Detective D. Case

by Neal Goldy

  Rapid gunfire continued. D. clung to the metal office desk belonging to Chief Advert. On the floor he found a pair of handcuffs. There was no key. He rattled through different drawers and smaller boxes until he found a handcuff key. D. didn’t know if the key he found was the same one that opened and locked the handcuffs, but he took it anyway. He took all of them, in fact, every key he found until no more could fit inside his coat and pants pockets. The handcuffs were stuffed in his belt, and D. proceeded to the door. Were they being attacked? Bullet holes on the door weren’t enough to conclude it. As he got closer to the savage holes watching like dead eyes, he wondered where Chief Advert was. He said he was getting coffee and a smoke . . . was it the truth? Did he have officers and guards sent to kill him? Everything blurred together into one, mysterious conjugation.

  “D.!” someone cried. It didn’t sound like the chief. “Get out or we’ll come in!”

  “Come in, then!”

  No response from the other side. D. reached for the doorknob, but another gunshot blared.

  D. crumpled to the ground, shivering in fetus position. He breathed hard like a fish out of water. When getting to his feet, he held his pistol up while he shinnied to the far right wall next to the door.

  Another gunshot, this one louder than the previous. Some metal broke off (maybe the doorknob?) and out of shot a man cursed. D. heard the gun being reloaded and readied his stance.

  His heart panicked. “Don’t come in!”

  “Playing games, are you? Tease me into coming in only to warn me not to? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  D. refused to speak. The man from the other side shot and the doorknob flew off. For some reason, wires began pulling out, indented like a cliffhanger. His eyes flicked to the door. No sudden movement or gunfire came after that, and everything fell into a hushed silence.

  “Tell me your name!” D. demanded.

  . . .

  “Speak or I’ll fire!” He pushed the door open just a teeny bit with the barrel of his pistol.

  . . .

  D. fired. He didn’t give a second warning, and his feet blew off the ground. Just for a few seconds he flew in weightless motion. When the moment ended, he fell hard on his back. He swore that if he couldn’t get back up, then his spine must have broken during the fall.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll say it!” The man whimpered like a puppy. In no way did D. think it was the same man who had shot previously.

  “Are you the same man from before?”

  Without waiting D. sprung up and out the door. He kept one hand in the space between the wall and the door in case anybody fired; he would then have a quick barrier of protection. Out in the hall, though, lay a frightful young man in a police uniform.

  D. got a closer look. It was a rookie, he supposed, judging from the humane characteristics this one possessed. Never had he met policemen who cowered from a gunshot.

  “Boy,” he barked. The young police officer shook as he looked up.

  “Are you a rookie?”

  He nodded. Yes.

  “Why were you firing at me before?”

  The rookie got up from his knees. “I-I didn’t do that, sir. Please don’t hurt me.” He went back down as if in prayer.

  “Who did, if it was not you?”

  A shaky finger indicated the source. “Over there,” he said, and crawled off. D. took a second of silence and turned. In that duration of the turn he fired, regardless who it was. He knew he hit something when blood splattered over his coat and face. Some went into his mouth; it tasted metallic and warm. He ceased right then and paced back, staring at a police officer whose uniform had large bloodstains. “I demanded a name,” D. said. “You never spoke.”

  Surprisingly, the bloody officer answered him. “I didn’t need to. I have my own authority.”

  “Not when I’m here.”

  “I don’t give a damn about what you want.” His smile was greedy. He shot near the officer’s ear. Tears filled around his eyes and blood began dripping in. He searched for his pistol, a weapon, anything . . . but found none.

  “Why did you shoot?” He kept his cool voice as light as pink petals jittering in the wind. “I’m looking for Chief Advert. Have you seen him?”

  “He told me to.”

  The ticking landed on D.’s shaking shoulders. They cramped. What did he mean? “I thought you said you had your own authority.”

  “I do!” protested the bloody officer. “But . . . he threatened. He didn’t want any arguments. If I did, then . . .”

  “Who was this man? Was it the chief?”

  “He’ll kill me if I say anything.”

  “The chief will kill you—?”

  “I never said it was the chief! But I won’t speak of him. Just please, please leave me alone! I need to get as far away from here as possible.”

  “Why deal with all the hassle? Wouldn’t it be easier to work things out with whoever ordered you to do this disastrous deed? If I were you I’d think about doing that first before running off and looking like a fugitive.”

  “It’s not the chief, goddam. . .” The bloody officer’s voice faded as he continued. “I don’t take orders from him. He told me you would know him more than I ever would. See, rumors spread around here and . . . and . . .” He swallowed thick blood. “A ghost . . .”

  Just the sound of the word brought unwanted presence. “Spirits don’t exist.”

  “You think they don’t exist, but they’re here. And no, it’s not the babbling floating see-through bullshit.” He lowered his voice, so low D. had to lean in close to hear it. “He’s haunting the place.”

  “The police department?” he asked.

  “Not just that,” said the bloody officer. “He wants the government, too. He used to work here, and he was one of us until . . .” The bloody officer went to his feet and ran off.

  “Go then!” D. cried. “See what’ll happen to you when the chief gets here!”

  Whatever he said, the bloodied officer didn’t say anything about it. Later on there would be a special on a news program somewhere at 6 or 8 in the evening, and there would be a mystifying report on the murder of Officer Princeton Sun. Pictures of him would be shown, the most iconic one to date being the shot where his screaming face covering half the photograph, everywhere else there were holes scattering all over his chest, blood oozing out of his eyes. Stumps were left where his arms should have been.

  D. searched the station. Nobody else seemed to be there, so he did a quick look to see if maybe Advert was captured and hidden somewhere. He searched through every room, looking for the chief. He wasn’t found. Jokingly D. thought about going through the lost and found box to see if anyone dropped him there. D. even went to the records of jailed people, where he witnessed something he probably shouldn’t have.

  All the files were marked with red tabs, which probably meant the dangerous one possibly. For a police department station, it sure wasn’t organized like one, with all the regular things D. saw in departments from the upper part of the city. Maybe things were different, like the lack of lights on the ceiling. It gave a dingy look to the place, like a long lost attic.

  One of the files he went through was so dirty you needed to wash your hands clean before going back out, either that or use latex gloves. He flipped through them all, wishing he would find something that might add to the case he was working on. Three profiles seemed to fit with the disappearance of McDermott: a man named West Lake, another by the name of Apollo Stone, and Douglas Teague, a teenager locked away in a prison, it said, far away from the mainland. Alcatraz shut down many years ago, he heard, so he ruled that one out. San Francisco seemed too far away to travel there, if it still existed. All or none of these people could relate to the McDermott case, but at least it was something. Maybe they were marked with red so that Chief Advert could look at them later, possibly searching for info he would never tell the old detective.

  D. shut the file cabinet. Stomping sounds came from upstairs.
There were some other people still here . . . the sound receded for a moment or two, but then returned.

  His eyes were filled with too much white and too little pupil. The old detective ran, not caring if some papers flew or if he crashed into a trolley cart of books. His mind and eyes were the crosshairs, fixated at the door, seeing nothing else. Before the footsteps reached the floor he was on, D. had already left the records room and was in the hallway. He made a quick hunt through the locker room for a second time. The place had been emptied before he had gotten to it in the second run, and all the lockers were ajar like a human jaw pin unhinged. They were painted in multiple colors and showed possible, more-than-likely vandalism. At the end of the hall was no web of madness that D. had found in the visit here earlier. Merely a blank wall with everything taken down as if somebody didn’t want anybody noticing that it had been there before.

  D. arrived, not exactly in a loop, at the chief’s office. He needed as much information as he could find so it’d be better to look through Chief Advert’s things in case the man was hiding something vital to the problem--you know, things that might be important but put away for foolish human reasons. But when D. went through all the drawers, filing cabinets, hidden cases, briefcases, boxes, and other receptacles Advert could possibly have used for storing information – including his desktop computer and laptop – a few crumpled up notes ready to dispense into the wastebasket was all he found. They were about him, outlining possibilities on how to treat the conversations he already had with him and ones the chief would use in the future. Placed in the center was a reminder to look underneath the desk, and open the latch. And so the old detective did as the chief told.

  Underneath the chief’s desk, after opening it of course, were tons of photos and newspaper clippings. He could suspect the chief of trying to solve the case for himself (taking all the credit) but then an article floated like a fallen leaf, landing on his face. Snatching it, D. read: DO OLD PEOPLE LOOK LIKE CHILDREN WITH WRINKLES? A web of schizophrenia was sent from the dwellings of the unknown. Chief Advert must have found it while going through the locker room, and then took it down for investigation. And to think he didn’t say any of this to him!

  Some photos were the ones that D. had found in the penthouse when searching right before the bathroom deteriorated. What was it doing here? The photographs seemed to make less sense when you got a good look at them. Again it reminded him of the photos that came from McDermott, some of them taken from the very bathroom they were in. He was thinking about how this might all be connected in one web of madness when he read the note in the center that read: PLEASE READ THIS.

  So D. read the tale and followed a different trail to where the chief would go to next. Seemingly, a story branched out from the opening (the one he already read) that told of the chief who struggled with his failing marriage. There was a case involving a mad policeman, but he decided to trace his finger elsewhere. He went to the part where it was said that the police chief had hired an investigator (hopefully not him) in partnership so he could finish the case and probably fix things up with his family. This was not so when fire struck a building, hundreds of innocents dying. It did not take long to make connections with the penthouse that occurred not too long ago. Numerous funerals were held, but not one spoke loud enough to deem it a normal, public conversation. Everyone wore white. The chief hadn’t gone mad but was sober this time, as if the magic of storytelling pulled a different turn, and a darker one at that. His wife found a new man who really loved her – and how could he not, for his last name was Love? John Regal Love, newly wed to the former wife of the chief. His son became a mute and joined a strange religion that nobody liked speaking about. The chief, in turn, made secret arrangements with the mayor, doing what they pleased. Politics never mattered anymore: only their lives mattered. He quit the force and began reading books, living an all right life until the mayor declared a final act against the investigators pushing crime away. This was all wrong, thought the chief as he scrambled in what D. thought a fictitious journal entry. The mayor, my all-time friend, doing such tragedies like this! Surely he’s gone mad by now. Weeks later, the mayor proposed a new act. No one agreed with it except him, who had learned to wear two costumes where everybody could see only one. The world was afire and about as literal as it was metaphoric. The unnamed police chief didn’t die as in the first run D. read in this strange tale from an unknown source, but instead was trained to become the best slave that the mayor saw fit.

  What a story.

  *****

  After all it's the middle of June of the West Lake

  The beautiful view is really different

  from the other seasons.

  The lotus leaves are so wide and endless,

  they are connecting the skyline

  with their so much bluish green

  to set off the beautiful water lilies

  especially red in the sunshine.

  He thought: West Lake, huh? Of course it had to be the West Lake in the city since somehow – and luckily – it matched the profile of the criminal D. had found in the records at the police department. He reread the English translation of the poem, pressing it until he could memorize it. West Lake was located somewhere in the lower part of the city, and he remembered going there once. Noisy children and quacking ducks more annoying than blaring horns from sailor boats distracted him from the wondrous beauty of the trees. Nature brightened in it, so he preferred the upper part where there were more beautiful rivers and lakes and less bothersome distractions. Nowadays he barely went out at all, usually tinkering with book spines and other pointless things. Going down there at night wouldn’t be too bad, so he walked.

  If only he could drive there. The police station parking lot had less than five cars parked, but none of them was D.’s. He could take the chance of “borrowing” one of the cruisers, but sooner or later somebody’s gonna notice.

  D. used a few minutes’ space looking at the nearly empty parking lot, and then broke into a run. His legs ached, his head ached, everything ached, but he couldn’t leave West Lake alone for everybody to grab. No, he couldn’t let that happen. Light rain sprinkled his face as the old detective dashed through the nightlit streets. A few streetlamps were on. An orange glow softened the scene. D. was running out of breath. Still in his short-lived, premature sprint, he checked his pistol – not too many bullets left. He didn’t slow down until he had a good five minutes ahead of him before collapsing.

  “Get me up!” he cried. “By hell, get up!”

  His hands were soaked with water and gravel, his knees scraped beneath bloodied pant legs. Although he never glanced back, D. had the feeling he was being followed. He didn’t know by whom, but the feeling stuck. His paranoia chased him like a frenzied dog.

  West Lake couldn’t be far from where he was, D. thought. “Lake, must find the lake,” he repeated. He never tired of saying it. He did cartwheels with his arms so they circled like the spokes of windmills on a wind farm. When his eyes saw the lake, his breath ran low, depleted, his heart beating too fast for his age so that it slowed almost to a deadly stop. Each beat imploded in his mind, bearing its mark, every beat sounding like death giving him one more second to live, not sure when he would stop playing children’s games and give him the kick.

  “The lake!” he cried. “Get me to the lake!” If anyone was there, they’d be wondering who the old detective with an initial for a name was talking to.

  D. found himself crash landing again. Hopefully this didn’t happen too often, he made sure of that. Now what to do when he reached the bank? If he reached West Lake, what was he to do next?

  Like a toddler, D. was on his arms and knees crawling. Every inch counted, they mattered to him like the air he breathed and the food he ate. The lake got closer – no, he got closer as he went on. He was the one who got closer, not the lake. West Lake would always be in that part of the city no matter how far D. was, or anybody else living for that matter. It’ll stay there unles
s massive evaporation or worldly destructions and/or changes happened hundreds of years in the future. But by then he’d still keep this in mind, and he still thought this when the longest of his fingers reached the water, cupped some into his hands, which went into the parched mouth of the old detective who thought he couldn’t go any farther.

  But West Lake held nothing new. It was still the same lake he had seen before, nothing special about it to deepen the case he held responsibility for. He doubted it had anything to do with the man named West Lake who coincidentally shared the same name. Reading the profile description again, none held information about him or the lake. All that was left was something D. found strange: Failure in attempted fire at police department and mayor office in synchronized time. Continues to stalk the department for unknown reasons except for cryptic reasons both officers and investigators are still searching for – could this be related to the web he found earlier in both Chief Advert's office and the locker room before?

  D.’s heart sank deeper into the internal hell provided in his stomach when he read the poem and searched the lake. None of this had to do with the case he begged from Chief Advert earlier, but it brought chills and pain nonetheless. He surveyed the whole bank in a loop, searching for anything that might take him to another clue. The unidentified sender must have known what he/she was doing; otherwise this would all have been a waste of time. When it looked like he was done, D. went over to the trees and observed from a higher standpoint.

  The Chinese poem mentioned lotuses, but D. didn’t find any lotuses surrounding the lake or pressing onto its shallow surface. Color didn’t matter; if it was there, it meant something. It’d be symbolic or literal but it had to be something, D. knew it in his heart and in his mind (or was it only in his mind and never in his heart?). Like a child looking for something that can never be found, again D. reenacted the same poses and reactions. On the ground where he landed, D. inspected tiny blades of grass, going through them like hairs. Denial always came before acceptance, but D. still kept himself in the denial stage. He choked up on his tears, preventing them from flooding all over the place like projectile bile filled in sadness. There had to be something in the poem that might help. He read it until he could remember it (and would soon forget the whole damned thing from his near-perfect memory loss) and even read in between the lines, probably giving it too much credit for what it was worth.