Chapter 3: Murder at the Docks
It was the next morning, Detective Harvey Mills and Peter Hudson arrived at the harbour in Harvey's car. They pulled up a reasonably short distance from the crime scene. Mills and Hudson got out of the car and began to walk towards the crime scene when they were approached by Sergeant Wu Chang.
"Sergeant Chang, what's happened here then?" Hudson questioned.
"Mass murder, multiple corpses scattered around and there's even more on the cargo ship. We also found a lot of drugs on the ship." Chang explained.
"Okay, let's take a look." Mills remarked.
Hudson and Mills pulled latex gloves over their hands after Chang handed them over and with them on, they entered the crime scene distinguished by the yellow tape blocking it off from civilians. There about five bodies within the yellow-taped perimeter. The one of which Mills firstly examined was obviously killed by a blade to the neck.
As Mills just knelt down, Hudson called, "Hey, did you hear?"
"Hear what?" Mills questioned.
"A house exploded." Hudson replied.
"A house exploded? When?" Mills questioned.
"Last night." Hudson replied.
"Whose house was it?" Mills questioned.
"Does the name Ruslan Kumarin ring a bell?" Hudson rhetorically questioned.
"Kumarin? The Russian mob boss? Who'd be crazy enough to blow his house up?" Mills questioned.
"Well after all he was a mob boss, and knowing the type of man he is, there's no doubt that he has no shortage of enemies." Hudson replied.
"Such as?" Mills questioned.
"The Italian Mafia." Peter replied.
"The Italian Mafia…" Harvey chuckled, "They're like the Russian's arch enemies."
"I never understood why they hated each other so much, you know." Hudson replied.
"Do you want me to explain?" Mills questioned.
"Okay." Hudson muttered.
"Well, think of the entire New York criminal underworld as a… battery for example. The positive end is the Italian Mafia and the negative end is the Russian Mafia, the two are – at their basics – the same, but they cannot, by any means, connect or join." Mills explained.
"They repel themselves from each other. In fact the same metaphor could be used for the diversity between the police and the whole criminal underworld, between bad and good, justice… and injustice." Mills continued.
"What about the bit in between?" Hudson questioned.
"For which metaphor?" Harvey questioned.
"Both." Hudson replied.
"Well for the Mafia battery, then I guess the bit in between could either be the regular criminals, the average thugs, or it could be the police, symbolising the force that stands between them." Mills explained.
"And what of the other metaphor?" Hudson questioned.
"Well, in that case, the bit in between would probably symbolise the rest of civilisation, you know: the average Joes, the normal families, the everyday people who no one notices." Mills explained.
"That's an interesting thought." Hudson remarked.
"It's my job, Peter, that's what I do." Mills replied, "Now, let's take a look at these bodies."
As Mills knelt down beside the body and gazed upon the sliced throat, as he gazed into the deep slice, he had a sudden flashback in which he as a child knelt down beside his mother's dead body after she and Harvey's father had been murdered by the two petty murderers. His mother's throat had been slit by one of the killers and young Harvey whimpered one last word to his mother's dead body, "Mummy?"
Harvey choked up a bit after his short flashback concluded.
"Mills! Get over here, look at this." Hudson called over to Harvey.
Mills went over to Hudson and questioned, "What is it?"
"Look at this guy." Hudson suggested.
"That's f*cked up man." Mills remarked.
The corpse which Hudson had firstly examined and presented to Mills was one which had died from a bullet directly through the left eye and out the back of the head.
"So what do you think, murderer with a motive or a psychotic lunatic?" Hudson remarked.
"Depends… hey, Sergeant, who were these guys?" Mills questioned Chang.
"Erm," Chang pulled out a note pad from his pocket and read out the five names on the list on the first page, "Aldo Caprini, Max Hill, Gino Del Favero, Chris D'Angelo and Bobby Costello."
"What were their occupations?" Mills shouted to Chang.
"Neither of them even had an occupation. But they were connected to the Mafia, so I guess that's how they earned money." Chang replied.
Mills turned to Hudson once more and said, "Someone is definitely targeting members of the Mafia, this isn't a psychopathic lunatic, this is a murderer with a motive."
At that moment, Captain John Murphy arrived at the scene of the crime in his very own car. As he stepped out the car, Mills spotted him and quietly remarked, "Look who it is."
Hudson turned his head and looked at the Captain and as he gasped the word 'Why', the Captain's car suddenly exploded into a massive blazing cloud.
Sergeant Chang was sent to the floor by the shockwaves of the blast along with a few others whilst Mills and Hudson were just hit by a strong wind as they stumbled to the floor in shock.
"What the f*ck?!" Hudson roared in reaction of the explosion milliseconds before bullets bolted through the smoke and at the police.
Officers were shot down by the automatic bullets before they could even aim their guns properly.
"Holy sh*t! Get down!" Hudson screamed to Mills.
As Mills ducked his head and stayed flat in a ball on the floor, Hudson was suddenly shot in the right knee cap, the upper right leg and in his left arm.
As Hudson hit the floor Mills screamed, "Hudson!"
Hudson lay on the floor screaming as blood poured out of his leg. Mills pulled out his handgun, scattered up onto his feet and began to run across the yard of cobblestone.
Mills stopped as he passed the blazing vehicle and it was then that he witnessed the shadowed culprit dropping his assault rifle and beginning to run into the maze of big cuboid containers. Mills sprinted for his life in pursuit of the rapid culprit who manoeuvred between lanes distinguished by the containers between them but Mills never lost him.
Harvey began to shoot at the culprit as he ran a distance behind him until he finally shot the culprit in the leg. The terrorist fell to the floor as the bullet had just pierced through the side of left leg. His face was still shadowed as he crawled across the floor in an attempt to flee.
Mills slowed down and began to stroll towards the culprit as he pulled handcuffs out.
"Don't move a f*cking muscle, unless I tell you to move a f*cking muscle!", Mills ordered as he approached the culprit whose face was covered by the back of his head of which was partially cloaked by a black woolly hat.
"Not today." The culprit mumbled before suddenly pulling out a handgun from his belt, flipping over and shooting Mills in the torso area, sending the detective to the floor.
The only part of the culprit's face which Mills witnessed was his furious eyes as he pressed the trigger. The mystery culprit lifted himself up off the floor and began to limp quickly for the rest of the lane. As Mills lay on the ground, seemingly dead, he suddenly he began to moan and after his blurring vision faded, he ripped his top open to reveal that he was wearing a bullet proof vest and that a compressed bullet was jammed in the right side of the upper vest.
Mills pulled the bullet out of the vest and threw it aside; it was at that moment that a five-man squad of police arrived at Harvey's position with Alsatians who were brought to find the culprit. The leader of the five men said to Mills, "Are you alright sir?"
"I'm fine! Now go! Find the piece of sh*t!" Mills ordered.
As the search squad ran on in search of the culprit, Mills got back up onto his feet and sighed. Minutes later, he arrived back at the yard, his bullet proof vest was visible and his shirt was open.
Mills gazed for moments at the terror that had occurred, the fumes of a blazing vehicle being put out by fire men, injured police men and dead bodies being carried into ambulances – Detective Hudson of course being one of them – and police men trembling as the cargo ship exploded before their eyes.
…
Later that day, Mills was at the hospital sitting beside Hudson's bed. Hudson was lying on the bed in a patient's gown. His leg had been bandaged up and his pain was relieved by the painkillers supplied by the hospital. Hudson was awake so that he could converse with his friend and fellow detective.
"They bandaged me up, I'm going to have to take painkillers for a while, but I should be fine. That f*cking psycho shot me right in the leg, it was f*cking painful I can tell you that." Hudson explained.
"Are you going to come to the Captain's funeral tomorrow?" Mills questioned.
"Yeah, I'll be there." Hudson replied.
"Apparently his body is burned to a crisp. They say his skin is like charcoal and he's been burned to the point that certain bones are visible, but even they're burned." Mills explained.
"He got what he deserved; he was a scumbag, a corrupt officer, he didn't even deserve the title as Captain." Hudson replied.
Mills stood up and finally remarked, "Well Peter, my friend… justice is blind."
...