by John A. Daly
The crisp tune of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” poured out through a pair of speakers stationed on opposite sides of the room. Sean had always liked the warm sound of vinyl, but the only records he owned were those that he inherited from his uncle. Sean didn’t have an ear for country music, which was all Zed had listened to, but Johnny Cash never struck him as quite fitting into that genre. So, one of Cash’s greatest-hits albums was the only one that wasn’t still collecting dust on the shelf above Sean’s desk.
Sean threw on an old gray sweatshirt that smelled clean and a pair of frayed jeans that didn’t. After he laced up his hiking boots and buttoned his coat to the top, he pulled a ski cap down over his ears and made his way out the front door. He knew the record player would shut off by itself once the album wrapped up.
The Nova cranked a little rough because of the cold weather, but it eventually roared to life, and Sean spent the next ten minutes brushing snow and scraping ice off of the car windows amidst the freezing temperatures. The snow had stopped sometime during the night and now the bright sun lit up a winter wonderland of scenery outside of the Hansen Security office building.
Large evergreens stood like imposing white towers overseeing unblemished blankets of snow whose drifts had been chiseled into sleek shapes from the overnight winds. The dirt road at the end of his driveway had been yet to be traveled upon that morning. That was about to change as Sean climbed into his car and fiddled with the radio dial before popping the transmission into reverse.
He took things much easier than the night before, watching his speed, and pumping the gas pedal when needed. In just a matter of minutes, he was coasting through the downtown area where the streets were being carefully cleared by a plow on the front of an old pickup truck being driven by Alex Martinez.
Martinez was a college kid who Sean guessed was around twenty years old. He’d been working an internship at the Winston police station for a few months while taking criminal justice classes at a community college in nearby Summit County. Chief Gary Lumbergh was big on Martinez. Somehow, he saw promise in him as a future law enforcement officer. When Sean looked at the kid, however, all he saw was a “five-star kiss-ass,” as he put it. Martinez’s overeagerness to please and impress Lumbergh always made Sean squeamish.
Sean often observed Martinez performing what he called the “public monkey work” around town that no one else wanted to do. The kid always wore a permanent smile across his face while he did it, too. It was a shifty smile as far as Sean was concerned. When Martinez’s smile was paired with his disproportionately large nose, the kid’s face reminded Sean of the mascot for the Cleveland Indians. It was that smile, along with the wave of a hand, that greeted Sean as the two passed on the street. Sean nodded his head subtly, not really returning the gesture.
“Lumbergh’s bitch,” he muttered as he listened to the truck’s plow scrape packed snow from the pavement.
Only Lumbergh’s Jeep and his lone officer’s cruiser sat in the police station’s cleared parking lot. Sean pulled in alongside the cruiser, watching shards of snow fall from the roof of the building as the subtle warmth of the sun began to strengthen.
It was hard to believe with the sun so bright that a large snowstorm was expected to come through the following night. Some Lakeland deejays had been talking about it on the radio. At least two feet of snow was the estimation, possibly more.
When Sean walked in through the front door of the police station, he saw no activity in the reception area to his right, which was unusual. He did, however, hear some voices from down the hallway creeping out from Lumbergh’s office. The tone of the dialogue was low and restrained, and when Sean approached the office door, the talking stopped—seemingly in reaction to his presence.
Sean poked his head in through the doorway to see the alert eyes of three men staring back at him: Lumbergh, Ron Oldhorse, and Jefferson, Lumbergh’s sole officer. They all looked anxious. Jefferson even had a thumb resting on the backstrap of his holstered firearm.
The display prompted a sneer from Sean. “What the hell’s going on?”
When the men recognized him, the tension seemed to release from their bodies all at once. Shoulders lowered and the uniformed officer’s hand dropped from his pistol.
“A little antsy this morning, aren’t we, Jeffrey?” taunted Sean as he trained his gaze upon the officer. He lowered his eyes to the pistol. “Lumbergh doesn’t actually let you keep bullets in that thing anyway, does he?” He knew Jefferson hated being called Jeffrey. Sean had called him that since high school.
“He sure as hell does!” Jefferson snapped back, taking Sean’s bait.
Sean’s assertion had clearly struck a nerve with the tall, lanky officer, whose handlebar mustache and bloated chest sometimes drew comparisons to a Civil War reenactor.
Lumbergh shook his head in irritation, displaying little patience for the bickering. “Can you give us a minute, Sean?”
“Why?” Sean quickly retorted. “Is this a secret club meeting?”
“Please, Sean. Just a minute.”
Sean read exhaustion in Lumbergh’s eyes. It was then that he noticed the rest of the police chief ’s appearance. His face was unshaven and his normally well-groomed hair was a frazzled mess. His eyes were red and glazed, and they blinked with sensitivity to the sunlight that was beaming into the room from the window beside him. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in some time, though the clothes he wore appeared slept in.
He had never seen Lumbergh like this. The police chief was a man who always valued his appearance, priding himself on looking professional in a job he took very seriously. Yet today, he bore no resemblance to a “metrosexual.” Sean had recently begun referring to him that way after hearing the term used on an episode of Law & Order and deciding it applied to Lumbergh.
Whatever conversation the men had been engaged in looked serious, and the mystery of what was behind it triggered Sean’s curiosity. He would have pressed Lumbergh for an explanation, but he had come there to ask for a favor; pissing off the chief wasn’t a great way to get what he wanted. He bit his tongue, nodded his head, and walked back to the small lobby. He imagined that the silence following his departure probably came from the shock experienced by all three men. Sean Coleman actually complying with a request from Lumbergh was almost unheard of.
Once the office door snapped shut, Sean quickly pivoted and entered through the doorway of the neighboring room. He carefully made his way inside, leaving the overhead light off and relying on the luster from the hallway to keep him from running into anything.
The musty, windowless room housed a number of thick oak shelves overflowing with town documents. The newer ones were stored in uniform, white-cardboard boxes. Many were probably case files. The older ones, likely tax records and court documents, were bound in tall leather books that appeared many decades old. They were pressed together in several tight rows.
He tiptoed (as best a man of over 250 pounds could) around the shelves and a long, solid wooden table before reaching the sidewall that adjoined Lumbergh’s office. He placed his ear to it.
The wall was thin enough to hear the men’s voices, though not clearly. The three had likely lowered the tone of their discussion, weary of Sean’s nearby presence. Still, he made out snippets of dialogue�
��phrases like “back door” and “How could he get so close?”
As Lumbergh was talking, Jefferson erupted into a long coughing fit that pretty well drowned out the rest of what was said.
“Jesus, Jeffrey,” Sean whispered in irritation. As best he could gather from what he’d heard, someone had either broken into the police department or vandalized it from the outside. When he heard the loud shuffling of a chair, he briskly lumbered his way back around the shelving and out the doorway to the front lobby. He softly closed the door behind him.
He stood in the lobby, pretending to gaze out the window on the front door. When no one immediately emerged from the office, however, he did take a moment to pay some attention to the outside world. He became transfixed on the brightness outside. It was almost blinding, with the sun reflecting off of the snow in dazzling brilliance.
From where he stood he could see that the yellow newspaper machine was vertical again, standing beside the blue one. Though it was quite far away, Sean could make out some of the damage he had done to it the night before. It was lopsided and warped, and he smirked as he mused over the expression that likely adorned Roy Hughes’s face the moment he showed up that morning to load it with papers.
Moments later, Lumbergh’s office door opened up and both Jefferson and Oldhorse streamed out. They exchanged sober glances with each other before walking right by Sean, barely acknowledging him.
“Jefferson,” said Sean, using the officer’s full name. “Do you need a cough drop?”
The men stopped and the officer spun around.
“Do you have one?” Jefferson asked, his eyes wide.
“Yeah, I think I’ve got one right here,” Sean replied, digging his hand into his pocket. He lifted his hand out, empty, but his middle finger stood up at full mast for Jefferson to see. “There you go,” he said with a satisfying grin. “Feel better?”
Jefferson’s eyes narrowed angrily.
Oldhorse fended off a smirk. “Come on,” he muttered to Jefferson, who struggled to find a verbal comeback.
“You’re an asshole,” was the best he could blurt out.
The two men left through the front door.
Sean pondered why Oldhorse had been there in the first place. His involvement in a matter as simple as vandalism made little sense. All Sean could think of was that Lumbergh called on Oldhorse for his tracking skills, which were second to none. But with the area covered in snow, Sean imagined that anyone could simply follow footprints if there were any to be found.
Regardless, Lumbergh was now alone in his office, and Sean aimed to take care of some business. As he walked back down the hallway, he noticed for the first time that a collapsed steel folding chair had been placed up against the back door of the building. It was wedged there at an angle, as an extra lock, presumably to prevent entry.
He peered through the office doorway and found Lumbergh sitting at his desk with his head turned toward his window. The chief gazed through the glass as if he were lost in a deep thought. His eyes shifted to Sean once he entered.
“What do you need, Sean?” Lumbergh asked. He grabbed a couple of manila file folders from the top of his desk and shoved them into the top drawer.
“Everything okay?” asked Sean.
“Yes. Fine. What do you need?”
Sean took a deep breath. “What do you know about Andrew Carson, the missing person down in Greeley?”
Lumbergh’s face twisted in confusion, as if he were having difficulty transitioning away from his previous thought. “Andrew Carson?”
“Yeah. He’s the guy who went missing out in front of his house. Blood in the garage. Blood in the driveway.”
“Okay. Sure.” Lumbergh nodded and pulled himself deeper into his desk. “All I know is what I’ve read in the paper and seen on the news. That case is pretty far out of my jurisdiction.”
“I know that.”
“Why are you asking me about it then?”
Sean’s eyes drifted to a corner of the room before a chuckle escaped his lips. He wasn’t sure how to best formulate his words. When his gaze returned to Lumbergh, it was met with raised eyebrows. The chief was awaiting an answer.
“I know someone who’s related to him,” Sean blurted out.
“Okay. Is there some information they want to bring forth or something?”
“No. I was just wondering if there was any progress in the case. Any leads? Any suspects? Maybe something they’re not reporting on in the papers?”
A wince formed on Lumbergh’s face. “Sean, even if I was privy to that information, which I’m not, I couldn’t give it to you.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean why not?” Lumbergh said angrily, leaning forward in his seat. “It’s official police business. It’s an active case. I can’t just leak that kind of information out to people.”
Sean’s jaw squared as he glared at Lumbergh, scrutinizing him with his eyes. He shook his head slowly. Lumbergh gasped at the audacity of Sean’s reaction, throwing his good arm up in the air and tilting his chair back.
The sound of the front lobby door being opened and closed grabbed both men’s attention.
“The streets are all clear, chief!” the enthusiastic voice of Alex Martinez sounded out.
“The streets are all clear, chief!” Sean said in a mocking tone, not loud enough for the intern to hear him. “Kiss ass.”
“Shut up, Sean,” said Lumbergh. He shouted instructions for Martinez to record his time in a ledger posted at the reception desk and then added that he could take off for the day. He turned his attention back to Sean. “How many years have you known me now, Sean? What have I done during that time that gives you the impression I would just spill out confidential information from this office upon your personal request?”
Sean crossed his arms in front of him. In a scoffing tone, he replied. “Nothing, Gary. You’ve done absolutely nothing to show special treatment to the guy whose sister you’re married to. I get it!”
He paced back and forth a bit, surveying Lumbergh as he did. He then raised his index finger and pointed it in the police chief ’s direction. “But you owe me!”
The chief ’s eyebrows formed upward arrows as he glared at Sean the way a parent would at a child who was about to make a reckless decision. He leaned forward in his chair. “Tell me you’re not serious.”
“You bet I’m serious,” Sean answered, locking his arms in front of his chest. “Did you really think I was going to cash in a favor from the police chief of Winston by having him shovel my driveway or something? I cleaned up your shit. You owe me!”
The back legs of Lumbergh’s chair scraped loudly along the tile as he pushed himself away from his desk and rose to his feet. The sound of Martinez exiting the building went unnoticed. “Sean, I can’t tell you what’s going on in an active case. It’s against the law! And again, it’s not my case! It’s not my jurisdiction! I know nothing about it!” He forcefully pressed his finger to the top of his desk with every assertion.
“Bullshit!” Sean roared back. “Gary, you’re a goddamned celebrity now! The Montoya shooting turned you into Super Cop! I saw the way the
other police chiefs swarmed all over you at that convention Diana dragged me to last month—the one where they gave you that award! They just don’t like you; they want to be you!”
“What are you getting at?” Lumbergh sneered.
“All you have to do is pick up the phone and call your counterpart over there in Greeley. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to spill the beans on everything that’s going on over there.” Sean could almost see the steam rising out of Lumbergh’s ears as the chief ’s eyes pierced forward. He knew Lumbergh would regret the day he indebted himself to him, though the truth was that Sean had never intended on cashing in the favor. Still, he took some guilty satisfaction in watching the realization settle over Lumbergh’s face that the day had finally come. He liked watching the “big city” former police lieutenant squirm in discomfort at the mercy of his far less polished brother-in-law. He knew Lumbergh to be a man of his word—a trait he perhaps valued even more than his commitment to professional protocol.
For the next five minutes, Sean paced back and forth from the hallway to the front of the chief ’s desk as Lumbergh did his best to engage in cordial small talk over the phone with someone at the Greeley Police Department. Lumbergh’s sociable tone didn’t at all mesh with the disdainful glare he kept trained on Sean through the doorway during the conversation. Still, he sounded genuine enough.
“Oh, you saw that interview?” Lumbergh spoke into the receiver with a brief grin. “Well, I’m glad you liked it. They threw some interesting questions at me in that one. Like, ‘What gun would you have ideally had with you during that shootout?’ Ridiculous.”