Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  Steven could sense she was starting to break down. He needed to bring her back to their conversation, if nothing else to get her thinking about something other than what had happened to their daughter, “Yes, Beth, we did talk to our girls and other parents talked to their children as well. People take precautions every day because they are aware that there are in fact people out there, criminals that take advantage of them or victimize them in some other way.

  “This is different, Beth, these individuals aren’t criminals, not in the sense we know them. This is their nature, what they are born to do. It is the way evolution works, honey, they are not human, they look human and act human, but they are something else.

  “Criminals, the people we warn our children about, are human beings, they are made criminals by their upbringing or they become criminals because of greed or trauma or drugs or some mental deficiency. These are the things the world knows about and what they educate their children to be cautious of, what we’ve prepared ourselves for.

  “But they are human beings in the end, no more capable of carrying out their crimes than another human would be able to. They are bound by the same limitations that we’re bound by, the same physical abilities, the same intellect, the same physiology. It’s a level playing field. If we’re cautious and aware, then we are on the same playing field as them, as the criminals.

  “These things are different, Beth, they are physically different, they are able to do things that humans are not able to do, and they are able to use that to hunt, to do what their nature calls on them to do.”

  Beth had to interject. She had heard what he had explained before about the science and about what he would be arguing, but now it became more concrete, more real, and she simply could not believe what he was saying. “What do you mean they have abilities we don’t have? What do you mean it’s not a level playing field? What you’re saying isn’t possible, Steven. It sounds like science fiction, like some bad novel!”

  Now it was his turn to lose his cool, “Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve explained to you, Beth? To what I found in my research? Don’t you think I thought the same thing, that I was even more skeptical than you are? You know my training and you know where I’ve been and the things I’ve done. Do you think I’d be willing to take this risk, to put you and the kids through this, if I wasn’t sure about what I’m doing?”

  Beth, tears now streaming down her face, answered in the most even tone she could manage, knowing that he’d hear her tears anyway, “I do know, Steven. I told you that I trusted you and that I would stand by you no matter what and I will, always. It’s just that this is so hard to put my head around; it’s so hard because it’s your life, our life, that is on the line. I want to be there for you, I love you and I know how hard this has been for you, but I’m still trying to make sense of it all, what happened to Tracy, this, everything.”

  Steven could hear the anguish in her voice and it broke his heart, but at least she sounded more grounded, like she wanted to believe what he had said and to understand what he was doing. It was too much to ask of her on their first conversation, but he just didn’t have the time to work her through all of it. He needed to end the call, but he didn’t want her mind wandering, coming up with her own notions or ideas of what he was doing.

  He wanted her to understand the science the same way he had, so he came up with the best thing he could think of to do both. “I’ll tell you what, I will send you the research I’ve done, the links to the websites and blogs and to the academic papers. You can read through all of it and that way you’ll have the same information I had when I made my decisions.

  “I know it’s too much to ask you to understand everything in just one call, honey, and I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of bringing you along when I was making my decisions, but I just didn’t have things clear in my own head until a few days ago.

  “I have to go now, but I promise I’ll send everything and once you’ve had a chance to look at all of it we can talk again. I love you, Beth, with all my heart. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, you and the kids.

  “I’m sorry for putting you through all of this and I promise I will do everything in my power to get our life back again, but I need to do this, babe. I may not have started this, but I have to finish it, to make it mean something more.”

  Beth, now unable to control her emotions, responded in a quivering voice, “I know, Steven, I know you do. I will try to understand this better, to understand it the way you do. I love you and so do your kids. Whatever else happens, please don’t forget that.”

  Steven’s eyes welled up and he needed to say goodbye before she could hear it in his voice, “Thank you, Beth. I love you very much and I’ll call you as soon as I can. Bye, honey.”

  With that he hung up the phone. He remained in the chair for a couple of minutes, getting his emotions back under control. It was the hardest thing he’d had to do so far, but he knew there might be even harder things to come. He wiped his eyes with the handkerchief in his pocket, let out a deep breath and stood up, ready to get on with the rest of it.

  Zeidler and Drew Willis were waiting for him in the lobby by the conference room. Zeidler motioned for Steven to lead the way, “Are you ready to go, Steven?” Loomis, now composed, simply nodded and went to the elevator bank.

  Chapter 18

  Robert Grady and Mark Mullins were sitting in Grady’s office waiting for Loomis. They both had what felt like their tenth cup of coffee in front of them, three or four having been poured in the last hour. Consequently, they were two bundles of nerves. They had sat in the office since the call, talking and tapping their feet. Both were nervous about the whole situation and had agreed that it should be Grady that led the interrogation.

  Mullins said, “He said he had to speak with his people first, I bet you he walks in here with an army of attorneys and that we don’t get shit.”

  Grady looked at him and then out the window, “No, I think he’ll say what he’s coming here to say, even if his lawyers tell him not to say it. He wants to talk, shit, if he could have, he probably would have told us he was going to do it before he did it.”

  Mullins looked at Grady with an unbelieving look, “You mean he’s been planning this for a while? C’mon, that doesn’t make sense.”

  Grady looked back at him, “You know, Mark, there’s a shitload of things that make no sense about all of this, not to me anyway, but Loomis deciding he was going to take out his daughter’s butcher is not one of them.”

  Mullins went on, “You mean you saw this coming way back when?”

  Grady was honest, he knew this room and this man would be the only opportunity he would get to speak his mind, “Aw, c’mon, you can’t tell me it didn’t occur to you at some point, especially after the warehouse. The guy is a professional operator with dozens of black ops under his belt in some of the most godforsaken places on earth. You really didn’t think he might consider something like this?”

  Now it was Mullins’ turn to look out the window in introspection.

  He finally hung his head and smiled sideways at Grady, “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I think it was always somewhere in the back of my mind, I just decided to ignore it…couldn’t imagine him actually doing it.”

  Grady nodded, “Exactly, it was pretty much the same for me, but now you see why it wasn’t a big surprise.” Mullins just nodded without saying anything.

  In the sedan driving them to the precinct, Zeidler was still on the phone orchestrating everything surrounding the case, a public statement, who would be part of the trial team, who would be in charge of researching what. Drew had to be impressed. He had figured Zeidler would delegate everything to delegators who would then delegate it on down the line. The truth was that the old man was still the ringmaster. Nothing happened without his explicit approval and nothing was decided without his say-so. Drew wondered how he was going to manage this type of micromanagement. He was used to bein
g his own boss and doing things his own way, and although he knew he didn’t have anywhere near the experience Zeidler did, he did consider himself a smart and seasoned attorney.

  Drew stopped listening to Zeidler and looked at Steven Loomis. The man was remarkable. He was looking out the window, clearly arranging his own thoughts, oblivious to the conversations going on around him, hand supporting his chin, simply a man at peace with his decision. It wasn’t that Loomis didn’t likely betray some human emotions, especially when he was thinking about his family. Even then, though, he held his emotions in check and Drew could see that he was being very deliberate in what he would allow to affect his actions.

  Drew decided to engage him. He wanted to get a sense of what he was planning on saying at the station. “So, you know what you’re going to want to say?”

  Loomis looked at Drew with something akin to curiosity with just a bit of frustration thrown in. “I think I’ve been pretty clear in what I am going to say. I am planning on letting the officers that I have worked with know that I am responsible for the shooting at the courthouse.”

  Drew pressed on, “That’s it? Are you sure, Steven, because you know these guys are going to want to know a lot more than just the fact that you did it. They may not even believe you. There are lots of wackos that are probably, as we speak, taking credit for the shooting.”

  Steven gave Drew a tired grin as he answered, “I’ve interrogated my share of people, Drew, and I am fully aware of what the police will want to know. I am also quite aware that there are nuts out there who probably take responsibility for any crime they might want to be proud of, whatever it happens to be this week. Don’t you think I’ve thought about all of this?

  “I already explained to you exactly what I am going to say and who I am going to say it to. I will have nothing else to say at this time. I have also explained that I will share details that will unequivocally prove that it was in fact me who pulled the trigger, details that only the shooter would know.”

  Drew nodded. There really wasn’t anything else to say. The guy knew exactly what he wanted to do and he knew the role he wanted his attorneys to play. Drew was already taking Loomis’s plan in stride, but he was concerned about how Zeidler might react to it. He was already far down the road preparing not only the defense but the story and how it would be spun for the media, which he knew would be all over the story for weeks if not months to come, especially once the shooter was identified.

  Zeidler finally got off the phone, “Alright, we’re starting to work on a statement for when this breaks. Basic stuff, ‘No comment at this time,’ ‘We’ll wait to try this in court,’ ‘Mr. Loomis is innocent until proven otherwise,’ and on and on. We’ll basically tell them nothing other than what they’re already going to have.”

  Steven had already figured this would be a media circus, but now that it was beginning to unfold he had to admit that it was somewhat unnerving. He had been and still was clear on his objective and his commitment, but everything that came along as a consequence of that commitment was something he was going to have to learn to deal with as he went along. He only hoped these men would be able to guide him through it and take some of the pressure off. So far, in spite of Zeidler’s showmanship, Steven felt this was the right group of people to help him through this. He was particularly impressed with Drew Willis. In spite of his age, the charismatic young lawyer was self-assured and seemed to have a solid moral compass, two things that Steven valued greatly.

  The sedan arrived at the police station and double-parked while Steven, Max and Drew got out. Max stuck his head back in to tell the driver to circle the block until he found somewhere nearby to park or until they came out.

  The three men, dressed in overcoats and suits, walked into the precinct. As soon as he saw the watch sergeant, Steven raised his hand. The man had seen him enough times and raised his hand in return, “Mr. Loomis, been a while. Looking for Grady?”

  Steven stepped up to the desk with Max and Drew close behind, “That’s right, sergeant, I think he and Mullins are expecting me.”

  Sergeant Simms picked up the phone, “Hey, Bob, Steven Loomis is here with a couple of other guys…okay, you want me to…the conference room? Alright.”

  He looked around and found a young uniformed officer, “Hey, Patrick, can you take these guys back to the conference room?”

  Patrick came around the desk, “Sure, Sarge. Follow me, gentlemen.”

  The four men proceeded down a long hallway. Sergeant Simms watched them turn the corner and picked up the phone, “Hey, you might want to head down here, something’s going on. Loomis and two guys that were obviously lawyers just came to see Bob Grady…yeah, he was expecting them. I don’t know what’s up but I’m thinking it may have something to do with the whole courthouse deal…yeah. Okay. And hey, Felix, I don’t know who else might have made some calls, but you know to keep this tight, right? Don’t let me down, kid.”

  Simms hung up and almost immediately second-guessed his decision. He liked Felix Garcia, and the kid had proven to Simms that he had common sense and that he could really keep his sources clean, but this felt to Simms like it might be a big deal and big deals tended to throw off the judgment of even seasoned reporters. It was too late now. Simms would just have to trust that the kid would keep his word and his common sense.

  Robert Grady and Mark Mullins were waiting in the conference room. Just five minutes earlier, they had finished arguing with Captain Freeman in this very conference room. In spite of Loomis’s request, Grady had no choice but to tell Freeman, even though he knew what the consequences would be. In fact, the actual exchange had been worse than either Mullins or Grady had anticipated. They had both expected that Freeman would insist on being in on the interview, but neither had thought he would come as unhinged as he did upon being told the subject of their investigation would only speak to Mullins and Grady.

  Freeman wanted to have his finger in everything of substance going on in the precinct. It gave him the sense that he was in control, and finding himself on the outside looking in on the biggest case the precinct had ever caught was something that Freeman just couldn’t reconcile himself with. Grady had finally gotten him to calm down by explaining that he and Mullins were planning on coming at Loomis hard and they needed to have someone in charge outside the loop, so when Loomis and his attorneys wanted to go up the chain of command, Freeman would be there to catch them. It made sense and wasn’t entirely untrue, but it was something he had come up with on the fly. Now that they were waiting for Loomis, Grady was thinking that it was actually a pretty good idea. He had diffused the situation and at the same time he had made an ally of Freeman, which could come in very handy if they did indeed have to get a bit ugly with Loomis or his attorneys. Grady had a very hard time believing that Loomis would lose his cool or that he would hire obnoxious mouthpieces; he seemed too controlled for that. Still, you never knew and Grady had seen weirder things in his time.

  He and Mullins hadn’t really talked about how to go about this. They had both done hundreds of interviews and had heard more than their share of confessions, but this case was completely different than anything either man had dealt with. In addition to the fact that Loomis was different from any other defendant they had talked to, there was the matter of the warehouse and the way in which Riche had been discovered. Grady doubted that Loomis would play that card, but men changed when they were facing the loss of their freedom or having to hurt their families. They also had to consider the fact that Loomis wasn’t coming in alone, he was coming with what was probably the best legal team money could buy, a team that was unlikely to sit idly by and watch their client spill every bit of information that would make the prosecution’s case. It was crazy to speculate on all the possibilities; there were just too many variables. In spite of all of this, Grady still felt good about the interview and he was still glad that things were unfolding this way. He knew he and Mullins might still have to deal with some tough
questions about the warehouse, but clearly it was much better than having to go upstairs and let them know that they had given Steven Loomis information about the case and that he had most likely orchestrated the incident at the warehouse. Whatever way this was going to unfold, it was going to happen in the next two minutes.

  The young officer led the three men through the hallways of the homicide unit and to the conference room where Mullins and Grady were waiting. As they were walking to the conference room, it occurred to Steven that he would most likely not see daylight again for a few days, if at all. He was confident of his actions, but the fact remained that if the prosecution chose to make an example of him, he faced serious time in prison. And while he had thought about that quite a bit, walking down this hallway and into a place where he was going to admit what he had done still gave him pause.

  Once they got to the conference room, Steven wanted to make sure that he didn’t let Zeidler control the meeting, so he went in first and immediately walked up to Grady.

  “Hello, Detective Grady.”

  Grady stood and shook his hand, “Hello, Mr. Loomis.”

  Loomis also shook Mullins’ hand and introduced his attorneys, “Detective Mullins, good to see you. This is Max Zeidler and Drew Willis, they are my legal representation.”

  Grady and Mullins shook both men’s hands.

  Grady had to grin at the sight of Zeidler, “Max, good to see you. Mr. Willis, nice to meet you.”

  Max also smiled, “Bob, been a while.”

  They shook hands. Both Drew and Steven were a bit surprised by the exchange.

  Drew asked, “You two know each other?”

  Max answered the question, “Yes, we do. When you’ve been in the business as long as Detective Grady and I, you can’t help but run into each other.”