Hollow Green

by Hannibal Adofo

  “What do you mean?”

  Stone leaned forward. “Quite frankly, doctor, it doesn’t feel like Michaels is responsible for what’s happening. Other officials and I are of the mind that someone else, possibly, concocted this whole situation.”

  “I’m at a loss,” Davidson said. “I’m not quite sure I follow.”

  Stone made her move.

  She pulled out the photograph from Trevor Michaels’ box and slid it across the table to Davidson like a Mafioso in the movies making Davidson an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  “What is this?” Davidson took a look at the photo.

  “I was hoping you could shed some light on that. Detective Vincent discovered this among Michaels’ personal belongings during our last visit.”

  Davidson scrutinized every inch of the photo like he was appraising it. “I’ve never seen this before in my life. You’re saying this was in Michaels’ personal belongings?”

  Stone nodded. “Indeed. And, according to the records, Michaels doesn’t have any next of kin that we are aware of.”

  “No. He doesn’t.”

  Stone shrugged. “Perhaps you can explain it? If Michaels didn’t leave this behind, someone else did.”

  Davidson took another look at the photo.

  His eyes went wide.

  “My God,” he said. “I’ll be damned…”

  And then he pointed something out that even Stone and Vincent had overlooked.

  11

  The chief had obviously started to get a sense of what Vincent was doing as they continued having their “conversation.”

  He stood up from his desk, hands in his pockets as he rounded the corner and sat on the edge of it, right in front of Vincent, looming over him and reminding Vincent of the position he served underneath him.

  The chief said, “I’ve known you a long time, son. I know when the nose of yours is starting to get into something that it shouldn’t. That being said, I know what you’re getting at. And I’m insulted at your lack of grace that in attempting to say the questions that are on the tip of your tongue.”

  Vincent and the chief locked eyes, staring each other down.

  The chief casually motioned to Sandoval, eyes still on Vincent. “Would you excuse us, detective?”

  Sandoval said nothing, nodded, and ducked out of the room.

  Silence held sway.

  Interminable silence.

  After a few moments, in a gravelly tone, the chief said, “No more games, boy. You gotta something to say—say it.”

  Vincent nodded. “Fair enough. Where were you before the raid?”

  “I was en route. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Hollow Green is currently navigating some rough terrain, and I’ve got over ten thousand people acting like a bunch of pissed-off fans at a football game as a result. I’m running around every inch of the goddamn town trying to keep order, and now you’re questioning my intentions.”

  Vincent said nothing.

  The chief continued, “You do see how that can make someone in my position a little… hot under the collar?”

  Vincent nodded. “Yes, sir. But the fact remains that someone is out there killing innocent people and trying to set this town on fire. And it damn sure isn’t Trevor Michaels.”

  “The hell you talking about?”

  “Nothing lines up in the whole thing. We’ve got scattered facts, a city on lockdown, and a quarter of every law enforcement officer in the state scrambling to keep up, and all their attention is focused on one man—Trevor Michaels.”

  “You’re saying it’s not him?”

  “I think I’m being pretty clear about that. Yes.”

  “Based on what?”

  “A hunch.”

  The chief burst out laughing. “You’re incredible, son. Really. I did you a favor letting you work for me here in Hollow. You were so shell-shocked from that fellow you shot back in the city that you haven’t been able to see straight ever since. Your time in Chicago fried your brain, kid, and now you’re trying to build narratives based on hunches while the world is falling apart around you as a way to cope.”

  Keep calm, Vincent told himself. Don’t lose your cool.

  He smoothed out his tie, interlaced his fingers, and sat up in the poised position that he’d held during the inquiry over his shooting several years back.

  He was calm. Composed. In control. He said, “You’re not a foolish man, chief. Think about it. What’s the best way to screw up an investigation?”

  The chief shrugged.

  “Convolution,” Vincent said. “Adding impertinent facts to a case to keep the police chasing their tails. Several murders. In the same town. All of which are linked somehow through the facility.”

  The chief looked genuinely shocked. “What?”

  “The male victim worked as a guard over at the facility. The first victim helped them balance their books just a few months ago. We’re still trying to find out where the second victim lines up, but it appears that someone took a few pages out of her file…”

  He gave the chief an accusing look.

  “You saying I did it?” the chief asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vincent said. “But someone did. And very few people have access to that the file.”

  The chief took a long moment to compose himself. As he did, Vincent’s cell phone rang.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  A few moments of chitchat.

  “Got it,” Vincent said before hanging up.

  “Who was that?” the chief asked.

  “Stone. She just came across another revelation. There was a photo among Michaels’ possession at the facility.”

  “Of what?”

  “A young girl. We thought it as maybe a relative we didn’t know about. Stone asked Davidson about it, and he said that Michaels never once had that photo on him during his sentence.”

  “Well… what the hell is it, then?”

  Vincent shrugged. “It’s nobody.”

  “What?”

  “The picture is a stock photo that companies put in picture frames for display in stores. He said he recognized it from a collection of frames he saw at a pharmacy next to the potato chip aisle.”

  Vincent couldn’t help but smile.

  “I don’t know about you, chief,” he said, “but that sounds like another unnecessary element being tossed in the mix for the sake of obfuscation.”

  The chief’s eyes wandered. He pushed up off his desk and moved toward the window. “What is this?” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

  Vincent stood and came up a few feet shy of the chief’s heels. “I’m not crazy, sir. Tell me you can’t see what I’m seeing.”

  “I see it… I see it…”

  “Then we need to start looking internally,” Vincent said. “At everyone, at all our people. Including Stone’s. I think someone is trying to cover up something deeper by making it look like Michaels is haunting the town. It’s someone or something to do with the facility. It has to be.”

  The chief turned, faced his detective, and gave him a nod. “So,” he said, crossing his arms. “What do we do, detective?”

  “I’ll tell Sandoval to start rounding everyone up. We need to question everyone we know. And fast.”

  “Including Sandoval?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I vouch for him. There’s no way it’s him, but it’s necessary to be thorough.”

  Vincent’s cell phone rang. He have the “one minute” gesture to the chief and answered the call.

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s more,” Agent Stone said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “What is it?”

  There was a crash in the distance.

  “I want to talk to the goddamn chief! Now!”

  Vincent’s eyes turned to the bullpen—and the angry mob of citizens trying to push their way to the conference room.

  “Oh, shit!”

  12

  Vincent wasn’t sure that it wasn�
�t the chief. Not just yet.

  But the guy looked sincere and his cooperation meant something to him.

  When the ruckus began out in the bullpen, Vincent still had his phone to his ear and Stone on the other end of the line. “So the photo is a fake.”

  “Big time,” Stone said. “And there’s more about Karen Mercer, the second victim. It turns out that her husband was a guard at the facility for a few years. He retired last year and was then killed in a car accident—”

  The commotion inside the bullpen was starting to sound unruly as a citizen with a bald head and a flannel shirt demanding to see Chief Mason stormed his way over with clenched fists and red skin as Mason moved to intercept.

  “The chief may be in the clear,” Vincent told Stone. “I’m not sure yet, though. Just get back here as soon as you can.”

  He hung up and moved ahead of the chief, wedging himself in between him and the guy with the flannel shirt. “What’s going on, bud?” Vincent asked, holding up a hand.

  The guy slapped it away. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Detective Vincent. Just take it easy, okay?”

  “To hell with that! I want to know what the hell is going on around here. You’ve got the whole damn town under lock and key, and none of us know what the story is!”

  The chief stepped around Vincent. “Lyle,” he said. “Let’s hit the calm button for a moment, okay? I understand you’re upset—”

  “You understand fuck all, Mason!” Lyle cried out, the two men behind him dressed like truckers itchy and looking for a fight, their greased-stain knuckles and forearms pulsating and tensing.

  The chief said, “Look here,” a little sterner, his chest a little puffed out. “I want to get a hold of the situation. Believe me. But I’m not going to tolerate civil unrest. The last thing we need right now is for the town to start tearing itself apart.”

  “You got a killer on the loose,” the trucker to the left of Lyle said. “You’ve got three dead bodies, and you think this place ain’t tearing itself apart already?”

  The other trucker said, “You don’t have control of your town, chief. All of you are running around with chickens with your head lopped off.”

  “I appreciate your take on the situation,” the chief said. “But like I said: I’m not going to tolerate insubordination on behalf of the citizenry. All of you, from here on out, are to remain in your homes until further notice. A curfew is now in effect.”

  Grumbles. Moans. Chortles.

  Lyle took a step forward. “I think maybe it’s time for the people in this town to exercise certain rights…”

  “The hell you getting at?” Vincent asked.

  Lyle turned his fiery eyes on Vincent. “I’m talking about the right to defend ourselves, detective. The right to protect ourselves when those we pay to do it for us fail to hold up their end of the bargain.”

  Weights were shifting. Feet were being planted. An unbearable tension started to overcome everyone in the immediate vicinity as an FBI agent decided to step in.

  “That’s enough,” the tall, dark-skinned gentleman said. “I want everyone who’s not sporting a badge out of here immediately.”

  Lyle focused on the agent with a scornful look in his eye as he sucked air through his teeth. “I don’t believe I was talking to you, boy.”

  “And yet I answered,” the agent replied, eyes narrowed and his jaw firmly set. “Now take your boys and get out of here. If I see you within two hundred yards of this place, I’ll have you brought up on charges of obstruction.”

  Time passed, just a few seconds, but enough to feel like an entire lifetime.

  Lyle held out his hands and glanced at his trucker friends. “Well, boys,” he said, “you heard the man. I think it’s time we got going. Don’t you?”

  The one trucker looked at the other trucker.

  Then they both looked at Lyle.

  “Na,” one of them said. “I don’t think so.”

  Lyle looked back at the agent. Shrugged. “Yeah. Me neither.”

  One second passed.

  And then Lyle sucker-punched the agent in the jaw.

  The agent went flying as a bone-crunching smack reverberated through the room. The agent flew into a desk behind him. Vincent lunged forward with a balled-up fist toward Lyle as the chief, two patrolmen, and another FBI agent all converged onto the scuffle, fists flying.

  As Vincent went to plant his fist into Lyle’s gut, Lyle preemptively countered by throwing an uppercut that clipped his chin and knocked Vincent backward.

  Vincent was prevented from falling onto his rear when he collided with the side of the desk behind him, the two truckers backing up Lyle now charging toward the chief and the HGPD patrolman as their limbs became locked, curses began flying, and an all-out brawl overtook the bullpen.

  Vincent pushed off the desk and charged forward, burying his head into Lyle’s gut and knocking the wind clean out of him as he fell with Vincent to the floor and onto his back.

  The other FBI agent pulled the one that got smacked in the jaw to his feet as they went about pulling the truckers off Mason and the other patrolman.

  Vincent, now on top of Lyle, buried his knee in the man’s groin. Lyle howled in pain as Vincent then balled his right fist and planted one firmly on Lyle’s cheek.

  A round could be heard being chambered in someone’s weapon.

  All heads turned as the familiar metallic ping of a shotgun round being pumped into the chamber echoed throughout the room, the brawl immediately ceasing as everyone turned to lay eyes on Detective Sandoval—a shotgun in his hands and aimed square at Lyle’s head.

  “Everybody freeze!”

  The group complied.

  “You two,” Sandoval said to the agents. “Take these idiots and throw them in the holding cells.”

  The two agents each grabbed a trucker by their belts and shirts and hauled them away.

  Sandoval nodded to Vincent. “You got this guy?”

  Lyle locked eyes with Vincent, still eager to go another round with him. Vincent cocked a fist and popped Lyle square in his jaw.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I got him.”

  Vincent hauled Lyle to his feet and began dragging him toward the holding cells in the back. As the dust settled on the inside of the station, outside things were starting to look like the L.A. Riots.

  Several department stores were being looted. A few of the blockades on the major roads leading in and out of the town were rife with unruly citizens trying to push their way through. A fire had started on Main Street, a man was ransacking homes, and several fights broke out in residential neighborhoods as Agent Stone weaved her way through the crowds and toward the police station.

  “Oh no,” she said. “What the hell is happening?”

  13

  Vincent threw Lyle into the cell, slammed the door shut, and locked it.

  “Just sit tight, hillbilly boy,” he said. “I’ll be back to fetch you in a bit.”

  Lyle, his jaw swollen, crooked a finger at Vincent and said, “This isn’t over…”

  Vincent twirled the key around his finger and said, “I’m sure it isn’t.”

  He headed out into the bullpen. Sandoval was still clutching the shotgun as he whispered into Vincent’s ear, “The chief told me what’s going on. What do you want me to do?”

  Vincent sighed. “I’m sorry I kept you in the dark about it. I didn’t want to say anything prematurely.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Someone is causing a deliberate panic to keep us distracted from the bigger picture. I damn sure want to find out who it is.”

  As they approached the chief and prepared to coordinate, Stone entered the station. Vincent motioned her over, and the group stood in a circle in the corner.

  “It’s turning into hell out there on the streets,” Stone said.

  “I’m assuming everyone here is up to date on what’s going on?” Stone asked.

  Nods.

  “What did you find out from Davidso
n?” Vincent asked.

  Stone produced a file. “Something very interesting,” she said as everyone gathered behind her to take a look at the pages. “Karen Mercer, victim number two, had a husband that died not long ago in a car accident.”

  “Tom Mercer,” the chief said. “I knew him.”

  “Then you knew he was a guard at the facility.”

  “I did. Yes. Did he work on Trevor Michaels’ floor?”

  Stone held up a finger. “That’s the kicker. I did as much digging as I could, and I grabbed as many files as I could on the way out, but it turns out that Tom Mercer did not work on Michaels’ floor at any point. However, he and one other guard did share a rotation on another wing.”

  “Which guard?” Sandoval asked.

  Stone held up three fingers. “Bryan Presley,” she said. “Victim number three. Apparently, he and Tom Mercer shared a shift in Wing 1C. The worst of the worst that were housed inside the facility were on that floor.”

  “Okay,” Vincent said, thinking. “So what connects them? Clearly, this all ties into the facility somehow. It’s just a question of who. And why.” He sighed. “Damn it. We’re not getting any closer. And time is against us.”

  “This is what we do know,” Stone said. “We know that all of our victims had some kind of connection to that facility. Directly. All the signs point to that place. The question is who, like Vincent is saying.”

  “We need to look at those records,” Sandoval said. “See if anything lines up.”

  “How many files did you manage to snag?” Vincent asked.

  “As many as I could,” Stone said. “They’re in the trunk of my car. Davidson was more than accommodating in handing them over to me.”

  “What was your read on him?”

  Stone thought about it, huffed, and shrugged. “I can’t say for sure,” she said. “But he didn’t seem to be hiding anything.”

  Sandoval shook his head. “I disagree. I met Davidson before. The guy’s…”