” Stacy laughs and pulls him away from the refrigerator. They walk towards the bedroom and Todd approaches them, completely trashed.

  “Stacy, can we talk?” Todd asks.

  “Not now,” she says as she pushes past him. Todd grabs her arm and pulls her within earshot.

  “You are going to talk to me right now,” he demands.

  “Whoa mothafucka,” Tyrone says, “you take your hands off her or I’m gonna break your ass in two.”

  Todd squares up and smiles as he releases Stacy’s arm. “I’d love to see that,” Todd says.

  “Make a move then bitch,” Tyrone says not backing off an inch. The commotion has everyone on the boat circling the boys waiting for a fight. Eric walks in between them, freaked out.

  “Hey,” Eric yells, “if you two are gonna fight, go out on in the yard, I don’t want you fucking up my dad’s boat.”

  “No one is going to fight,” Stacy says as she pulls Tyrone away, “come on Tyrone, let’s get out of here.”

  “You lucky motherfucker,” Tyrone says as he backs away.

  “Fuck you,” Todd says, “I’m down to fight, let’s do this you fucking…” Tyrone shoots back into Todd’s face, knowing that he is about to say something racial.

  “Say it motherfucker, I dare you,” Tyrone says as he gives Todd a fiery stare. Stacy gets into Todd’s face as well.

  “Todd,” she says, “just go home, nobody wants you here.”

  Todd shoves her away from him and screams, “Fuck you, whore!”

  Tyrone jumps on Todd and knocks the massive man onto the ground and begins punching him. Everyone at the party forms a circle around them. Eric runs off of the boat and pulls out his cell phone. He hangs up and begins looking around, waiting for someone to arrive. Todd flips

  Tyrone around on his back and begins punching him in the face and in the ribs.

  “Eat that motherfucker,” Todd yowls. Tyrone knees Todd in the crotch, causing Todd to roll off of him. Someone in the crowd kicks Tyrone in the back so that Todd has time to recover. They both get back on their feet, both bloodied and circling about in a predatory fashion. A bright flash of light comes over the deck and through the windows. Deputies stand on the dock, shining lights everywhere.

  “This is the Pine County Sheriffs Department,” the deputy says, “everyone off the boat and into the yard.” Many of the teens on the boat jump into the water, swimming in different directions away from the boat, knowing that the police won’t jump in and follow. Stacy runs onto the deck and looks back at Tyrone, who is the only one still on the boat; a deputy makes his way onto the boat.

  “Tyrone, come on!” Stacy yells. Tyrone runs on to the deck but is frozen when he sees the depth of the water. He begins shaking.

  “I can’t do it,” he yells, “go on without me!”

  “I am not leaving you by yourself,” she cries, “come with me, I am a lifeguard, I can get you across.”

  “No,” he screams, “Go damn it! Go now!” Stacy runs to Tyrone and kisses him. Tyrone closes his eyes and takes in the moment. He pushes her off the deck just as the police run up to him and grab him. Tyrone tries to fight the police off of him, but he is too weak to do much of anything. He is pulled to his feet and approached by a familiar man, Deputy Jones, the same cop he saw at the convenience store.

  “I don’t imagine that you might have any identification on you do you young man?” Jones asks.

  “No sir,” Tyrone says as the deputy walks him to the edge of the boat, “I never got a drivers license or I.D. or anything.”

  “What is your name?” the deputy asks.

  “My name is Leroy Hines sir,” Tyrone says.

  “Okay Leroy,” the deputy says as he puts a life vest on Tyrone, “let’s go on the boat here and discuss what went on.”

  “Yes sir,” Tyrone says. The deputy notices the bruising on Tyrone’s face and his bloody nose.

  “Do you need a paramedic young man?” he asks.

  “No sir,” Tyrone says as he is escorted into the backyard. As he is placed into the cruiser, an expression of despair comes over him; he knows that his run of fun is now over. He thinks about Stacy, wondering if he really could’ve gotten away had he not been paralyzed by his fear of deep water.

  Eventually, they arrive at the station and Tyrone is seated next to Deputy Jones’s desk. He is amazed at the smallness of the place. When he would get pulled in for questioning back home, he would be taken into a large office building that was filled with officers and interrogation rooms. “This place is more about the size of a fast-food restaurant than a police precinct”, he thinks. He slides down into his seat. Deputy Jones grabs a pen and a notepad and begins questioning Tyrone.

  “Please state your full name, address and date of birth,” the deputy says. Tyrone quickly thinks of a cousin that he can use for temporary identity.

  “My name is Leroy Lamont Hines; my address is 100 Martin Luther King Boulevard, St. Louis Missouri. My date of birth is 12/18/96,” Tyrone says.

  The deputy speaks as he continues writing, “Okay, Leroy, we got a call on some underage drinking on the lake and you were the only one on the boat that we were able to get as of now. Now, we did find marijuana and alcohol on the boat, was any of that yours?”

  “No sir,” Tyrone confidently states.

  “Okay,” Jones says, “tell me what happened.”

  Tyrone looks away from him and mutters, “nothing to tell.”

  Deputy Jones puts his hand under Tyrone’s chin and further examines his face, “What happened to your face then?”

  Tyrone jerks his head away from the deputy’s hand and explains, “I was playing basketball and caught an elbow. Look are you gonna charge me with something or let me go?”

  Jones leans back in his chair and locks his hands behind his head and smiles. He begins spinning in his chair, acting as if he is bored and frustrated. He stops and picks his pen back up, grabs his notepad and calmly states, “That depends on your cooperation Leroy, which has thus far been very questionable up to this point. We know a fight was going on because someone called us and told us an assault was in progress. Looking at you and that fresh bruising tells me that you were one of the participants in that altercation. We need to know if the other person involved wants to press charges or if you want to press charges.”

  Past experience tells Tyrone that they have nothing without a witness and they will have to release him, “Let me go or charge me so I can call my lawyer,” he says.

  “Is that really what you want to do Tyrone?” Jones asks.

  “Yes sir, I know my rights,” Tyrone replies. Deputy Jones smiles as he slides an A.P.B. over to Tyrone, which has his picture and personal information on it. Tyrone knows he has just blown his false identification.

  “Funny, I’ve got an eyeball witness saw you leaving a liquor store that got broken into,” Jones says.

  “That’s impossible,” Tyrone says.

  “Well, impossible or not, I do have an eyeball witness and I am placing you under arrest for assault and destruction of private property,” Jones says, “I also know what yo
u pulled tonight at the hospital. My boss is gonna wanna speak to you in the morning.” Deputy Jones reads Tyrone his Miranda rights and then walks him to a small, dingy cell that looks like it was built in the 1940’s.

  He shuts the cell door, “Turn around and put your hands between the bars.” Tyrone follows instruction, Deputy Jones removes his cuffs. Jones walks away and Tyrone walks over to his cot. He curls up in the fetal position and notices a cockroach running across the floor. He flips over on his cot and faces the gray concrete wall so that he no longer has to look at his cell.

  Chapter 11

  Flanigan lights a cigarette as he sits on his couch watching the History Channel. He looks up at the clock, it is 1 a.m. It is storming outside and the occasional lightning strike lights up the room. He stares over at the stack of case files sitting on his coffee table. He turns on the table lamp and begins flipping through the case files once again, as if he will finally come across something that will give him some insight. Someone lightly taps on the front door, startling him. He grabs his service revolver and creeps to the door, slowly cracking it open enough to see who is on the porch. It is Ryan Hugh standing at the door, his shoulders sunken.

  “What the hell are you doing here, is everything okay?” Flanigan asks.

  “I figured you’d be up… I heard that you don’t sleep much. Do you mind if I come in for a minute?” Hugh asks.

  “Hell no, I don’t mind,” Flanigan says as he draws his weapon down, “get in here and out of that damned rain.” Ryan walks into the house and takes a seat in the living room recliner. Flanigan sits down on the couch.

  Hugh starts to take off his dress shirt and pauses, “Do you mind?” he asks, “I have a shirt on underneath.”

  “No,” Flanigan says, noticing Ryan’s massive arms which are covered with military tattoos. “Damned son,” Flanigan jokes, “you look like you could go bear hunting with nothing but a switch.” Ryan laughs and is interrupted by a voice coming down the hallway.

  “Can you boy’s keep it down please?” Flanigan’s wife yells from the bedroom.

  “Sorry honey,” Flanigan says. “My wife is asleep,” he whispers to Ryan, who nods and sinks further into the recliner.

  “Damn this thing is comfortable,” Ryan says as he rubs the arms of the recliner, “where did you get this?”

  “I don’t know,” Flanigan says, “my wife does all of the decorating around here.”

  “I’ll have to ask her if I ever meet her,” Ryan says.

  “So what brings you here at one o’ clock in the morning?” Flanigan asks.

  “I’ve had a pretty rough night,” Hugh says, “Jeffrey is out of it and the doctors told me that it doesn’t look like he is going to make it through the week. My mind is just racing and I wondered who else would be crazy enough to be up to talk to this late. I decided to drive by to see if you were up and I saw the glow off the television hitting your curtains, so I gave it a shot.”

  “Shit Ryan,” Flanigan says, “I know that maybe it isn’t my place to say this, but shouldn’t you be at home with your wife?”

  “She hasn’t left the hospital in the last two days,” Hugh says, “I really don’t even think that she knows that I’m there half of the time.”

  “Oh, I see… I’m sorry,” Flanigan says, “can I get you a beer or something?”

  Hugh gives him a half of a smile, “yeah, I could go for a beer right about now.” Jim walks into the kitchen and grabs a couple of Budweiser’s. He tosses one to Hugh.

  “I wondered if you would still be up looking at case files and it looks like I guessed right,” Ryan says as he opens his beer.

  “Sleep is overrated,” Jim says, “I usually can’t get a wink in the first couple days after any kind of homicide.”

  “I could tell that you were a damned pit-bull the second I met you,” Ryan says, “I’ve been around a lot of tough and disciplined men in the military and you are right up there with the best of them so far in my opinion. I just hope to become half of the cop you are someday. Is it true that other than the Butcher murders that you have solved every homicide that you’ve touched in less than a week?”

  “Yep,” Flanigan says as he sips his beer, “but over my whole career and all of the homicides including the Butcher that only puts me at a sixty percent solve rate.”

  “That’s still pretty damned impressive if you ask me,” Hugh says, “so taking away the Butcher, what is the most interesting case that you have ever worked on?”

  Jim takes a minute to think, “Well, I don’t know about interesting, but I could tell you the worst.”

  “Go for it,” Hugh says.

  “Well I was about your age,” Jim says, “and we got a call about a woman found in the woods. When we got to the scene, the officer that called it in showed me the body and her face had been completely flattened. Now when I say flattened, I mean it looked like a multi-colored pancake floating in a puddle of blood. I had never seen anything like that before. I mean her neck and the rest of her body were totally normal with this huge bloody pancake attached to it. One of the only times I ever got sick on the job… bits of skull and tissue and you could make out what some of the other parts of the face were simply based on their location in relation to their natural placement on the face.”

  “That is disgusting man, how did you I.D. her?” Hugh asks.

  “She had her purse and wallet laying just feet away from her,” Flanigan says. “Anyways, there was a damp indentation of a large flat rock about ten feet away from her so we knew that it had to be a rather strong individual to pull off a feat like that. So, I go to her house, which was about ten miles away to interview her family and her husband answers the door. The guy was a biker, a tall fellow that was at least 6’4 and had to weigh at least three hundred pounds. Obviously with him being a large man with a close association to the victim, I’m going to look at him first as a suspect. He tells me that his wife left the night before, but didn’t say where she was going and that he hadn’t seen her since. The guy didn’t seem bothered at all that his wife was missing, so that raised my suspicions even more. He tried to buddy up with me and offered for me to come in the house. Anyways… to make a long story short, he said he needed a cigarette, so we went out for a smoke and BAM, I see a similar shaped rock sitting right underneath a tree in the backyard. I thought it couldn’t be… nobody is that stupid. But there is no blood on it, so I wanted to cover my bases and get a warrant. So I thank him for his hospitality and go straight to the courthouse to get a search warrant and the next day forensics identified it as the rock that was used to kill his wife.”

  “Wow,” Hugh says, “he really took you back to where the rock was?”

  “He sure did,” Flanigan says, “the sad fact is that probably ninety percent of my victims were killed by other family members or close friends and most were very sloppy in covering their trails.”

  “So did the guy ever say why he did it?” Hugh asks.

  “Well, he suspected she was cheating on him with a man she was working with,” Flanigan says, “when he confronted her with his suspicions she admitted to it. He choked her until she turned blue, thinking that she was dead. So he took her to the park to get rid of the body. She started to wake up and cry for help, he said he saw that rock lying near her and just lost it, grabbed the rock and smashed her head in with it until there was nothing left to smash in.”

  “Huh,” Hugh says as he takes another swig, “what kind of time did he end up getting?”

  “Plead guilty to manslaughter,” Flanigan says as he lights another cigarette, “he’s been out for about twenty or so years now. Anyways, so how about you, what’s the worst you’ve ever been associated with besides today?”

  “Well believe me,” Hugh says, “I hope I never see anything as bad as I saw today, but there were times in the war I don’t even want to think about, the roadside bombs were the worst. You’d see pieces of people stuck to things they just shouldn’t be stuck to. I don’t really want to
go into that though; I still wake up in the middle of the night with visions of that shit in my head. But I did two years on the street and one year as a detective before I got here. The worst thing I have seen here in the states was finding a six year-old girl in a dumpster as street cop. She had been raped and murdered… only six years old. We caught the guy that did it three hours after the body was found. We lied and said we found his DNA on her dress; he wasn’t smart enough to know that we couldn’t have processed it that quickly, so he caved. He had just been paroled a week earlier, spent four years in prison for a similar sex offense. When we talked to him, he said he told everybody he was going to do it again if he got released. The detective asked him why he killed her and he told him that the reason he got caught the last time was because the girl identified him. He wasn’t going to let that happen again, he didn’t want to go back to prison. I think that anyone that does anything to a child should be put to death. Child victims are always the worst; they haven’t done anything to anybody. It just makes me wonder about people… I mean where are we as a society? You’d get more time for robbing someone with a water pistol than you would by molesting a child. Who in the hell makes these laws? It just makes you want to insulate your kids from everything and everybody when you know pieces of shit like that are left roaming around in the streets.”

  “Yeah,” Jim says, “sometimes I can’t stand the fact that we bust our asses putting trash like that away just so they can be released in a few years.” Hugh nods his head as he finishes his beer. He points to a large crucifix hanging on the living room wall.

  “It really does surprise me that you are religious,” Hugh says.

  “This again,” Flanigan says, “why do you find it so hard to believe?”

  “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to fit,” Hugh says.

  “Why doesn’t it fit, is it because I’m not a bible beater?” Flanigan responds, “I don’t care much for telling others how to live, people do what they are going to do regardless anyways.”