Rage: The Reckoning

by Christopher C. Page

  Tanya had a clear view of the area with the exception of what was on the other side of the brush, only meters away. She gave up any hope of the dog actually coming back to her on his own so she stomped her way across the remaining distance in defiance of her fear. As confident as she tried to convince herself that she was, she kept her thumb over the cell phone keypad, just in case. As she rounded the brush, she saw what appeared to be a large doll, or a mannequin of some kind, arched backwards with its back broken over the stump of a fallen oak tree. Her first thought was that some kids had pulled it out of a dumpster somewhere and dragged it into the woods as a joke. It looked as if they had set fire to its crotch; everything was melted away into what looked like a crater. But inside the hole, something appeared to be moving, or melting.

  The wind shifted again, sending a slight breeze in her direction and she was struck again by a horrible rancid smell. All she could think of was the time a package of raw chicken wings had fallen out of the bag and, somehow, ended up under the seat of her car. They stayed there cooking in the summer heat with the windows rolled up for two days before she found them. By then, the smell had been so horrible that they had sold the car after three different cleaning solvents had failed to get the stench out. This smelled just as bad.

  Covering her mouth with one hand, she resolved herself to the task of getting Rambo the hell out of there and getting on with her life. But as she got within ten feet of whatever it was and she was able to get a hold of the dog’s leash, she saw the thing’s face.

  It wasn’t a mannequin at all.

  Eleven

  Sarah Cannon gazed out the window of the Bell Mark IV helicopter and pondered her current predicament. She and her new team were travelling one hundred kilometers outside their base of operations in Orillia, cruising over the vast woodlands and lake systems surrounding Gravenhurst and Huntsville, to a little town that nobody on the team had even heard of. If not for the fact that their victim had apparently been taken by force from one location to another before his murder the case would have been simple murder and outside of their jurisdiction. Kidnapping and forcible confinement had brought it under the purvey of the provincial police, and right into her lap. Now she’d have to muster every bit of knowledge and experience from every member of her team to close this case or face the humiliation of failure that her superiors were expecting.

  Sink or swim, baby.

  Sarah adjusted the volume on her headphones and tried to block out the chatter between the helicopter pilot and her team’s second in command, Tom Lewinski. It had been just three months since he’d been passed over for the lead spot and his disappointment still bled into almost every single thing he said or did. Lewinski was a pig. Ten years her senior, he’d been married and divorced three times and was of the mentality of the nineteen-fifties that women were meant to stay home and raise children before making dinner and lying on their backs for their husbands. Anything else was considered man’s work and above any woman’s capabilities. He’d barely made it through the Academy and had more complaints filed against him by members of the public than any other cop Sarah had heard of so it was no surprise (given the path her life had taken), that she’d ended up partnered with him on the job. It was a match made in puppy hell.

  While her approach had been docile and even-tempered, Lewinski went about his career cracking skulls and using intimidation as his primary method of gaining co-operation. Sarah had done her best to make it work, but when she had legitimate complaints, the brass upstairs accused her of being difficult.

  Worse than that, after she forced the issue and took her complaint to the civil liberties board, he retaliated against her by leaving her alone on a raid. The suspects were five large men with long criminal records ranging from armed robbery and kidnapping to aggravated assault and murder, and they were holed up in a housing project full of gang members. Lewinski’s story was that they’d been separated while searching the building for their suspects, but they’d both been to that specific location so many times that it was beyond any reason that he could have suddenly gotten lost or become disorientated as he later claimed.

  Sarah survived the ordeal, stronger and smarter because of it, the right side of her neck still bore the mark of the knife they held against her throat while they took turns with her. The men who attacked her escaped that day and were never found, but one of them had managed to impregnate her during the attack. Sarah chose to terminate the pregnancy, unable to handle the idea of raising the child of a criminal who had raped her.

  After a short and sweet investigation, Lewinski had been cleared of any wrongdoing. Now here she was, three years later, listening to the same dumb jokes and bullshit stories that seemed to have become more and more grand as time passed. Only now, she was technically his boss and any breach of protocol would be dealt with swiftly, and in his case, severely.

  The rest of her new team was an even mix of young enthusiasm and exemplary courage under fire. Ian Wright was a true veteran of law enforcement and had worked more cases in more precincts than almost every other member of the team combined. In fact, every now and again he’d tell a story about cases he’d worked before Sarah was old enough for a training bra and Tristan Cutler, the youngest member of the team, hadn’t even been born yet. Cutler, by comparison with Lewinski, was the new breed; computer savvy, hooked on technology, making his way by aid of any and every gizmo and gadget on the market. The three men together made up a nearly perfect trisect for a team like theirs, but the amount of testosterone surrounding her would have been unbearable. As such, Sarah couldn’t have been more pleased by the fifth addition to their group, Darcy Drake. Like Sarah, she had been tested, re-tested and then tested again. She carried herself well, was smart as a whip and could kick ass right along side the men. Better yet, she had good judgement to decide if and when that ass kicking was necessary, something men like Lewinski lacked desperately.

  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the crime scene. Dozens of police officers were huddled together looking up at the helicopter as it circled the man made reservoir, holding onto their hats to keep them from being blown away by the wash from the rotors.

  “Looks like a bunch of fucking Africans scrambling around down there, waiting for us to drop a bag of rice or something,” Lewinski chuckled through the headset.

  “Nice, Tom,” Darcy snapped back at him before Sarah had the chance. “You’re a real humanitarian.”

  The pilot sat the helicopter down in an open field beside the reservoir mindful of the power wires strung nearby and the team waited for the rotors to whine down before climbing out of the cabin and jogging away in a crouch towards the group of uniformed officers. A particularly rotund man stepped forward from the group to greet them followed by a thinner more distinguished management type wearing an expensive suit.

  “Detective Cannon?” the cop said, extending his right hand. “Captain Ralph McLeary, thanks for coming.”

  Sarah shook his hand briefly and quickly introduced the rest of the team. A group of officers were huddled near the back of the ambulance parked nearby and through the cluster of blue uniforms she spotted a woman holding a small dog while paramedics fixed an oxygen mask over her face and checked her vitals. “Is that our witness?” she asked.

  “Yup,” McLeary nodded without looking. “Tippy Sacco, jogging with her dawg.”

  “I’m going to need to speak with her. Where’s the victim?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the suit said, stepping forward. “Before we get ahead of ourselves we need to get a few things straight.”

  “And you are?” Sarah said, feigning interest.

  The man noticeably tensed up, his shoulders rising an inch. “I’m Lawrence Tate, the goddamned Mayor, don’t they tell you guys anything?”

  Sarah’s eyes locked on his, her demeanor as cool as ice. “Just the things that matter.”

  “Well that’s very cute but they should have told you that we don’t need you and I don’t want you.”
>
  “And why is that I wonder?” She said it with the same level of interest one would use to decide which brand of toilet paper to buy. Aware of her team standing behind her, riding on her every word, she decided to have mercy on the man and shut him down quickly. “Whether or not you want me here is irrelevant Mr. Mayor, we’re here under orders from the Attorney General’s office. So, unless you can trump that, I suggest you stand aside and let us do our job.”

  “It just so happens that we have one of the best damned detectives in the province working right here in Ratcliff,” Tate said, refusing to give her an inch. “I don’t know who called you or who gave you permission to come in here with your goddamned helicopter, but I suggest you leave.”

  She breezed past him and returned her attention to McLeary.

  “Anybody ID the victim?”

  “One of our guys seems to think it’s a local kid by the name of Dushku,” McLeary pronounced it; doosh-koo. “I’ve never dealt with him personally but I’ve seen him around. Kind of hard to tell if it’s him or not,” McLeary added hesitantly.

  Sarah quickly surveyed the scene, determining her next course of action ever aware of the multitude of eyes focused on her. The locals looked as if they had the basics under control; they’d set up a perimeter and kept the press outside of the crime scene.

  “I’m going to need your people to keep the locals out of here Chief,” she shot the Mayor a look. “That means anyone not carrying a badge and a gun.” At her remark, the Mayor’s face turned as red as the two hundred dollar tie around his martini bloated neck. McLeary looked amused but did his best not to show it.

  “Are you going to allow this?” Tate asked angrily.

  “Well, I’m not sure what to do here,” McLeary said, turning to Sarah. “Like the mayor said, we’ve got kind of a celebrity working for us up here. He’s probably the best we’ve ever had when it comes to this sort of thing. Maybe you’ve heard of him, John Stevens from Toronto Major Crimes?”

  “Never heard of him,” Sarah said curtly. The last thing she needed was some washed up city cop sticking his nose in. As far as she was concerned, if he was so good, then what the hell was she doing there? “All due respect Chief, this is our case now and we don’t have the time. If you don’t mind, just keep the civilians out and try not to let your people screw up the scene anymore than they already have.”

  “So it’s like that, huh?” McLeary said, looking slightly hurt. “Look, I realize the kidnapping aspect of this thing puts the ball in your playground, but we’re not a bunch of total dunces out here. If the attorney general made the call on this one then I don’t have anything to say about that, I guess. But there’s no reason our people can’t lend a hand, is there? After all, people of this town are going to want some answers and we’ve got to have some to give em or we’ll look like total assholes.”

  “Any help you can give us on the periphery would be greatly appreciated.”

  “All right then,” he said, apparently satisfied. “The crime scene is just down the end of that path, just veer off when you see the yellow tape. I’ll be right here when you decide where you want to start. I’ve got uniforms knocking on doors around the reservoir and I’ll let you know if we hit on something.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  The Mayor of Ratcliff looked as if he was about to have an aneurysm but McLeary threw up his hands as if to say ‘what can I do?’

  Sarah led her team down the asphalt track around the backside of the lake until they saw the caution tape strung between the trees in kind of a path leading out into the woods. The leaves were flattened into the earth in an obvious trail.

  “I wonder how many of these yokels trampled out here to take a look,” Tristan said, shaking his head.

  Wright, already breaking a sweat from the short hike let out a snort. “What’d you expect? Most of these guys have probably never seen anything like this before. Let’s just hope they left something for us to work with.”

  They followed the yellow tape tied in bands around tree trunks placed intermittently every fifty feet or so until they reached a small hill atop which two uniformed officers were waiting for them. Sarah sized them up as they climbed the hill noting that the younger one standing on the right looked a little green, the faint whiff she caught of something in the air explained the pale color of his skin. The one on the left was much taller and stood with the confident ease of someone familiar if not comfortable around death. It took one to know one.

  “Let me guess, David Caruso, right?” she said, with no hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Actually,” he replied smoothly, “I’ve always been kind of partial to Peter Falk.”

  “Must have been before my time, but like Caruso, I’m not sure you should be carrying a gun.”

  The tall cop smiled a little, apparently surprised by Sarah’s frankness and wit, maybe even a little impressed. He quickly came back at her with a hint of appreciation in his voice. “And like Caruso, you guys should be wearing big white jumpsuits with plastic booties on your feet.” Then he cocked his head a little towards Lewinski who was sulking nearby. “Although, that guy has got the bad suit and shades down pat.”

  Sarah heard a few snickers escape from the people around her, but she couldn’t be sure of whom they came from specifically. Her eyes were locked on the tall cop’s. There was no question in her mind that this was the hotshot that the mayor was referring to.

  Her mind instantly formed an opinion of the man and the likely circumstances that would see a man of his experience back in uniform in a shit-hole town like this one. From Sarah’s experience, it was likely one of two things, or a combination of the two. Either he was hiding rage issues behind his badge and pounding the shit out of the citizenry, or he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In their respective lines of work, it wasn’t uncommon to find oneself with access to large quantities of valuables, cash, drugs or expensive jewelry. For even the most dedicated, seeing a suitcase containing thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of dollars in unmarked cash lying at your feet was hard. For some cops, especially those with alimony, child support or multiple mortgages to pay, sometimes it was too much to resist. The smart ones gave the money back and begged for mercy. If they were lucky, they’d get busted back to uniform, maybe the auxiliary police or even out of law-enforcement. The not so smart ones refused to talk or even tried to run from it. Most of those guys ended up blowing their own brains out or hanging themselves in their jail cells after their conviction.

  Maybe this guy was one of the smart ones.

  “So tell me something,” she said, turning her head to look down the embankment and removing her shades, even at the risk of imitating her least favorite TV cop.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Like, how many of you guys have been trampling through my crime scene looking for keepsakes before we got here?”

  She shifted her eyes to the younger one, he looked guilty as hell but it was the hot shot that answered. “A couple of rednecks with brains smaller than their dicks,” he admitted. “I don’t think they mucked it up too bad, I sent them packing and we’ve been standing watch ever since. Nothing has been taken in or out.”

  Sarah was pleased by the answer but before she could think of a response, Lewinski stormed past her, shouldering his way between the two uniforms even though it would have been a shorter path to go around them. “Well whoop-de-fuckin-do. Buy yourself a Crispy Crème on me, jagoff.”

  Sarah wasn’t about to let the remark pass, even if there was a bit of truth to it. “Detective Lewinski?” She called out without looking at him as he made to climb down the other side of the hill.

  He stopped in his tracks, looking back over the crest at her, clearly annoyed. “What?”

  “Stay.”

  Aside from a few snickers coming from the rest of the team and the younger cop with the hotshot, Lewinski did as he was told. “Good boy,” she said, adding insult to injury, “You’ll have to excuse my colle
ague, he’s not properly house trained. As for this business, we appreciate your help and now I’m going to have to ask you to stand back and let us do our job.”

  “No problem,” the pale looking cop said, a little too quickly.

  Sarah began to turn away but something made her address the hotshot once more. Normally, she wouldn’t have cared if she’d offended his pride, she was used to that, but for some reason she seemed to feel some sort of camaraderie with him, which was crazy. She didn’t even know him. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that their meeting was like two warriors meeting on the battlefield. Both fought the same enemies for the same Queen, why then shouldn’t she extend an olive branch considering the circumstances?

  “Uh . . . just one more thing,” she said. “Any thoughts you want to share before we go in?”

  The tall cop thought for a moment, “Nothing you won’t pick up on your own when you see him, I won’t waste your time with my opinion.”

  She was surprised by the remark; it was both honest and complimentary, she hadn’t expected that. Sarah reached the point where Lewinski was waiting for them and said, “Come.” Then she led the way down the hill to where a hundred square foot circle had been sectioned off by police tape.

  A short distance from the bottom of the hill, around a large thicket of bushes, they found their victim. The brief description she’d received from her unit commander didn’t do the actual scene justice; in over two hundred crime scenes where death was involved she’d never seen anything like this. Her team members too were noticeably and uncharacteristically quiet as they set about their work. They approached the body carefully and slowly, mindful that every step they took could destroy or conceal crucial evidence. Though a gray blanket covered the victim’s body, Sarah could see that the wrists and ankles had been painfully bound with steel wire so tight it had actually burrowed into the flesh.

  “What do we know?” she asked no one in particular.

  Darcy was the first to answer. “Paul Dushku, seventeen. No record of criminal activity. High school drop out with a full time job at the local factory. Lived with his parents, no missing persons report filed.”