Signs of Portents

by Lou Paduano

  “He’s not wrong,” Loren said, closing the file and placing it on the ledge next to her. He put his hand upon it to keep it from whisking away into the night. No passing child needed to see the photos contained within the thick manila folder.

  “Doesn’t mean he’s right,” Soriya answered, refusing to look at him.

  “Arguing won’t win him over. Especially the same argument.”

  She spun around on the ledge so her legs were dangling over the side of the parking garage. The city was quieter than it had been the night before. Quieter than either of them had seen it in a long time. Something was coming they needed to be ready for, not pretend it didn’t exist.

  “Ignorance is not bliss, Loren. You know it better than most.”

  Loren nodded. It was a thought that plagued him four years earlier. If he had known more about the city, if he had truly seen it for what it was and accepted every facet of the culture beneath the city lights, could he have saved his wife? He had tried to reconcile that man or beast may have committed the heinous act as far as he knew from what little evidence was found on the scene and in the apartment, but the question remained. Had he done enough?

  “This was Beth’s city. Not mine,” he said, eyes distant, overlooking the city. “That night? The night we truly met? If Beth was still around, I would have asked her to pack her bags and head as far away as possible from the city and never look back. She wouldn’t, of course. No way in hell. The fight would have lasted for hours and we would both still be here. For her. Not for me. Honestly, though, I expect it would be my reaction that almost everyone would have knowing Portents the way I do now.”

  Soriya’s lips softened, the rage fading from her cheeks. Her hands unclenched against the concrete of the ledge and Loren saw her head lower in thought. She looked to him for the first time since entering the garage.

  “How would you have ended the fight?” she asked quietly.

  “Same way we always did.” Loren smiled. Even the memory of his wife brought back the thin grin he always carried in her presence. “We’d run out of things to say. And a kiss.”

  “Guess Ruiz and I still have things to say.”

  “Just don’t give him a kiss.”

  She laughed, spinning back into the parking garage. Her hands pushed off the ledge and she landed square on her heels. “Yikes. Please talk to me about the case before that mental image takes hold.”

  “Right.” Loren opened the folder and handed it to her. She flipped through it and immediately peered back up.

  “Something new. What Ruiz was mentioning about the better connected victim,” she stated, holding up the image of a man buried under a mountain of garbage in a back alley. Little could be seen of the victim but what could explained the goal behind the murder.

  “Found this afternoon,” Loren nodded. “Fifth victim. No skin. Looks like our guy found that new suit.”

  “The sign?” Soriya asked, flipping through the photos without success.

  “None. He didn’t seem to be anything more than human too.”

  Soriya’s eyebrow raised and she tilted her head to the right. “He’s meticulous with his victims except this guy?”

  “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Add it to the list.”

  “Yeah,” Loren agreed. “Ruiz is pushing for a curfew and more patrols. He’ll get the patrols at least, but the commissioner and the mayor won’t sign off on taking people off the streets. Knowing their feeling on it, Mathers won’t push for it either.”

  Soriya closed the file and handed it back to Loren. Her hands leaned heavily on the ledge, her shoulders slumped in frustration. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “What?” Loren asked, curious.

  “What Ruiz said about me. That I shouldn’t be here.” In the moonlight, her eyes shifted rapidly. She was working through something, Loren noted. It was why they worked together so well in the past. He had questions, sure, and could even find answers to some of them. Nevertheless, she had questions that no cop could think up.

  “You know he didn’t…” he started but she raised her hand to wave him off. She wasn’t fishing for pity or a compliment.

  “He shouldn’t be here, Loren.” Her eyes were wide. Her hands moved before her, willing the answers out of her with thoughts moving faster than her lips. “The murderer. These trophies aren’t trophies at all. Mentor was right about Anteros. The balance has tipped.”

  “Slow down, Soriya.” He tried to follow as best he could, knowing more questions were already being raised. If the trophies were needed, what were they needed for?

  “Loren,” she continued. She crept up on the ledge of the parking garage and began to pace above him. “This killer. He shouldn’t be here and he knows it. The fact that he knows more about this city than us. The placement of the murders. The signs themselves. Something or someone ripped him back but not all of him made the journey. His body was cracked and torn when he came back and he’s…”

  “Putting the pieces back together,” Loren chimed in, following her train of thought.

  “Showing Humpty Dumpty how it’s done too.” She jumped down and started for the far side of the parking garage and the exit. Loren hesitated for a moment, wondering what she was up to, then quickly pursued.

  “What’s the endgame once the pieces are back in place?” Loren asked.

  “We can’t figure that out yet. We need to know who he is first.”

  “So we find Mentor, right?” he asked, knowing the old man wanted in on the case. His last request continued to echo in his thoughts. Keep her safe. The question, of course, made the joy fade from her face, the two failures from the last two days playing in Technicolor behind her eyelids.

  “No,” she replied. She let the answer hang between them for a long moment until Loren nodded. Then she smiled widely, ever the child holding onto a secret she couldn’t wait to share. “He has his methods. I have mine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The sixth floor of the Rath Building was a different animal than the second, where Ruiz made his home in the corner office overlooking downtown. Where stained ceramic tiles, mostly cracked or mismatched with their neighbors, lined the floor in the detective bureau, the sixth floor carried lush carpet throughout. The doors were stained glass with thick cherry frames, each with the name of its occupant in the center. Turnover made this a lucrative endeavor but one always justified when it came time for budget review. Personnel be damned.

  A long hallway extended from the elevator. Secretaries and aides were set up in cubicles along the left hand wall. Restrooms were to either side of the sliding doors of the lift upon entry to the floor. The right hand wall was made up of two large offices. The second was the commissioner’s with the first acting as home to his personal staff, a connecting door between them to keep contact with the outside world and any unwanted appointments to a minimum. Commissioner Reginald Dunn was known for this tactic, doing his best to keep his head out of the line of fire as often as possible. His personal mantra to the citizens of Portents as the man who “gets it Dunn” always brought a smile to Michelle’s face and rage to Ruiz’s. If filing reports and weekly staff meetings were enough to get it done when it came to the job, Commissioner Dunn must have been living in a fairytale.

  Wide double doors stood at the far end of the hall. Behind them was a large conference room, home to many weekly meetings with every department in the building but more often than not the meetings were between only two people—the mayor and Dunn. City Hall was never where Mayor Franklin Hill wanted to end up. He fell into it over a career of quiet ineptitude, at least from what Ruiz gleaned during election season or every single time Hill attempted to say his name with his best Spanish accent. Ruiz preferred people butcher his name rather than his heritage. Every week since taking office, Mayor Hill found his way to the Rath for his weekly meeting with the commissioner, bringing his entourage and taking over the entire conference room for the day. The standard meeting was more to placate
the masses when it came time to vote or to figure out the next best place for a catered lunch than it was about crime statistics and open cases…until five murders hit the headlines in a single week. Weekly meetings turned daily. The entourage was left at City Hall and arguments over the cheese platter turned to screams over what was being done to end the string of violence infecting the streets of Portents. As if it started and stopped as easily as that. But that was how the mayor saw it, so that was how the commissioner saw it. A simple fix without seeing the underlying problem, a problem Ruiz knew went deeper than most anyone else did in the Rath, although he was hesitant to make it known without first checking to verify his pension was secure.

  There was another reason Ruiz kept quiet about Loren and Soriya’s suspicion about the murders: fear. Fear that saying it out loud would make it real. Fear that no one would believe that the city contained the monsters of myth and legend that they had only read about as kids, because half the time he had trouble believing it as well. More than anything, it was fear that because they refused to believe, things would get worse. There was already that feeling with the latest rash of homicides in the city. How could there not be that feeling? Five dead in a week’s span was an ungodly statistic to hear on the news or read in the paper. Ruiz knew it could be worse, though. There was a line he held close, a line that allowed people like Soriya and Mentor their own brand of justice, even though it went against everything Ruiz stood for but he could see it sliding without Loren. Without himself at the captain’s desk. Especially when the next person in line for the job stood in front of him, arms folded across his chest and a scowl across his face, waiting to take over and run the ship directly into the ground.

  Captain Rufus Mathers.

  Mathers waited patiently outside the glass doors of the conference room, watching the two shadows within. Muffled curses flew freely and the bald, bespectacled officer of nineteen years watched silently with mild enjoyment upon his face. Ruiz met the man, ten years his junior, the first time he walked into the stationhouse. He wore the same black suit with the same upright posture that placed him higher than most of his fellow officers. Mathers started as a simple beat cop who quickly found his place in front of the cameras. His eagerness to please his superiors assured him room for growth and when the captain’s desk opened there was no discussion, though Ruiz fought tooth and nail for an officer with experience over a younger face to put before the cameras as the voice of the law in the city, which was exactly the role the commissioner wanted for the exuberant Mathers. Mostly, he was meant to be the buffer between the commissioner and the press, but even knowing that didn’t slow Mathers down from snatching up his role with vigor. He loved the game and played it well. There were many occasions where Ruiz thought his time was over, mistakes made on a personal level or even with the job at hand, but Mathers always snaked his way out of the firing line and back into the hearts of his superiors.

  Times were shared between them that could have been construed as moments of true friendship. Both men shared similar paths, held similar faith both in God and in the world. The differences, however, were insurmountable. Mathers was ambitious to the point of open betrayal at every opportunity. His suit was worn as a sign of his station, while the coffee-stained cuffs of Ruiz’s own button-down carried the look of a man willing to dig into the job rather than sit back and wait for the report to land on his desk. Mathers was in the office at the start of his shift, no sooner, and out the door at the end. His desk was clean and organized. Ruiz never left on time, rarely showed up less than an hour early to start his night at the station, and could not say what color his desk was, as he had not seen it clearly since his first day as captain.

  “I’m sure we’re next,” said Mathers without turning to see him. His eyes were level with the shadows pitched against the glass doors of the conference room. Muffled curses became audible though neither would acknowledge them outright.

  Ruiz stopped next to his daytime counterpart. “Mathers.”

  “Ruiz,” replied Mathers.

  The handle to the doors fell within Ruiz’s grasp but before he could turn it, Mathers called out without looking. “I’d let them finish.”

  This was where Mathers knew the game better than Ruiz, or more to the point, where Ruiz couldn’t be bothered to play games. The politics of the position, the face time with the public, were all nuances that Ruiz was capable of handling when necessary but never sought out beyond that necessity. Playing to the crowd, winning the support of the press and his superiors, were the wrong motivators when it came to police work in the city of Portents. They were the obligatory evils of the system, but obligation only went so far when it came to closing cases. Mathers knew the arena. He lived it daily. He loved the games, played them very well—as evidenced by the barrage of questions and accusations thrown Ruiz’s way instead of his own during meetings. Mathers wanted the spotlight and took it as often as he could, from drunk driving arrests to corner store robberies. He was hired to be the face of the department and thrived on that role.

  “I don’t have time for them to figure out how to run my case,” Ruiz answered, though he let his hand fall from the conference room door.

  “Your case?” Mathers scoffed. He turned from the conference room, allowing his wiry frame to lean against the wall behind him. He loomed over Ruiz, who could see his reflection in the younger captain’s thin, round spectacles. “That’s funny, Ruiz. I was under the impression Greg Loren had taken it over. I must have been mistaken, though. I mean, we wouldn’t let that lunatic back in the building unless he was in cuffs. Would we?”

  Ruiz’s voice fell low. “I’m not going to do this with you, Rufus.”

  “Please, Ruiz. Let’s.” Mathers’ hand slipped into the small portfolio that rested by his feet. The zipper snapped open, revealing a number of files. Mathers found a bright green file among the pack of manila and snatched it with his free hand. “And look. I even brought his personnel file.”

  Ruiz felt his eyes roll. This was the part no one understood, from his own wife to Loren, though sometimes he received more pity from his former colleague than Michelle. There were battles to be fought with each case. The officers that served with him fought theirs on the streets. Ruiz was forced to fight them in the Rath, and fight them with his own team. It was exhausting, and since the promotion of Mathers five years earlier, it had become much worse. More than anything, it was jealousy, an envious nature at the amount of cases handled and closed by the night shift over the day. While Ruiz saw this as simply the way the city worked, Mathers saw this as a challenge to take over the Latino’s job and become the top captain at Central Precinct. Another difference to add to the joy of their working relationship.

  “Hmm,” remarked Mathers, flipping blindly through the file. Both men knew it by heart, Ruiz because he noted most of the events within and Mathers because Loren was one of the few officers that managed to piss him off. “Three disciplinary hearings in two years. Two cases thrown out from negligence and, oh yeah, that little bit about putting Detective Standish in the hospital.”

  “Dammit, Mathers. Loren’s wife died.”

  “So he gets to John Wayne the job the rest of his life?” a new voice responded.

  Both men turned to see the stares of the men and women congregating in the sixth floor hallway. The muffled curses had also faded. Mathers cocked his head away from the doors. They took a step away, glaring at the others until they took the hint and resumed their work.

  “No,” Ruiz finally answered. He kept his voice to a whisper, both men positioned next to each other against the outside wall of the conference room away from the double doors. “He doesn’t get to write his own rules. But he does get the benefit of the doubt. Or did you suddenly forget your buddy, Standish, was misplacing evidence to cover his gambling debts? Evidence that caused those two cases of Loren’s to be thrown out.” Ruiz grabbed the file away from Mathers, flipping back through the papers until he landed on a report with his own letterhea
d. “Why, that’s strange. It says that right in this report that you seemed to skip over. Don’t worry, though. When you pout and cry to the commissioner about Loren’s awful behavior in order to take over the case yourself, I’ll be sure to bring this up.”

  Mathers closed the file. A single finger slipped up to his glasses, fixing them against his face. He turned away from Ruiz. “That’s not what this is about.”

  A small chuckle escaped from Ruiz’s lips. “Of course it is. You live for high profile cases. Hell, you were probably already in there helping write their victory speeches with special thanks to the efforts of Captain Rufus Mathers, the man who solved the case of the missing prize in the Crackerjack box. Too bad that won’t cut it with them. Domestics and B & E’s just aren’t front-page news, especially this week, and that’s all our supreme overlords are able to read before flipping to the funny pages. But a murderer? A serial killer on our streets? That would set you up for quite some time.”

  “Quite the imagination, Ruiz,” replied Mathers with a thin smile.

  “Yeah, it must be the kid in me that sees the world so completely screwed up,” Ruiz snapped. “Let’s just get this over with. I have a murderer to put away.”

  Ruiz gathered up his files and started back to the conference room. The deep voice of Rufus Mathers called him back.

  “Loren’s a loose cannon. Standish didn’t deserve what happened to him, and don’t think for a second Loren won’t do it again.”

  Ruiz stopped, thinking back to Standish bleeding on the floor of the second floor hallway outside his office. He remembered the screams and the fury of Loren, standing over him. There was nothing in his eyes but rage. It had been that way since the death of his wife, but never against his own. Charges were brought up and the record of Loren’s other questionable acts came to light, leaving Ruiz little choice but to take his friend off the streets until he could work through the darkness that had infected him since Beth died. He should never have let it go so far, never let him near Standish. Internal Affairs helped ease the suspension once Standish’s own actions were brought front and center, despite Mathers’ attempts to back his friend and detective. Loren put in the time. Therapy. A new outlook. He came back just to quit. Ruiz remembered the smile plastered from lens to lens on Mathers’ face. He held that image while he walked away from the conference door.