The Basement

by Tom Clarke

Darrel took a breath and continued, “Well when I was in Seattle at that weird ass container massacre that’s what I did, I took photos of the crowd when no one was looking. I never really gave it much thought, but after we met with Cowley yesterday I got to thinking that all this shit is connected. So, this morning I went to my office and pulled the file up.”

  Darrel put several pictures on the table for Keith and I to look at. The first were scene photos of the killings, then of the container, and then the pictures of the crowd.

  “What am I looking at Darrel?” I asked.

  “Third row back, off to the right” he replied.

  “Oh my God!” I said.

  “What Jim, what am I looking at?” Keith said as he peered into the photos.

  I shuffled the picture over towards Keith and put my finger on the person in the crowd, it was Stevie. “I didn’t know Stevie was part of that investigation” Keith said.

  “He was not” Darrel replied. “I didn’t even know he was there until this morning when I took a good look at the crowd pictures.”

  I stood up from the table, “Darrel, listen bro, that does not prove anything” I said.

  Darrel replied, “Jim, I have talked about this case around Stevie before, he never said anything about being there.”

  “Wait, wait, wait just a second!” Keith said. “Stevie is our friend, what are we talking about here?”

  “Jimmy, Keith, I get it, he could have any number of reasons for not speaking up about being there, but listen, look at the picture, look close, at his face.”

  “Yeah, so, it’s Stevie” Keith said.

  “Now look at this picture” Darrel said as he pulled another photo from the file.

  My heart started racing and I got chills running through my body as I looked at the second picture which had been taken right after the first. It was Stevie, but his eyes were almost black and he had a smile on his face like an artist admiring a new piece of work.

  Darrel then produced a third picture taken of Stevie, it was taken as he had started to walk away.

  You could see Stevie’s back and shoulder as he turned and started to step away from the camera, but in the location where he had just been standing in the previous photo, was a dark shadow that seemed to almost be attached to Stevie. Then the fourth photo showing Stevie as he walked away, the shadow was gone.

  “I think I’m going to be sick” Keith said as he got up from the table.

  “Be cool brother” was all I could say. My mind was racing, trying to process all this, and it was not working very well.

  “Jim, when we did that deal with Desie over at Rockets the other day, I saw that fucking thing standing in the doorway to the club!” Darrel said.

  “What!” Keith replied.

  I looked up at Darrel, then over at Keith, “I saw it too, just before I dumped Desie on her ass.”

  Keith put both his hands on his head, “Darrel” he asked, “was that the possible second person that you guys were talking about on the radio?”

  “Yeah” Darrel replied. “I pointed it out to the rest of the cover team. The weird thing about it is that Stevie, he looked right at it and didn’t say a thing, he just radioed that we may have a second player. He never did say anything else about it” Darrel said.

  I looked up at Keith and Darrel, both of them had a look of almost panic on their faces. “Okay, what did the professor say about possessions, the length of time depends on the strength of the will power.”

  “Yes, he did” Darrel said, “and Stevie is a pretty strong-willed guy, I mean, don’t you think?”

  “Your damn right he is!” Keith said in a very confrontational tone.

  “Take it easy Keith” I said trying get everyone to dial back a notch or two.

  “Fuck easy Jim!” Keith barked. “I told you not to mess with this shit! I begged you to leave it alone, and now here we are doing what…accusing Stevie of being a demon!”

  “Listen fellas” Darrel started to say when he was interrupted by Keith, “No you listen Darrel, I’ve just about had it with...”

  “Hey!” I yelled, “You did say to leave it alone, if we had this shit would still be going on, only we would not know about it! Now whether you want to accept it or not we are dealing with some next level shit here, so you can either put your big boy pants on and get it together or not, it’s up to you!”

  Keith looked at me, shook his head, and put his hands back on his head while looking up at the ceiling. He walked in a circle for a few seconds, then looked back at Darrel and I and said, “Your right Jim, I’m sorry fellas this whole thing just has me freaked out, and not just this shit about Stevie. I mean I just met him for drinks the other night.”

  Keith stopped, I could see the wheels in his head turning, his eyes were darting around as though he was trying to figure something out.

  “What Keith?” Darrel asked, “What is it?”

  “Nothing” Keith replied, “what’s our next move?”

  I walked over and put my hand on Keith’s shoulder in an effort to reassure him, he looked at me, sighed and just shook his head.

  Keith took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Okay, that professor, he said that after a possession the person is going to be out of commission, right?”

  “That’s right” Darrel replied.

  Keith continued, “I’m going to give myself an ulcer by saying this but, what if Stevie was in Seattle, happened by the crime scene and this thing jumped him, possessed him and came back with him.”

  “But that would not explain this Ripper cat, or Darrel seeing that thing in the doorway to Rocket’s while Stevie was driving the jump out rig” I said.

  “Oh my God!” Darrel said, “there are two of these things running around?”

  “We don’t know that!” Keith replied in a very stern manner.

  “Come on Keith, what else could it be?” Darrel said standing up from the table. “I can’t think of another explanation!”

  “Okay, let’s just take a breath here” I said. “Darrel call your cousin, see if she has a weekend contact number for that Professor Cowley. I think we need to bring him in on this.”

  “Okay, I will give her a shout right now” Darrel answered as he walked out onto the front porch to make the call.

  As Darrel was calling his cousin Karen I poured Keith another cup of coffee, “Keith, one of the things we talked about the other day was dismantling this things support structure. If there are two of them, and I’m not saying that there are, but if there is I think we need to make this happen sooner than later.”

  Keith replied, “I would agree with you on that!”

  Keith then sat down, put his head in his hands and said, “Jim, if Stevie is compromised we are going to have some issues, I mean he knows us, our tactics, equipment, all that stuff.”

  “I know brother, we will cross that bridge when we get to it I guess” I said as I sat down across the table from Keith. We didn’t not say a word, but we both were thinking the same thing, this shit was getting bad and had the potential to go south in a real hurry.

  Darrel walked back into the kitchen, “Jim I talked to Cowley, he sounded pretty spooked when I told him that there may be a second one of these things in play. He agreed to meet us at 12:30 at his office.”

  “Good” I replied, “with a little luck he has picked up another bottle of that Scotch.”

  Darrel and Keith both let out a slight laugh and a smile, “Yeah, I could use one” Keith said.

  I leaned forward and said in a serious tone, “Listen boys, when I shot that cat in the basement yesterday he took several rifle rounds to the chest. It wasn’t until I hit him in the forehead that he went down, he was motivated!”

  “Your damn right he was” Darrel said.

  “My point is that these fuckers are dangerous! That dude had a big ass knife and was going for Danny, a uniformed copper, and anyone who got in his way!”

  “Let’s all make damn sure that we don’t leave the house witho
ut a gun and an extra magazine.”

  I looked at the table for a second and then said, “Keith, might not be a bad idea if we started carrying our tactical bags in our cars too. That way we got some body armor, M-4, and our other gear just in case.”

  “Damn right!” Keith said. “Jim, what are we going to tell Rick?”

  “The same thing I told the shooting investigators yesterday, Darrel and I stumbled onto an occult inspired link between the Seattle killings and our guys here.”

  Keith reluctantly shook his head, “Sounds good, what do we say about Stevie?”

  “Nothing yet” I said.

  “But we need to remember that until we KNOW that he is, or is not, one of those things, fellas, he’s our friend, but he’s also dangerous.”

  The mood in the room got heavy, “We need to make sure that none of us are alone with him and we need to do our best to keep him out of any operations involving these jokers….agreed?” Both Darrel and Keith shook their heads in agreement.

  Looking at Keith and Darrel I knew that they were felling the same thing I was. My heart was heavy, Stevie was a good guy, a great agent, and a friend. I had known officers that, for one reason or another, had gone bad over the years, but at the end of the day they were still them and not some freaky ass demon.

  I started thinking back to what a crusty old veteran officer told me one time; “You can only walk in the mud for so long before your shoes get ruined, some guys just can’t handle the mud.”

  It was true. I had seen good officers go bad because they lost their way, or just could not find a way to deal with the stresses that come with a career in law enforcement.

  But this, this was different, this thing had come in and stolen our friend, stolen a good cop and a good person.

  I was pissed, grinding my teeth and shaking my head, that’s when Shelly walked into the kitchen. She had been in the other room listening to our entire conversation. “Okay” she said with a serious tone of authority. “You three assholes are coming to church with me tomorrow and that is final!”

  Shelly then turned and walked back out of the kitchen. I looked at Keith and Darrel, Keith started ask if she was serious. I put my hand up and said “Bro, better dust off your nice jacket, looks like we are going to church in the morning.”

  The three of us decided to just hang out at my place until it was time to go and meet with Professor Cowley. We spent the rest of the morning trying to reestablish a sense of normality into our lives by doing what cops do best, telling each other war stories, having some more coffee and, at least in my house, watching some hockey.

  The reality of it was that the three of us were all a bit freaked out by what we had become involved in.

  In our day-to-day operations, we knew who to make the moves on to get the job done. This, we had no idea how to proceed, and it was scary. Being together helped to ease the fear.

  7. Escalation

  At about noon we all jumped into Darrel’s SUV and headed to the university to meet with Cowley. “Hey Darrel, is your cousin going to be there?” Keith asked.

  Darrel looked him right in the eyes and said “No, she will not.” “Too bad” Keith answered with a snicker in his voice; I could see Darrel crack a smile.

  As we were pulling into the parking lot of Cowley’s building I got a call on my cell phone, “Hello” I answered. “Hey bro what’s going on, right, right….wait, say that again! Okay thanks man, I’ll call you later.” I hung up the call,

  “Fellas that was Tim Johnson over at the PD, he is the traffic officer working on reconstructing the damage to Danny’s car.”

  “Hey I know Tim, we were in the academy together” Keith said, “What’s the news?”

  “They were able to pull the video from his dash camera” I continued. “He was running code, but there was no radio traffic with dispatch. He was rolling into the driveway of Hollow Crest when Tim says that it looked like he rammed something in the driveway. He also said that they couldn’t see what it was because the camera started going a little goofy right before impact. He said they did see the shadow of whatever it was that he hit with his car though.”

  That familiar chill I had been feeling all too often the past several days was back, and I could tell that it was all over Darrel and Keith too.

  After taking a second I continued, “Anyway, whatever he hit is what caused the front-end damage and the airbag deployment. They sprayed Luminal on the front of his car to look for blood or other evidence and when they turned the shop lights out and hit it with the blue light they could see what he described as large paw prints on the hood and roof.”

  Darrel and Keith just looked at me, neither of them saying a word. “Tim says that Danny’s seat belt was cut, so they are thinking that after the collision Danny was incapacitated and someone cut his belt and removed him from the car.”

  I took a deep breath and continued with the chill in my bones getting colder by the moment, “Tim says that he spoke with the homicide guys that were there and they only found two sets of foot impressions right outside of the driver’s door of Danny’s car. One set were regular impressions left by me when I got his rifle out of the car, the other appeared to be drag marks left by Danny’s feet as he was pulled from the car, and then what Tim described as scuff marks where Danny was resisting being pulled. It was right by those marks that they collected the shell casings.”

  All three of us just sat there for a moment, and then Darrel said, “So, for whatever reason Danny is running with his emergency lights on, driving to that Hollow Crest address. He arrives, sees something in the driveway, and then rams it with his patrol car.” “Then something with, according to the traffic guy, large paws, jumps all over his car? Someone then cuts him out of his seat belt and drags him out of the car, but leaves no visible prints in the dirt. At that time Danny probably comes to and starts to resist, draws his handgun and starts shooting.”

  “That’s what I took away from that conversation” I replied.

  “Okay” Keith said, “I’m going to need a minute before we go talk to this professor.” All three of us got out of Darrel’s SUV and just kind of stood there for a minute doing our best to collect and refocus our thoughts.

  What the fuck! thought. I knew Danny, we had been on SWAT together, he was as rock solid as they come. I mean he must have had a damn good reason for running code up to that house with no radio communication to dispatch. And then to ram something, on purpose, in the driveway only to be dragged out of his car and then start shooting?

  It didn’t make any sense, none of this made any sense. I thought that I had a good handle on what the world was, 20-years as a police officer had given me the opportunity to see, what I thought, was just about everything that man had to offer both good and bad.

  But this shit? I was having the hardest time wrapping my head around it. I looked over at Darrel and Keith, the expressions on their faces told me that they were having the same internal struggle that I was, trying to take what it was that we were experiencing and make it fit into the world as we knew it. A world that seemed to be getting weirder and weirder by the day.

  “Come on boys, let’s go see what the Professor’s got for us” I said. Neither Darrel nor Keith said a word, the three of us just walked into the building and down to Professor Cowley’s office.

  When we got to the Professor’s office the door was locked so Darrel knocked, “Who is it!” the Professor yelled from inside his office.

  “It’s us Professor” Darrel barked back, I could then hear what sounded like the professor moving furniture away from the door to his office, then the door cracked and Cowley took a look out at us, he sighed in relief, opened the door, and let us in.

  When we walked into Cowley’s office I could see that he was packing up papers and stuffing his personal items into a suitcase and a couple of duffle bags. “What’s going on Professor?” I asked.

  “Who’s that?” Cowley asked in a very suspicious tone pointing at Keith.

>   I looked at Keith who gave a slight shoulder shrug, “That’s my partner Keith….so what’s with the boxes?”

  “Jim, I will tell you what’s going on, I am leaving! That’s what’s going on, and I would advise you three to do the same!”

  “Slow down Professor” Darrel said, “why are you leaving? What’s going on?”

  Professor Cowley grabbed a newspaper off of his desk and threw it at Darrel, “Have you seen todays paper?” Cowley asked. Darrel opened the paper to the front page, I could see his expression change to one of confusion as he started to read.

  “Looks like there have been 10 suicides since Wednesday” Darrel said as he continued to read.

  “What, 10?” Keith asked as he walked deeper into the room towards Darrel.

  “Yeah, says here there have been 10 apparent suicides in the last three days, two on Wednesday, three on Thursday, and five on Friday.”