by J. L. Drake
It was better that Drake didn’t find out about his lack of fame before his death. He may have killed himself.
Jason heaved a sigh, massaging his ribs while no one was looking. He felt like a hard-boiled egg that had been dropped a few times. He groaned and straightened up as Cheyenne approached.
She obviously hadn’t gotten very much rest either, judging by her bloodshot eyes, exaggerated wrinkles, and mismatching socks.
Her jovial greeting was forced. “Good morning, starshine.”
“We haven’t found anything on Drake yet.”
“Nice to see you too.”
He rubbed at his eyes, turning the surrounding skin a chaffed red. “We need to pick up the pace. He’s almost done…”
“Who?” she said as she reached for a coffee.
His frayed nerves snapped, “Santa Claus. Who else? Abel!”
Cheyenne nodded once and took a silent sip of her drink.
“Pick up the pace…” he muttered to himself, staring at the three remaining commandments.
He settled into a chair, not even noticing the pain in his torso. His mind had traveled elsewhere, thinking back over the past week. The sunny morning on Venice Beach, the dank alley in Sinai Hills, Skid Row’s Hindu prayer house, the rainy streets of Los Angeles. He pored over every event, every insignificant detail that might give the investigation a push in the right direction.
The hundreds of conversations drifted back into his mind, deafening him like a giant cocktail party in his head.
“I’m about to make you three promises, and I never lie. One—you will not find me until the time is right. Don’t worry, I’ll help you keep up.”
“Which is more: the number of Americans that yearly visit the Greek Coliseum in Italy, or the ounces of oxygen that hourly pass through the human heart’s chamber?”
“Two—my plan will succeed. You can’t stop it. I know you don’t believe that, so I won’t waste my breath trying to convince you. But it’s the truth.”
“Abel’s planting evidence from his next victims on his current ones…”
“And, most importantly, three—once my plan is completed, the world will never be the same. There will be no going back. Things will change for the better, and a new era will begin. Remember, I’m no liar.”
“The war is bloodiest when the enemy knows he’s losing…”
He snapped his eyes open. His head was in a thick cloud, his mouth ajar and dry. Had he been sleeping? He wiped a stream of drool from his chin. Yep.
He took a few slow breaths as he tried to get his bearings. How long had he been out? The clock told him it was a bit after noon. Things were pretty busy in the bullpen, but he was tired enough to sleep through a circus at the moment.
“Detective Flynn?”
Jason turned his head and found himself face-to-face with Josh Locke, the officer’s nose just centimeters from his. He yelped in surprise and jerked back.
“Sheesh, Josh…”
The officer’s stoic expression didn’t flicker. “I brought you a cup of coffee, Detective.”
“Uh, thanks, Josh.” He took the steaming drink from the officer. After a few moments, he turned back to find Josh still standing there, back straight as an arrow.
“Is there something else, Josh?”
“I was hoping for an update on the examination of Shane Drake.”
Jason put on a polite smile in an attempt to hide his irritation.
You, an officer, will get an update when I, a detective, give it to you. Got that, Private Pyle?
Instead, he muttered, “I’ll let you know, Josh. Thanks for the joe.”
Josh gave one short, powerful nod and marched off.
Jason set his hands on his knees and lunged to his feet. He set off in the direction of the forensic offices. An update on the Don sounded like a good idea.
He maneuvered his way through the bullpen, dodging the people and the desks. Captain Jones stood at the far end, chatting quietly with Garth, both of them clutching Styrofoam cups. Coffee seemed to be all the rage at the moment.
The crowd cleared around the main entry door. As Jason passed it, a young man stepped in, carefully gazing at the crowd of people. He was a youngish guy, mid-twenties perhaps, with short hair and hunched shoulders. He would’ve had a handsome face if he didn’t look like he was about to have a nervous breakdown.
Then Jason screeched to a halt. He locked eyes with the young man. Recognition flared up in the man’s face, then anxiety, then fear.
Jason couldn’t feel his feet anymore. His heart seemed to stop for a few seconds. He gulped, then began to walk toward the young man, hands trembling.
The man tried out a small smile, but that only made Jason’s jaw tighten. How dare he smile? How dare he come here? How dare he?!
Rick Neves raised his hand and gave an apprehensive wave. “Mr. Flynn…” he began to say.
Jason pulled back his fist and socked the boy in his cheek.
The boy—the child—who had killed his wife stumbled back, holding his hand over the bruised skin.
A clever weasel that passed for an attorney named Rupert Snare had gotten the boy released from County Penitentiary after convincing the American legal system that Keri’s death was an accident. Now, eight years later, Rick walked free and Keri was buried under six feet of dirt in Calvary Cemetery.
And Rick had the gall to walk right up to the husband of the woman he’d killed.
Jason heard a huge gasp and frantic bustle throughout the bullpen behind him, but he didn’t care. He had a thing or two to tell this kid. The kid that had taken away Ted’s mother.
Rick raised his head, his dark eyes wide as golf balls. “Mr. Flynn,” he tried again.
Garth appeared at his side, clamping his strong hands on his shoulders. “Jason! What’s the matter with you?” Then he saw the young man. “…Rick?” Understanding leaked into his tone. Sad understanding.
Captain Jones, on the other hand, wouldn’t tolerate any shenanigans in his bullpen. “Flynn!” he barked in his sandpaper voice, “Get a grip!”
“You, Neves…” Jason hissed, barely able to force the words past the knot in his throat. He straightened up, doing his best to calm his breathing. Bit by bit, he regained the front of a calm, sane man. On the inside, however, he was anything but.
“Rick Neves,” he said the name again.
The boy opened his mouth before Jason could continue. “Mr. Flynn, I know you don’t wanna see me…”
It was then that Jason noticed the deep wells of sorrow engraved in Rick’s eyes, deep and murky, as if they were a permanent part of his expression. Sharp cheekbones jutted out of his face, skin stretched tight across his frail skeleton. His breath was rapid, fearful.
“…And I know that…” He stalled again.
Jason glared at the young man. His vision had tunneled, completely blocking out Garth, Jones, the entire bullpen.
“When your wife talked to me…Keri. When Keri said those couple of words to me…”
Ten seconds of silence smothered everyone in the room. No one spoke, no one breathed. Jason didn’t move an inch, boring holes into Rick with his trembling stare.
“Mr. Flynn, I’m so sorry…” The boy shook his head and looked to the floor.
Jason paused as he absorbed the short, abrupt words.
“You’re sorry…?” Tears pushed against the back of his eyes, but he didn’t dare let them fall. He clenched his fists, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
He muttered, “You goddamn prick…”
He lunged at the boy, screaming, throwing his fists. “You bastard!”
“Jason!” Garth threw his arms around his friend’s shoulders, frantically holding him at bay.
“You are not sorry!” Jason cried, teeth gnashing like a crazed lion. “My son is sorry. I am sorry! You did it! You killed her!”
Jones roared for him to settle down, but he couldn’t hear a thing, not even his own voice. The ocean of rage that had been simmering for
eight long years had finally been tapped, and there was no way he could contain it any longer.
“You, Neves! She was the greatest, sweetest person I’ve ever met. Always loved God and loved people. And look what happened to her! Manslaughter or not, my wife is dead, and you pulled the goddamn trigger.”
Rick stumbled backward, trying to escape the bullpen. He whipped his head around desperately, looking everywhere but at Jason Flynn, the man from whom he had taken everything.
“I’m done, Neves.” Jason surged forward, pulling Garth along with him. Garth strained to push him back. “I’m done thinking about you. You’re dead to me, worth nothing. Lower than dirt! You are worth nothing!” he enunciated every word, hurling them at the boy like rocks. “Burn in hell, Rick!”
Finally, Rick yanked open the bullpen’s door and fled as fast as he could. The door swung shut with a fatal clang, but Jason kept fighting against Garth, clawing at the air where Rick Neves had stood.
“Burn in hell!”
Garth placed himself between Jason and the door. “You need to cool off, Jason. Don’t let the situation get to you. You don’t mean that.”
But he did mean it. Every word.
A single tear slipped out.
***
Tick tock. Tick tock.
The entire house was silent. Even the wind seemed to have picked up the solemn mood and quieted down. Only the monotonous duty of the clock could be heard. No matter what tragedy took place, even if a nuclear bomb ripped the globe in half, that clock would continue to tick because time would continue to move forward. Nothing gave pause to the cycle of life. Not war, famine, sorrow, or, ironically, death.
Jason sat in the kitchen, eyes drooping, hair ruffled. The clock told him midnight was approaching. It had been a long, hard day. He had stumbled into the house in the early afternoon, his rage leaving him physically and emotionally drained, and plopped down at the table. He hadn’t budged since.
Ted had returned from school at about four, but no words had been exchanged. The boy only gave a meek wave and retreated to his bedroom, giving the door to his mom’s room a wide, fearful berth.
After the fact, Jason had thought of a dozen different scenarios in which he reached out to his son, comforted him, laughed with him, held him close. But none of them had come to fruition.
Things were different between him and Ted now. A deep, wide chasm had formed, growing larger and darker with each passing day. Words went unsaid, emotions buried. It didn’t used to be like that. But things had changed.
Abel…
Rick…
His hands trembled as he sat there. For nearly a decade, his anger had been staunched, forming a deadly well in his soul, and early that day, it had been released like a volcanic eruption. At first, it had surprised him, but it then struck him that his fury was completely justified. Understandable, even. Who wouldn’t explode like he had?
How dare he, that vile killer…
Jason didn’t know whom that thought applied to: Abel or Rick Neves.
Dark shadows crept through the room, blanketing his entire body as a layer of moss would. He could practically feel his anger coursing through his veins, as natural as his heavy heartbeat.
An ominous feeling had clutched his consciousness as soon as he had left the police station. No matter how he tried to shake it, the grim instinct clung on, just about driving him mad. An image plagued his mind: Abel invading his home in the middle of the night, looking to attack, looking to kill young Ted Flynn.
Jason felt in his gut that Abel would strike very soon, and he wasn’t going to take the chance that intuition was correct. At that moment, he clutched his 9mm Glock, his index finger setting against the trigger’s guard. He stared at the front door, drilling holes into the wood with his blunt, angry gaze.
He kept visualizing the same scene over and over: A shadowy figure approaching the door, a long knife in one hand, reaching for the knob with the other. Jason would raise his gun and fire a round through the maple, piercing Abel’s flesh. But that wouldn’t be enough for such a demon. He would shoot again and again until his Glock’s clip was empty, until the door was shredded like lettuce, until Abel collapsed to the ground in a heap, completely, totally, finally dead.
This fantasy replayed many times in Jason’s head, growing grander and more satisfying each time. It felt incredible to think about ending Abel’s reign, as if it was an Olympic prophesy he was called to fulfill.
He took in a deep breath, eyes never leaving the door. Slowly, he exhaled, doing his best to cool the sweat that had transferred from his palm to the gun.
Thump, thump.
Two light knocks from the outside of the door.
Jason’s heart jumped up into his throat. Slowly, he slid out of the chair and stood, his joints stiff from hours of sitting still. He placed one foot in front of the other, creeping across the kitchen floor, eyes never leaving the house’s entry.
It seemed the clock’s ticking had grown impossibly loud, but he realized it was just his blood hammering in his ears.
He reached the door, a few feet in front of it. After a few short breaths, he raised his Glock to eye-level with one hand and clutched the doorknob with his other.
He inched the door open and peeked out, keeping his gun hidden but at the ready. Lamps from the street cast a surreal glow on the neighborhood. The sudden shift from total darkness to the electric lights hindered his vision for a moment, but he recognized the face behind the door. Instantly, his heart settled down.
“Hey, Jason,” Chris White said with a tentative smile.
“Chris?” After Jason’s nerves lowered, he glanced back at the clock. “What’re you doing here? It’s almost midnight.”
Chris opened his mouth to say something, but then gave a small shrug. “I just felt that you needed some company…” He gestured to Jason, and to the door, which was still ajar a crack. “…And it looks like I’m right.”
Jason cleared his throat and checked to see if the streets were clear. No one in sight. “Sure,” he said as he swung the door wide open, exposing the Glock he held to his side, “C’mon in.”
Chris’s muscles tightened at the sight of the gun.
A humorless chuckle rumbled out of Jason’s chest. “Don’t worry. This isn’t for you. It’s for…” he struggled to get the right wording, “…visitors with less than genial intentions.”
Jason walked back through the house toward the kitchen, the sound of Chris’s footfalls a few seconds behind his. He set his firearm on the table and flexed his stiff fingers. “You can have a seat if you want. Care for something to drink?”
Chris settled behind the table, trying to lighten the mood with a wry grin. “What’s brewing?”
“Well, there’s twenty-hour-old coffee, milk with a funny color, or some tepid Dr. Pepper.”
“I’ll take a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”
Jason laughed.
A minute later, the two sat at the scuffed table, the gun back in Jason’s fist, but cradled in his lap, out of sight. Chris sipped from a clear glass, one of the few clean ones left in the rapidly emptying cupboards.
“Jason,” Chris said, anxiously eyeing his friend, “why are you up like this? Guarding the front door with a gun? And you look like you’ve been through hell. What is it?”
A few ticks from the clock passed while Jason readjusted in his seat, doing his best to dismiss the scalding rage from his mind. But the thought of Rick and his spineless apology made his blood boil. He clamped his eyes shut, feeling his emotions rising up again. A loss of control the likes of which happened at the police station was coming.
“You’re a better man than that, Jason.” Chris had leaned forward, speaking intently as if he was disarming a time bomb. “I remember how you were after Keri’s death. Bitter, hateful, a different person entirely. And you’ve overcome it all. Take a deep breath…”
Bit by bit, Jason expanded his lungs and then exhaled, trying to exhale his anger at the
same time. He gulped, shoving his emotion into some dark recess of his brain where he could deal with it later.
Chris spoke carefully, “It’s Rick, isn’t it?”
“Not just that,” Jason quickly changed the subject. “It’s this whole case. Abel and his tricks and victims…”
Chris looked confused but kept his mouth closed.
It was then Jason realized no one outside of the L.A.P.D. even knew the full story of what was happening in the city. It was strange that only a handful of people had knowledge of the thing that was dominating his life.
Jason recapped the past several days, from the discovery of Max Black in the alley to finding Shane Drake dead of a broken heart. He told Chris everything he knew about Abel: his voice, his chilling mantras, his plot to change the world.
Once Jason stopped speaking, Chris slumped back in his chair, looking completely drained. “Murders based on the Ten Commandments?”
Tired of talking, Jason simply nodded once.
“Congressman Magnum, adultery? Rao, idols? Malorie Daniels, stealing? That’s…” A pause as Chris shook his head. “Diabolical. And you’re right about what will happen if this Abel succeeds. If his plan is executed perfectly, meaning nobody stops him, people will start to follow in his footsteps, killing left and right.”
Jason nodded again.
“The irony, however, is he’s ignoring a very important asterisk.”
“Hmm?” Jason asked, interested. “What do you mean?”
“Mark 12:30 and 31.” Chris took another drink. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. And I quote, ‘There is no commandment greater than these.’”
“How about that?” Jason chortled quietly. “I completely forgot about that one. But I still don’t think that will change Abel’s mind about this whole deal.”