by Rob Ashman
Mechanic’s reflection stared back, its contours distorted by the clinging fluid. All evidence of effort faded away. All evidence of control faded away.
The lips parted with a faint smile.
‘That’s better. You’re ready when I say you’re ready. Now let’s go and please Daddy.’
3
The air in the bedroom was as still and warm as its sleeping occupants. The darkness of 3am worked its way into every corner as if to muffle any sound that might wake the sleeping beauties. The quilt covering the two of them rose and fell in the gentle rhythm of deep sleep.
A bathrobe lay tossed into a heap at the foot of the bed. Footprints in the thick pile carpet, where heavy wet feet had crushed it flat, were slowly drying and returning to their original position. Books lay casually discarded on either side of the bed, books designed to exercise the eyes to sleep rather than the mind to action.
Edmund Lucas was a sound sleeper.
He was calm and collected at all times or, at least, that’s what he told himself. He was cool under fire or, at least, that’s what he told his staff. And he was a great husband, though not even he had the gall to tell his wife that. In addition to this glowing self-assessment, Lucas had a rather unusual trait. Since the age of twenty-six he had never been startled by anything.
As a highly strung young patrolman he’d pulled over a car which had unexpectedly exploded in front of him as he questioned the driver. The guy turned out to be a religious maniac, intent on bringing some unfortunate individuals closer to their maker. The explosion turned out to be a homemade bomb which went off prematurely due to the hot weather. Something to do with sugar, fertilizer and plastic bags sweating in the heat.
Lucas was blown a good ten feet through the air, but miraculously landed in one piece. The driver, however, was blown into what could only be described as bite-sized chunks. Lucas was in a bad way following his sudden flight, and it remained a remarkable stroke of luck that he survived. Fortunately for him, he did.
Ed Lucas had never been startled or jumped at anything since that day. He figured the blast had blown away all his nerves.
Ironically, the two weeks spent in the hospital high dependency unit did more for his career in the police force than anything he’d done before, not to mention the improvement it brought to his fictitious love life. After six years of working as an unremarkable uniformed officer who drove a patrol car around his beat, he became a local hero. Overnight he was transformed into the guy who tackled the terrorist single-handed. The papers and news channels had a field day. The force milked it for all they could – it was good PR at a time when they badly needed it.
Regaining consciousness five days later, Lucas didn’t have the heart to tell them he’d had no idea that the man was a religious nutcase, even less that the mad bastard had a bomb in his car. All he knew was the guy had a brake light out.
The media circus paraded around him, and Lucas just lay back in his intensive care bed and let it happen. Later, he’d often reflect that, in all the interviews he gave, no one once asked the obvious question: ‘So, Officer Lucas, how did you know the guy had a bomb?’ It wasn’t important to them, so Lucas considered it shouldn’t be important to him either.
His hospital-acquired love life now slept beside him. Somewhat larger than the one-hundred-and-thirty pound nurse who’d blanket bathed him as he lay unable to move, but still possessing the same caustic wit and magic eyes.
Mrs Lucas was now almost the same size as Mr Lucas. He often said she only grew fat to piss him off, saying that making love was now like trying to balance two ball bearings on top of one another. She’d reply that if he was larger in the men’s department, the ball bearings wouldn’t have to try so hard to balance. Of their many marital jibes, they enjoyed this one the most.
Lucas, like his wife, was an only child and, also like his wife, his parents were dead. As they moved from place to place over the years, they’d accumulated a wide circle of friends and were known as a sociable couple.
She always said their friends liked her but tolerated him. Lucas countered this one day by saying, ‘If that was true, they’d visit when I’m not here.’ She smiled and replied, ‘They do, honey, I just don’t tell you.’
For whatever reason, kids never came along. They tried hard for several years when they were younger and did all the tests. Nothing wrong with him, nothing wrong with her. However, life changed dramatically when they were both aged forty-two and what she thought was the onset of early menopause turned out to be a most unexpected pregnancy. For the next six weeks the news put their well-structured and well-ordered lives in a blender, switched on with the lid off.
The mental turmoil stopped when she miscarried. The pregnancy was ectopic and she lost an ovary in the process. They were both devastated. Lucas shut his emotions in a box and locked them away for good, while she too never got over it.
Not once did they consider it a sign that they could at last become parents. They simply both slipped back into their ‘let’s just forget it ever happened’ lives and threw themselves into their work. Since that day, they always thought of themselves as happy but not really complete.
The phone rang, its synthetic warble demanding attention. Neither of them stirred.
It rang again, as if annoyed at being ignored. Still no response.
On the third ring, the bulk next to the phone moved. A large black hand oozed from under the quilt, like mud from beneath a sneaker, lifted the receiver and took it under the covers.
‘Lucas.’ The voice was deep, slow and sleepy.
‘Sorry to wake you at this hour, sir, but there’s been a burglary at the home of Celia Mason.’ The voice paused for a response. None came.
‘Sir, this is Metcalf from the station. There’s been a burglary.’ He paused again. Lucas emerged from beneath the bedding and tried to focus on the luminous green digits of the clock.
Metcalf had thirty years’ service. He’d been there and done it all. He was in his late forties with his sights set on early retirement, but he looked much older. He’d risen to the dizzy heights of desk sergeant at the pace of an injured snail. Maintaining an easy life was now his main objective. Metcalf feared this call was going to be anything but easy and could put a sizeable dent in his comfortable existence.
‘Sir?’ This didn’t sound good. The continued silence was the sign of an unhappy Lieutenant. Lucas was renowned for his silence before the storm.
‘Sergeant,’ Lucas spoke at last. ‘There are around two thousand burglaries in our area every year. Why am I being told about this one? And why at three o’clock in the morning?’ His voice was still slow, but not as sleepy.
‘Sorry, sir, but it’s Celia Mason’s home.’ There was another long silence. The sergeant was beginning to believe his colleagues who’d said that he’d be dead meat for calling so late.
‘You said that once, Sergeant. Unless you make sense with the next sentence you utter, I’m going to kick your ass around the station. And that will happen in around five hours when I normally get in.’ Metcalf gulped.
‘Sir, Celia Mason is the daughter of Judith Somerville, the congresswoman. The one you called slayer. The one you called the law and order dragon, the one you called ...’
‘Okay, okay, I know what I called her.’ It was Lucas’s turn to pause. ‘I’ll be in within the hour. When I arrive I want a full briefing and I want Bassano there as well.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll call him.’
‘I’ll see you in an hour,’ said Lucas. ‘Oh, and Metcalf, who told you to call me?’
‘No one, sir. I thought it important enough to call myself. Why do you ask?’
‘No big reason. I just wanted to know how many asses to kick when I get in.’ Metcalf swallowed hard as Lucas hung up.
Lucas sat up in bed and absorbed the conversation. As he stared into the gloom, the vision of Judith Somerville invaded his mind. Whenever that happened the picture was always the same. His thoughts drifted back to two years ago when she�
�d been running for Congress on an aggressive law and order ticket, the ferocity of which the state hadn’t witnessed before. She’d portrayed herself as a woman who was supremely well equipped to manage a crisis. Unfortunately, it was almost always one of her own making.
She and Lucas had been guests on a television news programme following the brutal murder of a young man in a park. She’d chewed him up and spat him out. Every which way he turned in the debate, she demolished him with a ferocity and venom that physically hurt. She tore him and his police force apart in front of shit knows how many millions, dismissing any attempt by Lucas to defend the steps that had been taken to apprehend the killer.
Lucas distinctly remembered the low point was when she labelled him and his force ‘limp dicks’. She later issued a public apology but the damage was already done and her votes secured. He still winced at his ritual flaying in front of the cameras and vividly remembered his two overwhelming thoughts on that eventful evening. At first he’d wanted to screw the ass off of her, she was seriously horny. By the end of the show, he wanted to kill her.
She’d promised to kick some police butt if she was elected and stem the obscene level of violent and serious crime. Three months later she did just that and, as promised, Lucas’s department endured a significant amount of kicking. She was all over them like a dose of clap. She restructured, rationalized and performance-measured them to death. That was two and a half years ago, and Lucas still had her as his cross to bear and the force still had a bad case of the clap.
Lucas snapped his thoughts back to the present.
He whispered into the darkness, ‘May God protect us and may God protect my pension.’
The day had started badly.
4
Driving to the station, Lucas was on autopilot. The roads were full of traffic for such an early hour. Beside him on the passenger seat was a brown paper bag containing a selection of fruit and cold meat grabbed from the refrigerator. He always made a point of ensuring he set off to work with a healthy lunch and then bought food from the deli up the street.
For Lucas, his weight was a constant source of embarrassment. His wife didn’t care, his friends didn’t care and his colleagues didn’t care. However, it engendered in him a feeling of quiet self-loathing. In his mind, he ate little and exercised more than most. In reality, he took the elevator to the first floor and ate for two people – one of whom stuffed himself with chili dogs and the other was a fat bastard.
Lucas fought with his weight like a kid fights with a hosepipe, wrestling to bring it under control but far too much fun to turn off. It wasn’t something he wanted to get to grips with or acknowledge. Instead, he was happy to pack healthy food in a bag, drive it to work, put it in the bin and then eat a fast-food lunch.
Lucas tore himself away from the bag–bin–deli conundrum and thought about what lay ahead. Under normal circumstances he drove to work with his brain fixed in catch-the-villain mode. Today it was in damage control mode.
She’s gonna go fucking nuts, Lucas thought as he waited at the traffic lights. He was still trying to anticipate just how fucking nuts she could be when the driver behind honked his impatience at being made to wait at a green light. Lucas put his hand up in apology and pulled away.
Walking up the steps to the front office, Lucas concluded that he and his precinct were likely to suffer major collateral damage at the hands of the darling congresswoman, regardless of which action he took. The chances of securing an arrest for the crime were almost nil and he figured there were two options available: deal with it as any other burglary, almost guaranteeing no result and suffering the fire and brimstone treatment from Congresswoman Somerville, or throw everything at it in a vain attempt to get a result and risk accusations of special treatment.
What a screw-up, he thought.
He decided to do what he always did when faced with a difficult decision and that was not to make it, at least not until he’d been fully briefed. He got into the elevator and pushed the first floor button, his head still buzzing with the consequences of the decision he had to make within the next thirty minutes.
Arriving at his office he punched the handle down on the door marked Lieutenant and strode in, flicking on the lights. He picked up the phone and hit one of the buttons.
‘Metcalf, it’s Lucas. Has Bassano arrived? I want the two of you in my office now and bring all you have on this Mason robbery.’
Minutes passed. Lucas tried to relax with his feet on the desk, his full weight pushing the reclining mechanism of the chair to its limits.
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, he mused. He then snapped out of his daydream and lost patience. ‘Where the hell are they?’ He lunged forward to grab the phone when there was a knock at the half-open door and both officers trooped inside.
‘Thanks for coming in at this early hour.’ He nodded to Bassano, motioning for them to take a seat.
Bassano was a senior detective who looked like he was straight out of a TV cop show. The son of a second generation Italian-American father and a Swedish mother who’d come to America as a tourist, his was a gene pool to die for. Six feet one inch tall with chiselled features and an equally chiselled body. He worked out in the gym to make sure everything was as it should be, but actually didn’t need to. It was just the way he was built. As much as he prided himself on his physique, the winning combination every time was his brooding Italian charm and his piercing electric blue eyes.
It didn’t matter if he was clean shaven or sporting two-day-old stubble, or if his hair was swept back in a movie star style or a bedraggled mess, Bassano was a magnet to women.
Where women were concerned he didn’t have one type, but one thing was certain, for just about every woman he met, he was definitely theirs. Age didn’t matter, shape didn’t matter, social class didn’t matter. They threw themselves at him. Bassano didn’t understand how it worked, all he knew was it did. He sat opposite Lucas and it was clear that today’s look was ‘just got out of bed’.
Lucas resumed his briefing. ‘I’m sure that Metcalf has told you about the burglary tonight at the home of Celia Mason. Nothing especially traumatic about that, except that this is the daughter of our beloved congresswoman Judith Somerville. I’m sure you’ll agree this puts an entirely different perspective on the amount of shit we could get ourselves into. I also don’t need to tell you, gentlemen, that this is very sensitive and could blow our balls off if we screw it up.’ Both men nodded, knowing only too well Judith Somerville’s penchant for removing balls when it suited her.
‘Okay, Metcalf, fill us in.’ Lucas reclined his chair once more and the mechanism creaked and groaned in protest.
‘Well, sir, we had a phone call from Mr Mason at 2.35am. He said that the house had been broken into and various items stolen while they were asleep. Apparently, he noticed items were missing when he got up to take a leak.’
‘What was stolen?’ asked Bassano.
‘The usual,’ Metcalf continued. ‘Silverware, trinkets – anything that was small and sparkled.’
‘Method of entry?’
‘Crowbar under the patio door. It wasn’t deadlocked, just lifted clean out of the runners.’
‘Alarm system?’ Bassano was on a roll.
‘When the officer got there, he reported that both Mr and Mrs Mason were drunk as skunks. They’d thrown an all-day party and forgot to prime the alarm.’ Metcalf folded his notes away.
‘Brilliant, just brilliant. Is there anything at all to go on?’ Lucas was on his feet now, prowling around the office.
‘Nothing, sir, just a run-of-the-mill burglary.’ Metcalf knew this wasn’t what the boss wanted to hear.
‘What do you think, Bassano? Have you got anyone out there processing the scene?’
‘Not yet. By the sound of it there were about a hundred people at this party. We’ll collect prints okay, but I’m not sure what they’ll tell us. We can run what we find against the database and see what comes up. But other than that �
��’
Lucas returned to his long suffering chair, reviewing his options. The three sat in silence as if waiting for a eureka moment, each one conscious of retaining his balls.
The phone rang. Lucas answered it.
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I had a Judith Somerville on the line for you.’
Lucas shut his eyes. ‘How does she sound?’ he asked, not wanting to know the answer.
‘Like a pit bull has bit her in the ass.’ The caller paused. ‘Sir.’
‘Tell her I’m busy. Take her number and tell her I’ll call her back,’ Lucas ordered, determined to show who was the boss.
‘No, sir, I had her on the line. She’s gone now. She told me to tell you …’ There was a pause while he consulted his notes, ‘… she’s at her daughter’s house, she’s waiting and she’s not happy. In that precise order, sir.’
‘Thanks.’ Lucas replaced the receiver in its cradle and stared at the expectant faces opposite him.
That damn woman, he thought. I should’ve killed her when I had the chance. Despite Bassano and Metcalf awaiting his pronouncement, his thoughts rambled on. Any court in the land would have accepted a plea of self-defence. Any court that had seen that fucking TV programme, that is.
Bassano took his chance and interrupted. ‘Sir?’ Lucas pulled himself together.
‘Okay, I want a forensic team all over that house. I need everything you’ve got. If there’s a fibre or a print that doesn’t belong to someone at that party, I want it. Get a team working on the guest list, I want everyone interviewed. I want this case cracked. I want maximum effort. Got it?’
They both nodded, clear about what Lucas wanted from them. Even though he was not directly involved, Metcalf found himself nodding too.
‘Let’s get to work. I want results fast.’ Lucas thumped the desk.
He had made his decision.
Across the city, in a quiet well-to-do neighbourhood, another decision was about to be made.
