Judas

by Caleb Meeks

  “I appreciate it, Detective, I really do. And you’re right, it’s not exactly the case I saw myself being thrust right into in the beginning. I joined this force to do my part in bringing people like this down, though, so I’m not going anywhere.”

  A large smile came across Cadman’s face. “You know kid, I like you. I like you a lot. And I’m really glad you decided to stay on, because every other person in that original briefing has chosen to step down from the case.”

  “All of them? So it’s just us?” His voice wavered from the shock.

  “Yeah, just us. So I hope you’re in this one hundred percent.”

  “Now more than ever.”

  Cadman and Newman both smiled, trying not to let the stress of the situation bring either of them down. “If you are so dutifully determined to bring this guy down, you have any interest in helping me go through more of these files?”

  “Really?” Newman asked.

  “Yeah, I mean, as long as you have the stomach for it. And, if you have other work you need to do, I totally understand. I just know that when you’re the new guy, not a lot of people give you much of a chance. Totally up to you.”

  “No, I would love to. Thank you.” Newman said excitedly.

  “Great.” Cadman said, also excited to have the help, and quite frankly, the company. “I hate to do this, but could you go back down there and get any more of those files you could find? I would help you, but I have to speak to the captain for a minute.”

  “No worries, I’ll grab them and bring them right back here.”

  “Great.” Cadman said. With that, Matthew turned and walked back towards the hallway with an excitement in his eyes. Cadman remembered that, but years in this industry has a way of dwindling that excitement. Perhaps the new kid could help bring some of that back to him.

  He walked out of the door and made his way to the captain’s office. After knocking, the captain ushered a gruff, “Come in.”

  “Sorry to bother you captain.” Cadman apologized.

  “Not a problem, what can I do for you, son?” The captain said.

  “I’ve been going through the old Judas case files, and one of the guys on my team, well, the only guy on my team now, just told me they’re stored down in cold cases. The case is still open and active, so why are they down there?”

  He inhaled, “With the sensitive nature of this case, having the files out in the open is just asking for wandering eyes to find them. Down in cold cases, they are a little more protected.”

  “I see.”

  “That all?” The captain said, expecting something more.

  “Well, I was also wondering why the FBI got my witness from the scene this morning. Everything lined it up to be my scene, and my witness, so why was she allowed to come in and take it?”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d have questions about that. The FBI is primarily responsible for keeping all of Judas’ information out of the wrong hands. Therefore, having a witness who claimed to have information about him was better suited for her agency. I know it was unfortunate to lose such a powerful witness, but for right now, really all that can be done is live with it and try and move on with what little we do have. I wish there was more I could say.”

  “Me too.” Cadman said, clearly hoping for something more. “Thank you, Captain. Also, I wanted to ask if the other cases you have me working could be reassigned. I appreciate the case load, but with how important the Judas case is, I’d like to give it all of my attention.”

  The captain responded almost immediately. “It’s no problem to reassign those cases, I appreciate the commitment to the case, son. You’re doing good work. I’ve been hearing good things.”

  Cadman smiled slightly. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.” He walked out with slightly more lifted spirits than he walked in with. Something seemed off, maybe something dismissive about the captain, but he shrugged it off.

  Once he arrived back at his office, Newman had already grabbed a large stack of the case files from the cold case storage room.

  “Ready, sir?” Newman asked.

  Cadman inhaled, then smiled. “Let’s get to work.

  Chapter Six.

  Too many nights have been broken because of my past. Waking up dripping in sweat from the images. There were nights where it seemed like I was trapped in a cage, forced to watch them on repeat. That’s why I don’t sleep often. Waking up and finding that demon has climbed into bed with you, well, it can be overwhelming. Still, even though it’s been years, the scars, both physical and emotional, are just as present as they were when they were made. I’ve tried to let them go, but they don’t want to leave, and I can’t make them go alone.

  ▪

  My mother always told me that I would do great things when I grew up. From the youngest age I can remember, I can still feel her holding my chin, instructing me that whatever was happening in my life, I wouldn’t let it stop me from becoming a great man. Changing the world. Making a difference. Doing good, for goodness sake…right? Look what happened, Mother…

  She would also tell me I would never end up like my father. She was right there.

  The images are as clear as daylight. Even from a young age, I can still draw the pictures back to mind in vividly lifelike reality.

  I knew we weren’t the most well-off family, but being so young, I didn’t really have any understanding of what that meant, or why. It was just life, and it was good in my eyes. I knew that Mom wasn’t always around. I knew that Dad wasn’t always around. I knew that Mom and Dad fought a lot. Some people see that as the end of a good thing, but for me, that was my good thing. It was when that got worse that I knew it was deteriorating.

  As I got into my early teens, I realized why Mom and Dad weren’t always around, and why they fought a lot. Mom had to work three jobs to keep us afloat. Why Dad wasn’t doing that always confused me, since that’s how it was for all the families people considered normal, but I knew not to question it. For some reason, though, even though Dad didn’t work, he was never home. And when he was home, he wasn’t himself. He’d act…strange. Like something else was running him. He spent a lot of time in his room, and even though I was curious, I knew never to go in there. He lost a lot of weight, but that didn’t seem entirely too odd to me. His bones started to show more than usual, but I was taught to just accept that Dad was sick. Little did I know, he was. Just not in the way I had come to accept. Whenever he came out of his isolation chamber, he seemed dead, both inside and outside. His eyes sunk in, and had large dark bags under them. Altogether, he seemed different from the other dad’s in the world.

  The first time he ever used physical aggression is the most memorable, though. I remember it like it was yesterday.

  I was sitting in my room with the door closed, like my mom often instructed me to do. I got tired of it though, I started to become aware that something was really wrong, and was tired of being in the dark about it. That, coupled with the growing masculine bravado every growing boy has, made for a lethal concoction of curiosity. So, I walked down the stairs into the living room and found a big pile of drug paraphernalia lying across the coffee table. A small medical needle, a rubber strap, a bag of white powder. I’d never experienced it, but I was familiar enough to know what was going on.

  My mother immediately ran across the room, frantically trying to be as intense, and as quiet as possible, “I told you to stay in your room.”

  “I know.” I said, unable to separate my eyes from the pile before me. “But what’s going on here? I’m not just a child, Mom, I think I deserve to know a little more than what I’ve been told.”

  The sincerity in her face immediately brought me back. “Listen to me, you do not want to know what is going on. Go back to your room right now, do you understand me?”

  I was hit with a wave a fear, and immediately regretted the haughty decision to come out here. Unfortunately, I didn’t have this it sooner. Both my mother and I heard the angry footsteps stomping down the hallway,
and what emerged was a man with the face of my father, but the demeanor of a monster. He noticed me standing right next to the table, and flew across the room in what I can only assume was a drug induced fit of rage. He slammed a vase to the ground, and the crash of the glass on the floor still wakes me up some nights. He shoved my mother aside like she was weightless, even though she was clawing at him and screaming. I remember standing there, completely frozen. It somehow didn’t make sense to me that all this could be happening. The smack across the face helped me realize just how real it was. I toppled to the ground, and the right side of my face went practically numb. It was like the whole world went blank. I could hear my father screaming at me. I could see my mother sobbing and clawing at the man who had just smacked his child. I could see it all, I could hear it all, but I wasn’t really taking any of it in.

  I distinctly remember my mother yelling for me to just leave and go back to my room. My mind must have taken over, because I remember getting up and running to my room, but I don’t remember doing it by my own volition. I ran into my room, slammed the door, and crawled into the corner. I didn’t want to believe it was happening, so I just sat in the corner and cried for hours. I stayed there until the next morning. Out of the window, I saw my father stomp out, get in the car, and haphazardly drive away. That’s when I felt comfortable to leave my room.

  My mother was sitting in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee, seemingly deep in thought. My eyes immediately found the dark purple splotch surrounding her eye. The worst part was that she tried to cover it up with make-up, probably for my sake. I sat in a chair opposite her, and she looked up at me.

  “Did he hit you too?” The words felt so foreign coming out of my mouth.

  She seemed distressed that I was so forward, but tried to play it off. “This?” She gestured to the spot on her eye. “This is nothing. Tell you what, let’s just try and put this behind us, ok? No reason to let it haunt us forever.” Oh, if only you knew, Mother.

  I nodded my head, fighting about it was definitely not the way to move forward. “Is it going to happen again?” I asked.

  I saw the tears well up in the corners of her eyes, but she managed to keep them in, trying to stay strong. “I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

  She knew. I don’t blame her for not telling me, though. What kind of mother wants to tell their child that their father was becoming an abusive monster? She wanted to keep that shy hope inside me alive, even if just for a short time. And it was just that. A short time. Something that night had unlocked a beast within him that should never have been let out. Something happened in that moment when he let his anger impulsively rule him, and that’s how life was for him from then on. Anger became the ruler inside his mind, and he followed it without question.

  From then on, abuse became his method of communication. He was never a loving man. I don’t even know if he was when my mother met him. But now, now he was the opposite of a loving man. He would smack you if you even looked at him in a way he took wrong. That night started a lifelong event of beatings, abuse, and torture that would go on to haunt me and my mother forever. For different reasons, yes, but both of us were changed forever, and that’s not even the half of it.

  ▪

  Detective Cadman and Officer Newman sat in the small office Cadman had taken up residence in. It was a nice little space. He hadn’t had time to personalize it much, and he didn’t have much to personalize it with. Most men would put up pictures of their family, but he hadn’t seen his in a long time. Having the ability to close the door and blinds was a nice way to escape the world outside, though.

  They had completely lost track of time, but it was nearing two o’clock in the morning. They had been going through case file after case file for hours now. Even though they hadn’t made any real progress, Cadman enjoyed the company and renewing positive energy Newman brought into the situation. The real question would be whether or not this case would crush that energy for Newman like previous cases had done for Leo. He hoped not, for the both of them.

  “Wow.” Cadman said.

  Newman looked up from the gruesome crime scene photos in his lap to see Cadman looking down at his watch. “What’s up?” Newman asked.

  “It’s two A.M.” Cadman blurted out. Both men held eye contact for a moment, then let out a refreshing belly laugh. “You got someone to get home to?” Cadman eventually asked after they stopped laughing.

  “No, sir.” Newman said.

  “What? Strapping young guy like you’s got no business being single.” Cadman joked. Newman smiled and let out a chuckle.

  “Guess I just have other things on my mind. I have plenty of time to think about those things, right now this,” he gestured to the piles of case files, “is my priority. What about yourself, strapping old guy like you has no business being single either.”

  Cadman laughed, then realized he had just been called old. “I am only thirty-six, thank you. But no, I am not with anyone either. I was married for a while, even had a kid, but then I started bringing too much of my work home with me. I don’t blame her. I try to focus on the fact that I’m bringing my work home to try and make it safer for my kid.” He looked up from the ground and into my eyes. “Sorry, probably a little more than you were looking for.”

  Newman nodded. “Noble cause, and not at all. I hope it’s not too personal to ask, but was it one case in particular that ended it, or a combined effort?”

  Leo cocked his head back for a moment, thinking. “I guess it was kind of both. It started out small, just being more agitated than usual when a case wouldn’t go my way. Things like that. When I first started this job, I was really good at leaving the cases at the station when I left to go home, but after a while, they started staying with me a little more, and a little more, until I finally just couldn’t let go of them. I’d say the case that really ended it was when I lost a kid. I was working a serial kidnapper case, and I won’t go into too much detail, but basically, by the time I caught onto what I was going on, we were too late. I never really recovered from that one, and it changed me. Changed the way I was with my family.” He trailed off.

  “Wow, man, that’s…that’s heavy.”

  Cadman went to open his mouth to say more, but then his phone rang, disturbing the moment. “Who would call me at this hour?” Cadman answered the phone and Newman looked back down at the file in his lap. After a moment, Cadman said, “Thank you.” And hung up the phone.

  Newman looked up at the man and noticed his face had flushed slightly. “What’s up? What was that?”

  “Remember that witness in the Judas case that got taken from me?”

  “Yeah, what about him? Did he spill some details?” Newman, slightly concerned by the look on Cadman’s face.

  “He was just murdered in FBI custody.”

  Chapter Seven.

  My foot eased on and off of the gas pedal as I sped down the road. Representative, perhaps, of the mixed feelings I had settled into regarding this meet up. Yes, good for business, yes, good for partnerships, but I had other things going on in my life that took mental priority.

  As usual, he gave me an address to a cliché bad guy location. Originality never has, and never will be their greatest strength. No one ever looks for bad guys in the middle of a crowded park, or cutting into a steak in a nice restaurant. Even a dark alley draws less attention, but meeting in a rundown factory outside a suburban neighborhood is begging for investigation.

  Again, the drive was silent. It, however, was an unpleasant silence. I did everything in my power to drown out the voices in my head, but nothing seemed to work. It was a constant stream of my demons climbing on my shoulders, taunting me with past events. Dominic had given me medications throughout the years to try and help me control them. He tried treating it as a mental illness, as a stress reaction, as a trauma reaction, and everything else he could think of. I’d taken drugs for everything, but nothing seemed to work. The drugs that put me to sleep were, surprisingly, the worst.
Hours in a mental cage reliving chapters in my life, slave to a drug. I guess you just can’t take a pill for your brain when it’s imbedded in your heart.

  I pulled into the location the man had sent me, and just as previously said, it was as cliché as I had envisioned. The building he chose to hole up in was an old shipping facility. It was unassuming at first, the lights of the city were still visible, but looking closer, you could see what was going on inside. The sun had dipped below the horizon, the darkness was overcoming the complex. A bit of an homage to the man inside, I suppose.

  I drove into the complex, greeted by a lineup of stone-faced guards. Their attire made them practically invisible in the darkness, but the man in the red suitcoat stood out, almost shining in the moonlight. Logic would say that’s the one who called me. They have a tendency to be flashy. Some call it the byproduct of money, I call it hiding in front of what you do. Whether or not they would acknowledge it, they aren’t proud of what they do, and a lavish lifestyle is an easy way to distract yourself, and others.

  I turned off the car and stepped out, unenthusiastically looking at the decorated man before me. He smiled as I got out of the car. His guards did not.

  “Judas, I’m so glad you could make it.”

  I walked to him and stuck my hand out. He gripped it. “I’m sure you are. I apologize for the mix up.” He held on tightly to my hand. The pungent cologne he wore wafted into my nose. A mix of cedarwood and insecurity.

  “Not a problem. The name is Brutus, Brutus Ivanov.” He finally released my hand from his locked grip.

  “Russian?” I asked, mildly curious.

  “Originally. My parents are both Russian, so that makes me Russian by default, I suppose. No accent though, so I understand the confusion.”

  “God’s grace, right?” I asked, referencing his last name.