Detective D. Case (10 page)

          “I thought
we were done last time we talked.”

          “Oh, it’s
not about that.” Davidson could feel the sneer on Terrance’s mouse-like face. “Not
that at all. I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Davidson.”

          “Then what
is it?”

          “It’s your
faith in yourself. You’ve broken it.”

          Davidson
grabbed
Extremhögern
from the ground and placed it on the coffee table.
“And what do you mean by that? It’s not what I think you mean, is it?”

          Terrance
laughed, always typical Terrance. “You know better than I.”

          His whole
stomach sunken in fright. “It’s the truth.”

          “And the
truth is you’re a liar.” Terrance sputtered in more laughter. It came out as hilarious
on its own, but spewed into venom when it came to Davidson. “You think that by telling
yourself every now and then that you’re an honest man, more honest than any angelic
child could ever be, you’re telling the truth? Hell no! I’ve been thinking and I’ve
noticed that what you’re doing right now, and always have been, is just some ploy
to trick yourself into thinking you speak the truth. All this time you’ve been lying
to every one of your family, even to your own dead son!”

          Davidson
stood. “No, you’re lying!” The coffee table rattled.

          “Dear?”
came his wife’s voice from another room. “Is there something wrong?”

          Alarmed,
he began picking up the pieces of the tea cup. He rushed into them and split his
finger. Blood seeped out of the cut. “No, I’m fine, honey! Nothing to worry about!
Just . . . just a little spill of tea is all!”

          “All right
. . .” Her voice faded away with those last two words.

          Outside
somebody was knocking on his door. Davidson froze, hoping the person would leave.
Already he was on his way to delivering the broken tea cup shards into their desired
place.

          Knock.
Knock. Knock.

          He threw
the pieces out and went to the door. Opening it, he saw a man whose face paled so
white in the sunlight that he might have been a vampire asking for sugar from one
of his lovely neighbors. What made it different (for now) was that he wore a police
uniform. The man’s eyes were blotted with red cracks like lightning branches. His
pupils had no light in them, leaving a cold black throttled inside.

          “Hello,”
said the pale officer. “I am officer Lincoln Deed.”

          “Nice to
meet you,” said Davidson, shaking the officer’s hand. He shook hands with an ice
bucket was more like it. “Tell me, what brings you to my home at this time?”

          The pale
officer was balanced on the balls of his feet. “Oh, nothing much, really . . . I’m
just wondering if I could come in and explain something important to you.”

          “How important
do you think it is?”

          “Strictly
important,” said the officer. “I need your help, of some sort.”

          “Well then,
come in, come in!” Davidson opened the door wider so he could let the pale officer
in. He was the only one who knocked on his door, so it seemed odd that there weren’t
any more officers like they usually have during a questioning at someone’s home.

          “Please,
sit down.” Lincoln did as he was told. He moved left and right in his chair until
it seemed okay. After that he brought up a notepad and pen and began to speak.

          “Do you,
uh, remember the night when you’re son disappeared?”

          Davidson
went whiter than Officer Lincoln himself. He made a short chuckle, pushing it aside.
“We don’t talk about that nowadays . . .”

          “Anything
personal doesn’t matter at this point. I need you to cooperate and tell me what
happened that day when you learned your son had disappeared. It’s very important
that I know this.”

          He took
a deep breath, swiveled his hands together. Just what he needed now was a police
officer letting himself in and asking about Hubert. Five years ago didn’t seem like
a long time according to a monthly calendar, but it was two days since the tragedy
in Davidson’s mind. If he were to blink, he would be transported back to that day
where dreams and nightmares merged, wishes and curses were the same, and his son
had left him. His only son, Hubert, was pronounced dead without a body. Everywhere
he went, people were on the line of uncertainty about a thing this ambiguous:
was he dead or missing?

          “Well,
we knew Hubert was coming back from university from abroad. It had been years
since we saw him, but now it’s been a lot more than that.”

          The cold
voice of Lincoln spoke. “Go on.”

          “Doesn’t
it matter to you that my son –
my son! –
has been dead these past five years?”

          Officer
Lincoln took a deep breath. “Yes, it does matter quite greatly, which is why I need
you to go on and give me all the details.”

          So Davidson
continued. He recounted the darkly distasteful day when he had been writing an article
for a magazine for work. His wife had been out getting ready for Hubert’s arrival,
and the house had been left alone to Davidson. All that he did that day wasn’t anything
entirely new: he had written his articles, made lunch, and watched television. Never
did it come to mind that his son would arrive dead instead of a congratulated return.

          His first
alarm was the phone call--that stark phone call of that day. When he heard the first
ring, he finished up his lunch and strolled over to the phone. He had answered on
the second ring, giving out one of the laziest hellos he could muster. What charged
him back was the sound of his wife’s hard breathing. She had been crying, too. Her
sniffling had pinched his heart.

          “Frederick?”
his wife had said. “Frederick, please tell me your there!”

          “Yes, I
am!” he’d told her. “What happened?”

          Her sniffling
had broken most of what she said, but Davidson knew she was speaking about Hubert.
His wife’s tears smeared the words she had been trying to say, but he had made out
something about a message. Hubert had sent a message and never called back until
his strange disappearance occurred. He wasn’t in the crowd of passengers in the
airport, and he hadn’t answered his phone, either.

          Officer
Lincoln wrote this all down, flipping over to continue on extra pages. “And you
never found out what happened to Hubert?”

          “Five years,
officer,” said Davidson, “and still no answers. Now tell me, what is this for?”

          “Well,
I – I mean we – have found something rather”—he coughed and cleared his throat before
speaking again—“rather interesting.”

          “And what
was it?” Davidson demanded.

          “We found
another case involving the case of a wealthy family under the surname McDermott.
They lost their only son, too.”

          “What a
coincidence.”

          Officer
Lincoln shook his head. “That’s what I kind of thought, too, until I realized that
this may not be so. We’re starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this case you’re
holding is a fake.”

          Davidson
stayed calm. He was doing his job.

Officer
Lincoln was doing his job.

An
officer’s job for the police, that’s all.

No
he wasn’t.

 “Are
you out of your goddam, shriveled up mind?” he screamed. He didn’t care if his wife
heard him. Davidson promised to calm himself down after the last breakdown, but
not anymore. “Get the hell out of my house, now!”

“Mr.
Davidson, please.” Officer Lincoln began sweating, pushing back from where he stood.
He went for his belt, where his gun was held.

“You
dare use that!” Officer Lincoln didn’t look too easy in Davidson’s opinion, which
must mean he was turning purple again. “You’re gonna use that on me? Thinkin’ about
using it right now?”

“Please,
sir, calm down. I can’t let you go running wild like this.”

“Not
to me. I think you’re toying with me!”

“There’s
evidence on this, Davidson! If you can just settle down, we can talk about it.”

“How
do you know my name is Davidson? I never said my name, if you happen to remember.”

“I
have information about you in the case, if you happen to remember.” Officer Lincoln’s
reply dripped with sarcasm.

Davidson’s
anger raged inside the metal cage of his body. The locks were breaking, no matter
how sturdy he had made them. Sooner or later they’d break, and then whoever stood
in the same room wouldn’t be in good health. It was of no use, and Davidson let
the cage break open. His anger deteriorated the prison and he tackled the police
officer, the same anger whistling so loud that Davidson hadn’t heard two gunshots
going wild, barely missing both his ears, making them ooze blood and what was left
of his poor eardrums pounding to their little squeamish deaths.  Davidson’s wife
came much, much later. She made the mistake of fixing up her garden an hour earlier.
The Davidson garden went as far as a mile from the house, but that wasn’t an excuse
to go looking for her husband when something like noises and sounds of breaking
of furniture happened. That it occurred out of earshot would be a silly reason.
She pulled the two men apart, ending the fight, and Officer Lincoln put his gun
back into his belt. Wordlessly, he raced for the door with his notepad and pen as
well as other things he must have planned on using before this nonsense happened.

The
wife, her heart too sweet to deal with these things, broke into crying wails. Her
hands masked her tear-stricken-like-the-rain face, and Davidson went over to the
kitchen to think. He knew he could help his wife later, but something else was on
his mind. Davidson’s thoughts wandered to what Officer Lincoln had mentioned about
the identical cases the police held. The police, he supposed, would have found this
out long before and not now, but maybe time had a reason for this. Interestingly
enough, Davidson had the impression of looking into a mirror of the same destroyed
past, like a parallel universe.

*****

Martin’s hair was
all over his eyes so people thought he was older than he usually looked. Right now,
though, his eyes – if the possibility of seeing yourself became a reality – popped
through the giant mat of long, curly hair like a 3-D movie. The real kind, not the
cheap converted knock-offs.

          Under his
breath, he muttered many things. The one that rang up the counter had to be the
phrase, “I’m going to jail.” Second place would be awarded to, “I’m
so
going
to jail” and “My parents are gonna give me hell!” finalized the third. While doing
so, he shook the wheel so hard he was afraid it might pop off just like his eyes
were about to do if he didn’t stop.

          Sitting
in shotgun was his half-drunk friend, Ray. No matter where, Martin never saw Ray
without a beer, scotch, or jack. One time his parents said that he was gonna drown
himself in his own alcohol. In return Ray said that those were the most powerful
pieces of poetry he ever heard.

          He was
wild, that Ray, but now he slurped his drink with lazy eyes. “Maybe he isn’t dead,”
he slurred.

          Martin
let his hands go. Just as he sort of predicted, the parts where his hands were on
the wheel crunched. When given the right pressure, Martin could transform into a
human Hulk if he wanted to. Maybe not precisely when he wanted to because it
only happened at the time the power seized him and not the other way around, but
you get the idea.

          Ray nudged
his shoulder. “Martin. Martin, you still there?” he asked.

          “Yeah,
still here.”

          “We should
get out of the car. See if the man’s alive or not.”

          Automatically
Martin’s hands went back to chewing the rubber off the wheel. “No way, man, no way.
What if he wakes?”

          “If he
does, we’ll tell him we saved his life. He was going to fall off that safety guard
right over there.” He pointed out the safety guard shining in the night. It looked
ghostly, Martin remarked, just hovering there like nothing else existed. And nor
will exist.

          “I can’t.”

          “Why the
hell not?” demanded Ray. “It’s not like he has a gun or anything.”

          “Ray, you’re
in this car with me, correct?”

          It took
a second for Ray to digest that. “Okay. So?”

          “How are
you – and I repeat you – supposed to know if that man we just hit has a gun on him
or not?”

          “Whoa,
whoa, whoa, hold it! Since when was it the both of us that jacked up that old man
down the road?”

          “Sorry,
I meant me. But who was the one who thought it a good idea to bring a nice big bottle
of jack with us?”

          “Dodge
suggested it, shithead. I just complied.” He altered his voice into Sweet Ray, a
voice Martin never agreed with. When you heard his voice, it sounded too nice; he
might’ve puffed sugar into his words. “Now, why won’t you be a dear and get out
of this car, walk itty-bitty
all the
way
to where the nice
old man had been knocked from not your car, but from your stupidity, and see if
he’s well or not?”