The bus engine roared to life and the back wheels started burning rubber and before any of us could think, much less react, the bus went front-first over the edge, as in slow motion, and landed on its top, its own weight and the force of gravity crushing everything and everyone inside on the freeway pavement below.
Shackleford called a meeting of the entire squad. He wanted to examine the procedures of the bus scene, identify mistakes, and learn as a team, in the open. It was his protocol but this wasn’t a homicide case, not technically. Our jobs began AFTER the victims were killed.
Which was why the bulk of his remarks and inquisition were directed at me.
“When a busload of innocent children—special needs kids, no less—goes down on our watch—and by ‘our watch’ I mean the Denver Police Department as a whole as well as members of this unit on scene—the public wants answers and they want them now.”
In the silence he looked at me, as if waiting for me to explain away what happened. I said nothing.
“When the public and the media demand answers, the Brass demands answers, and that makes the job of Lieutenant ‘answer man’—and you know what? You take the shitty parts of the sandwich right along with the good fixings; that’s what my father taught me.”
Shackleford’s dad retired as a Captain after twenty-five years. He’d also taught his son that twenty years was the MINIMUM for retirement and you never aim for the minimum unless it was a kill shot.
“May I say something,” I asked.
“I was hoping we’d hear from you on this one, Detective. Seeing how your presence was requested yet again.”
“First, it was a hostage situation. I—Detective Rodriguez and I—were there as requested but neither of us are recently trained in hostage negotiation.”
“Noted,” the boss said.
“Regardless, I think everyone in this room knows Grant intended to drive that bus over the edge no matter what was said or done.”
“We can’t know that and we certainly can’t make that my official answer to One PP.”
“No, we can’t. But this is OUR meeting and I think facts as well as gut beliefs are relevant to how we perform our jobs,” I said.
“You just might make a decent lieutenant one day, Mac,” Shackleford said, released a breath, and sat down at the head of the table.
At least he’d lightened up, which meant my statement had served its purpose.
“The little boy. He’s still alive?” the boss said.
I nodded. “He’s nowhere near ‘out of the woods’, but he’s alive,” I said.
We’d found one autistic boy, nine years old, breathing. He’d crawled beneath a seat and the extra space—just a few inches—saved his life. The only survivor. We announced officially to the press that all were believed to have perished, hoping to delay the facts a day or two at most. We did, of course, notify the family immediately and prior to any statements that their son had so far survived but to not speak to anyone about those specifics yet.
“The suspect was not found in the wreckage?”
“No, sir. We believe he was never on the bus. Our working theory is the driver was in on the plan. Or forced to do what she did.”
“To drive herself and eight handicapped children to their deaths?”
“Yes.”
It sounded preposterous, but we took apart the bus, even looking for escape hatches, hidden compartments—it was a compacted mess. I even consulted a magician whose specialty was in the area of “escape artist”. I brought him in to examine the evidence, hear the story, watch the news footage of the bus from all angles based on the fact that media helicopters were on the scene and filmed the entire incident.
He said, and I quote:
“If a man was on that bus, he made the greatest escape of all time.”
Spence Grant was never there. No one could say they’d actually seen him firsthand. He claimed he was calling from inside the bus, but he could have been anywhere. The news footage did not show the inside of the bus; windows and doors were closed and the Colorado sunshine hid the interior as well as if the windows had been tinted.
Shackleford and the rest could clearly not imagine how the bus driver—a woman driving for the school district for twenty-seven years, no police record, no traffic stops, and a devout Mormon, could have been convinced to carry out such a horrific act.
But I knew.
And now so did Manny.
If he believed it.
7
I STOOD in the JDK3 Task Force war room. It was still a couple of hours before the rest of the team would arrive and the day begin. We all had our “day jobs”, though we worked them as second priority and in the off hours. It was quite the orchestration, bringing so many law enforcement personnel from myriad agencies, departments, and jurisdictions together for just one meeting, much less three to five a week, depending on developments. And we’d most certainly had a “development” with the appearance of Spence Grant after all these years. It was my briefing this morning and all I could think about was how much or how little to tell.
Not unlike the forever battle in my mind—or rather, between my mind and soul—my mind being the source of reason and logic and the known world; the things we can touch and smell and taste; the things that made the world what it was to us, made some kind of reason out of a predicament the human race had really never fully understood.
The soul, of course, being the source of love and dreams and, in many cases, beliefs, even when the mind and the ways of our known universe implied otherwise. I remembered something Father West—my cousin; a Macaulay—told me years ago when I was struggling mightily to grasp the meaning of what we’d seen, done, been witness to—and let me be clear about something: seeing a thing and being witness to it were two entirely separate things and not open to semantic interpretation. Seeing is a physical act; we observe the thing—the happening—and perhaps, depending on various elements such as the level of shock, vantage point, and yes, even belief system, we retain, at some basal level, a recording or remembrance of the circumstance.
Witnessing an event implies something much deeper and completely different. Witnessing does not happen with the eyes; it is not a physical thing but a metaphysical or, if you prefer, a spiritual one. It occurs within the realm of ourselves that we refer to as a soul, an un-seeable, untouchable, un-examinable (at least with modern instruments) organ but nonetheless the most palpable one we have as sentient human beings. We do not weigh it—cannot—but it weighs us.
Manny was the most recent to hear my story. I’d only ever shared it with a handful of people, most of them—scratch that, all—because they had to know; because whatever moment of a case or an investigation or, most important of all, the saving of lives, depended on them hearing it. After hearing it rather than seeing it firsthand, they and they only were capable of bearing witness and measuring, searching inside, grappling with the inconceivable, and coming out the other side with a personal level of belief and understanding on their own.
I was always careful to make clear we were not talking about anything that had not been part of human history as long as it had been recorded; I was not speaking of witches, warlocks, werewolves, vampires, ghouls, ghosts, or zombies. I headed off the natural reaction of dismissing the telling as if a ghost story. I believed the mind’s reaction to the telling craved a way to somehow de-legitimize the reality of what was being shared.
For millennia the story—my story—had been told, and not in fairytale books or around campfires but in churches and synagogues and temples all around the world by every cogent religion since nearly the beginning of time.
God and the Devil.
Good versus Evil.
A great preponderance of people on the planet would not call these things paranormal—beyond the normal—at all. In fact they would argue emphatically that these “stories” were not the background noise of the universe but the very stage upon which humanity played out its meek and unfinished existence; a play wi
th (at least for us) an unknown ending.
And was it so hard to believe that I was part of a lineage whose sacred duty had been—for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years—tasked with waging a battle on the side of Good; a war against the sometimes unbelievable and inexplicable elements of Evil?
It was for me. I was a detective, first and foremost. Our entire process depended on empirical evidence. The touchable. The seeable. The tangible. Evidence.
Then again, any good cop would tell you that half of what he or she did—particularly the successful half—was due to intuition. Call it what you would: gut feeling, instinct, intuition, hairs standing at attention on the arms and necks, goose pimples, little devils and angels on the shoulder.
The paranormal. Beyond physical or instrumental explanation. But there wasn’t a decent investigator alive or dead that would tell you, if they could, that such un-seeable, un-measurable, unsubstantiated elements were not only key to solving cases but perhaps central and most important of all.
I stared at the evidence board—the summation of all we’d seen, done, found, and yes, witnessed (although I might be the only one in the room, other than my best friend, who believed we’d witnessed anything at all—particularly by my definitions).
So many young women—girls, most. Underage by every definition of the word. So brutally their lives were snuffed from existence. Did they believe it in the end—what they’d witnessed? Did they believe in the existential reality of Good and Evil—God and the Devil? Had they seen the demons as I had?
The irony was that we humans use the term all the time. Battling our demons. The return of our demons. The word was practically universally codified in the handbooks for addicts all over the planet.
But to tell—to even imply—one had seen a demon, much less a horde of them? Well, at that point we were normally talking white coat time. Psych lockup. As if we humans had it all figured out. We’d been here on this planet for perhaps a fraction of an eye blink next to the age of the Universe itself yet we were arrogant enough to think we knew all the answers.
Never mind that those “answers” changed almost daily; never mind that what we knew yesteryear (the Earth was flat; we were the center of the universe; there was no cure for Polio; there were x number of planets in this solar system or that); never mind the theories (and discoveries) of wormholes and Quantum Physics and the fact that science itself—the most elephantine skeptic in the room—literally thrived on the next unknown discovery around the corner.
Since the beginning of the killings and my participation in their investigation I had felt the palpability of my involvement. Not physically on the team or even my selection to it. That was logical. No, I had sensed more. A lot more. Yes, I had missed the Spence Grant connection but, A) That was more than likely as preordained as it was poor detective work; and, B) It really didn’t change much in terms of the why, where, and when for the next victim.
It gave us a name. Perhaps another path; another starting point into an abyss of the unknown. But it did not give us any of the answers for which we searched. However, it pulled on me—it had my insides firing on every piston. I was excited; I felt as if I was but an inch from knowing the why, where, when and from catching that son of a bitch.
But then I also knew that finding him—discovering the “master plan”—was in all likelihood only the beginning. “Beginning” being as stretching and warming up was to the “beginning” of the twenty-six mile run, one-mile swim, and one hundred mile bike ride of an Iron Man Triathlon.
Yet I needed desperately to cover that last inch so that we could finally, after all these months and all these deaths, truly begin the race.
I was still staring at the pictures on our investigation board when Bum Garvey walked into the room, himself still over an hour early for the meeting.
“Figurin’ on changing anything by starin’ long enough at them pictures or were you just tryin’ to divine some new leads through some kind of Jedi mind meld?”
I smiled and shook my head slowly. Bum always made me feel better. He was the Hardy to my Laurel; a great man who had been in service to his country since I was learning to watch Dick run and Spot take a dump. “It’s just all so overwhelming,” I said.
“That it is,” he said. “But that’s not why you are here hours before the sun is up and with a look of worry on that face that could discourage the Dali Lama himself.”
“There are new developments,” I told him. “The problem is, with these developments comes a lot of baggage. And not the kind that’s easy to explain or defend.”
“Last I looked, the charter of this team was to find the killer, not explain or defend how we do it.”
“You’re right. But these developments—these people and the elemental beliefs that fall into question when discussing them—well, it is never easy to talk law enforcement personnel into much that falls outside the empirical, if you know what I mean.”
“Devils and demons and such?” Garvey said.
“Among other things.”
“You know why you were picked for this unit, right?” Garvey said, standing up to walk toward starting the coffee pot in the corner. “I mean beyond being one of the goddamned finest detectives I’ve ever known.”
“Guess I thought that was why.”
“You ever been on one of these task forces before?”
“No,” I said. “I never have.”
“And suddenly you’re on this one,” Bum said. “Kinda begs a question or two, don’t it?”
“What’re you poking around at, Bum?”
“Stories fly around law enforcement circles faster’n anywhere I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Some people wanted you on this team because of the developments, elements, whatever, of which you speak, partner.”
“Some people?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe just one?”
Garvey poured the water in the coffeemaker and looked up, his bushy moustache and leathered face as emotionless as paper, or air. “Maybe. What difference does it make? Here’s what you do this day, Mac: you say what needs sayin’. You tell these people what happened. They’re good people and good cops and not one of them didn’t want you on this team. Not one. So they’ll listen to ya, too. They will.”
“Thanks, Bum.”
“You can thank me down at the pub after you get your ass laughed outta this conference room.”
“And you can remind me again why the hell I listen to you,” I said.
“Because of my genius, good looks, and inestimable charm. Plus when I drink I end up buying all the rounds.”
“Most truthful thing you’ve said today.”
“They trust you, Mac. But you gotta let ‘em.”
8
I STOOD before the group of elite law enforcement personnel. The funny thing that hit me was that even police could be afflicted with “cop panic”. I was intimidated as hell. But I tried to breathe steadily, concentrate, and remember Garvey’s words.
“I think it’s time we put a bullet in the elephant,” I said.
Not so much as a chuckle. It was a tough crowd.
“You all know my story. I am not going to stand up here and tell it nor will I defend it. It is what it is and the only parts of it that matter are those that help us catch this fucking killer.”
Graveyard silence.
“I don’t know any of your religious beliefs,” I said. “I don’t care. I am most of the time confused about my own. But I know I am sane, I know what I have witnessed, and I know that there is more at play here than cops like you all and myself are used to dealing with on a daily basis. Beyond that, I’d rather this be more of a sharing of information through questions and answers. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I’ll tell you my working theories, crazy as they may sound. But I’m pretty sure each one of you has a shitload of questions for me so why don’t we start there?”
Steve Jenkins, Deputy Director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, took the opportunity li
ke a hungry lion spotting a fresh kill unattended.
“You think this is God and Devil and demon possession, don’t you?”
Jenkins had no middle ground, no places in which he tiptoed.
“Sir, as you well know and with all due respect, nothing is as simple as that.”
“But you are implying to us that there is something preternatural to these killings, are you not?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I knew your old man, son,” Jenkins said. “Paddy was a mean son of a bitch, but he was one of the most honest, worthy men I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. Whatever you’ve got to say, whatever you’ve seen or know, I am ready to hear it.”
In the silence following the Deputy Director’s statement you could’ve heard a gnat cough. Jenkins didn’t get to where he was being anyone’s pal, so I appreciated the vote of confidence even more.
“You’ve no doubt all heard a variation of the stories,” I said. “Only believe the most unbelievable parts.”
The ovoid faces around the table turned to one another in my peripheral vision, my own eyes never leaving Deputy Director Jenkins. He nodded in understanding.
“My theory is that the bus driver herself drove those children to their deaths—sorry, almost all,” I said.
“You believe a devout Mormon killed seven children, intent on killing them all as well as herself?” said Janet Del Rio, a supervising Sergeant and Detective in the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.
“I don’t believe she was herself when she did it,” I said.
“What exactly does that mean?” said Del Rio.
“I believe she was possessed.”
At that moment, you’d have been able to hear the gnat blink.
“Son, you’re askin’ a lot from these educated, experienced lawpersons. Maybe a little truthful sharing of what you’ve learned, seen, done—whatever the case, might be in order. No one is here to doubt, and there ain’t no crazy thoughts or theories, not if one brings us closer to the killer, or killers. The only ‘crazy’ far as I’m concerned is out there murdering innocent young ladies,” said Garvey. “And now children.”
R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning Page 8
