Part 2: The Outsider

And so I drove right by that park bench, glad to be liberated from its clutches. The man introduced himself as Chuck. He was mostly a quiet person, but we talked a little bit as we made our way through the outskirts of town towards the slightly battered and unkempt (but not unwelcoming) home of Chuck's. On the contrary, I found the hot water, soft furniture, and fresh food simply heavenly. I was given clean clothes in which to change into after a long wash to detox all the shit nestled in my skin. When I came out of the bathroom, clean shaved, I noticed that Chuck had brought all the boxes from his car inside, and in his hands was a small card. He walked up to me and handed me the card. I took a glance at the text written on the card: "There ain't no motive for this crime, Jenny was a friend of mine- The Killers". As much as I wanted to forget about the park bench, and the situation with the police, this card reminded me that I wasn't here to lay low until everything blows over, I'm here to find the truth and bring justice to the death of Mr. Westacott, and his family. His wife and daughter died shortly before he did. The trail of evidence lead me to believe that the deaths of Jenny and Amber Westacott were caused by John, but it's clear that a murderer is still out in public, posing a threat to myself, to the police, and from the considerable amount of information Chuck has spilled to me, I'd say there's a good chance that he has a target on his back, too.

Chuck had started spreading the contents of one of the boxes out onto his dining table, and he seemed eager, ever ready to get down to the bottom of this mystery. It was a shame that three people were dead, but it's times like these that you need to keep your head on straight and bring some justice towards the people who were wrongfully robbed of their lives. It was with that motive that I pulled my mobile out of my pocket and called my (former) boss, Senior Sergeant Michael Lincoln, after all, I've found myself to be in an uncomfortable situation.
"Hello, Senior Sergeant Lincoln speaking" the all-too-familiar voice droned through the speaker of my low-tech shitty mobile phone.
"Hey, Mike. Ol' buddy ol' pal!" It was hard to hide the sarcasm in my voice, but I think it worked.
"Who is this? Do I know you?"
"How about I give you a hint. You stuck me on a park bench, and left me there for months! Looking for a man who was already dead! Do you know who I am now?! Guess who, Michael, guess fuckin' who?!" Okay, I was in a cynical mood, so sue me.

"David. David, David, David... what were you thinking?"
"What was I thinking? What were YOU thinking?! Why did you do this to me, why did you have to stab me in the fuckin' back?!"
"Stab you in the back?" He cried, voice growing more irritated by the minute. "I did no such thing. You stabbed yourself in the back. You stabbed yourself in the back, you stabbed all of us in the back right about the time when you started handing information to this Westacott guy, served on a platter! You turned your back on us, David, and now you have to accept the consequences."
"Bullshit. I was one of the few people who actually gave a damn if we caught the prick or not. I wasn't about to hand him inside information on a platter. I could have caught him, I could have caught the sonofabitch. But you... why did you have to be so paranoid about me? Why did you throw me out of the circle, no questions, no inquiries. The least you could have done was talk to me about it. And now Westacott is dead. He's been given the easy way out. He deserved to rot in a jail cell for what he did, but you had to stir this shit up, well now it's a mess, Mike, now it's just one huge fuckin' mess. And what's more, you've got your head so far up your ass, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if you were the one that pulled the trigger and killed Westacott. Good bye, Michael. Good fuckin' bye." I hung up, hands shaking with rage, this bastard ruined my life, and I wasn't about to forgive or forget any time soon.

For a moment there, Chuck had stopped re-organizing John Westacott's possessions, and was staring blankly at me. I guess I shouldn't have snapped like that, but what else was I to say to the man that had ruined my career, and perhaps my entire life? Needless to say, I was hardly going to have a civilized chat with the man anyway... why not give him a large slice of the David Bradshaw mind?
But it wasn't a major concern for Chuck. He just bent over the table again, reshuffling papers, he called across his shoulder "That should be the last time you contact these guys, okay?" I nodded. "As you damn well know, they'll be organized. They could easily track your call, not this one, but any time from now on. I'm certain they already recorded this call, although it'll be no use to them. They don't know where you are, they don't know all of what you know, and they don't know that I know you."
I nodded in agreement. I knew (or thought I knew) Senior Sergeant Lincoln so well. I could easily believe that he would be examining my case file under a microscope, using all the resources he could to track me down. Well, here I am Michael, don't expect me to go down without a fight.

I sat down at the table with Chuck, and watched him methodically work through the belongings. After I decided that I had no place to assist him, I picked up Chuck's keys and made for the door.
"Where are you going?" Chuck asked suspiciously.
"I'm just going to go to my apartment and gather a few things..." I didn't like the look he was giving me, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. I turned the handle on the door.
"Are you fucking nuts?!" Chuck was now on his feet. "I'm sure your apartment is already swarming with cops already, if you go there, you're a dead man."
"If there are cops there already, it'll be damned obvious, they'll be out the front, they won't be expecting me. What significance is another car driving past the building?" I had my foot out the door.
Chuck stepped away from the table. "Look, if it really matters, I'll come with you. Think about it, what if your guys showed up while you were in the apartment. I'll be another pair of eyes. You can gather your shit, and then we can get back to the task at hand." He then strode towards me, picking his coat off the hook next to the front door.
"Fine, but I'm driving" I said. I had a hunch that he already knew where I lived, but it put my mind at ease to drive myself, and keep the extent of his knowledge unknown. After all, I was stuck with this guy, the last thing I want is to have doubts and trust issues...

So I drove with Chuck across town to my small apartment home. It was with some relief that I pulled into the driveway to find everything appeared just how I had left it. No police cars, no busted doors or broken windows, although if I remembered correctly, the guys back at the police station had a copy of my house keys. Wasting no time, I unlocked the front door, and welcomed myself back to home. Everything still looked to be in order. Nothing obviously missing, and the only messes were the ones that I had left there myself. I went from room to room, checking to see if nothing was disturbed, moving through the apartment to the master bedroom, where I was hoping and praying that everything remained undisturbed. Chuck mostly wandered around behind me, mostly uninterested, and with a feeling of impatience about him. I was at the door of the last room, and I grasped the doorknob, giving it a twist.
"Hey David?" Chuck spoke from the kitchen.
I pushed the door open as I turned to face Chuck (somehow that mattered, even though a wall divided us). "hmm?"
"You've got a new message on your answering machine." Chuck said.
"Okay, play it then." I called back.
"Hello David" The anonymous voice spoke with a chilling, mirthless tone.

"I'm sorry things had to turn out this way, but it's the only way you'll ever learn, after all, that which does not kill us, only makes us stronger, isn't that right? I hope you don't take this as a personal attack, after all it just comes down to the survival of the fittest mentality. Don't lose, David, and you could still make a name for yourself." There was a click, a beep, and then there was nothing. The words echoed in my head, what on earth could provoke an anonymous caller to leave such a cryptic message? I turned back to face my room, and it became more evident as to what he was talking about. There, sprawled unceremoniously upon the sheets of my queen sized bed was a brutally lifeless corpse. I turned away as a convulsive reaction, with an initial reaction to gag, but I knew I couldn't afford such weak moments, so I took a deep breath and plunged into the room, trying to distance myself from the body, but knowing there was no point. From the amount of dried blood on the mattress, I knew two things; that this victim was definitely dead, and that he had been dead for a while, probably more than one or two weeks, and probably no longer than a month, a month and a half. The body hadn't decomposed too much as of yet, but there were significant signs that it wouldn't have been long before this process was well under way. The body was male, but who, I couldn't be sure just yet, he had a heavy duty plastic bin-bag wrapped around his head.

The sight of this lifeless, this dead weight... this sort of sight comes around frequently enough with this profession, but it never gets any easier. In fact, this time it hit me harder than it has in the past, it wasn't just another faceless, nameless stranger, this was a warning, a threat, a personal attack on me. The words were running through my head; "...It's the only way you'll ever learn...".
I sat down on the bed and nested my head in my hands. I could hear Chuck walking around in the kitchen, but I took no notice, I heard his voice, he was talking to me, but all I heard was a jumble of noise. Everything just felt so surreal, I had no idea what to think, I had no idea how to feel, I was at a loss as to what I should do.

Then Chuck walked into the bedroom and saw me sitting on the bed, or rather, saw the empty shell of me, my mind had regressed to foetal stage, and I probably would have stayed there for hours, days, maybe even weeks before I'd move, if not for Chuck. He had noticed the body, obviously, but unlike me, he seemed to burst out in pure, destructive, energy. He shook me violently, and yelled words I couldn't comprehend, next thing I know, I'm not the four month old foetus any more, and I'm yelling back at Chuck, I'm yelling things even I can't comprehend. He's at his wit's end, and he decides to drag me from the bed struggling and screaming what I could only imagine as profanities, and he drags me through my own apartment into the bathroom and runs me through and ice cold shower to bring me back to reality.

I sat in the shower on the hard tile floor, in my soaked clothes, and an icy wet chill running deep into my bones. Chuck stood over me and I looked up at him with pleading eyes. He switched the taps off and lifted me to my feet.
"What should we do about the body?" I asked in a somewhat croaky voice.
"What should we do? What can we do?! What did you have in mind, that we take it with us, that we hide it from your cop buddies, that we bury it somewhere in the middle of nowhere?"
"Well we can't just leave it here!" Warm blood was starting to circulate through my body again.
"Yes we can, and yes we will. All we can do is take notes and hopefully find out a little more about who it is and why it's here. You're a detective, detect." Chuck appeared to be running short on patience. And for good reason too, we were both distracted, there was a corpse at our disposal and we'd well overstayed our welcome.
I knew he was right, we couldn't do much with the actual body, but whatever else we did have, we had to capitalise on it.

So, with a sense of determination, I went back into the bedroom where the corpse was, first and foremost to complete my initial objective. This time, I made the effort to glance away from the corpse as I strode past it towards my wardrobe. I pulled the doors open and got to my knees. There, in the deep corner of the wardrobe, there, standing strong and tough, away from prying eyes, was my safe. It was quite scarce in terms of prized possessions and family heirlooms, but it served its purpose for me. I had placed inside my safe all my police standard equipment, before I started my undercover investigation, my badge, my gun, my standards which had given me so much leverage and authority over the years. It was an essential requirement of my role in the investigation. I thought it was a bit ridiculous at the time, but now I understand that the request was not just a bit ridiculous, it was completely fucking diabolical. Luckily for me, I opted to take care of the safe keepings of my own means, rather than handing my badge and gun over to Lincoln, as was the ideal he was pushing for. Of course, he couldn't force my decision without raising suspicions.

I spun the combination lock on the safe, and heard the resounding click as the safe swung open. Click. This was a sharper, more aggressive click, like that of a police issue pistol being cocked. I looked over my shoulder to see Chuck kneeling at the mercy of a masked stranger, who was holding my gun. I glanced back into the safe. It was empty.
The man kept the gun pointed a Chuck and said "What the fuck are you doing here?"
I gazed into Chuck's eyes. He was shaking from fear, with a desperate pleading shining off his eyes. "We were here to pick up a few things, that's all" I said. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"I was here to get rid of this body, but I'd have thought that you had been here already. I came, saw your car out the front, and thought I'd make a formal introduction. All you need to know is that they call me 'The Grim'."
"What did you need my gun and badge for?"
"I don't. I just needed to keep them from you. I suppose there's no use for me holding on to your badge..." he tossed it at my side "... but I'm keeping your pistol. And I'll be taking your car, too. There's no way I could move this corpse without it." He acknowledged the body tangled in my blood soaked bed sheets.

The Grim continued to aim the pistol at Chuck's head. He instructed the both of us to get to our feet, and then, following us closely, he forced Chuck and myself to carry the corpse (wrapped loosely in my bed sheets) outside to my car. How fucking obvious would that look, if anyone should pass by the house? I popped open the boot, and we heaved the body into it. The Grim, holding the gun inches from Chuck's head, extended an open hand for me to hand over the car keys. Knowing I was helpless, I dropped the keys into his hand, and stepped back towards the house. He pushed Chuck back towards me and hopped into my car, driving off down the road leaving us to fend for ourselves.
"What the fuck was I thinking, letting you come back here!?" Chuck shouted at me and strode back into the house.