Chase_The Sons of Crosby

by Kathi S. Barton

  “You’re not leaving here, Mr. Bates.” He told the judge that he was Agent Bates. “No, you are not. Now, Mr. Bates, let’s start again. What has Mrs. Crosby done to you that you feel you have to harass her?”

  ~~~

  Bates was holding to his claim that Emerald Crosby was a queen of dragons, and that her husband was the king. There were other claims that he had, but the thing that bothered Paddy Lindsey the most was the way he kept having a conversation with his hand.

  Well, it wasn’t his hand, not what Bates was saying, but a faerie. A tiny one too, that he’d described in great detail, several times now. And she, this faerie, had also told him, that he needed to take a breath and let it out slowly, which he did. Paddy was sure that poor Bates was off his noodle. In more ways than one.

  He was a mess. His hair looked as if he’d combed it with cacti. He’d not shaved in what appeared to be days. And his clothing was dirty, like he’d slept in it as well. The man he’d known was gone, and in his place was a disheveled shell of a person.

  The questions that were being put to him were ones that he himself had written out. The judge, Lynn Merkle, had agreed to be an impartial judge on behalf of Bates. But even that wasn’t going well. Everyone, including the men that he’d had come in to run the equipment, were shocked at some of his answers.

  “Mr. Bates, what can you tell me about your leaving the hospital?” Bates asked her what she’d meant. “You were arrested, then taken to the hospital. What happened that made you want to leave the care given to you then?”

  “I didn’t want to be there.” He looked down at his hand again. “The faerie said to tell you that you need to stop asking me this question. It’s making me look bad.”

  “We’re not here to make you look good or bad, Mr. Bates. We’re here to get answers to a lot of questions. Some of them you’ve avoided. So, we’ll try this one. Why did you send Agent Nash here to find out what he could about Mrs. Crosby?”

  “She wasn’t Mrs. Crosby when I sent him to find her. And I didn’t send him here. I just told him to find her. And to bring her in. He couldn’t even do that part. I’m betting that his fat wife did that too. She’s an evil one, that one is. And why does he get to be agent when I don’t? I think he should be fired for dereliction of duty.” She asked him what duty had he not done. “Find this woman, as I have told you several times before. Ten, as the faerie has been keeping count.”

  This was what he’d been hoping for, and not hoping he’d admit. Several times while he’d been employed by the agency, he’d been told not to pursue looking for this woman. And he’d done it, assigning a new person to the job, putting him away in the building so that no one would know about it, and continued on as if he’d not been warned. Standing up, Paddy looked at Bates with sadness.

  “You continued to have Agent Nash search for this woman, when I had told you several times that you were to stop wasting tax payers’ money on this.” Bates told him he’d been wrong to do that. “So, you admit that you were warned. Yet you assigned an agent to continue working on the case anyway.”

  “Yes, and I’d do it again too. Don’t you get it? She’s acting like there isn’t anything different about her, when we all know that she’s not human. Shoot her. Go ahead and try and kill her. See that what I’ve been telling you is right.” Paddy was shocked at the request. “Well, if you don’t want to do it, then give me your gun and I’ll do it. You’ll see that she can’t die. She told me that.”

  “Bates, what the fuck is wrong with you? You cannot kill a woman just because you think she might be an immortal. Things are not done that way.” Again, Bates waved him off. “You can’t be serious. You actually think that one of us should fire at this woman to prove if your theory is correct?”

  “Yes. I don’t know why you’re so squeamish about this, Lindsey. I mean, she told me straight out that she wasn’t able to die. And you won’t believe me any other way. So, shoot her. You’ll see.” He stood up and put out his hand, and Paddy looked at it then at Bates again. “Just hand me your weapon, Lindsey, and I’ll show you. There are enough recording things going on around here that no one will blame you for it if I should be wrong, but I’m not. She’s not going to be harmed at all. You’ll see.”

  “You keep saying that.” Paddy looked at Emerald. She was being held by her husband, and it broke Paddy’s heart that the woman seemed to be sobbing. Her husband was glaring at Bates as if he might well do the man harm. This was nuts, more so than he thought Bates was now. “I think we’ve heard enough. Harold Bates has clearly lost his ability to have clear thought.”

  “Yes, I have to agree with you on that one.” Judge Merkle just shook her head as she continued. “It gives me no pleasure in having to say this, but Mr. Harold Bates, I remand you over to a place where you can be tested for your mental capabilities. Until such time, you will be watched over so that no harm can come to you or others. These proceedings are closed.”

  Before much more time passed, Bates was handcuffed and taken out of the room. The judge stood up as well, and came to sit next to Paddy as she spoke to him in a quiet and sad voice.

  “I’m sorry about this, Paddy. He’s gotten a little worse since he was in my courtroom, and I’m sorry for that. Was he a good agent?” Paddy nodded. “Then I’m doubly sorry for this. But he didn’t leave us much in the way of choice.”

  “Yes, in his time, he was even a likable man. But like a lot of people, he’d gotten stuck in his job duties and what his power was. Not to mention, he sort of stuck himself in the fifties and never moved forward.” Merkle laughed and said she got that too. “I’m sorry about that. I truly am.”

  “It’s all right. He’ll get some care now.” He hoped so. Paddy surely hoped that he got a great deal of care now. “The tapes; if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a transcript of them. Just for my own records.”

  “I’ll ask.” He knew as surely as he was sitting there that there would never be any transcripts of this proceeding, so that she could not read them over. As far as anyone would be concerned, this had never happened. And Bates, for all his insanity, would never be seen or heard from again. Not in the public form anyway.

  Harold would be taken care of. The best of care too. But his name would be stripped of any kind of attachment to the Bureau, and any cases that he had worked on, any cases that he had solved, would all go to someone else for the glory. He hated it, but it was the way that things were done.

  When he was left alone in the room with only Emerald and her husband, he asked her if she was all right. When she nodded and sat down, he smiled at her. This certainly ended all the trouble for her, he thought. Bates was no longer going to be trying to chase her down, or bother her about pictures of what he was sure were long dead relatives. Physically or mentally, not for a long time, if ever.

  “I’m sorry about this.” He nodded at her. “He was becoming troublesome, but he won’t be the last, I’m afraid.”

  “No, there are men out there like him all the time. Thinking that they know better than most. I’m so very sorry that you were trapped into his thinking. It won’t happen again with him.” She said that she knew that. “I’m glad. If there is ever anything I can do for you and your family, Mrs. Crosby, you just let us know. We, as an agency, we never thought it would come to this. I know you find this hard to believe, but he was a good man. Still is, I think. But things got out of control for him, and he went too far.”

  “Thank you. And yes, I do believe he was and still is a good man. Just a little obsessive about things.” When she stood up, he thought for a moment, a very quick one, that he saw a little person on her shoulder. Blinking several times didn’t make the little creature disappear, so he looked at the woman again. “You know, you might see all kinds of things once you open your mind to it.” With a sassy wink, she moved to her husband again.

  He sat down after the couple left him. Paddy was sure that he’d seen it. And just as sure that he’d not. Standing up, he decided that he wa
sn’t going to think about it, about what he might or might not have seen. No, he wasn’t going to become another Bates.

  “Not me. Not in this lifetime.” He closed his mouth, thinking that talking to himself wasn’t going to help either. So, as he made his way to his car, Paddy made sure that he didn’t look around. And in doing so, he thought about his life and career, and made a resolution that he was never returning to this town. It didn’t matter to him if the entire town became terrorists, which he thought would never happen, but not him. He wasn’t coming back. Never ever-ever.

  Stopping by to see Nash and his wife seemed a bad idea as well. The sooner he left the better, he told himself. He had cases to clear off his desk, and a report to write. Things would be better once he was home, once he was back to normal. A giggle escaped his lips, and he put his hand over his mouth to stifle any more that might slip by him.

  Normal? What the fuck did that even mean anymore?

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  Kathi Barton , winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement award as well as a best-selling author on Amazon and All Romance books, lives in Nashport, Ohio with her husband Paul. When not creating new worlds and romance, Kathi and her husband enjoy camping and going to auctions. She can also be seen at county fairs with her husband who is an artist and potter.

  Her muse, a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Hugh Jackman, brings her stories to life for her readers in a way that has them coming back time and again for more. Her favorite genre is paranormal romance with a great deal of spice. You can visit Kathi online and drop her an email if you’d like. She loves hearing from her fans. aaronskiss@gmail.com.

  Follow Kathi on her blog: http://kathisbartonauthor.blogspot.com/