Mason intruded on his mental rumblings. “Where are you? You gonna pick that up?”
Harry sneered and picked up. “Hey Luce, what’s up?”
Mason made kissy-faces which forced Harry to salute him with a middle finger.
She asked, “How’s it going?”
“It’s going kinda rough right now. It’s like bedlam, and we’re about to get a cold one.”
“I know, I know. We’ve got tons of new evidence to process. I don’t remember it ever being this bad.” Lucy’s pause shifted Harry’s attention away from Mason. Her tone was deceptively conversational. He had never known Lucy to waste time with small talk, but experience taught him not to push. She said, “I ran across a name and I thought I’d better ask you something.”
“Yes, Luce?”
Both men turned at the sound of the Lieutenant’s door slamming shut. The sound rose above the chaotic din and seemed to heighten an already tense atmosphere.
Lieutenant Ellen Casey zigzagged through the human congestion and toward them in incredibly high heeled shoes while wearing a mean look of determination. The ensuing jabber in the room hushed a few decibels as the lieutenant approached in her no-nonsense blue suit and go-to-hell attitude.
Ellen had a fondness for high-heeled shoes. Perhaps she wanted to appear taller than her natural height of five feet four, or maybe she loved showcasing her admirable legs which she did often by wearing very short, tight skirts.
Harry thought, if only she had given an iota of consideration to the rest of her appearance then maybe she wouldn’t appear so plain. Her smile, which she wasn’t apt to reveal, tended to be disarming. So rare was it that Harry assumed she was up to something whenever she did smile.
Her blue eyes were always just shy of calculating, as if she looked at situations from an enlightened angle, which Harry guessed was easy for her since she was the one who called all the shots. Her skin was weathered, clear evidence of too much youthful sunbathing, and her hair was cut short and poorly trimmed. It looked as if someone had used a weedwacker on it.
She seemed to zero in on them with the single-minded focus of a hungry shark. Harry respected her leadership despite her cold-bloodedness. Ellen was politically savvy. The new snatch case might be very high-profiled and that would be a good reason to close it up as a fast win.
Ellen handed Harry a flimsy file. Her perfume was more subtle than the expression on her face. Obviously, she wanted a conversation.
Harry said, “Hey Luce, I gotta call you back,” and hung up quickly. “Yeah, boss?”
Her tone was abrupt. “No eyewitnesses. One parent. No reported trouble at home or at school. Here’s the problem, aside from a lack of evidence, mom is going to hold a press conference,” Ellen consulted her watch, “in twenty minutes. The dumbass is going to offer a reward. Now, I’m not against grieving relatives offering money, but not this early in the game. She could at least wait to see if she would get a ransom call.”
She looked around the room, “If you think it’s bad now just wait until she makes the announcement. Listen, I’ve got tired detectives burning me in effigy. You two probably already joined the fracas. Be mad, but I need you guys on this one.”
Harry heard the plea, but recognized it as a demand. “You look like you can use some help right here.”
Ellen was dismissive. “I need you two to ask the mom nicely if she will submit to a polygraph. The dad is listed as deceased. See if you can get some background on his folks. See if there’s any friction between the mom and his relatives for custody. You know the drill. Look at home first and then fan out. Talk to the neighbors, the boy’s teachers, and see if the little guy has any friends. Like I said, you know the drill.”
Harry picked up the file and flicked through the pages. “Ain’t much in here either? The crime scene was processed, right?”
“Kinda. CSU got there before the snow, not that it mattered. The school is in old Church Hill. Cobblestone streets. No tire impressions. No cameras. Forensics did find the boy’s eyeglasses and they dusted up a partial print. They’re running it through AFIS, but that’s all we’ve got. Not sure if they got enough for DNA.”
Mason asked, “We got this report mighty quick?”
Ellen retorted, “I don’t like your implication. We do this for all tender ages. And you know that the longer it takes to solve this case the more likely we’re gonna end up searching for a body. Right? Was this random? Find out and tell me.”
She concentrated her cold stare on Mason. “You’re going to cause me pain too, Epps? I know the Tolliver case left a bad taste. But you two are working with Tommy and Ethan. I’m not taking this case from them. I need teamwork and a rescue. Not a body recovery. You understand? Teamwork.”
Harry’s guts spun like the pencil he twirled. His headache had him biting down on bile. He wished he could disappear into the wall like a shadow, then grimaced at the very thought.
She repeated, a little louder. “So let’s get to it, guys.”
Mason asked, “Hey Lieutenant, just what the hell is going on here?”
Ellen shook her head. “Attitude? Maybe a little insubordination?”
Mason chuckled. “No, I mean around here?” He gestured with his thumb around the squad room. “Looks like more than attitude. The city’s acting like a backed up toilet spreading shit everywhere.”
Ellen shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on. Seems like everybody who committed the perfect felony decided that chicken soup and confession is good for the soul. I’m hearing crimes so cold they happened when my mom was getting ready for her prom.”
After looking around, Ellen huddled in and whispered, “Stay off the radio on this one. Use the cell. We don’t want to feed the media any more than we have to.”
With her load lightened, she strutted back to her office at a decidedly slower pace and slammed the door shut.
The case was theirs after all.
With coffee cup in hand, Harry shuddered. He dropped his head and froze his stare on the name under the face, Victor Adamson. The kid looked like he was loved. He looked like…
The lights suddenly went out. There was a hiss as the power tried to kick back on, but everything ultimately went dark and eerily quiet.
Harry lost the sensation of time passing. It seemed he sat in darkness for eons.
The squad room grew cold, like a tomb.
He expected an uptick in the chaos, but not the silence as a dankness enveloped him until he felt swallowed by the universe. The only thing he could hear was his heartbeats as it sounded off his terror. In slow motion, and as the chills passed through him, his hand instinctively went to the place where his holster used to nestle. Feeling the emptiness, he remembered that he had locked up his gear.
Before he could feel for his desk key, the wind suddenly cried and it had an unnaturally feminine quality. It sounded like a horrified woman’s shriek.
Harry couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Where was sound? He thought a word…a name and then there was another hum. The lights flickered on. But the silence prevailed. Goosebumps rattled up his arms.
Sweat trickled down the sides of his face. Although he remained stone-faced, Harry was shocked by their unified proximity. How had they moved so fast?
The nearly forty alleged robbers, rapists and murderers, stood slack-faced directly behind Mason in a crowded semi-circle. They were mostly men, mostly middle-aged, and oddly diverse.
Harry held onto his composure, keenly aware of his vulnerability.
Mason spun around, “What the hell?”
Harry saw that he was the center of their collective universe. What he sensed from them was universal yearning. He felt like food, like if they had a chance to tear him into pieces and eat the bits raw, they would do it.
Mason stood up and pushed a guy. “Back the fuck up!”
Detectives, who apparently had also been caught unaware by the concerted stealthy movements of their perps, began hustling them back to their seats for more
questioning. Slowly at first, the chatter and chaos resumed. Harry forced himself out of his stupor. He was aware that he was battling more than confusion, he nursed a bad feeling.
Harry hooked Frank’s perp before he had a chance to cart the man back to his desk. Harry asked Mr. Accountant, “Why were you staring at me like that? Did we meet ten years ago?”
The self-proclaimed murderer dropped his head. He bristled and then tried to squirm away. Frank about-faced him again, and asked, “If you got something to say, then say it?”
The guy sounded incredulous. “You don’t know?”
Mason heard enough to chime in, “We don’t know what?”
He gave a silent what-the-fuck shrug of his shoulders before he said, “She knows you’re going to be looking for that boy. She keeps feeling different. When she found me the first time, I couldn’t make her go away. I think she does it like you guys, only better because she can get in your head. She flips through your memories like cards. She digs and she digs. I tried, but I couldn’t make her go away.”
He looked around and started to whisper as if relaying a classified secret, “She gets in your head cuz she’s looking for him, she’s showing you all about him at the same time she’s torturing you too.”
Frank asked, “Who is she? You’re not making sense.”
Mr. Accountant teared up. “I can’t tell. I don’t think she wants me to. She took me to that place again. I couldn’t stop seeing myself chopping her up…I couldn’t stop it. She said that she was going to keep punishing me unless I turned myself in.”
Frank’s exasperated sigh hinted at intolerance.
Mason smirked. “Do you wear tinfoil on your head too? When are the aliens coming?”
But Harry couldn’t remove it; the sinister undercurrent that threaded through the squad room, bolstered by the nearly unbearable banshee-like sound that howled in from the outside.
Harry flashbacked to how the douchebags, just moments ago, had crept up behind Mason en masse, and with no thought to escape, only to surround his desk.
Mason prodded his partner. “C’mon, we need to get going. Press conference? Remember?”
Harry grabbed his gear from his desk drawer and packed it on, then he picked up his overcoat from the seat next to his desk and slid into it. He had hoped he would feel better once they left the precinct, but seeing all that snow set his teeth on edge, both figuratively and literally. Another few inches had piled up since they’d brought in Jerome Bryant.
The violent wind blew into his ears. He raised his coat collar, a meaningless act considering the ferocity, and stared out at the pristine landscape. It should’ve felt festive this deep into the holiday season, but it didn’t. Maybe he was meandering into lunacy, but he sensed there was something hidden in the atmosphere and that it was using the snow as cover.
As they approached their vehicle, Harry tried to smother his apprehension. No matter how hard he attempted, he couldn’t swallow down the anxiety that lodged in the back of his throat. He was knew fear. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
He was reacquainted with it each time he lost sight of his partner in a dangerous situation, or when some loon completely torqued off before he could get the cuffs on him, but this was different than wondering if the freak behind the door he was pounding had a gun.
This new fear had two edges, either he was going nuts or there was something weird going on out there in the snow-covered metro area.
They sat in the parked SUV, in an unaccustomed silence, as the heater obliterated the cold. Finally, Mason said, “I think your problem is that you need to get laid. I mean, you could use some trim to ease your way out of that scrotum bind.”
As an afterthought, he added, “Hell, with the hours Tracy’s been putting in at the hospital, I could use a little trim myself. I keep wondering when she’s going to doctor me? Physician, heal your husband! Shit!”
Harry said, “Maybe it ain’t so bad being asexual.”
Mason retorted, “I would use palm oil before I would even think about being one of those things.” He chuckled as he started the truck and then sped on the freshly plowed streets like a NASCAR driver giddy on gas fumes.
Again Harry noticed how the righteous snowfall failed to lure kids outside to play. The blizzard did look brutal. Not one living thing seemed to be out in it, except for them. Harry was reminded of his strange feelings while at Centerfield.
As they closed in on their destination, he saw there was more activity. There were cars, news vans from each of the local networks, and amazingly a rather large crowd of onlookers huddled together at the podium.
Mason wrangled the truck close to a curb.
Harry saw that for some irrational reason, the press conference was being staged outside the parochial school. He stepped out of the toasty interior and sank into crunchy snow. He cringed as snow crawled into his shoes, soaked his trousers and even iced-over the remnants of his good nature.
Miffed, he said, “This ain’t happening. I’ve got to change clothes if the lieutenant wants me to do some serious legwork tonight.”
Mason said, “Well, to do some serious legwork, we need to have some leads. Let’s meet up with the gruesome twosome first.”
The fifty odd onlookers were cordoned off by sawhorses and policemen. A bank of microphones was secured to the podium. The scene full of cameramen and reporters, caused Harry to momentarily flashback to the Thad Tolliver case.
In his mind’s eye, Harry could still see Thad’s parents holding onto each other for support, and weeping while they appealed for his safe return.
Harry warned himself, This ain’t the Tolliver case.
No, he thought, this could be worse. Part of his reasoning was the crowd’s reaction. Their collective behavior was unnatural and quiet. He was beginning to hate that word, quiet.
The onlookers were soundless. They didn’t share even a murmur. Their united appearance disturbed him, but not as much as their silence. They appeared as captivated as the group in the precinct, but there wasn’t an inkling of hungry hatred; only a look of anticipation, and a dull sort of cult-like adoration in their eyes.
He didn’t like that either.
A news woman was working the crowd. Her name was Poppy something. Her puzzlement was obvious. When Poppy approached the mayor, she was quickly turned away by a policeman. She leaned into a beefy Hispanic-looking guy holding up a huge camera like a cared for toddler and they whispered together.
Minutes before the conference began, a limousine crawled down the snow-covered street. The governor emerged from the limousine just as the police chief took the impromptu stage. The governor joined the mayor in a huddle.
Harry felt ambivalent. Would the appearance of the governor and police chief help or hurt their investigation? He knew the mom had juice, but he was afraid her friends would jam things up.
He crossed the street and took some shelter on the porch of a boarded up house that slanted toward collapse. From his vantage point, he had a good view of things. Plus he was out of the blizzard. He glanced at his watch. It was almost show time. Five minutes or less to hear her plea and then they could get out of the cold and begin their investigation in earnest.
Mason joined him on the porch. “I talked to Ethan. They’re going to wait until after the press conference to fill us in.”
Harry mumbled, “Who has a press conference during a fucking blizzard? Makes sense to you?” His partner looked neutered. “What’s pissing you off? Did Tommy say something or was it the chief?”
“No man, I’m good.”
But, clearly Mason wasn’t good. Harry decided for the second time that day not to push. He shivered as he waited, but mercifully he didn’t have to wait long. A woman in a long fur coat appeared from within the school and was helped to the podium.
“Jesus,” Harry muttered, without fully realizing that he was speaking. She didn’t look like a grieving mother; she was too composed and too well put together.
He had expected downcas
t eyes, sunken cheekbones and pinched in features from too much crying. In her sable coat, she appeared like a movie star readying for a Hollywood strut down the red carpet. The constant camera flashes certainly didn’t take away from his perception.
Harry gaped at her attractiveness. Tracy, Mason’s wife, was elegant, but stiff. This woman was, and he searched for the right word, sultry.
Perhaps it was the way her tears glossed over her pupils that made her eyes seem to sparkle. Or maybe it was how the camera lights shone on her flawless brown skin. Even her eyebrows were perfectly arched. She had a slightly upturned nose, and her full lips were as red as blood. He just knew that her dark hair, dotted with snowflakes, had the texture of satin.
The police chief helped her up on the makeshift riser before he climbed by her side. Immediately, he draped an arm around her in a manner that suggested familiarity. She leaned in close to the microphones as she stared unflinchingly into the cameras.
Harry dipped inside his coat, pulled out a slender pad with his notes from the file Lieutenant Casey had pushed on them. It was true there hadn’t been much information in them, but he read that Ms. Adamson was clean. There hadn’t been any infractions. Although his notes recorded that she was forty-two, she looked at least a decade younger.
She cleared her throat, the small sound echoed in the stillness, and she began her appeal for her son’s release. Her timid voice was devoid of emotion although the cadence of her speech was soothing, almost hypnotic.
Harry waited. He knew it was coming and braced himself.
She said, “I’m offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for my son’s safe return. No questions asked.”
Harry expected chatter among the onlookers, but there was none. Only the reporters seemed animated by the chunk of money offered. A few reporters updated their viewers and wondered out loud if the sizable reward would create false leads and possibly obstruct rescue efforts.
Harry wondered about that too. It would take manpower to sift through bogus leads to find a pearl. The department was already stretched thin trying to deal with the sudden influx of perps popping to cold cases. Who in the hell was left to man the tip line?
Stolen Prophet: A Horror Supernatural Thriller (The Prophet's Mother Book 1) Page 9
