“What have I done to make you treat me like this after all these years?!” Harry began to yell and ask Ryan,
“You know precisely what you’ve done, you’re a liar, an addict and a murderer!” replied Ryan knowing he could never take any of that back, but he was OK with that. He wanted Harry to know he was going to make him pay for what he had done.
“You know nothing! Nothing of what I’ve been through and nothing of what I have had to do in my past,” Harry replied,
“I know enough, enough to expose you for what you truly are.”
“...Prove it,” said Harry,
“I will I have your conversation with Walker from last week all on tape,” replied Ryan, causing Harry’s eyes to widen with even more rage as it seemingly surged through him like a jolt of electric current. He clenched his fist and struck Ryan two more times in the face as he lay there. Ryan on the other hand, knew however much Harry tried to hurt him that it was just confirming everything he already knew about the man he once called a friend.
“Where is the tape!?” Harry ordered Ryan to tell him, he threatened him with yet another strike to the head. Ryan nonetheless just began to laugh softly to himself. His mouth and teeth were dyed red with the colour of blood as he bled from the inside of his mouth, but all Ryan did was laugh as he looked Harry square in the eyes. Harry lowered his blood covered knuckles, lowered his fist and released his grip of Ryan’s robe collar causing him to fall back on to the floor of his atrium. Harry climbed to his feet and slammed the door as he left, not uttering a word to his old partner whom he left bleeding on his own floor. Ryan heard the noise from Harry’s car as it sped down the street and into the distance. It then suddenly occurred to him where Harry may be headed next, to the man who actually had the incriminating evidence that all of this was about in his possession. Ryan stopped laughing and forced himself to his feet, he grabbed the slip of paper with Wayne’s number on from a few feet away, Harry had dropped it during the melee between the two a few minutes before. He journeyed back up the stairs to his room to find his mobile phone. As he dialled the numbers he began to panic, he knew he had to be quick, if he was found with the tape Harry would kill him. The phone began to ring, there was no answer. It rang several times before it reached his answering machine in his home, he clearly wasn’t in so Ryan left a message.
“Wayne it’s me detective Ryan we met last week etcetera...Look! You need to get out of there, he knows about Walker and he’s coming for you, just get out of there and hide somewhere you know is safe with the package. Contact me in a few days to let me know you’re safe.”
Ryan hung up the phone, and realised that by confronting Harry like that in the way that he did, he could have signed Wayne Peterson’s death warrant. All Ryan could do was hope that he got the message and got out in time before Harry arrived.
* * *
Not twenty minutes later on Monroe Street, Wayne was walking southbound, back towards his tattered home with a small brown bag tucked underneath his left shoulder. He was cradling the contents that resembled a large glass bottle through the outline of the paper bag that was twisted and crumpled around it. With his other hand he jangled his keys and threw them up in the air coinciding with a hearty tune Wayne was whistling as he headed home to break open the bottle. He had just returned from Jeremy’s having played for him the audio file and safely converted and copied onto a disc which he was also carrying in his coat pocket. All of a sudden he ducked behind a thick green hedge row that belonged to the house opposite to his derelict. As his forehead emerged over the top of the bushes to glance out he saw a strange car parked poorly over most of the curb and parts of his lawn. Wayne’s front door also stood wide open as the faint sound of clattering and banging could be heard from inside. When Wayne turned around and slumped into a sitting position behind the hedge he looked up to find an old African American man in the downstairs window signalling him and violently flailing his arms perhaps suggesting that the vagrant looking Wayne Peterson remove himself from his front garden. He moved from the cover of the hedge to a nearby elm tree roughly ten yards further down the street. Meanwhile, inside the house Harry was causing an almighty mess and he happily destroyed what little furniture Peterson had. He sighed with disbelief and held his hands to his head upon discovering that after nearly half an hour of searching, the tape was nowhere to be found. He dropped the tyre iron that he was using from the trunk of his car to help demolish the belongings, and removed his mobile from his pocket. In a rush he called the one person who didn’t want to speak to him, especially after their last confrontation.
Downtown, Eli Walker was sat in a meeting listening to other suits drone on and on about school dinner budgets and the state and decay of local public schools. So he seemed more than delighted to pretend to receive an important phone call that interrupted and excused him from the meeting for a few minutes, if anything just so he could vent his frustration out in the hallways.
“Yes?” Walker asked as the delight of being able to leave was marred by the thought of talking to O’Neill.
“They have a tape, they have a tape of us two and our bust up last week,” Harry replied in a panic as he paced back and forth over Wayne’s splintered wooden floors.
“Whoa, slow down, are you sure?” Eli tried to confirm,
“Yes of course I’m sure! It’s Ryan and Peterson, they both know,” said Harry.
Eli closed his eyes and took a deep breath, he sighed and replied,
“If you had simply listened to me then that scum Peterson wouldn’t be here and Ryan would probably be none the wiser as usual,”
“Sir, they’re expecting you back in the meeting,” Walker’s assistant replied as he turned and held his hand over the cell phone speaker and nodded in acceptance.
“I have to go duty calls, I trust you to sort this out,” said Eli,
“Why only me? I need your help!” Harry pleaded,
“You aren’t my problem anymore, you’re on your own,” Eli told Harry as he hung up the phone and walked back inside for the rest of the dull meeting. All the while Harry on the other end was now even more panicked, he retrieved his tyre iron from off of the floor and exited Wayne Peterson’s house. After he had driven away it was finally safe for Wayne to check on the damage. Everything but the house phone and answering machine had been either tipped over or smashed to pieces. Either way, he knew it was no longer safe for him there. He grabbed what was left of his belongings that lay strewn across the floor and quickly escaped cursing Walker’s name.
Chapter III
Eli Walker was unsure as to whether his day was stressful, boring or both as he pulled into his driveway on Garfield Street. He approached the doorway to and attempted to insert his key only to find the door already partly open and he merely pushed it. Eli entered slowly, the entrance was dark. He tried to turn on one of the lights but found the power was out. He observed through his front window that the other houses along the street were not affected by any power outage and in fact were all lit up on the inside, only his was subjected to darkness.
“Christy?” he said hoping his daughter would enlighten him as to what had happened with the power. She would have finished school and returned home by now but there was no answer from either downstairs or upstairs. Eli walked all through the ground floor of his lavish home and tried flicking all the light switches while repeating his daughters name in the hope that she would answer. Ever since the threat on his daughter by Peterson a few weeks earlier he had always been in a state of panic when a situation arose with Christy. Eli rushed upstairs to find her room empty, and a solitary note left on her pillow along with her personal cell phone that was left on the bedside table by her lamp. His heart raced almost beating out of his chest in fear of what might have happened to his beloved child. He carefully opened the letter and read the contents,
“Dear Councilman, I have your daughter... She will be kept safe as long as you do what is asked of you...A call will be made in a few days with mo
re details, until then, sit tight.”
The note fell to the floor and Eli reached for his chest and clutched it tightly. He continued breathing heavily for another minute before wondering what his next move should be. Walker was losing control of the situation and now his daughter had been taken. He knew he couldn’t find her on his own and the longer he kept it from the police the harder it would be to explain, although on the other hand contacting the police would surely open a whole can of worms in to Eli’s private life, his dealings and any personal enemies that he may have. This could lead them directly to Wayne Peterson who would now have an outlet for his accusations about Eli, all it took was for one person to listen to him and start digging.
Eli decided to do the right thing and contacted his good friend Commissioner Ellis and informed him of the situation for the sake of his daughter. It was perhaps the fastest response time that could have ever been recorded. Within minutes the street was lit with the flashing red and blue, nosey suburban neighbours began to appear at the edges of Eli’s property hoping to earwig any conversations to find out what might be going on. Christy was unfortunately no longer under the age of eighteen so an amber alert couldn’t be raised even if the police had deemed the incident a kidnapping which they very likely would have.
“Cavalry is here,” Ellis said, he walked through into Eli’s study where he was sat. With a drink in one hand and the note in the other he sat in his leather wing chair where he had spent many nights in his past deciding what to do about problems and issues. However, this was one issue that couldn’t just be ‘handled’ his way. Ellis moved towards Eli who still hadn’t uttered a word to him or the other policemen since their arrival and broke his engrossing gaze at his own fireplace. Now standing in front of him he took a knee and lowered himself to Eli’s level placing one hand upon his kneecap hoping to grasp his attention.
“Tell me everything,” Ellis asked of Eli, who no longer displayed the self-righteous and dominating presence, but now portrayed a broken and lifeless shell of a man. His eyes were watering and his lip trembled as he passed the Commissioner the note to read. Eli looked to his left and through his study doors he could see uniforms and CSI’s moving freely about his house and examining areas for any potential clues that might be found. Ellis didn’t leave the study the whole time Eli was there, and Eli only moved to raise his arm to pour himself another drink.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” Ellis then asked, having read the note several times before carefully bagging it and placing it in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
“There was a man, whom I put away many years ago, when I was still just the District Attorney. His name was Wayne Peterson,” Eli told Ellis as his voice started to break.
“I remember vaguely a Wayne Peterson,” Ellis replied,
“Well anyway,” Eli took another sip of his stiff drink as his hand shook, “He has been stalking me the past few months, he’s crazy and he’s been blaming me for sending him back to jail.”
“I don’t understand? Why would he blame you?” asked Ellis,
“I don’t understand either, but around two months ago I received a phone call one night while my daughter was visiting a friend in the hospital, it was him. He was claiming he was going to hurt my daughter because of the hurt I had given to him. It’s Peterson I know it is,” claimed Ellis as he stood up slowly and rested his elbow on the mantelpiece above his fireplace. He began to look at an old family picture of the two of them from when Christy was a little girl, no more than ten years old. A small sliver of water ran from his eye and onto the picture, he wiped it with his thumb before placing it back upon the mantle where it belongs. Ellis placed a hand on his shoulder from behind,
“Don’t worry old friend, we’ll get her back,” he told Eli before he exited the room. By this time the front of Eli’s house was teaming with extras and police cars almost as if a movie were being filmed. Except this was all real with no one standing by to yell ‘cut’ to put an end to the drama, this was something that Eli was going to have to live with, his daughter Christy was gone.
Legions of reporters lay in waiting for the Councilman as he exited his house. Ellis had wanted him to return with him to the police station to help their investigators establish a motive and answer a few more questions. He realised there would be too many reminders and distractions for Eli located around his house which for the night at least was a crime scene he was no longer allowed to enter. There must have been hundreds of on-lookers by the time he reached Commissioner Ellis’ car, reporters and neighbours alike. To his right the reporters were pushing the police line back trying to position a microphone nearer to the Councilman in the hope he might answer one or two of the many questions he was being broadsided with about his daughter’s disappearance. To his left he noticed the neighbours he knew nothing about, not even their names whispering and gossiping undoubtedly about what was happening and about Eli himself. The whole sequence of walking twenty-five paces across his lawn to the Commissioner’s car door seemed to take an eternity and time felt as if it slowed drastically during his time of crisis and loss. When he finally arrived and got in the passenger side of Ellis’s car he was greeted with reporters knocking and tapping on the window hoping desperately to get a comment or a sound bite out of the Councilman about how he was feeling. Although if you were to ask him, there would probably be little to no words that he could manage to muster about how he indeed was handling everything. What Eli also knew was that it was only going to get worse as time passed and as long as his she was still missing.
* * *
Thirty-six hours had passed, it was now the first of May on the calendar, and Eli Walker’s daughter was still gone. The police knew that their window to find her could be closing fast and they had nearly exhausted all of their avenues of ideas. Christy’s face was being plastered on the news, the front of nearly every single paper and also in between shows on the radio and television alerting people to a hotline that they could call along the entire Eastern coast of America. Walker hadn’t yet left the police station and was currently opting to live off of food from the break room vending machines as well as weak coffee and water. He still wore the same suit that he wore to work that day, it was sweaty and creased with his black and grey hair sporting helping him to sport an ill favoured look. No one blamed him for his appearance and for camping out in the police station however as the congress of reporters were still in session and gathered around the front and rear of the building. The investigation into Wayne Peterson’s connection as a suspect and person of interest had fully reached the end of its tether as no more information was given by Walker as he refused to incriminate himself. Peterson’s whereabouts were also unknown as a state-wide manhunt had near enough begun for the ex-convict who was running out of places to hide from Walker, the cat had nearly caught his rat. The station house was loud with everyone being pulled in on days off and from holiday and sick leave to help out with the search. The phones rang off the hook as people called the hotline with either bogus tips or mistaken identity claims about seeing Christy Walker. There were barely enough people to man the phones that constantly rang let alone head out and search for Peterson and young Christy. Ryan was also sat at his desk having been called in to help out. He had covered the bruises along the side of his jaw line the best that he could with some of April’s makeup earlier that morning. In between making notes and dealing with the public he couldn’t help but wonder why. Why had Wayne gone off the rails and abducted Walker’s daughter, was he so blind for revenge that he just wanted to inflict as much pain as possible he thought to himself. At that moment the mail had been sorted and was handed out to people and left on the appropriate desks in the main bullpen. A large brown envelope that was addressed to ‘Detective Ryan Mathers’ was suddenly dumped onto his keyboard as the mail clerk walked off. Ryan never usually received any mail unless it was from the IRS or an insurance company. He opened the hand written envelope and reached inside, not much was
there as he held it up to pour the contents upon his untidy desk. A small CD with a recording device was inside as well as a small unsigned note that simply read, “Dear Detective, in case anything happens to me,” this could only mean one thing. Wayne had sent the evidence to Ryan for safe keeping; it told him nothing of his location or what he was doing. Ryan quickly placed the device and the CD in his coat pocket that was over the back of his wooden chair. He then rose from behind his desk and ventured to the Commissioner’s office, he politely knocked on the door and was waved in while he was on the phone. Ryan closed the door and sat down as Ellis hung up the phone,
“What is it Ryan?” He asked, “As you can see we are all very busy,”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ryan told him,
“...What doesn’t make sense?” asked Ellis,
“Why would Peterson abduct his daughter? It makes no sense!” Ryan said raising his voice to his superior.
“Because he’s a madman ex-con who has been stalking the Councilman, while also making previous threats towards him!” Ellis confidently replied having already painted Wayne as the accused.
“Yes, because he said so, there is no proof that this man took his daughter!”
“Oh no? Then who did? Like it or not Mathers it’s the only lead we have, if you would like to go out there and tell him it’s a waste of time then be my guest, otherwise get back to work. Remember, you’re still suspended, the only reason you’re here is because I need all hands on deck. Now get out,” Ellis told Ryan. He then left. After the door closed, the Commissioner leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand over his coarse unshaven chin, it seemed Ryan had certainly given him something to think about.
The Sins of a District Page 16
