by Luis Samways
“You say you were here for a meeting. With whom, may I ask?” Mullins said as he got out his pad and got ready to jot down some notes.
“A man named Jesse Foster. He’s the big boss man of this company. Such a nice gentleman. Shame, really,” Sal said.
Mullins scrunched his face a little at that remark.
“Shame?” he said.
“Shame he’s dead,” Roger interrupted.
Mullins shook his head.
“How could you possibly know he’s dead?” Mullins asked in astonishment.
There were a few seconds of silence that followed. Both men looked at each other in confusion, as if what they were saying was as concrete as the foundations that kept the building they were standing in up.
“No one loses that much blood and lives to take another breath, my boy,” Sal said, pointing down to the massive pools of the stuff that caked the carpets in the office.
Mullins looked around once more and nodded his head in agreement.
“I suppose you are right, but what’s to say that it’s his blood on the floor?”
Both Sal and Roger Smith shrugged in unison.
“If it isn’t his, then who knows. I’m just assuming. He had sent everyone home, you see. No one else works here. Everyone had been fired, so I’m just assuming it’s his blood. That, or the cleaner went and cut herself during scrubby-scrubby time.”
Mullins pulled a face at the seemingly off-color comment. Racism wasn’t his favorite subject; he decided to ignore the possibly inflammatory remark.
“Okay, I’m going to call some backup in, and I need you to make some statements regarding the state of the crime scene. Give us as much information as you can about this…Jesse Foster…and anyone else you two could think would be relevant. In the meantime, please feel free to grab a coffee from the vending machine in the hallway downstairs. You two are going to be here for the night,” Mullins said.
Both Roger and Sal nodded. They both looked excited, yet a little scared.
“Are we in danger?” asked Roger.
“Nope, trust me. You two will be just fine. In no less than ten minutes this building will be so filled with cops that you’ll be sick of being that safe,” Mullin laughed.
“I guess,” Roger said.
Both Smiths walked out of the office and made their way to the vending machine. Neither of them said much else, as they were too wrapped up in the possibility of the danger that surely lurked around the corner.
Forty-Eight
First thing I heard was the sound of a helicopter flying over the crime scene at Boston Common. It didn’t really throw me off at all; I kind of expected a chopper to scout the area. It was standard practice in law enforcement. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell them differently, that was for sure!
The helicopter turned into what sounded like two helicopters. It was then that I began to wonder. Suddenly I saw some beams of light scattering across the tents. It was then that I realized snipers were being set up around the crime scene. I recognized the laser sights for sure; they had been pointed at me on a few occasions, usually when I was apprehending a dangerous suspect. The fact that my life might hang on the effectiveness of the sharpshooter pointing a rifle in my direction usually filled me with joy and fear at the same time. Many times I would fantasize that they would get it wrong and accidentally kill me. That was my dream, you see…going out by the hand that fed me. That was my way of dealing with stress. That, and at those particular times I was a bit down and depressed. These days, however, I didn’t have much of a death wish. The only wishing I’d be doing from now on was apprehending the men and women who broke the laws of Boston. And heck, there had been so many of them, I’d nearly lost count.
I quickly sat up and composed myself. Obviously I was aware that something was going on. It didn’t take a genius to work out something big was happening. I got my cell phone out and speed-dialed Shaw. The prick answered fast. Man, I hated that guy. No particular reason why, but he just rattled me ruthlessly. I just couldn’t stand him. Maybe it was the fact that he was as arrogant an asshole as I was. Either way, I’m sure he felt the same, or he wouldn’t have attempted to suspend me a couple of days ago.
“What the hell is going on, Shaw? I’m hearing helicopters outside the tent. I saw some sharpshooter lasers peering through the air. Should you be telling me something?”
I heard Shaw clear his throat on the other end. Shit. I knew this was deep. He only cleared his throat when he was about to lay something heavy on the line. I knew him all too well.
“We have a situation, Frank. The killer has made himself known. And he has a rifle pointing in your direction. Looks like he wants to take you out. The sharpshooter lasers you saw were coming from him, no doubt. Don’t worry. We’ll get you out. Just stay calm. I’m sure you’ll be okay,” Shaw reassured me.
“Urm, Chief. I’m pretty sure this tent isn’t bulletproof. So don’t go telling me I’ll be fine. Why the fuck has he picked me? And why the hell is he revealing himself?”
Another long pause at the end of the phone. Damn chief was stalling for time. He knew something I didn’t. He was starting to annoy me.
“Chief? Why the hell is he aiming his weapon at me? Matter of fact, why in the hell is he aiming a weapon at all?”
Chief Shaw cleared his throat again. His nervous tic sounded like a megaphone in my ear. It rattled my eardrums. Everything in the tent was shining brightly. I was panicking, which was weird, seeing as I didn’t really mind dying. Something was off, and whatever it was, it was scaring the shit out of me.
“Look, Frank, he hasn’t said much. He’s been talking to the press. He says he feels like killing a policeman. He said he chose you because you were the only one left behind. Apparently he had someone else in mind. For some reason, he said he liked the look of you. He also said it pained him to aim a gun at an officer of the law, but he needed to do it, if his masterpiece was going to flourish,” Chief said.
I clenched my fist in anger. I managed to kick the dirt under me. It spattered across the white tent. I had managed to contaminate the scene. I couldn’t have given a shit, really. The crime scene was the last place I wanted to be at the moment.
“Where are you guys? Where is he?”
“We are stationed a few yards down the park. We have some men propped up in position to try to scout this guy. Whoever he is, he’s a dead man. I wouldn’t worry, Frank. We’ll get him,” Shaw said.
“You didn’t answer my question, Chief. Where the hell is he? Where is he positioned? Take the fucker out!”
There was another long stint of silence, and then Shaw finally spoke. The cell phone was getting hot against my ear. I swallowed hard as my throat started to clench up in a panic. I felt like a sitting duck in the tent. A big white marker for the killer to open up on. Maybe he had heat optics on the gun. Maybe he could see my heat signature through his scope. Maybe he was seconds away from firing.
“We don’t know where he is, Frank. We don’t know his position,” Shaw said, sounding defeated. It was as if the prick actually cared whether I lived or died.
“So you’re telling me I’m toast?” I asked.
“No, Frank. We’ll find him,” he replied.
With that I hung up on him. I was seething in anger. I had had enough. This case was going to kill me…with a damn sniper rifle! This wasn’t how I imagined I’d die. I always thought I’d have overdosed on my pills for my voices or something. And the funny thing was, not even the damn voices in my head had anything to say. The damn situation had them just as stumped as everyone else! Even my disability had left me to deal with this by myself.
My phone rang again. I contemplated whether or not to answer it. I hadn’t heard the first few rings. I was too busy swatting my head back and forth, looking for a little red laser dot. Anything to warn me of his position. But I found nothing. Although it was as if I could feel the killer’s hard scope on me. I could feel the warm sensation of death around the corner, up
high, somewhere over Boston Common. I was a dead man. And then I heard the rings.
I quickly pressed the green button.
“You better have something for me, Shaw, or are you just calling to reconfirm my deadness?”
I heard an unfamiliar laugh over the phone.
“Hello. I do have something for you, and it comes in the size of a .308,” the voice said.
Suddenly I heard a whisper in the air, and then a piercing pain in my calf muscle. I had been shot. I hadn’t heard the shot, but I knew I had been capped. I looked down and saw the blood trickling out of my left leg. I nearly vomited when I realized he had shot me. I couldn’t believe it. I heard nothing but the cold laugh he possessed on the phone. I heard no returning fire. Nothing. The cops surrounding the damn tent hadn’t even noticed I had been shot. That, or they didn’t care.
“Next present I’ll have for you will be of the same size Mr. Detective, but I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, it’s not the size of the present that matters, it’s the result — which will be your death, if you don’t do what I say,” the voice said in a clear Mexican accent.
Forty-Nine
Chief Shaw was pacing around the parking lot in a state of anger and frustration. He was smoking a cigarette. The other officers around him could hear the searing of the paper as the cigarette disappeared with every hard toke the Chief took.
Shaw didn’t even bother looking up at the men who surrounded him, waiting for instructions. He was too busy contemplating the situation at hand. As for the many men and women who surrounded him, they were all too tied up in the case to care about how tired they were. They were all too consumed with rage to give a damn about the lack of sleep that was plaguing them at that moment. As the sun set on Boston and the night overshadowed Boston Common, all the supporting law enforcement officers were supporting red eyes, and crow’s feet. They were in a near trance state of sleepless nights and bad takeaway food. Not even a sugar rush could bring those hardworking men and women out of their slump. They had nothing but oppressive thoughts on their minds. Thoughts of a detective being scoped at by a killer who had already proven himself worthy of such fear. Thoughts of an unstable detective being in the limelight, the news dragging his name through the dirt. The killer using Frank’s ego as a reason to kill him.
All of those thoughts were running through every able officer at that meeting. The point of operations was located just outside the Common. It was heavily guarded by police and SWAT. Even the FBI was making their presence known. It baffled Shaw to think that just a hundred yards down the tree line, a detective of his was in danger, and just a few more yards farther, a killer had his fate in his hands.
Shaw stopped pacing and looked at his soft-eyed officers as they tried to look game for the situation at hand. Shaw flicked his cigarette on the floor and stamped it out with authority. The orange sparks scraped across his boot as he dragged the butt under his foot. For a minute it looked beautiful in his mind, like a light that hadn’t been present in the case since the start. But that thought quickly escaped his mind when he realized it was just a cigarette butt being extinguished, and nothing more.
His face looked saddened as he approached the rickety table that was swaying in the breeze of the outside field office they had managed to assemble within such a small time. A few computers sat on the table along with a radio. A tent was being set up behind him, and a few men sat on Jeep turrets on either side of the “compound” they had erected on the playing field of Boston Common. A slight scent of burning could be smelt across the Common, but Shaw didn’t know if it was in his mind or the smell of burning was in fact as real as the danger they were all in.
“This situation is bad,” Shaw said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “On the other end of this phone, I had my best detective pleading with me for help. Help that I couldn’t give him, not because I didn’t want to, but because it wasn’t in my power. We have yet to find out who this guy is. We still don’t know the damn ID of the mummified body at the Common. We certainly don’t know why the killer chose to dress the corpse up as a piñata, and we don’t know why he has an obsession with everything Mexican,” Shaw said as he placed the cell phone down on the table. He looked around at the sorry-looking faces that surrounded him. Men and women who felt a little too close to this particular case. Men and women who knew Frank McKenzie well. Some hated him, some loved him, but all knew he was one of the good guys, one of the good guys who needed saving from the bad guys.
“Please tell me what you all suggest we do about this situation. Sure, I’m the chief of police and all, but some of you must have an idea of how to deal with a marksman threatening to kill one of our own?”
There was a long pause as all the officers looked at one another in a seamless sigh of despair.
“Okay. Just so I am clear, we have no ideas regarding the safe extraction of one of our own?” Chief Shaw asked.
Another long pause as nobody saw fit to answer back. The breeze was hitting the trees above, and some leaves were falling onto the ground they occupied. The echoes of winter were abundant, and the cold was getting to everybody. Chief Shaw was in no mood to be diplomatic. It was obvious by his demeanor that he wanted to end the situation as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to waste time on being diplomatic; he wanted an all-out war.
“I say we go in from the back of the tent and extract McKenzie. I say we cut the phone lines and place a sharpshooter on every single window facing the common and the crime scene tent. I say we go in aggressive and resolve this before it becomes a media circus,” Shaw said as he reached into his jacket once more and pulled a fresh pack of twenty out. He started to unwrap the packaging.
“Ruthless aggression?” an officer offered up as he watched his boss fiddle with the packaging to his smokes.
“That’s right, Tommy,” Shaw replied.
The guy named Tommy turned his head and looked over at the horizon. He could see a convoy of vans with satellites driving up toward the Common. He sighed loudly, exhaling a large cloud of condensed air from his warm mouth.
“Looks like the circus have already turned up, sir,” Tommy said as the other men and women surrounding the table spotted the news crews turning up in droves.
“Fuck sake, just what we need,” Shaw mumbled as he made his way toward the cordoned-off area that the vans were approaching.
Fifty
Olivia Cormack was unwinding with a glass of wine in the bath. The bubbles were frothing at the base of the water, popping up for air and then disappearing into a misty smog of warm water. It felt good to be that relaxed after such a hard day. She really needed to unwind and was enjoying every minute and every bubble-filled second of it.
She had been soaking in the bath for a good hour. She didn’t care that her fingertips resembled a chicken’s foot, nor did she care that the water was starting to feel a little cold. All she cared about was switching off. She looked around the bathroom and admired her well-kept faucets. They looked angelic and expensive. Abstract pictures of stones and waterfalls adorned her bathroom walls. The essences of calm filled the bathroom as she dunked her head and submerged herself. She stayed under for a few seconds, opening her eyes and admiring the look of her ceiling as it wobbled under the water. She gently took her head out of the water and breathed in a deep lungful of air. Her hair stuck down to her shoulders as she flicked it back and looked around once more. She wiped the water off her face with a washcloth and cracked her fingers.
“Lovely,” she exhaled.
She then reached for the radio that was built into the wall. It was a handy gizmo, and she loved it. The radio had touch buttons and was well protected against water and vapor. Before she had it installed, she always imagined enjoying the radio while in the bath. But because of the fear of it falling into the tub and killing her, she had always decided against such an idea. That was until she came across the fixture while planning out her new bathroom, and thus far she had never regretted ha
ving it installed. She loved it and couldn’t imagine bath time without the sounds of music and the occasional news hour.
“Let’s see what crazy shit the world is up to today,” she said as she turned the wall-encased radio on and switched over to the news. Boston News Channel, CNN – Boston Local, had their own radio station. She enjoyed the station a lot. It was because she thought they had a class about them, a certain aura of respect that most news channels seemed to lack. She knew that when something big happened, CNN wouldn’t go about scaremongering as most channels did. She didn’t need that sort of thing in her life. After all, she was a rather panicky person, and suffered many phobias. News hour was like a horror movie for her, but she always felt the need to keep up with what was going on, if only to justify the wrongs in her life by proving that many people had it worse off.
“CNN…NEWS HOUR WITH MIKE CAMBINI,” the radio spouted as she got comfortable and started to play with the tap using her big toe.
“Hot…cold,” she said as she smiled to herself.
“Hello, I’m Mike Cambini, and you are listening to CNN news. Today’s top story: murder in Boston. Sources close to the Boston PD say that there have been a handful of bizarre murders across the city. Businesspeople have gone missing, and a few have turned up dead. Could this be the work of the drug cartels, or is Boston being run by bloodthirsty bankers?” the voice said.
“So much for the damn news,” Olivia said, immediately regretting turning on the radio. She hated feeling scared more than most, but to hear that something so close to home was happening right now was hard for her to take. She decided to listen on and hear the story in full. Maybe the news was scaremongering. Maybe she was overreacting and it wasn’t a big deal. Businesspeople being murdered was quite common in Mexico…. She knew that for a fact. Maybe drug cartels were responsible…who was she kidding? She didn’t know a damn thing, and, like most, she always assumed the worst. She decided to sit up to pay attention to the radio.
“Also, coming up…. A man is holding a detective hostage at the Boston Common park. He says he has a rifle and isn’t afraid to use it. CNN has managed to get an exclusive recording of a phone call with the supposed wannabe assassin. Stay tuned for exclusive updates as we return after these messages,” the man on the radio said as his voice was drowned out by a catchy jingle.