DIRTBAG CHAPTER 14

    In the center of the white board was a picture of Detective Cecil, with the word ‘missing,’ written underneath it.  Lines extended out from the picture to pictures and names of suspects.  Every man available was working and the Palo Alto Police station was a buzz with activity, people everywhere walking to and fro, at their computers, or talking with each other.
    Lan and Stuart were at their desk, Stuart speaking, “Mike Aaron rented the property where the Junk Yard Dog’s hung out, and he was the manager.  He has to know who they are.”  They weren’t aware of this, but Aaron was the guy Cecil and Moore spoke to when they visited the cafe in Half Moon Bay.
    “Senior Airman for the US Air Force, Honorable Discharge: 1994,” Lan said.  He was reading the on-line records and Stuart said she found a current address on another website.
    “Let’s check it out,” he said, wondering if she could handle herself.
    As they were heading out, Carlos and Woodman were coming in through the front door and they met Lan and Stuart in the lobby.  “We have some information on Jeff Mace,” the guy Nigel wanted to talk to in Half Moon Bay, whom they recently interviewed.  Carlos told him, “He said he was with his girlfriend when Cecil was abducted and the sheriff confirms that.  He wasn’t with his buddies, the Junk Yard Dogs, but he doesn’t think they were behind Cecil’s disappearance and he hasn’t seen Nigel at all, although he says if he did…”  And the implication was clear.  He would kill him.
    “You believe him?”  She asked in disbelief.  “You think the Junk Yard Dogs weren’t involved?”
    “Could be they kept him out of the loop,” Woodman said.
    “Were you able to get a complete membership list for the motorcycle gang?”  Lan politely asked.
    “We’re up against some pretty big players here,” Carlos explained.  “We may-”
    “Oh, don’t give us that bullshit,” Stuart barked irritably, “get that membership list!”  She walked out of the building, followed by Lan, glancing back.
    “We’ll need a warrant,” Carlos said on his way to the office.
    “On what grounds?”  Woodman asked.
    His partner checked his answering machine.  It was Jerry, the security guard, “I know your boss’s name is Elaine, and I have her number right here.  I already talked with the receptionist and told her that I had some information concerning the two of you and I wanted to speak with her personally.  I expect she will be returning my phone call any day now.  You know how to make this all go away.  Call me!  You have the number.”
    “We have to do something about this guy,” Carlos said.
    Woodman saw the look in his eye and he knew what it meant.

    Things shifted, Detective Moore had Cooper Watts dangling over the second story railing, then he decided to take it up a notch.  Now he held a gun to Cooper’s head where no one could see what came next, around the back side of the apartment building in a narrow weedy lot, between the rear wall and a wooden fence; the suspect was knelling down, hand-cuffed behind him.
    “Tell me where they have Cecil, or I swear I’ll blow your head off.”  Moore shouted.
    “Look man,” Cooper said casually, “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”  He was standing in his doorway, looking casual, drinking a beer, not at all concerned Moore had any ill intention toward him.
    Moore was fantasizing about what he would like to do to  this Junk Yard Dog, who had a smirk on his face.  What Moore would like to do to that smirk, but he refused to use brute force to get his way, but he had to do something, so he knocked the beer out of Cooper’s hand and pointed in his face, “Look, my partner is missing and believe me I will go to any lengths to get him back, so don’t fuck with me.”  He was looking at his neck, but he didn’t see the Totenkopf tattoo?
    “Get away from me?”  Cooper was getting irritated now and he started to close the door, until Moore’s foot got in the way.
     “If you know where Cecil is, I suggest you tell me now, because if I have to find out later you knew something you held back from telling me, well that’s obstruction of justice and I’ll haul your ass in for that and add that crime to the list of charges I’ll be filing against you.  You want that to happen?”
    “Go fuck yourself.  I don’t know shit.”  Cooper said and Moore let him close the door.

    Approaching the house, Stuart spoke into her walkie-talkie, “At suspect: Mike Aaron’s home now.”
    A modest place, jammed into a long row of such houses, the suspect lived above a one car garage in Daly City.  Stuart said, “If this guy even blinks funny, lets take him in.”
    Lan held her back and asked, “Are you okay?  You seem a little tense?”
    “Times a wasting,” she said harshly.  “You want to hurry, let’s go.”
    He hesitated, then nodded and knocked on the door.
    It was quiet inside.  Lan rang the bell.
    Then they heard someone and whoever it was turned on the porch light and opened up.
    It was a little old lady.
    Then a man entered the hall entrance way from the other room and when he saw who was at his door, he ran for it, toward the back of the house and disappeared around a corner.
    Lan and Stuart exchanged a look, then opened the screen door and barged past the old lady, as she let out the cry of a wounded animal.  The police ran down the hallway and to the left, but their suspect was nowhere in sight.  They opened two doors, one on either side and found no sign of Aaron if that was him.  The hallway intersected with another hall, with an area to do laundry.  As the cops rounded the corner, they found their suspect, trying to get past his big mama, who was taking up all the space between the wall and the washing machine.  In his efforts to squeeze by, he managed to get one leg over her back, as he hung upside down, madly gripping her leg with one arm for dear life, as she sidled slowly toward the rear exit.
    The cops easily apprehended him, put him in hand-cuffs and sat him down in the back of their car, while they got a search warrant for his home.  Once they had that in hand, they found some incriminating evidence, hidden in the crawl space under his house.

    Meanwhile, Moore was sitting in his car, drinking coffee, keeping his vigil, far into the night, when he saw Cooper in his black Mustang driving away from his apartment building at one AM.  Moore followed Cooper to a military base: Moffett Field and Cooper’s car passed through the security gate without incident.
    Moore was behind another car.  Cooper seemed to be aware he was being followed, for he sped off and was quickly out of Moore’s sight.  When he pulled up to the security gate, the guard asked him for some ID, then picked up the phone in the booth.
    A moment later, the guard told him turn around and leave the grounds.
    There was nothing he could do.  He had no jurisdiction.  He had to leave.
    Sitting in his car in the 7-Eleven parking lot, looking at a phone booth, more coffee, more nerves on edge.  What should he do?  He made the call to his boss.  “You have reached the voice mall of Elaine Marshall.  Please leave a message.”
    “Elaine?  I followed suspect Cooper to Moffett Field.  I have the base under surveillance now.”
    The military base was slated for closure soon.  However it currently housed Navy, Air Force, Marines and there was a huge airplane hanger that he could see from miles away, so big it was said to have its own atmospheric conditions.
    Outside the main entrance way to Moffett field, Moore listened to the police radio all night.  In the morning, he heard a communications operator, trying to reach him.  Elaine, his boss started speaking, “Moore, come in Moore.  I know you can hear me.  Come in.  Talk to me Moore.  We can make this right, just come in and talk to me.”
    Right then, he decided he wasn’t going to turn himself in, until he had Cecil safe and sound.  He turned down the radio, and then he saw Cooper again.
    This time he was on a military bus, plainly visible through a window, flipping off the detective, who followed the military bus to the San Francisco airport, where it pulled over to the curb, by the entrance way.  Taxi cabs crowded the available yellow curb side, as hundreds of cars herded together over three lanes of traffic.  Moore put on the flashing lights, hidden underneath the hood and parked in front of the bus at an angle, cutting the passenger carrier off from traffic.
    The soldiers were entering the terminal lobby, when Moore came around the side of the bus.  The men were in formation, marching toward their gate.  They stood in line and dropped off their gear at the ticket counter.
    Getting in the same line, after the last soldier passed through the gate to catch his plane, Moore went up to the ticket lady, and asked her where they were going.  She was reluctant to tell him, until he showed her his badge.  Then she checked her computer.
    Looking at the screen, she said, “They fly to New York: connecting flight to Lisboa.”
    “Portugal?”
    “Yes, and from there, he has another connecting flight to Terceira Island,”  She looked at him to see if he understood.  He did not.  “That’s off the coast of Portugal.  I believe that’s where Lajes Air Base is located.”
    “Sarajevo,” Moore thought, “I bet he’s going to Sarajevo.”  That was the current hot spot in the world and didn’t Lan find an article showing two of the Junk Yard Dogs in military uniform surveying a mass grave site in the countryside around that city?

    Mike Aaron was a big guy, tough; you could see it in the hard lines on his face, the fierce look in his eyes, desensitized by his years in the military.  As he sat with his  back rigid in the chair, at attention, Lan sat across from him and Stuart was facing his side, studying his reaction with a keen eye.
    “We found the Junk Yard Dogs jacket tucked away in your crawl space of your house in Daly City, where you thought no one would find it, hun?  You want to tell us about that.”  Lan was steady and calm.
    Aaron was tapping his foot, taking in the ceiling, acting nonchalant.
    “You know what we found on that jacket?”   Lan smiled, like he was holding all the cards and this guy had looser written all over him.  “You know what we found on that jacket, don’t you?  A spot of blood, that’s right, same type as Cecil’s.  Now why don’t you tell us how it got there?”
    The suspect was perplexed.
    “That spot of blood belong to Cecil?  Tell me, does it?”  Stuart yelled.
    He didn’t seem to know the answer.
    Stuart started screaming in his face.  “Start talking asshole!  We don’t have time for this bullshit!  We want to know where Cecil is and we want to know pronto!  Where are they holding him?”
    Mike Aaron looked at her, then at Lan and said, “I want a lawyer.  I’m not talking unless I’m guaranteed full immunity.”
    “What we have on you right now, once that spot of blood on your jacket, with your fingerprints on it is matched to Cecil’s DNA, it doesn’t matter what you say.”  Lan said, feeling frustrated.  “We’ll have all we need to put you away for life!  Do yourself some good here and gain some good will.  Tell us where you’re keeping him and we’ll get the judge to show you some leniency.”
    “You can take your leniency and shove it up your ass.  I want a lawyer.”

    Carlos pulled up along side Jerry’s car in his Ford Bronco and rolled down the window.  They were meeting in a secluded parking lot at the bay lands, marsh land preserve, in Mountain View.
    “We got trouble,” Jerry started out saying anxiously.  “My boss knows two men were readmitted to the lab and the man whose badge we used, swears he wasn’t in the lab that night, so my boss wants to know who used his badge number and who the two guys on the security tape were, who kept their faces adverted away from the camera and if they were the same guys who were in the lab earlier that night, and did I let them in again?”
    “Calm down,” Carlos said.   “What did you tell him?”
    “I told him I didn’t know who they were or how they got someone else’s badge, but they were different guys, not the same guys who were in earlier.”
    “Good-”
    “But he’s not buying it.”
    “There’s nothing he can do to you as long as you don’t talk.”  Carlos gave him a serious look, to see if Jerry would bend or break.
    “Look man,” Jerry whined with a sniffle, “I need some more of that shit.  I can’t get up in the morning without it.  I need it man.  Can you get me some more?”
    Carlos got out of the car.  He looked more serious than Jerry had ever seen him.  The light in his eyes was turned off and now they looked deadly and scary.
    Woodman was getting out of the passenger side.
    Carlos reached through the open window and grabbed the grubby little security guard around the neck and seized the arm that was about to start the engine, when the window started to roll up, Carlos seized his other arm.  Then Woodman came around and together, they pulled him out of the car, kicking and screaming, with people too far away to hear his cries for help.  They hauled him into the giant horse tails at the edge of the bay water and punched him repeatedly in the gut, in the arms and legs and Woodman was kicking him and Carlos felt like bashing his head in, but he didn’t want to mess up his pretty face and call attention to the fact he was beaten.
    As Jerry lay bleeding and crying, Carlos was shouting.  “You will not be saying anything to anyone, including your boss, or we will track you down and kill you!”  Taking his face in one hand, Carlos asked, “You got me?”
    The message came in loud and clear and they left him lying there, whimpering in pain.



 Copyright 2016  William Leslie