DIRTBAG CHAPTER 27

    A hardy soul, the warden was a big man, with red patches of skin on his scaly  white hide, dressed in a blue suit and a cowboy hat.  His name was Roger and John, the ADA came into his office and said, “Roger, always glad to see you.”
    “John, well I’ll be damned,” a cheery Roger said, and shook his hand.  Whenever the ADA needed the warden to soften up a prisoner for questioning, Roger had the guards go into the con’s cell, and beat the captive with their batons.  “Whatever I can do for you, it would be a pleasure.”  He said with a nudge of his elbow.
    “Thank you.”  John grasped his hand warmly.  “You’re one of the good one’s.”  Getting down to business, he said, “Actually, I’m here to see Dan Murdock.”
    Roger lowered his voice and spoke privately, “You didn’t want us to soften him up for you by any chance?”
    John was being cautious when he said, “Why?  What happened?”
    The warden spoke plainly.  “He was beaten pretty bad.  Several knife wounds.  Doctor rated his condition as critical.”  He popped up brightly, with his hands outside his face.  “Ooops!  Accidents happen.”
    “Yes,” John said dryly, “we'll file this one under: Accidents Happen, Dan was accidentally beaten within an inch of his life.”
    Dan’s lawyer, Terry Riley, a liberal civil rights trial attorney was allowed into the warden’s office, where they were talking about his client.
    Terry was irritated when he heard the news, “So my client is in the prison hospital?”
     The warden nodded. “We have a twenty-four hour guard on him now.”
    “You sure the guards aren’t the one’s that beat him?” Terry asked cynically.
    “They’re under strict orders not to-I mean, to protect… the prisoner.”
    “That’s very reassuring…”  The lawyer turned to go, then stopped and faced the warden in the doorway.  “I will make sure there is an outside investigation into this beating and a review of prison policy.”
    After he left, John and the warden had a good laugh.  The review board didn’t care about prisoner wellbeing.  He knew at least three members who thought the prisoners were being treated too kindly by giving them reading material.

    That evening, Jake came home to his mother and step father, Cecil.  They were at home, when Debra answered the door to find her X-husband dropping off her son.  They exchanged pleasantries, and goodbyes, and her son came inside.  Oh, she was so glad to see him, she threw her arms around him, a tear in her eye.
    Then she had him sit down at the dining room table, where his step father was waiting.
    Debra spoke tenderly, “I’m very glad to have you back, Jake.  And so is Cecil.  He has something to say to you.”
    He smiled pleasantly, “Your mother and I have been speaking and we agree, that given your recent behavior, we haven’t gone far enough in disciplining you for your bad behavior.”
    “My bad behavior?  What about what you did?  What about what you did to me?”
    “What did I do to you?  I did what I had to keep you in line?”
    “Fuck you!  Fuck you both!”
    Cecil got up and grabbed Jake by his long hair and pulled him into his bedroom, over ten feet of carpet.  He slammed the door and yells, “Stay in there!  You’re grounded for a month!”
    He was still swearing inside his room.  His mother was nearly crazy, nodding, her head down, frustrated beyond belief.  Cecil paced around the living room, thinking, then he went over to Debra and put his arm around her to comfort her.
    She wanted to mend fences.  Maybe she should talk to Jake?  Cecil said “Listen, he needs to know he can’t get away with that kind of behavior.  It’s a hard lesson to learn, but he needs to learn it.”

    Lan and Stuart ran into Cecil outside the facility the following morning, near the front steps to the police station.  Lan said, “We received a new Masonic membership list in the mail and guess whose name is on it: Blair Thomas and he belonged to the same lodge as Nigel Mann, the lodge in Half Moon Bay on Main Street, the lodge Victor Weiss is… is…”  He turned to his partner for help.
    Stuart said, “Worshipful Master.  Victor Weiss is Worshipful Master of Blair’s lodge.”
    Cecil thought for a moment and said, “We need to find Blair, bring him in for questioning.”

    An hour later, Stuart and Lan, looked anxious and more than a little nervous, when they stood in the doorway, while Cecil was at his desk, working.
    Getting his attention, Lan began, “Ah Cecil…”  He mumbled unintelligibly.
    Cecil could see something was wrong and told them to “come in” and “close the door.”
    Stuart looked at Lan, prompting him to speak.
    He was disappointed in himself, when he said, “Blair is out of the country.  He’s in England.”
    “What?” Cecil asked, “Didn’t you get his passport?”
    “Yeah, he must have gotten another one.”  Lan explained.
    “How?”
    “Hell, if I know.”
    “Really?”  Cecil was perplexed.  He thought for a moment, then said, “As much as I’d like to go to the United Kingdom to question him, we’ll never get Elaine to go along with that kind of expense, unless…”
    “We had enough to make an arrest.”  Stuart was enthralled with the idea.
    “How about a search warrant?  Do we have enough for that?”  Lan asked hopefully.
    “No,” Cecil said, “all that evidence is circumstantial.  We need to physically link Blair to the crime scene.”
    “How?”
    “Leave it to me.”  The lead detective said, “I’ll think of something.  Meanwhile, I need you to work on my abduction case.  If you could find out where the gurney that was used to transport me after my operation came from and who bought it…”  He picked up a slip of paper off his desk.  “Here’s the model number and manufacturer.  Only two medical supply stores sell these in the Bay Area.”
    They nodded and left, taking the file with them.
    An hour later, Cecil was still looking for some evidence to use against Blair,  He needed to get out of the facility, so he took some personal time off.

    Driving over Highway 92, Cecil took Main Street in Half Moon Bay to the same Masonic lodge Blair and Weiss belonged to and found it locked.  He saw a slot for submissions and mail.  He wrote down his information and added this comment:

        George Washington was a Mason and I always admired the father of our country, greatest president we ever had.  My father was a Mason and even though a lot of people think this nation was founded by Christians, in reality, it was founded by Masons: Benjamin Franklin and James                 Monroe among them.  Furthermore, I feel a kinship with the Knights Templars and despise Philip the Fair of France, who acted in collusion with Pope Clement V to destroy the knights in 1307.  However, I am inspired by the remnants of those noble knights that fled to Scotland, where they eventually became known as the Freemasons, before establishing the grand lodge in England.  I wish to join your order.  Please accept me as one of your brethren.

    Cecil signed the document, sealed it in an envelope and dropped it in the drop box.
    That evening, when he was at home with his wife in the bedroom, he was looking at the scar tissue on his chest in the full length mirror.  Mostly healed by now, he said to his wife, “I’m ready to get back in the field.”
    “What does the doctor say?”  She was concerned he was pushing too hard.
    “I don’t know,” he said, “I have an appointment tomorrow.”

    At home, eating diner, Elaine was reading a magazine, while her cats purred and slid around her legs in hopes of getting some of her delicious food, she had a surprise visitor and found Weiss sitting across from her at her dining room table.  She gently set down her knife and fork.
    Weiss looked disdainfully at the blasé wall hangings of nondescript subject matter, chosen to match the mauve couch, and lavender lamp shades, a wretched decor in his opinion, however, he smiled when he asked, “What did you find out from Moore at the hospital?”
    She shot him a glance, a look of anger and resentment.  “I don’t appreciate you showing up like this.”
    They locked eyes and kept still, then he nodded graciously.
    Moving on, Elaine said, “Moore knows.”
    “Everything?”
    “He knows I’m taking money from you.”
    “Who else knows?”
    “No one.”
    “Excellent, that means Moore is the choking point.”
    She couldn’t believe what she was hearing and reminded him that she was a policewoman, “I don’t want to hear about any criminal activities, especially if it involves murder.”
    Weiss sat back and smiled.  “Excellent, just make sure it get’s done.”
    She couldn’t believe he wanted her to kill Moore.  Her mouth was agape and she was speechless.
    “Listen,” Weiss said, leaning in.  “The man saw us together.  The meeting alone would be seen as improper, since my name came up in your investigations and he saw you with the money.  Do you want to take the chance he wakes up and starts talking?”  He looked at her for a response.  She had none.  “This is your career on the line.”  He gave her a cold look.
    Being defiant, Elaine said, “It makes you look guilty as hell too and besides, murder is more your department than mine, isn’t it?”
    “You’re the one who can get close to him, not me.”
    She kind of whimpered, hating him with all her heart for showing her it was the only way out of her current dilemma.  “How?”  She asked, “How do I do it?”
    He handed her a syringe and a liquid vial and said, “I think you know what to do.”
    Elaine looked at it and read the label: “Noctec, what’s that?”
    “Noctec is a barbiturate.”
    She looked from the vile into Weiss’s eyes.
    “You see Elaine, he’s already on Noctec, so a little more, maybe a little too much… if you see what I mean?  Chalk it up to hospital error.”  He could see she had questions, “And don’t ask me how I know this.”
    Looking at the vial then at Weiss, Elaine asked, “How-How much?”
    “It shouldn’t take much more if he’s on the maximum dosage.  When he starts throwing up, he’ll aspirate, be gone in less than a minute, probably before the nurses get to him.  It can never be traced to you, as long as you get out of there in time.”
    Weiss smiled and said, “You have a lovely place.”  And he left.

    The next day, Cecil was going over the evidence in the double homicide again and he discovered something interesting: a shoe made in England was a positive match to the bloody footprint found in Nigel’s basement: a fifty percent match, although, maybe not enough for a warrant to search Blair’s apartment.  Cecil made a phone call to the lab and talked to Conor, the head crime scene investigator.
    “I see you have a fifty percent match on the bloody shoe print in the double homicide… I was wondering if you could raise that number up to say a… 90% match?”
    “I can do better than that,” Conor said, “if you can get me the shoe.”
    “I can’t get you the shoe, unless I get a search warrant and that’s impossible, unless you can bump up that percentage point above 50%.”
    Connor thought for a moment, then said, “I may have something that will help.  Spending some of my own time looking into this, since the case was closed, I found a shoe manufacturer in England that makes a very distinctive sole like the imprint we found in the basement: Cobham shoes, unavailable in America.  Now I was able to track down a receipt from a store in Whitechapel that sold a pair to an Englishman, an American immigrant named Blair Thomas.  You find a pair of Cobham shoes on the suspect, I could probably make a 100 percent match.”
    “You’re sure Blair Thomas bought a pair of Cobham shoes?”
    “Absolutely.  Will that help with your warrant?”
    “What size?”
    “Size 7, which translates to a size 9 in America.”  Same size as the bloody footprint.
    “How sure are you the brand is Cobham’s?”
    “Over seventy-five percent.”
    “That might be just enough.”
    “The reports already out.  I can’t change it.”
    “You could amend it.  Say you found some new data that alters the results.”
    “I…”  Conor was highly dubious.
    “Come on.  Help me nail this guy.  Chances are he did it and you’ll be looked on as a hero, the changes you made, justified.”
    “Ah…”

    “Ah, listen, Elaine…”
    She looked up from the file on her desk.
    Cecil was standing in her doorway.  “Good news: the doctor is putting me back on full duty.  He’s cleared me to go back in the field today.”
    Elaine perked up, surprised, “Really?”  She thought maybe he was pulling her leg, “You have the paperwork?”
    He placed it on her desk and she perused it.  “Also,” Cecil said on his way out, “some new info has come to light in the double homicide at Nigel Mann’s house.”
    “What?”  Elaine seemed more irritated, than pleased.  She looked at Cecil and sighed.
    “I said good news: Conner is 75 percent sure, the bloody shoe print belongs to Blair Thomas and he’s 100% sure the suspect bought such a pair.  I’m going to get a search warrant.”
    Elaine hesitated, then smiled and said, “Great.”  When he left her office, she seemed troubled by the news and picked up the phone and said, “I have to see him, right away.”

    The next day, Cecil was sitting in a large windowless room, facing a table, on the other side of which, sat Weiss, two austere gray hairs on either side of him.
    A long silence, in which Victor scrutinized Cecil, making him uncomfortable.  It was clear from the expression on his face, Weiss didn’t approve of the detective, while a man with a mustache and bushy eyebrows, smiled pleasantly, which made the policeman feel most welcome.
    “Buddy Cecil, why do you want to be a Mason?”  Weiss asked.
    “Recently, I realized a lack of something in my life, spiritually speaking and I read up on a number of religions, including your faith and I found the most kinship with your history and belief system.”  Cecil felt satisfied his answer was fitting.
    “Really,” Kronenberg’s tone was droll.  “I was told by someone who knows you, that you have no faith in God, or an afterlife, even though you had a near death experience?”
    “People change,” Cecil said meekly.
    Weiss decided to cut the bullshit.  “Am I, or is this organization under investigation by your department?”
    “No, not at this time.”
    Weiss sighed.  “But we, or more specifically, I was in the past.”
    “Yes,” Cecil said, “but we ruled you out as a suspect.”
    “Really,” the austere billionaire was incredulous.
    “Well, as my boss said, ‘Just because you owned the land where a crime was committed doesn’t make you a criminal.’ ”
    The elders chuckled, while Weiss did not.  He had all he needed to make a decision.  Turning to the others, he looked on them to speak.
     The man with bushy eyebrows spoke in a raspy voice.  “Do you harbor any ill will against us?”
    “No, absolutely not,” Cecil protested and the elder smiled contentedly, whereas Weiss frowned.  The detective nodded knowingly.



 Copyright 2016  William Leslie