“Detective, what on earth would make a man laugh in your position?”
“You think you’re a god and you think bleeding me into a pit is going to make you stronger, that takes a special kind of crazy.”
“I’m the one holding the knife, and you sir have nothing.”
“I have Chester Swanson.”
“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
“It means me,” Chester says as he grabs Jackson Addler, he twists his arm over and makes him drop the knife, Jackson slides out of Chester’s grasp and heads for the dark compartment that Chester emerged from, Chester grabs ahold of him again and places the tracker on him while he tries to get him into a sleeper hold but Jackson shrugs Chester off and hits him in the solar plexus, Chester staggers back and loses his wind.
“I would like to stay and finish this, you brute, but I can see this is how you want to play the game, farewell,” he says and hits the button beneath the counter, the wall slides to the side.
“Chester, he’s getting away, get him or get my gun, fuck it use yours, shoot to wound,” Marshall says. Chester unholsters his gun and approaches the chamber but Jackson Addler is gone down the passageway, Chester watches the passageway close as he aims his gun at the darkness, he presses the button beneath the counter but when it opens again there is a heavy brick wall that doesn’t move.
“He’s gone,” Chester says.
“Did you get the tracker on him?”
“Of course, but no man moves that fast.”
“He left the camera behind, cut me out of here.” Chester cuts Marshall free from the rig carefully and helps him down. “I thought you had him.”
“I thought so too, a normal man couldn’t fend me off like he did, I had one hundred pounds on him at least, probably more.”
“He apparently has training, the man in brown did too, it was a perfect set-up, he had no idea you were back there the whole time, quick grab the camera, he’s down in the alley, we can still catch him.” Chester grabs the camera and they run down the stairs, flight after flight until they are on the ground floor and then they head down the alley, “You go around the south side, I’ll cut him off on the north, he can’t escape that alley.”
Marshall holds his gun out and begins walking down the alley from the north end, he watches the tracker on his phone, it isn’t moving, he sees Chester at the other end, Marshall shakes his head as he walks forward and finds the black suit jacket in a trash can with the tracker on it. “Son of a bitch, how did he know? At least we can bag the jacket maybe get some DNA off of it, find out who he really is. We have the camera as well; we’ll have to tear that place apart for anymore clues. This was our best chance, call the police, we’ll get them here too.” Marshall takes as many clues from the apartment as he can bag; he takes the videotape and leaves the camera.
“Maybe they’ll catch him,” Chester says. Marshall looks at him in the eyes.
“This was our best, possibly our only chance, we couldn’t afford to mess this up, and look at us, holding a jacket with the tracker on it. How did he get away through that passageway and you couldn’t get after him?”
“It changed, after he went through and I opened it, there was just a brick wall, no more passageways.”
“Interesting.”
“We have clues though, the cops will have clues.”
“The man is loose in New York City, they will not find him.”
“But we may.”
“The point is that we had him, now he will be desperate, people will die because he got away.”
“People will die because he is a psychopath who will not stop.”
“And a misogynist and a sociopath, he will continue to cut a swath through this city, and now we’ll have to chase him, with any luck we’ll have DNA, at least have a real name.” Marshall begins walking outside, he turns to Chester, “We’ll be here until we catch him.”
“I figured you would say that.”
“He’s the last one of the group, I have to do this, if you don’t want to stay, I understand.”
“Where else am I going to go?”
“You could go back home, you could go back to Kansas City, you could live a quiet life.”
“A quiet life is a boring life; it will be quiet enough when I am dead. I know what this job entails.”
“A real detective gives up a normal life, whatever a normal life looks like.”
“I’m not familiar with how it appears either. The cops will not be happy you confiscated items from the crime scene.”
“I left them enough to find him, I’ll show them what we have, everything except the videotape,” Marshall says, they walk out and it is raining. “How fitting,” Marshall says as he pulls the front of his hat down, the water runs off of it.
“Why not show them the videotape?”
“I will eventually but I need to watch it first, when they ask questions, just let me answer.”
“I understand,” Chester says and he watches Marshall work the cops like a gambler working a blackjack table, a professional gambler, Chester soaks it all in, he knows he would never be a cop, he could never have been what Marshall was, but he understands what he is now, and he knows he could be like that too, after all he had done it for a year now, he felt like he found his calling, that night they rent a hotel room at a cheap New York hotel which means they paid the cost of rent on a condo in Kansas City, Marshall stays up all night, Chester falls asleep around three A.M., Marshall looks out the window, he watches the rain pound the concrete, he watches his left hand shake a bit as he thinks about how he nearly died, having his vitals cut out by a madman, he takes his gun holster off and runs his fingers through his hair, he feels the disappointment too, he feels like both could be caught and now they just have one. After an hour passes, he walks to the bathroom, he washes his face and looks up from the mirror, he sees the decaying jawbone first, then he sees the flesh rotting on her neck.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: CODA
“I thought you were gone,” Marshall tells her.
“I thought so too but he brought me back.”
“Who is ‘he,’ the man in brown?”
“I don’t know, but it’s some manner of evil. I don’t know what hurt more, when my throat was burning up after Carmen poisoned me or when I woke up this time.”
“I don’t understand, I saw you in the fire, I accepted what happened. You were gone, I saw you in the fire,” Marshall says.
“Something brought me back again,” she responds. Marshall sees the box in his mind, he wonders if Gina is now coming from the same place but he can sense the air growing damper, he can detect the odor of the ground; he turns from the mirror and looks at her. “I thought it meant I could leave too but something happened in that cabin, that’s why I’m here.”
“It was the box, but if it had any power, I should have been the one to bear the brunt of it.”
“You saw things you couldn’t explain, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, I thought it was just in my mind. I never believed in the box, I don’t believe in any of that stuff but the kid did. If it had any power, it should have been shut off once it closed.”
“But it was opened and that was enough. You defeated him but he opened that box and now you and I must suffer because of it.”
“Haven’t I suffered enough?”
“That’s not for me to determine.”
“What does it all mean?” he asks.
“I’m not allowed to say but you’re the detective, you’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t deal in matters of what I’m seeing; when I used to see you, it was as you were when you left, I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I’m not allowed to say what I am either.”
“You’re just in my head,” he turns around and splashes his face with water again; he watches her decaying hand as he turns around. “I know you are, right?”
“Whatever makes it easier for you, Marshall.”
“But what ar
e you?”
“I think you know, you’ve always been the best at asking questions for which you already know the answer.”
“I thought this was over.”
“I did too, I didn’t ask for this, who would ask for this? That man and the box brought me back like this.”
“That man is captured; I can make him tell me what he did.”
“Maybe it can be undone.”
“I let you go; I felt it when I walked away from that fire.”
“I let go of this world too and you, he, or that box brought me back into it.”
“Does this mean what I think it does?”
“You’re wondering if you’re crazy?”
“Maybe I’ve been around men like that too long.”
“After everything you’ve seen, I think the world would allow you to be a little crazy, in a world like this, aren’t we all crazy in some way?”
“It doesn’t make me feel like I’ve solved anything.”
“You put away two dangerous men in a relatively short span of time, Barnabus Shield will be an old man if he ever gets out, the man in brown will never see freedom again.”
“But I can’t solve what’s wrong with me.”
“There is something wrong with all of us, some are just better at hiding it than others,” Gina explains, Marshall watches her mouth and sees a white light emanating from it, it grows brighter and fills up the room and then it flashes, he hears a sound like the air is being sucked from the room, then there is a loud screech, he wonders if this means he’s finally lost it and if there’s any way he can make it right again. He now knows he should have buried the box instead of holding onto it and leaving it in the basement. After the flash she is gone, he sees Chester sleeping, Marshall blinks his eyes hard, he picks up his flask and takes a drink, when he looks back at the bathroom, he sees her standing in the doorway, against the white paint and tile of the bathroom and the way she is standing in the doorway, he sees her small black frame almost like it’s a silhouette of a shadow on the floor, this is not the girl that he trained before, this is a dead but still animated version of her, this is something sinister, something his rational mind cannot comprehend.
Detective Tumbler and the Man in Brown (Detective Tumbler Trilogy Book 2) Page 27