How Bizarre, How Random, How.....

Chapter I -- A Sheriff's Lonliness.

Sergeant Mallory, of the Brownville Police Force put aside the cup of warm coffee he’d been drinking and stared at the ceiling. The cup was still half full, but he had no desire to finish it.

His mind was occupied with his latest case. He couldn’t get over it. He wondered why. In his career, he’d seen worse; he’d seen the really ugly. No doubt, this was ugly too, but he’d seen worse, so why should it linger…

He picked up the cup and brought it to his lips. Then he realized how distasteful he’d found it just a moment ago and put it away, far away, so he wouldn’t absent-mindedly reach for it again.

The body had been found, as bodies often will, by schoolchildren. They were playing soccer and one boy hit his leg on something. He didn’t think much of it but went on playing. It was when he was back at home that he felt very queasy. He felt his step being broken over and over by something squishy, something brittle. The next day, when the kids went to play soccer at the same place, he said he didn’t want to. He was rebuked and he finally gave in, and he found himself being attracted to the same place, and his foot hit the thing again, and this time he couldn’t take it and vomited.

One other boy noticed something sticking out too, and he was curious enough to go close to it and look. It was a toe. He held a scream and backed.

The body was as yet unidentifiable, but analysis had shown it to be that of a teenager, possibly about fifteen or sixteen, and female. It seemed to have been buried a year ago.
Brownville was a small town, and what horrors Mallory had seen had been outside. He’d actually moved here to get away from all that. The town had seen two murders the last year, both drug related, and had a murder rate approximately of about one point five for the last ten years. Most of those deaths were drug-related.

Brownville was not the sort of place that saw psychopaths and molesters run amok. It was a warm, friendly town where most people knew each other. It was very likely the dead girl was not local. Thus far, there were no indications that she was. Nobody matching her descriptions had disappeared or had been killed.

They’d sent the body to the nearest city with a good forensic department and they’d been able to find no traces of any drug. Of course, the body had been dumped a year ago, so it was unlikely that drugs would remain, but to Mallory, who’d already been convinced about the innocence of the girl, that fact endeared her to him further.

Out of town or not, her killer had to be found.

At home he saw his wife busy knitting. She’d picked up that hobby suddenly; prior to that, she had no hobbies to speak of. It seemed to suit her well, perhaps she should have picked it up years ago, while they were in the big city and when he was at work all the time. Then, she’d complain about his work taking too much of their lives, and he’d tell her there was no other way out if they wanted a decent living. She worked, but not very long, and when she came home she complained about finding it empty. That was very early on, before the kids came. Then she kept herself busy with them. Now they were gone, and once more she had nothing to do, so it was good she’d picked up a hobby.

He was hungry, and he went over to the fridge to see if there was anything there. Some leftover chicken, a couple of stakes, apples. There was nothing else, which reminded him he was supposed to go and get the shopping done.

He took the steak out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. It was only to warm it and after that was done, he cut it in two and took a skillet out and filled that with oil. He put the flame on low heat and spent a while cooking it, turning the meat around as much as he thought needed possible.

“Don’t you have to watch your weight?”

“Yes, but not today. Today, the last thing I want to think about is watching my weight.”

“Well, you might want to think about your friend Hermann. He called.”

“Hermann called? And what did he want?”

“He said he wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

Oh, Hermann. Hermann was a pain in his side, had always been. Hermann was the ambitious, ruthless type who’d been born in the wrong sort of place. Ambition was looked upon suspiciously here.

He met Hermann on a park bench that was a little wet from the light drizzle of the hour before. Herm was dressed dandily, as he always was. Herm fancied himself a big-city investigator, so he dressed that way. He wore a hat, an overcoat and sunglasses. The overcoat was beige, the hat brown, the sunglasses coal black. Really, he’d lived in the city and hadn’t seen one who dressed like that.

Herm didn’t smoke, and rallied against second hand smoke a lot in his spare time so Mallory thought it would be prudent if he didn’t light up.

Herm took off his hat and daintily dangled it from one of the bench’s metallic projections. It looked uneasy there. His golden hair was cut medium length. It was silky and blew with the wind. He turned his light blue eyes to him.

“I’ll put all the cards on the table.”

Mallory nodded.

“Its your case. Your immediate case. You want it solved. I can help.”

“How so?”

“As I said, I want to put all my cards on the table. That involves telling you a little more of what’s going on than you might have liked.”

Mallory looked at him suspiciously.

“What I’m telling you doesn’t leave this place, of course.”

He cleared his throat.

“Now, this girl whom you found.”

“You know who she is?”

“No, I don’t. And I don’t know who killed her either. But I’ve a hunch. Do you remember a couple of years ago I was working on the Turtle case?”

“Yes, I do. I remember….”

The Tuttle case involved some fraudulent real estate deals which were traced vaguely to some state politicians, but got nowhere further.

“That was two years ago, and I was working on that, and I remember thinking how it could very well be the break I was looking for. That case. I remember thinking how I was on my way to indict some big-time politicians and have my name splashed all over the papers. I thought it would be my way to get out of this dump, into statewide, or even nationwide, spotlight. That’s what I thought then, boy, was I naïve. I really thought I had that guy Dermott on my sights. I was so sure, I took once or twice to going around his house to watch him. You know, I thought I was playing with him the way a cat does with a mouse, that I was the predator, and he was prey. I used to watch him from outside his house and tell him softly ‘Derm, when you go down, Herm will rise’”.

“ I hadn’t figured politics being the thing it is then. As I said, I was naïve. But it raised its head, and I found myself thwarted at every turn. I could feel the man within my grasp, but then he would slip away, from my very grasp.”

“Now what does that have to do with the girl? I’ll tell you in a minute. But let me go on with my story. You’ll understand what its all about when I’m done. So, Dermott begins to give me the slip, and that’s of course how the story ends, with him getting away completely away, and that’s why I, Hermann Klansman, am still here in this tedious town when I should have been somewhere far away, making the bucks, exercising power and all that. But I’m here, stuck in this stagnant pool, and it makes me mad, but that’s what life dealt me, I’m afraid. But let me tell you something, friend. Hermann Klansman’s not a fool, nor has he ever been, he may have been naïve, but he was never a fool, and very little of what he does ever goes waste.”

“What I mean is this,” he said, as he reached into his briefcase.

He pulled out a large yellow envelope which had a knob on one side. He twisted that and pulled the flap up. He passed the opened envelope to Mallory.

Dermott with much younger women, all in bed, all without clothes on. Not very surprising, Mallory supposed. There were six or seven of those photographs, all in black and white, all well shot.

“Take a look at that one,” he motioned.

Mallory did. Dermott was sandwiched between two blondes. One of them was smoking a joint. But it was to the other his eye turned. She was looking straight into the camera with her lighted eyes. She looked young, very young.

“Notice anything?”

“Her age. She seems to be underage.”

“Nothing else?”

“No…”

“Look again. Does she remind you of someone?”

He looked again but could find no resemblance in her to anyone he knew.

“Nothing at all?”

Mallory shook his head.

Hermann reached once more into his briefcase and pulled out something. A newspaper. Herm held it in his hand a little while, the way he might have imagined big-city detectives did, and then passed that on to Mallory.

Mallory spread it out in front of him. Hermann had been kind enough to highlight the article he wanted read in pink, so his eyes were drawn automatically there.

“Girl found strangled,” it said, and he read on. The name of the girl was Karen Weiss, she was 15, and she had been buried superficially enough that some farmer on his daily rounds had bumped into the body. He skipped over the details and went down the article. Was there a photograph? Yes, there was, right at the bottom, but a very grainy one. She was blond was all he could be for sure.

“That’s the girl,” Herm said.

“On the basis of this photograph? Its too unclear.”

“No, I’ve found out by other means. It’s the same one.”

“So what does this mean?”

“It doesn’t automatically mean that Dermott also killed the girl you found, but it’s a start…..”

“Did Dermott kill anyone?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying…..”

“And what do you want, for this?” Mallory held up the newspaper.

Hermann made the face of being dragged back to business. It was apparent he wouldn’t be very comfortable for the next few minutes.

“A chance back…..a chance to come back.”

It was precisely Hermann’s renegade methods that had caused him to be dropped from the force. Renegade methods such as tailing politicians without approval from his higher ups and obtaining sinister information which he hadn’t divulged.

Mallory shook his head.

“I thought you were happy without us. I mean, you just said you wanted to get away from all this. Why are you even here man? Go to the city, live your kind of life there.”

“Look, you don’t understand, do you? I don’t care about the force, I sure as hell don’t care about this town. I care about myself. I care about rising up in this world. I want to get to the top and not sit at the bottom like I’m doing here. I want to get back to the force, get something done, and then leave. What I want to do is to use the resources of the police department to further my own rise. That’s what I want, that’s because, going freelance, I find that its often tough to get things done sometimes. With a badge, I could go further. I could do something, conduct a sting operation, catch a crook, something, something that I could use to get ahead…”

“But what can you do here? Nothing happens here, unless….”

Hermann grinned.

“So you’ve already got something, huh, you bastard?”

Hermann tapped his head.

“I’d been working on this, on my own, and it seemed like nothing would ever happen. I don’t know why I went on. I guess I was just looking for the break to turn up, and now this. Mallory, you don’t know how important the discovery of the dead girl has been to me.”

“You’re still sure its Dermott?”

“I’m not going to say anything until I get reinstated.”

“That’s criminal.”

“Do what I want, and I’ll give you what you want. Look at me. I’m a man of the world. I don’t care for badges, I don’t care for honor. I want money, and I want power, and I want to feel like I’m right on top. Is that too much to ask for? Look at the scum we have four our politicians. And you can tolerate them, but you can’t tolerate me just wanting to get by? Mallory, you and I are different. I know that. You’re completely obsessed with finding what happened to the girl. I understand you, but I don’t understand why. Why are you so obsessed with law, and justice? What does that mean to you? I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, or what you want to do. You’re too complicated for me. I’m a simpler type, all I want to do is to go to the top of the world. I don’t want to make it better, I don’t want to understand it, I would conquer it if I could, but I don’t have the means.”

“ Why do I care so much for the law? That’ s a good one. My wife asks me that sometimes, not so much these days, but in the past, in the distant past, she’d ask me a lot. And I don’t have any answer. I’m in the business of lawmaking because someone has to be in the business of lawmaking, we can’t all have people like you who pretend to be in that business but are really not, can we? Then, what would we have? Anarchy, chaos, that’s what we’d have. I’m just a cog, a little one. The big one’s the Justice Department, the big ones are the FBI and the NYPD, they turn, we follow. I’m 50 now, I’m approaching retirement age, I’ve had my dreams and my naivety busted. Once, I thought was helping do something good by my police work, that it counted for something. Lately, no, I know I didn’t do anything, the murderers still murder, the rapists rape, the politicians get away with everything. But these days, I’m happy to be a cog, I’m happy to turn whichever way the big wheels turn. Occasionally, I still want to feel like I’m doing something good, otherwise the feeling that I’ve done nothing worthwhile in my life gets to be quite acute.”

Herm looked at him with that uncomprehending stare that the eternally ambitious will give to those less inclined to be quite that way. Then, upon seeing another shower was imminent, he picked up his hat and put it on, taking care, of course, to set it right. Rain or not, some things had to be done right or not attempted at all.

Mallory was fit at the age of fifty, but that’s not to say he was immune to his age. While getting up, he felt a slight tingle in his belly which grew and grew as he got up, till it became quite fierce. He made a face.

“Need help,” Herman asked politely.

“No, I’m okay. It’s all to do with my age. Sometimes….”

The sentence he didn’t complete and stood beside the chair, with his hand holding on it as if for support.

The rain came down quite heavy and both had to cover themselves. Hermann led Mallory away, for the latter still appeared to be in a bit of pain. Progress was slow as a result, and the squelchy ground didn’t make it easier. Puddles formed everywhere, reflected the overcast skies and it was into one of these that Mallory once stepped right into. Mud specks covered his white pants.

They got into Hermann’s car.

“Want some music?”

“No.”

They spent the next few moments in silence, watching the rain render the windows and windshield translucent.

“Hey, I need a smoke,” said Mallory.

“And isn’t all that smoking what’s causing you your pains?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Age.. Domestic tranquility.”

“Tranquility?...”

“Too much of anything’s bound to be bad for you. When life becomes so tranquil on one side, and there’s pressure on you on the other, you know…”

“Things crack.”

“Exactly, and I couldn’t have put it better myself. Things crack. Only, Doesn’t feel quite like I’m cracking right now, more like I had someone stab me. Maybe my wife did, with her knitting needles.”

He grinned.

“Okay. But about this thing. I don’t know what to say. Reinstate you, sure, its partly in my power. But why should I, really? Why shouldn’t I just arrest you, confiscate everything you have, do my own investigation, and have two birds with one stone?”

Herman’s gaze turned less piercing, more subtle.

“Let me tell you why not. First, any cop, ex or not, going down is bad for police morale. Second, I don’t believe you think I’m not smart.”

“Explain..”

“I’m ambitious, Mallory. I’ll do anything to get to where I want to go. Unlike you, I’m not content to be the cog. Which is to say, I’m willing to take risks, like I did by both following Dermott and showing you what he’s been doing. On the other hand, I’m also smart enough, when I take a risk, to make sure I’ve covered it. I don’t speculate. That is to say, when I come with information to Mallory that could be used against me, I make sure I have the inside goods on Mallory himself.”

Mallory looked at him with a jerk.

“Inside goods on me?”

“Yes, sir, on you.”

“But you can’t.”

“I did.”

“You can’t, because there’s nothing on me.”

“I did, because there’s something on you.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Show me, what have you got?”

“In that case, you’ll destroy the evidence.”

“It’s a bluff.”

“No, its not.”

“It’s a bluff, and I’m going to call you on it.”

“You won’t take the chance. Look, Mallory, its true. I know what you want to do. You want to know how much of it I know. Believe me, I know, a lot….”

“And you’d better believe me when I say that I’ve got nothing….”

“Okay, you’ve got nothing. But when I say you, I just don’t mean you, you know. You’ve got a wife, two kids. Maybe I have something on them.”

“I’m going to fucking punch you.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to listen to what I have to say, and then you’re going to do what I tell you to do. You’re stupid, I realize now. You know what, you don’t just think of yourself as a cog, do you? You really buy this justice crap, don’t you? That’s why you’re here, stuck in Brownville while I’m going up. You’d be doing yourself and me a big favor by stepping back and letting me join the force again. Then I’d merely blow this case open, get my name in the papers, and vanish from here completely. You’d never see me again, this town wouldn’t. Now won’t that be mutually beneficial? I won’t have to see your ugly mug ever, you won’t have to worry about mine. Because, if you mess me up, take it for a guarantee that I’ll be after your stupid ass for a long, long time. This is a good chance for me to get out, to be the man I wanted to be, for you to bid me farewell, so don’t mess it up. Please, don’t.”

“Tell me who it is, or I’ll know you’re a liar.”

“No, then you’ll want to know what it is. I can’t tell you.”

Mallory punched and Hermann ducked, and then he used his hands to twist Mallory’s around so that he had a vice-like hold on him.

“Please don’t get so upset, Mr. Mallory. It will be over, let me tell you, and soon. Then everything will go back to being the way it was around here with only one difference, you’ll still be the same douche you always were, but I’ll be gone.”

Hermann turned his face into a mask and spittle formed at the ends of his teeth.

“Am I hurting you, Mallory? You seem to be in much pain.”

He loosened his grip but Mallory still seemed to be caught in it. When he finally let him go, Mallory looked rigid.

“Okay, I’ll try my best from my side. As I said, I’m only half the picture. The approval has to come from all sides, and they’ll want to know why the hell I’m doing it….”

“I understand. I’ll make sure to have things get across to them.”

“You’ll make sure? Who are you?”

Hermann smiled.

“Relax,” he said while straightening out his hair, making sure there weren’t too many creases on his jacket, “you don’t have to worry about that. Just make sure you do your best to make sure I’m in the force. I’ll know.”

“You’ll know if I’m making an effort?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if you’re fucking insane or what. But I’m powerful in this town. No one spies on me. Least of all you. I know what. Its that whole detective things of yours, you’re taking your abilities so seriously that you’re beginning to believe you can do things that you can’t. Is that what its all about?”

“Do you want me to hold you in my grip again?” Hermann asked, opening his mouth just enough to show his canines.

“No,” said Mallory, “ I think I’ve had enough, for one day. With you. I want to go home.”

He walked in the rain again, this time all by himself, and the pain had still not dissipated. It was still there, beside his heart, a pricking, on and off sort of pain. He bore it without holding himself or slackening his gait. All he wanted to do was to get away from that creep Hermann.