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Chapter Twenty-Three
The Greater Picture
Early the following morning, hours before Salem Dade
would begin his begrudging ministry on the street, Homicide Chief Randall
Walker called Jake Cosgrove directly at his home in Anaheim and ordered he and
his squad to begin interviewing members of Adam Leeds church. It was the second special assignment to
interrupt squad one’s busy schedule.
Sid Barnes, who knew the churchmen personally, had also risen early to
check in with his newfound friend.
Several members of Our Lord and Savior Independent Christian Church,
including himself, Sid explained to Randall, had considered the Reverend Leeds
to be a heretic and, as a result of his new age preaching, left the
church. Sid, who had first hand
experience with the maverick minister, and his born-again cohort Randall
Walker, had made this a personal crusade.
Both men, through prayer, consultation, and personal scrutiny, would not
give up, no matter what CSI or the fire department investigators concluded
about the case. Unable to reach
Captain Walt Franklin at home this hour, Walker had used this excuse to
expedite the investigation, himself.
The Adam Leeds case would, he told Jake Cosgrove, have top priority for
squad one this week. If need be,
the chief boasted to Sid, he’d investigate it himself.
To justify utilizing squad one to Captain
Franklin and Lieutenant Howard, the chief used the flimsiest of arguments. Although material evidence didn’t
exist, Randall, in the official memo faxed to Franklin’s and Howard’s offices,
agreed with Deputy Fire Chief Sid Barnes that Reverend Adam Leeds and his
wife’s disappearance deserved an official investigation. Arson, they concurred, could not be
completely ruled out. The homicide
captain’s eyebrows had raised at the urgency implied for such a routine
case. Lieutenant Howard was
greatly irked that he would be short handed today. But neither leader would offer resistance. There were, they understood, several
prominent citizens on Randall’s list, and the missing minister was, after all,
Walker reminded them, a man of the cloth.
Both Barnes and Walker, in secret alliance,
in what was half-seriously called the Brotherhood of the Fish, had made this
investigation into a greater cause.
The groundwork for a secret organization that would grow exponentially
among public and corporate leaders had already been laid. After the inspection made at the scene
by Harry Waters, Sid was waiting for test results of ash samples from the crime
lab. For his part, Randall, waited
for CSI to find human traces in the ashes left by the fire. It occurred to them, though there was
no proof of arson or murder, that an agent, as yet undetectable by modern
science, had destroyed all evidence in the strange fire. Secretly, because of their belief in
the End Times, both Barnes and Walker suspected whom that agent might be.
Homicide’s list of
persons to be questioned included all members of Adam Leed’s church, as well as
the Leed’s neighbors and friends.
Persons hostile to Reverend Leeds’ wife, especially those who reportedly
stormed out of the church, would be at the top of the list. Although Jake Cosgrove, whose team had
been assigned the case, normally reported to Lieutenant Howard, he had been
ordered now, by Randall, himself, to keep the homicide chief in the information
loop. Randall would, in turn, give
Sid Barnes a progress report at the end of each day. In this way, in “spiritual ignorance,” Jake Cosgrove, his
partner Sam, and the detectives of homicide squad one now worked for the
Brotherhood of the Fish.
******
During the hour, Jake would
call squad one’s detectives to find out what they had heard from members of
Reverend Leeds’ church. With Sam
behind the wheel, Jake had the freedom to scan his laptop for news items that
had a bearing on the case. Because
of his new speaker adapter purchased at Fry’s Electronics, he planned on having
total freedom with both his hands to also jot down notes, while listening to
his phone. In theory, the speaker
adapter was supposed to provide the same clear sound as desk phones and the
newer cell phones. In reality,
however, Jake’s new toy failed miserably when put to the test. After plugging the adapter into the
car’s lighter outlet and anchoring its clips to the cell phone receiver, as
directed on the package, Jake was prepared for the trial run. He had ignored the suggestion on the
package that the speaker be placed three feet away during operation for best
results, and had failed to read the finer print, which warned of possible
atmospheric interference inside automobiles during use. Soon, after making his first call this
afternoon, the static coming with the detectives’ voices grew unbearable,
grating on Jake and his partner Sam Ruiz’s nerves.
“Sarg…Colin Wood…here,” a
crackling voice sounded eerily from the speaker.
“It sounds like its coming
from deep space,” observed Sam wryly.
“Colin,” Jake drawled
irritably, “what did Eugene and Millicent Waterford have to say?”
Quickly snapping on the
tape-recorder adapter that probably added to the static in the speaker phone,
he picked up Colin’s static reply: “I…Squawk…Waterford…Squawk…
wife…Squawk…jack!”
“That’s not going to
work,” Sam muttered irritably, “there’s too much interference in the car. Why didn’t you buy a state of the art
cell phone in the first place?”
Adjusting the volume
control then tapping on various sectors of the set, however, Jake refused to
give up. Though the reception was poor, he was able to interpret, based upon a
favorite expression from Colin, the last portion of his message as “They don’t
know jack!”
“Colin, can you be
a little more specific,” he sighed, with the volume turned up full blast.
“Squawk!…Squa-awk!…Squawk-squawk-squawk!…Squa-a-a-a-awk!”
“Use your regular cell
phone,” Sam said from the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe there’s a
wire loose somewhere,” grumbled Jake, pulling it rudely off the dashboard. Holding it this way and that in an
effort to improve the reception, he was able to hear Colin say “She
said……Squa-a-a-wk!……battleaxe……Squa-a-awk……”
Suddenly, as
traffic began to slow, they could hear only static on the set: a continuous
onslaught of crackling, sputtering, whistling, clicking, and nerve shattering
squawks.
In a fit of anger, Jake snapped the adapter off his
cell phone, jerked the adapter out of the cigarette lighter, and tossed the kit
into the back seat of the car. Sam
stifled a chuckle as the sergeant, cleaned his cell phone of all electronic
debris. Using his phone “the old
fashioned way,” he called Colin Woodbury, a scowl etched into his rugged face
as he listened to Colin’s report.
“Yeah. . . Oh yeah, no shit, Colin,” he rolled his eyes around in
disbelief. “Well, I think Waterford knows more than what he’s telling you. According to Higgins, he and the misses
left in quite a stir. That misses
of his sounds like she hated the reverend’s wife.”
The one-sided sound
of Jake’s gravelly voice was a welcome relief to Sam. As Colin Woodbury complained in Jack’s ear of the
Waterford’s intransigence, his partner Rusty Greer held up a hastily written
note: Tell him about the wind!
“Oh yeah, thanks
Rusty,” Colin sighed into the phone, “those folks got blown around inside the
church by some kind of poltergeist.
The misses told us that when we were leaving.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jake
looked at Sam. “Now there’s a poltergeist in the plot. Higgins left that detail out and so did
Philip Lindley. I don’t blame
them.” “Stay on this Colin,” he said to Woodbury before disconnecting. “Go to
the next one on your list. Keep
Rusty on a short lease. I don’t
want anymore complaints.”
Rusty, Jake recalled Sarah Mendoza telling him, had quarreled with
Felicity Brown, the Leeds’ next store neighbor, over her theory about the
fire. Felicity, who believed that
the End Times were approaching, thought that the fire a sign from God. As proof, she argued with Rusty, was
the behavior of the flames, a characterization that brought on the rookie’s
immediate scorn. It seemed
unconscionable to him that she saw this tragedy as divine wrath. Jake would have been surprised to know
that his superior, Randall Walker, believed the very same thing.
“This case is a joke,” snarled Sam, watching Jake write something on his
pad.
That kid better learn to control his temper, the
sergeant made a note for himself. Last night was the third time Sarah complained about
Rusty Greer.
As Jake called Sarah and
Benny, the second team in the field, Sam searched impatiently for the turnoff
ahead. Sergeant Cosgrove had saved
James Royce, the potentially most difficult of the elders (according to Dwight
Higgins) for themselves. It was
not easy questioning those elders who had, in apoplectic fit, stormed out of
Reverend Leeds’ church. Virtually
all of them knew that they were suspects in this case.
Sarah Mendoza, Jake’s most
seasoned detective, and her partner Benny Rawls, however, had done much better
than Colin Woodward and Rusty Greer.
Although William Breckenridge and his wife claimed to have no animosity
toward Salem, himself, both of them gave a scathing critique to team two of
Cora Leeds.
“Oh, that woman is a
class-A bitch,” Sarah chatted into her phone. “She needs exorcism. According to misses Breckenridge, she’s
a first rate drunk.”
“Tell’em about the barf,”
Benny, who was behind the wheel, tapped her knee.
“Oh yeah,” Sarah made a
face, “the last time she was in the reverend’s church, she upchucked into the
pews. A real mess. The rev’ said it was ‘cause she had the
flu, but the Breckenridge’s claim she smelled like booze.”
Benny, who took
copious notes, handed her his notepad now, and Sarah read verbatim what Benny
highlighted with a marker, in a deadpan voice:
“Suspects claimed
the Reverend’s wife has not attended church for over six months, and that his
sermons suffered for her behavior.
Her absence, though welcomed by the congregation, effected his general
attitude. The Reverend turned
progressively toward new age thinking and Norman Vincent Peale’s philosophy in
order, perhaps (according to Mr. Breckenridge) to give meaning his own life.”
“You copy that Sarge?” she
asked with a gasp
“You didn’t write
that,” Jake seemed amused.
“No,” she replied quickly,
“Benny, our resident Injun did.”
“Who’s next on your list?”
Jake searched his own notes.
“The Lindley’s,” she
yawned. “This case is a real sleeper, Sarge.”
“Okay. We’re doing Royce and Billingsley,”
Jake looked up from his notebook. “What did you hear about the freak wind?”
“Oh yeah,” her eyes popped
wide. “The misses said the air conditioner was acting strange.”
“That’s an
understatement,” frowned Sam. “I think we should check that out.”
Jake made a note of it on
his pad. He would not admit it but
he felt a peculiar excitement now, he dare not put into words. Instead he drew a little ghost in the
margin. After signing off
abruptly, he quickly checked in with the evidence technicians Tim Blodgett and
Nick Sandoval, who were at the library doing research on local news.
Compared to the others,
Tim’s response was snappy: “Detective Blodgett, LAPD!” He chimed.
“Hey, Blodgett,” grunted
Jake, “got anything on Leeds?”
“Nothing, Sarge,” replied
Tim pertly, “except a back page byline about him replacing Hugh Thomas at his
church.”
“That’s it?” Grumbled
Jake. “You’ve been there all morning, and that’s all you found?”
“Well, not exactly,” Tim
seemed to equivocate. “We started sniffing a different trail.”
“Smells like shit, Sarge!”
Nick shouted in the background.
“What’s he talking about
Tim?” Jake poised his pen over his pad.
Inexplicably he had drawn an impish devil’s head this time on the
sheet. Unwittingly, the sergeant had
given himself another clue to the case.
“It’s a mixed bag,” Tim’s
voice droned. “We found out that members of the congregation have been quitting
the church in droves. Many of them
disagree with his sermons. Others,
however, approved of his new approach.
We began checking the backgrounds out of all of the members we could
identify. . . It seems that one of the elders was accused of child molestation
with his daughter but the charge didn’t stick.”
“Who?” Jake, his eye-lids drooping, came alive.
“James Breckenridge,” Tim
chimed, “one of the elders of the church.”
“Give me the details,”
clipped Jake.
His adolescent voice
charged with excitement, Blodgett read the police report as if he had just
found an important clue:
“After responding to a call by a neighbor, who claimed to have witnessed
the event in Breckenridge’s backyard, the family presented a united front and
denied the charge—”
“That’s enough Blodgett,”
Jake snapped brusquely into the phone, “I can read it the police report
too. That’s your big scoop?”
“No, uh-uh, we have lots
of stuff,” Tim frowned into the phone.
“Alright, Blodgett, what else you got?” He prodded the young detective.
“We’re checking out all the other suspects too,” Nick’s voice came into
the phone this time. “Man, Sarge, you wouldn’t believe how much money ol’
Waterford has: he owns half the condos in town-”
“Okay, Sandoval,” interrupted Jake, “that’s wonderful. You guys just concentrate on the
smell.” “Call me back when you found some real shit!” he quipped, slamming the
phone shut.
There was no connection
between the fact that Breckenridge might be a pedophile and what happened at
the Leeds household, and yet Jake found the news significant enough to right it
down on his pad. It seemed quite
clear to him that this was a dysfunctional church. At the bottom of the current
page, he wrote What kind of people are
we dealing with?
******
Realizing he had
not checked in with Walker this hour, Jake flipped open his cell phone, scanned
the electronic phone book, and punched the memory dial. An all too familiar phenomena became
starkly familiar to Jake and Sam, now that the Sergeant had checked in with his
squad. Traffic was slowing rapidly
now. Inexplicably, Jake’s cell
phone was filling with static, as he held it to his ear. When he tried Sam’s phone, he received
a busy signal from Randall Walker’s phone, indicating that Walker was still on
the line.
“Hang up my phone,”
advised Sam, “and call again.”
“No-o-o,” drawled
Jake. “Let’s wait until we got something good to report.”
“We’re not going to
find anything good,” replied Sam, “not in this case.”
Settling back in
their seats, the detectives fell silent a moment as traffic slowed completely
to a halt.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Sam
swore under his breath.
“Find us a side road or
alternate,” the sergeant groaned, rubbing his face. “Look for a detour up
head—anything. This could take
hours!”
“This might not take
long,” Sam consoled Jake. “It could be just a fender bender. Fortunately, we’re in the slow
lane. If traffic starts creeping
up, I’ll pull off at the first exit I see.”
“All right,” Jake said
with resignation, re-opening his laptop and returning to the web, “it better be
soon!”
With forced calm, Sam
turned on the radio, and sat there drumming his fingers on the dashboard as
classical music filled the car.
Nodding with approval at
his selection, Jake looked up from his research at the cars ahead, curious but
not moved by what his tired eyes detected in the sky. The great urgency to get off the freeway passed, when he
considered how meaningless their interviews with James Royce and Tim
Billingsley would be. If worse
came to worse, he would place the magnetic beacon on top of the car and they
would use the emergency zone to exit this mess. Already, without talking to a single witness, he was convinced
that Reverend Leeds had murdered his wife. His sleuthing instincts also told him they would never see
the reverend again. This would
become a cold case, and yet, despite scoffing at it, himself, there was an
urgency about it that transcended the normal routine for an investigation.
His interest had been
wetted, not by a sense of duty, but by a restless spirit, searching for meaning
in life, not landmarks for his detective career. There were far more complicated cases out there to absorb his
work ethic. At this very moment,
he was not even thinking about their schedule. He was wondering what it was that made a routine arson
investigation so important to two high-ranking officials. What agenda could they have to make
them focus on something that lacked both evidence or even a clear cut motive
for the crime? It seemed doubtful
to him that Walker and Barnes even knew the reverend and his wife. Jake could not remember a single
instance in his career of a high-ranking police and fire department officials
collaborating this way before.
Yet, though there wasn’t a shred of evidence for even arson now, he was
as certain, as Walker and Barnes, that a crime had been committed at the Leed’s
home.
Without proof or a clear
motive, he now wondered if it could ever be solved. It was nothing more than missing persons file and suspected
homicide at this point, but he knew, even at this early stage, it was much,
much more.
******
By now a dark and ominous
column of smoke had risen several hundred feet into the air, arcing westward
with an offshore wind. A faint
gasp escaped Jake’s chest as the visual stimulus set in.
“Sweet Mary,” he cried, as
the column took shape, “do you see that?”
Inexplicably, for those
seconds, the smoke fingered out overhead, transforming into a monstrous
hand. In that brief interval, as
it spread over the nearby city, the sergeant saw, without comprehension, a
forewarning of the Apocalypse beginning in skid row.
“This is going to be a long one,” Sam replied glumly, rolling
down the window and sniffing the air.
The smell of burning
rubber and oil now filled the car, indicating that it was more than a mere
fender bender as Sam had suggested.
“Someone got torched,” Jake shook his head.
“Not necessarily,” Sam
said thoughtfully, watching the column curl ominously up into the sky. “They
could’ve gotten out. It could’ve
exploded later, after the driver escaped.”
“Yeah, right,” Jake
scowled, turning back to the laptop on his lap. “I hope this starts
moving. Pretty soon, I might have
to go pee.”
Curious about the
disaster, Sam channel surfed until finding a station broadcasting the
news. After hearing the end of a
newscast, he caught the beginning of a traffic report that seemed more like a
narration from a script. In the helicopter
flying overhead, Jetta Carlson, a KPFK news camerawoman, sounding more like a
commentator than a reporter, spoke eloquently of the gridlock below.
“Something exploded beneath the clear, cloudless sky,” she began loftily.
“A dark plume of smoke rises skyward to mark the spot. Speedometers plunge and break pedals
jam. An eruption of horn blasts
shatter the air. The stream
thickens now, congealing into a solid mass. Each car, losing its identity, is drawn imperceptibly along
as more motorists clog the on-ramps, unaware of the horror beyond. Each driver, in silent fraternity,
becomes part of the current, until inevitably it stops completely, and a
restless hush falls over the stream.”
Sam turned up the volume.
“Are you listening to this?” He looked at Jake.
Jake, who had been reading an internet article on archaeology, looked up
with an enigmatic expression on his face but said nothing.
“. . . From the suburbs of the city to the heartland of the metropolis,”
expounded Jetta, “a traffic jam’s in progress—the kind of nightmare feared by
motorists but expected by the highway patrol. Sirens will be sounding in the distance and red lights will
be flashing in the emergency lane of traffic. Already, the fire department and paramedics are rushing to
the scene. Up ahead, as we
approach the scene, it is apparent that a terrible accident occurred. I can see below, that the original
crash has created hundreds of lesser wrecks down the line. Bumpers have embraced and doors have
collided. Countless whiplashes
will be reported today. For the
vast majority of commuters, however, the danger is over and the terrible
waiting has begun. . .”
Jake and Sam now smelled
sulfur in the breeze, so faint at first it was difficult to distinguish from
the normal sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide in the air. After a few moments of listening to
what sounded like a treatise on traffic, the smell grew stronger, until Jake
and Sam recognized what it was.
“I’ll be damned,” murmured
Jake, “it’s that odor again—the one I smelled on my vacation.”
“Yeah,” nodded Sam. “What
was on that truck? It’s like the
smell at a foundry: burning slag.”
“It’s brimstone!” Declared
Jake, recalling the devil’s head drawn on his pad.
******
Along with Jake and Sam
and everyone else on I-5 this afternoon, On-the-Spot News Van Seven was
stranded in the traffic jam. For
the rookie reporter Valentine “Tino” Getz, who happened to be tuned into KPFK,
the sound of Jetta Carlson’s crinkly voice, was both an inspiration and a
challenge. For his partner Milo
Flores, however, it appeared as if Valentine was going off the deep end again.
“Please-please,” the
reporter begged the cameraman, “just stand up through the sun roof and shoot
some of it for me. I know Gus will
like it. He liked my commentary on
that fire, didn’t he. Come on
Milo, I’ve been following the rules.”
“You’ve followed the rules
for exactly two days,” Milo corrected him. “That’s hardly a record.” “So help me, Tino,” he wrung his
finger, “when I say cut, you’ll stop this bullshit at once!”
“Yes-yes,” the reporter
leaped up, with his remote mike in hand.
Often, if Tino stepped out
of line, Milo would use the old fashioned plug-in microphone to keep him
literally in tow. This time, as he
stood up with his camera on his shoulder, side-by-side with the reporter, there
was no where else for Getz to go.
When he released his finger from the camera trigger, it would be over
and that would be it, even if he had to drag the young man back into the van.
“. . . An asphalt truck
appears to have been sideswiped by an SUV,” they heard Jetta say. “There’s no
injuries, just a terrible mess covering two of the lanes.”
Now that her introduction
was over and she had turned back to her traffic report, Valentine began his own
narrative he hoped might overshadow her effort when it was aired tonight:
“From
the city limits to Downtown Metro, it unfolds now:” he paused for effect, “. .
. a super jam, in classic
form. For hours they will be
stranded: one hundred thousand of them, waiting miserably for it to end. Fists will clinch, and teeth will
grind. An ocean of protest will
shatter the air. . .”
At
this point, the reporter was stopped cold by something he detected in the
breeze. A familiar odor wafted
into his nostrils, caressing his olfactory nerves. The cameraman took this as his cue to stop the camera and
climb back into the van.
Apparently satisfied with what he had said but remaining silent those
moments, the reporter followed suit, shutting the sun roof behind himself and settling back quietly into his
seat.
Milo
studied the slack-jawed expression on the young man’s face. Lately, he had been displaying quirky
behavior but nothing quite like this.
“What was that all about?” the cameraman asked, sitting his equipment
back into its rack and scooting behind the wheel. “. . . You know very well,” he said after a pause, “we can’t
give that to the editor. I bet
Jetta Carlson gets in trouble for that the little stunt.”
The
reporter shrugged his shoulders and searched for words to describe the feeling
gripping him now. Without the need
of sound or the knowledge of an oncoming war, a distant drumming had began
resonating in Valentine Getz’s mind.
“Well,
we’ve got some good footage of the smoke,” Milo continued, chuckling to
himself. “We just can’t use the soundtrack. That’s not news, Tino; it’s a commentary like Jetta just
gave.”
“It’s
not the smoke. . . It’s the smell,” Valentine craned his head and sniffed the
air blowing into the van. “. . . Don’t you recognize that Milo? It’s the same smell we detected at the
Leeds household fire. . . brimstone.
What on earth would that odor be doing on the afternoon breeze?”
******
The same question plagued Jake and Sam. Almost an hour had passed since the gridlock had set
in. Traffic now begin to move
imperceptibly, beginning with the slow lane. As Sam prepared to detour at the nearest exit, he noticed
that Jake had lapsed into silence again.
He had been searching the web for countless bits of information, but now
sat staring out the windshield with almost unblinking eyes.
“I can’t explain it,” Jake
groped for words. “. . . After getting a whiff of that sulfur again, I feel
like something important, no, big, is going to happen. . . and we’re
going to be the first ones to know.”
“Well,” Sam nodded his
head. “Walker and Barnes know something we don’t know, that’s for
certain!”
“Yeah,” Jake looked back
at his laptop screen, “I found a website called Positive Thinking in the New
Age Church. After reading
this, I can see why the elders thought Leeds was a heretic. Those middle age conservative men and
women saw his watered down version of Christianity as a corrupting influence in
their church. . . Question is, Sam, why did Walker and Barnes take a personal
interest in this case? . . . Is there a connection somewhere we can’t see?”
“I dunno,” Sam reached
down to turn the radio down. “There really isn’t much substance to this
case. All we have are tantalizing
clues, but no evidence of arson or murder.”
“When you get right down
to it,” remarked Jake with a sigh, “there isn’t much substance or pattern in life!”
As the haunting second
movement of Sebelius’ Swan of Tuonella filled the car, Sam turned off at the
Fifth Street detour, which would take them directly into skid row. It was a detour that would forever
change the course of their lives.
Jake was now in what Sam
recognized as a philosophical mood.
His wife Anna was suffering from cancer and his daughter Janelle was
moving with her husband to Arizona where his son-in-law had found a new
job—facts that only a select few people, including himself, knew. There was nothing Sam could say to Jake
that would not sound like maudlin sentimentality, but he understood Jake’s mind
and, as always, would act as a sounding board for his partner’s mood.
This case had seemed dull
and unsubstantial compared to ones done in the past, and yet, because of the
urgency given to it by Walker and Barnes, Jake had begun drawing devils and
ghosts in the margins of his notes.
Sam had noticed this development and had noted Jake’s recent interest in
archeology too. For just a moment,
as a change of pace, Jake paused in his research in archeology, to write on a
Microsoft Word page in his laptop: (1) House burns down. (2) Couple is missing.
(3) The only suspects are members of Leed’s church. In a second column, in respective order, he followed with:
(1) No evidence of arson. (2) No evidence of a murder. (3) Other then seeing her as nuisance,
what motive could there be for murdering the reverend’s wife?
Because of the gridlock,
Sam could safely glance over at the laptop. “My thoughts exactly,” he said, pointing to the screen.
“That’s
the sum total of this investigation,” Jake confessed to Sam, “a house fire and
two missing persons.”
“We’ve had much less to go
on in the past,” replied Sam. “Our squad may not agree, but there is
something peculiar about this case.
You won’t admit it, but your artwork speaks loudly, Jake. It’s all that reading you’ve done. You’re fascinated with the causalities
in this case. You have a chance to
put all that extracurricular reading to use. That was an unnatural fire; no on can argue with that. But it’s all academic, Jake. It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours
yet since the fire. As you’ve said
yourself: there’s no evidence of arson and no proof that there was even a
crime. This is, and everyone knows
it, a highly irregular investigation, that will make the department look stupid
if the Leeds show up suddenly on the scene.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Jake
shot back in disbelief. “The pastor left for his meeting. She entertained a stranger. The stranger left without Mr.
Leeds. And Cora Leeds was still in
the freaking house!”
“No, it’s not clear at
all,” Sam shook his head stubbornly. “It was too dark for Rick Schoolcraft to
have clearly made out who was in that car. This could still be an insurance scam. They could still be out there waiting
for just the right moment to return.”
Jake threw his head back
and laughed. All of his detective
training and gut instincts told him he was right. He could not, however, argue with Sam on the basis of
instinct or use the logic gleaned from articles on the web in order to prove
his point. Already, after his
actions in the past few weeks, his partner was worried about his state of
mind. What would Sam think if he
told him about his feelings now.
This time his gut feelings were overpowering. . . Yes, the reverend
murdered his wife, but there was a greater meaning to this case. He had already tried awkwardly to
explain this to Sam (“I feel like something important, no, big, is going
to happen. . .) Unfortunately, he
had been in philosophical moods too many times to be taken seriously by
Sam.
It was Walker and Barnes’
interest in this case that first intrigued Jake. The investigation, itself, seemed unspectacular, yet the
smell of brimstone had felt like a religious experience to him. There was, he sensed acutely, a greater
mystery afoot. The shadowy motives
of the powers-that-be--Walker, Barnes, . . . God, he shuddered at the thought,
now caused him to retreat back into the web. For a few moments, he resumed reading an article about an
archeological dig in Arizona, a state in which he hoped to retire with his wife
so that they could be near their grand children and daughter Janelle. On a separate window opened on his
screen, where he jotted down his thoughts, Jake also took the opportunity to
continue transcribing his handwritten notes from his notebook onto a file in
Microsoft Word, entitled simply Walker and Barnes:
. . . Though
hearing sounds inside the house, the Leads’ neighbors, with the exception of
Rick Schoolcraft and Felicity Brown, have never seen Cora Leeds outside her
home. She had been, according to
Schoolcraft, a recluse since the Leeds moved in, until yesterday when she
quarreled with her husband and exposed herself to a motorist on the
street. According to Dwight
Higgins, many of the elders had far more complaints about Salem than his wife. She was, in many of their opinions, a
drunk and had the few times they saw her acted deranged. He, on the other hand, had become a
heretic, poisoning the minds of young people and driving many members
away. The church was, perhaps,
dysfunctional and its members a peculiar lot, but they were hardly the rogues gallery
we’ve encountered in the past.
Were is there a motive for the members of the church for this
hypothetical crime, unless the reverend, himself, murdered his wife? Until a body turns up or arson can be
proven, it remains a missing persons case. . . yet it is much, much more.
******
Returning to his internet article, Jake thought about the artifacts that
had been covered for centuries, accidentally discovered by Arizona construction
workers working on a new tract of homes.
He could not help comparing archeologists’ efforts to detective work, as
they pieced together evidence of the past. A professor from the University of Northern Arizona,
receiving a tip-off, gathered together a team, drove from Williams to Holbrook,
Arizona, reaching his destination just in time to cordon off the site. The ruins of a Pueblo kiva, of unknown
origins, uncovered by the team, brought new housing construction in Holbrook to
an abrupt halt. Arizona
archeological sites are considered sacred treasures. Much of what detectives uncover is also found by sheer
chance, though human beings, it seemed to Jake, were more often discarded as
trash. City garbage collectors, he
read recently, found body parts in a downtown dumpster, and, just last month,
joggers found a dead body for homicide to investigate along a foothill trail
. . . But this time there would be no discovery,
Jake wrote in his journal. No one
would ever see those two again.
He and Sam, he reflected,
as he finished up his internet article, had seen the gamut of human depravity
and malice: from crimes of passion to serial murder. In connection with homicides, their files were stuffed with
all manner kinky behavior and violent acts. Nothing could surprise them very much. The number of unsolved cases and
missing person, probably murdered, far outweighed the successes they had in
solving crimes. It seemed as if
much of their effort lead them in circles or frustrating dead-ends, . . . until
last night. Even Sam sensed that
there was something special about this particular case.
As
they followed a long line of vehicles, who were also taking the first detour in
sight, they had a chance, to see the steam rising in the distance as fire
fighters doused the flames, though they were over a city block away from the
collision of the asphalt truck and SUV.
Jake, Sam had noted with
satisfaction, was now interested in archeology, a vast improvement over the
dark topics they had discussed before.
Recently, Sam had heard a disturbing range of subjects from his partner Jake,
from comments on basic criminality to the atrocities of World War II. All were part of the killer ape
syndrome that Jake espoused. In
the beginning, he once explained to Sam, man’s ancestor had been an innocent
brute. From the moment he first
used a tool, however, he held it as a weapon in his hand. He found he could kill his neighbor as
well as his foe. In many cases,
Jake claimed, his neighbor was his
foe. That point, he theorized, was
when murder and anarchy began, the line that separated homicide from
self-defense. Murder was not a
psychological or theological phenomena today, Jake believed. It was a throwback to primal man, when
the killer ape was let loose.
After
snooping in various magazines and books, and most recently on the web, the old
detective had gathered other tidbits—just enough knowledge on various subjects
to become opinionated and, in many cases, misinformed. His killer ape theory was just one
example. But Jake had many
theories on life and in the last fifteen minutes had just claimed that there
was no pattern to life, which seemed to Sam to be a contradiction to the Killer
Ape Theory he espoused.
Now,
as he detoured through skid row, with the plan to hook up the freeway further
down the road, he heard the epitome of cynicism from his partner’s lips.
“There
are two clean points in our lives:” Jake declared after much thought “birth and
death. The rest—that great void
between—is filled with garbage. We
can’t escape it, Sam; it gets deeper every day.”
“Never
thought of it like that,” Sam found this humorous.
“It’s
true Sam, don’t laugh,” he said in an offended voice. “Almost everything you do
winds up in the trash, garbage disposal, or recycling bin. It either gets old, rots, rusts, and is
either revamped, recycled, or thrown away.” “Take this car here,” he thumped the dash.
“You
take it,” Ruiz grinned. “I’m tired of garbage.”
“No
seriously, Sam,” he persisted, “in a few years, if it’s not completely
overhauled, this car will wind up on the junk pile like everything else. Nothing is constant Sam; remember
there’s no substance and no pattern--least of all for us!”
“Oh
yeah,” Ruiz offered, “look at Yosemite National Park. It won’t rust or change; it’s made of rock!”
“Hell
it won’t!” Cosgrove sneered. “Haven’t you heard of erosion? What do you think carved that valley,
Sam? Ice, that’s right, plain old
ice.” “Did you know,” he said with
inspiration, “that in Italy there’s a microbe that lives off stone? Don’t shake your head Sam, I read that
on the internet too—they don’t lie!
“A
philosopher, Bicarde or Descarte—I can’t remember his name—once said ‘the only
thing that is constant is change itself.’
That’s true Sam, and everything and everyone is turned into garbage in
the end.”
“Okay,
bugs eat stone and ice carves rock—big deal.” Shrugged Sam. “What about the Golden Gate Bridge or
the Eiffel Tower. They’re made of steel!”
“Rust,”
Cosgrove waved. “If not rust or corrosion, they can be demolished someday for
bigger and better bridges and towers.
Even if they stand for hundreds or thousands of years, do you think
they’ll remain the same?”
“Yes,”
Sam nodded stubbornly, “why not?”
After
watching Sam roll his eyes in disbelief, Jake drew upon his vast library of
trivia, sorting through it for just the right fact.
“Look
at the Coliseum,” he snapped his fingers. “I’m not talking about the Los
Angeles Coliseum either, Sam. I’m
talking about the Roman Coliseum built by Titus in 76 A.D—the one used for
Christian persecutions and gladiator fights.” “Now,” he searched for words “. . . it’s nothing but
ruins. It’s become a historical
landmark and tourist trap.” “But
that’s not what scientists care about anymore,” he shook his head. “Did you know that archaeologists in
Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. get most of their information by studying
garbage? Yes it’s true Sam. Don’t shake your head. I read that on the internet too. They call it kitchen middens if its
evidence of sea food or discarded bones and call it potsherds if its old busted
pots. Bones, as you know, lay around
for millions of years and become fossils.
Fossil dinosaur turds are called coprolites.”
“Jeezuz
Christ,” Sam groaned finally. “What’s the point in all this? What
does this all mean?”
“Mean?
. . . Point?” Jake mused
thoughtfully. “That is the point Sam:
there’s no meaning and no point. Life runs on waste and want. It’s directed by rot, ruin, and deterioration.” “Life is garbage, Sam,” he said dramatically, “filled with death and
destruction—an unending tale of murder, mayhem, and woe!”
“Murder?
. . . Mayhem? . . . Woe?” Murmured Ruiz. “I knew something other than garbage
was at the bottom of this. It’s
that Killer Ape Theory again!”
“Yep,
that’s when it began,” Jake winked approvingly. “How many battered children,
muggings, rapes, and murders are reported each day?”
“I
dunno,” Sam rolled his eyes in disbelief, “thousands, maybe millions.”
“That’s
right Sam,” Jake nodded eagerly, “millions,
because I’m talking about the whole
world!”“
“The
whole world?” His partner mumbled quizzically. “. . . I’m confused Jake, I
really am. What’re you driving at now?”
As
the outline of the old Fairmont Hotel loomed up in the distance, they could see
a large congregation of people on the sidewalk, spilling onto the street. Although the police reports had
mentioned a problem in this sector of town occurring earlier this week, neither
detective made the connection with this shabby-looking crowd. Glancing over at his partner, Sam
wondered if they should stop and check it out. It was not uncommon for some form a commotion in this
neighborhood. Jake sat there
quietly, staring out the window, his laptop still open in his lap. Once again that special look had fallen
over his chiseled face, as he groped for something that was always just out of
reach. . . the truth.
******
Without
saying a word, Jake motioned to the crowd on the sidewalk and the vehicles
gathered by the road. Sam mumbled
“let’s check it out,” as he pulled up behind a motorist beside the curb, but,
with a sudden determination, the older detective had already emerged from the
car and walked several yards toward the scene.
“Hey,”
he shouted to a pedestrian on the street, “what’s going on here?”
“The
devil has found himself a prophet to begin his work in the world,” the old man replied
quietly, gesturing discreetly to Salem Dade in the crowd.
The
old man, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, wore a dark suit and clerical
collar. There was a tattered Bible
in his wrinkled hand. Not
expecting such a lofty reply, Jake rephrased his question: “Did you see
anything out of the ordinary sir?”
“That
man is the False Prophet,” explained the old preacher in a gravelly voice, his
bald head shining with the radiance of an opal in the morning sun. “Standing
around him, with that bunch, are his twelve disciples. The day before yesterday two other
homeless folk were incinerated by Satan’s wrath.”
It
sounded quite matter-of-fact to the detectives, which made his claim seem all
the more ludicrous, and yet Jake was troubled by the timeliness of his presence
on the street.
“There
must be a hundred bums in front of that alley,” he squinted, shielding his eyes
from the sun. “Which one are you talking about—the guy with the beard wearing
the white suit?”
“Yes,
the one who looks like Jesus. You
knew that immediately,” the octogenarian smiled, his dark eyes twinkling in the
sunlight. “You must stay with this case, sergeant. . . You, my son, in your
search for the truth, are not far from the kingdom.”
Both
Jake and Sam had turned to study the crowd and the alleged prophet in their
midst. When they looked back to
where the old man had stood, there was a vacant patch of cement on the
sidewalk. Because there were so
many pedestrians in front of the alley, it was easy to assume that he had
simply melted into the crowd, but neither detective had seen him pass by them,
nor did it seem likely that the crotchety old man could have walked out of
sight in such a short span of time.
“Jesus
Christ,” gasped Jake, “where’d he go?”
“Beats
me,” Sam scratched his head, “he must’ve ran like hell somewhere or vanished in
thin air.”
“Maybe
he’s sitting in one of these cars,” Jake suggested, bending down and looking
into an empty sedan parked on the curb. “Is it legal to park here?” He looked
back at his partner.
“. . . .What’s going on here, Sam?”
“Let’s go find out,” his
partner led the way.
After a few more steps,
Jake stopped abruptly and reached into his coat.
“Wait,”
he said, bringing his cell phone up to his ear, “let’s call this in. Dispatch might have reports on it. It won’t hurt to check.”
“Here,
use mine. Yours is dead, remember?” Sam handed him his phone.
Sam
was growing irritated with these delays.
He sensed that it might be, as the Leed’s fire investigation, another
long day. They were, as the other
detectives, suppose to talk to church members, but it looked as if the sergeant
had forgotten their appointments or didn’t care.
“Is that right Millie?” He
could hear Jake say. “The police didn’t think it was a 187? False alarm, eh. . . Yeah-yeah,
I’m sure Officers Fletcher and Reed did a fine job, but we’re gonna check it
out just the same. Please let
Lieutenant Howard know we’re following up on this one. . . Thanks Millie. Caio!” “That’s just typical of how the
police treat this neighborhood,” Jake moralized as they turned their attention
to the crowd.
Salem
Dade now wore a white suit in place of the Biblical outfit in which he debuted
on the street. Though he still
wore a beard, it was groomed to modern standards and his long hair was tied in
neat pony tail in back of his head.
In spite of these alterations, he still looked, in many vagrants’
opinions, like a modern version of Jesus Christ. Marie, who wore the same blue dress as before, looked even
more radiant, in spite of the lack of makeup or fancy attire. Virtually all of the twelve disciples
had been miraculously scrubbed up to look presentable, though they still wore
the same shabby old clothes.
A much smaller crowd had gathered as Salem rattled off a series of
religious generalities pointing to the new faith: “There will be a day when
skid row will become a garden and you, children, will share in a new day. . .
.” His voice, however, faltered as
he caught sight of Jake and Sam.
Here, he told himself, were the dreaded detectives Marie warned him
about: a graying, steel jawed veteran and his dark, swarthy sidekick, each
supporting a holstered gun by his chest and ready, with pad and pen, to trip
him up by his own lying tongue.
“Should
I act autistic like I did before?” He asked Marie in a croaking voice, as they
approached. “Maybe I could talk to myself, like Cassie. That would be a nice touch.”
“No,
that was a stupid idea,” she whispered. “Say only what I tell you. Don’t say anything until you clear it
with me first, but mentally—inside your head. Don’t move your lips; already many of these people think
you’re deranged.”
Salem
and Marie now stood quietly in the crowd.
Salem appeared exhausted and dazed to the detectives, which was partly
true since he had slept poorly last night. A frantic look shown on his face, as he watched them pass
through the crowd. Marie, who
looked out of place among this riff-raff, smiled confidently as she held his
hand.
“May
I have your attention!” Cried Jake, waving his badge. “I’m Sergeant Cosgrove
and this is Detective Ruiz. We’re
from the police homicide division.
We heard there was a homicide down here earlier this week. So what else is new? We’re going to ask you folks some
questions. First, would someone
show us where it took place.”
“It
was in the alley, but it wasn’t a homicide,” Effie replied with a
toothless grin.
“They
were nuked” the bag lady said, folding her arms self-righteously, “burned up by
God’s wrath!”