Measure Twice

by J. J. Hensley

  He was hammered. He knew the experience well, and knew better than to move too quickly. The amount of alcohol in his system was not enormous by his standards, but on an empty stomach, it had done the trick. Channing rubbed his eyes and rolled his neck. A tapping noise was coming from…somewhere. He made a feeble attempt to stand, and steadied himself on the second attempt.

  An empty beer bottle spun across the room as Channing accidentally kicked it when attempting to take a step around the coffee table. The noise, which was a little louder now, came from his left. Walking toward the front door, he finally recognized it as knocking. Half walking, half shuffling in that direction, he opened the door without checking who was on the other side. Illuminated by a yellow porch light, Tina Lambert looked alert and confident. As she sized up the form standing in the doorway, her expression changed to frustration, but just as quickly—concern.

  “Sorry to bother you so late.”

  Channing did not speak. He simply left the door open, walked back to the couch, and sat down. He made no effort to hide the empty bottles surrounding him. Lambert stood in the doorway, unsure if she should leave or if the open door was Channing’s idea of an invitation. He was obviously drunk and he had to realize she would be able to tell. So, if walking away from the open door was an invitation, it was one filled with indifference.

  “What time is it?” Channing inquired as he sorted through beer bottles, trying to find one that still contained fluid.

  “It’s nearly three o’clock,” answered Lambert. “I couldn’t sleep, took a drive. I thought you might be up, so I called dispatch and got your address. I drove up, saw your light on and…well, here I am.”

  Channing found a bottle that was not quite empty and drained it into his mouth. He lowered the bottle and his eyes dropped to a space on the floor between his feet.

  Lambert waited for him to speak, but after twenty seconds, it became apparent that the ball was in her court.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I just thought we could talk and maybe clear up some things.”

  Her partner’s head didn’t move, but Lambert could tell his eyes were still open. This time she used the silence to look around the living room. Modest and tasteful furniture. It looked to be a recently neglected home, littered with empty bottles. Pictures of Channing and the woman who must be, or once was, his wife decorated walls and tables. Some medals were hanging from a set of pegs on the wall.

  As a former star high school and collegiate athlete, she knew the kind of display. She had a similar set-up displaying some of her achievements on the track. She was only a few years removed from putting on dominating displays of speed, but now it seemed so long ago. So many miles, so many victories, so many athletic and academic accolades and here she was: a cop, staring at her alcoholic partner at three in the morning, working a grisly homicide, and fighting for respect from both the public and her own department.

  She looked over at the top of Channing’s head, breathed in air thick with the smell of alcohol, and shook her head while wondering what her mother would say about this. The woman who had given her so much, while having so little. The woman who cleaned houses and wiped the noses of children that did not belong to her in order to give her own daughter a chance at a better life. The woman who died happy, knowing her only child was going to go to college to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or…something other than this.

  “Look,” Lambert said in her most maternal tone. “I don’t know all the details about what happened to you, but I know what I saw from you today in Harris’s office. You were energized. You were…sharp. You were—”

  “Relatively sober.” Channing interrupted and looked over at a picture of him and his wife. They were standing in front of a fountain at a local park. Channing remembered handing his cell phone to some random woman and asking her to take the picture. What was it—two, maybe three years ago?

  Lambert let the silence settle back in and immediately regretted it. Now she would have to fill the void again.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry if I came across as icy. I can do that sometimes. It’s a defense mechanism and I need to work on it. It’s nothing personal. If half of the rumors about you are true, it’s amazing that you even came back to work.”

  She paused, not sure she wanted to say the next thing on her mind.

  Keeping a calm tone, she suggested, “I’m sure you could change your mind and still take some sort of early retirement, or a light duty assignment, or something like that.”

  If Channing was listening, he did not let it show. He was still looking at the picture on the other side of the room.

  Another few seconds passed and Lambert decided she should leave. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and turned toward the door.

  The metallic sound of the keys banging together seemed to register with Channing. He spoke in a quiet and serious tone.

  “I was working the Drifter case. It was really just mop-up duty at that point. Making sure we had all our ducks in a row for court. No heavy lifting. Just doing everything we could to make sure he didn’t walk on a technicality.”

  Lambert stopped and turned around. At first, she thought he was talking some sort of drunken nonsense. Then, she replayed the words in her mind—Drifter case—and she knew where her partner was going with this, but she was not sure it was a good thing.

  Stanley Drifter had abducted, raped, and killed three gay men in the area. He tripped up when he tried to grab what would have been victim number four behind a bar that was a favorite of Pittsburgh’s homosexual community, not realizing that his slight-looking target had a black belt in judo. A beaten and battered Drifter escaped with a broken arm and multiple cuts and scrapes. Through witness descriptions and a canvas of the local hospitals, Channing and his partner, Alex Belmont, tracked Drifter down and subsequently discovered a treasure chest of physical evidence in his home. As far as murder cases went, it was pretty much open-and-shut.

  Channing leaned his head back on the couch and closed his eyes. “We were just following up with Drifter’s neighbors—asking the usual questions: Did you see anything unusual at Drifter’s house? Did you ever have any problems with him? Ever notice a lot of vehicles coming and going? Basically, checking to see if there might be any more victims that we didn’t know about. Nothing unusual.”

  Lambert uncomfortably played with the keys in her hands and wondered if her visit was a big mistake.

  “We’d probably hit six or seven houses on the street and hadn’t come up with anything new. Everybody said the same thing. ‘Nice guy, quiet, never figured him for a fairy.’ It was a blue-collar neighborhood, not the picture of progressiveness, but not a particularly dangerous area. Damn, it was hot that day.”

  Now his eyes were open, but he was not seeing the present. Lambert waited. He was somewhere else now.

  “We were at one of the last houses on the block. It was a nice looking two-story—nicer than most of the other houses. An orange cat was sitting on a windowsill on the front of the house. We had walked all the way down one side of the street and looped back up the other side, so we were near where we had parked the car. I wanted to grab a drink from my water bottle, so I told Alex to wait a second. He said he’d go see if anyone was home and for me to catch up when I could. So, I let him go up to the house alone. I never should have…”

  Channing slowly shook his head, then continued, “I got to the car, took a drink, and my cell phone rang. It was Mary. She wanted to know if I had decided what kind of bushes we were going to have the landscaper put in the front yard. We talked for maybe five or six minutes, I told her I loved her, and then I headed to the two-story. Alex had already gone inside.”

  Lambert watched him intently. He was not upset. He was just reciting the story, but she had the impression that he had not told it before. There was a distant look in his eyes.

  “The front door was cracked open. I knocked, but no one answered. I pushed the door open and yelled for Alex. When he didn’t an
swer, I stepped inside and called his name again. I put my hand on my gun, but thought maybe Alex had gone to a back room with whoever lived there and he just didn’t hear me. I checked the entire first floor. I was about to head upstairs, when I thought I heard something behind a door off the side of the kitchen. Now I drew my gun and opened the door. The steps led down to a dimly lit basement and I heard shuffling noises. I crouched and slow-walked down the wooden steps—you know the type, unfinished basement steps. I was about halfway down when I saw a black dress shoe—the kind Alex had been wearing—laying on the concrete floor. I was walking down the stairs sideways when I felt something grab my ankle and I went headfirst the rest of the way down the stairs.

  “When I woke, I couldn’t see much out of my left eye and my face felt wet. I looked down and saw blood on my left leg. I was sitting in a chair opposite Alex. But Alex wasn’t in a chair. He was tied to a giant round circle that once was the top of a table. He was naked, in the upright position, his arms spread out like some sort of Vitruvian Man, his wrists and ankles held in place by rusty chains. Alex was conscious, but barely.

  I looked around the room the best I could. I had no idea how long I had been out, but it must have been a while. The basement was damp and smelled of mold and urine. Tools lay around everywhere, in piles on workbenches, spread out on the floor. I tried to move, but my hands were tied behind my back and my ankles were chained to the chair. I called to Alex and his head moved, but he didn’t answer. At some point I passed out again.”

  Channing got up and rolled his head around, stretching his neck. He walked unsteadily over to a wall where another picture hung. It was a picture of him with his former partner, Alex Belmont.

  “A bucket of cold water got thrown in my face and I heard Alex talking to someone. He was saying that we were cops and that more cops were coming. A voice to my left said that our car had already been moved and that he doubted anyone would be bothering us. Alex, who had been the best man at my wedding and had worked midnight shift patrol with me, cursed and threatened the man, but got only silence in return. My eyes cleared up enough to make out the figure that was standing off to the side. He was well over six feet tall, must have weighed two-forty. I thought he looked Indian or Pakistani. Later I learned that he was of Sri Lankan decent, but was born in this country, so he had no detectible accent.

  Channing turned toward Lambert and focused his red and tired eyes on hers. “You know, in the movies, the psychopaths always talk a lot. They use scary phrases and have a flair for the theatrical. Not this guy. He just picked up an eight-inch knife, walked over to Alex, and went to work. The piercing squeals echoed off the walls. First, he cut off his nipples. Then he skinned—”

  Seeing Lambert cringe and tense up, Channing stopped himself.

  Slightly embarrassed for being so graphic, Channing hesitated, and then continued. “Anyway. This went on for a while. I have no idea how long. The entire time, I was tied to that chair. I yelled and eventually pleaded for him—Jayakody, Kasun Jayakody was his name—to stop, but he didn’t even acknowledge me. Eventually, Alex passed out and stopped screaming. That’s when Jayakody spoke to me for the first time. He told me, ‘You’ll be next, but let me give you a little taste of what’s to come.’ Then he ripped my shirt open and went to work on me with a different knife. This one was curved and razor sharp. It cut through my skin like it was tissue paper. It was probably a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. I just kept thinking about my wife and how I wasn’t going to see her again.

  “When I woke up again, I was still in the chair, and Alex was awake and chained to that table. Everything was the same, except Alex was facing the table, his back exposed. Blood was everywhere: on us, the floor, the walls. The air was heavy with blood and sweat. I asked Alex where the man had gone. He was able to turn his head to the right enough for me to see his right ear was missing. Alex said he didn’t know. He was crying. I struggled against my restraints, and every part of my chest and shoulders hurt. I tried to reassure him that we would be found, that we had marked out in the neighborhood, that cops would flood the area and go door to door. But I knew that if our captor played it cool and presented himself right to any cop knocking on the door, it could be days before we would be found—if at all.”

  Lambert stared at the keys in her hands. She could not look at her partner now. She had opened a door she was not ready for, and she knew it.

  “Alex and I talked for a while. I told him it was all my fault. I should have gone to that door with him. He was so young.”

  Channing wiped his eyes and reflexively felt for the flask inside his jacket, but slowly withdrew an empty hand from his breast.

  “Did you know he was the youngest person in the department to ever make it to Homicide?”

  Lambert shook her head, but did not make eye contact with him.

  “Yeah…people forgot that about him.” Channing paused and took in a deep breath. Then, he continued, “Anyway, it wasn’t long before Jayakody was back. This time he used an assortment of knives on Alex’s back. Some looked new, but most were old and rusty. I screamed almost as loud as Alex. Eventually my voice started to fail. It must have gone on for about an hour before Alex passed out again. And just like before, Jayakody said very little. He just walked over to me, took the remaining shreds of my shirt off and started carving up my back. Before I blacked out, he told me that I’d be going up on the table when he was finished with my partner. I remember looking up at Alex…”

  Tears filled Channing’s eyes. He held a hand up to his mouth and struggled to keep the vomit from coming up.

  “I could see part of his spine—his spine. But he was still breathing. Somehow…someway, the tough S.O.B was still with me. That was the last thing I remembered for that day. From what I’ve been told, that was just day one out of three.”

  Channing moved to the couch on the side of the room and sat down. He took a moment to compose himself. He looked around the room and seemed to lose his train of thought. Then he raised his exhausted, bloodshot eyes and said quietly, “You should go now. Everyone. Everyone… should just go.”

  With that, Channing fell back on the couch and closed his eyes. Lambert stood motionless for half a minute, trying to find the words. She conceded there was nothing she could say—no comfort she could offer—no question that would be appropriate. She walked out the front door, closing it softly behind her. Sitting behind the wheel of her car, she realized she had two different partners. The Jackson Channing with a razor sharp intellect and passion for his job was one partner. The empty shell of a human to whom she had just spoken was another. In less than twelve hours, one of them would show up to work. She wondered which one.

  Step 6

  We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

  T he sound of plastic vibrating against wood caused Channing to stir. He reached above his head, found a pillow, and covered his face. The noise continued for several seconds and he ignored the vociferous buzzing. Channing was about to give in and pick his cell phone up from the coffee table when the offending racket abruptly stopped. He had just started to fall back asleep when the phone vibrated again and fell off the table and onto the floor.

  Without removing the pillow from his face, he stretched his right arm down to the floor and felt around for the device. A few seconds later, he had the phone in his hand and located a button on the side that told the phone to ignore the call. He would check to see who it was later. It was too early and he was too hungover to deal with anyone. He had not known if he could even get himself drunk enough to give himself a hangover anymore. Now he knew.

  He did not know how much time had passed when the noise started again. He reached down, grabbed the phone, and pushed the button that would let him get some more rest. This time it did not work. It took another full minute before he realized the doorbell was ringing and someone was knocking at his door. Removing the pillow from his head, a beam of sunlight coming through the livi
ng room window blinded him. He squinted and pushed himself into a sitting position. Immediately, he regretted it and his forty-year-old stomach reverted to the way it felt the morning after his twenty-first birthday.

  The ringing and knocking persisted while he slowly got to his feet and steadied himself. Trying his best not to vomit, he walked to the front door, peeked out the sidelights, and rubbed his eyes.

  Pulling the door open a few inches, he cleared his throat and managed a low-sounding “Good morning.”

  “It’s not morning. And it’s not good.”

  His partner’s attire was all business and so was her expression. She stared at him. He tried to return the look through a squint, but the sunlight was in his eyes.

  “What are you doing here? Did something happen?”

  “Yeah, you could say that. I’ve been calling you.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. Where did women learn that stance? Was there some class they took? Pissed Off At A Man 101? Was it an elective course? To Channing it seemed like a lot of women majored in that field.

  Not in the mood to play games, Channing refused to speak and kept looking at Lambert—or at least he tried to look at her. The pain behind his eyes was excruciating.

  Finally giving in, Lambert asked him, “What time is it right now?”

  Channing impatiently told her he had no idea.

  “I figured as much. I’ll be in the car. I brought coffee.”

  She stormed off his porch and walked toward the street where he assumed her car was, but he could not see that far yet.

  After closing the door, he walked to the kitchen and looked at the clock on the microwave oven. It read 2:30 p.m. His shift had started at two o’clock. He breathed out a curse and headed to the bathroom to clean up.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in Lambert’s car, subjected to hostile silence—another skill that women learned at an early age. He had to find that course catalog somewhere.