by Neal Goldy
“Who are they? Are you in your office now?”
“I-I have to go now. Meet me in my office.”
D. rattled the phone as if that would bring him answers. “What do you mean your office? You just said –”
“I know what I said. But you need to go there anyway.”
After that he had hung up, providing more questions than D. could have come up with before he even had the case. When it came to family relationships, D. was a lonely branch in a sea of woods. Any connections with aunts, uncles, grandparents were erased from his memory. If anyone asked why he never visited his family, he kindly replied, “Because sometimes I need alone time.” The same response went for friends or colleagues. D. wiped them off cleanly as simple as using a diner napkin from the dispenser. Why would someone go calling for me D. thought. I don’t get it.
D. didn’t understand lots of things. This was one of them. The Chandler Police Department was in a lonely brick structure with the nearest buildings in a 5-mile radius. Spirits never captured the heart of the force, but D. suspected that years of accused innocents and deadly murderers and such had provided an almost holy place in which to signify crime at its worst in the city. Well, at least it signified the lower half of the city. Two guards sat at the front desk when D. entered, and they showed him the way to where Chief Advert's office was located.
Chief Advert's weight hadn’t lived up to his hopes; for forty years he had been over his usual poundage, although nobody called him names like they did during school. Now, pushing those thoughts aside, he focused on the main matter: the Case of the Endless Maze. Earlier today, he heard some officers calling it the Mystery Maze now, so that was proof that this would keep going until this man solved it. All of it, the case and everything involved with it, was formulated like a Sudoku puzzle with words: interconnected layers that in the end made no meaning. Of course, there was also the problem of what Officer Adams had found . . . but he didn’t want to think about that right now.
He heard short rapping on his office door the same minute he lit his lighter to a fresh new cigarette. “Come in.”
One of the police officers – more like security guard – entered. He recognized him as Dale from the abstract haircut he had these recent days. Next to him was an old man moving through the tiny space between Dale and the edge of the office door. He pulled through, nearly knocking over one of the two chairs sitting on the opposite side of Adverts desk. Dale lingered for a second or two before leaving. The old man, whom he called earlier, opened up a pocketbook that came from the wrong time period; probably near the 1800s in England, not America. The old man also wore a long black coat that, if you were far enough away, could be mistaken for a witch’s cloak. Unlike Investigator Will, this one didn’t hold a pipe. At least he wasn’t having it now, because most kept it at the corners of their mouths without ever taking them off, not even when sleeping, Advert concluded.
“You don’t dress like a detective,” said Advert. He just forgot to say hello.
“A pleasure to see you, too,” said the old man.
Advert frowned. “I apologize for forgetting, detective. It’s good to see you, really.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The old man shut his pocketbook. “Not all detectives have to wear trench coats, smoke pipes, and sport English deerstalker caps.”
“I guess not.” Advert puffed smoke from his cigar. He picked out another one and held it up so the old man could see. “Smoke?”
Wordlessly, the old detective snatched the cigar from Adverts hands. He provided a match from his inside pocket and lit it up.
“How long have you been working in this . . . business?” Advert asked.
“About as long as you were working as a police chief,” answered the old man without the smile that carried the sign to make the opposite laugh.
“I want real answers,” Advert warned, “not games! Are you trying to act like the psychopath here? Or is it you terrorizing the force?”
“Terrorizing what? This is the first time I’ve been here on account for solving a case. Usually clients come to me with their problems, give me payment, and I solve it. Once I’m done, they pay me the cash and we go our separate ways.”
Advert snapped and stood. The chair he sat in jerked back with screeches and pulls. Finally it rattled to the floor like a coin releasing its last spin. “No smart talk! If you want the job, you follow my rules.” He was serious, but his eyes pled.
“All right, all right,” the old man said, motioning Advert to sit back down. “What’s the point of having to have me come over?”
Advert took a deep breath. Besides his apartment, his office was the last place he could think of to meet. His eyes flickered to each and every camera that eyed them as if alive. The darkened spots of each were like real eyes, pupils of omnipresence.
“Here, take this.” Advert held up a cream-colored folder with documents pointing in many directions, disorganized. “All you need to do and know is in there.” He slid it onto the other side of the desk.
The old man took it, examining its contents. “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
Laying it down, the old man said: “Chief, what’s the point of this?”
“Pardon?” said Advert.
“This folder, what’s the point of it? You tell me to come all the way here so you can give me a two-inch thick folder? Why not mail this to me instead? You could have saved time for both me and yourself.”
“Some things happen for a reason.”
“Stop being cryptic,” said the old man. “Be blunt. All of this nonsense is making the case more mysterious than it should be. Is that why Investigator Darren Will committed suicide while on the case? Was it because of you?”
“Enough,” Advert growled. “Take the folder and go.”
“I hate to slow things down, but isn’t there supposed to be payment before work starts? It seems you forgot that part.”
Fuming, Advert opened a drawer and separated the wads of bills he stored in there. He came up with about 500 dollars. “Here’s 500,” he said. “I’ll give you another 500 when you finish the job.”
The old man wasn’t taking the money. “I’ll need more than 500.”
“700?”
“How about 850?” the old detective suggested.
Advert laughed. “You’re out of your mind. Take 750, then.”
The old man thought about it. “750,” he mused. “Fair enough, deal.” Chief Advert brought up the desired amount and placed it into the wrinkled, almost spider-like hand of the detective. “I’ll take the other half when I finish the case and everything is in order.”
“Half?” cried out the chief. “You mean . . . you mean 1500 in total?”
The old man nodded. “If it means that much to you . . .”
“You can have it,” said the chief. “Just find out who took McDermott.”
*****
The locker room section of the police department had water filling the floor up to D.’s ankles. He came out of the bathroom and found himself wherever he was. He noticed even fewer people in here, but since nobody was around to bring him back to the entrance and get on with his business, he took a better look. Moreover, the web of strings at the end of the hall hypnotized him, fate and destiny pulling together in a force of malevolent trickery to bring him to things he wasn’t supposed to see.
All the lockers inside were painted white, which didn’t add up in D.’s opinion. White lockers . . . who came up with that idea? The locker room had a long, narrow hallway that went on for four minutes. Reaching to the end wall, D. found a massive web of pictures, documents, files, and evidence. It was the plan of a madman, filled with newspaper clippings of deadbeat crimes and suspicious killers, maps of the city, and profiles of what D. believed to be some of the officers in the force. They were plastered everywhere. If you stepped back enough, a whole web was formed in the shape of an inverted pyramid.
“What in God’s name?” D. tore off a newspaper clipping.
In black bold letters the headline read: DO OLD PEOPLE LOOK LIKE CHILDREN WITH WRINKLES? The title story concerned not an event but how old people, during the last years of their lives, begin to act more and more like children. All of it was based on scientific studies and the poem, “The Little Boy and the Old Man” by Shel Silverstein. D.’s mother once read the poem to him. Still, what was it for?
The date of the clipping read September 23--a few weeks ago. Stepping back, D. found the web forming from the mind of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia. Large indented circles looped over and over, darkened from the graphite. In the center of the web, where in big red letters it read START, there were lyrics to a song. D. read them. He had heard the song more than once before, a long time ago, since he listened to 30s and 40s music. Too frequently people thought him mad to spend his time hearing music targeted for children and bedtime. An old man hearing such things and people already begin cooking up ideas of pedophilia. People were control freaks, for the most part. The song, according to its lyrics, referred to the all-too-famous Boogeyman that scared children in their sleep. Whoever sent this must have seen similar parallels between the poem and the web the old detective was glancing at. The description of the Boogeyman sounded quite odd when he read it, something between a fuzzy bear and a pedophilic stalker during the night. And the teeth that somehow laughed even when he wasn’t smiling . . . the man who wrote and sang the song probably wanted to bring up various ways to stop the devious monster, but it brought D.’s attention to whether there was a way to stop the lurking shadows that may or may not be entirely real.
What did this mean? Was it connected to McDermott in some way, or not at all? Did this web have a purpose or did it just represent madness? To whom did this belong to?
D. took the note and stuffed it in his pocket. He followed one line and continued on the yarn that made up one-sixth of the web. A note told of a man who was the chief of the city police force. Huh, that sounded very familiar. No names were written on the note, but you didn’t need to be a detective to figure it out.
Red tape followed the first note onto several branches, and at each he encountered the tale of the police chief who had a failing marriage. His son, Joe, came out straight. The police chief decided to never speak to him again because of the blot he gave to the family name. The only living, breathing thought he had in life was his job. Day after day, the chief went further into the new case presented to him. When he read it, he banned the case from anyone’s eyes: he wanted to do it himself. He was falling apart, and finding the plot of a psychopath was an easy job to pull his strings back together. As he figured it, the psychopath wanted to burn down the police station to ashes. He wanted people dead, burned alive. The chief wouldn’t let that happen, and would put a stop to it.
D., following the story, went up to the top of the inverted pyramid where all the branches expanded out into multiple endings. Photos of the chief’s son were there, indicated by a name labeled below. Others showed his family and journal excerpts from his wife spelling out abstract messages. The words “KILL”, “CHIEF”, and “DEAD” were pasted on top of the chief’s wife’s photo of her head and shoulders: she was smiling at the camera. When the story began to end, the chief somehow got the psychopath under his arms and began beating him. Only through the description of the words, it didn’t sound like beating. The chief had begun torturing the psychopath with pleasure, as if making love. Oh how did the love of pain and blood make him burn with fever! When he finished, he ripped a limb from the psycho-plotter, and left him there. Everyone was saved, and when he was done, the chief shot himself in the head. The psychopath had lived with a metal leg and ended up burning down the police station after all. Dozens of officers lost their lives in the fictional fire. At the conclusion, the chief’s wife had married a drug dealer, Joe was a political figure trying to legalize heterosexual marriage, and the psychopath went on playing with the police and the government.
The last scene contained with these words: and they were happy for the time being, all police forces hunting down Killer (that was the sick-minded man’s name) and bringing down justice. They keep looking, but when will they stop? A photo was on top of the last note, showing a bunch of policemen sitting in a dark room. In the background D. could see the same web of madness on this wall in the locker room--on the wall in the photograph. D. searched elsewhere in the web. He saw a scribbled page taken from a spiral notebook; he noticed the three-holed paper punched through. Dark purple hue from the pen ink filled the page coloring the tiny letters.
To Whoever Can Read,
I believe I am so innocent that I am perhaps guilty. People believe I committed a CRIME, betrayed my fellow officers, and raped two little girls in a petite school building. With my head clear, I can safely assure you all that I never committed any crimes (I vow this even to GOD) and have only left the force for secret reasons even I cannot pen into THIS NOTEBOOK.
As for those two little girls . . . PEOPLE BELIEVE ANYTHING. [Illegible from tears and pen scribbles] they, them . . . they were too innocent for me to touch them. I didn’t do anything harmful to them, only gave them candy. Then one day, one time, they SCREAMED and everything went [illegible]. A touch of a dress was all, okay? OKAY? OKAY! OKAY, YOU BELIVE ME! I’m so sorry I’m yelling even though nothing is coming out of my mouth. But the girls, Lisa and Jenny, they never were wrong, though. They had friends but never were they so cruel as to tattletale like this. I never raped anyone nor will I ever. "I’LL NEVER TOUCH ANOTHER WOMAN IN MY LIFE, I SWEAR IT. I’D NEVER . . . I’D NEVER . . . JOANNE IS THE ONLY ONE FOR ME, EVEN WHEN SHE DIES
I promise. Do you promise?
Sincerely,
Your Best Friend
D. was tight-lipped. An attack on the police department and a confession letter was supposed to fix what? He noticed the man signed himself, “Your Best Friend.” Best friend of someone, but D. never suspected him or the chief to be one of them. Nevertheless, it presented a very frightening scene to him and much more to an officer who stumbled upon this while doing his daily locker routine.
He thought it quite a story indeed.
D. opened the door and exited the locker room. He decided to go out the back since he didn’t want to appear suspicious to the security guards at the front and Chief Advert for departing so late. For the second time that night, D. began to think. Big money was always a good thing, but D. didn’t know if it was worth it. People were always looking for crimes to solve, so there must be competition. But even then, why would the chief police want him, D.? As mentioned before, he was nearing his seventies and worked slower than before; his prime years must have been in his forties. Lonely hours watching reruns of old TV shows did nothing to help the matter, but it was what he did to pass the time. He grew old to the bitter taste of crime, knowing many types of cases that didn’t require much of a brain to solve (just for extra money he slowed himself down, but that didn’t happen often). If he were to buy that new apartment on a higher floor than the dingy one he had now, he had to get working.
D. rushed out onto the raining streets of the city. His case was a simple one, but he never understood it. The chief had given him a folder containing all the information he needed to get started. However, when D. got a good look at it, he was sorely confused. All the information given was the background info of a man named Paul McDermott, a wealthy billionaire who had a company making hotel buildings. The McDermott franchise was a large one, but what was the point? It had nothing to do with the case he was going over with the chief both on the phone and in person. A mystery within a mystery . . .
Why couldn’t he understand all of this? Cases were cases, not puzzles to test the crime investigator in him. When he asked about the McDermott case, the chief told him it was connected. Somehow Adams had been following closely McDermott’s every step and breath, keeping contact as a stranger and then a close millionaire friend. How he did it, the chief didn’t explain. But recently, before his disappearance, Adams had noted in a journa
l he left in his house that McDermott was drunk on his money. A couple days ago he had made an announcement that the world had never heard – an announcement that on October 18, he would kill himself. What method would be a huge surprise, he had promised. D. didn’t want to find out.
Did money need to exist? D. thought this when he walked down the rainy streets to his apartment building. He needed his briefcase and a ticket to the subway. Everybody was drunk on greed in this city, no need to deny it; you’ll just look like a fool. Walking, D. pondered the idea of money not existing – what would happen then? Could people be happier than now? He only wished.
*****
The phone call was a stern and furious one for Officer Lincoln Deed. Chief Advert, their boss, would be speaking with the new detective involved with the McDermott case, and if he accepted the job, then they’ll be conducting the search together looking for anything new. However, his voice roared like a lion’s flame, or a dragon’s fire. The chief was so loud that, in order to understand him without blowing his ear off, Lincoln held the phone half a foot away. Even then he felt his ear splitting like wood being chopped.
“So what happened to Darren Will?” Lincoln wondered.
Big Hands face paled. “He’s dead, you idiot.”
“Oh, right.” He hoped the hand that was cupped over the mouthpiece blocked out any sound he made, especially what he said about the previous investigator, Darren Will. As if the phone would soon burst, Lincoln lifted his hand from the mouthpiece, going a few inches up until he knew safety was assured. “Are you still there, chief?”
“Yes, I am.” The chief was fond of using short, blistering sentences when he was aggravated.
Lincoln laughed in relief. “I’m sorry for leaving you hung up for a few minutes.”
“Sorry?” He asked that question too flat, and without the higher pitch at the end, it didn’t sound like a question at all. “I heard everything.”
Lincoln winced as if the chief had broken a beloved painting, preferably Doré’s The Creation of Light. Did the chief always have to be this stern, he wondered? “About the . . .?”