CHAPTER THREE
My grand plan involved moving on the first day of the month following the James McCoy confrontation, which was pretty far away when I decided to catch the thieves. At first, I did not want to tamper with the police, whom I was in constant conflict with. Then I just desired to catch Bill Bishop and his cowardly pal that wouldn’t reveal his identity. Requesting the police to search for the thieves on the first day was something that anyone would do if they were in my shoes. The problem was that the results were quite unfruitful, and I was not convinced. Previous experiences gave me every right to believe that the cops did a small, coarse search for the guys before moving on to another task. Because of my suspicions, I decided to start my own gig in catching the thugs. In a small town like Pine Grove, how hard could it be to bring in two runaways to justice? After six days, I went out to look for them.
I figured there was something along the lines of a 99.9 percent chance that the thieves were miles away, but my rationale was that they might’ve suspected that and actually stayed in the vicinity. At 10:00 PM, I went outside of my apartment to the parking lot to look around. A thorough search in the parking lot took me the entire hour. Then I began looking in the small patch of woods between the parking lot and the cul-de-sac the combatant ran toward. I spent another hour on the ground and up some of the trees. I did a little quicker search as I headed through the next neighborhood. Within the following hour, I found myself at the edge of the town and I wanted to seek for them in the actual forest until I was certain the money was missing. During my final hour of detective work, I witnessed the Sun jet rays of morning light into the luscious green forest at around 6:30. There was the usual alternating between light columns and shadow columns as I eased through nature’s corridors. At last, I decided that I had failed.
Albeit, the failure did not keep me from thinking that the police did a mediocre job at looking for the lawbreakers because of the reason I was pessimistic about my personal search. In the time they were gone, they could’ve been hundreds, if not, thousands of miles away. Flocks of birds swooped over the houses of South Street during the brisk temperature of the morning, which was very silent. I chose to stop at the police station since I was in close proximity of it anyway. I was hoping that one of the better police officers found something.
I entered the police station to find the only person in the entire town of Pine Grove that liked me, Officer Betty Clements. She actually liked doing her job and she was always enthusiastic over it, which bore the finest service in all of Pine Grove. There wasn’t a single person in the township that didn’t know of her valiant duties. Indeed, she was a sheriff for the county and always used to stick around Brookside Township since she was from Pine Grove, which harbored most of its people. Multiple times had she made headlines on the Port Salmon Press for things she did way out in Pine Grove including a boat chase down the Temperate River and catching a murderer with the help of her German Shepherd, Good Ol’ Barker.
Upon entering the police station, Clements greeted me with a wave before taking her coffee with her into the back. She went behind a pair of doors that led into the room that was in the midst of being repaired after it collapsed in the fire. After a whole night of searching, I couldn’t help but sit on the chair next to me near the belt buckle of the room. Within the blink of an eye, it was 25 minutes later and I heard people talking behind the door. It seemed as if they were arguing about something, though the speech was difficult to discern since there were constant noises of drills and hammers.
Benjamin Hollard finally emerged from the back room with his sunglasses on his face followed by the sergeant.
“Well, what do you want?” Benjamin Hollard asked the moment he saw me.
“Well, did you find the guy fighting Henry Thornton?”
“Yes. He’s in the correctional center in the rear of the building.”
“What about Bill Bishop and his pal?”
“Uh, no, we couldn’t find them.”
The sergeant jumped into the conversation, “We’re still looking, though. Evidence does show that there is a third person involved who is believed to be the mastermind behind the theft. So far, the only troubles have been finding the thieves and,” he gestured a movement with his hands that signaled the fact what he was about to say was obvious, “the identity and location of the mastermind.”
An extremely ominous look struck Hollard’s face, and I figured it meant he would probably take the day off or something similar to that. So, I figured I’d be a nice guy and cut him a break.
“Hey sergeant, how about I help you find the culprits and Hollard can have the day off.”
“Excuse me?” Hollard said while taking off his sunglasses.
“You know,” the sergeant interrupted, “I think you do need the day off. Maybe Travis will bring us some luck in finding the bad guys.”
“Now, wait a minute here!” Hollard started to raise his voice. “I never said that I needed the day off. In fact, I’d rather Travis not to join because he might hold us back.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I spewed, “You don’t even do your job the way it’s supposed to be done. If anything, you’re hindering the sergeant’s detective work. Besides, it’s my money, so I should have a say on whether I look for it or not.”
“It is not your job, anyway,” Hollard started his want-to-be sophisticated rebuttal, “so you don’t have a say on the protocol by which we conduct our search.”
Swiftly, I stormed the police station and ran back toward my apartment. On the way back to the apartment, a promising picture caught the corner of my eye. I turned to confirm my hopes. I was right; it was Bill Bishop, the guy that helped steal my money. Acting casually, I crossed Main Street and hid behind a pine tree as I watched him walk past a small, red house. When there were no cars nearby, I started to follow him. He stopped as if he was about to turn around, so I hid behind a bush. The last thing I needed was to almost have Bill Bishop in custody, only to let him free. I was positive that everyone in town was cognizant of Bishop’s characteristics, which had me flabbergasted. I knew the people of Pine Grove were stupid, but not oblivious. What was ironic was that I watched as a jogger ran past Bishop while simultaneously passing a poster of Bishop that was suspended at eye level. I continued to follow Bill as he was heading in the direction from which I came from. Once he was across the street from the police station, he crossed Main Street. Adjacent to the police station was a small portable toilet. After I crossed the road, I saw Bill knock a certain rhythm on the door of the toilet. Everything stood still for a few brief seconds until he repeated the rhythm onto the door.
Underneath the latch of the door was an “occupied” sign that turned “empty”. Someone inside the toilet opened the door and let Bill in. The Sunny day made it easy for me to see their silhouettes in the portable potty. They were having a quiet discussion, so I moved closer to hear their dialogue.
“Yeah, well George left, he’s on his way to Port Salmon,” Bill stated with something in his hands, “This is yours.”
“That’s it! There should’ve been $1200,” said the mastermind. I instantly recognized the voice as Hollard’s and was so shocked that Hollard was behind the predicament that I stumbled over a garbage can while backing up. Needless to say, it fell with a thundering crash. Immediately, the door was unlocked and Bill walked out saw me. He turned around and started to sprint away.
Getting up, I yelled, “You’re dead, you lowlife!”
As I ran, I was in the middle of bypassing the toilet by a couple of feet, running in the direction the portable toilet’s door faced with a slight angle. Hollard busted out when I was at my conjunction with the toilet, and it didn’t take him much effort to catch up to me and tackle me onto the parking lot asphalt. Before I could scream, he shoved me into the toilet and placed a cloth in my mouth. He then smacked with his bat and at that point, my experience had a void in it.