Radical

by Sijal Aziz

  Things started changing between him and Jennifer as soon as Jennifer started working on the case. Where earlier they would meet each day, suddenly Jennifer was not available to see Derek for days.

  She did not pick up his calls and when she finally did, she told him she was busy.

  She stopped coming over to his apartment and when he called to meet her, she would make excuses that she was busy and that the case was important as the mayor was involved. One day Derek couldn’t take it any longer. He went to Jennifer’s home. She opened the door for him and the very sight of her in sheer negligee took his breath away.

  She had a beautiful smile on her face when she opened the door and when she saw Derek, the smile turned into a frown, “What are you doing here Derek? I thought I told you that I am working tonight”, Jennifer said still standing in front of the door.

  “Yes, you did. But we need to talk about this. May I come in?”

  “Yes”, Jennifer reluctantly moved away from door.

  Derek reached for Jennifer once he was inside, but she backed away.

  “Jennifer, what’s wrong? We were so much in love. Now you don’t call anymore, you are never available, and we haven’t slept together in two months. So, tell me what’s wrong?”

  Jennifer looked away from Derek.

  Derek went close to Jennifer again and put his hand on her arm, “Please tell me Jennifer. I am going crazy living like this. I cannot concentrate on my work. I cannot eat and I am angry all the time. I don’t like living like this. All I think about is you and I cannot go on like this”

  Jennifer looked at Derek with an aloofness in her eyes, that made Derek’s heart sink, “Derek you are a sweet man. But I don’t think things are going to work out between us”

  Jennifer was still talking when Derek pleaded, “Don’t say that Jennifer. I cannot live without you. Is it something that I have done? If it is, I am telling you that I can change”

  “It’s not what you have done Derek, it’s what you are. I cannot live with a detective for the rest of my life. I have been working on the police force long enough to know that there are no fixed timings for detective work, policemen get killed every day.

  Hell, I don’t want to be a police detective. The only reason I joined the police force was that there was nothing else to do. I have met someone wonderful and he has asked me to marry him. I submitted my resignation last week and it was accepted, I will be moving to Malibu in a few days. I know you will find someone wonderful, but I am telling you, you are wrong for me and I am wrong for you. You will never be able to keep me happy”

  “But I thought you were happy with me”, Derek said trying to stop the tears of helplessness that were welling up in his eyes.

  “I was happy but that does not mean that we have to spend the rest of our lives together”, Jennifer said walking towards the door and holding it open for Derek to leave.

  Derek stood his ground, “So this was just an affair for you?”

  “Yes, and we had fun Derek, didn’t we?”

  “I didn’t just have fun. I fell in love with you!”

  “Well, I am sorry Derek. But I cannot live my life like this, in a one bedroom apartment on a detective’s salary. You know this negligee that I am wearing cost me half of my monthly salary. I love beautiful things. I want to be able to afford them. I am sure you cannot afford them for me and I sure as hell cannot afford them by myself. So, there is no use of continuing this relationship. I have found someone who will take care of all my needs and I am sure you will find someone too. Now if you can please leave, I am expecting him to come over any minute now”

  Derek looked at Jennifer for the longest time and then left. He went to his car, closed the door and started his car but something made him stay there. He wanted to see who Jennifer had fell in love with. He felt like a fool doing it, but something in him wanted to know.

  After waiting for about 15 minutes, Derek saw a yellow Lamborghini come to a halt in front of Jennifer’s apartment. He saw a short heighted bespectacled man come out of the driving seat and ring the bell. Then he saw Jennifer bursting out of the door and hugging him like her life depended upon it. From what Derek could see, he was at least five inches shorter than Jennifer. They kissed each other wildly and were almost naked by the time they entered through the door.

  Derek noted down the car’s registration plate and called the control station to inquire whom the car belonged to. It belonged to David Sheen, the head of the pharmaceutical conglomerate.

  Jennifer was working on their case. Derek did not know how long Jennifer had been sleeping with David Sheen but knew in his heart that she must have been sleeping with both of them before she made up her mind that she only wanted to be with David Sheen.

  Jennifer left the second district robbery homicide division after couple of days and Derek had never felt so lonely and angry. He stopped talking with everyone and immersed himself in his work. He asked for overtime more than anyone on the team because being back at the apartment brought back hurtful memories of Jennifer’s laugh, the way she looked, the way they spooned together when they slept, the way they made love and the way she wrapped her arms around him whenever they ran into each other.

  The hurt went away after a couple of months, but Derek promised himself never to let any woman touch his heart like that again. He did not stop sleeping with women, he did not hate them but as soon as he found that a woman was getting serious with him, he broke off the relationship.

  Somehow looking at Kate reminded him of Jennifer. Maybe it was because Kate had touched a chord in his heart that he thought he had cut off a long time ago.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kate’s mind was not working. She decided to turn on the television. She went through all the channels and decided to stick to CNN.

  There was news about an organization, called Islamic State, that was beheading American citizens in Syria and Iraq. Kate shuddered at the thought of this and wondered what made people stoop so low as to carry out such atrocities against other human beings.

  The news further said that United States was increasing its strikes in Syria and President Donald Trump had given the use of excessive force to drive out the IS militants from Raqqah.

  As she was debating whether to turn off the TV, the doctor came.

  “Hello, I am doctor Steve Dunne”

  “Hello doctor”

  “I see from the chart that you lost consciousness due to a stressful event. I can see that you are well now, and you are ready for a discharge.

  I have written a complete report for you that you will get when you get a discharge from here. There is nothing to worry about and this was just a one-off incident.

  But if you feel anxiety or have a similar sinking feeling again, I want you to start taking the medicines that I have prescribed to you. I want you to come and see me again after four weeks if you feel that you are unable to go to sleep or are feeling depressed”

  “Ok”, Kate said wondering how she would visit the doctor again from jail.

  “That’s it from my side. I wish you a speedy recovery”, Dr. Dunne said with a smile.

  Dr. Dunne was not very chatty with patients, but Kate was beautiful, and he liked talking to beautiful women.

  “Thank you doctor”

  After Dr. Dunne had left, Kate went back to the situation at hand again. She did not want to be arrested for a murder she did not commit, and she did not want to spend the rest of her life in jail.

  Somehow, she needed to get out of there. She was about to get off her bed again when the door opened, and detectives Derek and Ryan walked in.

  “Ms. Katherine Hawkins, we are taking you downtown for formal questioning as a chief suspect in the murder of Matthew Raymond”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not yet, but based on the evidence against you, this questioning is just a matter of formality and I assure you that we will arrest you after that. If you have any personal belongings with you, I want you to put them in
this bag”, detective Ryan said handing a bag over to Kate.

  Kate put her wallet, mobile and keys in the bag and handed it over to detective Ryan.

  If you can please extend your hands, I need to cuff you”

  Kate extended her arms and detective Markus put handcuffs on her. Kate could feel tears streaming down her eyes, “You’ve got it all wrong. I did not kill Matt. I loved him. Instead of wasting your time on me, why don’t you go and arrest the real killer. You have to believe me. I did not kill him”

  Detective Derek looked at Kate with contempt and retorted, “The evidence states otherwise, Ms. Hawkins. You were found crouching over your boyfriend with the murder weapon in your hand and you also heard what he said in the 911 call. And frankly speaking, with your police record and violent past it is no surprise that you would have graduated to murder a long time ago”

  Detective Ryan continued curtly, “Therefore there is no need to play Ms. Nice with us. Since this is an open and shut case, why don’t you do the state a favor and take the guilty plea, it will save the state the cost of a trial and I will put in a good word for you with the DA so that they give you a lenient sentence”

  Kate turned to detective Derek and asked, “What do you mean you have gone through my record. I don’t have any record!”

  Derek replied mockingly, “Yeah, sure.”

  Kate did not speak again. She knew that the police were mixing her up with someone else.

  They took her to the car and put her in the back seat. Then they headed back to the police station. Once in the car detective Ryan talked into his radio informing the station that they were headed to the D2 with the suspect, Katherine Hawkins.

  Everything went smoothly until they reached the highway. As detective Ryan tried to change his lane a truck in front of them swerved left and hit the median strip. The trailer of the truck loaded with logs slid backwards towards the police car. Detective Ryan tried to turn his car to the right so that he could steer clear of the truck, but the car hit the truck’s back.

  The logs in the truck got loose and one of the logs fell on the police car crushing detective Ryan’s skull.

  The accident deployed the airbags and detective Derek was knocked out by the impact of the airbag. Kate was thrown against the front seat and the side of her face was badly bruised.

  After a few seconds, Kate got off the floor of the car and looked around. The door on her side had opened due to the impact of the collision.

  She looked at the front seats, detective Derek was unconscious and detective Ryan’s skull was split open.

  She scrambled out of the car and tried to stand up straight. Her back and neck hurt a little. Her first instinct was to help the detectives. She could clearly see that detective Ryan was dead.

  She checked detective Derek to see if he was still breathing. He was. With handcuffs still on her hands, Kate searched detective Derek’s coat pockets looking for a phone. She found the key to the handcuffs and the phone in his left breast pocket. She took the keys and the phone out and called 911 and reported the accident. Then she looked around and unlocked the handcuffs.

  Kate knew she had to run away but then she remembered that she did not have a single penny on her. If she wanted to go somewhere, she needed the money. Detective Gibbons had put her belongings in the trunk of the car. She did not want to go to detective Gibbons’ side and open the trunk, so she started searching through Derek’s pockets again for his wallet.

  She told herself that she will only be borrowing the money and once everything was cleared up, then she would return the money to him. She found his wallet, as she was taking it out of his pocket, detective Derek came to and grabbed Kate’s wrist. Kate tried to break free, but he had her in an iron grip.

  Kate tried again and this time she broke free. She started to run but then stopped, turned around and looked straight into detective Derek’s eyes, “Look detective you have got this all wrong. I am innocent and I have not killed Matt. If I let you take me then I will surely end up in jail. I am running away so that I can prove that I am innocent, and I do not have a rap shit. Do you think my company would have hired me if I had a criminal record? I have called 911 and they will be here soon to help you”

  Detective Derek tried to unbuckle his seat belt, but it wouldn’t come off. He turned around to ask Ryan for help but when he saw Ryan, he just sat there staring at him.

  Kate crossed the highway and made her way across a green path, hoping she would be able to come to another road on the other side. She heard some sirens, so she hid behind a tree. She could not make out whether the sirens were from a police car or an ambulance. She kept on hiding there until the sound of the sirens went away. She then opened detective Derek’s wallet to look inside. She found $110 inside and a police badge along with some credit cards. She closed the wallet again and put it in her pants pocket and started running again. After running for 20 minutes, she reached another road. She stood on the side of the road to catch a ride back to the city, hoping that no police cruiser came by.

  The road was empty as far as Kate could see. After five minutes of waiting, she saw a white van coming her way.

  When the van was close enough, she saw that it was being driven by a woman. She stuck out her thumb. The woman stopped the van and stared at Kate for some seconds before unlocking the doors of the van. Kate opened the door and sat in the passenger side. The woman driving the van looked to be no more than 40 and she was wearing large sunglasses and a brown cowboy hat. She looked at Kate suspiciously and asked, “Is everything alright? Your head is bleeding”

  Kate hadn’t realized that her head was bleeding.

  “Yes, I am alright, but I need to get out here immediately”

  The woman nodded and put her foot on the gas pedal and started driving.

  The woman drove in silence for the next five minutes and then asked, “What happened to you?”

  Kate had to come up with something quick, “I, I was beaten by my boyfriend and he locked me in his car. I ran away when he went to the restroom at the gas station and have been running since”

  “Do you want me to call the police?”, the woman asked.

  “No please don’t”, Kate said too quickly and then bit her lip when she realized that she sounded suspicious.

  The woman looked at her more closely.

  Kate had to think of something quick to cover up for her blunder, “My boyfriend is a police detective. He is in a habit of beating me up, I tried to report him to police earlier but they never look into my complaints. I have tried to run away from him many times, but he ends up finding me and beating me even more. Now I have decided to go to another state and leave Washington so that he cannot find me”

  “I know where you are coming from honey. One of my friends’ boyfriend was a cop and she had the hardest time getting out of that relationship. She only became free when that crazy bastard found himself a younger ass”

  Kate nodded.

  “Where are you headed?”, the woman asked.

  “I just need to make a quick stop at DC before I leave. If you are headed that way I would appreciate if you can drop me off there”

  “I am headed to DC. I need to do some shopping for my girls’ birthday party. I have twins. My name is Jessica and my friends call me Jesse”

  “I, I am K…Jordan”

  “Nice to meet you Jordan. I hope you get free from that asshole of a boyfriend”

  “Me too”

  They sat there in silence for some time. Kate felt that whenever any car sped by, the driver of the car was looking at her.

  She did not want to be recognized. She was thinking of going to the back seat and sitting there when she thought of a better idea. She looked at Jesse and asked, “I hope that it is not too much to ask, but the police will recognize me looking like this. I bet my boyfriend has already alerted all his friends to keep an eye out for me. If you don’t mind, can you please consider selling me your hat and shades?”

  Jesse looked
at Kate before responding, “Sure but I just bought these, and it cost me 50 bucks. Kate knew that both of them together would not have cost more than $30 but she didn’t argue and took out $50 from detective Derek’s wallet and handed it over to the Jesse.

  Jesse took off her hat and glasses and handed them over to Kate.

  “Thank you”

  “Sure.”

  “Hey, I can’t drive in this sun, can you be a sweetheart and get my new shades, they are in the bag, on the back seat”

  “Sure”, Kate turned around and picked up the bag from the back seat and looked inside for the glasses.

  There were two dolls in the bag. She took out the glasses and handed them over to Jesse. Then she put the bag on the back seat again.

  “Those dolls are birthday gifts for my gals. They have a lot of dolls but it ain’t enough for them. So, I thought what the heck, let me buy them some more”

  “Oh, that is so sweet”

  Kate was thinking ahead. She needed to call Alison from a phone booth but to do that she needed the quarters. She checked detective Derek’s wallet and found no quarters there. Then she remembered that she had once read in a novel that detectives keep the quarters in their pants pocket.

  “Uh, Jesse, I was wondering if you could help me out with just one more thing?”

  “Sure, I will help if I can darling”

  “I need some quarters to make a call to my friend”

  “Help yourself to some, they are in the cup holder”

  Kate took some quarters from the cup holder, which had quite a few.

  They hit a speed bump and Kate hit her head on the roof of the car.

  “Oops sorry, my bad, I just didn’t see that. Are you alright?”

  “Yes, I am fine”, Kate lied, she felt that her head was dizzy.

  She closed her eyes and thought about the dolls in the back seat.