Mendez Genesis

by Edward Hancock II

  “This cannot be happening!”

  His eyes glowed red, blood red. Crimson gates standing guard over a soul devoid of anything save the Power he served eternal. His scream was jungle-like. Primal, full of fury. Denied his latest feed, he rose and walked slowly toward the vehicle he had driven. He would have to put this little setback behind him for now. Another time, he scowled. Another time.

  “You can’t save them all!” He defiantly declared, opening the door to the Pontiac Bonneville. “We’ll play later! I’ve got business to take care of. And not even you or your precious Companion can stop me.”

  * * *

  Danny switched off his desk lamp, grabbed his car keys and stood up. His legs were tired, cramped and stiff. His feet had fallen asleep from the hours of sitting, pounding out the paperwork that had piled up in the course of the investigations he’d been running. He wished more than anything that he’d had someone reliable working with him on the David Collins case, but the best he could hope was that Teresa Roelig would be able to look over his paperwork, successfully add her own report to the file and give it to the Captain for his review without screwing something up along the way.

  Danny had been coordinating efforts as best he could, keeping as much of the work as he could manage for himself. Normally he was quite the delegate, but Teresa Roelig did not bestow a high level of confidence in Danny. He’d assigned her to work with Chuck Gaines, mostly because he knew what a chauvinist Chuck was. He wouldn’t take orders well from a woman and Danny knew it. He’d been a homicide detective for more years than Danny had been a policeman, and yet he always seemed to get passed over for promotion, mostly due to his distaste for politicians and their kin. Chuck was everything Danny thought he would be fifteen years hence. Not a team player – good at his job, but blatantly out for himself – bitterly distrustful of the justice system, Chuck Gaines was arguably the most thorough cop on the payroll. He did his job ten times better than anyone, kissed nobody’s butt, made no excuses when he screwed up – which wasn’t often – many times rewriting “the book” when following procedure didn’t seem to suit his investigatory needs. Teresa never admitted fear – probably because she was too stupid to know when fear was warranted – and never seemed to show respect to anyone, but for some reason she had taken to Chuck Gaines like a fish to water. Whatever he said was law. Even though Teresa technically outranked Chuck, his strong personality overwhelmed her. She had given him authority virtually without a fight.

  Officially, it was Teresa’s investigation – under Danny’s watch, of course – but unofficially it had fallen directly into the hands of one of the most capable cops with which Danny had ever had the pleasure of working. His jolly Alabama drawl sounded almost charming as he lamented his theories on how women were better served in the home than on the beat. Never one to get angry, Danny had seen Chuck argue a woman to near violent rage – using simple logic – without so much as raising his voice above normal speaking. Most women wouldn’t work with him because they knew of his arcane powers of persuasion. Working with Chuck Gaines was often akin to setting the women’s movement back seventy years. How on earth such a young, opinionated, spoiled-rotten, little girl like Teresa Roelig ever got along with Chuck Gaines was as much a mystery to Danny as it was a welcome shock. Danny had compared the team of Teresa Roelig and Chuck Gaines to a binary liquid, like Epoxy. Either liquid by itself was basically useless. Put the two together and, Danny hoped, the flaws would cancel each other out and the investigation would hold stronger than superglue. So far, his theory seemed to be working and, at least for now, Team Epoxy held. Where Teresa lacked an attention to detail, Chuck was strong in his desire to do it right. What Chuck might have lacked in his people skills, Teresa more than made up for with her chatterbox, socialite mentality and rookie’s reliance on “the rules.” As Danny was heading for the door, a young ebony-haired patrolman, looking slightly disheveled, stopped him.

  “Lieutenant Peterson?” the youngster asked, his voice sacked with urgency. The patrolman’s name was Steve Christie. Danny knew him, or at least knew of him. He was young, barely out of the academy, but eager and by all accounts, reasonably good at his job. Worthy of the respect of his peers most said. Not filled with the cocksure attitude of many gung-ho rookies, Steve Christie seemed to give off an air of confidence that was nonetheless powerfully evident, despite his mildly unkempt appearance. He stood just under six feet tall. His shoulders weren’t too broad but he wasn’t a small man necessarily. Danny nodded at Steve but said nothing.

  “Lieutenant, we have someone in custody that I think you need to see.”

  “I’m off-duty now, Officer Christie,” Danny said, his voice monotone.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” Steve Christie offered, “I was asked by Sergeant Vargas to come get you. She said you’d want to see the guy. Something about The warehouse down on Ninety-eighth Street.”

  The warehouse. Alex. That’s the place where Alex had been hurt.

  “You mean they found the sucker!?” Danny said, excitedly.

  “They found somebody,” Christie said. “Well, I guess we found somebody. Me and my partner. Some guy he said attacked a friend of yours.”

  “More than just a friend,” Danny offered. “Lieutenant Alex Mendez is one of the finest officers this or any other police force has ever known.”

  “Oh yeah!” Christie said, his eyes filling with life. “I remember hearing about that. Man, I’d forgotten about that.”

  “When it’s one of your own,” Danny admonished, “you shouldn’t ever forget.”

  The young man’s eyes suddenly fell weak. With just a few well-placed words, Danny had broken him. In that moment, maybe that’s what he wanted. Nobody should forget Alex.

  Alex wasn’t dead, but this idiot might as well have just walked over and peed Alex’s grave. For that, he’s lucky that a verbal reminder was all he got. Steve Christie was a cop. Cops don’t forget other cops. Ever.

  “You want somebody to forget about you, Officer?” Danny asked. His question was met with an understanding silence.

  Danny’s face tightened as they walked toward the holding cell. He could hardly believe the small, rat-faced vagrant had gotten one over on a cop like Alex Mendez. Even in his faded grayish-black overcoat, he didn’t look like much. He was gaunt, dirty and smelled like six kinds of vomit.

  His breath reeked of as many kinds of liquor and his eyes were bloodshot, vacant of any intelligence. He looked like an even uglier version of Argus Filch from the movie adaptation of the Harry Potter novels.

  “Did you read him his rights?” Danny asked Officer Christie.

  “You bet.”

  “Good,” Danny said, turning his attention back to the dirt bag in the holding cell. “I have just one more right to give you. You have the right to answer my questions. If you give up that right, anything I can find will be held against you in an increasingly violent manner. Do you understand this right as I have instructed you?” The man’s eyes widened. He no doubt knew that Danny meant business. His voice shaky, graveled, he spoke in a raspy whisper.

  “His eyes.”

  “Whose eyes?” Danny asked.

  “His eyes!” He appeared to be looking through Danny. His focus was off. It seemed to be in another world. Probably, Danny thought, whacked out on drugs.

  “Look, Jerkweed, now is not a good time to play the schizophrenic homeless guy role with me. You’re either going to answer my questions or I’m going to jerk them out of your throat. Do you understand me?”

  “The eyes!” He shouted. Reaching through the bars, Danny grabbed the filthy thug by his dusty overcoat. Braving the smell of vomit, vodka and street rot, Danny lifted the guy off the ground and slammed his head into the bars, meeting nose to nose with him.

  “Now you look into my eyes, you idiot! You tell me now why you tried to kill my friend. Who do you think you are attacking a cop? You think you’re bad? Attack me if you think you’re so bad! I’ll beat you senseless through these
bars and save the taxpayers the cost of a trial!”

  Officer Christie’s eyes were huge. Danny knew he was flirting with disaster having a witness so close to this display, but he was no longer in control. Alex was in control. Thoughts of Alex’s mangled body. Thoughts of his life being destroyed. Danny wanted revenge and the most convenient target had just presented itself. Danny shook the guy violently, causing small dust clouds to leap from his clothes and hair. Danny blinked dirt from his eyes and finally tossed the guy backwards, causing him to stumble and fall.

  “Open the cage,” Danny said to the jailer.

  At first, the frightened jailer stood in stunned silence, frozen, unable to obey Danny’s order. Finally, Danny gave the order again, less friendly this time. “Open this cage now!”

  He grabbed the jailer and ripped the keys from his belt. Danny opened the holding cell, shut the door behind him and threw the keys between the bars, to the outer area. He seized the dirty rodent man and lifted him up, slamming him into the wall hard. The guy grinned an almost-toothless grin, spitting breath from his lungs that was anything but welcome in Danny’s nostrils. He heard something like a dripping noise and realized the guy was peeing his pants. It took a couple of seconds for Danny to realize that the guy’s fly was open and he had, either by accident or on purpose, peed on Danny’s leg. Infuriated, Danny growled and again slammed the guy into the back wall of the holding cell. Repeatedly, he slammed the thug against the wall like he was little more than a rag doll; not sure what he wanted to do with him; not sure what he needed to ask him; not sure of anything except this was the guy that had hurt Alex.

  “You have the right not the remain silent!” Danny shouted, as he slammed the guy hard into the holding cell wall. “You have the right to have the snot beat out of you in this holding cell! You have the right to have my fist shoved down your throat or my foot shoved in the other end!”

  The dusty filth bag seemed to be smiling all the more when Danny stopped shaking him. His eyes no longer showed fear, no trepidation at all. Slowly, he reached a hand up to Danny’s neck. To Danny’s surprise, however, he did not squeeze. Curiously, his fingers wandered about Danny’s neck and face. After a few seconds of controlled searching, his fingers stopped on Danny’s ears. All the sounds of the room suddenly dropped. Danny found himself drowned in total deafness. Stunned, he dropped the guy and reached toward his ears.

  “No,” the thug said, calmly. His voice echoed in Danny’s head. His insides tingled with the closest thing to fear that he’d ever known. The fear of the inexplicable. Anyone standing directly behind Danny could have shouted into his ears and gone unheard. Of that much Danny was sure. But he heard Mr. Dirt Bag’s voice as plain as he heard the sounds of his body crashing against the holding cell wall just moments before. Danny’s mind filled with images he could not make out. He saw faces.

  Flashes of light surrounding granite tomb-like structures. He saw Alex falling from the scaffold as clearly as if it was happening right in front of him. It all happened without sound. Without smell. Without the benefit of any sensation. This was a movie, albeit a silent one played out on the projection screen of Danny’s mind.

  He saw Scott Bryan’s face before him. He saw the dead teenagers from Rock Springs Cemetery, their lifeless bodies being tossed about by an able-bodied Scott Bryan. He grew curiously timid at the sight of Scott Bryan’s maniacal grimace. What the hell was he looking at?

  Was this real? Was this some bad acid trip? Had he fallen asleep at his desk, buried under a mountain of paperwork?

  He saw Lisa’s body lying in a mangled heap in a bathtub. Her mouth was bleeding and, it appeared, so was her head. Christina was standing over her, sobbing, frightened, bathed in a mysterious blue light.

  Anger swelled in Danny as he fought to regain control of himself. He looked at the thug’s face. His eyes were no longer eyes. Replaced by sulfurous-yellow spheres. They lacked depth but seemed, simultaneously, to go on forever as if the lights themselves were a journey to some unspoken region of Hell. Instinct told Danny to strike the guy. He slammed his fist hard against the guy’s hands. Nothing happened. Not even a flinch. Not a wince of pain. Again Danny struck, this time at the thug’s face. Again, nothing. Danny knew he had struck the guy hard enough to shatter his face. He was no weakling and he’d struck the guy with all the force his anger could muster. Without warning, Danny felt himself flying through the air. He had sailed, he guessed, some ten feet past – or rather through – the cell door before he felt the pain caused by his body striking against the metal bars. Everyone that hadn’t been knocked over by the Police Lieutenant flying through the welded metal structure stood awestruck at the mere sight. Danny lay in a confused, bruised and painfully battered heap. Not even massive doses of adrenaline could mask the pain caused by becoming a human battering ram. He fought to get to his hands and knees, but his arms were shaky, weak. Losing consciousness, he caught a glimpse of the thug’s eyes one more time. He was running into the corridor, out of the holding cell area. He heard laughter.

  He could hear again.

  “Stop him!” he heard someone say. Another voice screamed.

  Footsteps. Running. There was something like an explosion. What was it? Danny’s head swam with pain. His mind grew cloudy as the room filled with the smoke and ash of exploding metal, mortar and brick.

  This sucks!

  Chapter 11 ~

  Lisa woke veiled by the weight of a very heavy mental fog. Different from the one that had propelled her deep fall into the sea of darkness from which she was emerging, but no less intense. Her mind registered discomfort, stiffness in her muscles and joints, but no real pain to speak of yet. Her head ached a little, but mostly it seemed to have developed its own rhythmic pulse, independent from, but in harmony with her beating heart. Her ability to move, though labored by stiffness and the cramped area in which she had awoken, had somewhat returned. She felt her body being shaken and for the first time thought she heard someone calling to her. The voice sounded so far away, almost as if Lisa were dreaming, asleep, but aware of the world from which she had been separated.

  Lisa tried to focus on the voice, but her mind couldn’t decide if it was real, imagined, near or far. This world or The Next.

  This world or The Next.

  The single thought was more disconcerting, more confusing, more frightening than Lisa could digest. Suddenly, she wondered in which world she existed. Had she fallen into the Eternal Rabbit Hole from which there was no wondrous return or had she simply detoured briefly into frightened slumber? She tried to open her eyes but realized that they were already open. As she fought to focus, she was relieved at the visions of dancing shadows before her, clinging desperately to the hope that each shadow was proof against an unforgiving blindness. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes.

  “Mommy,” The voice was soft, timid.

  Christina! Oh God No!

  Christina found me! Oh God, tell me this is not happening! Wake up Lisa! Wake up and tell your daughter everything’s okay.

  Wake up! Mommy just fell Honey. That’s all.

  Wake up!

  She tried to speak, wanted to sooth her frightened child, but her voice was not cooperating. Her speech was mumbled. She tasted blood, her own, she hoped. Confused senses comforted her that the blood did not belong to someone she loved, frightened her at the unlikely possibility that it did, in fact, belong to a loved one and repulsed her as her mind filled with images of a severed tongue, bitten off when she fell into the bathtub, which would account for her inability to speak coherently.

  Blinking almost violently now, her eyes were slowly registering more and more sparkles of light; it almost appeared to Lisa as though a fireworks show was playing itself out inside the darkness of her diminished senses. As the taste of blood mixed with a stale perfume of unidentifiable odors, Lisa’s gag reflexes convulsed powerfully, rocking her involuntarily into a seated position. Gasping for breath, her vision cleared to near perfect for half a second, a m
illionth of a second, only to propel her back into the flashing fireworks display that denied her visual clarity.

  Still blinded by the imaginary pinwheels, Lisa’s eyes began to discern a thousand make-believe characters. Like tiny glowing gnats swimming about the moist surface of her eyeball. As she fell further into darkness, her mind, too late, processed the images her eyes had registered. The bathroom was, as far as she could tell, in relative order, given the chaos to which she’d been a party. Nothing seemed broken or out of place and… Christina!

  A flash of her daughter’s profile in the mirror. There she was, standing right by the bathtub, barely tall enough to be visible, her body hidden, Christina’s frightened expression seemed all the more pronounced. What her eyes had seen, her mind had not immediately registered.

  “Baby,” Lisa choked out, swallowing hard to remove the gravel from her voice. Clearing her throat. Hopefully, she thought to herself, there goes the tongue biting theory.

  It was a desperate attempt at communication. It was a mother’s reassurance, apprehension, validation and need for confirmation. One spoken word, encompassing a universe of emotion. The sound of her own voice echoed in her head, sending shockwaves of pain bounding off the walls of her skull. Lisa envisioned tiny trolls engaged in the most evil game of cranial racquetball imaginable. For a moment Lisa wondered if she’d actually spoken the word or just thought it.

  “Mommy!” Christina’s excited voice called. She felt hands on her face, tiny hands, warm, steady hands. There was no tremble. No sign of fright as in the small excited voice that was Christina. Mommy’s big girl, Lisa sighed. “Mommy, you’re all better!”

  Again, Lisa’s vision returned. This time for a few seconds. An eternity, but not nearly long enough. Not with full clarity. Flashing in and out, Lisa moved her eyes around the bathroom trying to focus on as many things as possible. Trying to get a feel for her visual limits, while trying to reach past each visual roadblock she encountered. Her vision still clouded, Lisa searched for Christina. She reached for the tiny hand on her face and fought again for her voice. Fought to command it. Fought to make it reassuring.