Deadly Obsession

by Jack Parker

  "And you are?" Foster tried to place where he remembered Kari from, and then as he realized who she was his face darkened again. "Oh right… the reporter."

  "I promise I'm not after a story. Dan Taylor is kind of a friend to both of us and we were worried." she tried to assure him. Understandably most law enforcement workers were weary of media members they didn't already know.

  "Well, if you are his friend then you would know better than us where he's been."

  "But I've been with Mike at the hospital for over a week." she said, pointing at me. "This note says 'I'm sorry'… does he have anything to be sorry about? Maybe something happened in the past couple of days and he got chewed out because of it."

  "Honestly, I haven't seen the guy in the past couple of days and we certainly haven't had any confrontations. Maybe the note you are holding has something to do with the paperwork I see underneath it." Foster mentioned, making his way towards the desk.

  I looked at the desk and there was some kind of paperwork underneath it. I guess I hadn't noticed anything with all of the distractions that popped up when Foster entered the room. Before I had gotten a chance to look at it, my mind immediately thought of all of the possibilities. He must've been working on something that triggered this need to just get away and leave a note for some reason. But why leave a note? And why just a two word note?

  "This isn't a file from our case." Foster mentioned. "This is… a notice of resignation? He's resigning as Chief of Police of Houston."

  "Really?" Jay asked. I hadn't seen him before but he suddenly appeared at the door. "He's gone? Just like that?"

  "That's what this document says. And this is his signature at the bottom." Foster confirmed, pointing to the signature that he was referring to.

  "So where do we go from here?" Jay wondered.

  "We should probably try to figure out where he went and try to get the full story of why he left. Resigning like this is unusual isn't it?" Kari asked.

  "It is unusual, but we don't have time to deal with it while we're in the middle of a big case. Besides he's probably on a plane to Hawaii by now. And in any case, the chain of command won't waver too much." Foster said, moving within arms reach of Jay. "Detective Jay, for the time being I want you to handle the duties of the Chief of Police while the Mayor appoints a new one. When it comes to this case, I'm still in charge. We just have one less person working with us. This is a curveball but a manageable one."

  I didn't say anything as I just stared at the note in my hands. I still couldn't believe that he would just leave like this. Why? What explanation was there? What reason did he have to suddenly want to leave? I pondered all of those questions, but the thing that I wondered about the most was why he didn't mention anything to me. I've known him for only a year, so perhaps I don't deserve his life story, but I deserve more than 'I'm sorry'.

  Was it possible something had happened to him? Was he in trouble? Maybe during my coma he had gotten into something way over his head and someone kidnapped him to teach him a lesson. That sounded like something that only happened in the movies. It wasn't normal. But then again suddenly leaving without so much as a goodbye wasn't normal either. Forging the note he left on his desk wouldn't have been an issue. In fact, they could have threatened Taylor into writing it himself. However, the official resignation paperwork would've been a little harder to obtain. And even if they somehow got around that, they would've had to sneak into the police station unnoticed. Surely they would've been caught by cameras walking into the Chief's office to place the note.

  So maybe instead of being kidnapped he had been coerced into leaving somehow. That of course begged the questions 'with what' and 'for what purpose'. The latter could be any number of possibilities. He's a high ranking law enforcer and has the ability to do many things. That's a good enough reason alone to neutralize him. And with a threat of action they could've gotten the Chief himself to walk into the station and resign on his own. That would've solved the forgery issue and the sneaking around issue that my previous theory had. However, one thing it didn't solve is the fact that Taylor is a damn good detective and he could've left behind a message that either Foster or I would've picked up on.

  Maybe he actually did leave completely on his own free will like the scene before us suggested. If that was the case, the reason he left so mysteriously was probably because he didn't want anyone to know the real reason why. I felt it had been far fetched because usually people like Chief Taylor that worked hard to accomplish everything he's accomplished in his career don't just resign mysteriously.

  But this isn't the first time he's done this.

  True. He resigned as the Chief of Police in Denver previously, and under similar mysterious circumstances. He suddenly left without giving anyone an explanation. No one had a clue why he left that post either except for maybe the mayor of Houston that appointed him as the Chief of Police in this city. Months ago I had discovered this secret about him, and when I finally had the opportunity to look around for clues as to why he left the only thing I found was a folded up picture in his desk of him with his wife and son dated around the time of his resignation in Denver. A note on the back said 'It's over. I'm taking Marty with me. Don't try to find us.' I naturally came to the conclusion that that picture had a lot to do with why he suddenly left. But if we were to presume that he was leaving Houston for the same reason, that didn't exactly make sense. His wife couldn't leave him a second time. So if he did leave, it was for a different reason than the last time.

  "Is there anything we can do to help?" Kari asked, asking Foster but glancing over at me every so often for support.

  "I'm not the person to ask. Jay knows what needs to get done. It's not my job to delegate assignments to you guys." Foster noted. And with one small wave he left the room. Now it was just Kari, Jay and I.

  "Here's what I'm going to do." Jay turned to us and began to explain his plan. "You aren't up to date in the investigation. So rather than getting you caught up, I'd rather you just wait until we get this mess settled with finding a new Chief of Police and we'll see if we have work for you guys."

  He basically was firing me. If they ended up making him the new Chief of Police, I knew he wouldn't bring me back on. But even if it was someone else, the new Chief would still have no reason to hire me back on. I saw this coming. Jay wasn't a big fan of mine. After all, I had no police background. I had a computer science degree but I wasn't technically using it for this job. In his mind all I did was follow the Chief around and do virtually nothing. But I couldn't blame him for thinking that because I never really showed off my skills to Jay or the other detectives, and I didn't mind if the Chief got the credit for my ideas as long as the attention was off me. Not that it would have mattered if he thought I was good anyway. I wasn't about to work with some stranger.

  At one point in time Taylor was a stranger to you.

  Yeah. He used to be a stranger to me. Over a year ago after the incident between my old friend Jessica and I… I had been completely devastated. But Taylor out of nowhere offered me this consultant position. I remember trying to weigh the pros and cons. I remember considering that this job would certainly force me to work with others, something I tried to avoid doing. I remembered being afraid that I wouldn't be as good as he thought I could be. It turned out I was wrong about that. But I also remembered being afraid that I would become friends with the people I work with. I was actually afraid of that, because I knew that one day I would wake up and it would be over. It looks like I nailed that prediction dead on.

  So why did you accept his offer?

  That's the question that I always came back to. And each time I thought about it I honestly couldn't find the answer. Maybe I fell for the bullshit fairytale that I could enter this new world and it would change me. But it seemed like there was something else behind all of this… some other reason.

  "So that's it then?" Kari asked Detective Jay.

  "Unless you have something relevant to the case to
offer us…" he let the statement hang in the air.

  "Mike, do we have anything about the case they might want to know?" she asked me. I wasn't about to try to explain how I knew what the Vigilante Killer looked like to a guy that I knew wouldn't believe or even understand my theory. I shook my head.

  "Then you two should probably make your way out of the building." Jay turned and left. I was glad that he wasn't going to escort us out of the building like we were a bunch of troublemakers. There was still one more thing I wanted to do.

  "Did we just get fired?" Kari asked as soon as Jay left.

  "I think so." I confirmed.

  "I should probably head out so I can tell my boss that I lost my source. Maybe he can give me a different beat to cover." she mentioned. She technically didn't work for the police. But Chief Taylor and I had been her link to HPD. For the past few months she had tagged along with us while we investigated crimes and usually after we closed a case she would write about it for the paper.

  "Ok. I'll see you later then." I said.

  "We're still doing dinner later right?" she asked.

  "Dinner? I didn't know we had already planned something."

  "Remember? You won our game and the loser had to pay for dinner next." she reminded me.

  It was common for us to play stupid little games and usually a meal was on the line. As a result we went out for lunch or dinner at least once a week. In this case we had actually played three games during the beginning of the Vigilante Killer investigation. The first one was "Identify That Quote". She didn't think I was good at remembering quotes from movies or games. I definitely proved that I was, but she still won that game with a bit of trickery. The second game was Uno. She had dominated me at that game, but I still won with a bit of trickery of my own to tie up the overall score. The tiebreaker ended up being played during our search of a potential hideout of the Vigilante Killer. It was simple: whoever found the most interesting thing won. I found a bomb.

  It had been nearly two weeks since that day, and the moment I woke up in the hospital it seemed like she had made it a point to make light of what had happened. Reminding me that the same thing that almost killed me was also what won me the bet we had going on was exactly the type of thing she usually did. Maybe it was her way of getting past this bad incident. Or maybe it was her way of helping me get past it.

  "Oh yeah… that's right." I remembered. "I'll call you later and tell you where we are going when I decide."

  And after she left, it was just me in the Chief's office. I wasn't ready to leave yet because I had a few things I wanted to look into. The first thing I did was rummage around his desk, looking on top of the desk and in each of the drawers. Then I checked the cabinet on the off chance something was hidden there. I was searching for anything that could give me a clue as to what might have really happened with Taylor, but there was one thing in particular I was looking for: that folded up picture with his ex-wife and son,

  The fact that I couldn't find it scared me a little. It was the only personal possession he had in his office. If he took it with him, that must've meant he knew he wasn't coming back. The only way that works is if he left by choice or if the guy forcing him to leave put him in a position where he couldn't return. But if he had the ability to take some personal items of his with him, surely he could leave some clues behind for us to come find him.

  Everything pointed to him leaving on his own, like Foster originally guessed. The question now was, why? I knew that had the Chief actually come up to the station, his face would be on all of the security cameras, including the one right outside this office. Maybe he went somewhere else inside the station before leaving the building altogether. There might be a clue he unintentionally left behind that unlocks the answer to this whole mystery of why he left all of the sudden.

  I would have to go to talk to Brandon the video expert; the guy that had just been out here giving Foster his report. It would be nothing for him to follow Taylor through the police station using the security cameras and track where he's been. But I quickly realized the flaw in my plan. I had no authority to get this guy to help me out. I knew I didn't have the ability to convince him if he didn't want to do it. Never mind that pulling off this operation would require me to talk to someone I barely knew.

  But after a few seconds thinking about it I came up with a plan. He didn't know the Chief had gone missing. I could use his email account to send a request to Brandon asking him to put together the video of everything the Chief had done today from the moment he entered the station to the moment he left. He would think it was weird maybe, but the task was also easy and innocent enough that he probably wouldn't think there was anything suspicious behind it. I've seen the Chief assign tasks before via email before and I know how to do it as if I were him. Then it would be simple enough to walk down the hall to the multimedia lab and just look at what video clips he came up with.

  It took no time at all to send the mail. I waited a few minutes so that Brandon would be busy looking at video by the time I sidled into the room, but I eventually made my way over there undetected. The multimedia room was small enough to make it essentially Brandon's "office", meaning that I could count on just Brandon being there almost all the time unless someone else wanted something. But it was actually bigger than a real office, and usually the lights were dim so that he could view videos better, thus making it easy to slip into the room and watch him work without startling him.

  He had a specific way of working, starting from the camera where the Chief entered the building. Then he took that footage and created a new video that would contain all the clips of Taylor in the building. He kept going in chronological order, cutting all of the clips into the main video. He was done in about thirty minutes, with most of the time spent getting access to the actual camera footage. I followed along behind him and saw that Taylor never went anywhere unusual. He walked into the building, got the resignation paperwork from the copy room, made a stop in a few other rooms and then went into his office for a while before leaving after about half an hour.

  "Oh hey, I didn't notice I had company." Brandon turned around and saw me sitting behind him doing nothing.

  "I-uh." I froze, not able to think of a logical reason for me to be here. The only reason that made sense to me was that I was spying on his work.

  "Don't worry, I won't tell Agent Foster you are taking a break. I know he doesn't like seeing people that aren't working." he said. Taking a break? I guess that was a logical explanation for why I was here. This room was the least visited room in the station unless you had a specific reason to be in here. My anxiety could be mistaken for a fear that he would turn me in.

  "Thanks." I decided to play along.

  "There isn't really much to do anyway. And the boss keeps sending me these weird assignments. He just had me put together a video of everywhere he's been today. Now, why he would need that is beyond me, but it's certainly not the weirdest thing he's done today." he said.

  "Really?" I tried keeping up my one word responses, encouraging him to talk so that I didn't have to.

  "Yeah, earlier this morning he came in here with a cassette tape." he continued. "You know… technology from like 20 years ago? Wanted me to load the audio analysis software and leave the room. I left the room, figuring it was probably a bad idea to piss the boss off. He was in here for about five minutes and then left in a rush."

  "Wow." I added. My curiosity made me break my one word response streak. "Did you find out what he did?"

  "When I came back the program had been closed. I tried finding evidence of what he did, but he erased the record of any analysis he did on the tape."

  "Oh." I said, clearly disappointed.

  "However, on a hunch I checked the audio clip history. I thought that maybe the reason he came in here was to compare his tape with some other audio clip in the database. A lot of the detectives that use the software don't think to clear that history. They think just clearing the inquiry is enough. Anyway
s… the last file used for a comparison was a reference sample we had of the Vigilante Killer. So he was just doing normal police work."

  I didn't say anything. I just nodded my head and acted like this wasn't a big deal. He didn't know that the Chief had resigned yet. And even when he found out, he still might not make the connection. He brought a tape in and it was a match to the Vigilante Killer, and then minutes later he resigns. What does this mean? It couldn't have been for the case, because I certainly would've heard about a recent break in the case from Foster. Besides if it had to do with the case, why the secrecy? Why keep the contents of his tape hidden?

  We don't know if it was a match or not, though.

  We know he made some kind of discovery based on the results of the comparison because he rushed out of the room quickly afterwards and left a note that he was resigning hours later. I tried imagining what possible scenarios there were where he would have audio of the Vigilante in his personal possession. Maybe a phone call he taped? Or maybe it wasn't even his phone. The lead Foster put him on was to investigate the probability that the Vigilante had contacted friends or family members of the victims of the criminals that the Vigilante eventually killed.

  Maybe he found proof of contact with one of the friends or family members, but needed to confirm the audio for some reason. Another possibility was that somehow he met the Vigilante in public, directly or indirectly, and he was able to obtain an audio clip for a comparison. But if this was possible, why not just go directly to Foster with the information? With either version of the story, it was a break in the case that they could work with. And it still didn't answer the question of why he felt the need to resign a few moments after making this discovery.

  No matter what logical explanation I came up with to explain why he would secretly compare a tape with audio they had of the Vigilante Killer, I couldn't explain why he had to resign. The truth was, I needed more information to narrow down the multitude of possibilities that fit the facts I already have. But I had to admit, given the data I had it didn't look good for the Chief. Everything pointed to something being seriously wrong.