by Grant Pies
“It’s not the truth. It’s a fucking story, nothing more. So, get it over with. We’re here, sitting around the campfire. So fucking talk. And maybe, maybe, I’ll let him come back here with your precious meds.” Sam pushed off Dennis’s chair and stepped away. “Talk! Or so help me God, I will beat the shit out of you right here! And what they’ve already done to you will feel like a light massage compared to what I’ll do!” Sam said through clenched teeth and walked back to the corner of the room.
This was an anger Carter had seen building in him, an anger he knew he should be on the receiving end of. For not listening to Sam, for not taking him seriously, for putting him in danger.
There was a brief moment where no one talked. Carter wondered where to pick up. Ask about the medications? Or who wanted Dennis to look after Rose? Or should he just stay quiet and let Dennis talk?
“I – I was fired,” Dennis started. “At the last school I taught at. There were accusations from a student.”
“Big fucking surprise,” Sam muttered.
Dennis looked at Sam for the first time. “It was a misunderstanding.”
“Yeah, you misunderstood what age of consent meant,” Sam said.
“Okay, okay,” Carter said. “And…”
“No one would hire me after that. I was blacklisted.” Dennis’s eyes watered. “I – I couldn’t make a living. No one wanted anything to do with me. Not even my family.”
“Boo hoo,” Sam said under his breath.
“You lost your livelihood. I’m sure that was tough,” Carter said. They hadn’t discussed playing good cop bad cop, but he figured he would run with whatever Sam was doing.
“I lost everything. I was living in my car for Christ’s sake.” Carter nodded, trying to contort his face into some expression of sympathy. “So, I drank … a lot. So much so that I ruined my liver. In a matter of two years, I was all but sentenced to death.”
The air conditioning hummed through the vent on the ceiling. Somewhere in the distance, doors rattled and electronic locks buzzed. Some crazed person, likely high on crystal meth, kept screeching in his lone holding cell.
“My only hope was a transplant. Without one, they gave me one year, but I saw on their faces it was less. Much less. I know how long those transplant lists are. I knew my odds of a match weren’t good. So, I was leaving the clinic one day, and a man approached me. Said he could help.”
“Help? How?”
“He said he could get me to the top of the transplant list. He knew people at UNOS. He said he also had connections at St. Mary’s. He could get me a job there. Make my past go away. In one week, I was scheduled for surgery.”
“That’s a lot of connections for one guy to have.” Carter was skeptical, but he just wanted Orcheck to keep talking.
Sam held his arms out. “You’re not buying this shit?”
Carter ignored him. “So, you accepted his help? What did that cost you?”
“It was free … charity.”
“C’mon, even I’m not buying that.” Carter narrowed his gaze.
“Last year.” Dennis nodded. “They wanted me to watch Rose. She had just started at St. Mary as a freshman.”
“Watch Rose? What does that mean?”
“Keep an eye on her. Befriend her. It’s like they were worried about her, wanted her to be safe and fit in.”
“You didn’t think that was a strange request?” Carter asked.
“I thought maybe a distant relative or something was behind it. Like a rich uncle who wanted her to be safe and happy. They made sure she was in my class. They put me in charge of any clubs she might be interested in.”
“But you got too close, didn’t you? You weren’t supposed to do that. Not supposed to get her pregnant.”
Sam shook his head and laughed. “Carter! Do you hear yourself?” He pushed off the wall and stepped forward. “So, let me get this straight. They give you—an alcoholic pedophile knocking on death’s door—a new liver and a new job. And in exchange you only had to be in charge of a fucking photography club? C’mon, Carter. I know you want to solve this, but even you can’t be buying this stuff.”
“It’s true!” Dennis insisted.
“You thought they wanted Rose to be safe?” Sam asked. “They have the means to make your shady past go away, to put you on the top of a transplant list, but these mysterious good Samaritans are dumb enough to put someone like you in charge of watching over a teenage girl? Give me a fucking break!”
“How long ago?” Carter asked. Orcheck was talking and that was all that mattered. Maybe he was lying. Maybe only ten percent of his story was true, but it was more than Carter had moments ago. “How long ago did you have the transplant?”
“Two years.”
“And that’s when they got you the job at St. Mary’s?”
“Yeah.” Dennis nodded. Carter jotted a rough timeline in his notepad.
“Who are they?” Carter asked. “Where are they located?”
Shaking his head, Dennis said, “I don’t know. They said the clinic they ran was closed down or something six months after my surgery, so they came to me for all of the follow-up appointments. They were building a new place. Somewhere in the city. State-of-the-art, they said.”
“Let me guess, you never saw the new place?” Sam said.
Dennis ignored Sam. “They gave me antirejection meds each visit.” He looked at Carter. “You have to get them. There’s a three-month supply in my refrigerator. Please.”
Carter thought back to his brief search through Dennis’ house. The refrigerator, he recalled was filled with beer and bottled water. But on the top shelf was a vial of medicine. At the time Carter assumed it was a tranquilizer used on Rose, but perhaps it wasn’t. A touch of truth in a sea of fantasy. Carter rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, trying to recall the name of the medicine.
“Without the medicine, I will die,” Dennis said, his eyes red and watery. “Please.”
“What about James Miller?” Carter ignored Dennis’ plea and changed subjects, hoping to catch some glimpse of something on Orcheck’s face, but all he saw was confusion.
“Who?” he asked, scrunching his face together.
“Miller, James. Sound familiar? Was he the man who approached you?”
“No,” Dennis said. “Look, my meds. I need my meds. I’ve told you what you wanted to know.” He swallowed deep, struggling like something was stuck in his throat.
“You told us a story, nothing else,” Sam said, checking his watch. “Time’s just about up.” He tapped his wrist. “Waste of fucking time.”
“I told you what I know!” Dennis said, his face growing even more red underneath his swollen wounds.
“What you know is nothing!” Sam shouted. “You told us everything while telling us nothing at all. You think you invented that tactic? You spin some yarn about a person who just wanted to help out an accused pedophile? Come fucking on! How stupid do you think we are?”
Looking down at his stomach, Dennis said, “Here, check. Open my jumpsuit. You think I’m lying? Check the scar.”
Carter stood slowly and looked back at Sam, who shrugged and threw his hands in the air. Carter pulled open Dennis’ jumpsuit. His body was bruised, his gunshot wound bandaged but bloody.
“Down there,” Dennis said.
Carter pulled the clothing away from Dennis’ body to reveal a long scar stretching across his stomach.
Nodding and looking back at Sam, Carter said, “Yeah, it’s there.”
“Psssh.” Sam shook his head. “So, the guy’s got a scar. Big fucking deal.” Pulling his shirt up slightly and turning around to show a scar on his back, Sam said, “I got scars too, doesn’t mean I was given a fucking kidney. This is such bullshit, Carter. We are wasting time here.” He looked at Dennis. “Maybe you don’t deserve your meds. Maybe you should die. You ever thought of that? Hm? Your fairytale story still doesn’t explain away you getting a fifteen-year-old pregnant. Or was she fourteen when you d
id that?”
“Please.” Dennis ignored Sam and looked at Carter. “My medicine.”
Carter glanced at the time. “What about Bridgeport Cryobank? Ever heard of them? Ever been there? Or BioLife?” From the corner of his eye, he could see Sam shaking his head in disapproval. “Bridgeport – no, I, uh, cryobank, like a sperm bank?” Orcheck asked. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“When’s the last time you talked to Rose?” Carter asked.
“A couple days before she went missing. I mean I saw her in school, but we didn’t talk really. Not talk talk.”
“What was she like? Was she worried about the pregnancy? Happy? Stressed? Angry? Did she want to run away?”
“She – she—” Dennis looked up, surely picturing his last encounter with Rose. “She was nervous, I guess. Nervous and afraid her dad would find out about the pregnancy. She wanted to stay at my place, but I wouldn’t let her. Too risky I told her.”
“What else?”
“She thought her dad knew about us. She was dead set on it. She told me to be careful. That he would kill me if he found out about us. Told me her dad’s friend was following her around after school. She was scared of him.”
“She was scared of her dad or the friend?”
“Both. I don’t know who he was. Some guy her dad worked with.”
“Roy?” Carter asked.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
Carter looked down at his watch. Only a couple minutes more. He was already thinking of how they could buy more time.
“She said this guy was following her. She figured her dad must have sent him since she would have noticed her dad’s car. But this guy had a van. She said she always saw him around. Parked across the street or something.”
“You ever see him?” Carter asked.
Shaking his head, Dennis said, “No, but I saw the van. The day before Rose went missing. Outside my house. Dark. Windows tinted. I see why she would be freaked out.”
“The van.” Carter reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “It was just a plain van? No markings?” Dennis nodded rapidly. “Did it look like this?” Carter flipped through pictures on his phone until he got to the picture of the van from MKZ Distributions.
“That’s Kingsley’s guy,” Sam said to Carter. “He has nothing to do with this.”
Carter turned to look at Sam. “I know, I just want to know if it was a van like this. Not a minivan, or camper van.” He turned back to Orcheck.
“Yeah,” Orcheck said. “It was that type of van, but no business name on it. And not black like this. It was a dark blue. Almost black, but blue if you looked really closely.” He reached his shackled fingers out and swiped through Carter’s pictures. Back a couple. “That’s it!” He tapped his fingers against the phone. “That one!”
Carter saw the first pictures he took of the van following him at Bridgeport Cryobank days ago. Until now he’d thought this was the same van as the MZK Distributions van.
“That’s the same—"
“No,” Orcheck said. “The other was black. That one’s blue, like the one outside my house.”
Squinting at the picture, Carter said, “Fuck me, you’re right.” He quickly flipped back and forth between the two pictures. One was a dark midnight blue van, and the other was a black van with the MKZ Distributions logo on the side. Sam stepped forward, grabbed Carter’s phone and flipped through the pictures just as the door opened and Detective Shaker stood in the doorway.
“Time’s up. Let’s go.” He flicked his fingers towards the door.
“You gotta believe me,” Orcheck said. “I didn’t do anything. Please, you have to help. My medicine. Please.”
“I’ll do my best,” Carter said.
He turned sideways, squeezing past Shaker in the doorway. He and Sam walked down the hall and left the police station out the back.
“You can’t be serious?” Sam asked as they walked away from the station. “You’re going to try to help that man?”
“It’s just something you say. I haven’t really given it any thought.”
“I gave it about as much thought as anyone should, maybe one second, and decided that man should die in jail,” Sam said. “And his story. What a crock!”
The humid air wrapped around Carter like an unwanted blanket. “I don’t know,” he said. “He did have meds in his fridge. He had a scar. And what about the van? He said the same van that followed me at Bridgeport was parked outside his house the day before Rose goes missing?”
“No, he said a van like that one was parked outside of his house. You’re naïve,” Sam said, shoving a new cigarette in his mouth. “People will say anything when they’re out of options. He’s had days to figure out this story.”
“But he told us,” Carter said. “Not the cops. Us. What good does that do?”
“It gets him his meds, I suppose, if that’s even true.” Sam cupped his hands around his cigarette and lit it. “Like I said in there” —Sam talked through pinched lips around his cigarette— “why on God’s green earth would a person who cared about Rose’s safety put someone they knew preyed on kids in a position to get close to her? Makes no sense.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve got a point.”
“Finally! Am I getting through to you? It’s a ridiculous story!”
“But maybe that’s just it,” Carter said. “Maybe they needed Orcheck to get close to her. Maybe they were counting on him to do something inappropriate. That would make him the perfect fall guy for when she goes missing.”
“Fuck.” Sam sighed. “Now you’re really overthinking this. Simplest solution is the most likely.”
“And what about Detective Shaker? What did he mean when he mentioned Orcheck’s pictures?”
“What? Pictures?” Sam squinted and wrinkled his brow.
“Yeah he said we should have seen the pics Orcheck had.”
“Okay…”
“I kept the memory card, remember? The cops never saw those pictures. But when we got to the station, Shaker mentions the pictures. The entire time we were questioning Orcheck, it’s like a hot coal burning through the back of my mind. The cops never saw those pictures.”
“Yeah, they didn’t see those pictures. You saw for yourself how many other pictures he had in his creepy shed dark room.”
But Carter was staring off, thinking about what Shaker could have meant.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Sam snapped him out of his daydream. “You’re telling me that you believe what Orcheck, the pedophile, said, but you’re skeptical of Detective Shaker? What the hell, Carter! You’re taking this thing against cops way too far. Way too far. You’re delusional! We are done with this! From the outset, you’ve taken the opposite stance from me. I say Rose is dead, you say she’s not. I say leave her parents out of this, you want to give them an update every hour. I say we should walk away, you rob a fucking sperm bank! Now you’re putting us in debt to a Russian mobster and siding with pedophiles!
“It’s like you have something to prove, like if you find Rose it’ll prove Leland wasn’t just a nutcase with a brain tumor! I think deep down, you want her to be dead, so you can show everyone Leland was right and the cops were wrong. But you can’t let it go with just the implication that she died. You have to march out another body for the press to see.
“I’m beginning to wonder why you even hired me. You know only one of us was ever an actual detective.” Sam pointed his finger at his chest. “I’m beginning to think you only hired me to make yourself feel better. Give you someone to look down on. I’m sick of being treated like some charity case that’s got nothing to offer! You’re not doing me any favors.”
“Give me a break!” Carter snapped. “Enough with the real detective bullshit! You can’t go one day without letting out some underhanded dig about how you worked as a detective, like I couldn’t cut it at the CPD. You ever think maybe I didn’t want to work as a ‘real’ detective?”
“You’d rather trash-talk cops so you can pr
etend it’s some choice of yours,” Sam said. “It’s just like your family – you talk about them like you escaped some oppressive cult, but I don’t see any of them chasing you to Chicago to beg you to come back! You ever wonder why your mom never asked you to come home? Huh? Maybe she’s glad you left! Maybe she’s happy to be rid of your self-righteous, know-it-all attitude!”
“Well, if you don’t want me to look at you like a charity case then stop coming off as so goddamn needy!” Carter said. “And while you’re at it, why not act, just try and act, like you give a shit about this case! I’m practically dragging you to each new lead. You had this case closed since Claire and Robert stepped in our office. Dead! That’s all you can say about Rose. That’s all you can offer. And now we’re faced with a new set of facts and you want to just ignore them.”
“New set of facts! Psssh. That’s what you call his story?” Sam shook his head. “The fact that you believe that pedophile is proof of how desperate you are to prove me wrong—not find Rose, but prove me wrong!”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. Sorry if I hold myself to a little higher standard than you. I actually want to solve something, not just do the bare minimum so we can collect our money and go. That’s the difference between you and me.”
“No, the real difference between us is I know where Rose’s case is going to end up. I may not know how it’s gonna get there, or when, but I know the end. And I want to save everyone else the pain of the journey. You’d rather drag this out just so you can feel like a real detective!”
“Fuck you,” Carter said.
“No, fuck you.” Sam flicked his cigarette at Carter, hitting his chest. Ashes scattered in the air. “I’m going for a walk. Don’t follow me.”
Long Lost Father
Carter stood on the sidewalk, the L rattling overhead, watching Sam disappear into the crowd on the street.
While waiting for the next train, he stared at his phone. The picture of the dark blue van on his cracked screen mocked him. If Jason Grimes wasn’t the one outside the Bridgeport Cryobank, then who? And why? How many people have been following us?
