by John Oakes
“Here we go,” Winton said as the two men closed on him. He swept his mixed pile of granules into his right hand and, as the black linebacker reached out to grab him, stepped past his hands between his arms and slapped the handful into his eyes as hard as he could. He ducked through the big man’s legs and reached for the kettle on the counter which wasn’t quite boiling yet, but was steaming hot.
“Sorry chief.” Winton sloshed the contents at the second man in the blue robe, striking him in the face and neck with the scalding hot water. Steam billowed out, as the man fell to his knees. Winton stepped in and dumped the rest of the kettle over the man’s shoulders and down his back. The cotton robe soaked the water up, holding the burning heat next to his skin even longer than if he’d been naked. He screamed and flopped on the ground.
While the linebacker fumbled with his eyes, Winton took his momentary advantage to refill the kettle and set it to boil again while he looked for something else to use for defense. He pulled the sodden belt from the blue robe of the man on the floor and ran toward the man attacking Julius.
“Trip him!” Winton commanded, then slid on his knees across the tile, dropping on all fours right behind the man. Julius barreled forward into him, delivering just enough power to tip him off balance. When he tried to put a foot back, he toppled over Winton, smacking hard onto his back. Winton threw the wet cotton belt to Julius. “Choke him out.”
Julius wrapped the belt about the man’s neck and sat on his chest, leaning back and pulling the ends tight. The man’s legs kicked furiously, and Winton helped bat his hands away from the belt as the pressure mounted and finally turned his lights out.
“That’s good,” Winton said. “Don’t want to kill him.” Julius unwound the belt, and the man remained stiff and still.
“Come on.” Winton grabbed one end of the belt. “He’ll be back in a sec.”
“You tall enough to clothesline them?” Julius asked.
Winton figured he wasn’t, so he tied a hasty knot in the end of the belt and ran a loop through it. “You fling that around one’s neck, I’ll yank it tight. Then we pull together.”
Julius held the loop in both hands and advanced on the black linebacker still trying to clear his eyes. He swung two clumsy haymakers at Julius as soon as he saw him, then before he could see what Julius had done, felt the belt go tight about his neck. Both hands reached for the tightening sensation. Julius stepped in and socked him in the jaw. Winton hadn’t seen him box before, but like his jab, Julius’ overhand right had some surprising pop. It didn’t knock the man out clean, but it dazed him, buckling his knees for half a second. As he stumbled, Julius threw a kick at the man on the floor struggling to tear the blue robe off himself. His foot buried into to the man’s ribs momentarily making the him curl up like a pill bug.
The tea kettle whistled, but Winton ignored it. Together with Julius, he shoved the linebacker off his feet into a corner. While he was still dazed, they shoved a round table into his head, pinning it in the ninety-degree angle.
For a brief moment, the fighting paused, with two men barely conscious and another struggling in pain to get to his hands and feet. “How do we get out?” Julius asked, panting.
Winton looked about. They could potentially shoot through the two-way mirror, but that put them back to square one with the fingerprint problem.
“Dr. Kerala.” Winton dove to his knees and pulled his lab coat back. There affixed to his belt was a set of keys. “Got ‘em.” Winton ran to the door, where he hurriedly tried key after key.
“Winton?”
“I’m trying.”
“Try faster.”
Winton tried a fifth key, a sixth.
“Winton, he’s got the gun.”
Still on his hands and knees, the man in the steaming blue robe had his hand on the pistol Julius had kicked near the kitchenette.
Winton turned back to the lock and tried the seventh key, or was it the fifth? Had he reversed direction on the ring?
“Let’s go man.” Julius’ tone dripped with fear.
Winton looked over his shoulder. The man in the robe raised the pistol.
Click.
Winton gritted his teeth and flinched.
Click. Click.
Either the pistol was malfunctioning, or it was out of ammo. Winton tried the eighth key, then the ninth, and the lock turned, and the door opened. “Ah!” Winton gasped. They drew the door shut behind them just as the man in the blue robe pounced at them. Winton locked it from the outside, and they ran for all they were worth, avoiding the main entrance in case Jansen was lurking.
Winton pointed to an emergency door. Julius bashed through it, but no alarm sounded. Winton sprinted through it after Julius, stopping short beside him in a flood of blue and red blinking lights and the halogen glow of Galveston PD cruiser high beams.
Winton squinted as he put his hands in the air.
TWENTY-THREE
Winton and Julius were questioned separately at first, then brought into the same windowless room. Their handcuffs were left on, but the officers who stood at the door didn’t appear concerned with them.
“Where are the detectives?” Julius asked. “A lady cop grilled me.”
Winton kept his voice low. “Same. Some young uniform and his sergeant made me give a detailed statement.”
Julius’ eyes asked, “What now?”
Detective Plimpton appeared, chomping on his cigar just in time to answer that question. He set down some files and paced before them. “Your stories matched up close enough. What I don’t fully understand is why y’all were at the clinic to begin with.”
“Doctor Jansen said he thought Doctor Kerala was gonna kill him,” Julius said. “Probably with one of them beast dudes.”
“He argued that if we helped him get the remaining patients away to a new facility, Kerala would be harmless,” Winton said. “It seemed like the best thing for everyone.”
“Why did he need to explain anything to you?”
“He was playing the scared card, very well I’d add, and we wanted some answers in return for our help. But his real purpose became clear as soon as he shot Doctor Kerala and tried to frame us.”
“This Jansen dude thinks he’s untouchable,” Julius said. “Thinks he’s real smart.”
“You said the door was locked, forcing you to fight these so called zombies?” Plimpton said.
“Precisely,” Winton said. “He locked us in after he shot Kerala. He left the gun, but without any rounds left.”
“Why would he do that?” Plimpton took out his cigar and stopped his pacing.
“To have one of us put our prints on it,” Julius said. “Try to fire in self-defense and then die conveniently at the hands of those big zombies.”
“Except he forgot one thing,” Winton said. “There’s no gun powder residue on our hands. But there will be on his.”
“You coulda washed your hands real good before you came in,” Plimpton said. “Not that your prints were on the gun.”
“All I’m saying, detective, is that if he’d succeeded in getting our prints on the gun, any investigator worth their salt would notice that neither of us had residue anywhere on us. Impossible if we shot Kerala.”
Plimpton grunted.
“Jansen is growing bolder,” Winton said, “making mistakes. I’d wager he’ll only make more.”
Weischel entered the room with a bit of swagger, giving Plimpton a satisfied nod. “Well boys, you’re back early.”
“And bearing gifts,” Winton said. “Grip? Pinks? It’s the main drug they use to zombify these homeless people they pick up. In small doses, it’s fun, and they’ve been making a tidy little profit on the side. But they originally developed it for long-term use in high doses. For the patients, it’s like being in a mental prison of control that only the doctors have the key to.”
“That’s what control is.” Weischel entered the room. “It’s an illusion. And the more we seek it, the smaller we must become.”
“Well said.” Julius nodded. “And that’s how these patients become so subservient.”
“Are you willing to make him a suspect now in Beatrice’s death?” Winton said. “I know that Jansen killed Beatrice Spencer.”
“You have proof?” Plimpton asked.
“Enough for me.”
“Try me,” Plimpton said leaning in.
“We saw Bea pull Jansen aside at the funeral and tell him something,” Julius said. “She needed more grip because she was addicted.”
“Actually,” Winton said, “it’s more complicated than that. Way more.”
Julius cocked an eyebrow. Both detectives looked just as puzzled.
“Now, Julius you’re gonna be pained to hear this.”
All eyes in the room narrowed.
“When I told you to back off my cousin?”
“Yeah?”
“I thought it was because she’d gotten pregnant down here in Galveston, despite having a boyfriend in Alaska. I found a pregnancy test.”
“You what?”
“Yeah…” Winton groaned. “So when she said she needed to leave town because of Bea dying, I figured that meant she really needed to get home quick to establish a timeline, as it were.”
Weischel stepped closer. “You thought she was trying to get back with her boyfriend in time to keep it believable?”
Winton nodded, eyes searching the floor. “But the more I thought about it, Heather wouldn’t lie about that. She’s always owned up to her actions, cost be damned. Then it dawned on me. The positive tests weren’t hers. They belonged to Beatrice. That’s what she told Jansen at the funeral. Partly.” He looked up at Plimpton and Weischel. “If you ask the Medical Examiner’s office, I’d bet you anything it’s true.”
“That would mean Jansen wasn’t just tying off a loose end in his drug business,” Julius said, “but in his personal life.”
“And there’s a long history of Jansen acting unethically in his own best interests,” Winton said.
Plimpton left the room without a word.
Weischel leaned in looking intense. “Okay, I need to know exactly what you mean by that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Maryvale.” She registered the looks on their faces. “Yeah, I looked into him a bit. I didn’t find anything, and that just made me mad.” She waved a finger. “You know something about it?”
They didn’t have to exchange a glance. Both men nodded.
“Jansen worked there.”
Nods again. It wasn’t a question.
“What was going on there? Were they selling drugs, too?”
“Testing,” Julius said. “Illegal, unethical testing, without patient knowledge.”
“How do you know?”
Now they glanced at one another. “Because we talked to the man who put that big ass scar on Jansen’s neck before he escaped.”
“And a woman who worked there,” Julius said. “She corroborated it.”
Weischel ran a hand over her face, looking dismayed, invigorated, some odd combination of emotions. She waggled a finger. “I got an autistic big brother who lives in a group home. Long time ago, before I even became a cop, I found out one of his monitors was abusing him.” The cold grey in her eyes was terrifying. “I hit that fella with my car and beat the shit out of him in the street.”
“Jesus,” Julius murmured.
Winton’s eyes widened, sensing a kindred spirit.
“Point is, I’m in. I don’t care what Plimpton says or what the ME says. I want to take this scum bag down.” She stuck a finger into the table. “Fucking now.”
Winton cracked a grin to one side of this mouth. “Then, I think I know just who to call on.”
Before Weischel left to put their plan in motion, Winton stopped her. “When Jansen came over to our house earlier, I don’t think he expected us to be home. Julius’ car is in the shop, so no cars were parked outside. With no one there it would’ve been easy to get in.”
“Just pull a little plastic wrap aside,” Julius said.
“If he was gonna plant something in the house, he might’ve had a different plan to frame us for Kerala’s murder. Maybe that’s why he made mistakes on the fly.”
“You think that he might have gone back after?” Weischel said.
They both nodded. “Probably best if we mention that in good faith before we’re out of police supervision,” Winton said.
“I’ll peep in and see if anything jumps out at me,” Weischel said.
TWENTY-FOUR
As the evening’s excitement died down and the adrenaline from yet another scrape drained away, both Julius and Winton began to slump with fatigue and close their eyes. Winton pulled his face up from resting on the table. “We gotta be free to go.” He got out of his chair, tested the door and found it was unlocked. After giving Julius a wide-eyed look over his shoulder, Winton peered out, then opened the door fully. They stepped into a dim hall and walked toward the light of the less active nighttime shift. Only two uniformed officers were present, a man and a woman, each holding bunches of paperwork in one hand, coffee in the other and chatting.
They wandered unnoticed to Plimpton’s office where they found him on the phone. He looked up, and Winton motioned to the front doors then mimed sleep with two hands under his head like a pillow. Plimpton shook his head and waved a finger. He finished up his phone call, by yelling into the phone, “You fucking owe me, Grundy. Now run the damn story already.”
Plimpton took a calming breath as he set the receiver down.
“I take it that wasn’t mother?” Winton asked.
“No, smart ass. That was local news. Gonna run a story about tonight’s murder on the late news with some confusion over the details. To be cleared up in the morning.”
“Were they properly confused?”
“They are now.” Plimpton picked up a cigar off his desk. “Or else I’m gonna drop the hammer of Thor on that producer’s ass.”
“Makes sense,” Winton said. “Keeps Jansen placated if he thinks we’re dead.”
“Real smooth.” Julius let his arms fall to his side. “We free to mosey on out, then?”
Plimpton huffed. “Oh, no.” He stood and adjusted his jacket. “You two are cordially invited for an evening’s stay at Casa Plimpton.”
Winton and Julius exchanged a glance.
“You two are supposed to be dead.” Plimpton walked to his overcoat and threw it on, talking through clenched teeth. “Can’t have anyone doing recon on your beach house and finding the lights on, if you know what I mean.”
Winton chided himself for even needing to have it explained to him. But his mind felt like it’d been slapped on a cutting board and rolled out like bread dough.
“Suppose we can’t go back for any of our stuff,” Julius said.
Plimpton led them out and turned his office lights off, locking the door behind him. “Don’t tell me you gentlemen ain’t never slept a night in your clothes before.”
They both sighed and murmured, not contesting the assertion.
They walked to Plimpton’s Cadillac, and Julius reached for the rear door handle.
“Get your black ass in the front seat,” Plimpton whined. “I ain’t a chauffeur.”
Winton climbed into the back, figuring Julius had been selected for the front seat because of leg room, not racism, but with Plimpton, Winton couldn’t quite be sure. He ignored their compliments on his nice car and lit a cigar, ashing it out the window as they drove off the island.
“How far away do you live?” Julius asked.
“Far enough.” Plimpton took a drag from his cigar. “People like having cops in the neighborhood, but not next door. The island is just a little too small for me to be comfortable. I need to let my legs stretch out.”
They drove for fifteen minutes into a sleepy subdivision of ranch houses near an elementary school. Plimpton pulled into a long driveway with a half acre of trees and shrubs secluding the single level home.
He pulled into his garage right up next to a trailer with two jet skis on it.
Plimpton led them into his house and flipped on a soft light, illuminating a first class kitchen with marble countertops, dazzling fixtures, and stainless steel appliances. “The fridge has whatever you need to survive an evening. Help yourself.”
Winton peered out a back door onto a deck and a landscaped back yard complete with fountains and fruit trees. To the side of the deck, there was even a hot tub and a pool that curved along one side of the yard for forty feet.
“Day-um,” Winton muttered under his breath.
Plimpton led them through to the living room which was set with plush leather sofas and built-in entertainment center. He carried on to a couple of guest rooms, each decorated as stylishly as the rest of the house.
“I’m guessing you two just wanna know where the liquor cabinet is.” Plimpton pointed to a small bar station near the foyer and front entrance. “I’m gonna change. If there’s a knock at the door, make sure it’s a lady before you open it.”
Taking the cue, they wandered closer to the beverages, admiring the home and exchanging awed looks.
“It ain’t quite a mansion,” Julius said. “But why do I feel like I don’t wanna touch anything?”
“I love these houses that look small on the outside but are cavernous on the inside. Like a secret lair.”
“It’s like the kind of house the president lives in once he’s done being president.”
“Hmm. But it isn’t too polished either,” Winton said. “It’s stately and refined without being gaudy. More like the home of a retired Navy Admiral.”
“Yeah,” Julius said. “That’s on the money. Like, I wanna smoke a pipe right now, and I ain’t never smoked a pipe.”
“I wanna wear a satin robe with my initials embroidered on it,” Winton said.
“We need cocktails that fit the mood.” Julius picked up a book. “Look, it’s a recipe book for drinks. What’s classy?”
