Echoes From Hell
PROLOGUE
It was 4:21 in the morning.
There were the sounds of the city.
The sound of a car glowed off; then a siren faded away. A door opened and shut after that.
Footsteps seemed to rebound through the building.
It was now 4:09.
Inside the apartment B35 those sounds switched through the converged corridor.
While outside two shadowy leg reached the splitting corner from the darkly lobby there was the person crossing the hall.
Two minutes went by, three to go.
Closing now the dark corridor, he began watching intently the numbered doors. He knew it would not be monitored after 6:30. Slowly now he swept his right hand. Even though he could be more active with his movements, but he was sure he did not want to run himself off because too many things could go wrong.
It was now 4:17.
Too quiet, he thought; while he made an examination from left to right, right to left; and then he swept again his right hand. At this instance his face came into a serious look as he passed these apartment's doors. He walked past them slowly, hurtling back and forth his eyes, speeding it by the breathing that he seemed to conclude his last thoughts.
Slightly, a door opened by SOMEONE. He stretched out his left hand and closed it.
As he halted to this slightly sound, he began to walk to the end of the corridor.
It was exactly 4:20. And there was another sound.
He felt something beneath that sound as the lights of the corridor emerged by magic tricks.
He shook his head and swept once more his right hand. A whisper of SOMETHING against the ground made him to halt himself for a couple of seconds. Somewhere a siren shrilled once more in the distance and faded off slowly, almost steeling, through the quieted room.
It was 4:21.
It was at that moment he realized he had finished his delivery.
Saturday, May 17
There was a pleasure to listen.
It was a special pleasure to see things through his ears. To see things that happens if they were seeing by own eyes, and to describe it by such process of mental observation.
It's obvious, and yet when he sensed it to see, he often got so wrapped himself up in intervals that he seemed he just forgot to step back and become a passive observer.
He could hold it as well to replace all these primary senses in a creative way.
Again, oh yes, it's the sound.
A voyeuristic sound; a source of sounds hadn't satisfied his curiosity. Consciously or not, he learned from its extent that the sound had been provided shortly but gradually toward a different hold. Maybe it was not something important, he thought.
He had heard those sounds before. It's a whisper or a cat's noise that was growing more still until he realized it was the sound of someone breathing up the upstairs and then down again. Only then he concluded he was awake.
Somehow he knew that there was something wrong about those sounds.
Now his head straightened up like a snake in dry heat. Being move around, Charlie Cidersson could visualize the access from through the narrow corridor toward the ground-level lobby; but he wanted to avoid it and to 'see' if any of those sounds had to do what he was thinking. He could not, and he told himself it could be a considerably alarm.
He's living in B35, closer enough to 'feel' those who were living there; while he waited for any sound, he asked to himself again what those step-to-step whispers since earlier evening? That's, he thought, if the same tenants were followed some of kind of pattern or they were moving out throughout a sequence of counting or if it were any a kind of precaution routine? He would not have any idea that B36, B37, B33 or B34 any of these people living there he needed to alternate it in such a way.
He knew all of them by names. Their habits, what was the time they woke up and gone. It was unlikely to be so smoothly noise, slightest insistent.
He turned his head now and relocated his ears.
No, there was no sound now. So he demanded himself more attention. The question remained, WHAT WERE THOSE SOUNDS, NOW SO EXPENSIVELY SLOW? There was any possibility that room B37 was doing something extra. Because he was sure a couple of eighty-nine years of age was beyond that.
The Rodrigueses, ranging from a bored, resentful couple, did not demand anything else except to go to sleep. Have they watched TV so late at night?
It had halted him; there was no television in their apartment and with indifference, Charlie Cidersson closed it off.
Room B33 rented by another elderly couple who were living there for more than a century and about ten-thirty they shut themselves to everyone. Room B34 was vacant and it's going to be vacated because the whole floor settled down. Which the Room B36 remains, a woman in her late seventies named Mrs. Arbor. He had not ‘seen’ her since last night; for the last five years she had been knocking to his door to say good night and bring one of those cookies of hers. She was a quite person, with a simple living. So by 10:30 she was in bed. From his position, Charlie wondered:
WHO HAVE BEEN DOING THOSE BRIEF SOUNDS?
If they were not by them, he asked himself by whom?
And then, all had come to a stop, wrapping all up for the night.
It started again, usually made it with a car, below the street. So it carried the wave of ‘inexpensively’ noise
When it was time to hear those sounds again, Charlie Cidersson handled them with indifference. He, too, was a single man, living there, in B35, under the supervision of the morning nurse Elisa, because of his weight problem and because he was a blind man, and because he was unable to go out and see what it was.
Charlie grinned inwardly, damn it!
Holding, unable to turn or move, he heard again the footsteps moving off downstairs. Then a series of indifferent sounds: a cat seemed to jump on the edge of a window nearby. A car's siren was affronted in the distance and it was followed a few minutes later by a silken sound; then a door was opening. There was a whisper, too quiet to be really heard.
There Charlie hung up himself with his own inhibited behavior, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the last words, however, he realized a mixed tune had been intersected with it.
At the last moment, when his heavy body rolled to the right, compressed by the giant pillows, a deviation in such sound was exposed, and then, it was discarded as a door was closed.
The result was a set of waiting.
It never went far enough. And it never ever went away. As long as he peered through his ears, a scream heard. The sound of breathing a tiny chest rose, and then fell stop abruptly.
A day passed.
As morning commuter traffic rumbled over the North Hollywood Moorpark Bridge Freeway above, filled the room through the open window. An unfolded ray of the sun was able to feel Charlie's skin. As one might imagine, he did see different things, all of which end up in his head. Things seemed to stop right there where he was.
And quite suddenly, on one section in the right wing of the building, a scream, confirming what he had observed from his 'see' ears, pushed the morning backward.
“Oh my God! Oh! Somebody has killed Mr. Arbor!”
“Jesus!”
“Call the police! Hurry up! Call the police!”
The place called off.
The corridor isolated when they arrived.
Most of them dressing up as if they were go to an executive meeting. Many cellular phones and many cured faces, with their one-thousand Italian suits, printing up on those faces still framed against the doors, hashed authority.
They had to force them against all meaning. Making it most hashing because it was a weekend day and the people were still on beds and they did not want of being discouraged or to give out any information.
There was, however, the hassle; even their hallmark could not do it any good. Police stinks, tenant said somewhere in the second floor.
Some did as they were unable to control their impulse to take their eyes off from the corridor and from the door.
“Did you see anyone or hear anything else except the snores of your husbands?”
She stared at them, balancing this fume of her eyes.
He did not have any goddamn right to speak me that way, she thought as she closed the door shut.
How dare they could come here and do it, thinking it as a lack of respect, the old man thought after he nodded negatively when the officer moved to the next door.
They went everywhere.
And then the same cold, lunch of attitude and commentary and confusion they had brought up. People seemed afraid. Others were more a compulsion soul than a helper one. After several hours it was resolved to ask with the budge. And there without see it, it might been revealed as he knew that.
The sounds were of some people whose presences were slowly coming to the corridor. Voices mixed up by observation and commentaries. It was the kind of speculation what Charlie felt. Any questions that cropped up were discussed at the corridor, openly.
Who killed Mrs. Arbor, the sweetest lady whose kindness had made him to love her? he thought.
Who killed that poor woman?
When they reached to that conclusion, Martin and Simon crossed again the hall and strode into the ground-level flatting of the corridor, now completely empty, to the second level. After a constant interrogation, none of the tenants had seen or heard anything. “Did you call him?”
Simon asked to his partner, a quieted man in his late forties.
He was looking at the notes and said reluctantly.
“This is not ours, Simon?”
“Yes, I know.”
“It'll be to that nasty, fatty boy called D.D. Bookjor.”
“What you hate so much that guy, huh, Martin?”
“I got there before him and look what they've done? They give him the best of it. Called that asshole?”
He grinned, pumping his yes on him. He did not see any connection at all; but this was Martin, unreadable, mean, kept everybody out of sight of his nasty thoughts. He knew Martin could not fool him. He knew him and it was bad.
Enraged and frustrated for something else besides this job of his, Martin looked at him and nodded. A thirty-two veteran detective, with nothing else he would be proud with just as a past he hated to admit, Martin tempered himself against his own shadow. He was about to step into the room, a voice made him to stop.
“I think the man is coming.”
His eyes shone mysteriously, “It'll be a challenge to that fat man, Simon.”
“It explains why you're still gaping off with him.”
Martin's left-handed fished a cigarette and inserted it into his mouth.
“Not with the possibility to see him down, Simon. I can't hit it, but I don't really think you'd understand.”
“It touches me, Martin,” he said. “That's not my problem. And I see it has come before and I enjoyed the club.” He stared at him, raising into the eyes his worries. “I think it's personal.”
“Perhaps. I'd not regret it,” he sucked his cigarette. “He's a pig. And he'd not know that until he falls on his own fat ass.”
Simon looked he'd be out for good into private life and he did not say anything else. He was usually about Martin's remark, that he always added it. “You're so angry to let it goes, Martin.” He shook his head. “One day you two will kill each other.”
“Yes. This will be not me, I promise that!”
“Strange, Martin, you two were closer friends. Why it has turned so seriously fatal?”
He glanced at him but he didn't answer. His eyes, with directness, had a difference message. “Yeah, I know.”
His body framed the door and watched the corridor.
D.D. Bookjor, oversleeping, walked towards them. He found some excuses for pulling it late, telling them that it will be a fun-to-write tale than being a police officer in this lower neighborhood.
D.D.Bookjor was seven-five, three hundred and eight pounds. He was a fat man, smelling of smoke, of coffee; as he personally handed it who had not attempted to change a bit of it. Knowing his appearance had been underlined before those who hate him most: Martin, he was clever enough to say he didn't give a fuck.
“Something has happened here that I think may be of interesting to your people,” Simon said, who had not seen anything like twenty years of the job, a man such as this D.D. Bookjor, cheating himself, utterly without guilt.
He stopped heavy, his watery eyes on him. He intended after he had watched Martin, to call his attention what they were outside.
“This is part of your job, too.”
“Wrong call, pal.”
“And you people touched nothing?” D.D. Bookjor asked, avoiding any confrontation with Martin.
“We're not fucking rookies, you know, man”
“What freak finger is pushing you off, Martin, tell me, uh? It was just a question and that could make it a difference.”
Martin glared at D.D. Bookjor with that some old look of hate and importance. As his fitness figure straightened up in front of D.D. Bookjor as if he wished to knock down this rotundity and greasy man to the floor.
As for D.D. Bookjor could fell the old bullshit process of standard and the foreboding frustration of this Martin, he understood this asshole of Martin was still the same. He hammered again the question.
Simon answered, “No, D.D. We got the shot from this frame.”
D.D. Bookjor's unclear gray eyes, full of ugliness now, were on him, “We're the same, you know, Simon?”
“Bull,” Martin stepped back, untold, ready to explode.
“What's the fuck, Martin? Cut that shit, will you?”
“Get this straight, man.”
“Ah, fuck off.”
“You prick of shit!”
“Hey, hey, hey, guys! It starts already badly.” Simon looked at him. “D.D.. We are in.”
“Oh fuck, Simon.”
He twisted his face with a grin. There was nothing, through his stare, that made it so ugly indeed. D.D. Bookjor was already about it.
He said, “Make it you way, Martin.”
“Yes, right. As it will be.”
“How she died, Simon?”
“Serve yourself,” Martin crossed, grim violently, waiting.
After a sigh from Simon, he said, “You must look at it, Bookjor. It couldn't describe a simple word.”
“Who discovered the body?”
“She has a nurse and she came every morning to nurse her until two o'clock,” Simon was reading from his note. “That's it.”
“Where is she?”
“She let us all information to reach her.”
Seeing the notes, “Yeah. What the hell.”
“As you see, we're waiting the specialists.”
“Are you people gone?” D.D. Bookjor asked, walking further as they held their breathes as they could smell his.
Martin spoke up, his expression was sharply. “As far as you and I are concerned, yes, we're leaving. Everything is on the notes.”
Strolling footsteps heard downstairs from the lobby getting all tied up with hurry voices while D.D. Bookjor, carefully, steered Martin to one of his purpose.
As he was thinking: why this man hates me so much? He grinned and watched toward the lobby. An unworried team of Medical Police arrived in the corridor and headed to the open door. They nodded toward.
D.D. Bookjor recognized his partner Jo Atlas, who was crossing the corridor until he stopped breathing. He was a medium man, with green eyes and wore a blazer-and-jean combination. Composing his body in an elegant but reflective stillness, he looked at him. “I came fast as I could, D.D. What is all about?”
“As far as I know there is a murder.”
D.D. Bookjor greeted the experts; as one of his men nodded and the assistant medical examiner made a sigh to D.D. Bookjor and moved in. They came up, guided by D.D. Bookjor. The scene was unspeakable neat. I saw everywhere and all seemed in place. Except the middle of the living room; where the furniture had been anchored against the wall, while the body of Mrs. Davis Arbor, a seventy-three-year old retired woman was twittered on the middle of the floor. They were unable to see any clue that could indicate any struggle. But they saw below the chair, quite unique a rose that it could see it was untouched by the extraordinary scenario.
“We're waiting for you guys.”
“Soon, Jo.”
“D.D. Bookjor,” said one of them photographers. “I'd like you step backward and hold yourselves by the edge. I'll take some pictures from that angle.”
“You bet, my man.” Looking below the chair, he said. “And that this too. It seems a flower or something.”
He didn't bother to answer.
D.D. Bookjor stepped aside and handed the Simon's notes to his partner Atlas. “Who's that? Her nurse?”
“Yep.”
“The woman saw the murder?”
“Are you kidding me now, Jo? How this devil soul has wrapped it up and tells she had been seeing him?”
“She might have seen it.”
“I've already been asking that question. She's a poor nurse. And I couldn't put my finger on it but it bothered me.”
“It'll be my turn, huh?”
D.D. Bookjor looked at the assistant medical examiner singled off his suitcase and put it carefully on the table. “How did she die?”
The assistant medical glanced at D.D. Bookjor like a strange creature.
“I don't know yet. Soon I'll tell you, D.D.”
“I know you would.”
“How it will be?” His voice was husky, noticed that the team's expression were grim, stone.
Atlas did not think anything of it could be more that than. Seeing D.D. Bookjor walked heavy toward the limited edge of the scene and stared at them. The photographers were in their middle of shooting. They began to shot the corpse from right to left, examining by D.D. Bookjor.
From now on, everything was smoothly. D.D. Bookjor and Atlas passed to the hall where the plainclothes officers powdered for prints and vacuumed the site for any incidental evidence.
Jo Atlas watched across the narrow hall, looking out of any fresh clues and put down what D.D. Bookjor had told him. He looked at him, “Nothing remarkable. Clean, neat.”
“There'll be something else. I bet you for it.”
“I'll check out while the photographers are doing their job.”
“Don't cross their way.”
“Yes.”
Finishing with a click, he glanced at the doctor, “All is yours.” He turned and hammered his eyes toward D.D. Bookjor. “I had done ir.” The man closed in, putting all cameras into their cases and then moved out. “It'll be a couple hours. You'll have them by noon, D.D.”
“Thank you, Daniel.”
He didn't reply and shut the door behind him.
D. D. Bookjor looked at the assistant medical examiner waiting to begin his job. After finished writing, Atlas walked alert to the living room and stopped. He called one of the detectives over and handed him a notebook, telling him to check out all these names and numbers.
“Let me have the result before noon. Got that, Masa. And tell Ross to check that nurse. Her name is Helen T. Tellez, from General Hospital.”
Slowly he started to move towards the door.
“How it goes, doc?
The assistant medical examiner nodded. “Give me minutes.”
Kurt “Totty” French was a shaggy-haired man. He was tall, bony, with that faceless look and chest put in any tabloid magazine. His eyes were deeply brown as they were fixed on the corpse, around it, wounded off anything that could be essential. Every detail was a major signature. When he finished with the physical aspect of the examination, he stepped back, walked around the body. Seeing to do a psychological analysis of the crime he recognized it was neat, no blood; her body was putting on the middle of the floor, laying across the way of the living room, leading her legs to the exit and the head slightly bounding to the only window. Handing her hands like a cross on her chest, there was a piece of paper but in blank. D.D. Bookjor and Jo Atlas did not try to interrupt him from this observation. This was Medical Examiner's moment and whatever he could bring up from this inspection now would be a great value. How it happened? Have you ever seen this before? No blood. The murder was quite artistic, quite stable., and there was nothing of complication or mess. Even this was a brute crime. Had he seen it some similarities with that crime's mind of the SA Dume Case?
When he turned the body, there was the most devastating thing they've ever seen so far. That was the different between the SA Dume Case and this one. It was that it did not have chest. It was a black hole, cut off at the knuckles of the body. Where was the other part of the body? Several times Totty got up, looked at around him; and then he settled himself aside D.D. Bookjor asking such question. Where was the other half part of the body?
“Half of her body is missing.”
Thoughtfully, D.D. Bookjor glanced at him. But he did not say anything.
After he snapped his bag shut, he dried his face. Every one in the room needed a drink, but it had been blacked out with the unusual thought of this bizarre murder.
D.D. Bookjor thought this murder it's like a piece of meal from any butcher market. The case of SA Dume had been recognized as real. Though they noticed it could some 'copycat', D.D. Bookjor thought also it was just coincidence.
“What do you think?”
“About the time, you mean?”
“Hum. Hum.”
The young man looked at the corpse and then glanced down at his wristwatch. “I'd say that she was killed between one and one thirty. Certainly, I say not before that. The killer has to have plenty of time to dry her body and rise off that part which misses from her. As you see, she was five-seven. I'll be more specific after the postmortem. Perhaps Riss will do it.”
“Half body is missed from head to toe.”
“Yes. Speculation. The killer might have killed her instantaneously from behind. Drying off her blood, very carefully and cut off her body with an extreme sharp, short knife, like those butchers have. See...”
They stared at the clean sharp cuts.
“There's not twist, even being able to cut off the bones of her head within any deformation or damage. He has come here earlier, doing his job without any interruption.”
“Has he used a saw or something?”
“It could be no doubt he used a saw.”
“If it have been, then Martin and Simon said any neighbors did not hear anything. How about that?”
“It could be one of those handling instrument.”
“But the most I looked at it, in second thoughts, I've the impression on how he has operated it. Look, let me show you how he did this.” He looked at the dead woman's body, fleshing off, forcing the rest of the body with his hand. “See, he has not cut off the bones like a piece of pig, but he disjointed them. While some of them they have been cutting off from its roots. Imagine having to watch a butcher opening a cow. He is carefully not to hurt any important vessel or important vein or organs even she was dead!” He hesitated as he glanced under the body. “There is a doubt.”
“What it is?”
The assistant medical examiner gave a sad look at D.D. Bookjor and then said, “I think she was still alive but she was unconscious during a period of twenty minutes or so.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“I am not quite sure.”
“What kind of man could do such thing, man?”
“He was a man who has enjoyed all the way on doing this. Young, with incredible credibility in knowing the body of a human being or those lonely, old man whose past is just hide of his own personality to hurt people. Who know ...”
D.D. Bookjor eyed at Kurt Totty's report on the explanation sent by the doctor at duty who signed himself below of it.
The lab had discovered no points, no hurt wounds that could dismiss what Kurt had told. Unless the cuts had been quite artistically correct as a man who had some knowledge on the medical's field. The lab had discovery she was alive and died thirty minutes before the killers started to cut her body off.
D.D. Bookjor took a time to look his personal notes, steamed on it his watery eyes and underlined some items. From Martin's notebook, he revised what he had wrote anxiously about the tenants of 1931 Moorpark Building. No one had seen or heard anything. And it was confirmed by a dozen of detectives who were rushed to the scene. That's impossible, he thought.
He went up to one of the photos again. He shook his head as Jo Atlas strode on walking among the desks and chairs. He came out into the square hall and looked at D.D. Bookjor and gave him a rotten smile.
“After he has checked it, I wanted to be sure to give you the real stuff.”
“Good thought, Jo. So what is it them?”
“All those people are from a Community Recreation Center.”
He took a seat and leaned back against the cushion.
“But this address like those letters and this small book is missed one page.”
“Nothing we could to do about to retrieve them?”
“I'm working on it.”
“All right. Has Pascual finished her background?”
“He's starting to dig on it, D.D.”
“I'd like make another check through those tenants. Mainly closer to her.”
“You heard Martin.”
“It's not enough, Jo. There must be one who has seen it or heard something.”
“Do you like to make it myself?”
“No. Send five family goohearted fellows and give a reward card to each one of them to go to Disneyland Fantasy land, will you. And you, make her background available ASAP!”
“I'll sweat on it. Don't worry.”
D.D. Bookjor moved his butt around the chair and took a look toward his package cigarette and grasped one. He needed one. But he halted, giving an evasive respond to that wish and Jo's face expression. “Jo --”
The man looked at him. “Could you check also if there was any delivery?”
“Delivery? What kind of delivery?”
“Newspaperman. Ask anyone in the section. If there was any delivery that day, I can do it.”
“I'll take it personal.
“And then,” he glanced down at his own notes and three question marks emerged from it. And without know what was going on if that happen, he said. “Check this SA Dume Case, just in case.”
“Don't you think that stupid bastard has to do with this one? Come on, D.D.!”
“It has been a long time. But I want to be sure of that.”
“I'll take care of these.”
“Thank you.”
There was a momentum of curiosity and the things went on.
The alteration of the room very soon completed and her face glowed with a define lines of joy. She was very much prompted to this to get back to the other job that was waiting for her.
The nurse left the bedroom, moved to the kitchen and brought his hot cup of tea, saying if he needed anything else. “Oh no, Miss Sagges. Thank you.”
“You must decide if you will stay, dear Cidersson. This neighborhood has recently become very depressed.”
He tried to watch her through his dead eyes. During his conversation since Arbor's death, he was still thinking this was his place. “You see what happened to Mrs. Arbor. Poor creature!”
“It could not dictate me, good woman.”
The nurse made another round to the kitchen and reached her white jacket and put it on.
A knock on the door made her to stop what she was doing and turned her head. “It will be the same policeman. I guess they won't give up so easy after you talk with them, Charlie. Without much conviction what you've told me.”
“Did you tell I'm a poor blind man, holding nothing? Just a miraculously body off the ground I should say.”
“I'll see.”
She gained the small hall and opened the door. “Yes?”
“I'm Jo Atlas,” he produced his ID. “I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about what happened last night.”
“I'm just a nurse of Charlie Cidersson. He's who living here. But as I told the officer he didn’t want to speak for anyone. He's a sick man.”
“Can I see him?”
“Would you mind to leave a phone number? He needs to rest --”
“It's terrible important and it won't be long.”
“Wait, please.”
She closed the door and spotted before Cidersson. “I don't mind to talk to him or anyone. As I told you, Ms. Sagges, it’s alright.”
“Among them you still thinking of it.”
“Oh please.”
“You've said...Well, this is more insistent.”
“I said no. Go now.”
Having returned in front of Jo Atlas, she flapped her eyes on him.
“I'm sorry.”
And she shut the door close.
D.D. Bookjor was sitting surrounded by reports and notes.
He thought of Charlie Cidersson -- apartment B35. Blind and fat as he was, he had a little pity towards that man. But a monstrous crime had been committed in front of his door and he had to speak to him.
When he had apart the name of Charlie Cidersson, he lifted a note with another name. “Could you tell me who that Sheldon is?”
“He's a relative of the victim. His full name is Erick Sheldon, a computer student in Cal University. 27 years old, single. He's a full time worker in Tech Incorporation. What's up?”
“Have you checked him out?”
“A dozen of witness would testify that he was there in the billiard table that day in West Los Angeles.”
“He's the only one so far.” He read another report. With red letters one could read SA DUME CASE, 1986. “Have we had everything about this?”
“Yes. Of course. As you see, that sick bastard died five years ago in a hospital located in Rockville. Cause of his death, he killed himself. All these information is the pink folio.”
D.D. Bookjor remained quiet for a while, thinking to go over this matter later on. “Alright, Jo, alright. Now, listen, we've to stick with that young man named Erick. So he is the only one we got.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I do think to call him up and ask a couple of questions.”
“Tell you, D.D. He wasn't surprise or amusement what happened. It has been more than five years he didn't call or visit her grandmother.”
“Trying to get it into your head, friend. She still have a great lifesaver.” He picked up a report from insurance company and swept it around his face. “Always it happens.”
“Yes,” he examined the insurance report. “He seems he didn't care. He works and studying. He seems, you know, happy what he is doing so far with his lide.”
“What about his mother? Or Father? Or sister? Or brothers?”
“He is alone in this world. All died when their home was burnt down.”
D. D. Bookjor wished to concentrate in that particular point. When he had sat his thoughts now on the young man and what Kurt Totty had said earlier the man had to know the body of human being and known how the medical field. Erick Sheldon was not a medical student but a computer student. Does it make a difference? he thought.
Jo Atlas gave D. D. Bookjor his data: friends, hobby, which had to do out of medical field but just cartoon, a passion for billiard and a routine like an addict.
“Have you located the delivery boy?”
“Yes. He understood it and he'll come around seven. He has two jobs.”
D. D. Bookjor glanced down his wristwatch. It will be five-ten. He had plenty of time. “I can wait, Jo.”
“I got him on a close surveillance.”
“Oh that's nice.” Under high-arched fatty eyebrows, his eyes seemed smaller. As his fat ass stormed up from the chair and rounded heavy around the table and chair “We must to talk with the newspaperman and this young man Sheldon.”
“But you've said, you'd like to have a chat with that blind man.”
“Yes. I don't know how it'll come up, Jo. I've several points that I like to see it for myself. From there, I'll have a clear picture what I'd do next. How does the young look like?”
“Calm, self-endured, certainly he shows intelligence. And he serves himself as a skilled man in computer.”
“Such notorious qualities have to be pulled off. Don't you think?”
“Somehow. Do you think he might have screwed her off?”
“I haven't any idea.” When he passed before Janet's desk, he stopped and asked. “Are you busy, dear friend?”
“Not quite what you have in mind.”
“Just a couple of things. Do you mind to find this record and this?”
“No. I don't mind.”
D. D. Bookjor moved around and headed to the parking lot.
“You're still in doubt, uh?”
“I am, Jo. This characteristic of this case and the Dume Case both of them seemed to cross in my head and in the way this has come up. It makes me to think oppose.”
“I hope you are alright. It'll be a lot of noise.”
“The main point still,” he said. “Such terrible way, I would hide inside myself.”
They walked back across the Magnolia flipped club. There were a few people outside smoking cigarettes. D. D. Bookjor closed his eyes and passed almost blindly among them.
The place was almost crowd. By six o'clock all the tables were taken and the aisles behind the bars were occupied with all kind of personalities and commentaries. Along the corridor, a good looking white young man was seated around a table. Jo made a sigh to a plaint cloth who retired across the hall and the bar's chairs.
The young man was drinking a Diet Coke. He did not bother hiding his smile when he recognized Jo Atlas. He wrangled himself so that fat man he faced could occupy the vacant seat.
“Hi! Who's your friend? Some of the kind?”
D.D. Bookjor looked at him. He was a joyable boy carried his personality to a level of self-examination. And he could not believe this handsome champ could kill Mrs. Arbor, his own grandmother and done that terrible design with her body. For a chance like that, D. D. Bookjor controlled himself as he bent down to nest his plumped back on the chair. He took a long way to seat straight up and to glance at the boy.
“You're probably very busy, Mr--” he said. “And there's no telling who has the blame. So I'll be short and brief about this gentleman. I didn't kill her and I didn't care any of it. As they have told here about your friend Mr. Atlas, I believe could transplants.”
Jo Atlas glanced at D. D. Bookjor.
As the man said, “I couldn't say, young man. After I tested it by myself,” he stared at him. “But what is it that's worry you in telling me it?”
“It's hard to say, Mr --”
“D.D. Bookjor, he said. “Detective Bookjor.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bookjor. I've noticed that's the second times your people came to see me and I heard them started to inquiry among my friends. A matter of fact, I've buds behind --”
“My question is precisely as you'd told. Have you ever given anyone advice to this explanation.”
“What should I? They see me here and around the school or my job. They've their own eyes and minds, Mr. Bookjor.”
“In other words, all that time you're around them. From time to time, or visible enough, there was the feal. Or you've told them about your time?”
“Just enough to meet my visibility as it required by the lawmen like you, Mr. Bookjor.”
“Did you like read, Mr. Sheldon?”
“Yes, lots. And I don't quite know how to put this. My lecture does not have anything to do with it. I hate mysteries, and I'm more in things that works. Numbers!”
“Naturally. If anything isn't belong to you, of course. I'll sport it at once. Believed me.”
“Well, gentlemen, my game is starting...”
“Have you any girlfriend by chance, may I ask?”
A slow-arched eyebrow his eyes were on him.
“Of course not, Mr. Bookjor. No, I don't have. But you don't fake it by a wrong side. I like girls. And I fucked lots of bitches.”
“Do you keep any books or something else in your apartment?”
“That's silly.” He smiled and stared at him. “As I told her to your partner, you're welcome to dig in. Would you excuse me.”
You are welcome to dig in. The voice of the young man was still echoing inside of him. These were young people, so open, friendly perhaps, and intelligent. However, they are so dominated to do anything to get attention, he thought. You couldn't even have them to do the same image. D. D. Bookjor knew it was a challenge. Among them, however, there was also anger. A psychological fact that makes so damage so causative factor to anything, convulsive or pre-traumatic that was not matter, whatever it was.
“Check out that accident of his parents, Jo. And I want you to emphasize more respect this accident and his relationship among those friends of his.”
“Have you come with something?”
“I should explain, first of all, that I've a doubt. And the same time, I can't manage what it is. There is something does not fix very well. Perhaps, after you have those details, I can have it before me.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying that accident has to do what happened with her?”
“It's hard to say, Jo. At least two times in the pst three hours, I was unchallengeable to it. But -- as I saw him there, so convinced...”
“I told you how self-endured he was.”
“Yes, yes.”
“It will be easy then to be more vulnerable?”
“I don't know.” He watched through the window. “Drop me off where the newspaperman lives.”
It was difficult for her to conceal her surprise to see such voluminous man in front of the door. The woman made it impossible to hide the disgusting expression of her face and then the pumping smell of D. D. Bookjor was steaming up.
“Wait a moment, please.”
Inside the house, she held eyes on a short man watching TV.
“It's for you. The fat man is here to see you.”
Clay, a complicated man with two jobs, wondered if anyone had bothered to bring another beer.
“Where is the beer?”
“No way!” she said. “You told me one. And besides that was the last.”
He gave a look at his wife and stood up, stretched out his thin body and walked to the door. He knew there was no reason for him to come here. He had left the phone after waiting for hours at the Police Station.
The people are nut, he thought. Bastard!
D. D. Bookjor begun to explain his business as he halted breathless. It turned to be ugly, repulsive.
Clay looked at him; his wife was all right. He was a fat man. “Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you, Mr. Clay.”
He plunged into the house and looked for an armchair. He pushed himself and took a seat. The armchair suffered threat as D. D. Bookjor's right hand dried up his sweat and swallowed face. “I presume you're Mr. Bookjor?”
“Yes. I am.” He grinned. “So tell me Mr. Clay, did you have any delivery on 1931 Moorpark Building, around 4:18 or 4:20?”
“Yes. Before that, I mean, every day. That's part of my second job. I've five kids, you know.”
D. D. Bookjor looked around as he seemed to hope to have a glimpse of those children. There was none. “Was the time correct? I mean, what time it was exactly?”
“It's about 4:20 0r 4:21.”
“Have you seen anyone around at that time coming in and out?”
“You hoped I'll be as an alert as I was when I delivered those papers? Not quite, Mr. Boojor --”
“Mr. Bookjor.”
“Oh sorry.” He glanced at him attentively now. “What I was trying say...It not quite simple. I didn't see anyone.”
“Can you tell me -?”
“Who could possibly did it? What I seen or heard? I don't know --”
“Could you not remember anything at all?”
“Well,” Alvi Clay looked at him. He was thinking. “I didn't recall exactly. Just the sound of that night. It had been so quiet --”
“Nothing unusual, Mr. Clay. Can you remember anyhow anything else about that sound? I would be grateful if you remembered it, Mr. Clay?”
The man continued to stare at him but something through his mind had begun to glow up. He did not see anything, but the sorts of odds and sounds, ignoring by the stars. So far as he was remembering nothing important like that opens door and then silence? The light? When it was off and on? That happened in those old buildings. What so important about these and that?
“Well, maybe it was nothing. But there was something else about the lights of the corridor. Not to mention, that quicken open door --”
“Yes, please. Go on --”
“Well, you see. On that part from the empty stretching floor, the corridor was dark. It was just for a few minutes. The scary thing was, I knew it was not dark. Suddenly, the light went off and then on. As I said, it was for a few minutes.”
“Mind you to remember what happened with that closeness sound of the door?”
“There were sounds. Like, well, I don't know, but they were sounds, a kind of sound leaving off. I need you to insure and tell you there I did really not see anything else.”
At the moment, he would have found it hard to say what he really felt about that sound. There was no doubt that he might have heard the whole thing up through the night's sounds. It might have been the quieted night.
At any rate, he would check it personally.
When he left the house of the delivery Alvi Clay, he began to look for the manager of 1931 Moorpark Building. It was almost possible to deny what he had heard.
“I'd say no. There's the guard who could verify this, Mr. Bookjor. The corridor was lighted up when he arrived at 6:30.”
“It must be not.”
“I keep getting weird for the whole thing, detective,” the landlord said. “I'm sorry.”
“Thank you.”
When D. D. Bookjor walked to the lobby, he looked up to find out the door of B35 and B36, as well as B37. Every door seemed to face each of them. Occasionally one could make a remark that the same doors seemed adjoint along the wall.
He kept an eye on its frame while he climbed up. As usual, he had stopped to gain air. When he knocked on the door, the nurse opened the door.
“He's expecting you.”
D.D. Bookjor could not understood. “Perdon me, Miss?”
“I meant he's waiting for you. Please, come in.”
He did not ressure by the thoughts that someone else was waiting for him even without announcment his arrival. The detective nodded and stepped in. Following her to the hall she indicated a chair. In front of him was an open room. Chairlie Cidersson was half lied on the bed.
D.D. Bookjor stared at his empty eyes of his.
“How did you know that?”
Charlie Cidersson moved on the bed and he nodded at D. D. Bookjor as though, with such nodding he was invited him to take a seat.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
He looked down at a chair and his chubby back crashed slowly on it. D. D. Bookjor had noticed this man in front of him was bigger than him as he studied him attentively. He was thinking he will sense the confrontation Charlie Cidersson's suffering.
As she appeared from the kitchen room, Cidersson's nurse given the cup of coffee.
He cleared his throat. “Something has happened in front of your apartment that I think might be you heard or --?
“I can't see, Mr. Bookjor. It will nit help me to generate my feelings of insecurity.”
“Well, yes, sorry. In same way, it should not be too bad. “
“Of course it is. I believed as I felt it.”
“Have you heard anthing then that could be important?”
“I heard something, yes.”
D.D. Bookjor became rigid. His double flesh of his neck seemed to grow more. Looking at him straight up into his empty eyes, he said. “Can you tell me what it was, Mr. Cidersson?”
“I don;t know yet,” he replied slowly, thinking.
“I'll give it up thinking of you wanted it, Mr. Bookjor. But in this way was heard.”
“I'm listening, Mr. Cidersson.”
“Yes, I know.” He paused. “It has been pressed against my brain. At about this morning I recognized one those sounds. They were not familiar to me. I did not think anything else of it and went into myself to put more attention to it. When I sensed it, there was another sound, I wondered if anyone has bothered to walk back and forth. It could be the newspaperman, I thought at that time....But it was something different.”
“You must have awaked up earlier, Mr. Cidersson.”
“Perhaps. But it had come up and held. I knew it was the newspaperman delivered the papers. Should I say was there something else before it?”
D. D. Bookjor checked his notebook and said, “Could you be more specific?”
“In same way, yes, I could. But tell me, Mr. Cidersson, how she died?”
It was a confidential matter. A police work that till on investigation. Not even a hint of hesitation across on D. D. Bookjor's face had halted to it when he glanced at him. He gave him a brief description of her death and told him he was all right about the newspaperman and the time.
“Can you tell me the cause of death? How it was?”
“Mutilation. Half body has been removed from head to toes. No blood, everything was clear and neat. I'd be able to tell you for certain after that; he was all the time across the hall doing his job, Mr. Cidersson.”
A shivering, cold wind shook off Charlie Cidersson's soul, but there was nothing else that he kept listening calmly the last words of D. D. Bookjor.
“Yes, it was he.”
“Who he?”
“The last sounds of his. As he was moving something else and the rest it was just what I experienced. After that, about 4:21 or 4:22 when the newspaperman walked across the corridor, he was gone.”
“How it could be? I meant how you're so sure?”
“I cannot describe it, Mr. Bookjor. But I picked it up because there was a gap between the whisper, a radio's sound and him. After that, a car's sound was leaving ten minutes before the newspaperman had passed in front my door.”
“Can you?”
“Yes, I can. The more usually is how happened. It's hard to tell by all this sudden revival of listening; but I heard it on my way.”
D. D. Bookjor was interested. Recalling when he was a kid, he recognized the footsteps of his mother when he was smoking cigarette in the toilet and the step-by-step of his father did through the stony driveway. How it could be possible? Just the way he had learned it through those moment of alerting.
He stood. After he smoothed his steps and moved forward in the end of the hall. There's no hesitation from Charlie.
“Are you leaving, Mr. Bookjor?”
And what made it seemed more amusement that he had done not step firmly on the floor. He walked ten feet and said: “Excuse me, Mr. Cidersson.”
“That's quite all right, Mr. Bookjor.”
Bookjor noticed Charlie rolled on the bed as he was moving around. He thought it and asked, “Can you help me if I put you at the same position?”
Charlie Cidersson remained silent for a few minutes. It might be as simple as a mental picture of sounds in finding such patterns among a few people who, as he was quite sure, it would be the last test.
Could be it a transient moment? Could that sound be graped up by what he had heard before and happened?
D. D. Bookjor was tensed, watching him.
“Get them moving across the corridor; I think I can pick up the man who killed Mrs. Arbor!”
Sunday, May 18
“There are gaps between it, and you know it, Mr. Bookjor. It'll be quite extraordinary to jest it off and told that kid after that. Have you known the difference?”
Bookjor's boss Lawerence Bachman, Jr. a tennis-player, red bear, with lazy hair around his eyes and mouth, fumed up before D.D. Bookjor's proposal.
“No one knows but us and my partner. I need the warranty to search his apartment.”
“You must have been out again, Mr. Bookjor. I know you, man, you're the best cop in this department, and soon, I'll step out and you can have it. Don't blow it, please.”
“Don't need any stick post, sir. I'm sorry. What I need is your signature.”
“Listen, Bookjor. None that I've seen already on the report makes sense to lead to that kid.”
“Sir --”
“Are you telling me the truth, man?”
“Doesn't leave much to work it?” D.D.Bookjor said, moving his heavy stomach up-and-down with a protective reaction inside his eyes. “And they could hear others say otherwise.”
“Nobody has said anything about you. I believe it does not have anything to hold on it. Mr. Bookjor --”
“Yes?”
“If you are talking about Martin and his associate there was a moment recognizatiomn.”
D.D. Bookjor stood up calmly after looking at him. He was sorry for those assholes who would like to see him down. But he was more aware of the authority and discipline that one could not take it from him. No matter could happen, he will get that dammed warranty. He could feel that kid had not to do with that murder. But there was something else that bothered him.
D.D. Bookjor turned to leave.
“Mr. Bookjor --”
The man halted. Slowly he turned toward his boss. His eyes scanned his face; then he said: “All my whole life I've been walking on the edge and some sort of wearing masks have been my authenticity as a human being. But I try to pull myself from that hole, shaping my fat presence and be 'normal' again. At least around you or those people who are still loving me as I am. You see. I can't, and the only I can do best, is this, resolve murders, take bad guys from the streets, and keep seeing myself as an ugly, hasty human being...”
The boss did not know it would come. All what he had said was truth. They were few who could not want to work with him. And there was no doubt, he was one of his kind. “Well, maybe.” The boss opened the drawer's door and put on a piece of paper in front of him. “They'll kick my ass if they find out.”
“It's possible.”
“I hope you know what are you doing.”
Five minutes later Martin walked into the square and stopped by the edge of the hall, sending a disgust look over D.D. Bookjor sitting behind the desk.
Simon said something and turned, “I'll catch you later on, Simon?”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“No. I'm just wanting to talk with the fat boy.”
Simon shook his head, nodded at D.D. Bookjor as though, with this appearance, he'd become hard to know what he was thinking as he disappeared through the converged corridor.
Martin headed to the end of the square and rounded around the chairs and stopped a few feet from D. D. Bookjor's desk. “I heard you have you man.”
D.D. Bookjor's eyes went slowly up to Martin's face. His expression was grim. “You always enjoy my productive desire, Martin. But I'd like to tell you I'm not running for office, man.”
“Sometime last month, you've hate this job and wanted to run for office. When I said so --”
“That's a bad joke, man. You know me better than anyone in this jungle by doing that.”
“I don't believe a bit of it, okay? Burke has made it officially in.”
“Without my concern, we make it.”
“Bull, man.”
The atmosphere between the two men glowed slowly quite some officers from their desks watching them.
“That's all about. Tell me, eh?” Bookjor said.
“You just watch me, D. D. Bookjor. This is a tiny world! Say as little as possible, this can be a victory to both of you -- or fail to shape you two into hell,” Martin straightened up his body, pointing out him and said huskily. “Remember the SA Dume Case, hum? They dropped me from it because of you. I'd see it, honey boy. As you see, I'm still young.”
“I guess I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about and what you are becoming, Martin. I'm just feel sorry about you.”
He grinned, fixed his suit and walked away from the desk, “Go to hell, fatboy.”
Jo Atlas carried several files and stopped. He saw that hardness of D. D. Bookjor's face and that expression from Martin's eyes sharply toward him.
“What happen now?”
“What you already know, Jo. This bastard is sick, tell you.”
“Yeah. He's still pissed off from that Dume Case.”
“Forget it. I got the signed paper.”
“I didn't doubt about it. That Burker talks too much and he's a whisper sonofbitch sucker.”
Smiling, “He is.”
“...Not wonder he wants to be a player.”
“Let get this straight, should we?”
“I'm ready.”
“First, what did you find out?”
“Well, boss, there's no way to needle this kid. Except, what you've that I do not know. So, I watched him all the time and he didn't miss one of these follow routine: 5:00, gym; 6:30 shower; 7:30 work; 3:30 home: 4:00 jogging; 5:30 returning from jogging; 6:16 school; 9:30/9:40 club/billiard' 11:30 bedtime...By the way, I left Mark and Ernest in post.”
“I see it. It's a very finding. But I've a new approach. Read it to me, will you?”
“Well, we know she's been windowed for fourteen years. She lived alone in the same apartment and neighborhood, and she had a daughter, Merriam, who was the mother of Sheldon. With a package of insurance that's worth more than two millions, it appear she had the reaon.
.”
D.D. Bookjor revised his notes. “I got that.”
“According to the nurse named Ms. Robyna who was the caller and who found the body, which I verified through her friends, he hardly ever seen her after the accident of her mother.”
“That's about five years ago?”
“Correct.”
“Now, what can you tell me about that accident?'
Jo Atlas found several sheets, reports and letters found some of them in Mrs. Arbor's possession. “The old lady never had approved her marriage with Sheldon's father. Because he was an excon, with whom Merrian had knew him through letters written by him from the prison. It was this correspondence that end into marriage. A matter of fact, that was the man Martin had booked him up and accused him for suspicious of killing that seven woman. That was the SA Dume Case --”
Jo found an envelope on the desk with a note inside from the court file and asked him to look at it.
“He's the wrong man. And that's when you took over and promised him to clear his name.”
“Thanks for it, Jo.”
“You told me to look for any angle of it and you got it, boss. And there is more,” he glanced down and picked up several sheets.” It's something you just made up because he screwed up by killing that guy there in prison. That came up it was for defense himself.”
“But as the previous court records had indicated he was an error.”
D. D. Bookjor put a hand on the envelope.
“It was a strange case, Jo. But as neat as a needle it was the first time it had seemed I suggest to myself to be careful later on. Now this --”
“That's a good job, D. D. Bookjor.”
“Thank you, Jo. Okay. I've got it. So I'm underlining it.” He considered it for a while after it had passed to the next question. “All right, Jo. Was it then when Mrs. Arbor broken her relationship with daughter?”
He picked up a letter. “This letter was written by her mother and stated, “'I should take that disturbance elsewhere unless if you decide to get marriage with that criminal called Erick Sheldon.'“
“But Merrian won't break that relationship?”
“No. Those letters kept saying the same.”
“I pressume it was the end.”
“More of it, yes. And she was pregnant.”
“I'm reading this struggle.” D.D. finished and looked at Jo Atlass. “Did you see any connection?”
“Sort of it, but I don't put a finger on it.”
“Yes, of course. I can see it, Jo. I can see it. Revenge does not have face but soul, twisting after it exploded.”
“Had she told it to that kid about her own mother?”
“Probably. She must. And beside she was pregnant and then, nothing she got what she has dreamed for.”
“As far as I'm digging it, Bookjor, she did not have anything. No check account, no insurance, nothing. And after her husband got out of the prison, he was a bad shape to get job after that accusation.”
“How gone?”
“It's amazement how this kid has survived. He must be doing it for God's grace.”
“What about the fire?”
“It's a tragic. A terrible accident,” Jo Atlas putting before him several reports from Fire Department Unit Investigation and a close file by the city officials. “And I'll tell you more, Erick Sheldon, Jr., his own son, opened a file, in which he had accused his own grandmother in doing it. “
D.D. Bookjor considered it for a long moment while a double thoughts bulging in. He had already minded over the matter and he found himself running through a bar of maze before this young's mind. He tipped his plumped fingers on the surface of the desk.
Could be there a psychological factor that he did not see yet? Some stories narrated by a mother in pain, detached from her mother herself, and gradually glowing indifferent, had always a great effect later on? D.D. Bookjor didn't know what to say. This problem is deepest than a police matter, he thought. Or this is right there in front of me?
As revenge or a problem of infancy, actually they did not emerge until the individual becomes more aware of what is going on, he wondered. That happened to him when he began to gain weight; then, to smoke, so long as it was hiding from himself what was really going on. Was it what usually happened to Erick Sheldon, Jr?
“We take him, Jo,” D. D. Bookjor said suddenly. “There's not going to be a chance but to see his reaction. He's very smart. Or he has told us the real truth?”
The phone lines flicked on and D. D. Bookjor picked it up. The voice of Janet, portraying as a sitting queen in her desk had done through it.
“I've what you need. Would you like me to hand it over?”
“I'm going to my way of your desk.”
He hung up. When they switched back and forth into the corridor, the woman smiled to him. Her face was stained through it. “I hope you know what you are doing. I'll be a tomb if they ask me.”
“Thank you, Ms. Huston. You always will be an angel.”
He took it from her hand and put inside the pocket. With the weight what he had asked for, he would not like that could be an option. Or a sudden mistake what he had paneled in a remark against the young Erick Sheldon and what he was thinking to pull off.
But the truth it is just a difficult path to go through, he thought.
There, however, beneath it, D. D. Bookjor doubted once. It grew more complex, more aback. “Did you think he has done it?” Jo asked when they had crossed the parking lot.
“I shouldn't say it, but all run against him.”
He glanced down at his watch and sped ahead through the glow shadows of the park. It was 3:29. A few joggers were seen running around the square. Some were sitting; other stretching themselves.
Erick Sheldon turned on the corner and sped up once more. His legs kicked firmly on the pavement; perfect movement. All his muscles were physically smooth. Body and soul, liking the tightness made toward a perfect heal. About the way his breathe bursting freely out from his mouth.
Before he reached the going-on sidewalk, he stopped. He took off his black glasses and noticed they were there, waiting for him.
“Finally you got what you dreamed of, Mr. Bookjor.”
Jo Atlas rose up from the porch and showed the warranty to him.
“We got it.”
“Oh please, gentlemen! Gentlemen, you got all the trouble to have it? If you two have said it, I could give it green light, dear officers!”
He opened the unlocked door and turned to D.D. Bookjor, heavy and sweating, moved in. He took off his shirt and threw it on an armchair and remained there, a fringed position, in the middle of the floor.
“All is yours --”
“No, Mr. Sheldon. We've changed our mind.”
The young man glanced at D. D. Bookjor. “What do you mean?”
“We take you in. Mr. Atlas here will tell your rights. Have you a lawyer to call him up?”
“I don't need any lawmen, Mr. Bookjor,” he said.
D. D. Bookjor could still see he's looking up at him; his eyes glowing with nerve workship.
When they jailed him, D. D. Bookjor didn't know exactly what was inside the young man's mind. He uncooked all his fear, however, there was any personal interest that I could hold on.
Erick Sheldon did not admit that he had hated his grandmother. Actually he shuddered against it. When the news had arrived to him, “Did you kill her?”
The young man looked at him across the table. He didn't see those fiery eyes as before. His feelings were plain enough blocked by this turn of it.
“That's not matter. Overlooking it, you'll find all the evidences that I did. Do I have another choice but to kill her for you?”
“Did you kill her?”
“As far as we know, Mr. Bookjor, that's correct between us, except that I've witness.”
“Don't you care, do you?”
“I'm still holding my hatred what she did to my Ma, and there is something, or perhaps, you won't want to know. Hatred creates path over us that we don't know sometimes where it heads us while envy creates us a monstrous, Mr. Bookjor. All is possible.”
Monday, May 19
He shut his eyes. Hate. envy.
They did not look the same; but they brought up the same result: destruction, to kill. It was once of those days when the whole department had loved him more openly. He was the hero, the handsome guy from Arizona, still innocent, who had created the dilemma between Martin and him. He was not doubt he was smarter than Martin. He was smartest; Martin was the tricky one, the hateful fellow. Soon it had changed with particular case. An error that would desolate them forever: the SA Dume Case.
It was one of those days when men throttled apart.
He was not as he was now. Like Martin; ke was the same picture of D. D. Bookjor: fat, always influenced by liquors and unlucky with women and people. Was then the point of hating and changing? The payoff of being part of this envy?
D.D. Bookjor opened his eyes. He didn't mind lending it to the end.
No matter what it was the point of that hate-envy relationship they were talking about, he was an investigator, a detective.
He nodded slowly to this notion and drunk from the bottle, even it was ten o'clock of the morning. When he walked to the bath and looked at himself through the mirror. All his frustration and anger exploded.
As he inhaled after the broben the mirror, as well as things around it, he felt more better and smiled to it. Suddenly his head became heavy. He pushed himself down onto the living room to the exit.
Jo Atlas was standing beside the car.
He dropped his eyes on his face; but hardly waiting to get back to the car and opened the window. He felt his smell, and when he was about to say something of it, D.D. Bookjor's voice skulked him off.
“Meet me on 1931 Moorpark and do exactly what I wrote in this paper,” he handed a ten-page dox. “I'll take my car.”
Jo nodded with a sigh of relief.”
And he set off along Victory Boulevard where he stopped near Cahuenga and made a call to the dispatch. The phone was ringing busy after twenty minutes of trying.
He wanted to do this for himself. No lines below his knees but from the bottom of his heart. There were some points, which were not yet trusting before his eyes. And still he could not see why.
When the officer on duty holding the phone against his jaw and shoulder, he found the night log and looked at it. Fishing that page and found what he was looking for.
No, he had a RDO. It meant he was his day-off.
“Thank you,” the voice faded off.
The man kept driving to Riverside. He tried to keep his mind in a state of calm. He was an officers and he must respect it.
Another call went through.
It was to the Police garage and Arrayal answered it.
There was a question. “Any particular car, I must say?”
“I can't say. There were twenty cars out that day.”
“Can you see from the night shift?”
“Sure. Give me a sec.” He stretched his arm a Basket In/Out. He found the sheet log and a marked car -1978 Buick. “Yeah. It was out and it was returned at 0539 next day. Is there anything else, homey?”
The phone was off.
While the car reached the next street and made a right turn, the same thought had come up again and again.
Hate could not trace any awkwardness, but a boundary link that could be so difficult to remove.
Any trace about that particular person, it will fatal? he thought.
D.D. Bookjor was still thinking. Not even in dreams he could be possible dreaming of it. But there it was.
Finding a space before a school bus, he got out of the car and reached the pitiful garden of this blue house and sailed off through the narrow alley he knew so well during these three days. There was a door that he opened it easily enough to step in and came into the kitchen of the house.
A thought jumped upon. All sensible tissues of his brain had moved with it. He didn't answer it what it was really. It was a strange thought.
Why he was here? Which these hate-and-envy stuffs, he will expose in front of this harshly step?
Dodging in through the rooms and hall, D. D. Bookjor was looking around. A matter of understanding, he didn't know what he was looking for. He used to wonder about that thought.
Perhaps, he would find something after all.
Reaching a door, he stopped and stared at it. Slowly, his heavy figure looked down at it and watched it carefully. He retrieved a master key and forced it gently. After three attempts, the door opened.
The room was small, neaten. He recognized it instantly the decoration of this room. There were elusive pictures, photographs, profile of crimes, mindful faces, a dilemma of evil and good. A sense of limitless horizons opened before his eyes. All were sickness and disgust.
He also recognized his pictures, some pieces of news about SA Dume case; the headlines of Detective Elio Gasson Martin. His face was filled of power, as he was answering questions what they had been removed him from SA Dume Case. Finally Martin didn't mention to the media about his drinking problems, the wrong man he had accused, the constant argue with man named Dick Dolmon Bookjor.
And also Bookjor recognized once more the profile of Tylor North Sheldon, later known as Erick Sheldon Sr. When D.D. Bookjor had let him free above what Martin did against him, he was sure Sheldon had done just because he couldn't face what already the Police had done being as a wrong man.
All these were before him.
He stared at these pictures for a moment longer, trying to think that all were just a nightmare and when he woke up everything would be gone. And then, in a storm of emotion he had never felt before, D.D. Bookjor had discovered it was still have a fullness caliber in his hand. A damned dilemma.
This is impossible, he thought.
To this surprise, he did not want to hear it. But there was consideration and priority, a consideration that he had to see it.
Now I turned and he went quickly through the back of the house where he had parked the car. He felt so devastated. It was a few minutes he felt strong again. Then he squeezed the wheel, trying to hold a tear.
Why those troubles? he thought. You never know what you are going to pull out of it, and when it wired under a pass fill of burst moments, a voice said inside him. You are an officer. You must do it.
For the time being it's a serious request.
But he wanted to be sure. It's pressuring him.
It was later. And the blind Charlie was quiet. He had appreciated it too. As he raised his eyebrows in sharp disagreement, he nodded softly. “I won't”
And then he burst into seriousness again. “Perhaps, I'm wrong.”
D. D. Bookjor looked at him.
“For me it's something out of the ordinary, Mr. Cidersson. That is what I'm to be sure. It's so important to me.”
Charlie Cidersson closed his hands aside as they watched it and brought a sort of longing he had held some time now.
“It will be seen.”
The time began to pass.
Like the rest of the apartment, everything was under shadows. The open window faced a park, behind it the moon. He would love to see it.
Suddenly there was the sound of a dog. SOMEONE had left a dog running below and he could be hearing in dismay, whispering, beneath the beauty of the night. At least, that's what it indicated when some sounds began to hear through the corridor.
D.D. Bookjor squeezed the cellular phone that rested on his hand. Any vibration, he would feel it that the operation was in its way.
After he received it, Charlie Cidersson drowned himself. His eyes closed, his ears followed each footsteps echoed like a death row along the corridor. Some footsteps, however, were hardly to hear; but they were marked each one clearly. After a long moment, Bookjor stared at Charlie.
“Any of them isn't the man what you are expecting, Mr. Bookjor.”
D.D. Bookjor looked about him in astonishment.
Charlie handed a piece of paper where he had put down seven people. The last one was Erick Sheldon; Charlie did not know but only Bookjor who had done. His eyes followed his empty eyes and said, “This is not finished yet, Mr. Cidersson.”
Charlie nodded. It was plausible, he thought. Such purpose never finished too soon. After a moment, there was a knock on the door. One of the detectives opened the door and seven people came in. Among them, Jo, Mark, Ernest and the young man Sheldon. “Take a seat each one of you and be quieted.”
Sheldon could not understand it. He seemed anger, gazing at D.D. Bookjor. “What it's now?”
“Please, Mr. Sheldon. Take a seat.” He sighed rather sadly.
“You've opened something else and it will be closed at the same front gate, Jo.”
“Everything is in place then,” he said. “The men are where you told and my role will be just perfect.”
“You must go now.”
Bookjor gazed thoughtfully about the room as if he were seeing it for the first time. Why, he thought, rising again those days, it has to be finished this way?
When his eyes glowed with caresses on Charlie Cidersson's face, he held on him. As well as the time, along the length of its naked soul, he too had story to tell. Which story will be more suitable for Charlie Cidersson? He was sure. Who he was? Why he had come to this and now suddenly, he's part of this hate crime?
And quite suddenly, the sound a door opening was heard. It was outside, just for a second. There was a sharp sound here and other there; but all the resisting sounds would be traced. And they knew their ill purpose. It's barely audible in the silent room among them. But Charlie Cidersson it had savage his mind until he had cried out and judged it accordingly. “It's he!”
D.D. Bookjor yelled up. They saw as they thought his weight was not allowed him to move quick enough. He was the first to open the door as he kicked the corridor.
There, Martin stepped into the hall. He walked slowly toward this newspaperman's silhouette.
Jo, however, avoided that part of his sharp knife. He was fighting to get Martin off him now. But Martin stopped. Thinking now it was a trap, it was too late to reach. Finally he turned and faced the reality -- that D. D. Bookjorw who stopped a few feet away from him.
“Why?” He glanced at Martin who was now knelt on the floor and looked at him. “Can you give me any reason, Martin?”
Impressive, Martin stood up helping by the detectives. He was very still, feeding with that hate of his. It was enraged into his eyes and his stillness.
“Please, Martin, tell me?”
Martin was unshakable, his eyes were afire, his muscles rigid. He was still looking at him with cold eyes. Failure or not, he thought he was victorious one. When he passed before D. D. Bookjor pulled by the detectives, he spit his face. “Pig!”
Slowly D.D. Bookjor cleaned up his face and looked at him into his eyes.
“You're a sick bastard, Martin. You are sick!”
There were the long, agonizing moments, to recover himself with this.
But D. D. Bookjor could not. As he turned, his voice was barely heard.
“Sorry, kid,” he said. “You did something that made me think.”
Erick Sheldon walked toward him and eased his eyes against his face.
“I didn't lie to you, Mister,” he said. “Why should I? It may be overt and explicit what I did. Anyone needs a treat to such experience. Goodbye.”
He turned and disappeared through the hall.
Bookjor could withdraw, however, this challenge of this kid.
Could his feeling would be with this? he thought.
And then he glanced at the door of the apartment B35. He wished to knock and said thank you once more to this Charlie Cidersson. He had changed his mind, impossible to see why everything had come up as it was.
He began to walk.
Outside the night was bright, the stars were transient. When he stepped onto the sidewalk, a car stopped to deliver the morning newspapers. He glanced at the newspaperman and then at his watch.
It was late. The paperman smiled at him. He noticed he was not Clay. I wondered what happened to him. While he took a deep breath, he headed to the car a few feet away from the building.
Somehow, he was angry. Yet he could almost swear Martin had blinded himself and caught in his own hatred. As if they were compelling him to see it what it was.
Who were they? D. D. Bookjor thought, trying to forget the whole matter. Tomorrow, it would be another day, and it would be another sick bastard would do the same shit. He could not bear to come back and loose it as it was because of those sick bastards they are sick bastards.
Of course not, he told himself, driving toward his street home.
Comments