by David Dagley
Cale Dixon
and the
Moguk Murders
a Novel by
David Dagley
Eloquent Books
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 David Dagley. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, typing, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
Eloquent Books
An imprint of AEG Publishing Group
845 Third Avenue, 6th Floor – 6016
New York, NY 10022
http://www.eloquentbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-61204-815-4
Book Designer: Bruce Salender
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Part I
—
1
—
Cale Dixon turned his silver Volvo into a parking spot near the rear entrance of a San Francisco police precinct. He turned off the engine, pushed his door open with his elbow, and reached over to the passenger seat to retrieve a large paper bag filled with tattered brown, black, and red books and his briefcase. He wrestled the bag, then his briefcase, past the steering wheel and got out of his car. Cale gently nudged his car door shut with his foot and walked off towards the back door of the police station. As he walked with his hands full, he ignored the inconvenience of a blustery wind blowing his thick brown hair into his green eyes and across his pale olive face.
Detective Martin Hanna drove into the parking lot and saw Cale striding for the employee entrance. He honked his horn as he entered a parking space nearby.
Cale whipped his head to one side, moving his bangs so to see his old friend, who had gone to the academy and graduated in the same class.
Martin stepped out of his black BMW and took the time to brush his gray suit straight. He then opened the back door, pulled out a stack of manila folders, and cradled them in one arm. He looked over the top of his BMW and yelled out, “Hey, Dix, wait up!” Martin moved briskly around his car towards Cale.
Cale half turned towards Martin, nodded silently, and continued on more slowly.
Martin caught up and stepped in time.
Cale was surprised to see Martin and commented, “It's a bit early for you, isn't it, Detective Hanna?”
“Regretfully, I'm two hours too early.”
“What's the deal?”
Martin explained, “Oh, the usual—I'm swamped with cases, facing staff cutbacks, and I'm hearing reorganization threats from above.” Martin took a few steps, quiet in thought, before asking, “How's the research going on that witch cult case?”
“Victoria is working on it. That's what these books are all about. She sent me to Bolinas to see a rare book dealer who introduced me to a very pale, yet attractive, Gothic book collector. Between the two of them, they're allowing Victoria to borrow some books for the good of mankind, and for a donation,” mocked Cale.
“Speaking of attractive pale people, I saw your boss, Victoria, the other day. I hadn't seen her in awhile. Is she afraid of the sun or something?”
“No, she just works a lot.”
“Yeah, but she's so white. She looks like she's been living under a bridge in Northern Ireland all her life.”
Cale laughed and agreed half in jest and half in shock of the truth, “I know what you mean. I've been working with her for almost a year now, and I'm beginning to see my own veins.”
“Has it been a year already?”
“Just about.”
“Then your suspension should be almost over,” remarked Martin.
Cale grinned and replied, “As a matter of fact it is almost over—two more weeks or so. But I'm more excited about my two-and-a-half-week paid vacation coming up. I'm thinking I might even take a couple of sick days and personal days with that and go get a tan.”
Martin widened his eyes and exaggerated a friendly nod of approval, “Good idea. What are you going to do?”
“Go far away,” replied Cale.
Martin redefined his question, “No. I mean about your reinstatement as a detective?”
Cale answered with a twitch of his shoulders, “What's to do? They'll let me know what's going on when they're ready. Besides, I enjoy the research, so I don't mind if they just leave me in my present position. There are only two of us in the research department right now, and how many detectives are going to walk to their desks with an armload of case folders like you're carrying?” Still holding his briefcase with his thumb, Cale ran a finger up the side of Martin's stacked folders. The sputtering sound of his finger against the cardboard momentarily flashed Cale to his childhood when he used to put playing cards through the spokes of his bicycle wheel.
Martin suspiciously declared, “Sounds like you're making an excuse to hide out in that cave you call an office.” He grabbed a folder off the top of his stack, placed it in Cale's brown bag of books, and added, “But while you're there, give this a read through. I'll come by and pick it up later.” Martin quickened his pace to reach the door first and slipped a key card down the slot. The locked door clicked open, and Martin held it for Cale. Martin added sympathetically, “Seriously, Dix, you put in your time and worked hard to become a detective. Some crazy stuff went down. Case closed. That's over and buried. In a sense, you did your time, and now you should seriously consider reentering the active world.”
As Cale passed into the building, he stopped and confessed, “Yeah, well, thanks for the support, But to be honest with you, every day my mind crosses a few threads of completely unrelated information, like a news article or a random name called out in a crowd, which sends me directly to the file in my head. I can't help it. The case is officially closed, true. But for me, it's still open because it's unsolved and I was involved. I feel as if I'm still in the game, but no one else is playing. And the money I spent, my own money, was all worth it.” Cale paused briefly in a memory, and chuckled, then added, “I enjoyed the pace, racing all over Southeast Asia, chasing an international bank robber or a group of them. Who knows? I didn't even find out how many there were. And along with the embarrassment of a one-year suspension, the department had me go see a shrink, who, as it turns out, recently published a book using my situation as an example, not by name of course, but to embellish his chapter on Delusional Manifestations. The guy went as far as to say there may not have been any bank robbers at all and that they were some type of phantom I created or manifested for some personnel weakness I couldn't contr
ol. It's a bunch of bs.” Cale started walking down the hall towards his office.
“Yeah, I'm pretty sure the captain read that particular chapter in the doc's book. I saw the book on the captain's desk awhile back.”
Cale was wide awake now and loosing his patience. He stopped and turned around to look Martin in the eyes, “Look, Martin, there are no phantoms, just banks getting robbed by a guy in a light trench coat and matching hat. He puts the money in a coat bag and runs. The guy or guys don't even drive to the banks. Check my data and the film clips against any of the banks listed, and they'll tell you they were robbed. I'm still considering suing the good doctor. And not that I care, but if the captain were to ask me about the case, I'd tell him the same thing I just told you, and that would make him wary of any new case assignments.” Cale shrugged as he turned again, walked away from Martin, and declared, “The case got away from me, and that was my responsibility.” He walked down an empty hallway, crossing to his left. Before he got to the research department office door, he turned to look at Martin, walked the last few steps backwards, and proposed, “Why don't we get together tonight and play a game or two of pool? We can talk over the table, get drunk, and fight about it.”
From the door Martin took a right towards a noisy hallway leading to a field of gray cubicles and coffee-drinking personnel. He paused at the double-door entrance and responded, “You're on. What time and where?”
“See you at Barnard's at eight o'clock.”
“Home of the iron fist—see you there.” Martin waved and walked down the hall into a large, brightly lit room full of scurrying people and ringing phones.
Cale turned into the silence of the research department. As he entered, his boss, Ms. Victoria Short, Research Department Director, walked out from a small kitchenette behind the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.
“Good morning,” she said as she walked over and placed the cup of tea on a coaster on Cale's desk then moved on towards her own desk. “How was the drive?”
“Successful. Let's hope it was worth it.” Cale placed his briefcase on an open shelf behind his chair. He pulled Martin's file off the top and dropped it on his desk before he walked the bag of books over to Victoria. Handing them to her, he glanced down at her desk to see if she had anything already in the works for the day.
“Thanks for going to get these. I really appreciate it,” Victoria said graciously.
Cale grinned back and said, “No problem. On the way back from Bolinas I went to dinner at the old Felix place, The Pelican Inn. It's a Tudor-style tavern near the entrance of Muir Woods. The food was good and the pints even better, but I think my dart game needs a bath.”
“Oh, nice,” she said, preoccupied with pulling the books out of the bag and reading the titles.
Cale couldn't tell if she was responding to what he had said or to the titles and conditions of the books. He thought back to the Tudor-style inn he had known as a youth, surrounded by hillside horse pastures and a creek behind, buried in overgrown trees choked with poison oak and blackberry bushes. He could picture a roaming mist off the beach, calming the horses in the morning light. Then Cale's thoughts turned to Martin's comment about Victoria's lack of color. Cale looked at Victoria's straight auburn hair just touching her shoulders, her blue-gray eyes, and porcelain white skin shaping her delicate features. Her lips glistened with a shimmering gloss. Cale thought of Irish royalty and grinned to himself as he turned back to his desk. The office was dim with brass fixtures and reading lamps. The light reflected off the faded gold borders of some of the books on the shelves that wrapped the walls. Cale's antique wood swayback chair creaked as he sat down. Everything in the office, besides the computers and Cale, was from Victoria's personal collection, and sometimes he felt very much a part of that, too.
Cale opened Martin's file, flipped through it quickly, then returned to the beginning and began to read it thoroughly. He reached for his tea.
Martin arrived at his desk and dropped his stack of folders near his phone. The stack slowly shifted to one side, with the top few folders hanging precariously over the edge of his desk. Martin wasn't paying particular attention to his files because he noticed a group of suits in the captain's office. They were getting out of their chairs, shaking each others’ hands, and milling around towards the door. He recognized the commissioner and some other city officials as they in turn shook the captain's hand. Martin's meddlesome curiosity burned. He walked up to the coffee machine near the captain's door and took his time digging a dollar out of his wallet. He straightened the corners of the bill with his fingernail and fed it into the machine. While he waited for his cup to fill, the people in the office came out, talking softly amongst themselves, nodding in unison, and again thanking the captain as they left. The captain waved passively as they turned their backs to him and walked away. The captain backed into his office.
Martin grabbed his cup and stopped the captain's door from closing as the captain moved around his desk to sit back down. “Good morning, Captain. Got a minute?”
“Mornin’, Martin. Yeah, come on in. What's on your mind?”
“Cale Dixon.”
The captain turned his head, looked out after the suits, and sighed in frustration. Without raising his voice, he impatiently demanded, “What?”
“Isn't his suspension almost over?”
The captain replied sharply, “Yes, and as I told those people, he has every right to be a detective again.” He pointed at the men and women walking away. “And the commissioner and a few others are paying close attention. They came down here this morning to share their thoughts on the matter—after they all had an early breakfast together.”
“Sir, I've known Dixon since the academy. He's a good cop, and he's patiently smart. He has never told me all the details of what happened really or why he did what he did, but…” Martin paused briefly, waiting to see a serious look in the captain's eyes, and admitted, “We can sure use another detective. I'm below sea level on numerous cases.”
The captain explained, “The commissioner and his council gave me some alternative avenues to consider for Dixon. Somebody in that group suggested that we pick out a partner or sort of probation officer for him to check in with periodically. They're really blowing this out of proportion. But, at the same time, none of us want to be embarrassed again. On Dixon's side, I think a babysitter would be humiliating to a guy who completed his suspension time and got a raise while doing it. He's very good at the research end of detective work.” The captain nodded and pointed at Martin, “Patiently smart.” The captain laughed in disbelief and continued, “And others in that power pack have hinted that I offer him another raise to stay in the research department.”
Martin finished his coffee, threw the Styrofoam cup in the captain's garbage bin next to his desk, and went for the door. Holding the door open Martin asked, “Have you spoken to Dixon yet?”
The captain waved Martin off and shook his head.
A woman popped up from her gray cubicle, searching for a particular head over the tops of the other cubicle clusters. She scanned methodically like a searchlight and spotted Martin moving on the far side of the room. She spoke loudly, with her hand habitually covering the mouth piece of her phone, “Martin, phone—line three.” She dropped back into the gray, hedge-high, carpet box maze.
Martin went to his desk phone. He grabbed the phone handle and pulled it to his ear. The spiraling cord to the handset sprung out from under the stack of files, spilling them over the side of his desk, where they opened, spread, and blended across the floor. Martin winced as he looked at the floor and pushed line three, “Hello, Detective Hanna here.” Martin listened while simultaneously reaching for a notepad and pulling a pen out of his coat pocket. He wrote down an address and said, “Okay, I got it. I'm leaving now. And Matt, place a guard at the front door. Is the area taped off?… Tape it off and get the usual.” He listened for a moment. “Yeah, and keep all unnecessary people out o
f there. But don't let anybody pertinent leave until after I talk to them. I'm on my way.” Martin hung up the phone, still looking at the address. He turned to a woman sitting nearby and explained, “Mrs. Splaine, I've got to go to the museum. Apparently they've had a murder this morning.” Martin turned his attention back to the floor of folders and asked politely, “How are you feeling today?”
“Tired, overworked, and underpaid,” she replied, looking at the pile of mixed pages and photos on the ground.
“How are you at filing during your first two cups of coffee?”
She nodded lethargically and responded, “I'm up to speed with that task.”
“You're a gem.” Martin headed for the exit door. He stopped short and walked back to the captain's office. He knocked as he entered, “Captain, I just got a call from the Cho Estate Museum. There's a body on the museum floor. I'm heading there right now. Would you mind if I took Dixon with me, just to get him warmed up?”
“Is he in the bat cave?”
“Yeah, I walked in with him this morning.”
The captain clarified, “If Victoria doesn't need him, sure. Why not? Keep him on the sidelines, though, just as an observer.”
—
2
—
A police officer opened the front door of the museum for Martin and Cale after seeing their identification. Their clicking heels echoed down a deserted hallway as they entered a round room with a white marble staircase wrapping around on the left side, leading to a second-floor open balcony. Martin stopped briefly in front of a building layout directory attached to the side of a pillar then set off down an arched corridor of forest green marble. At the far end stood a larger-than-life statue of an Asian fisherman standing next to his beached boat in front of a shoreline mural background painted on the wall. The painting portrayed a small fishing village at the edge of a vast, dense jungle. The fisherman was in the middle of throwing a huge net fanning out over a large portion of the room. The net was tied at various heights near the ceiling and laced with colorful glass net floats. More glass floats were attached to a second net neatly arranged on the makeshift beach next to the fisherman's feet.