by D. Humphries
Olivia gasped as the images flickered on the screen. Several windowed documents appeared at once, one of them labeled “To Skin a Pig.”
“We got the bastard,” Connor smiled. “This is just what we need.”
He clicked through several of the documents to find unposted blog entries describing what Warren described as the misleading representation of police power and the bane of modern institutions.
The further the two dove into the recesses of Warren’s personal life, the clearer it became that he was motivated by a deep-seated resentment towards authority.
Despite the triumph, Olivia sighed. “This isn’t enough.”
“What do you mean? We have a motive right here.”
“It’s true that we understand him better now, but none of this is going to help us to actually catch him. From what’s on here, can you find anything about places he’s likely to have gone? He might have his own personal ‘underground,’ a bunker or something where he planned on going in case the law ever caught up to him.”
“Got it.” Connor pulled the chair out from under the desk, took a seat, and buried himself in the search. “This is when we need our wiz-tech guru who doesn’t like to venture out into the field often.” He smiled.
Meanwhile, Olivia took to observing the rest of the room.
He’d nailed racks onto his walls where he kept an impressive arsenal of prop weapons, evident by the orange muzzles. He’d also given the same treatment to his collection of knives, but all those were legal.
Most distressing were the pamphlets and newspapers arranged on a miniature corkboard. Headlines detailed the murder of cops, priests, city leaders, and others of their like from all over the country.
It was hard to believe this kid had been the son of a policeman. It seemed impossible that in a town like this that a boy with a policeman father could end up on the wrong side of the law.
“Olivia! Come read this.” Connor ran his hands through his rugged, brown hair and spun in the chair.
He rose in a fervor. Seeing him like that, Olivia felt her stomach tighten. Whatever he found must have been significant.
She took his place in the chair and began scrolling through the document expanded on the screen.
She could hardly believe what she was reading. Connor’s reaction made perfect sense now.
Right there in plain view were pictures of a young boy bearing bruises and lacerations which were strewn throughout the document. Below each picture was the date and a vivid description of the cruel beatings Warren suffered by his own father’s hand.
Connor and Olivia looked at each other in disbelief. How could this be possible was the unspoken sentiment.
Chapter 6
CONNOR HAD LONG SINCE DISAPPEARED OUTSIDE. After transferring the pertinent files to one of Warren’s USB sticks and formally collecting that evidence (it wasn’t exactly regulation, but slightly bending the rules to catch Warren made no dent in her conscience), Olivia joined him outside.
“Neighbors have to know something about him.”
“Connor?” Olivia reached out to place a hand on his shoulder. He let it linger there for no more than a second, then pulled away.
“I’m fine.”
“We can take a—”
“I’m fine. The more time we waste, the colder the trail gets. Someone around here should be able to tell us something. Let’s go.”
According to the mailbox, the Jefferson’s lived next door. Connor took lead up to the door and knocked. There was some shuffling and faint whispers behind the door. It opened shortly.
A short, pepper-haired man appeared in the doorway. He wore night clothes and a sleepy-turned-concerned expression.
“Good evening, sir,” Connor began. “We’re investigating the police shootings from a few days ago. You’re the neighbor to a possible suspect so we thought you might be able to share some insights about him.”
Mr. Jefferson slumped his head. “I knew I should have come forward sooner. I knew the boy had a rough time at home, but it wasn’t my business.”
“What wasn’t?” Olivia pressed though both she and Connor knew well enough where the conversation was headed.
“Sometimes, you could hear his father screaming from all the way over here. I never saw anything happen. That’s part of the reason why I left it alone, but my eldest daughter—she’s gone now, moved out—told me that he looked bruised at school—all the time.”
“You’re saying his father beat him then.” Connor struggled to conceal the frustration in his face.
“Simmons was a good cop. Who was I to tarnish his reputation?”
That’s when Connor lost it. “Who were you? Who were you?” His nostrils flared and he took a step back.
Olivia instinctively moved between him and Mr. Jefferson. “A responsible citizen is what you would’ve been. Two men are dead, and that’s on you.”
“I know.” Mr. Jefferson couldn’t have appeared more dejected, short and slouched over. He couldn’t bring himself to look into their eyes. Plus, he bore the brunt of Connor’s attacks, which continued long after they were due.
It took all of Olivia’s strength in mediation to talk him down and convince him to return to the car.
“Connor. It is not this man’s fault. He had no idea or inclination as to what Warren would grow up to be! You can’t just stand there and make wild accusations like that.
Let’s go and leave this poor man in peace. I know he feels bad enough so let’s not pile up any more guilt upon what he is already feeling.”
Mr. Jefferson just stood there and watched them leave. He didn’t go inside or close the door. He stared out into the subdivision, torn apart by the consequences of his inaction.
As he stared off into the distance, he thought about what had just taken place and wondered, “How can you ever know or be sure of what goes on in someone else’s home? Who was I to try and stop it?”
Olivia knew well enough it was best to let Connor blow off some steam on the ride back to the station. She didn’t chastise him for his loss of control or address the wrongness of his accusation that Mr. Jefferson was to blame for the death of his friends. Besides, his long frown suggested he knew those things already.
The Commissioner hustled forward the moment Olivia and Connor returned to the station. His hair was even more a mess than it’d been earlier but his face gleamed with pride.
“Get ready to start vetting a lot more leads,” he said. “We’re running with the cop-killer angle. I had Anna Gaines, our resident Wiz Tech guru, put out a request through Facebook for pedestrians to keep their cameras charged and on hand.”
“A little premature, don’t you think?” Connor scoffed. Olivia knew why. In a moment of preemptive genius, he deflated the triumph of their moment.
“Don’t give me that look. We’ve already started picking up on new info.”
“That’s what you sent us for.”
“We’ve got what you need,” Olivia jumped in. “The information on this file supports whatever you’ve already fed the public. Post some of those documents and people will be on a manhunt for him. After the death of two cops, hostility towards him has to be pretty high, even now.”
“You bet your pretty face it is.” Commissioner Casey took the file and began his retreat to the office. “You’ve done your part. You two can head out.”
The two did as instructed. Neither could help smiling at the progress they’d been able to make on the case, and in one day no less. Out in the parking lot, Connor broke the silent jubilation.
“Look, today’s been rough, but you’ve done a good job. I know I haven’t been the best to work with.” He flashed the same smile he gave her when he first met.
“It’s fine. You’ve been through a lot.”
“No, that doesn’t excuse me. If you’re willing to give me a second chance, I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course I am.”
They exchanged conciliatory glances and went their separate ways.
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Olivia travelled home without incident. All the way there, she beamed with optimism at how dynamically her relationship with Connor had altered throughout the day. They didn’t have to agree on everything for them to get along. That was starting to show. And she hoped that things continued to be the way they were. There was much they could learn from each other.
When she finally got home, she found the babysitter, Mrs. Brown, asleep on the couch. Her son, Nicholas, was asleep too, in his own room. It was a miracle that she even managed to arrange for her to stay so late but Mrs. Brown loved Nicholas just like one of her own grandsons.
Olivia stirred the middle-aged caretaker to life, paid her expenses, and dismissed her. Then she lounged on the same place on the couch and let the warmness engulf her.
Chapter 7
OLIVIA WOKE EARLY ENOUGH TO SEE THE SUN begin its rise over the horizon, but even that wasn’t early enough. Her phone lit up on the floor next to the couch where she fell asleep. A message from Connor.
Below that, several more messages, missed calls, and voicemails from both Connor and the Commissioner. Had she done something wrong? It was all too early for her to throw herself into a fire, so she ignored them for the moment.
She brushed her teeth and woke up Nicholas. They both ate the usual, only returning to her phone when she felt adequately prepared for potential chastisement.
After she took a quick shower, she sat down on the bed and unlocked her phone. She felt a wave of anxiety wipe over her.
“You need to get to the station ASAP!” read one of the messages, from Connor. He indicated nothing regarding the situation, but Olivia figured the voicemails from the Commissioner might assist her on that front.
She opened up the first message. Voices muddled together in the background of the message, then the Commissioner coughed and began his brief relay:
“We’ve got new developments on the case. Just woke up to it myself. I need you and Connor to get on top of this now. As soon as you goddamn can.” Then a click. And silence.
Olivia squeezed tight to the pillow on the bed and felt tremors run through her. How much time had she wasted on a complacent morning?
She gathered a newfound sense of purpose, scrambled into her work clothes, and gathered up her son to drop him at school before darting out of the house.
* * *
Two stories of red brick, the Police Department was an unassuming building in the midst of downtown Summit Spring’s commercial district. It was the only barrier between Olivia and discovering this urgent new information. She didn’t delay in striding towards the door.
Even from outside, the voices of dozens of riled up officers resonated through the walls. Something big definitely came through. No more delays. Olivia threw the door opened and mixed herself into the clamor.
Officers gathered in small groups, shouted across the room, and rushed documents from cubicle to cubicle. Olivia ignored them all, pushing through the crowd to find Commissioner Casey at his usual station. He was on the phone, but when he caught sight of the detective, he hurriedly ended the call.
“Finally decided to show up, huh?”
She couldn’t tell how serious he was and only stammered an apology. The sense of smallness she took on as she stood before the Commissioner gave her perspective. This was it. Everyone was performing at their best today. She refused to be the exception.
“I put Anna on the social media angle again and had her dig through the information you and Connor snagged at the suspect’s residence. She started working through the community to see what she could dig up. Turns out our killer isn’t as smart as he is reckless.”
“What do we have?”
“I’m getting to it. He broke down the door to the munitions supply store about an hour before they were supposed to open. He forced the store clerk to sell him ammunition. Imagine that? Doesn’t give two damns about killing cops, but stealing ammunition? Heaven forbid he’d do that! Bastard got himself caught on security cams. Connor went out to grab our store clerk.”
Olivia’s heart fluttered momentarily, up until she realized the news wasn’t as pressing as she’d been led to believe. “He’s already killed cops. We don’t need a store clerk’s testimony to take him in. If he didn’t even bother with stealing the weapons, what do we have to work with?”
The Commissioner smiled widely. “Because now we know exactly where the son-of-a-bitch is. At least we will—” He checked his watch. “As soon as Connor gets back.”
“Okay, but how?”
“Because unlike our killer, that store clerk is sharp. All the ammunition he sells is equipped with remote tracking technology. It only gets disabled when the ammunition gets run through a special scanner. Thing is, our clerk didn’t scan the items. He entered the transaction manually. That means the tracking tech’s still going. So as soon as he gets here—” Another glance at his watch. “We’ll have all we need to find this guy and bring him to justice.”
Those faded butterflies revived in Olivia’s gut. The evidence from his personal computer, Connor’s testimony that he murdered two cops, and now his illicit purchase of ammunition. They had enough against him for something to stick. All that remained was finding him.
“Speak of the devil.” The Commissioner’s smile, somehow, widened even more. His mouth looked as though it might split his head in half. His eyes gleamed at his phone when a text message from Connor lit up the screen.
Olivia didn’t need to read it to know what it said. Commissioner Casey started moving across the room to meet Connor and the store clerk at the door.
They entered, both droopy-eyed, and neither of them quite as optimistic about the situation as the officers at the station.
Looking back in the morning, Olivia realized just how early Connor must have woken up to pick up the clerk. It was only a little past seven. The sun barely scraped the horizon.
“Get him in, get him in.” The Commissioner wrapped an arm around the clerk, steering him clear of the door. He turned awkwardly to close the door.
What happened next occurred too quickly for anyone to properly respond. All they heard was the sound of Commissioner Casey’s booming voice. “Everybody down!”
It seemed like a joke, like he was raining on the parade, but his face soon grew red and he released his pistol from its holster. “I said get down!” He fired off a shot behind him, towards the door.
Connor leapt immediately into action, tackling the clerk behind a desk. Everyone else dropped to the ground, some reaching for their own weapons.
There’s going to be a shootout, Olivia thought. She was the only officer still standing when Warren burst through the front door, both hands gripping onto his rifle. Two words crossed Olivia’s mind: fully automatic.
A hail of bullets barraged the station. Wood splintered, papers scattered from desks; the chatter of the room died down.
And there was the Commissioner, still standing, just in time to shove Olivia from the scope of Warren’s fire. His weapon flashed. Olivia caught the flare of the muzzle just before collapsing. She rolled across the ground and slammed hard into the leg of a desk. Her back surged with pain. Her head throbbed.
The sound of bullets echoed in her head. Every attempt to move ended in a spasm of pain. She tilted her head up and saw the Commissioner on the ground, a few yards ahead of her. His hand loosely clutched his pistol.
The casing of his bullet rolled alongside his head. Oliva felt every shred of pain written in his anguished face. She tilted her head a little higher. Dozens of officers rushed the front door, screaming at Warren, warning him not to move.
Then she searched for Connor. He fell nowhere near her, out of sight, but he’d been right there in the line of fire.
And the clerk, the only person capable of tracking the ammunition—should Warren somehow escape—he could have been dead. Olivia would never know, because she could no longer keep herself awake.
“Short day,” she whispered and closed her eyes.
&n
bsp; Chapter 8
Connor couldn’t stop thinking about the sling he wore. He wanted more than anything to blame Warren Simmons for putting him in it—and in a sense, he could—but he had to try to let Olivia’s words to him sink in.
“Don’t let him make you a worse person,” she’d told him the day Warren assaulted the police station. Everyone had been shocked, revolted that he had the gall to pull off that kind of stunt.
As for Connor, he felt personally responsible for not noticing the killer tailed him all the way back to the station. That singular regret nearly made him puke.
If not for Olivia confronting him in his office, he might have done something he’d have regretted for the rest of his life. There might not have been a defendant standing at the pulpit.
Warren Simmons couldn’t afford a suit for the grand jury hearing, so they allowed him to wear the same fatigues he’d been wearing for days.
Olivia refused to attend. If Warren refused to respect the formality of the court, she would refuse to give him any further audience. After all, she’d given him enough.
It was the shock of the event that ultimately rendered her unconscious that day but ever since it happened, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him. How rash he’d been. How arrogant. How overflowing with malice.
Part of the reason she refused to show any emotion was because she couldn’t stomach the sight of him.
Now, as the judge made her final verdict, Connor could rest easy. Olivia would be expecting good news. And good news there was. The judge withheld bail. Warren would be in lockdown until the conclusion of the trial. Hearing that, Connor quietly rose from his seat and exited the courtroom.
Outside the courtroom was noticeably less stuffy. It didn’t reek of a cop-killer. Olivia sat on a bench just down the hall from the courtroom. “Good news,” he called out to her. “No bail.”
Olivia’s face lit up. She leapt from her seat and wrapped her arms around Connor. Her face immediately turned red. She felt heat in her stomach erupt like a long-dormant volcano yearning for sweet release. Then she stepped back. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have. I’m just…we did it!”
