He balled his fist and blew his breath into it. A yearning broke through and he envisioned a warm sunny day, heard families laughing behind him at a get-together, half the grass bright green and the other half in shadows from bushy trees blocking out the sun, and umpires yelling strike three on the baseball fields to his right during college games. He pictured himself jerking his arm over his right shoulder and flinging his fishing rod forward into the soft water glistening from warm sunshine beating on it, hooking and struggling with a nice-sized bass until he reeled it up, unhooked it, and tossed it back, watching the shiny skin and red gills jump in the lake and wiggle away. The sun’s warmth on his back, sweat on his forehead—life’s good times.
A wind brushed by his face and stung his eyes from the sheer cold, reminding him of how much he hated the winter.
Two squirrels chased one another and darted up a tree next to him, and he thought of how animal life was so programmed, so routine, just following their instincts. Why aren’t humans like that? Why are we self-aware and have the ability to choose and rationalize, break what we were programmed to do and decide our own paths. Maybe the world was designed by the greatest computer programmer that ever lived. Maybe the Universe is just one big computer and everything in it has its own programs and codes to tell it what to do, uploads every day on its own when the sun comes up. He guessed that would be true if humans didn’t exist and didn’t have the ability to alter the Earth, to cause it destruction or progress, to make our own choices. Animals he could see having a program because they just live and follow nature’s course. But he wondered why humans had animal bodies but with intelligence, and could use that intelligence to help or hurt his fellow man, to make intellectual decisions? That had to mean we were here for a reason—that we were here to experience, to learn, to grow—that the body was a vehicle for the soul. And he reminded himself that he believed we were souls who touched down on Earth in human bodies for a brief moment in time to experience and understand imperfection, understand pain and joy, love and hate, peace and fear, and all through emotions and our five senses and brains and our flawed human existence on Earth filled with bad and good, and it was our decision to appreciate and yearn for sheer bliss in the all-loving afterlife with God, that the gift and beauty of life must be recognized through pain. Life’s vulnerability made it precious. He asked himself what he’ll do with the short amount of time his soul was given to make an impact on this world, on this plane, to bring peace or fear to his fellow man. He didn’t know the answer to that. All he could come up with was to love Marisa, his family and friends, and to help people along their journey while growing and learning in his own life.
Dread and anxiety twisted in his gut. What if we’re here for nothing? What if we as humans overvalue ourselves and our lives are meaningless? What if we’re used as lab rats by a superior species? What if those superior species watch documentaries on humans like we do on apes or chimpanzees? But then what would be a higher species’ purpose? Why would they even exist? Everything is energy and nothing dies, isn’t that what you read in that article, that we’re all connected and one—everything in the world is here for a reason? he thought. How would consciousness be explained? What the fuck is consciousness anyway? How do we think? What is a thought? He punched his right fist into his left palm, frustrated. He knew he could look at life one of two ways. One way as random and totally meaningless and godless and a chaotic product of evolution that produced multiple life forms without souls, that life was pointless, but to him, that mindset only led to depression, apathy, and negative, unproductive results—he’d lived it at one time. Or look at it the other way as having an unseen, guiding force, call it God, the Universe, whatever, pulling the strings in his life, teaching him lessons in the Earth-school for the evolution of his soul, for self-growth, for life on a higher plane of existence. The only thing that kept him going was the hope that things were happening for a reason, even if deep down he thought it was all bullshit. But he reminded himself that no one had the answers to any of these questions, so he went with the latter, striving for growth and finding meaning and learning lessons and, if in the end it was all for nothing, oh well, at least he lived for something, instead of in despair.
He stared up at the darkening sky and wondered why he was thinking this way, that maybe his church-experience had spawned philosophical thought.
His right pants pocket vibrated, rang. He reached in and flipped the phone to his ear in one swift motion.
“Hell-o.”
“Steel?”
“Lieutenant Williams. What’s up?”
“Not going to believe this.”
Steel’s heart kicked up a notch. He walked to his right and leaned an elbow against a tree, crossed one foot over the other, and kicked at small pebbles and watched them ricochet off a rusty metal trashcan nearby.
“Jonathan Herns, the schizophrenic man.”
“Yeah?” Steel said.
“Parents found him dead this morning. On their own doorstep, at that. They said he ran to the corner store for coffee creamer and was taking too long. They opened the door and looked out and saw him on the step, squirming around. He died in their arms minutes later. Gunshot wound to the chest.”
“Jesus Christ,” Steel mumbled, but his stomach flipped after realizing he may have just insulted Williams, who was a Christian and a pastor.
Williams didn’t react.
Steel sighed, relieved.
Williams said, “I don’t need to tell you that we need this case solved…ASAP.” He inhaled and breathed out the words, “Who else has to die?”
“I’m back on the clock now. I’m back on until I solve this thing. No days off.”
“You want me to assign a veteran detective to it?”
“No. I’m on it. You have my word.”
“Don’t make me regret it,” the lieutenant said.
Steel’s stomach flipped again but this time from anger. He took that remark as a slight, but he clenched his jaw and kept his mouth shut.
“Got it?” Williams said.
Steel squeezed his jaw tight and almost grinded his teeth to pieces. He muttered, anger in his voice, “I told you I’m on it.”
“Good,” Williams said firmly.
Steel hung up and sprinted over the pebbles, listened to his sneakers scratch the ground, and hopped in his silver Jeep Grand Cherokee. He jerked the car into reverse and then sped off. The tires screeched, leaving black skid marks. Steel thought that his soul was just given a mission, his life purpose happening now. He’d stop this monster. Although he didn’t have much to go on, he remind himself not to focus on how far away from the goal he was, but to focus on how close he was getting. He thought of Williams’ words, Who else has to die?
Steel yelled, “You picked the wrong fucking detective to mess with, whoever you are! I’m coming for you, I’m coming…cocksucker!”
32
S
teel and Marisa entered the convenience store on the corner of Jonathan Herns’ street. A short, stocky Latino man in his forties, his head bald, sporting a thin black goatee and a thick gold chain around his neck, approached them and stuck a finger in their direction. “You guys the detectives that called over coupl’a minutes ago?”
Steel flashed his badge and pointed to his chest. “Detective Steel.” He waved a hand toward Marisa. “Detective Tulli.”
The man studied them for a moment, his eyes like stone, but it was more a curious stare than a suspicious one. He spoke with a slight Latino accent. “Okay, yeah, all right, come on in back with me.”
The man led the way and flung his short arms forward and told them to follow. Steel followed him, spotted candy bars stacked on a shelf—yellow bags of peanut M&Ms, orange Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, red Twizzlers, brown Hershey bars, at least seven other choices and a few packs of green and blue Trident gum. The man must have just ordered Chinese food because the scent of oily, burned rice and garlic-shrimp and warm pepper-seasoned meat hung in the ai
r. Steel rubbed his nose and continued down the aisle, past Stroehmann’s yellow-packaged sliced bread, blue boxes of pasta, jars of pickles, and squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard.
The man halted in front of a beat-up, chipped door in the back of the store, reached a hand around and behind his lower back and dug in his pants pocket, and twisted out a key. After entering, they all stepped inside one by one. The room appeared to be his office and wasn’t anything glamorous but seemed to do the job. A few rusty filing cabinets lined the wall just right of a wooden folding table that was used as a desk. A torn black computer chair sat in front of the table, directly in front of a laptop, a 76ers screensaver flashing in and out. The scent of cherry filled the room and Steel noticed three red air-fresheners shaped like trees hanging around the doorknob. A glass picture frame of the shape of Puerto Rico hung on the off-white walls, along with an autographed 8x10 photo of Roberto Clemente swinging at a fastball.
The man sat in the computer chair and the wheels shook from his body weight. He pushed a few cardboard boxes off two metal folding chairs in front of him and waved a hand toward Marisa and Steel. “Have a seat, please.”
They sat.
“Anthony, by the way.”
Steel lowered his brow, put on his serious cop-face. “So, I understand you have some information for us?”
The storeowner nodded quickly, his eyes growing. “Yeah, yeah. I have video of the man running by my store with a gun in his hand.” He poked at his keyboard and pulled up the surveillance screen, eight small blocks from multiple angles. “I got the camera out there, because, you know…” He pointed toward the streets outside his store. “…can’t trust nobody in this neighborhood. Fucking crazy peoples, man.”
Steel leaned in, squinted. Marisa tilted her head in the direction of Steel’s and took a look. “Was the gunman in here at all?” Steel said.
“No, no, Papi. He just ran by here. But Jonathan was in here ‘bout a minute or two earlier than that.”
“You know Jonathan?” Steel said.
“Oh yeah. His parents, too. They’re in here every day. Good peoples.” Anthony moved his head in what looked to Steel to be a personal prayer, kissed his first two fingers, reached in his shirt and pulled out a gold crucifix and pecked the precious metal once, confirming Steel’s analysis. He flicked up his sharp green eyes and scratched his light brown cheek. “Amazing what type a world we live in. Here today and gone tomorrow. That’s why I go to work, go home to the wife, and stay with my kids. Crazy world, crazy peoples, you know?”
“Right,” Steel said. “So Jonathan left here and that was it?”
“He come in here,” Anthony swallowed for salvia, “bought half-n-half and a bag of Oreos, and then about a minute later…” He contorted his right hand into a gun and his eyes lit up. “…I hear, Boom! Boom!” He pulled the imaginary trigger on the fake gun he’d made on his hand, his eyeballs darting. “I go outside to see what it was, and I see a man running down the street, Jonathan on his steps screaming in pain, I mean yelling loud, man, loud, grabbing his stomach, and his parents come out. Then I ran back here to call the police and ran to check my camera.”
Marisa said, “Did you get a good look at the man at all?”
He frowned, shook his head no, genuine sadness in his eyes. “Come here, look at the screen.”
Steel and Marisa leaned closer and saw the whole act in black-and-white tiny boxes, in slow motion—the man running from behind Jonathan and pulling the trigger.
Steel mumbled, “The son of a bitch is wearing a ski mask.”
Anthony shifted his eyes back and forth between the computer screen and Steel. “Yep, couldn’t tell anything but that he was fast as hell as he ran.”
“Fast?” Steel said and locked eyes with Anthony.
“Yep, Papi. Fast as hell.” He poked at the screen with his chubby, hairy first finger and rewound the video. “Look at him go, pretty fast, no?”
Steel smirked, thought how that was the second or third time he had called him Papi, but didn’t say anything. He said, “Hmm…so he was in pretty good physical shape, looks like.”
Anthony nodded. “Um-hm. Seems that way.”
Steel nodded, glanced at Marisa. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think so,” she said.
She scribbled FRATT on a legal pad and tapped a finger on the fresh ink, blue smudging against the tip of her flesh.
Steel nodded. “He just got bumped up on the suspects’ list.” He jumped up out of his seat and scurried toward the exit.
Anthony trailed behind, throwing up his hands. “Wait, what does this mean?”
“You’ve been a huge help, sir. We’ll need your tapes as evidence. Someone will be in here in a few minutes to collect them, right after they get finished at the Herns’ residence.”
Anthony’s eyeballs bulged, and he tightened his lips, chewed the bottom one. “Okay. You need anything else from me?”
“Nope. Thank you again.”
“You got it. Anything for Jonathan and his family.”
Steel opened the door and thought of ways to get some evidence on Fratt to make him a suspect or clear him from this case, whichever it was, although he was leaning toward suspect because he was the only one alive off his list and something just didn’t seem right about that guy. Something wasn’t right. He had a hunch.
33
S
teel stomped on the brake pedal and rolled over a yellow speed bump in the parking lot of the police station. Their backs jolted against the seats. Marisa grabbed the door handle above her window and snapped her head at Steel as if he’d done it on purpose, as if she was mad at him without a cause.
He wanted to check-in at the station, drop off his Jeep, and switch into the department’s vehicle.
He hooked a sharp right and pulled into a spot in between five or so police cruiser on either side. He cut the ignition and laid his fingers around the door handle, but just before he curled his hand to open it, his cell phone rang. He released his grip and dug in his pocket and lifted the phone in between his right shoulder and ear and pressed down and held it in that position while stuffing his cars keys into his coat pocket.
“This is Detective Steel.”
“Detective,” a man’s voice said.
“Speaking.”
“James Finndle.”
Steel jerked his hand upward and tugged at the phone from in between his shoulder and ear. “Jimmy. I called over to the office to talk to you earlier.”
Jimmy cleared his throat. “I know. My secretary emailed me.”
“I just had a few more questions I wanted to ask you. I know you don’t wanna get too involved, but I could use some more information.”
“Who said I didn’t want to get involved? I never told you that. You assumed that.”
“Never mind the semantics, can you meet me?” Steel said.
Jimmy breathed hard into the receiver and Steel heard it muffled on his end. “That’s why I’m calling you.”
“You wanna meet me, Jimmy?”
“I’m scared for my life.”
Marisa blinked a few times and bit her lip, turned her head toward Steel and held a gaze, studying and reading his shifting eyeballs and frozen shoulders and outstretched fingers scratching his cheek.
Steel didn’t say anything, just waited for Jimmy to continue.
“Look…I’m not sure I’m completely safe. I’m worried for my life,” Jimmy said, his words speedy and his voice high like a hungry alley cat crying out for food in the night.
“I’m not understanding?” Steel said.
Marisa tugged at his coat and whispered, “What’s up?” She flipped out her palms, crinkled her nose, and pressed her thumb against her first two fingers and shook the hand—Italian style.
Steel blinked and waved her off.
She inhaled deeply and shook her head, frustrated, and Steel knew he was in for it later on.
“I feel that I’m being hunted, that I’m
next,” Jimmy said.
“Why’s that?”
“Please just come meet me?”
Steel glanced down at his watch. “What time, where at?”
“I’m in Atlantic City.”
Steel snorted a shot of air through his nostrils. “You want me to drive an hour-an-a-half to meet you?”
Jimmy didn’t respond, pushed deep, heavy breaths into the phone.
“What the hell are you doing in AC?”
“Look, are you coming or what? This is my life.”
Steel shrugged, the thoughts in his mind pounding his head like horses slamming against the dirt at the track, galloping down the stretch. “Where at, Jimmy?”
“I’ll be at The Tropicana Hotel. Right on the casino floor, near the poker tables. I’m looking out at the boardwalk and ocean now and heading that way. I feel safe here in a public place with cameras. I got my wife and kids hiding out at her aunt’s in New Jersey.”
Steel grabbed at his steering wheel, squeezed the leather, and the seat crackled. His heart lunged at his chest and kicked, and his face burned and the heat pushed a slick sweat through his pores, over every inch of his body. His socks dampened and warmed like a steamy washcloth. Fear swept over him. “Whoa, wait a minute. How much danger do you think you’re in? What’s goin’ on here, Jimmy?”
“Please, just come and meet me. I don’t want to be on this phone too long. I’ll let my guard down and can’t watch my surroundings.” He yelled, “Please, just please!”
“Jimmy, give me something to go on, and I’m on my way.”
Jimmy sighed. “All I’ll say is that Kevin Johnson wasn’t the only man in Desiree’s life. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, sorry for everything. I was afraid….I have a family, ya’ know. Talk to you soon.”
Divine Page 19
