Detective D. Case

by Neal Goldy

  Lotuses, water lilies, red in the sunshine . . . did scholars have the same trouble D. was going through? He supposed that maybe the poem couldn’t be solved – it wasn’t supposed to be solved. Maybe it wasn’t about the case he had dived into but rather a little gem for him to keep in private matters. Nobody else would see it, D. made sure of that, even if it were meant for him or not, but its meaning was lost in itself, which he found unusual. Obscuring its meaning was like hiding the key in a pile of other keys, and that sparked D.’s thinking a little. He rolled up the little note into a thin cylinder reminiscent of a cigarette and gave a long look at West Lake. It couldn’t only just be the lake that the poem was referencing to, right?

  And then he saw it. A lily, in the middle of the lake and out of his reach, floated like some magician had plopped it there without a moment’s thought. D. got closer, edging towards the water. The lily flower had a blue, almost purple, color to it and a dew-like substance covering it like a gloss. His ankles had sunken into the underwater already, but D.’s eyes never left the water lily. Maybe in the day it would appear painfully red in the sunlight, whenever there will be any, but if it did, it would become identical to the Chinese poem rolled up inside his pocket. A red water lily in the daylight would match the words through which were painted the glorious picture D. was sure nobody had read before, at least not in this city. His shirt was halfway in water when he snatched the water lily, laughing in glee. He waded to the park, not waiting to dry his clothes. This just might lead somewhere.

  D.’s face hit the water before he reached the end of West Lake. Under the surface, he heard gunshots from above. He needed affirmation as to who shot and where. Eyes closed, D. felt six or so hands weighing him down. The water pushed his lungs tight, burning with rage, and he was desperately in need of keeping his breath going. He struggled with the hands, but they clung to him like bad perfume. Except here it wasn’t, oh well, guess we’ll have to get this day over with.

  The hands were multiplying (how so, if there were six or so to begin with?) and D.’s lungs were shortening their patience. They let go, and so did his breath, and the hands were everywhere. For a minute he could see the shadow of West Lake, but he might have dreaming.

  *****

  “He blacked out yet?” demanded a scruffy-looking young man.

  “Not yet.” They were pulling an old man wearing a shabby coat out of the lake. “I think so now, but I can’t be sure. You might wanna check it yourself.” The voice belonged to a man younger than the scruffy-looking one.

  “It’s always the same with you, isn’t it?” The scruffy man kicked the younger and sent him to the ground with his arms. Leaving him there, he went over to the old man in the shabby coat. He didn’t look familiar.

  “Have you found out what he was doing here?” he demanded again. He liked demanding things.

  None of them knew. He shot in the sky until everyone got to the ground.

  “Pathetic excuses, you all are,” he muttered. He kicked the old man, wondering if he’d wake. Ten seconds in with a second kick and nothing happened. He guessed him dead for the time being.

  “Anyone know his name?”

  “He doesn’t have one,” one of the men piped up.

  The scruffy-looking man stormed up to the man who spoke. “Don’t any of you know how to do anything?”

  “Uh, it’s an initial,” said the same man.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s from the old man, I think. His name isn’t really a name, but an initial. It’s just a D.”

  The dumbfounded look the man was giving irritated the scruffy-looking one. “How the hell am I supposed to know what that stands for? Go find out now!”

  They carried the old man with the letter D into their sports-car and began driving off. People of the reading world surely would like to know the meaning behind these actions, but it’s unfortunate that even in the scruffy-looking man’s mind, he still kept his thoughts private.

  Chapter 3

  As far as Lincoln saw, there were many cameras. They were blackened so the color was as thick as tar and disguised well so they looked like air fresheners. But the people who ran the place must’ve thought their prisoners as kidnapped victims because the bigoted idiots didn’t know the difference between their left and right shoes. Gladly he hadn’t been one of them, but he knew – or predicted, that seemed the ideal word – the thoughts and viewpoints of others when seeing the security enforcements they had put up.

  Hold on, he thought, temporarily removing the slacked off personality that everyone who knew him attributed to him. Now, with this on his hands, he became a silent mute who did not even speak when spoken to. Breaking that mutism wasn’t a grudge of childhood but something much worse. Returning to his thoughts: just who were “they” anyway? Lincoln flashed backwards to when he last saw the outside world, when everything appeared normal. He remembered investigating the apartment for the fifth anniversary of the case for what felt like forever. He wasn’t sure, though, if it was five years since the case started. He mulled it over a little, taking mind of the chair in which he was sitting. Lincoln found it peculiar that nobody thought of strapping him in to prevent his escape, but it could be a ploy, too, so he stayed put. Light, from where he was, was dimmed too low to see anything more than two feet away. The lights were placed on the ceiling in two far corners, making no sense to Lincoln. He tried to move, but he decided that they’d do worse to him if he got out.

  “Officer Lincoln,” said a baritone voice.

  “W-what happened?”

  The dimmed lights hid the man’s face, but Lincoln didn’t need that to know that his face wasn’t pleasant. “You were taken,” said Baritone Man. “Luckily we found you so you wouldn’t have died in the fire.”

  “Died, died where?” All of this was new to him.

  Baritone Man sounded annoyed. “In the fire, don’t you understand? When the building collapsed, you were there with the rest of the officers. Apparently you were searching for something, but we’re not quite sure what it was.”

  “So there’s more than one of you?”

  “You only ask questions when needed,” said Baritone Man. “For now you will be quiet and provide information when asked like a lawful student deep in their academics.” Baritone Man’s chair screeched when he pulled it closer to Lincoln; however, the shadow blacking his face stayed the same. “Allow me to introduce myself, since I have forgotten to mention it before. I believe I’ve been, shall I say, rude in my introduction.”

  Lincoln wanted to speak – even opened his mouth – but quickly shut it. He wasn’t sure if it was going to be a question or not, but the hidden man probably wouldn’t like it if he spoke anyway, question or not.

  Shaking hands the man said, “Hello. My name is Baritone.”

  So maybe Lincoln was right all along.

  “Nice to see you, uh, Baritone,” said Lincoln. He hoped the man didn’t notice the awkward way he spoke his name. “I’m –”

  “No need for your name. You must have forgotten the part when I first said, ‘Officer Lincoln,’ and scared you a great deal.”

  If only he could roll his eyes now. “Of course you were.”

  “I did, truthfully,” said Baritone. “I wish to continue, however.”

  The chair got closer, its screeching sounding like screaming victims.

  “Have you heard of the Davidson family? They’re wealthy and skillful in various projects with many talents.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “Did Forbes ever mention them?”

  “They are a private family, preferring to keep profiles low and do business where everyone can see them and yet, at the same time, not caring as to what they’re doing. The public is far too interested in more public people with scandals involving the rich and the famous and people they love to hate to go peeping around looking for private wealthy families. I doubt that they ever cared to go incognito.” He paused. “Wait, not even incognito. The Davidson family never disguise
d themselves and preferred to announce their presence where everybody could see them. Hiding in plain sight, I guess.”

  “And what has this got to do with me, Baritone?” Lincoln asked. “I apologize for interrupting but I don’t have time to stay here and listen to you rambling about private families whom no one cares about.”

  “I think you should care a great deal,” said Baritone. “For one of their members is missing.”

  “Why are they wealthy, anyway? Exactly what did they do to make themselves private and hidden from seemingly ‘public’ view? Or is it made up from the same family to make people like you believe in this nonsense yourself to keep me busy?”

  “I like the questioning and doubts you’re presenting to me, despite the fact that I made myself specific about you not asking questions while I’m speaking.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither will you.” And with that Baritone chuckled; it sounding darker than the man intended it to be. “Do you have a wife or children?”

  “No, I don’t. I divorced a long time ago.”

  Baritone thought about this response. “And how did you feel?”

  “I remember being very depressed. But why do you care about what I felt in the past?”

  “I’m saying this because the Davidsons were very depressed, too, when they lost the only boy in the family. He wasn’t very young, but he wasn’t too old, either. When he disappeared I remember the Davidsons thinking he had died and made a small funeral for him. Unlike other wealthy families where press and media come scouring over to the scene like superheroes who never save, just gossip, nobody gave a second look. They went on doing what they did every day, and nothing different. However, the police had been searching for the boy ever since, you know.”

  The police . . . this was sounding familiar.

  Before he asked, Baritone went on. “Six or five years, around that, since the police took the case into their hands. You’d think they – the Davidsons I mean – would’ve hired a private investigator to look at the disappearance, but they handed it off to the police. And with that in mind, you’d even think again that something like a missing person case like this would’ve been solved in less than six months. But nooo, five goddam years later, until right about this second as I speak, and they’re still searching. I suspect that those police people are looking for an excuse to get stories published with big headlines crying out, ‘WILL THE SEARCH FOR DAVIDSON MEMBER CONTINUE?’ If they were, then they did a good job, because now the Davidson family has finally become a publicly famous one-- ironically, exactly what the parents of said family promised they wouldn’t do since the beginning.”

  The Davidsons were sounding more and more like the McDermotts, but with a different name – or were they the same? Lincoln wasn’t sure, and it spun him dizzy. When he glanced at Baritone, the man didn’t seem too angry by Lincoln interrupting with something to say, so he went on ahead.

  “We . . . we had a case like that, too. It also has been going on for some time.”

  “But with the name changed from the Davidsons to the McDermotts?”

  Lincoln went wide-eyed, his hands shaking. “How did you know that? You’ve never worked at the police –”

  “How do you know that I never did? But with the two cases sounding identically alike, and them both starting at similar times, it’s hard to say which one’s a fake and which is real. Or who knows, both of them might be fake! Honest-to-God I have no idea. Hell, even the evidence provided for both cases speaks the truth! Think that sounds normal for a seemingly normal case like this?”

  “Uh, not really?” he guessed. Lincoln was at a loss.

  “You know what? I think you’re a smart kid, Lincoln, as honest as the man who bore the same name as yours. But you need to tell me what it is that’s different with the Davidsons and the McDermotts. Look at it like it’s a mystery within a mystery, which it kind of does if you ask me. Then we can know which one’s bluffing, and maybe even find out who did it, too. It could be a police/government thing, but nobody will know until you – and yes I’m talkin’ about you – find it out for all of us. Are we clear?”

  Lincoln nodded. “And if they’re both false?”

  Baritone clucked his teeth instead of laughing, which was what Lincoln expected from the man. “Well, if that appears to be so, then I’ll beat the shit out of the man responsible for it. We’ll do it together.”

  The cameras still watched Officer Lincoln in his deprived state, even after Baritone left.

  *****

  His audience (the one not involved in the beating and kidnapping previously) would have gasped if they found out an old man in an overlarge cloak lay cramped in such tight spaces where not even he knew where he had been taken. It took him three seconds of feeling around to realize they had locked him inside a car trunk. There were even four holes poked through the top, so D. knew they didn’t want him dead, not yet. With a glee, an almost childish giggle, D. hoped they would keep thinking to keep their old prisoner alive for the rest of the case.

  Muffled voices were on the other side. They sounded like a teenage gang ready on the prowl, predators, and their prey innocent little rabbits with a capital “W”. D. also heard thumping metal bars and male grunts, like they were trying to gang-rape metallic objects. Nobody opened the trunk door so D. kept his breath held. For an old man, he sure acted like a little boy.

  The voices got closer so D. could hear them better. It wasn’t enough to make out sentences, but gratefully close enough so a few words struck D.’s ears like sparks flying out of a sword’s blade when sharpened.

  “Called D.,” said one of the members. “An interesting name, I’d say.”

  Another one, more to the left side outside the trunk, laughed. The sneers of his voice notified the other and D. that he intended to mock with hard piercings. “You call this interesting? I, for one, think this name sounds absolutely trite.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know it. Just another pretentious investigator thinking he’s mysterious and haunting because he has an initial instead of a name. What a big deal.”

  The same man who spoke typed something.

  “What are you doing?” asked the other.

  More sounds of typing. “I’m trying to see if this oldie here has any, what do we say, criminal records in his past . . .”

  D. slapped a hand over his mouth in order to stop from gasping. If he didn’t, and suppose they heard him, he would see that the trunk door opened up and he was tumbling onto the pavement. He had no idea where he was, or where the car was parked, so he hypothesized they could be anywhere in the city, even underground. The low yet sharp gasp, when done, ruined everything. Of course they must’ve known D. was in the trunk – and he suspected that they spoke near the trunk for this purpose – but thought he was asleep or still unconscious from the near drowning. Let them still think him too weak to come out of his short coma and overestimate the circumstances. But D. hoped the nastier of the two would spin some fictive yarn and false stories accusing D. of things he had never done, things he had never thought of. He pressed an ear when he heard the nastier of the two finish his typing and possibly scanning the pages.

  He heard him grunt. “Nope, nothing,” he said.

  D. sighed in relief.

  None of the two spoke. “What was that?”

  The old detective gulped, moving to the back of the trunk. Searching his belt, his pistol was missing. Not a surprise to him that they’d taken all weapons; what’d be surprising is if they didn’t, which in turn would be quite an amateur if not a stupid choice. D. silenced himself, zipping up the open gaps. Just pray that they’ll go away like the child wishes the ghosts and monsters to go away from underneath his bed, or away from the darkest parts of his closet . . .

  “I dunno. I thought I heard something.”

  The two of them shuffled to the trunk. D. balled his hands, ready for what would come from the outside. Gangs like these never acted with reason.<
br />
  “You must have killed your ears or something. You are hearing nonsense. I don’t hear a damn thing!”

  The other stammered. “But-but I did!”

  “Quit your yapping and bullshit! I’m tired of working with you!”

  “Then why do you keep having me around?”

  The nasty one laughed. “That’s your fault, not mine.”

  Fading footsteps signaled their leave. D., on the other hand, puffed out his chest and released all the built-up breath he was carrying in the meantime. Well, he instead should release the breath in slow intervals instead of holding it, but pressure always blocked other better decisions in a person’s life. D. spat on pressure like he did on jealousy, but that did as much to it as doing nothing and accepting it. At least D. had the courage to resent it, which few people did these days. Day and night jobs with crime never helped.

  And speaking of which, D. needed to finish the job – the case, anyway. The sudden disappearance of the McDermott son took time in steady tolls, which was at the center of the problem. Add in the complicated dead ends and you have a pot boiling with madness, dashing in a pinch of frustration. Making things worse was what D. called the Time Stopper. He should be working on the case, maybe researching the backgrounds of the McDermott family and their relations with neighbors and other corporations. Assume that they had more than one company to handle? Power corrupts, and no matter how private the McDermotts kept their wealth and fame, they were no exception. Human beings in a general manner were not capable of terrible, dark power that came from the unknown – or the sinister side of humans, if you wanted a twist to the overall story of human life. With everyone he met so far, D. made up his mind: the world would be better off without humans, if the Earth was in fact intended for them in the beginning.