Dark Matters Radio Archives Vicious Vinyl Online Well, once again we are at one of my favorite times of the year ... Halloween. In just a few weeks that magical (especially for the kids) day will be here. I also manage to find that kid in me each year and I usually express it by writing themed stories in honor of the season. The following Halloween story is one I have been working on .. off and on .. well actually the "short" version is done .. but I am expanding it. I call it "A Person of Interest". It is a story of a cop, actually a detective, and a very unusual "missing persons" case. I do hope you enjoy it in the spirit it is intended ... of Halloween fun. I will upload the different parts over the next days and possibly weeks. Part 1 Person of Interest By Don Ecker All rights reserved IN THE BEGINNING Almost 2 months and two weeks ago the monster entered the city. It chose poorer neighborhoods realizing that it would be less likely for discovery. It was just before dawn, in an alley when it stopped, drew in a deep breath tasting the air that it knew the hunting would be good. In its own way of thinking it realized this was a rich hunting ground. Present Okay, I was lying in my hospital bed pondering what my Lieutenant had told me, wondering if they would prosecute. I had been in here about a week and was finally to the point where I could think without the excruciating pain. I looked up and could see the uniformed cop they had guarding my door, and except when I had been in the Gulf during the war in my recon platoon, could not remember ever feeling as alone. I must have drifted off when the sound of the door opening caused me to open my eyes and look up. A rather plain looking younger woman walked in carrying what I thought was a legal pad of yellow paper. “Can I help you?” I said. She looked at me and smiled, walking over to the side of my hospital bed, pulled the single chair to the side and sat down. “Ah, Detective Black, I’m Kimberly Bradley of the Daily News. I was assigned to cover your story and was wondering if you felt up to an interview?” Now, I gotta tell you that I was surprised. Except for my ex-wife being allowed in to see me when I was first brought in, no one had been allowed in here except for the medical staff or the police brass. I looked at my door and the cop on duty wasn’t there. “How did you get in here? Didn’t that cop stop you?” She looked at me with a question mark on her face. “What cop? There wasn’t any cop at the door.” Now, what I thought next came to me in a flash, but will probably take a little longer to explain to you. After I got to the point where I could speak again, one of the guys in to see me was my union rep. He told me that I should keep my mouth shut until a lot of this “shook out.” As a matter of fact, he “thought” I should have a lawyer present when the brass decided to “debrief” me. The fact of the matter was that this whole thing was so “off the wall” and unbelievable, I thought rightly or wrongly that I should get my side out sooner than later. I looked at this woman and nodded my head. “No cop at the door, huh? Okay, what do you want to know? And before we start, is there any word about Dick?” Dick, or detective Richard Baker had been my partner and went missing during this fiasco. She shook her head “no” and I nodded. “So, where do you want to begin?” “Well Detective, lets start at the beginning. When did this whole thing land on your desk?” I had stopped smoking after I got back from the “sandbox”, or Desert Storm. It had been rough but I finally kicked the habit. Except for when I had a beer or six, I didn’t miss it but now I wanted a smoke and I knew I wouldn’t get one. “This case landed on Dick and me a little over two months ago when the Ramirez girls went missing. You will remember the big search and when nothing turned up we were assigned. Dick and I ruled out the parents almost immediately. The dad was at work and their mother was working as a volunteer at St. Francis’s Church. Father Hernandez swore up and down that the family was as close knit as could be imagined. The two girls were 14 and 12, were like twins, and considering what things are today, were “dream kids.” Well behaved, polite and considerate. We started looking at the possibility of sexual predators, assholes jus.. oops, guys just out of jail, you know?” I thought I should probably watch my language with this reporter. She gave me a half smile at my “profanity” slip and nodded. “Please continue detective.” I closed my eyes for a second thinking back, drew a deep breath and continued. “Well, at first we thought we might have something with a guy just out of the state prison, but when we checked his story it was air-tight. Just when we thought we might be at a dead end, the Morris kid went missing. He was a 15 year old kid that was in his sophomore year at Central High School. He was on the football team and flat disappeared on his way home from a practice. That’s when Dick and I knew we had a very serious problem. Lt. Barnes then took this “upstairs” and we put a task force together to try to get this nipped in the bud. Dick and I were the lead investigators on this. The state police became involved and we also contacted the FBI. It suddenly became top priority and as you know, the news blackout began. The brass became very hinky with any information released to the press.” I lay back on the bed and took a deep breath. It was at that instant I remembered something Dick had said back then. “Christ Nick, I got a feeling! This is a “weird one” and damn!, I hate the weird ones!” Boy, did he get that one right I thought. Two months previously – Detective Richard Baker pushed his chair back from the desk and looked up at me standing in front of his cramped desk. We shared a space on the second floor of our along with robbery-homicide on the other side of the room. Cut-backs you know. “Nick, lets take a drive over to the Ramirez neighborhood and canvas all those homes again. Maybe someone will remember something, plus we can grab a bite to eat on the way back.” I nodded at him then I remembered. “Hey, I also want to check out by the overpass and see if any of those street people saw anything. I know we are probably pulling our puds, but hey, ya never know.” He grinned. “Do you mean our “dis-advantaged and chemically dependent pavement persons who inhabit our publicly available open spaces, under the underpass?” I just shook my head. Dick drove out in our unmarked “narc – ark”, which by the way everybody knew was a cop car, and I noticed as we pulled in next to a couple of shopping carts jammed with junk, two “chemically dependent” folk faded into the background. As a rule, street people come in two varieties, drunks and druggies and the nutso’s. Or as my Shift Commander points out, the whacked and the double whacked. Of course that is all in-house chatter. As far as the public is concerned they are mentally challenged or chemically dependent. Like I said, the whacked and the double whacked. We recognized one of the people at once. Emily So-so. If you ask Emily how she’s doing, she will tell you just so-so. I walked up to her with a grin on my face. “Hey Emily, how you doing Sweetie? You need anything?” Emily was standing next to her shopping cart and looked just off to the left side of my head. “So-so officer, just so-so.” I nodded and pulled two one dollar bills out of my pants pocket. “Here Em, got a little something for you.” She grabbed the bills in a furtive movement and jammed them into a pocket of her shirt. “Say Em, did you hear about the two missing girls from a couple of blocks over from here? Their name is Ramirez and they are just 12 and 14 years old. Detective Baker and I are very worried about them and we are trying to find them. Can you help me?” Now one of the job hazards with street people is that they do not often get a chance to take a bath. They don’t seem to care much but they can be pretty ripe. Em was ripe. She looked off to the right side of my head, grabbed my sleeve and pulled me along. “So-so officer, just so-so.” We walked about 15 feet then she turned towards me. Still looking off to the side of my head she began to whisper, “They are here you know. I heard they are here and they are looking for mostly youngsters. Maybe you should warn everyone cause’ they’re here!” “Who’s here Emily? Who told you they’re here?” Now I suspected Emily was off in La-La land and I began to think this was a monumental waste of time. “The man came the other night! The man came here and he warned us! He said we should be careful because they might take us too!” Dick looked at me with a huge question mark on his face, and suddenly I became interested. Of course with some of the street people, you just never know. “What man Emily? Are you sure someone talked to you? Maybe you, uh, you know, maybe you imagined it?” I looked closely at her trying to determine if she was lucid. “He was a big man officer. Big and blond. His hair was really long and really blond. He wore an overcoat down to the ground and he was big. He kind of talked strange too. He smelled funny, yeah, he really smelled funny. I don’t think he is from around here.” I was suddenly stumped but Dick jumped in. “Emily, you said he smelled funny? What kind of smell, like he needed a bath?” Emily shook her head almost violently. “No, he smelled like .” she struggled for a second. “ like chemicals. Ya, just like chemicals. I almost got sick from the smell, but he warned us, yes he did.” A big blond guy wearing an overcoat that smelled just like chemicals and he talk’s funny. Yeah, no problem Boss, we will have him by 5:00! Dick looked over to me and nodded toward our car. I agreed. “Okay Emily, thanks honey. We’re gonna go now but if you need to get in touch you know how to call me, right? Do you still have my card?” She dug into her coat and pulled out a mass of papers and other assorted junk and looked. She finally pulled out one of my cards, looked past me and nodded. “Okay Em, we’ll see you later.” Dick and I walked back to the car and got in. “What do you think Nick?” I mulled around what she had told us. “I’m not sure but she seemed pretty certain that she talked to someone. The thing about his smell, well I think we ought to follow up on that. Hell, you never know.” Dick agreed. We got over to the Ramirez neighborhood and canvassed again and came up empty. No one could tell us anything. I had run background on several of the neighbors and that was also “bupkas.” Suddenly I had an inspiration. “Let’s run over to St. Francis, I want to talk to the priest again.” “Yeah, okay. If Emily wasn’t dicking us around maybe the priest heard something.” Dick put it in gear and we were off. Father Hernandez was a warm man, about 60 years of age, and knew this area like the back of his hand. When the girls first went missing he pushed his congregation to help in everyway they could from searching the neighborhoods to posting flyers to calling us with anything any of them managed to turn up. If Emily was not hallucinating about a man maybe, just maybe, Father Hernandez might have heard something. We pulled into the church parking lot, and went inside. “Detectives!” Father Hernandez greeted us with a smile holding is hand out to shake. “Father, how are you?” His smile vanished and he looked at us sadly. “Is there any word on the girls?” We both shook our heads, no. I began, “Nothing yet Father, but we are following up on something. Detective Baker and I were interviewing several of the homeless people by the underpass and one of them told us that the other evening a man spoke to them and it might have something to do with this case. The person we interviewed said he was a large man with long blond hair, wearing an overcoat and had a distinct body odor. A chemical odor. We are trying to determine if there is anything to this. Have you heard anything? Anything might help.” Father Hernandez looked at me strangely. I immediately knew he had heard something. We waited to hear what it was. “Detectives, I may have heard something. A child of one of my members, Juan Salinas, came to me yesterday. Juan told me he was going to the playground to shoot some baskets when a big man stopped him. He said the big man “smelled funny” and asked him if he had seen anyone that looked like him, wearing a big coat. He said the man warned him that this other man was dangerous and to be careful. I didn’t quite know what to make of it, so perhaps I foolishly dismissed it. I am sorry.” I looked at the priest and bit my tongue, afraid I might say something I would regret. Dick looked like he was on the verge of choking. “Father! Didn’t you realize that anything dealing with kids should be reported immediately! Where is this boy? Can you get him to the church or call his family and we will go over!” Father Hernandez hurried toward his office and motioned us to follow him. He called the Salinas family, and spoke with Juan’s mother. “Mrs. Salinas will have Juan come right over to the church gentlemen. I am so sorry, I never thought “ “Okay Father, no sense in beating yourself up. Once we talk to Juan we will get this straightened out.” About 15 minutes later a young Hispanic kid, looking like he was 10 but probably 14 or 15 wandered in. He looked scared but the Father looked at him and smiled re-assuredly. “Juan, these are the two policemen looking for the Ramirez girls. They are trying to help and I told them about the man that spoke to you. Please tell these policemen all about that, okay?” I looked at him and gave him my biggest smile. “Juan, don’t worry about anything, just tell us what happened, okay? Father Hernandez told us this guy was kind of maybe strange? He said you thought he smelled funny, talked funny? Just relax and tell us what you saw.” The kid looked at the priest and then at me and nodded. “I was going to shoot some baskets, you know? I was almost at the playground and this big dude, bigger than you, he was walking past the ball court and he said Hey! I looked at him and man, I knew sumpin’ wasn’t cool. He had like really long blond hair an’ a really big long overcoat, you know? It was hot so why wear a coat like that? And man, this guy smelled, like really smelled. It was “ “Wait a minute Juan. Bigger than me? Like maybe this tall?” I held my hand just above my head. He nodded yes. “ He smelled like what?” The kid wrinkled his brow, thinking. Just about then Dick, who had our radio, got a call and he went outside the office to take it. “Medicine, man. Like this guy smelled like at the hospital, except really strong, you know?” I nodded. “And he asked me again if I saw a guy that looked like him. I told him no man, I would remember a dude as weird as that. Then he told me to be careful cause this guy was really dangerous. I said yeah, okay, then I got out of there, you know? Like this guy was really freaky. “Juan, you told Father Hernandez that the guy talked funny. Did you mean he had an accent, like from a foreign country? Maybe from Germany or something?” The kid shook his head no. “He talked funny okay, but not like that. He sounded like maybe he was talking with a computer voice. Yeah, that’s it, like when a computer talks, you know? Kind of like a machine.” I gotta admit, at this point I was stumped. “Nick, we gotta go!” I looked at the door and Dick was looking anxious. I nodded okay. “Juan, thanks, you’ve been a big help. Father, we will let you know if we find anything else out.” I smiled and hurried out of his office. To be continued .............