Succubus Tear (Triune promise)

by Andreas Wiesemann

  Stella gasped and dropped the file. She hurriedly picked it up and stared at the photo. Oh my God! Who is she?

  Chapter 24

  Answering to the Law

  “I am alone.”

  —Stella Fullson

  “Wake up, dumbass,” a gruff voice barked.

  Cain groggily shuffled his feet over the bunk and to the floor. He stared for a moment at three pairs of shoes: his, the shiny leather of an officer’s, and a pair of expensive café leather Italian heels. He passed a hand over his face and through his hair. “What now? Is it time for court?” He groaned to the shoes. “I really don’t think I have the energy since you guys thought that I needed to lose weight and neglected to feed me, or perhaps your fat ass ate it all.”

  “Why you fucking—”

  The café heels turned to the other pair of shoes that took a step back. “Corporal Rogers, is this true?”

  “As far as I was told, the dumbass was fed.”

  As Cain fought off a wave of dizziness, he heard an impatient sigh as the leather heels spoke again. “I believe the prisoner has a name. Corporal Rogers, please order a meal for Mister Lamentson. One more discourteous comment and you can expect an official warning.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. You are a professional; act like one.”

  Cain looked up to see the officer who had arrested him and a young woman dressed in a no-nonsense suit.

  What the hell? Cain’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Holly?”

  The woman looked confused. “Holly? My name is Stella. Detective Fullson, to you.”

  “Oh,” Cain said as he stretched and yawned. “For a moment there, I thought you were someone I knew.”

  Stella shrugged. “Mister Lamentson, please follow me. I have a great deal to ask you.”

  The next half hour was yet another uneventful ordeal that thankfully included a meager breakfast. Apparently Cain was arrested “for his protection” so they could deal with the real drug dealers. Considering that Cain himself might be in danger, they “assigned” Detective Fullson to watch over him as a “precaution.”

  Yeah, sure, Cain thought to himself. “I don’t understand. If I was arrested for my protection, then why was I questioned and starved?”

  “We had suspicions—not absolute proof of your innocence, Mister Lamentson. Even though the charges are suspended, you remain a person of interest for us.” Stella eyed how ravenously Cain ate. “And, uh, had I been in charge of your case, you would have been fed.”

  “Gonna eat that?”

  “Oh, by all means. I lost my appetite,” Stella said and pushed her milk and pancakes to Cain.

  Cain eyed the detective and spoke around a full mouth. “So, the law no longer provides protective custody?”

  “Considering that you have maintained your innocence, why would you need protective custody? My assignment to protect you should be enough,” Stella said evenly.

  Cain swallowed and looked Stella in the eye; he finished most of Stella’s food, but he was still extremely hungry. “Wait a second. You’re not saying that you—”

  “Corporal Rogers, I need a moment alone with Mister Lamentson.” The officer left with a puzzled expression.

  As soon as the door closed, Stella spoke again while pacing the room. “I do not know why some of these officers have their jobs. Most can’t even process evidence that is right before them.” She stopped and looked sideways at Cain. “But I think I’ll be grateful in this instance. Cain, your girlfriend presents something that I just can’t quite get over. Despite my best efforts, I cannot find where she is or who she is, for that matter.”

  Cain wondered what this woman would say if she knew that he had a Demon as a girlfriend. “How do you know that I—”

  “A recent girlfriend—less than three days, I’d say,” she said, her face deep in thought.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “A desperate girlfriend, no less. Very desperate, I’d say, and she must be one hell of a cook.”

  “What the hell, how do you know this?”

  Stella looked up. “Are you kidding? None of your neighbors ever recall you having female company over. Your bedroom is full of women’s clothing that was purchased just recently. Most of the articles still have the tags on them. Your trash bin is filled with food that is still within expiration, and your fridge and cupboard are full of organic and raw foods.”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Stella said, nodding as she fished out something from a leather briefcase. “But what is my business is that my superiors saw fit for me to watch you.” Stella tossed him an envelope that showed pictures definitely taken from a camera phone. The pictures showed four men unloading packages off a truck and into his apartment.

  “I suspect that there is a reason why your apartment was singled out. There is a reason why you were singled out, and I am willing to bet it is the same reason why your girlfriend is missing. So until we find out the details of this mess and connect all these loose ends, you are stuck with me watching you all the time.”

  Cain looked at the pictures, hoping to see any trace of where they might have come from, or for any sign of Al’bah. “Are there any other options?”

  Stella nodded and sat back down. “You can cooperate with us, give us some information that results in a significant break in this case. A break that will result in some real arrests, some real convictions.”

  “Meaning to say, you still think I am guilty of all this, or at least connected to it all?”

  Stella shrugged, never breaking her eye contact with Cain. “Would you expect anything less of any law enforcement entity? You have been in custody for twenty hours, and during that time you have spoken a total of one hundred words. That is not including your time spent with the only lawyer you met with.” She sighed and put her elbow on the table, cupping her chin in her right palm, slowly curling her fingers. “Add that up to the fact that your ‘girlfriend’ of, what, three days disappears right when all this happens? What was her name? Oh, yes. Al’bah.”

  “How do you know her name?”

  “Corporal Rogers has much to be desired when it comes to manners, but his hearing is excellent. He remembers running into you at the local mall with this Al’bah. Funny thing about her name, though, is that there is no one in the city that was around your area at the time of all this.” Stella pulled out a notepad and shook her head. “Nope, no one by that name, regardless of the variation of spelling, that lives even close to where you are.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Cain, most drug dealers wouldn’t bother to kidnap anyone. It’s too messy. In most situations, people that deal with drugs would have just killed her,” Stella said patiently. “So you can imagine how it looks with all these funny details piling up around you and her.”

  Cain swallowed hard; he knew what was next, and he used every bit of adrenaline and fear running through his body like a whip, lashing out to his brain as a frantic carriage driver to his horse to move faster! Faster!

  “Where did you meet Al’bah?”

  Cain licked his lips. “Strip club.” He kept his eyes locked with Stella, and fought against a supreme urge to laugh.

  “Uh, ah…I see.” Stella muttered and wrote a few notes on a pad. “Which one, might I ask?”

  “Dunno. I was drunk and half asleep. The lights were a purple and blue motif.”

  “Okay, and, uh, did she introduce herself as Al’bah? Do you think it was her stage name?”

  Cain shook his head, feeling a little more comfortable as he slipped from outright lies to half-truths. “Actually, I first knew her as Succubus.”

  “Do you have her phone number?”

  Cain started to relax a little. “Honestly, I never asked her for her number. I never even saw her with a phone.”

  “Where did she come from? Is she a citizen of the city?”

  Cain shrugged. “Actually, she was in some kind
of trouble when I first met her. She asked me to take her as my own, and I…well, I…” He paused, hoping Stella would help him finish the sentence, but she kept her quiet, piercing stare.

  “I just had to help her. She came with me without even a change of clothes. I just wanted…” Cain’s voice trailed off. Now that was something to ponder. What did he want? With himself, his life, and even Al’bah?

  “Look, begin all and end all, I’m sure she isn’t in league with this mess. Maybe it was the people she’s running away from that took her, I dunno. But I am certain that Al’bah is alive.”

  “You sound so certain, Mister Lamentson,” Stella said, her voice becoming friendlier. “You have that much faith in her? Or in people in general?”

  At the word “faith,” Cain’s body tensed slightly. “I wouldn’t call it faith, Detective Fullson. I have a feeling, that’s all.”

  “Feelings are fickle,” Stella said with a shrug as she dug through her leather briefcase. “I have some other questions to ask you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What is the nature of your relationship with Charlie Tsukada?”

  “We’ve been friends since high school. I’ve known him for over ten years now.”

  Stella flipped through a few more notes and nodded. “What can you tell me about Mark Green, John Tremmel, and David Hoelston?”

  Cain flexed his hands so quickly, most of his joints popped. “They were elders in the church my father attended.”

  “Go on.”

  Cain shook his head. “No. That happened sixteen years ago. I was twelve, and it has nothing to do with today!”

  Stella seemed like she was about to press the issue, but flipped to another page. “Fair enough. What can you tell me about Holly Archer?”

  Cain was stunned; Stella knew her last name before she changed it. “How do you know about Holly?”

  Stella rested her face in her palm for a moment and took a deep breath. “Cain, the time has come for me to remind you that I am asking you the questions,” she said with a voice that was still friendly but at the same time made him feel uneasy.

  Cain shrugged. “I can just keep quiet. I know I’m gonna walk once I am in court. Your attempts for me to confess to something I’m not guilty of, or to twist my words, won’t work.”

  “I agree—that is, if you had a court date coming.”

  “What?”

  “Have you forgotten already? All charges on you have been suspended for the time being. Funny thing about that is, you are now classified as a person of interest. I am sure you know what that means.” Stella folded her hands to her mouth and stared at Cain with her ice-blue eyes.

  “I don’t know what kind of games people think they can play once they are in an examination room, and I don’t care. But I will respond to your disrespect for the law with the assessment I have made about you. Once I am done, you will reply to my questions with answers, not more questions. If you don’t, believe me, I have enough on you to hold you for questioning and protection until we find the real drug dealers.”

  Stella resumed digging through her briefcase and plucked a digital recorder from its depths and clicked the “play” button.

  “Cain Lamentson, male. Age: twenty-eight. As far as I can tell, Mister Lamentson has only held construction jobs, and only in temp agencies.

  “In addition, Mister Lamentson has never opened a banking account, never held a credit card, never financed any major purchases, never had a phone number for longer than a year, and has never held an address longer than twenty months.

  “It is interesting to note that cities where Cain has been employed show a sudden spike and a sudden decrease of drug activity that corresponds with his arrival and departure; see file twenty-seven.

  “All of Mister Lamentson’s employers describe him as reckless, antisocial, anti-authority, and short-tempered.”

  Stella stood and clicked the recorder off. “My assessment goes on for another twenty-three minutes. Do I need to go on?”

  Cain shook his head “Maybe I would like to have a lawyer present.”

  Stella shrugged. “I have no need to question you with a lawyer present. We will just hold you until—”

  “You can’t do that!” Cain seethed.

  Stella smiled widely. “Johnson versus City Hall. There is a precedent, and though my superiors don’t have enough evidence to convict you, they have ample suspicion to hold you for questioning for a long time. Hell, protective custody can even play a part in all this, but how we define protective custody can mean a lot of things.” She shook her head as if the idea were distasteful. “I don’t want that, though. You probably don’t want that either.” Stella sat down and rubbed her hands together.

  “Okay, fine,” Cain said quietly.

  “Now, tell me about Holly Archer.”

  “Holly was Charlie’s girlfriend for about a year and a half when we worked together in Virginia Beach.” Cain shifted uncomfortably as he spoke. He knew what Stella wanted to hear; that she looked so much like Holly made it all the worse.

  “You see, Charlie and I have been through everything together. But there was something different about Holly. She loved him, and I…” Cain forced his fingernails deep into his palm. “Well, I didn’t want him to stay behind. But I knew he would have been better off with her instead of me. So I told him to stay in Virginia Beach.”

  “Why didn’t he stay?”

  “Charlie thinks he owes me his life. He has this crazy fixation about his own sense of honor.”

  “And what happened after he decided to go with you? What happened between him and Holly?”

  “Holly didn’t want him to go, and made quite a scene on the jobsite.” Cain ran his hand through his hair and made a fist. “She was killed—T-boned on an intersection that a car ran a red light on.”

  “The traffic report says differently.”

  Anger surged within him. Why did people like her always take the other’s side? With no questioning, as if those charged with authority were above weakness, failure, or judgment. “Yeah, well, the traffic report conflicts with the five witnesses that were there.” Cain looked up with a harsh glare. “The person who ran the light was a cop.”

  “Go on, tell me everything.”

  Cain sighed and tried to look away. But the way Stella kept her pale blue eyes upon him was like a harsh judgment, a ghost haunting from the past, representing the worst moment of Charlie’s life. Cain’s own guilt rose to the surface of that day—guilt from the relief he took from her death. Relief in knowing Charlie wasn’t going to leave him. Though Charlie refused to stay with Holly at first, Cain knew Charlie well enough to be certain he was going to change his mind.

  But the decision was made for the both of them; Holly was killed.

  “Everything?” Cain started to tremble from the stress and hunger. He probably had about five hours of sleep in the last thirty-five. And the food he had only awakened his hunger even more so, causing his stomach to hurt as if he’d been punched. “You probably know more than me,” Cain said wearily, staring into blue eyes that dragged him into the past against his will.

  “Anytime you’re ready.”

  “Dammit, Holly, I already told—”

  Holly shook her head slowly. “Tell me again, Cain. I need to know everything. What I said, what you said, everything.”

  “What do you want me to say? I tried, okay? I was even ready to cut Charlie completely loose! I was just about to leave him behind, you know?”

  Holly sighed. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Cain. You strike me as one who is filled with guilt.”

  “Holly,” Cain whispered, “I’m sorry. I was so wrapped up in my own world, I didn’t care to think about Charlie’s, about yours.” He shook his head. “Charlie was never the same afterward. He loved you, and I didn’t see it.”

  “Tell me about the last time we spoke, I have forgotten,” Holly murmured.

  Cain nodded and continued to talk. He leaned back into the uncomfo
rtable metal folding chair. God, he was so tired; that last concrete job was a clusterfuck for sure, with three people calling out sick.

  Sick, my ass! They just wanted to go down to the beach! The damn whiners just can’t hold their own in the heat!

  Holly sighed, bringing Cain’s mind back to her request. So many details came flooding back. He remembered that day Holly had come to him. She sat across from him; there was little pretense to be had, as the job assignment was three days away from being finished. He and Charlie had already accepted another job three hundred miles north.

  “God, Cain, thank you for coming. I know things aren’t going well between you and Cynthia, but I needed to talk to you without her and Charlie around.”

  “I know what you want, Holly, but I don’t think I can help you.”

  Holly shook her head. “Cain, Charlie will stay if you tell him to. He follows you because of whatever it was that happened in your past. Please, tell him to stay.”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me to ask my best friend of nine years to take a hike?”

  “Cain, I know I am asking much. I know I cannot compare to the friendship you have with Charlie.” She wiped her eyes and grasped his hands in a begging gesture. “But I know you. I know you to be an honorable man, and an even greater friend.” She gasped for a few moments. “And we both know that Charlie would be better off with me.”

  “Girlfriend of my best friend or not, you tell me one good reason to back that up, or I’ll slap you silly!”

  Holly wiped her eyes again. “Cain, you and Charlie both could be anything! Anyone! You both had the grades and the SAT scores for any college you wanted!” She looked up to him, her eyes filled with desperation and fear. “But you don’t want to; you don’t care to! Charlie does! But we both know he stays with you because of his loyalty. Why can’t you want what is best for him, and not just yourself?” Her breaths dissolved into a half sob, and she stuttered the last word he heard her speak.