Authors: Derek Blass
The Chief hung up the phone and set it on the window sill behind him. His slight storm was now a hurricane.
* * * *
It was about seven at night as Cruz and Sandra set out for Martinez's home. Earlier that day Diego used his resources to trace the address.
“
You remember that time you and I got arrested while marching downtown?” Sandra asked with a knowing smile. Again, Cruz took in more than just Sandra's words as he listened. There was a new intensity to how he thought of her.
“
Uh, yeah. That almost got me disbarred.” Cruz answered.
“
Really?” Sandra asked.
“
Yeah! I had to go before the Office of Attorney Regulation. Those bastards grilled me for three hours before they let me go.”
“
I'm surprised you took it that long.”
“
Well,” Cruz paused, “my Dad always told me people have to earn your respect. But, he also taught me that pride can be a great motivator or a great destroyer. Sometimes you've got to swallow it, just like you and I did by seeing Diego. My license is worth too much for me to piss it away on some notion of pride.”
“
It's a strange balance,” Sandra mused. “Having to check your pride when you need something. And yes, I had to check my pride—hard—when we went back to Diego.”
“
Your control surprised me. When he and your father got into it like that, I figured it was the last time we would ever see Diego.”
“
It probably would have been except there was no one else to turn to,” Sandra said, her sentence trailing off at the end.
The conversation stopped as they pulled up to Martinez's address. It was dark now and the home was eerily quiet. Cruz and Sandra got out of the car and walked up to the house. Nothing stirred in or around the area. The deadness made the hairs stand on the back of Cruz's neck.
“
Feels weird,” he said.
“
Feels like someone left in a hurry,” Sandra said as she stepped through the open front door. “Hello?” she called out.
Cruz put his hand on Sandra's shoulder and stepped in front of her. He stepped forward and felt glass crack under his foot. “We need to find a light switch.” Both Cruz and Sandra slid their hands along the narrow hall walls as they moved forward. Cruz's hand touched something slick and cool.
“
Huh, wonder what that was.”
“
What?” Sandra asked.
“
Just felt something strange on the wall.”
“
Now we really need to find a switch.”
They struggled through the home until Sandra cried out, “Ah-ha! Found one.” The light switch clicked and illuminated the kitchen. The condition of the house was startling. Cruz looked down at his hand in dismay as he saw that the slippery substance he felt was half dried blood. He quickly washed his hand in the kitchen sink while Sandra continued to poke around.
“
Wow, there was quite a struggle here,” Sandra said as she moved a chair out of the way to get to a living room. Cruz dried his hands as he took in the blood-splattered broken glass, the plants lying on their sides, the hole in the wall. Cruz followed the path of destruction into a back bedroom that appeared to be the master bedroom. He flicked on the light, which dimly lit the room. One of the light bulbs was broken in the melee.
Cruz stumbled upon a cubbyhole in the closet while moving around the room. A tile was removed, but there was nothing in the space below.
“
Hey Sandra, come check this out.” Cruz heard Sandra crunching in his direction.
“
Check out this little hiding space,” he said, pointing to the empty hole.
“
Yeah?”
“
Looks like whoever raided this house got what they wanted.”
“
You think someone made this mess searching for something?” Sandra asked.
“
Possibly. I mean, what if I was wrong, and it wasn't Shaver with the original?”
“
But look at all of the dressers and storage in the house. Nothing else is touched. If this really was a raid to find something, we'd see drawers pulled out and closets ransacked—not the neat removal of an inconspicuous tile.”
“
Well, maybe they knew where it was.”
“
Hmm, I don't know Cruz. I think Martinez was here when this happened.”
“
What makes you say that?”
“
You may be right about Shaver not having the original.” Cruz looked at Sandra. Going on, she said, “This doesn't look like a ransack—it looks like Martinez had to fight to get out of here. The blood on the wall and glass in the hall. The hole in the drywall. Overturned plants. Furniture on its side. This all points to a struggle and not a search.”
“
And Martinez had to get something out of his hiding place?” Cruz asked, jumping onto Sandra's theory.
“
Yes, look at that hiding space. A camera certainly wouldn't fit in there.”
“
The video...Martinez has the original copy...”
“
That's what I'd say,” Sandra answered. “And Shaver has the most to lose from that video.”
“
But...” Cruz started before they heard a noise by the front door.
“
Did you hear that?” Sandra whispered. Cruz nodded and started to move in that direction. Cruz picked up a chair leg and crept as quietly as he could through the debris. They heard a sound again and froze.
“
Who's there?” Sandra called out. They remained frozen and strained for some sort of response. Cruz resumed moving forward until he reached the end of the hall. The front door was on his right, about fifteen feet away. He held the chair leg behind him and peeked around the corner.
“
Oh, shit,” Cruz said with a bit of a laugh. “It's a damn raccoon!” Cruz straightened up and moved around the corner. Sandra stepped out to his side. They watched the raccoon scurry out of the front door. What they both missed was the man watching them from the darkness.
E I G H T E E N
__________________________________________________
T
yler arrived at the scene of the accident. He was a tall, lanky man, whose ghostlike silence and pale complexion made him deathly. He had dark black hair and black pools for eyes. A worn, black leather duster swamped his wiry frame. He slithered past an officer who jumped when he caught Tyler's shadow on the ground.
“
Damn! You can't come in here!” Tyler flashed a badge the Chief provided him for just these occasions. “Oh geez, sorry Detective.”
“
What happened here?” Tyler asked. Even his voice was icy enough to make the young officer shudder.
“
Well, this black SUV must have rolled six to seven times before it came to a stop on its roof. Pretty amazing the two officers inside survived.” Tyler surveyed the torn body of the SUV. A tow truck was in the process of loading the SUV onto its bed.
“
Do you know the names of the officers in the vehicle?”
“
Yeah, Shaver and Tomko,” the young cop answered. “Say,” he went on, “you work in our department? Never seen you around before.”
“
Pretty big city, wouldn't you say?” Tyler said as he turned and gave the cop a stare that was enough to cut off further prodding.
“
So, yeah. Shaver and Tomko. Tomko walked but Shaver was in pretty bad shape. They said he was gonna make it but, man, losing an eye probably. That's horrible, don't you think?”
Tyler didn't answer. Instead he crossed the train tracks and looked back. Remnants of the SUV were strewn along the tracks in the dirt stretching away from him. The young cop followed Tyler.
“
The tire marks go back about a quarter-mile or so over there,” he said pointing to a group of bushes on an embankment, “That's where we found the motorcycle. Well, what was left.”
“
How'd the rider of that bike turn out?” Tyler asked.
“
Shoot, we haven't found him yet. You figure no one would've been able to survive an accident like this on a motorcycle. They'd have to be Jesus to walk away.”
“
Yes, Jesus indeed,” Tyler echoed. “Where is that motorcycle?”
“
Over by the tow truck.” Tyler walked back to the tow truck with the young officer still at his heels. The accident had reduced the motorcycle to essentially two wheels and a metal frame. He took out a pad of paper and wrote down the motorcycle's vehicle identification number, then went back to his car and got in.
The young officer called to him, “Hey, that's it?” Tyler nodded. “All right, well I guess I'll see you around then.”
“
You hope not,” Tyler said under his breath. The young officer went back to his work. Tyler picked up his cell phone and dialed a number, “It's me. I need you to run a vehicle identification number. It's
1M8GDM9AXKP042788
…yeah, I'll wait.” Tyler sat stoically and stared straight ahead while he waited. His eyes were calm, rarely looking at anything around him.
“
Still here...who owns it?” Tyler got his answer and hung up. He put the car in gear and pulled away from the accident. He called the Chief next.
“
It was Shaver and Tomko.”
“
And the person on the motorcycle?” the Chief asked.
“
Martinez.”
“
So you know what Martinez has then. Go check his home first. You aren't that far away anyway. I'll text you the address.”
“
Got it.” Tyler flipped the phone shut. He thought about Shaver's ineptness as he drove. He never would have let Martinez get his hands on that drive. But, Tyler thought, people always get emotional right after killing someone. Plenty of experience taught him that those who could control their emotions would own the world and everything in it. That was one lesson his prick of an adoptive uncle taught him. He wailed on Tyler without a semblance of emotion. It wasn't until Tyler stopped caring about the beatings, accepting them as robotically as his uncle doled them out, that his uncle stopped. They never talked again after that day.
Tyler's personality kept him isolated from other people as a young man. Studying them from isolation, he began to develop the feeling that they were all weak and powerless creatures. He made efforts to sit among them and observe any redeeming qualities. He never saw one. Instead, he saw weakness. He saw compensation. He would choke as he breathed in their fake cheer. A teeming, parasitic bunch of lemmings who walked, nose to neck and crotch to ass, on their way to his slaughterhouse. With time and tens of murders, he began to view himself as their savior—their cultivator. Like children, they didn't know just how bad it all was. But, unlike children, they had some sense that something was wrong. They dared not ask though—instead they stayed plugged into the system, content to rot away.
These thoughts ran through Tyler's mind as he drove to Martinez's house. He slowed down to try to read addresses illuminated by solitary lights. He stopped a few houses away and turned his car and lights off. There was a car in Martinez's driveway. Martinez could not have come back, he thought. On the other hand, if that video was still in the house, he may have. He opened the car door and softly closed it. From a distance he could see that the front door was open. Some light spilled out from it.
He moved closer and saw the shadow of a person on the wall just inside the front door. Tyler moved behind a tree as two people came out. They shut the front door and started toward their car. It was a man and a woman. The man was tall but probably a few inches shorter than Tyler. The woman was about six inches shorter than the man. Both were well dressed and looked relatively young—maybe late twenties or early thirties. They started their car and backed out of the driveway. Tyler pulled out his pen and paper and took down their license plate number.
* * * *
Martinez stirred out of his sleep and then sat upright. Dawn was just beginning to break outside on the third day since the incident took place. His leg throbbed intensely. Taking care not to disturb the wound, he pulled his pant leg up and saw that the skin was glossy smooth from being stretched. His leg was discolored a plumish purple from his knee down, and the color deepened to caked, black blood around the bullet wound. Martinez knew that he didn't have much time before infection set in. He slid over to the train car's door and peered out.
All that he saw were plains intermittently broken by oil wells. Despair filled him a bit as he looked at the barren landscape. He took a breath and tried to calculate how many miles he had traveled. At an average of twenty miles per hour, he figured about a hundred and twenty miles. That distance placed him about fifty more miles from the next city. It was doable.
Martinez pulled the safe out of his jacket, which he guarded neurotically even alone in the train car. He typed in a code and opened it. The drive was still inside—peering back at him as if it had a life of its own.
“
I'm going to give you life just as soon as we get out of his mess.” He closed the safe back up and set it aside. His body swayed gently from side to side in rhythm with the train. Suddenly one of his pockets began to vibrate.
“
What the hell?” He reached into his pocket and felt his cell phone. “Forgot I even had it.” He answered, “Yes?”
“
Roman Martinez! How the
hell
do you go this long without answering. We thought you were dead you bastard!”
It was his wife. Martinez looked at the screen and saw sixteen missed calls.