Lonesome Valley; Chapter 2

The Imprisonator

You work in the city police force, prowl the streets filled with vicious muggers, dope peddlers, crazy weirdos for 10 years and you expect a quiet desk job to while away your days in peace. You are 32 years old after all. Its time they let you relax. You apply to your pseudo-intellectual boss to shift you to a more peaceful job. The sanctimonious prick who loves to say " subtle" every 2-3 minutes, ignores it and puts you into the security cordon of an anal retentive politician who has been threatened by yet another psycho. Appears they both studied together at some big shot ivy league college or the other, your boss had some brotherly love to spare and also a few men from the force.

It appears the senator Johansen was told by somebody called "the emancipator" to mercy kill his only child suffering from cerebral palsy otherwise the crazy will have to assassinate him on moral and philosophical grounds. Slippery grounds, those. You never play there.

They have also given you an ivy league humanities graduate for a partner who is on a "being a good Samaritan" mission. Eloquence personified and apparelled in a Van Huesen suit. The bastard even quotes Shakespeare. Name's Edward Devereaux. Fancy pansy.

The threat came by the phone. Wonders of science are innumerable and unfathomable. No chance of catching the perp even after tracing the call but it was done anyway by the bright boys from communications. So here you are staking out a suburban villa of Godzillic proportions with manicured lawns and pedicured ladies. The matter is being splashed about in the news paper like beer in a bachelor party. There is always a small mob of T.V. reporters in front of the gate. You feel like a red assed monkey at a historical site, stared at, jeered at and being asked things you don't know.

He is coming out of his villa in his bullet proof luxury car that lets him ride out any storm inside watching porno and sipping beer ensconced in fragrant leather seats. You are not so lucky, you have to pave the way for his majesty's departure to the hospital to see his son.

Its not even been 40 minutes since his departure, you have just settled down to have your coffee and cigarette and Edward 'Eddie' deveraaux comes huffing and puffing, spills the coffee and starts coughing with a hanky on his mouth with his initials stencilled on it. This is supposed to be your signal to stop smoking as Mr. eloquent doesn't feel terribly comfortable in cigarette smoke. You promptly blow a cloud on his face and tell him to cough the fuck up.

"Ah...I have the misfortune to report, a terrible loss". Hems and Haws he.
"Go on".
Uh...This might come as a shock but it is my duty to report the truth as I know it to my superiors.
You clench your teeth and press on "I am very much interested in knowing the information you bring Lieutenant".
Well...The gentleman we have been put in security charge of has been found dead in his son's hospital ward. Reasons are heretofore unknown.

You feel two spots growing on you.
1. The coffee spot where the Dumb ass has spilled it
2. The spot of dread that starts from your gut and soon reaches your jockeys and twists them in a knot.

You knew it was a bad job. But your old man was adamant for you to take some job, any job. An MBA was too boring. You were too lazy to become a scientist, engineer or a lawyer though you had a sharp mind (or so the cute female professor told you), so you became a cop. Getting in was easy enough but the folly of your ways was clearly apparent sitting on the hard wooden chair in the supercilious superintendent's otherwise plush office, the next day. He deliberately put that hard chair for you to make you uncomfortable.

"Sloppy. Your feedback report told me. I was a fool to send you on such an important duty. I disregarded the subtle insinuations of your senior officers and trusted your rough talent and what do I get?" The ranting had just started and the old man was wheezing with effort.

"Sir according to the forensics report, the poison was mixed in the beer which came from the local wholesale liquor dealer. One of the cans had been tampered with. He drank it in the car. The delayed effect of the poison started to show up in the hospital when he went to see his son. Just the other day he had given a statement to " The Post" that there is no chance he would do such a thing as killing his own son. Its the emancipator business. I was only on the guard duty." You wish there was a diplomacy class for dupes like you.

"How subtly you have shirked your duty captain. Truly admirable. When the car was inside the garage wasn't it your duty to check it when, as you put it so eloquently YOU were on the guard duty?" Just listen to the asshole. Were you supposed to sip all the beers to check whether they were doctored or not? But you bite your lip and keep quiet.

"Now the National Agency of Investigation has taken the case from us and we're expected to co-operate with them. Your duty will now be to co-ordinate with them and please do not give me any chance to complain this time, I must tell you in no subtle terms."

After two days of the big scene the NAI people interrogate you for four hours about your one week stay at the politicians house. Their condescension is visible. They smirk at your answers, you take it silently.

You take the squad car and make a stop at the liquor wholesaler. He's been visited by the NIA and is visibly distraught. He repeats his statement. He had taken a new delivery boy for the northern end of the city. The lad was late thirtyish,said he was a student and needed a job to supplement his allowance, chiseled features, broad chest, bearded, intelligent looking, and no he didn't give his documents. He was seen studyning heavy books sitting on a box in the warehouse.

Whatever, none of your business, now that the NIA is here, you swear never to get involved in high voltage stuff, that is for the high fliers. You decide to drop by home on your way to headquarter. The old man has paralysis of the lower body. Though there is a nurse who comes thrice a week, he still needs all the attention he can get, and then some more. To be very frank he is a pain the "you know what", but the problem is you love him too much. To be a little more frank, you had a call from the army and to be most frank that was your heart's desire. But after your mother ran away with the milk delivery man, you didn't have the heart to leave him alone. So you never told him, had you had he would have packed and Fedexed you to fort honor. He thinks you are a worthless no brainer nincompoop, but that is a small price to pay to stay near him and take care of him in his old days. Sometimes you think he knows it all, the old shoe box where you have kept your army call letter looks a little askew sometimes.

His gruff abusive language is what you come back home to hear. Though it irritates the hell out of you, you chew your nails out if you don't find the same voice fighting a verbal battle right through the thin walls with the neighbouring joneses.

You scan the police frequencies on the car radio; the usual chit chat about murder on east street, car crash on Tall Elks, burglary on Link Road. You twirl the dial and you get news a channel. Its abuzz; "The recent johansen murder case has yielded a new clue, or we might say a new puzzle considering the state of the police investigation. Among the beer bottles of senator johansen police have found a bottle of a prescription anesthetic called ketamine. Why has the killer left a ketamine bottle at the crime scene? lets ask our crime expert Dr....."
Bloody hounds, and whats with these psychos? Why cant they just do their thing and walk away? Why do they have to create such a furore about everything. Even criminals are publicity hounds nowadays. Where are the good old days when the killings were done in the cover of the night without seeking attention? Nowadays the bastards deliberately leave clues behind to challenge the detectives.
You have reached home, you divert your mind from policing(as if it really was a concern), and send it straight to oblivion to save it from the barrage that is about to hit you as soon as you make the front door creak. You open the door, no sound; he must be sleeping, you consider it a blessing. You take a peek in the old man's room. he sleeps so peacefully, nothing moves. Wait, something is moving inside the sheet near his legs. You slowly edge up to it, fearing the old fox's wrath if he is awakened. You uncover the leg and there it is, hissing and crawling, green and venomous, sleek and dangerous, satisfied after biting and killing your father. The leg is blue with the venom that has already spread throughout the body. You fling the sheet away to reveal a bloated, blue dead father. The man you loved more than your life is dead because you were too busy saving a senator. And you know what, you suck even at that. You are so ashamed you feel like smashing all the mirrors in the world. You check his pulse with more optimism than the your brain permits, the results make a worse wreck out of you. There is a phone on the bedside, you want a doctor, a big knowledgeable man, who can just touch him with a magic wand and make him alive again. You reach for the receiver, you notice something unfamiliar through stinging tears in your eyes. You scrunch up your face to read the label of the bottle, the new bottle that you have never seen on his table. Its reads; KETAMINE- medical purpose only.
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You are on extended compassionate leave from the police force. The numbness has gone. A seething anger has taken its place. You have become "The Imprisonator"