Inhuman: Detective Chase hunts an animal who protects his own

by Nathan Senthil

  Then he clicked the photos.

  They were the recovered bones from Tyrel’s graveyard, arranged on dozens of shiny steel stretchers. The skeletons were ancient—reddish-brown and dirty yellow. But they all had glossy, colorful skulls that looked plastic. Creepy.

  Gabriel pocketed his phone. “Sorry about that, Bill. Go on now.”

  “I just talked to that hobo with the brown hoodie.” Bill pointed to the back windshield with his thumb. “I don’t know. I feel like he’s pulling a fast one on me. Maybe you should help me interrogate him, Detective Chase.”

  “Too bad he’s gone.” Emma moved the rearview mirror.

  Bill’s eyelids peeled back as he jerked around. He pushed the door open and earned an angry horn and a stupid asshole from a passing car. Emma and Gabriel regarded Bill as he jogged to the alley. He shook the other man up and questioned him, but the man was terrified and couldn’t offer any help. Then Bill grabbed his temples and kicked the curb.

  When he cooled down, he got into the car and slammed the door.

  “Goddamn it. Now I know for sure he was lying.”

  “Lying about what?” Emma said.

  “I asked him if he had seen Tyrel, and he said yes.”

  “That’s a lie?” Emma said.

  “No. That’s the truth.”

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  “I asked him if he knew where Tyrel lives, and he said no.” Bill looked up at them nervously and swallowed. “That’s a lie.”

  Chapter 40

  April 13, 2019. 11:53 A.M.

  Bob hugged his brown hoodie closer to his body in a vain attempt to feel warm. He was in the cold alley earlier than usual, but what else did he have to do? Bob was a bum with no job, no home, and no future. Since he was on parole, what he excelled at, impersonation, was now a strict no-no. Stealing was the only other thing he knew how to do, and bars were easy targets. Not the bars themselves, but their drunk patrons.

  He inserted his hand behind a grease dumpster, pulled out a green tarp and spread it on the pebbly ground. He sifted through his pockets and found half a cigarette. He lit it up, lay on the smelly plastic, and closed his eyes.

  A figure moved and darkened the glow inside his eyelids. He opened them and saw a familiar face. Eddie, another vagrant Bob shared his turf with, loomed over. Eddie dug into his left elbow with his black fingertips, and the needle marks peppering his skin flared up.

  “Borrow your smoke?” Eddie scratched the back of his neck.

  “Get outta here.” Bob made an action of kicking Eddie, but the man didn’t move an inch.

  Maybe it was one of those mornings that Bob shouldn’t push Eddie around. You never knew if the addict had a length of glass wrapped in a cloth up his sleeve. Simple foolhardiness would leave you bleeding out in a dirty alley, with pieces of broken mirror churning in your intestines. So Bob relented and gave him the cigarette.

  Eddie took it and sat adjacent to Bob.

  “It’s just scary, this gravity,” Eddie said.

  “Gravity?” Bob said. “The gravity?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s scary about it?”

  He didn’t want to think about how Eddie’s mind had jumped to that odd a subject.

  “What if… I don’t know, it just sorta goes away?”

  “Goes away?” Bob raised his eyebrows.

  “Like, vanish, man.” Eddie clutched the hair on his temples as if explaining his question was too much for his brain. “You know, it just stops working?”

  “That’ll be scary.”

  “Not scary. Imagine, you start to float, and for some time you think you’re high or something. It’s all funny like. Then you go through clouds.”

  “It is funny.”

  “But,” Eddie shouted, and lifted his finger, “once you’re above the earth, the planet kind of spins away from you. It’s not like you are actually going anywhere. You are not moving at all from the moment the gravity stopped working, but it is the planet that moves away from you. You watch the earth slowly disappearing behind the sun. Then it’s only you and that bright light…”

  “Interesting.”

  “…till the earth rotates around and smacks you right in the face.”

  “Revolves.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “What’d you take?”

  “H.”

  “Damn.”

  “I’m really worried. I don’t wanna float away like that.”

  “Thought you said you aren’t scared of it.”

  “I said that? Weird, because I am scared. That’s why I chain myself to the dumpster whenever I sleep.”

  Bob was now really interested. He had seen Eddie lock his foot to the leg of the dumpster, but never cared enough to demystify it.

  “Gotta be smart to survive.” Eddie tapped his temple, where the hair was ruffled.

  “I agree.”

  Bob debated if he should screw with the druggie, and decided he would, all the books he’d devoured in the prison library finally being useful.

  “That won’t help, though.”

  “What? Why?” Eddie said.

  “Air has weight. So it will disappear into space, too. Soon as the gravity goes, you begin to suffocate. Not just air. Oceans, buildings, the ground we stand on, even the dumpster you lock yourself to—they are all fragmented and levitate.”

  Eddie’s eyes bulged.

  “If gravity goes away, then the earth will simply disintegrate into rubbles and ice while it’s rotating.”

  No response.

  Bob turned to Eddie. The junkie had his eyes open in horror, but Bob knew his mind had abandoned him. He’d zoned out, probably teleported to a world of paranoia where physics didn’t exist.

  It was best if Bob tried to get some sleep. He’d already eaten the only meal he could afford that day, and he’d need to conserve that energy for the night. Maybe he would get lucky.

  * * *

  “Excuse me? Sir?” A voice woke him up from his nap.

  The unmistakable voice of a pig. Shit. Why didn’t they pester Eddie? Why else? Because Eddie looked like the drug addict that he was, and Bob had the appearance of a hobo. Uncombed hair, dingy face, and a perpetually fatigued demeanor. Whereas druggies tweaked with energy. Hobos were more reliable and useful to cops.

  Bob woke up, pretending to be scared and disoriented. A hobo. Much better than letting them know you were a backslider.

  “I’m Officer Lamb. What’s your name?”

  “Bob. You… you aren’t in uniform.”

  “We are from the NYPD.”

  “Who’s we?”

  The pig pointed inside the bar. “There. Detective Chase and Detective Stein.”

  Bob looked in through the glass walls. A dude with an unruly beard and messy hair was showing his phone to the bartender, and a lady with a man’s haircut was talking to a customer.

  “Can you help me?” the pig said.

  What’s new?

  “Why don’t you ask my friend here?” Bob stood.

  “He’s talking gibberish.” The pig gave Eddie a disgusted look. “He’s useless for a few more hours, at the least.”

  “Fine, fine. What do you want?”

  “Have you seen this man?” The pig showed him a sketch in his cell phone.

  Every cell in Bob’s body jerked as a jolt of recognition hit him. But he didn’t let it show. He had been answering pigs half his life. And yes, he had seen that man. In fact, he was going to be Bob’s way out of this miserable life.

  “Yes,” Bob replied.

  You never lied to the pigs. Never fully lied, that was. You mixed truth in with bullshit. Facts were like cement, and lies were bricks. A wall built only with bricks, minus the cement, may stand, but it could collapse at any time. Precarious.

  “What?” the pig said, like he didn’t believe Bob. “Really? Where?”

  “In the bar.”

  “How frequently does he visit?”

  Bob had seen
the man a few times, but the first time he took a real interest in him was when he was returning to the alley after meeting his parole officer. He saw a car sitting there without anyone in it, and the streets were empty. Bob could break into cars in ten seconds at the most. So he closed in on it to try his luck. But there was a man inside, who he hadn’t spotted from the distance. The same man whose sketch the pigs were brandishing around now.

  “Not often. I saw him three weeks ago, I think.”

  “Was he coming out of the bar?”

  “No. He was just sitting in his car out here on the street.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “A red SUV.”

  “What was he doing in it?”

  Bob had wondered the same thing, too. So he’d peeked inside the car, and when he did, he gasped. The man had a big bag full of cash and was counting the wads.

  Bob knew he had to move from the window, but he was transfixed by the dough. Sensing the shadow, the man looked up. Bob pried himself away and walked out of there, blood being pumped into his legs, screaming at him to run. But he didn’t give in. A few safe yards later, he heard the engine start. He turned and watched the car leave dust in its wake.

  “Nothing, I guess,” Bob replied. “Just playing some stupid game on his phone.”

  He tried hard not to give out signs that he was lying. No stiffening of the body, no crossing of the arms, and no shuffling of the feet.

  The other two pigs came out and got into a muscle car parked down the street.

  “When did you see him last?”

  The previous week. Bob’s eyes lost their sleepiness the instant he saw the cash. He had to have it. But the only information he had about the man was that he was gay, and he would return because Inferno was the best gay bar in the city. So Bob borrowed a car, stashed it in the bar’s parking lot, and waited in the alley, day in and day out.

  The man eventually showed up two weeks after, but he came on foot. An hour later, he staggered out of the bar and got in someone else’s car. Bob followed them to a house, spent hours waiting outside until the car started again, drove to another house, and dropped the man off. That’s the last time Bob had seen him.

  “Two or three weeks back, maybe.” he said.

  “Do you by chance have any idea where he lives? At least his neighborhood?”

  After learning where the man lived, Bob planned to wait for his partner in the slammer to be released, and then they’d hit the house together.

  “No, Officer, I don’t.” Bob tried his best not to sound like he was regulating his breath, which he totally was.

  The pig raised an eyebrow. “All right. Do you mind staying right here? I’m gonna ask my boss to talk to you.”

  Bob nodded, but obviously he minded. A senior pig would be wiser to Bob’s ways and would request him to come down to the police station for interrogation.

  The pig strode to the car where his bosses were and got in. Bob, watching the car from the corner of his eye, slowly stepped back into the alley and avoided their line of sight. When he’d completely sunken back, he turned and hightailed it. He felt like someone was after him as he bolted, but whenever he glanced back no one was there. It was just his ears playing tricks on him. As he rounded the exit, he slowed and merged with the foot traffic on the other side. His thoughts cleared when his breathing evened.

  So the man was a criminal. Wasn’t surprising since he was counting that much cash on the road. And pigs were hunting for him. These two facts were both good and bad for Bob’s plan. Good because the man wouldn’t file a complaint when Bob robbed him of the cash. Bad because Bob had to do it alone now. His partner wasn’t coming out for another month, but the pigs were on the man’s trail, too, and they might get him before his partner was released.

  Luckily Bob was miles ahead of them. He would talk to the bartender and learn more. Maybe a new plan would present itself.

  * * *

  Bob visited the bar later, hoping to find out why the pigs were searching for the man. The bartender wasn’t a big fan of Bob. But he wanted him out of his business quickly, so he answered the questions.

  The senior pig’s name was Gabriel Chase, and he wanted to find the man because he was a witness in a theft. Bob told the bartender that he knew something important regarding the man and asked for the pig’s card. The barkeep obliged on the condition that Bob left the place immediately.

  Back on the street, Bob lit another half-cigarette and began thinking. Witness in a theft? Bullshit. They were downplaying the seriousness of the man’s crime, whatever it was, so the bartender would stay indifferent and not bother to talk about it.

  Then an idea popped up. Bob would disguise himself as the NYPD and threaten the man.

  If the man was a smart criminal, there was a minor chance that he would know that three pigs from New York were after him, and how they looked. So to be on the safe side, Bob would pick one of them to be his skin. But whose role would fit him? One was a woman, and the other was too young to be a detective. But the last one, Gabriel Chase, looked like a sewer rat. Looked like Bob. Choosing him was a no-brainer. Then Bob would visit the man, as Gabriel. Once inside the house, he would subdue the man, take the cash, and leave the country.

  That was a great plan. Since Bob now had Gabriel’s card, with his badge number on it, he could easily sell himself as an NYPD detective. The man might ask for ID, but it would already be too late.

  Bob hurried to the parking lot, practicing, “Hi, I’m Detective Gabriel Chase. Mind if I come in? Hi, I’m Detective Chase. Mind if I come in? Hi, I’m…”

  All Bob needed now was a gun. And for a bum, it was a lot easier to obtain one than find a job. God bless America.

  Chapter 41

  April 13, 2019. 05:24 P.M.

  “That son of a bitch began lying to me the second I started asking him about Tyrel,” Bill said, to no one in particular. “I just knew it. I feel like an incompetent failure. I should have—”

  “You did good. Don’t feel bad.” Emma squeezed Bill’s shoulder. “You either win, or you learn. There is no such thing as a failure until you accept it. The only takeaway here is always listen to your gut.” Then she addressed the rearview mirror. “Where to now, Gabe?”

  “The closest police station. They should know about the homeless in the neighborhoods under their control.”

  Emma made a U-turn. “What’s his name?”

  * * *

  “Bob? Sure.” The officer was sitting behind a desk that was pushing against his potbelly.

  The police station had an atmosphere of a command center during wartime—cops in a hurry, someone barking orders, and phones going off every other second.

  “What can you tell us about him?” Gabriel didn’t sit in the chair offered to him, hoping the officer understood the situation was urgent.

  Bill and Emma stood beside him.

  “Full name, Robert Norris. A parolee. In and out of Blackburn Correctional Complex.”

  “Charges?” Emma said.

  “Nothing serious. Identity theft, impersonating police officers, burglary. He’s harmless as a fly.”

  The officer hadn’t searched his computer to retrieve information about Bob, so Bob was probably a regular there.

  “You got an address for us?” Emma said.

  “Pick one from any number of homeless shelters or soup kitchens.”

  Gabriel expected nothing more. Non-violent ex-cons living on the streets weren’t scrutinized as much as their violent counterparts.

  “You know who his parole officer is?” he said.

  “Let’s see here.” The officer used the keyboard to wake the monitor up. “It is Graham.” He looked at Gabriel and shook his head. “Tough luck, guys. He’s not in.”

  “Where can we get a hold of him?” Gabriel said.

  “You can’t. He had a stroke last week. All those years of smoking finally caught up with him.”

  “Shit… I mean, I’m sorry,” Bill said. “Can anyone else help
us?”

  “Graham is the only one who kept track of Bob. Other officers from the parole division wouldn’t know anything about him.”

  “Maybe someone from your station can take us to Bob?” Bill said. “The beat cops should know him, right?”

  “Right, but as you might have seen outside, it’s too crowded in Louisville today. We’d love to help our siblings in blue, but we can’t spare anyone. You hear the constantly ringing phones and beeping radios? They aren’t gonna stop driving us mental until the Derby.”

  Gabriel could relate. He’d done his share of duties during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade back when he was a uniform. An event of this scale meant hordes of exuberant natives and tourists, which in turn meant an unusually high number of complaints concerning drunk and disorderly behavior, illegal parking, and road rages, among many other misdemeanors. It was not a good day to get the best out of the LMPD.

  “Know what? Let me try to call Bob.” The officer picked up a landline on his desk and fed numbers into the dial as he read them from the PC. Thirty seconds later, he hung up.

  “He isn’t answering his phone. Weird. He never does that. He’s supposed to answer his phone if the call is from the precinct.”

  “May I have his number?” Gabriel programmed it into his cell phone as the officer read it to him.

  When outside, Emma said, “Why are we after this Bob, again?”

  “Bill is sure he knows where Tyrel lives, and I trust his instincts. The question is, why would he run away instead of talking to us? It actually works in his favor to help the cops.”

  “Maybe he’s protecting Tyrel?” Emma said.

  “But not without gain,” Gabriel replied. “Bob said he saw Tyrel sitting in a red SUV three weeks ago. That’s when Tyrel abducted Michael. Helen said he drove a red Ford Edge. I’m willing to bet it’s the same car.”

  “Yeah. Why didn’t he go home with the money?”

  “He needed to count it, but he couldn’t do that at Helen’s place. The heat was too much. And he couldn’t take the car he used to commit a felony back home. Crime 101 dictates he must dump it. But what if he needed it to visit Helen again, just in case she took a little off the sides from Noah’s charity?”