What every policeman fears and dreads, that call in the night, where your life hangs in the balance and you have to put it on the line, your life, your liberty, everything. When that call came for Cecil, he told himself he was ready and he sat up in bed, rubbing his face, the phone to his ear.
It was after 10 PM and he just lay down to sleep an hour ago, when Sheriff Radcliffe of Half Moon Bay called to say, “Nigel Mann’s name came up in an incident report, early this morning he caused a disturbance at a local coffee shop.” He went on to say: “Then this evening, my deputies were called out to a house on Miramontes Street owned by Jeff Mace, a private first class in the army, his girlfriend was alone in the house, when she got the scare of a life-time.”
Watching TV in the darkened room, on a hot August night, the ocean breeze coming in through the open window; she saw the figure of a man standing in the sliding glass doorway and began screaming, a piercing ear splitting hell raising racket, the man immediately tried to silence her, by putting his hand over her mouth, then she bit him, then he put his arms and legs around her, to stop her from flailing about.
Now he was screaming, “You fucking bitch! Stop it and I’ll let you go.” She eventually calmed down a little and he pushed her away from him.
Crying, she cowered in a corner, near the side of her bed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He just wanted to talk. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect to find you here. I’m here to see Jeff, actually. I need his help.” He also needed to take a leak, because he had a lot of beer.
Leaving the bathroom door open, he kept an eye on her sobbing figure and suddenly, she ran for the other room, closed the door and locked it, before he could get his dick in his pants. Then she was on the phone, dialing 911. She yelled, “I called the police! They’re on their way.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you any harm. I just needed to speak with Jeff. Tell him Nigel Mann needs to meet with him: he’ll know where. I’ll be there for an hour.” And then he thought of something else. Taking a photograph out of his pants pocket, he left it on a table and said, “I’m returning something that belongs to him. Be sure he gets it.”
At home, Cecil was dressed and ready to go. He hugged and kissed his wife, Debra and told her, “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Worry is what she did, as she watched him leave.
In the drug testing lab hallway, Jerry faced his supervisor, the head of security, Mr. Cayman. The guard was extremely nervous. He faced certain dismissal if the true reason for his presence in the lab was found out. His supervisor wanted to know why Jerry wasn’t at his post, when he noticed Carlos and Woodman walking toward the locker room. “Excuse me, would you wait there please,” they stood frozen to the spot, while the supervisor went over to them and asked to see their ID.
Carlos was keeping his back to the man and said, “I’m…” He looked at the badge Jerry gave him, and said, “Wills Gordon, I mean Gordon Wills.”
Perplexed, his supervisor said, “Gordon?” He remembered speaking with Gordon, who told him he was moving to Colorado He knew this wasn’t Gordon. Speaking into his walkie talkie, he said, “Warren, come in Warren.” Then he turned to Woodman, “And you?” He asked.
Glancing over his shoulder, Woodman kept his face turned away from the man and searched his pockets, and the supervisor looked at his employee. He trusted Jerry, although he regarded him as somewhat incompetent.
“Warren here,” the supervisor’s walkie talkie squawked and he said, “get to the lab hallway, right now.”
Without an ID of his own, Woodman said, “I must have left it in the car.”
“Your drivers’ license will do,” Jerry’s supervisor said, but the detective was barging through, keeping his head down, shoving the supervisor to one side, as he made for the door, saying, “I’ll be right back.”
Following his partner toward the exit, post-haste, Carlos said, “I’ll help you look for it.”
Astonished, Jerry and his boss watched them leave, the supervisor yelling, “Wait, stop where you are.”
They kept walking and he told Jerry to go after them; he pulled out his stun gun and gave chase. His partner Warren saw them run through the front office, covering their faces as best they could and he followed Jerry, who saw them speed off in their car. They walked back to the front office and met with their supervisor. “Did you get a good look at them?” He asked.
When Cecil arrived in Half Moon Bay at eleven PM, a man wearing the Junk Yard Dogs jacket was in front of a nice two story home, confronting 4 deputies, shouting, “This is bullshit! You should let me go up there and meet him, at least!”
They saw Cecil and he identified himself and a deputy told him the sheriff was expecting him and to go in the house.
“Come on, times a wasting,” the biker said. “He’s not going to be up there much longer, if he hasn’t left already!”
Inside the house, the victim of the attack was clearly shaken, shivering with a blanket over her shoulders, looking down, distracted and smoking.
Sheriff Radcliffe was saying, “Of course, we’ll provide 24 hour protection,” but it was doubtful she was listening. Patting her shoulder, trying to offer her some solace, the sheriff stayed with her a moment before speaking with Cecil, saying, “Nigel Mann was here and he left this photograph.”
It showed an American in uniform, standing in front of a large mass grave site, with hundreds of dead bodies. He was with an another military officer, surveying the area, pointing and so forth. The resolution of the picture was not high grade and their faces were far away, so it was hard to make out any more detail. On the back side of the photo was one word: “Sarajevo, 1992.” This was 3 years before the NATO intervention this year: 1995.
They went out onto the front porch, while the boyfriend, Jeff was still yelling, “That son of a bitch has to pay and you know it, so turn your back and let me pass before it’s too late.” Radcliffe joined his deputies, with Cecil in tow.
“Come on Jeff, you know how we have to handle this,” the deputy said sternly. “Tell us where the meeting place is and we’ll go out there and take care of it. Once we have him in custody-”
“Hell, it’s the only way you’re going to get a look at him.” The other cop said, “We might even give you a chance to say a few words.”
After a moments reflection, Jeff said, “All right, but if you all go up to this secret meeting place at once, he’ll see you coming and take off, before you know he’s there. We have to park behind the cafe: NO LIGHTS and I approach him alone to draw him out.”
“What? No way!” Said the deputy, but Radcliffe was of a different mind and it was agreed: Jeff lures the fugitive out in the open. The meeting place was in the woods, behind the cafe on Miramontes Street, the place where Cecil talked to the Aryan biker gang a few days ago.
In the outdoor light behind the biker cafe, Jeff stepped into the clearing. “Nigel,” he whispered loudly, “are you there?”
Hungry animal eyes lurked in the night shadows under the trees and in the bushes.
They waited, Jeff went into the woods. One or two deputies kept an eye on him, keeping their distance.
The crack of a branch breaking under foot… everyone looked.
In the stillness, the only thing that moved were the eyes.
“Nigel?”
A search of the entire area was commenced. Armed with flashlights, the uniforms searched through the woods.
Jeff was livid. He knew Nigel wasn’t going to show himself to him, not with a million cops around. “You held me for too long.” He told the sheriff, “We should have done this an hour ago.”
Cecil asked for permission to speak with Jeff. The sheriff introduced him and said, “He wants to ask you a few questions,” and he stood by to hear his answers.
The biker told Cecil to make it quick, he wanted to get back home to his girlfriend, who needed him right then.
“Why do you think Nigel was trying to contact you?”
“I don’t know.”
Considering his circumstance, Cecil said, “Nigel is on the run. Maybe he was after some cash, some identification perhaps…”
Jeff gave Cecil a sharp mean look and said nothing.
“Was that you in the photograph in Sarajevo at the mass grave site?”
“No.”
“Why did you have the photograph? Who were those men?”
He wouldn’t answer anymore questions.
“Then just tell me this,” Cecil asked, “what’s Nigel’s affiliation with the Junk Yard Dogs? Is he a member?”
Jeff laughed. “He’s a wanna be biker, who can’t handle the ride.”
“Are you saying he’s not a member?”
“He may have the tat, but he doesn’t have the jacket, so we don’t consider him a member and after this stunt he pulled tonight, no way.”
“What were you doing last Friday night?”
Stepping up to the man, Jeff said it right in Cecil’s face, “I was with my posse, riding up the coast highway toward San Francisco.” He looked at the sheriff and asked, “Can I go now?”
“You can leave anytime, we’re not holding you for anything.” Radcliffe said.
Sitting in the drivers seat, outside the drug testing lab, hours after their first attempt to break in failed, Carlos watched Jerry’s supervisor leave. This was after the uniform police came and went. Woodman said, “Okay, let’s go.” Carlos drove the car to the nearest pay phone and called Jerry on the office phone. The security guard picked up and Carlos told him to listen. “Call me back when you’re alone in the front office again. We’ll be waiting by this number,” and he gave it to him.
Jerry was sweating bullets, but his coworker had another brake in half an hour. Jerry called back, telling them his boss was all over him “about letting people in secure areas without proper identification and he had to make a statement to the police.”
Carlos said. “Now that everyone is gone, let us back in the lab.”
“I don’t know man. It’s really not a good time. Everyone is on alert now.”
“If we don’t get in there tonight, man, we might not get another chance.”
Passing underneath the camera on his way through the front office, Carlos asked Jerry, if his supervisor had the video with the pictures of them on it.
“You’re lucky,” he answered, “Paul, my supervisor was going for the tape, when I got there first, and hit the rewind button, pretending it was an accident. The tape jammed up in the machine. I utterly destroyed it. The tape is worthless.”
“Good work,” Carlos said, proud of the young man.
Woodman patted him on the back.
Wearing a white lab coat, like his partner, Carlos opened a refrigerator, revealing many racks of urine samples.
“Is this the only one?”
No, there was a long line of refrigerators. Jerry said there were a hundred or more specimens in each one.
Woodman whistled one note, like this was going to take all night.
“Help me look,” Carlos said to Jerry. They only had fifteen minutes to find the designated cups, before his coworker’s break was over and Jerry was supposed to be in the front office, not looking for Carlos and Woodman’s urine cups. “I don’t know…” Jerry whined.
“Come on,” Carlos sounded cheery, like this was going to be fun.
Jerry relented and crowded in beside the detective to help him look.
“Go over there,” Carlos shouted, pointing to the refrigerator, next to the one Woodman was inspecting.
They were still looking for two specimen cups 10 minutes later and Jerry was getting impatient, checking his watch.
“I should go back to the office and wait? My coworker will be expecting me?”
“No, keep looking.”
Sighing loudly, Jerry reluctantly went on and asked, “What was that last name?”
“Mendez!” Carlos said.
“I got it!” Jerry cheered in triumph and Carlos joined him to have a look.
“That’s it,” the detective said, taking the sample from Jerry and handing him the clean one. “Wait, don’t put it back yet. I have to put the label on.” He had a vile eye dropper full of De-Solv-it, which he put on his own label. Within a minute, it was ready to peel off, which he did, tearing one corner. Using Elmer’s Glue stick he put the label on the clean sample container and handed it to Jerry, then turned back to help Woodman find his urine cup.
Then Jerry’s walkie-talkie squawked, “Come in Jerry.” It was Warren. “I know where you are.” Warren’s voice was ominous and slow.
Jerry’s eyes widened, afraid his partner was looking at him right now, turning in circles, looking up, like a dog chasing his tail. What if Warren was looking at him through some hidden camera? He didn’t see one, but that didn’t mean… His skull felt like it was about to explode and Jerry asked himself, “What am I doing in the lab with this crazy junkie cop, risking my job and everything?”
It was 12:30 AM, when Radcliffe and Cecil were standing in the parking lot of the biker cafe with the lights blazing on inside and the front door open, as if it were beckoning you to enter. The detective noticed it several times. The place appeared to be cleared out, and stripped down. The strange thing was, no one was on sight. The place was completely empty.
The sheriff got a call on his radio: “all units respond to a 187” and the voice gave a location. He had to go… immediately. He got in his car, rode code 3, lights and siren.
Cecil was left alone in the parking lot. As he opened the drivers side door to his car, he noticed something in the cafe and turned to look. He saw a man in a ski mask dressed in black, run into the kitchen. He was out of sight, but Cecil was suspicious and he went to investigate, going through the swinging doors into the kitchen, gun drawn, ready to fire. He was struck by the smell of bleach. A door leading outside was open.
Cautiously, Cecil approached, one sure step at a time.
Darkness greeted his poor eyesight when he looked outside. The new moon and no outdoor light, a black fence against a deep blue sky, a glimmer of dull metal in the shape of a dumpster, a pile of boxes and bags of garbage perhaps in the deep shadows of the night. He looked for a light switch and found one by the door, by it didn’t work.
Then, he heard a noise, a foot scuff on pavement.
Sensing danger, the creepy eerie feeling something was out there, waiting for him. Pointing his weapon in front of him, he strained his eyes to see past the dull grayness and into the blackness, as he stepped outside, he felt someone grab his wrist and pull it down on someones knee, knocking the gun out of his hand. Then 3 men in black ski masks threw him down on his back and pinned him to the kitchen floor. To struggle was useless, but he did it anyway, that was until someone stuck a needle in his neck and he lost consciousness.
Copyright 2016 William Leslie
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