Chalk Man

by Tony Faggioli

  “And I confirmed it,” Lieutenant Sparks said in a grim voice.

  They all shifted their attention her way as she continued. “I was privy to some of Detective Murillo’s information today ahead of time, so I made a few calls to the Army District Office. They were none too happy to hear from me and tried to blow me off, but once I firmly expressed my displeasure that someone they trained possibly killed one of my detectives last night and almost killed one of my patrol officers while also taking potshots at a bunch of others? I was able to work my way up the chain of command and was eventually put in touch with someone in Washington, DC.”

  “Hmm,” the cap said, unlocking his fingers and putting his hands over his chest as he swiveled his chair to face her.

  “I got an apology and the word ‘confidential’ lobbed at me like a damned hand grenade a good half dozen times.”

  Parker pinched up his face but said nothing. It didn’t matter. Nothing was getting past the cap this morning. “What, Parker?”

  Parker shook his head and shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  Lieutenant Sparks was no less interested. “Spit it out.”

  “Murillo. Roland’s file? Does it say anything about him being in special forces.”

  “Nope. Regular army only.”

  Parker nodded. “I dunno. It’s possible. But for a regular army guy to be involved in anything that gets tagged confidential in the military? That’s rare. Very rare.”

  “Great. We’ll have to come back to that later,” the lieutenant said, before looking back to Murillo. “So, what happens after Roland comes home?”

  Murillo crossed his arms. “His girlfriend gets murdered.”

  Chapter 21

  The cap raised his eyebrows. “Murdered? Ya know, Murillo, you coulda led with that.”

  “I’ve been trying to get there as quick as I can,” Murillo said, his tone a little sharp with weariness. “Anyway. It appears that the girlfriend, one Rosa Alba, who immigrated here from Guatemala, had a husband she never told him about. She was here legally. The husband? Not so much. He was deported back to Guatemala about six months before she met Roland. The husband, one Domingo Montecito, got his paperwork straightened out and came back to New Mexico and took umbrage at his wife’s engagement to another man.”

  “Imagine that,” Campos said.

  “Evidently, from the arrest report, she told him it was over.”

  “Or, more likely, she never expected him to be able to come back.”

  “Possibly. Regardless, they had a few confrontations. Then? Montecito went away. Or so they thought. Three weeks later, he catches her coming out of 24 Hour Fitness, drags her behind a garbage bin, rapes her and then shoots her seven times with a 9 mm at point-blank range.”

  Klink let loose a strained whistle. “Up close and personal.”

  “Ain’t love grand,” the cap added.

  “But that’s still not the worst of it. Turns out, during the autopsy? She was two months pregnant with Roland’s kid.”

  The room grew quiet before Parker spoke up. “Did Roland know?”

  Murillo nodded. “For sure. Roland came back for the trial. Threw a punch at Montecito in the courtroom, during the arraignment. Bailiffs stopped it from getting worse.”

  “Was Roland charged for that?”

  “No. Because Roland was an emotional train wreck, the judge took pity, let him off with a warning and had him banned from the courthouse and any further part of the trial or proceedings. I called over to the courthouse and spoke to the judge. Montecito narrowly avoided the death penalty. Instead, he got first degree murder and twenty-five years with no possibility of parole. But that’s not what the judge remembered most.”

  Lieutenant Sparks was a diligent notetaker. Until now, she’d been diligently writing things on a white legal pad in long cursive. But now she looked up. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He said that Roland was . . . uh . . . chanting or something before and after he tried to assault Montecito.”

  “Chanting?”

  “Chanting what?” the lieutenant added, looking as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “Like a song or something?”

  “Yeah. Good guess. The judge said all he could make out was that it was in a foreign language and not Spanish, because he knows Spanish. He said it sounded more like a Native Indian type of song.”

  “What? Like a rain dance?” Klink said sarcastically.

  Even though they’d been separated for most of this case, there was no getting around the fact that Klink and Murillo were long-time partners. As such, they were like a married couple that could now communicate with only stern looks, and Murillo shot Klink one now that seemed to say “shut up” before he pushed on. “Anyway, whatever it was, it spooked Montecito, who was never the same afterwards.”

  The cap had picked a paper clip up off the table and was now moving it around between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “How so?”

  “He was sullen, withdrawn and detached from his own trial and defense. His attorney tried to make a push for mental impairment but that failed. At his sentencing?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He shrugged.”

  “Shrugged?”

  “Yep. And three months later . . .”

  “Here it comes,” Parker said.

  “They found him hanging in his cell in Fresno.”

  “So,” Klink said with a sigh, “He got the death penalty after all.”

  “It appears that way.”

  A department intern poked his head through the door, breaking the mood in the room. “Coffee or water, anyone?”

  Everyone wanted coffee except for Parker, who ordered water. Coffee in the afternoon made him fidgety.

  “What do we have on Roland?” the cap asked.

  “Well. No proof that he knew anyone on the inside, if that’s what you mean. After the trial, he disappeared. I spoke briefly with his parents this morning.”

  After Napoleon was done ghosting through their house, Parker thought.

  Murillo yawned, long and hard, and pushed on. “He went on a walk-about after that, to Guatemala, evidently to pay respects to his dead wife’s memory. His dad was happy about that because, according to the dad, Roland seemed . . . off . . . at Rosa’s funeral months before.”

  “Off?” Klink said.

  “Yeah. His word. Not mine. But Roland’s mom was on the call with me, too, and she agreed. She thinks it was because the funeral was poorly attended, but the dad thought it was more because of what he did after the funeral was over and after everyone had left.” Murillo uncrossed his arms and leaned against the wall next to the conference table, seemingly unsure of how to continue.

  Lieutenant Sparks was not a patient woman. “Well?!”

  “I dunno, guys,” Murillo said. “This is a weird one. Evidently, Roland stayed after the services to watch the backhoe fill in the grave. Then stayed to watch the groundskeepers at the cemetery shovel pack the grave and roll sod over the top of it. Even after his mom went to go sit in the car and his Dad told him it was time to go? He refused to leave. So? The dad goes to sit in the car, too, as it was getting cold. Finally, at sunset? He sees Roland pull out a bag of powder or something and sprinkle it all over the grave.”

  “Powder?”

  “Like what, flour?” Klink chimed in, a quizzical look on his face.

  Parker saw it coming a mile away before Murillo replied. “No. Chalk.”

  Still, he moved to confirm it. “How did his dad know it was chalk?”

  “Roland came back to the car, still in graveside shock or something, with the bag still in his hand. It was mostly empty, but there were still broken pieces of chalk sticks rattling around at the bottom.”

  “So . . . what? He ground down—”

  “Or pulverized—”

  “A bunch of chalk sticks?”

  Murillo shrugged. “Weird, huh?”

  The cap let out a sigh filled with frustration and then answered. “You could say that, yeah.”
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  “Weird enough for the dad to remember it all this time and . . .”

  Klink leaned back in his chair. “And?”

  “I dunno. It felt like he was getting something off his chest when he told me. Ya know? Like it’d been bothering him this whole time. He even hinted around the edges that he’d been worried about Alex’s mental state before the wife shushed him.”

  “They think he’s sick, maybe?”

  They have no idea.

  Parker followed the sound of his voice; Napoleon was back, tucked into the corner of the room. Parker glanced at him before he thought his reply. “Nice of you to return.”

  Yeah. Well. I think Murillo accomplished more than me while I was gone.

  “Yeah? How?”

  Let him finish.

  As if on cue, Murillo flipped some pages of his notes back and forth and then continued. “So, while you guys were all counting sheep,” he said, with a nervous, kidding smile at the lieutenant, “we were waking up Judge Harris and getting a warrant for Roland’s apartment.”

  “No! You went back in there?” Parker said, embarrassed a bit by the level of apprehension in his voice.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Lieutenant Sparks said.

  Parker shrugged off the question.

  “Okay. What’d you find?” the cap pushed on.

  “Ya know, besides evil spirits and goblins,” the lieutenant added sarcastically as she looked at Parker and smirked.

  “Can you do me a favor?” Parker asked Napoleon in his head.

  Their inner dialogue was always a trip. Usually clear, but with a hint of warble in the acoustics. What’s that? Napoleon replied.

  “Can you maybe pop up in this lady’s closet or something? Ya know, like an apparition, just briefly enough to scare the shit out of her?”

  No, Parker, Napoleon answered with a chuckle, I can’t do that.

  Parker tensed up. “Yeah . . . well.”

  Calm down, partner. You can’t blame her. Not everyone has your behind-the-scenes knowledge. And besides . . .

  “Besides, what?”

  Those that act the most like they don’t believe in the other side are usually the ones most afraid that they’re wrong.

  “Murillo? You good?” the cap asked suddenly.

  Parker realized that he’d phased out for a few seconds and missed Murillo’s current panic with his paperwork. Suddenly, a look of relief came over his face. “Yeah, Cap. Sorry. I just wanted to get this right. Okay. The apartment? As you might imagine, pretty sparse. A twin bed, a small dresser, a thirty-two-inch flat screen and”—he looked up at Parker—“an Xbox.”

  “Bingo!” Klink said.

  “You turn it on?” Parker asked.

  “You bet. We have our WillowWalker10.”

  The cap slapped his hand on the table. “There it is!”

  But Murillo did not look the least bit satisfied. Instead, he looked very uneasy.

  “What’s wrong?” Parker nudged.

  “Well, we also found an altar of some kind.” Then, incredibly, despite another nervous glance at the lieutenant, Murillo did the Catholic sign of the cross.

  Amen, Napoleon said softly.

  The lieutenant pretended like she didn’t see it. “An . . . altar?”

  “Yeah. He’d gutted a chinchilla. It was lying in a shallow bowl of its own blood. And it was an ornate kinda altar. It had a circular frame and a series of masks, drawn in chalk. I took a pic on my phone and scanned for it on Google Images.”

  “And?”

  “It’s some sort of Mayan mask.” Murillo flipped through his notes, and again Parker already knew what was coming. “Of some god named . . . Hunhau.”

  Not a god. A spirit, Napoleon said in Parker’s head.

  “Is there a difference?” Parker thought.

  There’s only one God, Parker.

  The room had grown briefly quiet before Klink broke it by clearing his throat. “Weird stuff.”

  Murillo looked at him and then to Parker. “And that’s not the weirdest. There’s . . . one more thing.”

  “Since you were already going in there, you did mop up on our mystery girl?”

  Murillo nodded.

  “You mean the one that attacked us?” Parker said.

  “Yeah.”

  The cap nodded. “She got lost in the shuffle after the sniper chaos and Ruiz’s death.”

  “Okay,” Parker said. “So . . . what’d you find?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Well . . . she doesn’t exist.”

  The cap looked at Lieutenant Sparks. She’d stopped taking notes and her face was frozen in concentration. “What do you mean?”

  Murillo seemed to steel himself before he replied, “Look. She’s not on the hotel register. We knocked and checked on every room. None of the guests saw her.”

  The lieutenant sighed. “You couldn’t pull a warrant on the whole floor! One of the guests could’ve been hiding her.”

  “That’s the thing, though,” Murillo said. “The floor was only half occupied, and all of those guests let us into their rooms voluntarily.”

  The cap raised his eyebrows. “Voluntarily? Really?”

  Murillo shrugged. “Well. We leaned a little, but no one really wants to get involved in an investigation of an assault on three police officers, especially the type of people that stay at The Clarke. They’ve got enough problems. And besides,” he added, looking back to Klink and Parker, “the room where you guys said she came out of?”

  “What about it?” Klink said.

  “It’s impossible that she was in there. That room’s been under renovation the last three weeks due to a plumbing problem that collapsed the ceiling.”

  “So . . .”

  “There was nothing in there, Klink. No bed. No chair. No sleeping bag on the floor. Nothing.”

  “Boo!” Lieutenant Sparks said.

  In spite of themselves, everyone jumped. Parker sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and thought, “Napoleon. I’m begging you. Just pop up behind a door on her or something?”

  No, Parker.

  Klink pressed. “Well, Lieutenant, then what do you—”

  “It was a homeless crack addict who snuck in the room to stay warm. She was probably high on meth when she attacked Parker, Klink and Solomon. Afterwards, she no doubt freaked out and took the stairwell to escape or, for all you know, she’s hiding on the rooftop.”

  “Yeah. Or in the walls,” the cap muttered under his breath.

  Parker was proud of him.

  The lieutenant looked at the cap and smiled. “Honestly, Brian? You, too? I swear . . .” She looked around the room. “My sons are all grown and off to college now and my days of tucking them into bed are finally over, and now, I’ve got all of you big, tough men that need me to check in the closet for the boogie man?”

  Everyone laughed. But it was uneasy laughter. The kind that said that maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what they wanted.

  Chapter 22

  The laughter stopped as soon as Klink’s phone rang. He answered it. “What? When?” He sounded concerned.

  The table froze and Parker sat up in his seat.

  After another minute or so of listening, Klink nodded. “Yeah. We’ll be right there.” Then he hung up.

  “What’s going on?” the cap asked.

  “Joey De La Cruz? Charlie’s bully?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Last we heard, he was sick with a fever. But his fever kept climbing. One-oh-two. Then one-oh-eight. His mom rushed him to the ER and he was admitted but now he’s having convulsions.”

  “Was that his mom?” Parker asked.

  “Yeah, Parker. She’s flipping out because he keeps asking . . . for us.”

  Parker was stunned. “For us?”

  “Yep. They’re at White Memorial now.”

  The cap tossed his pen on the table. “You guys better get over there then.”

  Parker nodded and looked at Muril
lo, just in case. “Anything else really quick, before we leave?”

  “Shit!” Murillo said, “I wish. But instead of things getting any clearer . . .”

  “It just got muddier,” Klink finished for him.

  Parker and Klink stood at the same time and left. They were in the car and on the way to the hospital, Parker behind the wheel and Klink on the phone to his wife, hashing out something about the mortgage refinance they were going through, when Napoleon reappeared in the back seat.

  “What now?” Parker asked him, mind to mind.

  New Mexico gave me little, if anything. Like I said, to his credit, Murillo unearthed more, overnight and half asleep, than I did.

  “Care to give me any idea, at all, how things work on your side?”

  I would if there was much that was different. I mean, I can sense more than you can . . . like the bad vibe I got out of The Hotel Clarke before you went in. But it’s not like I’m psychic. It’s more like we’re both on the same road, but I’m ahead of you and can see around the curve just a little bit earlier.

  “Is that how it’s always gonna be? Just that?”

  Just that? Gee, thanks.

  Parker sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  No. At least I don’t think so. I told you, the other side . . . levels up . . . as you say. So, I’m assuming those of us working on this side do, too. In due time. But I think it’s earned, somehow.

  “Like a job. Do well, get a promotion.”

  Except this job isn’t about getting a raise or a cushy office. It has profound and eternal consequences . . . on the lives of others. In the meantime, I do what I can. I’ve been working on learning to control my powers every second I can.

  Parker could hear the tension in Napoleon’s voice again. It was odd; in most of their time together, Parker was used to Nap as his trainer. He was irritable and impatient at times, but also extremely self-confident. But this version of him—

  Isn’t any of those things. No.

  “Dude. The mind reading. There’s something, right? It’s rude as shit, but it’s something!”

  Yeah. And it’s only because I’m with you. When we separate? I nearly always lose it.

  “That’s good to know.”