Loosing control of her division, or so it seemed to the higher-ups, Elaine was sweating bullets, while the police chief was taking a closer look at her, putting on the pressure: Cecil was missing and Moore was AWOL, while Woodman and Carlos were putting in less than a hundred percent, Lan and Stuart were making no progress what-so-ever on finding him.
So nervous she was actually sweating and her voice seemed to be stuck in the upper register, Elaine practically deliberated every word she said to a group of people working on Cecil’s disappearance. “As you all know, the hunt for Cecil is still on and our only witness is not talking. Mike Aaron is scheduled to speak to the ADA in the next hour. Hopefully, he’ll get something out of the witness, where his assistant failed. Moore is MIA and the only clue we have to his whereabouts is a message he left on my voice mail, yesterday. Apparently, he was trying to track down Cooper Watts, whom we have since learned, has been called to active duty, to where we do not know. People, I know it looks bleak, but we can crack this case and bring Cecil home. We need to explore some new avenues of investigation. Lan, did you get a membership list for the Junk Yard Dogs?”
“Stuart and I are going to talk with Jeff Mace ourselves and he’s going to give us some names or we’re going to bring him in for obstruction of justice.”
“So, no!” She turned to Woodman and looked at Carlos, “Where are you on finding the rest of this biker gang?”
“We have some leads.” Carlos said.
They had nothing.
Moore held the gun on Josh Henderson, as he drove the vehicle.
“What have you got going on here? Why have you abducted Cecil?”
“Really,” Henderson whimpered, “all I know is he needed an operation.”
“What, like surgery? You mean they’re cutting him open?”
Josh was trying to hide his face, the tears he was ashamed of, when he said, “All I know is: it involves a plastic surgeon.”
“Son of a bitch!” Moore exclaimed in disbelief. When he looked through the windshield, he noticed they were driving on the frontage road, along highway 101, past a vacant lot and prefab, cement slab structures.
“Is it near here,” Moore asked.
“Right over there.” Henderson pointed at one of the dull gray buildings.
Meanwhile, Lan and Stuart were combing the streets of Half Moon Bay, looking for Jeff Mace, a known Junk Yard Dog. Earlier that day, they knocked on the door of the gang member and his girlfriend was home, but she didn’t know where he was, that was clear.
She said, “He sometimes hangs out at that bar… what is it? The half Moon Bay Bar and Grill, or the…” She was about to say something, then stopped herself. Stuart urged her to speak and she said, “Grocery store.”
“So he could be at a bar or a grocery store, that’s what you’re telling us?” Lan was incredulous.
“There he is!” Stuart spotted him. He was walking along Main Street.
Lan turned on the lights and brought the vehicle to stop in front of the suspect and he and his partner got out of the car and caught up with Jeff Mace on the sidewalk. They arrested him and threw him into the back of the car.
“Where are we?” Moore asked.
“1820 East Bayshore Road,” Henderson said.
A prefab concrete building, visually uninteresting, however Moore wasn’t there for the aesthetics and for once in his life, the rules did not apply. Getting inside this building was his only concern, that and getting his partner out alive.
He parked at the rear of the building, where there was a back door along the North wall. He had lock picking equipment, but he decided to see if Henderson’s keys would open the door first and he was in luck: one of them did work and they were inside. The lights were out. Someone behind them, turned them on.
Inside this vast warehouse was empty space and a high ceiling, with a few offices in front, by the street.
Standing in front of Moore and his captive were about ten men, dressed in black, with hand guns pointed at them. Another man stood behind them.
Grabbing Henderson and pointing the gun at his head, the detective said, “Anything happens to me, he gets it.”
Just then, a bullet entered the back of Josh’s head and blew his brains out along with most of his face. He slid out of Moore’s hands and collapsed on the floor. The same man who killed Henderson, was pointing his weapon at the detective, standing right behind him.
Moore tried to remain calm, but there was blood on his face and hands and bits of brain matter too. For the first time in his life, a man was shot in the head, standing right beside him and the detective began to quietly panic. He felt like screaming, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he realized, life and death meant nothing to these people. They would blow his head off too.
The ADA, a squat, self-satisfied, middle aged man was interviewing Mike Aaron with his lawyer present.
“Tell us where we can find Buddy Cecil and we’ll knock 10 years off your sentence.”
“My client wants to be put in the witness protection program.”
The ADA chuckled. “What do you think we are, the Fed’s?”
“Is that a no?” the defense attorney asked.
“We can’t offer the witness protection program, but we’ll be glad to put him in protective custody.”
“No deal,” Aaron shouted. The meeting was over.
Directing Moore toward an office, at the front of this empty warehouse, they came to a stop at a closed door, which one man opened and another forced him inside, a key turning in the lock. Moore tried the knob and it wouldn’t budge and another door across from him was locked too. He seemed to be in some kind of storage room, with janitorial supplies and equipment. The walls were over ten feet tall and he could see the warehouse roof through the open ceiling. He could almost reach up and grab the top edge, but not quite.
He found a barrel with rolling wheels and turned it upside down. Getting on top of it, he could peak over the wall. He saw the men in black standing guard in the warehouse proper. He ducked back down quickly and waited.
Everything was quiet, except for the echo of muttering voices.
He looked into the room next to his, he could see it was empty and he checked to see if anyone was looking at him. Climbing over the wall, Moore jumped and landed on a counter top, near a kitchen sink. Once on the floor, he found an open door to an inside hallway.
Some people were coming and Moore closed the door. He heard them pass by and went into the hallway, turned a corner, then came to a dead end, one door on his right and no sign of daylight.
It was locked.
Checking his shirt pocket, he found a small Allen wrench shaped tool, he used to pick the lock. The door opened and he went in, turning on the light.
Lan had the suspect in the interrogation room, sweating him out in the harsh florescent light. “You will tell me what I want to know, or we’ll be here all night.”
A hard man, with a determined look on his face wasn’t impressed. “I’m not a rat and I wouldn’t betray a brother.” He said and that may have been all he was going to say on the subject, when Stuart slammed the table with her hand.
“We’re not playing games, Mr. Mace. Tell us what you know and do it now, before we slap an obstruction of justice charge on you!”
“I don’t scare easy,” Jeff said, “I take my vows seriously.”
“What vows? What are you talking about?”
“Certainly not the vows to obey the laws of this country,” Lan interjected.
No, Jeff’s vows were… “To never turn on a brother, no matter what?”
In the bright light of the florescent lamps, Moore finally found what he was looking for in a make shift hospital room.
Buddy Cecil was in bed. A gurney was nearby. Moore tried to revive his partner and he finally came around, after pulling out his IV. Cecil seemed disoriented, squinting in the harsh light, “Where am I? Moore, is that you?”
“Come on, Buddy. I’m going to get you out of here.” He said, moving the gurney closer to the bed, when they heard footsteps and voices in the hallway. Moore stood by the open doorway.
Two male nurses came around the corner and stood before the entrance way, looking perplexed, like someone was in the room.
Moore wedged himself between the door and the wall, next to an IV stand.
The men entered cautiously. They noticed the patient was awake and in pain. One man said, “What? What happened to you? Who was in here?”
“No one,” Cecil said, “I woke up and opened the door myself.”
They didn’t understand, but they accepted his explanation and one said, “We’re here to move you. Just lay still.” Although he was objecting, they moved him onto the gurney, which they rolled toward the door and Moore rushed them holding a metal stand sideways, knocking them both to the ground and grabbing the gurney, pushing it toward the exit. As he was slowly turning the corner, the two men in white were on their feet and headed toward Moore.
Moore pushed the gurney down the hallway, around another corner and he saw the faint glimmers of daylight under a door. As he reached the exit, the two men caught up with him and grabbed the gurney.
“Ut-Hun, you’re not going anywhere,” one of the men said, then he told the other guy to sound the alarm.
One man was left holding onto the gurney, when Moore blindsided him with a punch out of nowhere. The guy went down and Moore got the gurney outside before the alarm sounded.
He heard voices behind him. “He went out this way!”
The car he arrived here in, the silver Mercedes Benz was close. He could hear men yelling. They weren’t far behind him. But wait, where were the car keys? He remembered taking them off Henderson when they arrived. He checked his pockets, as he brought the gurney to a stand still beside the car. And there they were in his inside jacket pocket. Moore opened the car doors and hauled Cecil off the gurney. His head almost hit the roof. His back went kerplunk on the seat. His legs hit the pavement.
Cecil nearly howled in pain. He thought he tore something on his chest and blood was seeping out, staining his shirt. Moore grabbed his partner around the waist and tried to thrust him back onto the seat, when he heard voices hollering, “There they are!”
They were getting close when Moore was closing the back door and getting in the drivers side. Guns drawn, they opened fire on Moore and he ducked inside the car and started the engine. Flooring it, he kept low as he drove off the parking lot onto East Bayshore Road, under a hail of bullets.
Moore was constantly checking behind him, when he saw them… a black sedan racing toward him. Moore wanted to accelerate, however he had to slow down for the turn, amid screeching tires, while the black sedan came in close behind him.
Guns blasted out the rear window. A bullet lodged in the head rest behind him. Another bullet grazed his brow and blood trickled down into his eye.
Negotiating a sharp turn to the right, slowed Moore up even more. On the straight away, he picked up speed.
Ducking under down low, Moore sped up, but the black sedan was still behind him. A bullet hit his left hand and he let go of the wheel, grabbing it with his other hand, as he negotiated a sharp turn to the right very slowly.
Behind him, Cecil was in pain, bleeding all over the back seat, as the black sedan came in close, gunning for them, bashing into their rear bumper
Cecil was thrown forward, using the front seat to brace himself. Breathing heavy, he was afraid for his life.
Moore swerved to avoid hitting a parked car and sped up, as his adversary connected with his rear fender and his back tires skidded out and he pulled on the steering wheel and managed to get out of the slide, when he heard the distant sound of sirens getting closer.
The black sedan made a left and disappeared and Moore did a U-Turn in the middle of the street, looking for the damn black sedan, when his vehicle was surrounded by six squad cars and he had to come to a stop.
He had to crawl out the window of his damaged car, pointing down the street with a bloody hand shouting, “Black sedan, you have to get the black sedan!”
At first confused, the officers didn’t recognize Moore as one of their own, so disheveled and haggard and stained in blood was he in a civilian vehicle, they aimed their weapons at him.
“Get down on the ground slowly, hands over your head!”
Being treated like a suspect, angered him and he yelled, “I’m Detective Moore,” raising his hands, “don’t you recognize me?”
Copyright 2016 William Leslie
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