Murder in Trinity’s Land End . . . Chapter 3
Welcome to Trinity’s Land End:Town of Murder & Deceit by
La-Tonia Denise Willis is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
July 14, 2008
The saga continues in the serialization of the upcoming novel WELCOME TO TRINITY’S LAND END:TOWN OF MURDER & DECEIT. Below is Chapter 3 . . .
(Click here for previous Chapters 1-2)
Click ABOUT NOVEL to get a synopsis and overview
CAVEAT: *Some of the formatting has been garbled in the chapter transfer from WORD doc to blog post. **Please BE ADVISED certain chapters in the novel contain graphic material and sexual content. Rated R. ***Welcome to Trinity’s Land End: Town of Murder & Deceit is copyright, 2008. All rights reserved. The novel is a work of fiction set in a fictitious Massachusetts town with fictitious characters. ****Information from this novel excerpts post may be reprinted or distributed in its original form only, for non commercial and educational purposes only BUT please link back to this blog site to give credit, if you do!!! Regarding this, please see our CREATIVE COMMONS license above. For any questions, send an email to creativemultimedia@qwestoffice.net.
Chapter Three: THE JANUS RIVER
As Katarina sat naked looking into the bedroom mirror and carefully pulling the brush through her long dark mane for what seemed to be the twentieth time or more he unpacked the remainder of her things. The blemishes on the large colorful trunk style suitcase tagged with picture postcards from all over the world easily showed its age. She once told him that she’d been to over fifty countries in the world on five Continents. She said the best feeling in one’s life is the one that gives you the latitude to pick up and go at any moment and not know where you’re headed or where your destiny lies.
“It’s my Gypsy blood,” she said. “The call of the wild.”
At first it was hard for him to believe that a woman with her professional and business credentials could still look to that sort of vagrant migration of her ancestors. Her life in Spain and job at the university seemed so normal to him but was he stereotypically equating the traditional with perceived notions of normality? Tradition. In a way it was what his mother sought to establish back then too until the bubble burst and his father accepted a new job in a new place, thus leaving Trinity’s Land End behind forever.
Of course the irony of the situation is that if the idea of a free spirit were different or antithetical to Katarina’s beliefs she probably wouldn’t be here with him now, in Baltimore, in a small little cramped apartment in a not-so-nice part of town.
“What are you daydreaming about over there? You finish with the luggage gajo?”
“What does that mean?” he asked. He always asked the definition whenever she used Gypsy terminology.
“Non-Gypsy silly,” she explained and continued to run the brush through her long tresses with care.
He stole periodic glances as the multitude of strands fell well over her shoulders and cascaded over her supple body with each stroke of the brush. He imagined it to be what Lady Godiva might have done before that famous ride.
“In Spain you called me paio. You said that meant someone who was non-Gypsy.”
“In Spain it did. Now I call you gajo, just a generalization of the same thing. There are many words and many spellings and many ways from country to country that we Gypsies refer to outsiders.”
“Pardon my ignorance but it doesn’t seem like a very nice word.”
“Why should it be nice or otherwise? It is simply a word that was born and existed in the context of the social conditions of Gypsy people in relation to everyone else. Sure, it has been said in a contemptible fashion many times before but it is also true that its etymology is part of the universal terminology of simply meaning,” she stopped in mid-stroke, “non-Gypsy.”
“Yes, Professor. I should have known I’d get a lecture.”
He opened the one available drawer in his dresser bureau and stuffed most of the clothing from the suitcase inside. It was a tight fit. He’d never lived with a woman before and had no idea of what the spacial configuration of storage between the belongings of the two parties cohabitating was supposed to be.
“Raymond, I have a question.”
“Katarina, I have an answer,” he smiled and closed the suitcase with the surplus of apparel still inside.
She turned away from the mirror to look back at him in mid-brush. “How is it that a man with your background doesn’t speak any languages of his native tongue?”
He sat at the foot of the bed and stared into her eyes. It was those same dark pupils that first greeted him from surreptitious glances in the little dive cafe off the beaten path in Madrid. He was on leave from the Bureau at the time and contemplating defection from federal agent to city policeman;a substantial romance was the farthest thing from his mind.
“Well, I guess I consider my native tongue to be English. Growing up, neither of my parents spoke their native languages in the household much. Between my mother’s mestizo Indian dialects and Spanish and my father’s Lebanese rooted in Aramaic, can you imagine?”
“Like a mini United Nations,” she laughed.
“Exactly.”
“But it is good, not a bad thing, to have such flavor in your heritage. You must always understand this. Like for me, most people think the reason I went to university and have an important professional position is because I finally break away from the life, from my people and go to the institution to learn how not to be a Gypsy. This belief is false. At an early age my mother was a fortune teller in a little shop in Rumania and when she came to America she became a fortune teller in a little shop in Little Italy in New York. Five years later when I was born my father quit his job at the docks and moved the whole family to France to help take care of his ailing older sister, my aunt Sonja. Still my mother found work as a fortune teller. This is what she did and she was damn good at it but I knew nothing about the cards and didn’t care. She saw this and the way I liked to read all nonfiction and the history books. She say to me one night, ‘Katarina, you are not destined to be a fortune teller, this much is evident. You are a teacher through and through.’”
He leaned forward, “Wow, that’s a great story, almost like a fable. I hear Gypsies are good at that.”
“It is a true story Raymond Litani. I do not lie to you. Mama used all the money from her fortune telling business to help send me to university in Europe. Both of my parents sacrificed to give me better opportunities. They were resourceful. I do not run away from heritage, my history, my origins as a Gypsy. It is because of it that I’ve been able to enjoy a relatively good life and good money and a good profession. You understand?”
She laid the brush down gently on the dresser and slowly began to move toward him. He watched attentively as the nipples of her breasts played hide and go seek behind the shelter of illustrious strands.
“Are you positive about this Raymond Litani? Living together?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled her closer to him and pressed his lips firmly on her belly,licking all over methodically before planting his tongue in her navel while on the way to further regions south. When she felt the warm breath of his mouth between her legs she flung her head back and closed her eyes and thought about the first time in that little cafe in Madrid when she caught him looking at her. Unlike her fortune teller mother she may not have been blessed with an understanding about the readings the cards offered but she did believe in destiny. And it was as clear to her now as it was on that day just six months ago that her fate was somehow intertwined with this strange policeman on holiday in Europe.
Detective Litani was awakened by thunderous raps on the driver side window of the police car. He looked up to see Tina Sycamore waving frantically to get his attention.
He looked at his watch and gasped. It was an hour since he’d left the Sheriff’s office. He couldn’t exactly place the time gap but figured he must’ve have pulled over off the side of the rode to catch a few winks to make up for his many sleepless nights of late. He was parked on a particular unseemly stretch of dirt rode that ran from behind the Sheriff’s station to the other side of town where the medical examiner’s office was located. It was a shortcut route centered among vast cornfields and nothing much else that hardly anyone used anymore. The reason being, it was rumored to be haunted by the ghost of an ancient mariner who committed suicide in the fields a long time ago.
When he finally rolled the window down Tina stuck her head inside and planted a big kiss on his cheek.
“Stop that. What are you doing here anyway?”
“Why it’s a public road Ray, ain’t I allowed? Besides, you’re sleeping on duty. You could get in trouble for that.”
“Get out of the way,” he said as he cranked the engine.
“Only if you give me a ride,” she shot back.
Reluctantly, he leaned over and opened the door to the passenger’s side. Tina hurried over and got in.
“Going to see Dr. Westminster about the autopsy?” she asked.
“Buckle up. I’ll swing by your place and drop–”
She interrupted, “But I just came from there. I wanna go where you’re going. I can help with the case.”
He gave her a look but it was no use. He was too tired to argue. As they drove away he got a sensational feeling that something wasn’t right. He felt weird, not himself. He grabbed the side of his head and winced in pain.
“What’s wrong?” asked Tina.
“Nothing, just be quiet please.” Talking made it worse.
It was the migraines again, they were back and in full force. Suddenly, the presence of Tina was a minor problem in comparison. He held on to the steering wheel as tight as he could and tried not to panic. They seem to come in flashes but without any medication all he could do was wait it out.
“Who is Katarina?”
“Wha–?” he blinked. The pain was getting sharper and it was harder to concentrate or form words.
“Katarina. You called it out in your sleep, don’t you remember?”
No, he didn’t remember. He didn’t remember anything. All he felt now was a rising unbearable pressure and an inexorable need to close his eyes. And when he did he saw the dead body of Patty Lowell staring up at him from an examiner’s table, blood pouring from every orifice. He screamed and lost control of the wheel causing the vehicle to suddenly veer off the dirt road and plow into the thick of the cornfield.
Dr. Westminster flipped through the report once and handed it to Detective Litani. It was the way he did it that got the investigator’s attention.
“We tested the fluid found along her inner thighs.”
“And?”
“Well, it wasn’t seminal that’s a fact so we’re still running more tests. There is indication of a sexual act prior to death though.”
“Sexual act or sexual trauma, doc?”
“A little bit of both,” said the medical examiner uncomfortably.
“Uh-huh, what else, doctor?” He asked as he massaged his temple. He still felt a little woozy from the car accident.
“There’s the bruising all over the body of course and possibly some signs of marks on the wrists caused by a rope or something. And oh yeah, the fracture on the skull.”
“What about the thread used to sew her lips together?”
“Just regular old black thread as far as I can tell. Nothing special about it.”
“What disturbs me Dr. Westminster is some of that rough stuff that was done to her jives with certain mutilation techniques that involve thrill and lust murders. Sexual restraint. Bondage. Anything goes these days but I get the feeling whatever Patty Lowell’s past sexual indiscretions this was one time she was certainly not compliant.
“If my mother could hear you now. You’d send her to an early grave. I’m not allowed to say anything about work at home. It’s one of the rules.”
“I see. Does that explain why you didn’t make it to the crime scene? I could have used an extra pair of hands.”
“Don’t you worry about my motivations none.”
Desperately trying to avoid a brouhaha of any kind Detective Litani stepped to the side of the room and scanned through the report. His eyes floated over the column marked MECHANISM OF DEATH.
“Cerebral Hemorrhage. Massive Contusions. Asphyxiation? This report is starting to resemble that of Russia’s Mad Monk, Rasputin. Exactly how many ways can one die a single death, doctor?”
“Well, it’s hard to tell what moment her life actually ended. Was it due to the trauma of having her skull bashed in? Or from the other bruises on the body? I can tell you there were at least four wounds that could have contributed to her death. I guess you can say she was progressively dying for hours.”
“That’ll be interesting on the death certificate,” mumbled Detective Litani.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Dr. Westminster with a wounded look.
“There was no blood evidence anywhere around the scene. Granted it had been raining that day but her body was ice cold which leads me to believe she was murdered somewhere else and then dumped.”
“Keep reading. She was stiff all right and it didn’t have anything to do with rigor mortis. Ice cycles.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. Frozen bits all in her insides. Never seen nothing like it. “
“Dr. Westminster am I to understand that the physiologic time of death could be as far back as a week or two ago and the body was preserved by freezing afterwards?”
“Well, we both know it would take some time to build up that kind of ice inside the body.”
“I see. I suppose whoever did it was probably buying time, a more convenient time for the body to be found, or why else wait that long? Of course, it’s a preservation technique to freeze the body to control decomposition but there was this one case back in Baltimore where the killer mutilated his victim and stuffed little pieces of her in tote bags to decompose at the local storage house.”
Detective Litani did not expect a remark and Dr. Westminster complied by not providing one. He was well aware that not everyone was fond of rehashing the horrific elements of some of his most disturbing cases as he was. Some found it peculiar and just plain weird that he shared a morbid fascination with the criminal mind in much the same way behavioral psychologists do. What they lacked in understanding was his undying allegiance to the victim that made it necessary to look for valuable insight into the killer’s contemplations and actions.
“Tell me more about this scar tissue in the uterus I see in the report.”
“Yep, an accumulation of scar tissue that’s right. More than likely from a previous miscarriage.”
“Or abortion. So, Patty Lowell was pregnant at least once in her life.”
“Yeah, but that was the least of her worries.”
Detective Litani took a step forward and waited for the medical examiner to explain. Dr. Westminster cleared his throat. His left eye started to twitch and he began to scratch the palm of his hand as if there really was an itch. All the time his foot was engaged in a vigorous tapping process that culminated in him turning sideways going to great pains to talk himself through the panic attack. It was the same set of histrionics he was accused of perpetrating by the professors at the medical school in Infinity City.
“Dr. Westminster are you alright?”
“It’s really unpleasant and I don’t want to talk about it. I was just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
Of course, Detective Litani knew none of that to be true but rather than accuse his colleague of an outright lie he pulled up a chair and sat down quietly still peering over the report.
“Is there anything else, officer?”
Detective Litani shook his head several times while keeping his eyes fixed on the report.
“Detective? I said are we finished here?”
Henry Westminster was a nervous man by nature and when people did unexpected things around him it only served to increase his uneasiness.
“Dr. Westminster?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Our professions . . . we do the things that must be done, correct? We both know that a good medical examiner can provide all kinds of insight and send the investigation in the right direction . . .” The inflection of Detective Litani’s voice was well below its normal register and there was a cool calculated syncopation to his speech.
Dr. Westminster didn’t say a word. He simply took off his spectacles and began a relentless and unnecessary wiping.
“My goodness, is it really necessary that you have all the dirty details?”
” . . . But a bad one who does a truly piss poor job of it can really fuck things up something proper,” he said continuing where he’d left off. It was a very effective way of letting his colleague know that he was not amused and would not accept anything other than full disclosure.
“Exactly what is it you failed to put in the official autopsy report, doc?”
“Tell me Detective, do the crib notes come along with that speech? Is it really that important that you have all the smut to go along too? I mean she’s dead after all. What good is it to expose her every unmentionable?”
On that note he opened the first drawer of the file cabinet and retrieved a large manila folder.
“All right,” he said and took a deep breath, “but before I give you this, I want you to promise that you won’t give the information to the newspapers. I can see the big city tabloids now getting wind of a small town scandal through the associated press.”
“Listen, my three main concerns are finding the criminal, arresting the criminal and making sure the evidence is strong enough to prove the criminal’s guilt in the courtroom. That’s all I care about.”
“I really hope you mean what you say Detective. This is sensitive stuff. People here don’t want to see the image of this town destroyed by the media.”
Detective Litani wasn’t in the habit of being at odds with medical examiners. Quite the opposite. They had served him well on a number of occasions back in Baltimore. It was a hard job staring at dead bodies all day and he could certainly empathize but it was important that their partnership remained if not congenial at least efficient.
“Patty Lowell’s private history is crucial to the investigation, you know that, especially the medical. I hate to sound like a broken record but I’m working to establish motive here. Am I missing something? Where I come from people in your position are supposed to work with the investigation, not against it.Or do they do things differently here in Trinity’s Land End?”
“Hey fella, everybody knows how you feel. You don’t have to wear your contempt for this town like a badge. There are some good and decent people living here. It may be hard for you city folk to believe but some of us prefer the camaraderie of living around people you know and trust. It’s not LA or New York and that’s why we love it, because of what it’s not,” said Dr. Westminster defiantly while grudgingly handing over the manila folder and walking away.
“You should remember something doc. The “Those things don’t happen here” defense isn’t what it used to be. A woman was murdered on this quite little town’s watch and that changes everything. There are no more frontiers Dr. Westminster, no place to hide from all the bad stuff. It’s high time you and the rest of the pioneers comprehend this very important fact.”
“I don’t need need a history listen from you. You don’t like me because I’m not a fancy forensic pathologist. I know what you did. I got a call asking for a copy of the report and a time to have the body sent to an independent Boston lab for a second autopsy. You didn’t have the guts to tell me yourself.”
Detective Litani had no idea the people from Boston would get back to him so fast. More than anything else he hated being put on the spot but after all, he did draw first blood by going outside the normal chain of operations which was always a small town killer. If he were a rookie just starting out and getting to know the playing field he probably would have done things differently. Rookies can afford to do things differently. The reality is the longer you were on the force the less time you spent worrying about stepping on toes.
“You’re crazy if you think the county is going to foot the bill to have this girl’s body flown to an expensive DNA lab in Boston for expedited service. Besides, I think Sheriff Daniels will have something to say about that.” He removed his glasses once more and went about the facade of cleaning them.
“Herpes simplex 2,” was all Detective Litani could get out after viewing the brief info in the supplemental file.
“Are you surprised? The girl was rumored to have a very loose sex life. This is a small town and people don’t like to talk about unpleasant things like that. It makes them uncomfortable. Husbands start to look at their wives a litter harder. This isn’t the big city where STDs are as rampant as the common cold. Now everybody knows you went to one of those fancy Ivy League colleges and I bet you think folk down here don’t know their ass from their elbow but there is a such thing as decency and I didn’t think you’d need this kind of information to solve your case.”
Detective Litani closed the supplemental file, tucked it inside the original and placed the documents on the counter. When he got to the door he could feel Dr. Westminster’s obsessive gaze from behind burning a hole into him. He needed to redeem Patty Lowell somehow. He needed to make it known that her life counted regardless of how she lived it. He needed to say something for the victim. He opened the door and stood there silent for a moment before bowing his head.
“Dr. Westminster, I’m sure Patty Lowell’s killer didn’t think or care how uncomfortable he was going to make everyone in town feel when he bludgeoned her to death and cut off her finger and dumped her liked garbage.”
As he left the medical examiner’s office he reflected on the word “homicide” as it was indicated in the MANNER OF DEATH column of the report. It was a word that was as much a part of his life as eating and breathing was to his survival. In a way he needed the word to justify his being, his vocation, as he had never wanted to be anything other than a police officer. It was because of his father’s work as a District Attorney that he was introduced to the dark side of human nature. Rapists. Murderers. Child Molesters. He encountered them all. He watched them parade before the courts with one excuse or another. He wanted to be a homicide detective because murder, in his eyes, was the worst humans had to offer and he felt it his job to give victims the last word.
That a son of a Lebanese father and an Argentine mother whom both experienced various bouts of racism in the United States could want a career to upholding the laws of a system that had not always served his family well was ironic to some. He always told them this was his country to struggle in for good or bad. His father made it against all odds narrowly escaping Lebanon in 1958 while the country lay in turmoil between pro-Western and pan-Arab factions.
His mother’s people were mestizos, part of the indigenous natives of the Andean highlands in Argentina and in some particular ways a little bit of Gypsies themselves. Her mother Angelina, his maternal grandmother, who had crossed the border from Brazil to escape slavery, met and married a Spaniard vacationing there whose commitment of race and class suicide made it hard to stay within the prosperous bourgeoisie community in which he belonged. As the story goes, his maternal grandfather Gael Arturo severed all communication with his family after their refusal to recognize his marriage to Angelina. Shortly afterwards, he moved his pregnant wife to the United States. In Argentina, the next day saw the palace revolt and the ushering into power of a group of army colonels; chief among them was Juan Peron. Angelina only knew that some in her family had disappeared after the coup.
Catalina Arturo was born in Boston. She met his father Élan Litani at Boston University. He was a professor of law and she was his star pupil. It was forbidden chemistry and she got pregnant the first time. In those days it was customary for the woman to abandon her prospects in place of raising a family. Still neither of them ever looked back. Newly married Catalina Litani discovered Trinity’s Land End one day while thumbing through a Better Homes & Garden magazine. Immediately she felt a connection to the simplicity of life portrayed in the magazine. After the move Élan Litani retained his professorship in Boston a little over thirty miles away on a half-time basis, which meant that Catalina spent a lot of time on her own with her newborn son and the citizens of the town.
You can learn a lot about a town if you look closely enough and he wondered if his mother ever discovered any of those secrets even though she remained a loyal inhabitant. He was only two when his father uprooted the family again and moved to Baltimore but now he was back under many different circumstances and Trinity’s Land End had suddenly found itself under one gigantic microscope.
As he drove around trying to clear his head he wondered whether the Sheriff would be willing to sign off on sending the body to Boston for an independent autopsy and DNA testing with trained forensic technicians. Clearly Dr. Westminster thought it was a joke he was even asking. It could be said that he was on the road to burning his bridges quickly with each quest into Patty Lowell’s murder. And although he would never admit it, it could also be said that deep down he thought about whether or not his mother would approve if she were alive. The little voice inside his head kept telling him this place would never be the same after the case was solved, if he could solve it. It was secrets he was after– no two ways about it–fallacies and secrets along a maze of undisclosed passions and predilections as they would presumably take him further into Patty Lowell’s life as an outsider in her own backyard. It was a forgone conclusion that the investigation would inadvertently succeed in plunging the town into turmoil and he hoped that he was not sealing his own fate in the process.
He gazed out over the riverbank and into the pristine waters of the Janus River. There once was a time when he thought of becoming an Olympic swimmer. While in college he excelled at the national meets and was well on his way to becoming a member of the US professional team. Somewhere along the line he lost the confidence to succeed and spent far too much time ruminating on how millions of Americans would be depending on him for a gold medal in his event. Americans never seemed to respect anything other than first place and at the time he was still unsure of his full capabilities as an athlete. He feared he would never be able to give them what they wanted and what they wanted was a winner. The day he quit the team and the sport was the worst day of his life. His teammates were crushed. It took some time afterward to separate the disappointment of a failed athletic career into channeling a future in law enforcement but when he did regain vision he vowed from that day on that he would never have someone lose faith in him again. Guilt went a long way in the Litani family.
As he became enraptured by the reflection the sunset cast over the long New England rolling hills, he looked out onto the horizon and made a pledge. He gave his word to Patty Lowell that he would do everything in his power to bring her murderer to justice.
As night approached he found himself on the way down to the only local bar in town. The Pig Pen was aptly named with the ominous location being once home to a pig farmer named Grizzle Laytham. When Grizzle discovered the town Council was on the verge of instituting an ordinance against him due to the foul order emanating throughout the area, he packed up immediately one night taking everything he owned, except the pigs. The swine were left unattended and in such a stage of sloth that the Department of Health was called in to clean up the mess. Consequently, the pigs were relocated to an animal farm up north. A few months later, aspiring small business owner Cletus Hornblower, with the aid of a small business loan, took over the pig farm and miraculously turned it into The Pig Pen. Business or not, pig stench was the kind of mephitic odor that kept on giving and anyone who ventured into The Pig Pen for a couple of brews was faced with those cold hard facts.
On arrival Detective Litani discovered Cletus in the middle of shutting down the operation. Cletus Hornblower was a man of schedule and had no intention of staying open a minute later than his designated business hours of operations. Not even for a cop.
“Can’t you read? It’s eleven thirty and closing time,” said Cletus all the while struggling to find the right key on his fifty keys or more metal hoop chain to lock up with.
“What kind of self respecting bar owner shuts down at eleven thirty anyway?” Detective Litani found himself arguing for the merits of alcohol.
“Look, if it wasn’t for me this whole damn town would be dry. It’s all I can do to keep that Lizzie French broad and her all-hag temperance society from meddling in my affairs. I ain’t trying to give them no ammunition either. Let me tell you something else, every night that old spinster sends her nephew Luke Skinner out to make sure the bar closes on time. Just you wait.”
Cletus looked at his watch and began the countdown. “One, two, three, four, five . . . Eleven thirty on the dot.”
Their eyes stayed fixed to the corner of Spruce street as the sound of a creeping pickup truck escalated into view. Inside a man in a baseball cap with a patch over his left eye waved in passing as the pickup rolled slowly by.
“See what I mean? That sonuvabitch likes to mock me,” said Cletus.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t cause any harm if you kept it open just this one time. Fifteen or twenty minutes tops. That’s all a need. A little comfort and a cold one,” begged Detective Litani.
“No way. Hey, you’re a cop and you want me to break the rules? The Sheriff never asked me to break the rules.”
“Well now Cletus, I guess that makes the Sheriff a better man than me. Anyway, sleep tight,” he said before driving off for home, “I know I won’t.”
Yet somewhere along the road he started seriously thinking of that empty house on Willows avenue. The house he never really knew because his childhood memories only began after his family migrated to an upscale Maryland neighborhood while he was still a toddler. He often wondered why his parents had bothered to retain the house at all after his father took the job as prosecutor in Baltimore. For years his mother hired a caretaker to look after the place. She seemed to be obsessed with maintaining its upkeep. He was sure that over the years she harbored a certain amount of resentment towards his father for making her move.
The ringing of his cell phone and a raspy little voice on the other end broke the memory of his youth. “Talk to me,” he answered. It was the special catchphrase he was fond of using during his training at Quantico. Leaving the FBI was a hard choice.
“It’s me, Westminster. I called your house and then I called the Sheriff’s house and he gave me your cell phone number. Where the heck are you anyway?”
“On the open road, what is it?”
“Look, Detective Litani, about before. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“None taken,” said the officer and waited on the other end of the line for the rest of it.
There was a long pause before Dr. Westminster spoke again.
“Some more of the clinical tests are in and its the darndest thing. Well, that fluid we were talking about, it was this plant compound mixture of blue-green algae that had been purified and distilled into a liquid. Well, anyway, algae has been known to have all kinds of medicinal properties and such but I got to thinking, a drug is a drug. It can be used one way or the other, right? And much of the blue-green stuff is toxic, well, Patty Lowell’s cells were full of blue-green algae. Around here you know where algae grows the thickest?”
“Of course. The Janus River!” Detective Litani blurted out.
He parked the car underneath one of the many mighty oak trees surrounding the embankment near the Janus River. A storm was brewing. By the time he got the flashlight from the glove compartment and trekked down to the spot near the hills where the algae grew the wildest, heavy rains bombarded the area. He felt a strong gush of straight-line winds that made him rethink his position. Still he persevered like a man eager to claim the prize at the end of the rainbow. As he happened to look out near the edge of the river he saw a deer with his hind leg stuck in an sludge pile.
“I’m coming little fella, just let me get a nice sample first,” he said as he waded through the muddy terrain and removed a plastic bag from his pocket. He used a pocketknife to unearth the root of a small section of algae and quickly stored it away. He continued on towards the fallen animal. The deer let out a yell that reverberated throughout the hills. When Detective Litani finally reached down to dig the caked mud from around the poor creature’s legs he felt a great deal of relief. He tried to sooth the yearling by rubbing its head. He desperately needed to keep it calm in order to prevent any jerking motions that might endanger his limbs being snapped in the process.
“One step at a time little fella, don’t fight it.”
In the process of rescue he was assaulted by huge hailstones pelting him hard from the front and back, making his efforts all the more risky. Luckily his vision was unhampered enough to clear the last pocket of soil and gently remove the deer’s stranded legs.
“There you go. You owe me one,” he said and cradled the small animal in his arms to safety.
As he headed for higher ground and left the river behind something came over him. He didn’t know what exactly it was that made him look back but as he would later relate, “It was the look of the century.”
Floating down the river in a whirlwind stream was the body of Victor Salley and he never looked more peaceful.
“Oh shit!” he called out but there was no one around to hear him scream.
It was early morning and the big burly man with the crew cut in a trench coat and dark shades walked around to the side of the limo and stuck his head in the window. His acquaintance leaned forward and presented the man with an envelope full of cash.
“Easiest loot I ever made,” said the man.
The acquaintance said nothing but rather communicated with a series of nods visible only to the hulk of man standing before him.
“Won’t nothing to it. He was stone cold drunk anyway. Just splashing around in the fountain all tore up. I ought to be paying you. I told you I’d take care of it,” he said waiting for his master’s approval.
The acquaintance gestured some more and pointed towards a blue sedan pulling up in front of them. As the vehicle got closer the man took off his trench coat and put it over his arm.
“Hawaii, her I come. Right back where I started from . . .” he sang the lyrics under his breath.
The acquaintance waited as his consort walked towards the sedan and said a few words to the driver inside. For all intents and purposes the Hawaiian knew, no two ways about it, he was on his way to Infinity City Airport en route to the lovely island of his birth. This he held to be self-evident. They say one man’s truth is another man’s reality waiting to sink in. And where this poor fool was going there was no need for luggage or packages. He was the package, something he would learn the hard way as he stepped into the back seat. The sheets of layered plastic should have given him a warning sign but it would be safe to say that he had not been hired for his intelligence quotient. Yet in all honesty it is questionable as to whether there was actually enough window of opportunity to do anything about it when he realized the cruel joke was on him this time around. For as quick as lightening the driver pulled out a magnum with a silencer and pumped a single bullet into his forehead and sent him caroling back against the backseat before slowly sliding down and tilting over on the brand new plastic with his name on it.
Across the driveway in the limo the acquaintance gave one final salute before beckoning his driver to take off.
. . .THIS CONCLUDES CHAPTER 3 OF WELCOME TO TRINITY’S LAND END: TOWN OF MURDER & DECEIT. STAY TUNED FOR MORE CHAPTERS COMING YOUR WAY . . .
hi, this blog is featured today at http://jccleofe.blogspot.com …have a great day!
[...] here for previous Chapter [...]