by mike Evans
Eric set down his fork wiping at his face and took his butter knife flipping it around and with his free hand caught his friend Rick off guard. He brought down the knife with all the force he had into his friend’s hand. His friend screamed, but no one in the diner seemed to notice. Tony saw a police officer enjoying a burger and fries. He was still chewing and didn’t seem to be bothered by the man screaming. Tony tried to get up, but the man said, “Sit down, or your mother is supper. I bet she’d be delicious.”
Tony got up flinging his chair back. Eric, the man with demon’s eyes, got up meeting him toe to toe. Blood was covering the table and the man had tears in his eyes screaming at the top of his lungs. Eric looked at him sideways like, he was unable to understand why he was being so rude and so loud. He took a finger running it across the lips of the man with a knife through his hand. Tony watched as the man’s lips melted away into nothing. He clawed at his lips, his eyes were filling with tears and it was apparent he was losing his mind, something Tony felt the two of them were able to share. “Who, who are you?” Tony asked.
The man stepped forward, sniffing and smiling. “You aren’t pure, are you? You’ve been taken before, I can smell it, we’ve got a hold of your soul…you just don’t know it yet do you? We’ll be taking it back very soon I think.”
“You’re insane,” Tony pulled off his jacket, rolling his sleeves and exposing the crosses he’d had tattooed on his forearms with the words, May God Keep Me Safe Beneath Each of Them. “You will not catch me without a cross ever again, demon, now go back to hell where you belong.”
“We’ll see each other again very soon, I promise you!” Eric’s eyes faded back to their normal brown color.
Tony took a step back looking around the diner. Every single person was staring at him, half with a fork hanging out of their mouths or mid-chew on their meal. Tony looked in front of him realizing that it hadn’t happened. Alecia was looking at him in shock whispering WTF to him, her face had never looked so rosy before and he didn’t know if at the moment it was from anger or embarrassment. He opened his mouth to say something, but everyone in the shop had sucked the words from his mouth. He looked down at the two men who he thought he’d been talking to and seeing being tortured and the two of them looked as normal as could be. The police officer was standing up looking annoyed for being troubled to stop eating his meal. Tony looked around, unsure what to do. He ran out of the diner not saying anything else.
Tears started to make their way down his face. He wasn’t sure if they were demons or if he was finally going crazy from all the medications and previous possession. He sprinted through the street, he tried not to look at the bums on the street, but when he did he saw their faces distorted and shriveled even worse than usual. One screamed to him, “We’re gonna cut Joan’s throat tonight, and then we’re going to eat her soul!”
The group laughed as he sprinted away. A patrol car pulled up in front of his sprint and came to a stop. The officer from the diner had radioed in to have someone on the lookout for a man that appeared to be absolutely deranged. Tony tried to turn to run but the officer who had been in the diner was there holding a gun in one hand and a baton in the other. Tony held up his hands, “I didn’t do nothing, I didn’t do anything, I'm just trying to go home, I swear, I just wanna go home!”
The officer from the diner shook his head not letting him know he’d probably be detained this evening. He stood shoulder to shoulder, looking left then right. The officer’s eyes turned black and a shadow came over his face. “We’re going to take a ride to hell where you belong, Tony, get in the car.”
Tony was unable to control what he thought was real or not, took a swing connecting with the officer’s jaw and sending him to the ground. The patrolman from the car hesitated zero seconds, bringing down his baton into the back of Tony’s skull sending everything black. Everything he heard from then on sounded like it was coming to him through a tunnel. “Hey, you alright, Travis? He knocked the hell out of you.”
“I'm fine, I’ve been hit harder, look at him, he’s in a cold sweat, that kids on drugs, probably crack.”
Tony felt two arms, taking his biceps and could just barely see his feet as he was dragged to the car and thrown in but not until a pair of handcuffs were placed on him making it feel like his wrists were going to explode from the pressure.
Chapter 16
LAPD
“Los Angeles Police Department, how can I direct your call?”
“There’s a dead body in my hotel, it is one of my staff.”
“Is the killer still on the premises?”
“I don’t know who the hell the killer is, I don’t know what happened, two hours ago, she clocked in and now she is dead. Her friend found her and almost lost her mind. She’s in the backroom shaking at this point and mumbling something. I’m pretty sure she’s going to quit.”
“Please hold, I’ll get someone on the line for you to speak to, we need to make sure we got everything answered.”
Mr. Kirby tried to reply, but the hold music came on and Lionel Richie was singing Hello to him. The front desk officer punched in for homicide. Detective Dursky was sitting around a desk listening to two other detectives tell him a tale that he didn’t believe for anything. Dursky smiled uninterested in their line of bull. When the phone rang, he said a silent prayer that he didn’t have to sit here any longer and that if there wasn’t a reason to leave, he still was going to go check in on something, on anything, hell he figured he could help someone in robbery if that was the case.
Dursky held up a finger, smiling and took the phone. The other two detectives walked off still recounting the story or at least how they remembered it. “Detective Dursky, how may I help you?”
“It’s Larry, detective, I think I got a fresh one for you, you got the time?”
“Wouldn’t have answered if I was on a case, Larry, you know any details?”
“Nope, just that it is a hotel, a friend found her, the manager is freaking out and they don’t have a clue if the killer is still on the grounds.”
“Send two cars over there, no lights, no commotion, they can tape off the room and make sure that there’s no one there to ruin my scene. Maybe there’ll be someone who screws up and comes back, maybe we will get lucky.”
“You really think somebody would be that stupid?”
“I never start off assuming someone is dumb, but the things I’ve seen criminals do is mind baffling sometimes.”
“I think everyone is, I mean everyone! You should hear the things I have to do; it is enough to make you lose your mind. You deal with them once they have a tag on their toe, you just have to speak to the dead and figure out who killed them.”
“Yeah, there’s nothing crazy I ever need to deal with. I’ll head down to the scene, you let the manager know we are on it, stay out of the room, the entire staff doesn’t need to go in there to say they saw the dead girl.”
“You don’t want to talk to him, at all?”
“Not particularly, if something comes up or the officers on the scene see something or hear something they can reach me. I got car five-sixty-two today just have dispatch channel you over.”
“Yeah, I can do that, good luck out there.”
Route 66 Motel Los Angeles, California
Dursky pulled up to the gravel parking lot in back. He never went in the front if he could avoid it, at least if he was going to a business. People were themselves and pleasant, even when something bad had happened. He liked throwing them off their guard; customer oriented employees had been trained to be polite and respectful to customers. If he came in from the back, they knew there would be no cause for them to think they hadn’t already been there and meaning that they’d already collected their money.
Detective Dursky got out looking around to see no one. He dropped his butt in the gravel grinding it out with his worn wingtip dress shoe. Stephanie looked up, seeing the cheap two-piece suit, the cropped short blonde haircut, and then eyes that were
way too active. People looking around that much were either police or criminals. The fact that he had state plates and a Crown Victoria painted deep navy blue couldn’t scream louder that he was the police, the fact that she and Laurie had lived in the ghetto when they were just starting out on their own did not make it anything but easier to see him. They’d had more drug busts in their neighborhood, car part scandals, chop shops…not the kind you took your car to so it could be fixed, but where stolen cars were dismantled and what parts were good on it were liquidated to area mechanics who were even less honest than the people stealing them.
Dursky saw Stephanie and from the looks of her and the pile of butts by her feet, knew that she’d been placed outside. He already knew the answer to his question, but he had to work people into answering questions and typically making them start out here with a few yes answers got them into the habit of it. Dursky asked, “Excuse me ma’am, do you work here?”
“Yes, I do, or I did, I don’t know, I think that I'm gonna quit.”
“You need me to call someone for you?”
“What are they going to do, you got a priest you can talk to for me? Maybe they can do something to make me feel better, about the only thing that would make me feel any better is to know that Laurie was in heaven looking down on me and was in no pain…anymore,” she pulled out a fresh smoke dropping the one she was still smoking off on the pile.
“My name is Detective Joey Dursky. You can call me Detective or Detective Dursky.”
“Joey?”
“It’s what my parents put on my birth certificate, hand to God.”
“Bet that made dating hard sometimes?”
“I'm happily married I’ll have you know, three kids too,” Dursky said with the hint of a smile, trying to ease some of the tension she was feeling.
“Really, I'm sorry, I say stupid things when I'm upset.”
“No worries, I'm just kidding, I'm as single as they come. But I'm always thinking I’ll find someone right if I'm patient enough. Who doesn’t want to fall in love with someone who does this kind of a thing for a career. I do my best not to take my work home with me, but I don’t give up until I find the son of a-”
“You are going to find out who did this to Laurie aren’t you? I mean, you’ll figure out who it was and why they did it? People don’t murder someone for no reason, right?”
Dursky shrugged, “I can’t say, we can’t ask the dead what happened, all I try to do is to put the pieces together and figure out what happened to them. I know it isn’t easy and it won’t be easy tomorrow either. You strike me, as someone working that knows what she is doing. Can you help me with any information before I go talk to your boss?”
“Sure, it was one of her rooms. Mr. Kirby, or Peter, or Dick as I like to call him stuck us on different wings of the hotel. If we aren’t working like the world will end, then he has a conniption fit. I don’t know what his problem is. He can quite literally sit on his fat ass all day flirting with the ladies coming in and out but doesn’t do a damn thing. If we try to catch just one extra smoke break, he’ll kill us.”
Dursky perked up at that and Stephanie wasn’t stupid. She shooed the idea out of his head before he could even make an assumption about him. “It was the priest, Detective Dursky, at least I’d put my money on it.”
“A priest is who you think killed her?”
“You go in there and tell me you don’t think a man of God did it, or at least someone trying to impersonate a man of God?”
“Would you be able to show me to the room? You don’t have to go in, I promise. You can come straight back out here. I’d rather not have anyone in there. Is there something religious going on in the room?”
Stephanie didn’t say anything as she took one last drag that would have killed him and flicked it uncaring where it went. They walked through the hallway and as they got closer realized it was getting quieter with each passing step. “You guys get rid of the people in these rooms, Stephanie?”
“Mr. Kirby did, he moved everyone to the opposite wing. He knew that if anyone saw the yellow tape that the next stop they’d be going to would be the front office to check out and leave. People don’t want to stay in a horror story, they want a place that makes them happy about not being in their own bed.”
“Does he like this job, Mr. Kirby that is?”
“Just check out the room and you won’t have to be questioning him in the manner that you are planning on. I don’t mean to tell you your place or job, but it is what it is. He’s a jerk but he does his job and wouldn’t lay a hand on any of us. He knows better, our husbands would beat him to a pulp if we came home bruised.”
He saw the yellow tape from down the hall and put a hand on her shoulder. “There’s no reason for you to go in if you don’t want to. I know you aren’t going to get any joy from it and would be disgusted if you did. Are you going to be okay getting back? Do you want me to send one of the uniforms with you, Stephanie?”
“I can walk back, I'm in no hurry to go back outside and sit. I really appreciate that you care, that you aren’t just writing her off as another dead maid that got killed by some crazy guy and you just assume that he left state.”
“I either catch them or they come up dead, there is no in-between. I haven’t been on the job long enough to not care. I don’t plan on doing it if I give up on catching the perps. If I do, I sure as hell am not going to go and be a quitter when it comes to catching people that have killed others.”
Stephanie didn’t ask, she just walked forward, gripping the man around the shoulders and squeezed him until her arms wouldn’t give her any more power with which to do so. She let go pulling him down by his tie a foot kissed his forehead and whispered, “Catch that son of a bitch please. I don’t want to have to tell her husband that they are going to get away with it.”
“They aren’t going to, don’t worry, okay. I mean worry, and beware of your surroundings, but-”
She cut him off smiling weakly. “It is okay, Detective Dursky. Just do your best, I have faith in you.”
Dursky watched her walking down the hallway slowly, feeling guilt and pain even though there was no way for him to have foreseen this or not doing anything to prevent it. He felt a small hope and calmness and watched as Stephanie walked into a light…the only light that was finding its way into the hallway. Her white maids uniform almost made her glow until she had been engulfed into it.
A cough came from behind him and brought him back to the world that needed dealing with. “I’m aware it needs looked at. Just let me have a moment of faith, would you?”
The younger of the two officers couldn’t help himself. “So, what’s the upside to doing this job? I mean, if it is tearing you apart, what do you get out of it?”
“I didn’t take this job to be happy; I took it to help people, and if that means I have some issues to work through then that is what I do. There isn’t a lot of options somedays, but to just put your head down and push through it.”
He looked at the younger cop and saw that his face wasn’t much off from looking like a lime Jell-O. The veteran officer who knew better than to talk with detectives or to ask questions said, “You mind if we step outside, I don’t think the rookie here can make it much longer. He’s already lost everything he ate this morning and probably last night as well. Gonna need to toughen up if he ever wants to try and be the cop that his dad and brothers are.”
“In my defense, I’ve never seen anything like that, sir, and you looked like you were about a second away from blowing your breakfast all over the place as well.”
“I had gas, you needed a tampon.”
“You guys head out, I don’t need anyone babysitting me. I’ve done this enough that I’m not worried about losing anything. Head out before I waste any more of my day. Kid if you got a weak stomach you stick to robbery and crimes when you decide you want to wear a suit every day.”
He gave a thumb up keeping a steady hand on the side of his stomach, trying not to
draw attention to it. When they left, he brought out a pair of gloves, blowing in them and getting them shook out. He pulled them tight and began doing his ritual of making sure each finger was in place. He pulled out his cassette player and headphones placing them on. Dursky got a tape out sliding in a Bach violin concerto. He hit play and began to float away into the room.
Dursky took slow, steady breaths, the room was not yet rank in any way and she hadn’t been here long enough to make a difference. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to be there so he turned the air conditioner on after checking out the room, not yet letting himself look at the scene. When he spun around, he took in the room, the kill, the blood, and everything in-between at once as a whole. He would run through a list of kills in his head upon first look trying to find anything that matched up to a previous murder he had worked in the past.
He had not dealt with many serial killers and he was fine with that. The one time which he had, it had not been a difficult case; the man had been so blood hungry that he could not control his own urges. He had gone through an apartment complex in the ghetto and while Dursky was investigating one building and the killer was five over making a second horror scene. When he had stepped out for a smoke it had not taken a very long time to find him. The man had come out with a duffel bag filled to the brim with skulls that he had cut the eyeballs from. Dursky had always wondered if it was for religious reasons or from insanity. He never had the chance to find out. One of the police on scene screamed for him to stop and he choked himself with the barrel of a three fifty-seven revolver squeezing one off in the commons area. No one tried very hard to get him to stop, he only had to fire once to blow the back of his head off and cover the pavement with his brain and bits of skull. When he’d pulled the gun, he had let go of the bag he’d been carrying. A dozen or more heads rolled from it. He had been confident that if he hadn’t done the job himself that one of the officers would have helped him with it, or made sure he didn’t move on from the cell that he would be placed in.
