“Hell,” Gibbons dismissed him, “ain’t you read about that guy in Miami who swallowed some bath salts and then tried to eat some poor bum’s face off? Night of the fuckin’ Living Dead kinda shit.”
“I doubt that man was getting psychiatric therapy at the time.”
“Whatever,” Gibbons replied. “My point is that none of that shit relates to our case.”
“There’s a lot of crazy shit going on around here, Gibbons,” Harrison point out. “What if it all relates?”
“You serious?” Gibbons all but laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure our missing girl is being held up in that nice home in the suburbs. Palmer’s got her lying on her leather couch right now, while she’s taking notes.” He began to mimic an obnoxious, female voice: “So tell me Megan, how do you feel right now about your kidnapping? Does it bring up any repressed emotions from your childhood memories?”
Harrison swerved around a horse and buggy along the road, passing it with slightly more aggression than usual. He knew Gibbons was just trying to talk sense into him, but he was irritated nonetheless. He took a breath, trying to explain his reasoning in a calm manner. “I’m sure you’re right,” he began. “No, I don’t really think Palmer’s involved in anything, but she was rather defensive when I mentioned George Summers.”
“Maybe she didn’t like bein’ suspected of somethin’. Maybe she took what happened as a personal failure.”
“Yeah,” Harrison concurred, “probably. But like I was saying, we’ve got nothing. All our leads have been dead ends. The Panco girl’s been missing for over a week, and we got a mystery here where a lot of things don’t make any sense. Now, I’m not saying that Palmer’s involved, but something’s still fishy about her. I can’t explain it, but I’ve just got this weird feeling. Besides, if you can’t find something you’re looking for, you’ve got to expand the search.”
“Well,” Gibbons replied, “you really expandin’. In fact, you reachin’.
“No,” Harrison disagreed, “I’m being thorough. Come on, Gibbons, what would Robocop do?” He turned to his partner with a smirk.
Gibbons let out a short laugh, but shook his head. “Look, Biddle don’t want you wastin’ yo time with the reputables, and I have to agree with him. I know we ain’t getting’ nowhere, but you and me both know that can change. All it takes is one good lead. We need to stick with the homeless community and this Williams boy. We just keep at it until somethin’ turns up.”
Harrison shook his head as well. “It’s like we’re spinning our wheels.”
Gibbons lowered his voice to a tone more serious, almost despondent. “We probably spinnin’ our wheels anyway. It’s been eight days. The longer this takes, the less likely we find the girl.”
“Yeah,” Harrison sighed. “Still, she’s our main priority.”
“That’s cause of her two dead friends at that apartment. Now that’s related. So it makes our case hot. We not only lookin’ for a kidnapper; we lookin’ for a possible murder suspect. ‘Cept homicide’s got nothin’ either.”
The two detectives sat in silence for a good while as Harrison headed back toward the precinct, located closer to downtown Lancaster City. He knew full well at this point that the likelihood of finding Megan Panco alive was dwindling every hour. It never sat well with him, having a job like this in which he put so much time and effort into many cases of missing persons, only to leave them open, or presume the missing as dead. Those cases that were closed, often were done so after finding a body. This particular case seemed more crucial to him, though not much different than others. Perhaps it was because of Jim Panco. He liked the man, and didn’t want to let him down. Mr. Panco had dealt with enough tragedy, and Harrison was the last person to want to amplify his already despairing life.
But even Jim had left town. Even he had apparently come to terms with the low probability of the authorities ever finding his daughter. At first, he had seemed so determined that he spent the past weekend doing his own investigating. Even though Harrison had advised him to cease and desist, he believed that it was not because of his conversation with the man that made him leave town. It was the news about the double homicide, Harrison decided. It was clear to see that the murders of Ben Weber and Ryleigh Darlington, two of Megan’s friends, brought down the hopes of finding her for everyone invested in the case, including her own father.
Trying to shake his own sense of growing hopelessness, Harrison broke the silence in the car. “You know, I’m not trying to talk like a white man. I worked really hard at losing my ‘ghetto talk’ because I felt it would give me an edge.”
“What’cha mean?” Gibbons asked, hardly listening.
“Speaking professionally. Sometimes it’s all about perception. People see you as an educated man. You get a better image. You never know; it can open doors sometimes. Not like I’m losing my heritage or anything.”
“True, true,” Gibbons acknowledged. “But you don’t need professional talk ‘round me, brother. And I didn’t mean to give you shit for it. Hell, I can lose the ‘ghetto talk’ too if I want. I know the game. Tell ya what pisses me off though. I’m speaking all professional to a whitey…”
“And he says, ‘You speak really well,’” Harrison cut in, indicating his empathy. “As if he’s surprised.”
“Yeah,” Gibbons spat. “Makes me wanna slap him upside his fat head.”
“Pisses me off too.”
Another half mile of silence. For some reason, Harrison didn’t feel like finishing the drive with his thoughts. “Thanks again for working with me today, man.”
Gibbons shrugged. “Like I said, not like I’m gettin’ nowhere on my beat.”
“Sorry I dragged you all the way out here, just to do a drive by.”
“Well, like you said, we off the clock. And it’s yo gas; if you ask me, it’s a waste of time.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“You scopin’ any of the other witnesses?”
“Not really,” Harrison admitted.
“So why just her?”
Harrison had been apprehensive about sharing all of his reasons for his fishy feelings toward Diana Palmer, but if there was anyone he could trust, it was his partner. “Okay, this may not make sense. Hell, I can’t make any sense of it.” He hesitated.
Gibbons turned to face his partner. “What?”
“Look, don’t think I’m trippin, cause I’m not.”
Gibbons gave him a puzzled look. “Okay… what?”
“The first time I met Dr. Palmer, she was at my desk last Friday morning, giving her statement about the guy Cliff who came to their Bible Study, and how she saw him getting into Megan Panco’s car. I looked at the file and saw Megan’s picture, and…” He paused again.
Gibbons prodded. “What, man?”
Harrison struggled to continue. “I think I recognized her.”
“Who? Palmer?”
“No. Megan. I had this weird feeling like… I don’t know. I think I had a dream the night before, and I think Megan was in my dream, giving a statement of her own, something different than a kidnapping.”
“Okay,” Gibbons said with a confused tone, “I’m not gonna say you trippin’, but what’s that got to do with Palmer?”
“Well, when she was in my office giving her statement, for a moment I thought that it was real. Like it really happened… like Megan Panco really came into the station the night before to report a crime. But at some point while I was taking Palmer’s statement, I realized it was just a dream.”
“Still not getting’ why this makes the woman fishy.”
“Me neither,” Harrison confessed. “but I think I was sure it had been real until that moment with Palmer. It was almost like my conversation with her is what made me realize it was just a dream.”
“In the dream,” Gibbons asked in a strangely concerned voice, “do you remember what crime Megan was reporting?”
Harrison thought hard. “No,” he admitted finally. “Here’s the fishy part though.
After Palmer left my office that morning, I couldn’t remember what I was doing the night Megan was supposedly abducted. I still can’t remember. I know I was on my shift, working in my office, but I haven’t any idea what I was working on.”
They were both silent for a while, both men staring straight ahead at the road in front of them, eyes squinting behind their sunglasses from the setting sun in the clear, evening sky.
“I got nothin’,” Gibbons finally blurted.
“You think I’m trippin’,” Harrison assumed.
“No, I’ll tell you what I think. I think you wearin’ yo-self thin. This job’s getting’ to you, you ain’t gettin’ no sleep, and it’s startin’ to fuck with yo memory. You gettin’ dreams mixed up with reality. That’s a sure sign you workin’ too much and not takin’ care of yo-self.”
Harrison shook his head. “I’m fine,” he protested.
“No, you ain’t fine!” Gibbons countered with a raised voice. “Now, I can’t explain how you could’ve had a dream about the girl we lookin’ for the night before she was reported missin’, ‘cept you so sleep deprived that yo neurons are firing off inside yo head, causin’ all kinds of crazy shit! But I’m tellin’ you man, as yo partner and yo friend, you gotta take a break and balance yo life out. I got yo back; always have, but if you gonna have my back, I need you to function! You ain’t Robocop! You human like the rest of us!”
“You’re the one who calls me Robocop.”
“Yeah, well I’m about to call you not qualified for duty!”
“You serious?” Harrison turned to his partner with an angered look.
Gibbons calmed himself, wishing to avoid hard feelings with his partner. “Look. Harrison. All seriousness… that’s the last thing I wanna do. I can’t work this case without you. But what I’m sayin’ now is cause I’m worried ‘bout you. You gotta promise me when we get back to precinct, you gonna go right home, have a healthy dinner, and get a good night’s sleep. You gotta take breaks when you need ‘em. If I see you startin’ to lose it, I gotta tell Chief… for yo own good.”
Harrison kept his eyes on the road; his eyes behind his shades had narrowed. “My blackout, if that’s what it was, only happened that one time. Never before; not since. Just an isolated incident.”
“Well it could happen again if you ain’t takin’ care of yo-self. It could happen to the best of us. This job can wear anyone down. Lot of stress. Not too many happy endings. But we makin’ a difference, even if it’s a small one. Can’t let the bad endings eat you up, or you done. Then you makin’ no difference at all. You feel what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah,” Harrison conceded. He knew inside that everything Gibbons said was right, and now his partner, feeling a sense of responsibility for one of his own, was doing everything he could to talk sense into him, before he got himself hurt. “I feel you.”
Gibbons’s eyes blinked. He wasn’t prepared for Harrison to give in so quickly. “Okay,” he managed to add. “So you goin’ straight home, right?”
“Right.”
“You swear?”
Harrison, not taking his eyes off the road, lifted his right hand from the wheel, giving his partner the scout’s honor sign.
Part of him felt like he should be angry with Gibbons, but he was rational enough to understand where his partner was coming from. Still, he didn’t feel like the job was stressing him out to the point where he was losing his mind. Whatever happened to him the week before, it was like nothing he’d ever experienced. He promised Gibbons, and himself, that he would take it easy when he had to, but he wouldn’t let up on his search either. A young woman was missing, a young couple had been murdered, and as long as the culprit was on the loose, he had a responsibility. After all, he had made a promise to Jim Panco.
After dropping Gibbons off by his own car, parked at the station, Harrison did as he promised and headed for home. Weariness slowly started to settle in, but it didn’t absolve him of the frustration that had been nagging away at him all week. And he knew that, though he would honor his partner’s wishes and go to sleep, he wouldn’t sleep well. As the sun inched its way closer to the horizon, Harrison glanced out his driver side window, taking one last look at the farmlands of Lancaster County while the light of day still lingered. Strangely, he began to wonder if there were any black Amish folk among the Pennsylvania Dutch. The work would be physically more demanding, he imagined, but he was certain that he would never have any trouble sleeping at night.
Chapter IV
Father Chris sat quietly within the confessional of St. Elizabeth’s church, waiting patiently for the next parishioner seeking forgiveness from sin. Patience was a virtue that he had to exercise much of since the beginning of his first assignment as an ordained priest. So far he seemed to hold very few responsibilities. The pastor Father Paul, he had observed, was a bit of a control freak who oversaw many of the church functions . Not only did he handle all dealings with the Outreach Program, as well as personally manage the educational curriculum at the orphanage, but he was also knee-deep in the middle of mostly all collateral functions that pertained to the public. He also took on the task of teaching the required Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes at night to both teens and adults, who were soon to be confirmed. Father Chris often suspected that, if the church had a school, its pastor would assign himself as principal.
All the while, he was rarely too busy to spend the four hours of scheduled confession time every Saturday afternoon.
And many of the parishioners who came, would only enter Father Paul’s confessional booth. Father Chris would often sit in his own confessional in silence for lengths of time, while sinners would ignore his availability, preferring to wait for the pastor to hear them.
“Give it time,” Father Paul would encourage him. “They just need to warm up to you.”
Father Chris sorely wanted to ask how the people would ever warm up to him when he was not involved in any programs that allowed him to really get to know them. Even his homilies given at the masses that he celebrated were bland. He always felt he could send much better messages, but the pastor was insistent on reviewing his prepared homilies before mass and would almost always make severe changes to them. Father Paul would explain his micromanaging by reminding the younger priest that he was still learning, and that it was important that his homilies portrayed the right message for such an exceptional congregation as St. Elizabeth’s.
“You’ll get the hang of it, my boy,” Father Paul would almost patronize. “Once I’m confident that your homilies are conditioned to what our people need to further enhance their spiritual growth toward the ways of Christ, I’ll give you the reins. For now, trust me. I know this church, and I know its people. Patience, son.”
Father Paul had no trouble delivering his own homilies in such a way that the congregation hung on every syllable he preached, even though his message did not seem to be in accordance with the teachings of Christ. They usually involved warnings against sin and evil. He never ceased to remind the church members to be mindful of their wrongdoings, to keep a pure soul by confessing often, and attending church regularly. And he never failed to inform them to always question their own actions. It seemed to Father Chris that the pastor kept within his members a perpetual fear of the devil in themselves, as well as self-guilt for not doing their Christian duty enough. The only encouragement he ever seemed to give the people was that of how well they were inviting outsiders to attend mass; a primary mission he had charged the congregation with every week.
Father Chris, though he would never share his opinion with his superior, had always thought that preaching the Lord’s will should involve topics such as forgiveness, loving thy neighbor, turning the other cheek, and judging not. Father Paul’s “Fire and Brimstone” homilies often bothered him, and he promised himself that if he could ever get out from under the pastor’s shadow, that he would change St. Elizabeth’s typical Sunday theme drastically.
Yet the people listened intently to
Father Paul. Somehow, he had their full, undivided attention every week. He just had a way with the parishioners, a way in which they ate up everything he taught. During his own homilies however, Father Chris felt he would have better luck teaching Art History to inattentive middle school students. To this day, he wasn’t sure how it could be possible, since the charismatic pastor all but scripted his homilies for him, unless he revised his speeches poorly on purpose, intentionally wanting the people’s love all for himself.
Father Chris dismissed the thought. A man of the cloth would not be so selfish as to become competitive or territorial over the people’s affection. He had to have faith that the pastor, being much more experienced than himself, knew what was best. Besides, it wasn’t like he was completely on the sidelines. Shortly after his arrival to the parish, Father Paul had tasked him with celebrating the sacrament of Baptism. Furthermore, with all of his travels around the community, he left it to the younger priest to visit hospitals and elderly homes in order to commence Anointing of the Sick and Last Rites. Apparently, the pastor took little interest in newborns, and even less in the dying. It’s true that Father Chris had recently been permitted as the main celebrant for many of the weddings, unless the marrying couple specifically requested Father Paul. And they often did. He wasn’t surprised; the pastor took it upon himself to run the Pre-Cana classes required for the engaged couples. Hence, Father Chris only performed so many weddings, specifically when Father Paul was unavailable, being too preoccupied with other matters.
The young priest reminded himself not to be ungrateful for his seemingly inadequate role. Whatever the reason, he had to remember it was God’s will that he was here. And his faith in that would never falter. It was faith that had first called him to the priesthood. Before entering the seminary, he was involved in a serious relationship with his high school sweetheart, Margaret. She was beautiful in her own way, and just as a devout Catholic as he. Shortly after graduation, Chris stopped into a local jewelry store, intent on leaving with an engagement ring. But something had stopped him from making his purchase. He loved Margaret, but there was always a hint of emptiness in his heart, a longing to make a difference on a larger scale than he felt he could have with a family to support. He could never explain it, but at the moment when he was about to point to the ring he knew Margaret would love, he was sure he felt something else. A calling. It had always been there, he realized, but he had never heard it as strongly as he did then.
The Paladin's Message (The Keepers of White Book 2) Page 20
