One son shot by a cop. The other one on death row for attempting to kill a cop. How much more pain can these folks take?
A photograph from James Mitchell, Jr stood on the side of the mantel piece next to a picture of a smiling teenager. She was strikingly beautiful. “That is Ginny, our youngest. She died in a car crash when she was fifteen.”
Hanson gently lifted the frame and looked at the beautiful teen. A mini Emily with James’ smile. Would she have been able to change her brothers’ minds? As if he could read her mind, James told Athena that like Karsten and Jim, Ginny too was mad at her parents. Just like her brothers she had felt an entitlement to an advance on her inheritance. “But I don’t think she would have gone so far as to actually cut us out of her life.”
With a sigh Hanson placed the frame back making sure that it was in exactly the same spot. So Miles really is the only one they have.
She turned to James. “What does the future hold for you guys?” James gestured to the back of the house where loud voices could be heard alongside some construction noises. “Let him work things out with Adam. Hopefully they will be able to reach some understanding so Jessie can meet her Uncle Miles.” And later on Jessie did indeed meet her Uncle Miles.
During one of his therapy sessions, Adam told his counselor that he had sent Athena a present. A crystal tear with the inscription “With Love, Adam.” The pendant symbolized the tears he had shed and by parting with them it signaled the beginning of his recovery.
***
Outgoing Chief Rodney Luc parked in front of the court house. It was a beautifully renovated building. He tipped his hat to his colleagues on duty. “Going up to the fifth floor, boys.”
In the elevator, Luc turned over the envelope he has holding. He had always sworn that he would never make any deals with criminals. However, he didn’t see how else he would be able to make sure that Detective Erica Paul came out of this ordeal without one single scratch. So he had called Zeke & Peeter.
Zeke & Peeter a.k.a. “ZaP Ya” were known for illegally copying live concerts and hitting the black market before the original live concert CD would come out. Nobody knew exactly how they got their equipment in but everyone agreed that their audio was superb. Luc had made contact to see whether they were recording the Benedict Brothers’ concerts in hopes that their cameras and microphones had picked up anything that District Attorneys Chuck Beauregard and Esmeralda de Ville-Port could use in case Karsten Mitchell did indeed file an appeal. So far, all the press announcements were intentions to file but no actual brief had been filed with the courts as of yet. Luc wanted to make sure none ever was.
With a soft ping, the elevator doors opened on floor five to reveal a spacious front lobby for the Vance County District Attorney’s Office. Luc knew his way around these offices and immediately look a left into the hallway and passed the second corridor. He found Beauregard and de Ville-Port in the conference room.
Without a word he handed the envelope to de Ville-Port. She extended her hand and felt the flat square shape of a CD cover inside. The Chief held on a little longer to the envelope than expected. Esmeralda looked the Chief into his eyes. She acknowledged what this had cost him with a soft “thank you, Chief” and shook his hand warmly. Luc gave Chuck a nod, turned, and walked out of the conference room. He didn’t go back to the elevators. Instead he continued down the hall towards the fire exits and walked five floors down. He exited in the parking lot, found his cruiser, and drove back to post.
***
“He saved her right back.” Chuck Beauregard watched the video for the second time. He had to be sure so he intended to watch it at least several times more with the audio on a separate track. The audio was crystal clear. The video was a bit granule but so much sharper than the video from the Vance Stadium security cameras. “Long live their equipment!” was all Esmeralda said. She too was going to watch it several times more and would take notes from everything she saw second by second. Both now knew that they would be able to secure the case forever.
The illegal “Benedict Brothers Live at Vance Stadium” CD from ZaP Ya of course showed the front of the stage. It also showed the frontal images from both Paul and Hanson as they closed in on the stage the night Paul shot Karsten. ZaP Ya ran their equipment 24/7 to be able to give their fans “bonus features.” Running a high quality microphone 24/7 is what saved Paul.
Watching the illegal audio and video with the Stadium’s video simultaneously, they saw Hanson and Paul enter. And they heard Hanson shout “Police! Come out with your hands up!” They clearly saw Karsten emerge from underneath the stage. The audio gave them what they needed. As Paul could be seen turning towards Karsten he faced her and screamed “Die sweetly, you bitch!” while aiming what they now knew was a crossbow straight at Paul’s chest.
Beauregard got up and got rid of his tie. He grabbed a cold water bottle and placed it into his neck. Then he leaned his head back and allowed the water to cool him down. Esmeralda was already watching and listening again. He knew that she would make a timeline. He’d later ask one of the tech guys to integrate the audio with both videos so if needed, they could play the entire scene from the front and from the back in court. Intention to kill a cop. Beat that, Lansing!
***
Luc turned into his reserved parking spot on the side of the building. He would miss this old building almost as much as the people inside. He had cursed it many times and especially Stormy for not allotting more funding to the police department. Vance was growing but Luc’s point about the police department growing proportionately to the population fell into deaf men’s ears with the Mayor and City Council. Cops were not popular so Stormy sided with the postal service and the fire department instead. Everyone loved getting mail and welcomed fire fighters on any scene. He thought his logic was flawless. Hanson would have her hands full. But she could handle it.
Despite feeling extremely sad to leave, Luc felt relieved that he left the department in Hanson’s more than capable hands. Hands that saved him. He admired her integrity and her courage. Lost in thought, he entered the side entrance, punched in his ID key, pushed the doors open, took the elevator to the top floor, exited, and was still busy thinking about his failure when he was hit with a balloon in his face.
“Surprise!!!”
The entire hallway had been transformed into one big party scene. Detectives Aiden Herschel and Sander Schmidt raised their glasses to him. Behind them, evidence room clerk Ally Ellsworth handed a tissue to secretary Deb Brynn who tried to wipe away a tear.
He headed over to Detective Erica Paul first. He gave her a big hug and whispered “I took care of it.” Then he grabbed a glass of champagne, motioned for everyone to be quiet, and simply said “To the Chief!” and signaled to Athena Hanson that the transition period was over.
The End
8: Unhinged
Part 1:
You really suck up everything, don’t you? I was trying very hard to exchange the dust collection bag on my vacuum cleaner without making a mess. I held my breath and squinted to get as little dust as possible in my face while taking down this full bag. It is always easier on TV than it is in reality. The cardboard top never slides down smoothly and when you detach it there is always dust floating out of the bag.
While I was pulling the bag down, a brown spider climbed out. I didn’t expect this so I screamed and dropped the bag on the tiled floor in the mudroom. The beige colouring instantly got a gray layer. I was mad at myself because now I had to vacuum again and possibly mop the floor to make sure that the dust did not get stuck in the grout between the tiles.
The spider went straight for the baseboards and disappeared in a crack in the corner. How the booger fits in there I do not know but he ran straight at the wooden board and did not even slow down before impact. I looked at the spilled dust. There was a screw in there. It was covered with fluff but still shiny. There are red and black painted rings on the cylinder. I pick it up, shake off the fluff, and wal
k out of the mudroom leaving the mess behind.
The screw with its red and black coloured cylinder intrigues me. Where did it come from, where did I suck it up, and most importantly what do those colours mean? I look around. What could possibly have a lot of screws around here? I check tables, chairs, the dinner trolley, and even look underneath the top of the kitchen island that functions as a bar when we entertain. Nothing unscrewed. But something had to be because where else would that screw come from? I am not in the habit of hardware store shopping and do-it-yourself jobs are delegated to my other half who gets to experiment in certain rooms only to avoid that a project takes over the entire house. So maybe I should look there.
The messy mudroom now completely forgotten, I walk downstairs to check the finished and unfinished basements. All the tools are downstairs so it makes sense to start there. The finished basement holds very little to solve my mystery. The tool box is not there and the room looks exactly the way I left it several days ago when I reorganized our shelving system. I always clear out everything when the seasons change to make sure we do not keep non-perishables beyond their expiration date. And then it hits me. Shelving systems.
They were a do-it-yourself project. If one of those shelves was unsafe because it lost a screw it could mean a disaster. We have those shelves with carved out holdings for glasses, wine bottles, and more. My decade long collections of NatGeo Magazines is right underneath the wines. They are stacked at the bottom shelf for stability. I do not even want to think about what could happen to our precious photo-album collections if it got spilled with wine. Yes, that’s right. We still have photo-albums. Shelf after shelf is filled with scrapbooks on which pages I taped in picture after picture with memories about our high school years, old friends, and more. I put the screw down. I will subject the entire room to a meticulous inspection to see if anything was unscrewed.
After two hours I finish checking the room and every corner of every shelf. I am absolutely sure that everything is securely fastened. Our collections are safe and the screws used for the shelving system are not red and black coated. They are plain metal. This means that I have to go into the unfinished basement.
I pick up the screw and stick it into the front pocket of my jeans. My feet don’t want to but I force them towards the door in the corner. That door badly needs a coat or two of paint. The previous owners had panted the door yellow to create some illusion of warmth and sunlight down here. Actually, they had painted every room in this house in a different colour. It had taken us weeks to repaint all the walls to cover up all the pinks, yellows, and Adobe baby blue hues.
The door’s knob is in an awkward place. The previous owners had placed all door handles at kid-friendly heights so aside from repainting the whole house we also re-handled the whole place. Naturally we only did the handles we use on a daily basis. By the time we were done with that we were sick of it so we decided to do other handles or knobs only when the need arises. Funny enough, my other half never complained about this knob when he went downstairs so I never gave it a second thought.
My right arm reaches down to grab the knob. It is really low so I need to lean in to the right. As I do so, my gaze goes to the upper left hand corner of the door. I see a brown spider quickly making its way into the corner where the door frame touches the wooden paneling. Is this booger taking over my home? I shake my head and tell myself that it cannot be the same spider. Relax. But my mind goes into overdrive. If that wasn’t the same spider then I have two boogers in the house and if those boogers are male and female, we’ll be infested in no time. I make a mental note: look for safe indoors insecticide ASAP.
The knob does not turn smoothly. It turns a little but then it hits a ridge and it needs a short, firm upwards jerk to complete the turn. I use my left hand to push the door open. I hate this basement. First, there is the ice cold wet smell of inferior wood that was used to build the basement stairs. Now combine that with old leftover pieces of insulation, the rubbery smell of tires, and the aroma of old paint cans and paint remover. That’s what your nose meets first when you open the door.
But it is the combination with the dark that really gets to me. It isn’t just dark. It is creepy dark. I cannot describe it. It is the dark you see before you pass out, or when you wake up after surgery. You are somewhat awake and regain vison but without any images coming back into focus. I straighten my back and with my left hand I search for the light switch that hangs off to the left near the wall. You can hear the light come on. The flow of electricity is actually audible and it makes a crunchy sounding connection with the bulb. Then the light comes on. It goes from very faint to instant eye-shattering bright. I close my eyes and slowly re-open them again.
I look down to make sure that I do not fall down the wooden stairs. They are unforgiving and since the wood is not treated, you will guaranteed end up with splinters. I go down the stairs turning my feet slightly as the treads are narrow. I turn my body to the right and hold on to the railing but not too tight because that too is untreated. My hand hovers over the round railing and my feet safely take me downstairs.
The temperature difference is about 10 degrees Fahrenheit and I wished I had donned a cardigan before going down. My shoes hit the floor and make that sandy, scratchy sound like when you use sandpaper on a rough surface. I go crunch-crunch through the basement. I have to find out whether there are any projects down here that required colour coded screws.
Who would colour code a screw anyway? Maybe it just means that it needs to be connected with other materials that are also colour-coded red and black. I could see some do-it-yourself projects using that to facilitate putting furniture together or to make sure that you use the right type of screw at the right spot for sturdiness. What other reasons could there be to colour-code a screw? While I think about this I cannot find anything that looks like a work-in-progress. Just the usual junk and items we should have gotten rid of decades ago but instead we moved it from house to house. Wait, if there are no projects here and we didn’t buy any screws than the only explanation is that someone brought the screw into our house!
Maybe it is the cold and the smell and the dark talking but a screw is a swindle so it could be a code to set a con into motion! The red and black could be the code for time, place, partners, and maybe even the type of con to take place.
My head spins into all directions. What had my partner once told me? What he did before we met was in another lifetime and didn’t matter anymore. And since he took that high paying engineering job it never occurred to me that maybe that other lifetime could be filled with things I do not want to know about. I don’t now, do I?
My left hand enters my pocket and finds the screw. I lift it closer to my eyes and pick at the red and black with my long fingernails. I am trying to find out whether it peels and if so, what was used. Was it paint? Marker? Car paint? Nail polish? No, it wasn’t nail polish. It lacks that distinct nose penetrating smell. So car paint? Does that smell different from regular paint? I manage to get flakes off without staining my fingers so marker is out as well. Paint. Red and black paint.
Red and black, in rings on the cylinder part of a screw.
A screw, a swindle, a tell.
The colour-coded screw is a tell.
A tell that someone left here and I wasn’t supposed to find it. Whoever left it didn’t mean for me to find it as I clearly have no clue what it is about. That means that unless my partner was supposed to find it, there is someone else who will come to our house to find it. It occurs to me that since the screw was vacuumed up and my partner never did anything out of the ordinary, he could not have been the intended receiver either! If he was, he would have asked something about finding anything while cleaning. It cannot be him.
We are in danger! Neither my partner nor I are the intended receivers of the coded message that had been laying in our house for I do not know how long. That means that very soon someone will come to our house and look for it.
I fe
el a panic attack coming up. I run towards the basement sliding windows and close them. There is no lock on the sliding window pane so I need something to block the sliding element. I break an old broom on my knees and insert parts of the broom stick in the frame so the windows cannot slide back anymore. Somehow I don’t feel any pain breaking the broom on my leg and I am confident that my jeans will block all splinters from entering my skin. I turn around and my eyes widen in horror. The coal chute!
We always thought of the metal door as quant and a relic of the past. We never thought about securing it from the inside as it didn’t seem wide or high enough to let a grown up through. Aside from that, we have gravel outside the house where the coal chute is and we would hear it if anyone tried to approach the house. Come to think of it, we have gravel along three sides of the house and the front is not accessible without our motion sensors going off. It is the roof!
I sprint up the basement stairs gripping the railing completely forgetting about possible splinters and the narrow treads that do not allow enough room for a whole foot. I try to take the stairs two-at-a-time and get instant punishment as I fall backwards down the stairs. I try to break my fall by gripping the railing. My hand latches on a piece of wood with a huge nail sticking out. I do not even seem to notice and grab that part of the railing. It doesn’t stop my fall but since I wasn’t that high up, the fall isn’t too bad. I quickly get up, check my hand, straighten my hair, get up the stairs again, and kick the door open.
I sprint through the finished basement and up the stairs to the first floor. Thank goodness there are no risks for falling or splinters here. I race to the kitchen where the builders attached another pair of stairs leading to the second floor. This house, a ranch, didn’t originally have a second floor. That was added later when the original owner sold the house to a family with kids. I have to pace myself here. This is a spiral stair case and if you run up too fast and bounce too hard on one tread you feel the entire staircase shaking. On the second floor, I go to the laundry room, grab a ladder, and carry it down the hallway. My heart is beating in my throat but I cannot stop now. I have to know whether someone is trying to get into the house through the roof.