by Matt Lincoln
I could hear the anguish in Seamus’s voice as he spoke words of encouragement to Callahan. We couldn’t do anything aside from standing here and waiting for help to arrive, and I’d never felt so powerless.
20
Charlie
The ambulance arrived after only twenty minutes, but it still felt like a painfully long time. I watched as the paramedics loaded Callahan into the ambulance. His face was ashen, and his black uniform was soaked even darker with blood. One of the paramedics asked Seamus if he would be riding back with them, and I watched him hesitate before finally answering.
“No,” he mumbled. “I need to stay here and wait for the local Garda. I’ll head down to the hospital once the suspect is in custody.”
There was a tremor in his voice, and it was heart-wrenching to see someone who’d been so happy and confident on the car ride over suddenly look so dejected.
“You should go,” I prompted him. He began to shake his head, but I ignored him. “Agent Chapman and I can wait for the cops. We need to see what we can salvage from the castle, anyway.”
Seamus looked like he was about to protest, but then he just smiled sadly.
“That’s very kind of you, sir.” He nodded before climbing into the back of the ambulance with Callahan.
The fire department arrived just as the ambulance was pulling away, and the police arrived a few minutes after them in a pair of white and yellow patrol cars that looked like they’d seen better days.
“Good afternoon,” one of the officers greeted as he walked toward the van where Junior and I were standing with the suspect between us. “I’m Officer Cedric Murphy. I spoke to Sergeant O’Connell just a few minutes ago on the phone. Is this the scoundrel, then?”
“This is him,” I grunted as I shoved the suspect none too gently in Murphy’s direction.
“We’ll handle him, then,” Murphy nodded. “Our station is located in the village of Tinahely, about twenty miles from here. Do you fellows need a ride?”
“We will,” I answered. “But first, we have to have a look inside the castle. We believe that the traffickers were using it as a base and set it on fire to destroy any evidence when we arrived. We need to see if there’s anything we can recover.”
“That’s a bit of bad luck,” Murphy grimaced as he looked toward the smoldering remains of the castle. “Well, best of luck in your search, then. I’ll transport this one back and have the other officers wait for you so they can give you a ride down as soon as you’re done.”
“Thank you,” I replied with a nod. I watched as Murphy dragged the man away before turning to look at the castle. The firefighters had put out the fire by that point, but there were still clouds of black smoke filtering out of the windows and doors, and even the air around the building scorched my throat as I approached.
“You shouldn’t go in there.” One of the firefighters held out an arm to stop me as Junior and I walked toward the castle’s entrance. “There’s a lot of smoke in the air. The stone kept the whole thing from crumbling in on itself, but it’s also keeping all the smoke inside.”
“How long will it take to clear out?” Junior asked.
“A building this big?” the firefighter responded. “Maybe two or three days.”
“We can’t wait that long,” I huffed as I pushed past the firefighter. I could hear him arguing behind me with Junior, but I ignored them and rushed into the building before anyone else could stop me.
He was right about the building being full of smoke. My eyes began to water, and my throat went dry as I attempted to draw a clean breath of air. I pulled the collar of my shirt up over my mouth and nose and moved further into the building. It helped to filter the air a little, but it was still painful to breathe.
Like the police station, the inside of the castle looked completely modern. I could see the remnants of desks and computers inside one of the rooms as I passed, and another that looked like it had once been a storage office. There were remnants of papers and folders scattered around the room and two file cabinets in one corner that appeared unscathed by the flames. I pulled one open and yanked out one of the files at random. It was a little challenging to read with my eyes stinging, but I managed to make out several dates, product numbers, and prices that didn’t make any sense.
I shoved the file back into the cabinet. We’d have to retrieve them later to look through them more intensively. Most of the rooms on the first floor were similar. I could see several desks, or at least what remained of them, set up in kind of makeshift cubicles. Unfortunately, most of the rooms had burned so badly that there wasn’t anything left for me to even look through.
I headed up to the second floor and was relieved to find that the air was a little easier to breathe up there. It was still hazy, but I could see better as well. The first room I came into was startlingly different than the ones on the first floor, as this one was filled entirely with crates full of guns in individual cases. I stepped into the room and inspected the containers more closely. Each one contained a different kind of gun in a different colored case. I had enough experience around guns to immediately recognize the cases by the size and shape, but I popped open one of the cases just to be certain. Sure enough, nestled carefully inside one of the dark green cases was a massive semi-automatic rifle. There were smaller orange and blue cases that contained different kinds of pistols and even larger black cases that I didn’t recognize.
It made sense that whoever was in here would try to destroy the evidence by burning it, but it obviously hadn’t occurred to them in their haste that metal doesn’t melt that easily. Even the cases the guns were in seemed mostly unharmed aside from some scorch marks.
I left the room and quickly inspected the rest of the upper floor. Two other rooms contained more cases filled with guns stacked floor to ceiling, but the last one was different. It was a lab similar to the one Agent Howard had back at the office, and the back of this room was filled with crates that had once contained glass vials and plastic packages. Unlike the guns, whatever was inside those crates hadn’t survived, as the only thing I found were charred and melted bits of glass and plastic.
I would have liked to investigate more thoroughly, but my throat was burning, and my eyes were watering painfully by then. I’d reached my limit, and I doubted I’d find much else in the way of tangible evidence in there, anyway. At the very least, we’d found the guns and enough that it was obvious they were trafficking them.
I made my way back to the lower floor and then out through the entrance. The fresh air outside was a huge relief, though there was still a lingering sting in the back of my nose and throat.
“Did you find anything?” Junior asked.
“Guns,” I coughed. “A lot of them. Enough that either they were planning on arming an entire militia, or they were trafficking them.”
“Either way, not good.” Junior frowned. “I’m glad you found something. That firefighter looked pretty mad after you went in there.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not waiting two days to go in there,” I retorted. “Whoever was in that armored jeep that sped out of here could be out of the country by then. There were some files in there that we might want to look at, though. We might need to ask the firefighters to get them out for us if they don’t want us going inside.”
“I’ll ask them,” Junior said. “It’ll probably go better than if he sees you again.”
He walked off to ask for help in retrieving the filing cabinets, and I went to tell the cops that we would be ready to leave soon. One of the officers was leaning against the side of the patrol car, reading a book. I could see another one inside in the passenger seat, looking at something on her phone.
“Oh, hello,” the one with the book said as I approached. “I’m Officer Felton, at your service. All ready to go, then?”
“Almost,” I replied. “My partner’s just speaking with the fire department. He should be joining us in a moment.”
As if on cue, Junior came jogging up to us r
ight as I finished speaking.
“They said they’ll drop the filing cabinets by the station,” Junior informed me.
“Well, let’s get going then,” the officer smiled as he opened the patrol car’s rear doors for us. I clambered in after Junior and settled into the uncomfortable plastic seat.
“It’s been a while since I sat in the back of a patrol cruiser,” I mused out loud as the officer shut the door and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Oh, right,” Junior smirked. “You were some kind of teenage delinquent, right? Wait, does that have to do with what you told me about on the plane?”
He frowned as he sat up straight to look at me. I’d almost forgotten that I’d told Junior about getting run out of town by my own mother and my crappy judgmental neighbors when I was just a teenager.
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “There aren’t a lot of options for a teenager without even a high school diploma with no money or connections. Especially one as angry as I was back then.”
“So, you really got into trouble, huh?” Junior asked. “For stealing food and things like that?”
“Yeah,” I chuckled. “Though if I’m being frank, I did a lot worse than that. Like I said, I was really angry and bitter over what had happened. I got into fights, stole, experimented with drugs, pretty much anything you can imagine. Then there were the trains. I almost killed myself jumping onto and off moving trains.”
“That’s why you were so confident about that stunt with the bus,” Junior muttered.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “The first time I did it, it was because I was being chased by the cops. I was sleeping on a park bench, and this cop was hassling me to go away. I got a little mouthy with him, and the next thing I know, I’ve got four cops chasing me.”
I chuckled as I recalled the memory. It had been terrifying at the time. I was just a dumb kid with nowhere to go who just wanted to get some sleep. I could laugh about it now, though.
“So you jumped on a train to get away from them?” Junior raised an eyebrow at me.
“Well, I didn’t want to be arrested,” I laughed. “I took off through the park and into the historic downtown area that still had a train track running straight through it. The train just happened to be passing by at that moment, so I made a split-second decision and jumped on when I saw a flat spot I thought I could land on.”
“And you got away?” Junior smiled.
“You should have seen their faces,” I smirked. “Looking back, it was a stupid thing to do, obviously. But it got me out of that awful little backwater town, all the way to New York, actually. After that, I started using trains as a mode of transportation. There are a lot of tricks to it once you’re used to it, like hopping into the space underneath trucks that are being transported on flat train beds or climbing the stairs that are usually located between cargo carts. After a while, I just started doing it for fun. It was an amazing adrenaline rush. Ironically enough, though, stealing food is how I was ultimately caught. Harry arrested me while I was nabbing some food from a gas station.”
“Wow,” Officer Felton sighed from the front seat. “You Americans sure do lead some exciting lives.”
“Oh, yeah,” I replied awkwardly. I’d been so absorbed in my own memories that I’d forgotten that there was a pair of police officers in the car with us listening to our conversation.
“Not all of us,” Junior scoffed. “Charlie’s life is dramatic even by our standards.”
The police officer behind the wheel laughed. The one in the passenger seat was still on her phone, and I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard any of the conversation.
“Well, thanks for the riveting story, anyway,” Felton chirped. “It made the drive much more entertaining.”
“No problem,” I replied as I glanced out the window. I leaned back in my seat and watched the scenery go by as I thought back to those wild days. That wasn’t to say that my life now was that much calmer, but at least now I was acting as a law enforcement agent. Back then, I was just a kid doing what I needed to do to survive. How things had changed.
“Alright, we’re here!” Felton piped up some time later. I’d gotten so lost in my own thoughts that I’d barely noticed the time passing by.
We weren’t surrounded by open green fields anymore, but we clearly weren’t in the city either. The buildings were still tall and wide, but unlike in Dublin, they weren’t packed as tightly together. On the contrary, there was plenty of space between them, so there were still no alleys but rather wide open spaces filled with sunlight. The buildings were all brightly colored as well, and we passed a green, a red, and a blue building all in the span of just a few seconds. The cheerful colors and wide-open spaces granted the entire town a pleasant and inviting feel.
The Tinahely police station was an adorable building. At the end of a short driveway sat a baby pink building with an arched entryway trimmed in brown bricks. Pots of flowers lined the outside of the building, hung beside the windows, and white lace curtains draped over every window. The only thing that set it apart from the surrounding cottages was the wrought iron post at the front of the building that bore the national Garda symbol.
“Here we are, then,” Felton chirped as he parked the car in the middle of a patch of grass to the side of the building. There was no parking lot around the building, and it was clear that this was just an ordinary house that had been converted into a police station for the tiny town. “I have to say, it’s not often we see a case this serious. Usually, the only ones in lockup are the local drunks.”
“I can tell,” I nodded. “This seems like a peaceful town.”
“I like to think it is,” Felton nodded proudly. “Maybe I can show you around after you’re done with your interrogation?”
“Marc,” the officer who’d spent the entire drive staring at her phone snapped. “No one wants a tour of this boring little town. Let the agents do their job in peace.”
“I’m just being friendly, Amanda,” Felton frowned. “No harm in having a little look-see after they’re finished with their investigation, right, fellas?”
“We’d like that.” Junior smiled at the man before I could say anything.
The man lit up immediately.
“Wonderful,” he beamed. “We’re a small town, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get tourists. We’ve been getting more visitors in recent years, you know. We have the kind of architecture you just can’t get up in the city. Oh, you’ll have to see the church, of course, it’s the town’s jewel. The botanical gardens might not be up to snuff this time of year, but maybe…”
He continued to ramble on as he led us into the station.
“There they are!” someone exclaimed as we walked in. I looked up to see Officer Murphy from before sitting behind a desk. He got up as we approached. “Great to see you again, agents. Did your search go well?”
“Sort of,” I nodded. “We found three rooms full of guns that we presume they were intending to traffic illegally. The fire department will be by later to drop off a couple of filing cabinets containing evidence as well.”
“Not a problem,” Murphy smiled. “I’ll make sure it gets to you. Anyway, the suspect is just in that room back there, right past the water fountain. You can speak to him whenever you’re ready. We tried talking to him, but he stonewalled us. He hasn’t got any identification on him. We did find a credit card with the name Lawrence Daly on it, but it came up as belonging to a bloke that’s been dead some eleven years now.”
“So it’s clearly a stolen identity,” Junior concluded.
“Yeah, looks that way.” Murphy nodded. “And we didn’t get anything when we ran his fingerprints through the system. At the very least, he hasn’t got a record.”
“That’s difficult to believe,” I replied. “People don’t usually go from law-abiding citizens straight to having gunfights with federal agents.”
“That’s true,” Murphy agreed. “Regardless, we don’t know who he is. I’ll leave you two gentlemen to do your w
ork, then. We’ll monitor through the CCTV from the next room over, so just give us a holler if there’s anything you need.”
“Thank you,” I responded before heading off in that direction. The police station, unsurprisingly, looked like a typical house on the inside. I could see a kitchen at one end of the hall, and the room he’d pointed us toward was obviously built to be a bedroom.
“Why did you agree to a tour?” I asked Junior once I was confident we were out of earshot.
“He was just so nice,” Junior shrugged. “And he looked so sad when his partner scolded him. I didn’t have it in me to turn him down.”
“He was nice,” I agreed. “Everyone we’ve met so far seems really nice, actually.”
“Except for the people that shot at us,” Junior muttered darkly. “And besides, it probably won’t take that long to have a look around. The town is pretty small.”
“That’s true,” I conceded. It might not be so bad to take a break and have a breather, anyway. We needed to interrogate the suspect first, though. “You ready to talk with this guy?”
“Ready.” Junior nodded.
I turned the doorknob and walked into the room. It was, by far, the most pleasant interrogation room I’d ever been in, considering it was originally a bedroom. There were large windows along both walls, and though they had metal bars over them, the sun still shone cheerily into the room.
Daly, or whoever he was, was sitting in a wooden chair behind a square metal table. There was a large egg-shaped lump on his forehead and the beginnings of a bruise beneath his left eye. He’d most likely gotten hurt when the car spun out. His hands were cuffed in front of him, and he sneered up at us as we entered the room.
“How’s that officer doing?” he taunted as I took a seat in one of the two chairs that the officers had set up in here for Junior and me. “He was looking mighty pale last time I saw him.”
“He’s perfectly fine,” I bluffed. I actually had no idea how Callahan was. We hadn’t heard from either him or Seamus since they’d left, but Daly didn’t know that. My bluff seemed to work as the smirk slipped off his face.
