by J. L. Drake
Creak…
Suddenly, her hair stood on end. She spun around, staggering to her feet.
A man stood in the doorway, leaning nonchalantly against the frame. Dark clothes, dark hair, dark eyes…His casual smile terrified her like something from a nightmare. How long had he been here?
She started feeling light-headed. There were never break-ins in this neighborhood, but now it was happening to her, of all people!
“Malorie, Malorie, Malorie…” The man’s voice was raspy, but so captivating she almost overlooked the fact he knew her name. He started sauntering toward her with slow steps that thudded on the expensive hardwood. “Repent. It’s not too late.”
He smirked, eyes flashing like lighthouses.
Okay. She tried to soothe her panicking mind. He either knew about her money skimming or her coke habit. Or both. Was this guy a cop? He looked like he could be a cop. Why was this happening? Did she own any pepper spray? Or anything heavy enough to beat this guy senseless?
Her thoughts were still racing faster than she could control. All right then, forget being calm.
Just then, as she was frantically trying to work things out, the intruder chuckled and smashed his fist against the side of her head.
And, like a light, she was out.
***
Jason
Jason burst into the bullpen, eager to get things underway. Garth spotted him from across the room, and, seeing his impatience, called him over.
“Josh and Cheyenne are just a few minutes out.” He laughed quietly. “Don’t worry, they got Carmelita without any incident or injury. No problems…”
“So far.”
“Yeah.” Garth nodded, eyes laughing recklessly.
A few minutes passed. Eventually, Jason resorted to playing paper-basketball to pass the time. Flecks of water smacked against the giant window overlooking L.A. The rain started falling gradually, but the celestial dams would burst soon enough and flood mercilessly.
Rolls of thunder rumbled the station. At that moment, the bullpen’s doors flew open and Cheyenne and Josh entered, shedding their wet coats.
Jason greeted them and then asked, “Carly’s here?”
Plucky and eager as ever, Josh spoke up. “Yep, getting led to one of the holding rooms. It’s crazy, huh, Jason? Who’d’a thought a woman we met by chance a few days ago would be vital to the case today?”
“Yeah, absolutely bonkers. Can we go talk to her now?”
A voice screamed out, “Decks!”
The three detectives turned, instantly on alert.
“You’ll wanna see this over here!” It was a young police analyst, staring in horror at a TV mounted on the wall.
Jason shot Garth and Cheyenne an intense look and jogged over to the television. Something had gone wrong.
He screeched to a stop in front of the TV, heart booming like a cannon through his whole body. Cheyenne and Garth shushed the crowded room. Every soul was wondering the same thing:
What’s going on?
A local news show played on the screen. Its dashing, silver-haired anchorman read off the current headlines in a deep, comforting tone.
“Without the help of volunteers and businesses, the community picnic would have been a bust.” Clears throat, straightens suit jacket, moves on. “Rainy weather is moving in—”
Suddenly, a burst of loud static interrupted the news broadcast, covering the anchor with black and white digital disturbance. Something was trying to push the show off the air.
“It’s been doing this for a while, Detective,” the analyst told Jason.
“Anything else?”
The analyst gulped, sweating buckets and buckets. He opened his mouth to answer, but a new face appeared onscreen.
A middle-aged woman, tied to a chair, staring straight at the camera.
The police station erupted in panic, people bustling back and forth, snapping to one another or on phones. The scene looked eerily similar to the ransom videos filmed by terrorists, and here it was, live on Los Angeles’s local news. The citizens were already on the brink of panic, and this would shove them over the edge.
Captain Jones bellowed into his cell phone, “How did this cut into the network?! Well, find out!”
The onscreen woman took a nervous breath, preparing to speak.
Cheyenne screeched, “Quiet!” The uproar silenced in an instant, waiting to hear what this woman, this apparent hostage, had to say.
“My name…” Her voice quivered, bordering on hysteria. Her wide, teary eyes reminded Jason of a beaten dog’s.
“My name is Malorie Daniels. I am CFO of Moutrin Corporations, and I have held this position for six years.”
A whisper rippled through the crowd. Only a few people knew about the company called Moutrin, including Jason, Cheyenne, and the Captain. The rest were confused and nervous about being in the dark.
More flecks of white fell across the screen. Jason couldn’t tell what they were. Red strips of cloth bound her to the chair, a white plaster wall behind her, streaks of purple mascara under her eyes…There was too much information to take in at once, but he had to. His mind saw everything, and he couldn’t stop it.
She spoke again.
“Over that course of time, I have…” She bit her lower lip, a few tears escaping from her eyelids. Some unseen captor must’ve silently prompted her from off-screen, because she gulped and continued.
“I have skimmed…stolen…I have stolen 2.6 million dollars from the company.”
She may as well have set a bomb off right there in the bullpen. The cops screamed at one another, at the screen, at no one in particular. Nearly three million dollars had been stolen right from under their noses. It was offensive, angering, but mostly embarrassing.
“Flynn!” Captain Jones screamed over the pandemonium.
It took Jason a second to snap himself out of the shock the hostage woman had dropped on him. He locked eyes with Jones amid the raging crowd. The Captain’s jaw was set, lip curled into a snarl.
“Find her!” he commanded.
***
Abel
Abel set the camera down and leered at his squirmy hostage.
Only fifteen minutes had passed since leaving Frederick Street, which he was immensely proud of. He had almost been late, but so far, the schedule was perfect. He had knocked her out, hauled her to the car, driven to this vacant apartment, coached the whiny hag on what to say, jacked into the airwaves, and let the camera roll.
Malorie stared at him, jaw hanging wide open. Her hair stuck out in every direction like an electroshock therapy patient. “What now? Who are you?”
He rubbed his unshaven chin. “That’s a good question.”
The air conditioning kicked in, filling the room with a cool draft and a creepy humming sound.
It sure was lucky he found a vacant, fully furnished apartment on this side of town…
He laughed to himself. Irony.
A picture of the apartment’s previous owner hung on the wall. Abel scoffed and knocked it to the floor. He never wanted to see that face again. That stupid, conceited, obnoxious, sinning face.
Refocus.
“Excuse me,” he cordially said to Malorie. If he was anything, he was civil, he always made sure. “I have an urgent call I need to make.”
He fished his cell phone out of his pocket, stepped in front of the window to gaze out at the bustling city, and dialed.
***
Carly
The short, gawky cop had hooked her up to the polygraph machine in record time. That is, the record for taking the longest in history. How complicated could it possibly be?
Carly heaved a sigh, leaned back in the chair, and took in the tiny interrogation room. It really looked how the movies depicted them—blinding fluorescent lights, white brick walls, metal table, bomb shelter door, gigantic one-way mirror staring at her like a hideous Cyclops’s eye.
It was getting a bit chilly. Someone needed to turn down the AC. She cros
sed her legs and picked at the apparatus strapped to her wrist. Nothing more than a thick bracelet that would measure her heart’s pulse, connected to a briefcase-like machine with more buttons and knobs than a rocket ship. Bizarre that such a small piece of equipment could discern between truth and lies, the basis of human nature.
She groaned. How had she gotten here? It had been like Christmas morning when she heard her conniving “boss”—more like “john”—Adam Fischer was finally dead. Killed, murdered, erased from the earth at long last. She thought she was free from the life of being used as a toy by any man with a full wallet. Little did she realize how difficult life was without Fischer giving her paychecks. One of the biggest mistakes she had ever made was going with that Congressman Magnum a few nights ago. His death was the most terrifying things she had seen in her lifetime, and now, it was haunting her in more ways than one.
The cops had said they were bringing her in for “her protection.” What a load of baloney. There was a laundry list miles long of things they could have arrested her for: unpaid tickets, public disturbance, littering, jaywalking…Oh yeah, and prostitution…And that little thing where she witnessed the death of a U.S. Congressman. Yeah, probably one of those last two.
A dial tone echoed out of the intercom built into the ceiling. She sighed. Guess nobody was man enough to question her face-to-face. But she wouldn’t mind that Detective Flynn from Fischer’s apartment interrogating her. He was drop-dead gorgeous.
“Thorne, is it?” The voice seeped from the intercom like smoke, heavy and grating. Sounded like the “bad cop” of “good cop/bad cop.”
“You’ve committed many sins in your short existence. You think nobody’s watching. That’s what everybody thinks. Strange, in this era of arrogance and pride, how people always underestimate themselves. They think they’re not important enough to be watched, to be judged. Well, they are. All will be judged.”
Geez, what a talker. This guy was really enjoying his speech, she could tell. She noticed a security camera dangling from one corner of the ceiling, aimed directly at her chair.
“Interesting thoughts, Professor,” she said to the intercom. “No offense, but can I know what’s going on? It’s my Constitutional right to know why I am being held.”
She stared into the security camera’s eye and blew it a kiss, then gave it an extremely crass gesture with her unbound hand that would make a New York cabby uncomfortable.
The coarse voice went on. “Ah, the Constitution. One of the most influential documents in the country’s history. No doubt, it is important, but we the people lean on it far too much nowadays. Each time we wonder if something is honorable, if something is moral, we look to the Constitution. There is another document that we should follow instead, and it was written on stone rather than parchment.”
Carly saw where this was going. A Bible nut for an interrogator, terrific. She smirked and chose to egg him on a bit.
“The Rosetta Stone?” she smirked.
A deep, irritated sigh hissed through the room. She realized she probably shouldn’t tick off her government captors, but it was just too much fun.
“State your name.”
“I’m sorry?” she said through her laugh.
“If you please,” he added.
She scoffed and decided to get on the cop’s good side. “Carmelita Thorne.”
“Good. Now that we’ve got a baseline, we can begin.”
She hadn’t even noticed the polygraph turn on. The small screen on the machine’s face showed a digital line shooting straight across. She’d seen enough TV soap operas to know that when she lied, the line would spike up and down like a roller-coaster.
“Goodie gumdrops,” she sneered to the ceiling.
“Your mother, Elaine Catcher. Did you often wish her to be dead?”
The breath rushed from Carly’s lungs. How did this freak know her mother’s name? How dare he suggest something like that? Her hands curled into fists.
“No…” she muttered, staring at the polygraph’s screen.
The line spiked.
Truth be told, she despised her mother.
Then something happened to her. She wasn’t sure what was going on, and that scared her more and more with each passing second. Her arm throbbed and stung like it was on fire, and the world spun before her eyes.
“Refocus, Carly.”
She looked down at her wrist. Lines of blood dribbled out from beneath the bracelet attached to the polygraph. A blade hidden in the bracelet had sliced her skin wide open. What kind of police station was this?! Torture!
A lot of blood pooled on the floor. She needed to throw up, pass out, run away…
“Your lies are only hurting yourself, Carly.”
“You psycho!” she screamed. “Help! Help me out of here!”
“The walls are soundproof. No one will hear you. Nobody is behind the one-way mirror. And don’t worry, only I have access to the security camera. You’re on your own this time.”
He still spoke so politely. It made her crazy.
Still, she screeched louder than her throat could handle. She clawed at the bracelet, but it was welded to her wrist. No matter how hard she pulled, how firmly she gritted her teeth, how ferociously she growled, it didn’t budge.
“Have you ever bribed IRS agents out of paying your taxes?”
She went with her gut instinct.
“No!”
It was a lie.
Another slice across her wrist. She was starting to lose her bearings.
“Can you even tell the truth?” he snapped.
How could this be happening? No person deserved this.
“Yes!”
She heard a sickening, popping sound as the blade cut her again.
Colors and visions flashed before her eyes as the edge of her vision began to grow dark. Tears were streaming down her face onto the floor, mixing with the red liquid.
“Carly, stay with me, we aren’t done!” He was yelling now, too. Seems he finally lost his cool. Was there any victory in that?
No. None, she thought as her neck fell limp. There was no strength left to stay upright. Moreover, she didn’t have the will.
For the first time in her life, she prayed to God Almighty, begging him for grace and mercy.
“Are you a worthless, disgusting whore?”
It took all her strength to murmur, “No…”
She didn’t know if the blade cut her or not. Suddenly, everything was gone. The room, the voice, the smell, everything except the pain and a tiny sliver of consciousness.
Then, she was gone for good.
Chapter 11
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
—Matthew 5:9
Jason
“Okay, playback one more time,” Jason said.
The crowd had cleared away from the TV and been forced to return to their normal routines, under the threat of a pink slip from the captain. Tension still filled the station, like a room filled with methane gas—one spark and the whole place would go up in flames. Only the three detectives and a few tech-wizards were left around the television.
Garth clicked a button on the remote, and Malorie Daniels showed up on the screen yet again.
This was the fourth time to watch the video, but nothing had been discovered yet. They were no closer to finding the hostage or her captor.
Abel. This had to be his doing. Malorie’s public confession of stealing was right up his alley. This woman had broken commandment number eight, and, going by Abel’s pattern, she didn’t have much longer to live.
“Can we drop the main noise? Hear what’s happening in the background?”
A technician nodded and went to work turning knobs and switches on a soundboard. On the television, Malorie started talking again, muted this time.
Tic, plick, tic, thump, tick…
“Rain?” Cheyenne suggested.
“Sounds like it to me.” Garth groaned and rubbed his ey
es. “That narrows it down to everywhere.”
Jason glared at the video. His brain pounded, the weight of a human life on his shoulders.
“Can you play the rain sounds again?” He clamped his eyes shut and focused on the noises, what secrets they revealed.
Tic, plick, tic, thump, tick…
“Again.”
Tic, thump, tick…
“Thump. Raindrops don’t thump. And I don’t recall any hail in the city.”
Cheyenne sighed. “It could just be a big raindrop, Jason.”
“No…” Garth stared at the TV, nodding. “Playback.”
Tic, thump, tick…
“Right after the thump…some sort of metallic noise. I’d know it anywhere. It’s an oncoming subway.”
“You sure?” Cheyenne jolted upright, energized by the breakthrough.
“Absolutely. That’s the only way I get around this city.”
Garth didn’t own a car? The things you learn about your friends during a homicide investigation. Jason shrugged the thought off for the time being.
“And the thump,” he jumped in. “Footsteps, above. And remember those flakes fluttering down as she talked? I initially thought that was static or some digital interference, but it could be dust or plaster crumbling from the ceiling.”
“Footsteps above,” Garth talked it out. “So an apartment or a hotel?”
“Not a hotel,” Cheyenne said. “Too many eyes, too many cameras, too many questions.”
Jason began pacing. “An apartment. Probably in one of the poorer areas where nobody pays each other any attention, and where the ceilings crumble…”
“Skid or Compton?”
“Wait a second…” Jason approached the paused image of Malorie Daniels.
The white wall behind her, made of solid plaster. Smooth, lavish, kept in good repair, unlike their profile of the apartment building. How could this one room be hospitable while its neighbors were shoddy?
Sounded like a place he had been recently. A scaled-down version of the Playboy Mansion inside an apartment complex that seemed to frown…