The Beast of 1977 (Book 1)

Chapter 34

There was a small, off to the side office that was located on the fourth floor of police headquarters.

With his left arm wrapped in a sling, Detective Linus Bruin despondently sulked in his chair behind a clean and orderly desk. The clothes that he was wearing just happened to be the same torn and bloody garments he wore from the night before. Not one detail on his entire body had been rearranged; from his unkempt hair, all the way down to his blood stained Thom Mcan's His drooping face was a blank canvas from cheek to cheek.

No sort of emotion whatsoever bothered to appear. Inside of him dwelt a teetering calm, like a cease fire in the midst of a hellacious battle.

All night long the man had endured question after probing question, cameras flashing in his face and officers frantically rushing him to one end of the police station to the other as if he were a time bomb inside of a box.

His hands rested motionless in his lap while his face stayed poised on the desk in front of him. There was an itch on the bridge of his nose that the man didn't have the strength or will to scratch at.

A knock at the door disturbed the silence in the small office. From behind the door appeared Officer Donaldson who came in with a steaming cup of coffee. The woman quietly placed the cup down onto the desk before handing Linus a sympathetic smile.

"Thank you, officer." Inspector O'Dea delicately stated before blowing lightly on the rim of the hot mug. "That will be all for now."

The average looking man that was sitting across from Linus with his thin lips pressed tightly together was around the same age as the detective. He wanted to appear smart in his oversized, blue stripped tie and white shirt.

The man's pepper-tinted hair was trimmed to perfection, with not one hint of an out of place sliver. His dubious looking white face supported a thick, grey mustache that was groomed to where a person could only see his bottom lip move up and down whenever he spoke.

O'Dea meticulously sipped on the edge of the cup before looking up at Linus and saying, "You must forgive me. I did not have the opportunity to savor my wife's delectable cooking this morning. The woman makes the best homemade sausage this side of the Ohio River. Jimmy Dean be dammed."

Linus sat and watched as the inspector placed his elbows on the table and folded his hands before glancing around the room and asking, "Are you cold?"

Linus only slightly shook his head from side to side. For him, and at that point, words were as hard to grasp as air in his hands.

"It's funny how thin the walls are in this building. Shows you just how old the place really is." O'Dea affectionately sighed. "My grandfather was an officer here back around the turn of the century. According to him, this place was falling apart back then, too."

Linus looked on as O'Dea turned his attention to the window to his immediate left. Both men could hear the protestors outside on the ground chant loud and clear.

"Boisterous, aren't they?" O'Dea looked back at Linus. "Jesus, you look like you haven't slept in days, Detective," the man pointed. "Are you feeling alright? Well, that's a pretty stupid question." He flippantly grinned. "Look, I know you think I'm here to nail you to the wall, but that's not the case. I just want to know what took place last night."

All of the sudden, colors began appearing right before Linus' eyes as he sat there in his chair. It was a psychological disorder that seemed to occur at the perfect moment and in the perfect place.

"Now, you've been silent about the entire ordeal for the past few hours, Detective. Don't you think it's time to open up? I mean, you're gonna have to do a helluva lot better than domestic abuse with that mob out there, my friend." The inspector empathetically explained.

Linus batted his eyelashes in a rapid sequence before looking up at the man. He waited for O'Dea to ask even more questions.

O'Dea looked down and studied the papers that were lying in front of him. "How's your family?" He inquired with a straight face that never bothered to look Linus in the eye.

Linus sat for a moment or two before replying in a dry tone, "They're fine."

"How's Elizabeth?"

Linus contemptuously eyeballed the inspector before sternly answering, "Fine."

"That's good." O'Dea casually remarked with his eyes still staring at the papers. "I'm serious, that's very good." He adamantly reiterated. "Detective, in your statement, you mentioned that you went over to Ms. Glover's residence last evening to secure Mr. Mercer for more questioning. But what I'm curious about is, what more questions did you have for Mr. Mercer?"

Linus exhaled a long breath before muttering, "I was following up on a...hunch."

"A hunch," O'Dea spoke up. "What sort of hunch?"

"There were some loose ends that I had to wrap up, so to speak."

O'Dea studied Linus' face as if he were trying to drill into his wrinkled forehead. "Mr. Mercer, much like yourself, was spotted running from one end of town to the other yesterday. From Ms. Glover's home, to his shrink, to his father's church and eventually back to Ms. Glover's residence. What I want to know is, what kind of a hunch could you have come across?"

"I visited the Cohen girl last—

"The young lady that was kidnapped and raped by Cummins?" O'Dea hastily interrupted.

Taken off guard, Linus caught his breath and said, "Yes."

"Why were you visiting her?"

"I wanted to see how she was doing."

"How she was doing?" O'Dea frowned with his arms folded in a sanctimonious fashion. "Well, I guess we could call you a nice detective, if nothing else. But that still doesn't explain this so called hunch. What I'm curious about is why you didn't bring Mercer in two nights ago when you and Detective Fitzpatrick visited there?"

"He...he wasn't feeling well." Linus hesitated. "I decided to—

"Oh, I see, so you decided." O'Dea strongly emphasized at Linus. "So, not only are you a nice detective, but you're also the decision maker as well. That makes sense."

Linus sat and stared daggers at the inspector. The man was far from surprised at what was taking place before him; he expected every bit of O'Dea's smug treatment from the start.

"So last night you decided to pay a visit to Ms. Cohen in the hospital, to which afterwards, you decided to make your way over to Ms. Glover's residence to pick up Mercer. Now, when you arrived on the scene, what was taking place?"

Linus took his eyes away from the inspector and directed them down at the desk. Right then, his body began to tremble all over again.

"Dammit, man!" O'Dea snapped, pounding his fists onto the table. "This is no joke, Detective!"

"I never said it was."

"Do you hear that out there? That is a medieval mob waiting for your blood to be shed! You shot a naked, weaponless, colored man with a twelve gage shotgun, a shotgun that was left in a cruiser by one Detective Fitzpatrick, whom we will be investigating next, and all you can do is just sit there and keep quiet!"

Completely unfazed by the inspector's tirade, Linus remained still and composed as though nothing were happening at all.

"What was the guy doing when you first busted your way into the house?" O'Dea anxiously inquired. "These are just some of the questions that the grand jury is going to throw your way."

Seemingly disturbed, O'Dea shot up from out of his seat and began to pace the room from front to back with his hands lodged inside his pants pockets.

"You say domestic abuse." The inspector shrugged. "Okay, maybe it was a domestic affair. It's no secret that those people can't keep a relationship together longer than a one night stand. But the guy didn't have a single weapon on him, and somehow, Ms. Glover's finger was sliced right off. Her entire body looked as though she were hit by a truck."

In vivid detail, Linus recalled holding Lynnette's wrecked and bloody body in his shivering arms. He could still smell her blood on his hands.

"There was a gun, but Mercer's fingerprints weren't found on the weapon. And yet, you decide to rampage into this house and blow this man away in a bathroom of all places. Jesus, I know you're fifty- three years old, Bruin, but do you mean to sit there and tell me that you can't overpower a naked man without shooting him dead?"

Crossing behind Linus every other second, O'Dea would stop to stare down into Linus' white hair as though he were admonishing a school boy.

"I wish we could work together on this one, Linus." The inspector rationally articulated. "I realize that you and I haven't gotten along too well over the years. I mean, we won't be exchanging Christmas cards anytime in the near future, but I've got both the D.A. and the Mayor breathing down my neck, and an entire town of colored hell-raisers wanting to burn down the city, all because you had a hunch."

O'Dea ceased his outburst momentarily while facing the caged window. It was all the better for Linus, he needed to come up for air before being waterlogged all over again.

"Did you happen to see some of the signs they got out there? One says, 'if it walks like a duck, and onks like a pig, then it's the fuzz.' The inspector sniggered, sounding tickled by the phrase. "They even managed to spell oinks wrong. Is any of this melting into that brain of yours?"

Linus clinched his entire body while listening to the man endlessly drill on and on. It was all melting inwards, just not through the proper conduits. There was no care left inside of him.

"It's been almost an entire year since your wife left you. The media found your file from when you went away. Christ, here I am trying to save not only this department's ass, but yours as well, and you just sit there." O'Dea then turned to the door and pointed, "Look out there, Linus. All those kids just waiting for one of us old farts to fall off of our perch. Hell, I've got a Mexican, or Chicano, or whatever they call themselves these days, drooling for my job. We're old men, Linus, too old to be chasing down kidnappers, rapists and murderers. For God's sake, man, this is no way for an officer to go out, a broken down husk of flesh."

Linus suddenly raised his head back up and opened his mouth. At first, no words came out, but after seconds of silence, with a shaky voice he murmured, "I...I don't know what you want me to say."

O'Dea spun around in amazement and listened attentively at what else Linus was going to hopefully state. Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

"What I did...last night was, was all my fault."

The inspector stepped over, slammed his hands onto the desk and said, "It doesn't have to be all your fault, Linus. All you have to do is tell me what happened inside that house and we can go from there. What the hell makes you think I want to see an officer like yourself go down? Linus, you broke into a house and shot and killed an unarmed man. Something like this doesn't just up and go away overnight. Hell, it'll be on the CBS Evening News before you know it. This is all Cronkite needs to add yet another award to his already cluttered trophy chest. Unarmed black man shot dead in the buff, for no apparent reason other than he was beating his fiancée. Oh what a tragedy," O'Dea zealously satirized before nearing closer to Linus' face and yelling, "Help me help you!"

Linus wanted to look over at the loud inspector, he wanted to hand the same kind of treatment back to him, only worse, especially after the mention of his wife leaving him, but his stale body chose instead to remain immobile. It was as if he had lost any and all audacity to stand up for himself.

Inspector O'Dea pulled away from Linus and sipped on his warm cup of coffee. He then looked back at the window behind him before glancing down again at the detective."Stranger things have happened, I guess." O'Dea spoke under his breath as he loosened his tie and headed for the door. "Don't go anywhere, we still have a lot to iron out, you and I."

Linus heard the door slam behind him, he was all alone. The man turned and gazed on at the shapes and sizes mill about in the busy office beyond the blurry glass in the door. Eventually, he would have to see all of those same shapes and sizes face to face; staying inside the room all day was improbable.

Linus sat and took a glimpse of his own blood stained fingers that he hadn't bothered to wash since before yesterday evening. The redness of his fingernails was beginning to turn a darker shade. For a

second or two the man had to actually remind himself just where he was to begin with.

It took just about every ounce of energy, but Linus ultimately managed to get up from out of his warm seat and gingerly carry himself out of the room and towards his desk.With just about every set of mournful eyes bearing down upon him, Linus began to empty the contents of his desk into a small, brown box that he had already seated underneath the desk.Numerous pens and pads, a miniature U.S. flag and a framed picture of his daughters all found their way into the musty old box.

The detective could feel the enormous weight of every stare beam upon him. Besides the ringing of telephones, the entire room was quiet. A couple of typewriters could be heard in the background, along with the chanting protesters outside the building, beyond those annoyances, the fourth floor was a hushed tomb.

Linus could feel the tears begin to well up inside his eyes; he wanted more than anything to breakdown right there at his empty desk, but instead, he chose the restraint of pride to hold back the eventual emotion.He swallowed his saliva and grunted while getting up from his seat. He put on his winter coat, loaded his box underneath his right armpit and without giving his co-workers a second glance he simply headed for the stairwell.

As Linus stepped down the stairs that led to the garage, his red eyes couldn't seem to tear themselves away from the grimy, discolored floor beneath his feet. He could hear perps hollering vile obscenities as he passed one floor after another; to him, they were just blurs in his head, like the buzzing of bees.

Linus took one more step, and before he knew it, he was at the final door. The man pushed open the door and right away caught sight of his own car parked just three yards ahead.

He briskly marched across the freezing cold parking lot while noticing his breath escaping with every step that he made. Linus' legs were becoming rubbery; his pace was uncoordinated. The weight of the

box he was carrying was rapidly becoming heavier. His car appeared more like it was miles away rather than simple feet.

Nearly dropping his box to the ground, Linus, with one hand, feverishly reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his car keys, only to have the box and all the contents within crash to the cement.Out of both frustration and fear, Linus kicked the box out of the way before kneeling to retrieve only his beloved frame. When he at last reached the car, he forcefully jammed the key into the lock so hard that it nearly broke in half. Just like that, he climbed in and slammed the door shut.

There alongside him inside the vehicle sat an ugly hush. It had been noiseless inside his head for the past few hours. He hadn't slept a single wink in two nights. In his windshield Linus could see a young man shuddering and twisting about in his own pool of blood on a bathroom floor. In the rearview mirror he saw a creature seated in the backseat.

Instead of being numb, Linus' body felt as though it were dipped inside a freezing cold tank of water; the sheer shock of it all repeatedly stabbed at every inch of his body.The man couldn't even shake anymore. He was still, his hands were to the side and his eyes were adamantly pointed directly at the steering wheel in front of him. Linus' mouth hung slightly ajar, as if he were trying to speak a word.

He no longer possessed any comprehension as to what day, month or year it was, all he seemed to be aware of at that point was the fact that it was daytime, and that reality was seen only through the open gate just a few feet away to his right.

All of the sudden, his eyes began to shift, from the steering wheel to the dashboard where his brand new Peter Gabriel eight track was lying. Ever so steadily his right hand reached over to the glove compartment. Inch by inch the tip of his fingers neared the latch until they ultimately made contact.

Without even looking, Linus reached inside and slowly pulled out a nine millimeter handgun. Just as many minutes as it took for his hands to reach the glove compartment, that was nearly as long as it

took for him to pull it right back to his lap.

From his eight track, Linus' eyes progressed to the weapon that sat warm before him. By then, after only thirteen hours removed from the incident, Detective Bruin had managed to forget even the name of the young man that he had unsuspectingly put out of his own misery. As a matter of fact, everything that had taken place over the course of the past few days had all but been erased from his brain, everything that is expect the nameless young man that was lying on a bathroom floor.

Images of him convulsing while his face reverted back to the human form caused only a migraine as well as an elevated temperature. Within his shattered body he felt so much sorrow for the young man, so much so that he wanted to scream.

Without thinking, Linus raised his gun, pointed it at his right temple and looked down at his daughters' smiling faces inside the frame.

"Linus," Alan knocked at the driver's side window.

Linus spun his head around to see his partner wearing a serious and pitiable manifestation upon his face. Soon, the pride that Linus wore so gallantly back upstairs was beginning to dissipate.

Without speaking a word, Alan opened the door, and with little or no regard towards his own safety, he secured the gun from out of Linus' hand. From there he helped Linus out of the car and wrapped his arm around his shoulder while escorting his friend back into the building.

As they carried on, Linus' face grew even more anguished and deformed. The man wept; there was nothing else left for him to do but weep.

It was the one and only explanation he could ever hand the world.