by Brian Ewing
It was that night, after a few hours and many beers, that he saw Troy Boatman on the opposite side of the ever-growing flames from the massive campfire pit. Andrick still remembered his mouth watering as he saw the boy’s green eyes, full of life and almost glowing with assistance from the crackling fire. His mouth watered, not because he was gay or sexually attracted to Troy in any way, but because he knew that night would be the last time that Troy’s eyes ever lit up as they had at that moment.
Andrick drove through the side streets of Miriam, Ohio, for twenty minutes, crossing over the I-83, and continuing into the next town where his brethren of motorcycle aficionados were currently squatting around until they rolled out the next morning. Andrick swore it would be the last year he would follow the weekend warriors on their path, but he paused that thought, as he vividly remembered swearing last year that same empty threat. Pulling up to a red light, he stuck his hand in the right pocket of his jeans and pulled out the crumpled piece of ripped paper with the names Brady and Joy with a phone number scribbled below.
Andrick, no stranger to wearing an approachable demeanor, was pleased with himself for making the trip to the town, as the gym became an accustomed hunting grounds for Andrick to search for prey. He figured he had to stay in good shape to keep up with the strenuous labor of moving dead bodies. He knew the moment he laid eyes on the couple today, he had to have them. Anytime he saw couples attached at the hip the way they were, it fueled an unwarranted fury in his mind. It was only years later he accepted the truth that he just plain enjoyed the chaos of disrupting such a harmonic bond.
The light turned green and he replaced the note in his pocket, continuing with his mind on autopilot back to the dingy motel that many of the bikers were staying at while in Findlay. He pulled up to the parking lot to see the sign, Clancy’s Motel. The angle and lighting couldn’t have been any more spot-on to give the run-down building a stereotypical shithole feel to it. He turned off the engine of his Harley and took off his helmet. The cool air hit his face. It felt nice as his body was still cooling down from the workout.
He looked around as he saw a group of bikers in the common area of the motel. A man he recognized but had not bothered to remember the name of, nodded towards him, causing the others he had been with to look in Andrick’s direction. Andrick nodded back with a forced, false grin and turned to unlatch his leather bag. He knew he was welcome and viewed as unthreatening within the community he hid, but had other things on his mind. He avoided the interaction, walking the edge of the motel instead of through the common area, to a set of stairs that led to the second floor of rooms.
Andrick specifically requested a room above ground level. He got some odd enjoyment out of looking at city lights at night, flashes zooming by as the citizens move among it, like they were invincible to any bad in the world. Andrick always reserved an honest grin when overlooking the city nights. He knew that the poor saps out there he saw on the highway, consumed in their bubble of life, believed everything good was meant to be, and everything bad wouldn’t kill them but only make them stronger. Unfortunately for one of those self-indulgent cattle, they would eventually come to an understanding that their fairytale version of life would meet a painful demise when crossing paths with Andrick Wesley.
CHAPTER 3
The echo from the released chambers was no match for the sirens that started going off instantaneously across the entire fourteenth floor in the business plaza. Floodlights illuminated the room as Sisto saw his attacker in perfect lighting. The life-sized wooden artwork had depicted an assailant pointing his weapon while holding a hostage in a chokehold with his free arm. The facial expression on the attacker’s face resembled how Norton looked when he gave a devilish grin. Sisto could see whoever did the artwork for the Saratoga City SWAT training enjoyed including the detail to the characters. The hostage had an amazing look of fear, which would be understandable if she had been an actual human since Sisto had just put a hole the size of a quarter in her shoulder.
He did get a headshot in the gunman’s forehead, however. That pleased him as he had been putting in time at the shooting range at least three times a week. The first time he shot a gun was when he was fourteen, on a camping trip with his dad and brother. The opportunities since then were few and far between. Looking at the landing of the two shots, he was sure Norton would recommend seeing an eye doctor after the training session. The enclosed space was preserving the intensity of the siren’s ringing, causing Sisto to develop an incredible headache. He went to holster his weapon and left to take a verbal ass-whooping.
Walking out of the bathroom, the atmosphere had changed completely. No longer was anyone in full tactical mode as Sisto approached his fellow members. He got to the end of the hallway where Kendrell had been posted to see both him and Tomb with scowls plastered across their faces.
“Sisto,” Kendrell, holding back the majority of the fury Sisto could tell was brewing on the inside. “You either pass or you fail next week, bro. What the fuck was that?”
Sisto pissed off at his logic, tried to think of a plausible answer but found it hard to come up with one. He continued around the corner to the center of the sales floor. The entire floor was a training op, full of operational desks and computers. In the middle of the cubicles were multiple wooden cutouts of characters kneeling, along with some tough Die Hard-looking terrorists pointing weapons at them. Beyond the theater crew assortment stood Norton. He had nothing but disappointment on his grease-painted face.
“Goddammit, Sisto. We have gone through these scenarios dozens of times in the training room and hit another handful of these live interaction simulations. You know better than to shoot your fucking gun like a cowboy without any regard for what’s in your sightline. What in the Frosted-Flaked-fuck is wrong with you?”
Knowing his answer would readily throw Norton into a rage, Sisto had to carefully tread with his answer.
“Norton, I…I didn’t shoot without viewing what was in front of me.”
“Wait a minute,” the team leader said in a completely baffled tone. “You mean to tell me, you meant to shoot the hostage?”
“Well,” Sisto started, knowing full well that Norton had probably never seen the classic movie, Speed, starring a young Keanu Reeves. “I shot her in the shoulder because it would have been non-lethal to her and would have gone through and hit the gunman in the chest. Heart area, Sir. The risk seemed to outweigh the consequence.”
“Shut your mouth, right now. I am going to shit blood if I have to keep hearing this nonsense. Are you for fucking real right now, Sisto?”
Norton, even camouflaging his face with black and green greasepaint was not able to hide the immense vein forming in the center of his forehead.
“I fucking told Jenkins I didn’t like this idea. I told him that I didn’t want to take on this pet project that he has set up with you.”
“Look,” Sisto admitted. “Jenkins told me if I wanted to be a part of the task force, he wanted to see how dedicated I could be. I passed the academy with flying colors and then he hits me with the ‘SWAT training starts on Monday’ bullshit. I understand I am not some super-soldier like you guys. I have been simply trying to keep up the last few months and stay out of your guys’ way. I am trying my best.”
Sighing hatred openly in his direction, Norton threw his spitfire eyes at Sisto, “One more week, Sisto. One more fucking week and I am going to tell you right now. If you do not pass your final exam and you have to restart the process, I will make it my personal goal to move into an apartment in your building and shit in front of your doorway every night until you do pass.”
The visual of Norton’s threat concerned Sisto about the man’s mental stability. He is a vivid man and says some incredibly odd things, but just when Sisto doesn’t think it can get more intense, he outdoes himself.
“The other tenants will think a fucking mountain lion is on the loose in the halls of the building. Do you want anything to do with that?”
Not sure if it was rhetorical or not, Sisto shook his head anyways.
“Good,” Norton said.
Fuller and Powers came from the hallway that Norton had led upon leaving the air duct, coming around the corner in a loose and non-threatened body language.
“What happened?” Fuller asked.
“A cataclysm of fuckery, Officer Fuller. A cataclysm of fuckery.” Norton replied.
By the time they got back to the station and Sisto had time to shower, he had about two hours before the debrief with Project: Corrine. The task force was created by Mayor Maitland in an attempt to reduce crime in the final quarter of the prior year. That was the reasoning on paper when Jenkins and Bell and everyone else knew it was just a ploy to get himself re-elected. Whatever the case, it worked and as opposed to disbanding the experimental team, decided to extend the program. Project: Corrine was originally proposed by the late Camille Caden, who was Sisto’s liaison when simply consulting on extreme cases for the Homicide department at SCPD. Her partner, Calvin Bell, who had never liked Sisto, ended up being the one to replace Caden as team leader when she fell victim to a psychopath that became obsessed with Sisto.
Months later, Sisto still felt responsible for the untimely death of Detective Caden. She would have never crossed paths with the knife that plunged into her with scorn if it weren’t for Sisto. For over a year, Sisto had been consulting on cases, most with Caden as the leading Detective. What started as shameless flirting ended up in an unfairly and untimely brief romance. Sisto knew the affection he gave her is what caused her to be targeted. The psycho that murdered her, Laura Saunders, was the mastermind behind recruiting a demented serial killer to try and create chaos in Sisto’s life, hopeful to have Sisto being drawn back to her open arms. The plan was insanely executed and almost worked. The one thing Laura never expected was that the playful murderer she put in Sisto’s path would escalate as fast as he had and developed a true joy for the cat and mouse aspect of the situation. Carson Vinnova had been recruited after a long stint of running illegal services for his uncle that had been involved in organized crime. Once he finished serving a few years in state prison right out of high school, he was like a rabid dog.
Prison broke the boy that went in and molded him into a cold criminal. Carson’s rage stemmed from losing his father, which he blamed on Sisto. Sisto had testified many years back to put Frank Vinnova behind bars after putting a hit on his family. Sisto survived and pairing his testimony with other federal investigations that had been going on at the same time, ended up being the final nail in the coffin. Frank Vinnova barely lasted a month before being murdered in prison and after researching him, along with Carson, Laura Saunders found her perfect way to throw Sisto’s world into an uproar.
While all of Carson’s psychotic tendencies were at the forefront, one thing Laura missed was the strategy and calculation Carson put forth when executing his kills. He had no bond to her, and nothing gave him more joy than to play with his prey. Carson decided that giving clues to Sisto after every kill, indicating Laura Saunders was behind the whole thing, would be more fun than just blindly killing. That caused Laura to get her own hands dirty, in the end. Sisto wasn’t smart enough to pick up on the clues until it was too late.
Laura had processed a drunken night of comforting lust as something else and wanted to recreate the pain surrounding Sisto’s life at that time, to draw him back to her. Caden got in the way of that. The last thing Sisto or Caden had expected was to fall for each other. The act of lowering their defenses and embracing the urge to be with one another, in the end, was all Laura needed to snap and bring a knife to a police officer’s home with the intent to kill. She had researched where Caden lived and visited her under the pretense that she was Sisto’s counselor and wanted to get Caden to help her support Sisto after the loss of a friend.
Sisto was given the gruesome details through a vision from The Reels, showing the primal rage Laura unleashed on the unsuspecting Caden. The cold color of death entering Caden’s eyes, even though it had been through another’s memory, had been etched into Sisto’s mind forever. Before dying, it had been Caden that had put together the proposal of the task force that composed of her, Bell, Sisto, and others. She had chosen the name after Sisto’s deceased niece, Corrine, who had been executed the same night Sisto received three bullets to his core. Instead of impending death, he somehow survived and gained a spiritual presence he had come to refer to as The Reels.
“Officer Sisto.” A voice called behind him from the break room of the Detective’s Hub.
Sisto, still not used to that title, turned to see the leader of his task force, Calvin Bell. Bell and Sisto had a very rocky start as Bell thought Sisto had been a con artist trying to collect a check and Sisto thought Bell was an over the hill, bare-minimum detective. They both proved each other wrong and while they hadn’t grown to like each other, they did acknowledge a certain level of respect that had been missing during their initial interactions.
“Don’t call me that, Bell. It sounds like I should be in a Halloween costume.”
“You went through the academy and passed…that technically makes you an officer of Saratoga City Police Department.”
Sisto wishes he would have thought of that before Captain Ross Jenkins tricked him into completing the academy training.
“Well, I do get a badge now when I go to crime scenes, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.”
Bell shook his head, “You hanging here until we meet or going home for a bit?”
“No point in going home. By the time the bus gets here and takes me, I will only have an hour max before I need to head back down to the bus stop and head back here again. Why?”
“Next assignment. Just got handed down. We got a lot to go over.”
Yawning at the idea of a two hour debrief after the physically exhausting day he just put in, Sisto nodded, “Okay. Sounds good. I’ll be in Caden’s Den by seven. I may con Wallace into taking me to get some food.”
“Pick me up a sandwich if you do.”
“What if the place I go to doesn’t have sandwiches?”
“Then go to the nearest sandwich shop by the dumb place you choose and get me a sandwich from there.”
There was the good old Bell that Sisto knew from the first year of working together.
“You’re getting grumpier in your old age. Correction, older age.” Sisto tacked on.
“You are a pain in my ass, Kid. Get lost. I’ll see you at seven.”
“Bell,” Sisto stopped him. “Do you need your heart medication refilled while I am out?”
Bell shook his head and just left without responding.
Sisto grinned the small victory of leaving Bell speechless and pulled out his phone. He scrolled through his text messages until he got to his thread with Ama. Ama Navarro was an insanely smart computer hacker that lived in Sisto’s building and helped by using digital footprints to lead the team to Carson Vinnova, and eventually Laura Saunders. Ama was invited into Project: Corrine after the brief interaction and expedience that Detective Caden saw in her during the Vinnova case. Ama had a good day job as a financial analyst and couldn’t join the task force in a full-time capacity, but did accept a consultant position under limited capacity, similar to how Sisto started with the department.
“Hello?” the voice answered after the second ring.
“Hey,” Sisto said.
“You don’t ever call me, only text. Everything alright?”
“I was going to text you but decided it would just be faster. You hear about the debrief later?”
“Yeah, I just got off work and am halfway home. I wanted to change out of these bullshit clothes and shower before coming down there.”
Ama felt most comfortable in tattered jeans and a fashionable shirt, usually having darker tones to it. She had piercings in her face and ears and wore darker eye shadow and lipstick but was not in full on goth mode. She looked like someone who was reforming from dressing goth most of her te
en years now that he thought about it. The two had met when Sisto was moving into the current building both still reside in, Corden Palisades Apartments.
She threw her card in one of his boxes and advised him to contact her if he ever needed computer assistance. He had and they had a friendship ever since. Sisto felt the friendship strained though after keeping a vision from her that he saw when she had brushed up against him last year. Between the serial killer that had Sisto in his crosshairs, along with the loss of Caden, it just never felt right to bring it up. Sisto knew he would approach the subject one day but felt like the friendship wasn’t in the right place to have the conversation yet.
“You want to come in as soon as you’re done showering and getting ready, and we can get some dinner before our meeting at seven?”
“Debrief,” She corrected him. “I have meetings at my day job. Quarterly analysis, projected revenue, things like that. What we talk about at the task force are not in the same realm as my day job.”
“Okay. So?”
“I am pulling into Corden Palisades now. Ill text you when I am in front of SCPD.”
“Thank you, Ama.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re buying, Money Bags.”
“Absolutely. See you soon.”
Sisto shook his head at Ama’s teasing name she had just called him. Sisto had kept it quiet at the department but Ama had recognized during the investigation she got tangled up with last year, that Sisto had paid for drinks a few times and pulled out an elite black metal card. To her credit, she didn’t ask about the card until the fourth or fifth time they had been out decompressing over whiskey. Sisto had to go into the backstory he hadn’t really told to anybody, aside from Caden, about how he came into a fuck load of money. Sisto’s brother, Eddie, had been working for Frank Vinnova and skimming on the side before his wife inherited family money.
