"You know, Hanson, when you think about it, it's kind of ironic, isn't it?" Ioki asked the next morning before they headed to school.
Hanson hadn't gotten much sleep during the night and still wasn't quite all there yet this morning either. He did a slow double take at the other cop and asked, "What…is ironic, Ioki?"
"Well think about it," Ioki said, "We're infiltrating these high school gangs, to bust them, at the same time we're all playing decoy to catch a serial killer who is targeting teenagers. As long as these gangs keep on doing what they do, and they all stick together doing it, they will never have to worry about being one of the next victims of this guy. Isn't that funny?"
Hanson looked at him with wide, tired eyes, and after a brief pause went in a deadpanned tone, "Ha-ha." Then he collected himself a bit and told the other cop, "Well, they'll also be nice and safe from him when we bust them and put them in jail."
"Hanson," Jenko said as he entered the workspace and passed by the two young cops, "You look terrible."
"Thank you, Captain, I've been working on it," Tom said sarcastically.
Jenko went over to the soda machine and got one out, "You gotta wake up, Hanson, look alive, sport, here, have a soda."
"No thanks, I don't want one," he politely refused.
"I didn't ask if you wanted one, I told you to have one," Jenko told him, and held it out in offering, when Tom wouldn't take it, he set it down on the young cop's desk and said, "I told you when you first came here, from now one, breakfast is potato chips, soda pop…"
"French fries and pizza," Tom nodded unenthusiastically, "Yeah, I remember."
"Yeah, but you ain't been doing it," Jenko told him, "Bad character, Tom, you start slipping now, soon everybody at your school's gonna know," he started to walk away, then suddenly stopped, looked around like a caged animal and sniffed the air, "Got a cop in our midst."
Hanson continued to stare straight ahead like a zombie, blinked his eyes, ran his hands through his hair and said, "I'm too old for this."
"And you're too young to be an old man already," Jenko pointed out, "Now if you need some time to recuperate from all this double duty…"
Hanson shook his head, "I'm fine," and opened the soda to take a drink.
"Penhall," Jenko addressed the heavier officer and told him, "Keep an eye on your partner, I'm starting to worry about him."
Penhall stopped in mid-chew on the piece of gum in his mouth and he looked at the captain and said to him, "You just now started to? I've been worried about this guy since he came here."
"Alright, everybody," Jenko got the attention of all four members of the Chapel, "It's going to be a big day so look alive out there and show no mercy."
"What, no 'let's be careful out there'?" Ioki joked.
"Hey," Jenko pointed towards him, "That's not a bad idea, I'll have to remember that, Ioki." He clapped his hands together and told them, "Alright, go out there and make your department proud."
"Jenk," Penhall said as he put on his coat, taking note of the captain's excessive enthusiasm, as well as the sudden volume increase in his voice that could be heard all throughout the Chapel, "Were you ever a cheerleader in school?"
"No, but I dated plenty of them," he smiled, "And let me tell you, Doug, their impetuosity is absolutely contagious."
"Something you clearly wouldn't know anything about," Penhall murmured to Hanson on their way out.
High school. Gotta hate it. Realistically Hanson knew nobody was looking at him, but you walk into school with a black eye, you might as well be 13 with a big zit in the middle of your forehead all over again, you could feel all the eyes on you. Except of course, for the ones who actually put the shiner there, Hanson knew those guys weren't watching him, because he and Doug had already proved last night that they were 'man enough' to meet with Pembleton.
"Well, Mr. Bower," the teacher definitely took notice, even though it wasn't until he actually sat down that she did, "What happened to you?"
What to say? If he said his dad kicked his tail for whatever reason, that ran the risk of the teacher contacting children's welfare, and the whole case was blown, but you couldn't rat out the real people responsible either, so…
"Ran into my sister's fist," he said.
The teacher, a plump, middle aged lady, rounded her mouth into an 'o', and said, "You have a sister?"
"Older sister," he answered readily, "Tough chick. Teaches a self defense class and was using me as an example."
"I see," she said, then turned towards the blackboard.
Tom turned to see Doug seated behind him, who said not a word but just gave the 'ok' sign with his fingers and smiled approvingly. Tom rolled his eyes, turned his head towards the front, picked up his book, and tried burying his face behind it. Somehow these days seemed to be lasting even longer than he ever could remember them doing before, and this was only first period.
While the teacher talked and the class didn't listen, Hanson especially didn't listen because instead he was remembering what Jenko had said, about taking him off one of the cases. Either he'd be taken off this case or decoy duty, either way he didn't see that as an option, he couldn't just up and disappear from the school and leave this to Doug, and as much as he utterly abhorred freezing half to death out on the streets every night acting like a stupid teenager out and about all by his lonesome and just ripe for the picking and strangling…no, he kept seeing the last victim, Kenny Bradshaw, staring at him with those lifeless eyes. No, he shook his head, until somebody caught this guy, he was going to be out there every night with the rest, if he caught the killer, if Doug or Harry or Judy did, or if some regular cop finally caught the nut, Tom knew he wouldn't be feeling any better about the whole thing until somebody did, and he was not willing to let some real high school kid unintentionally take his place walking those streets after dark. He just couldn't stand it if there was another kid dead because of this psycho, if he had to look at one more victim…
He couldn't think, his brain was processing too much stuff at the same time. When in the hell were those expert psychologists going to come in and help them figure out who and what they were looking for? They had to know the city was in an uproar over this guy, and the lot of them at the Chapel might as well have been the blind leading the blind. None of them had any idea what to look for to figure out who this guy was, or where he might strike next. A brilliant idea, boy he wished he had one.
Lightning struck. Tom looked up from his book and straight ahead though he wasn't seeing anything ahead. An idea came to him.
"Ioki, we have a very unusual specimen here," Doug told Harry as they walked over to Hanson's desk where they saw the officer seated and hunched over one book with three piles more filling up his desk, "Now we've always known that our buddy Hanson is a little off, right?"
"I suppose so," Harry shrugged.
"Not only that," Doug said, "We could tell from day one that they didn't come any cleaner cut and stuffier shirt than him, right?"
"Right," Harry half shrugged.
"I bet you I could tell exactly what he was like in high school," Doug said, "My money says he always had his nose in the books and therefore never dated."
"So?" Ioki asked.
"So, what happens when you graduate? Hmm?" Penhall shoved one pile of the books on Tom's desk into the wastebasket and said, "Bye-bye books, no more studying, no more researching, now it's time to go out in the real world and get a job, which explains what we're doing here today, this is our job…our buddy Hanson here on the other hand, has spent the last week, spent every spare minute around sleep and work, reading all of these books he got from the library. In fact, the man has become so engrossed in the fine world of literature that he's become completely oblivious to everything going on around him, watch."
Doug began his demonstration by poking Tom in the shoulder incessantly, like a woodpecker on Jolt Cola. No response.
"Ha-a-a-a-an-son," Doug said in a singsong tone as he poked Tom in the back, "Ha-a-a-a-an-son, are you in there?"
Nothing.
"Huh, tough customer," Ioki noted.
"You ain't seen nothing yet," Penhall told him, "Watch this one."
Doug stuck his forefinger in his mouth and took it out, but before he could do what he'd planned on, without looking up from his book, Tom said in a warning tone, "If you even think of sticking your finger in my ear, I will kill you, Doug." Finally looking up, he pointed to Harry and added, "And he'll help me," he looked to Harry and asked, "Right?"
After a short pause to consider, Harry replied, "Right."
Hanson looked up at the two of them and asked, "Don't you guys have anything better to do?"
"Not really," Doug answered.
"What're you reading, Hanson?" Ioki asked.
Hanson let his book fall on the desk and explained, "I checked out every book the library had on true crime, murder, mass murder, serial killers, the whole nine yards."
"Ah, bedside reading," Doug replied cynically.
Tom stood up from his chair and rubbed his eyes, "I read them all through the weekend, I think I've gotten about 20 hours' sleep since Saturday."
"But today's Wednesday," Judy pointed out, stepping into the conversation.
"I know it," Tom said as he leaned against his desk, he told the others, "I decided if those expert criminal analysts aren't going to get out here and help us out, we're going to have to do it ourselves. Somebody has to figure out then what it is we're going up against."
"Get any ideas yet?" Doug asked.
"Not really," Tom confessed, "I still can't get a handle on what kind of guy we're supposed to be looking for. All I know is everybody you ever thought you could trust is wrong, you can't, they're more likely to be the killers than the people you'd actually suspect."
"The stuff paranoia's made of," Hoffs commented as she picked up one of the books on the desk and skimmed through it.
"No kidding," Hanson said as he went over to the soda machine, "It's enough to make me never want to leave my house again, and I'm a cop!"
"That's the law enforcement's lot in life, Hanson," Jenko said as he entered the room, "To deal regularly with the scourge of the earth the common man can't even bear to think about."
"Hey Jenk, what's up?" Doug asked.
"Oh not much, Penhall, just got somebody from the mayor's office breathing down my neck," Jenko answered, trying to sound nonchalant but it was obvious that he was annoyed by the matter, "As we all know, this whole base of operation is the mayor's pet project, his baby, ergo everybody in the top office wants to know why the baby is a week overdue. Evidently they've got some number crunchers at city hall who know how to do enough math to know that this particular case is taking longer than usual."
"How do they know that?" Doug wanted to know, "How do they know about the cases before we break them?"
"Big Brother, man," Jenko said, sounding somewhere between his old hippie self, and a raving paranoiac, and to emphasize, he swooshed his whole body around every which way as if he was trying to spot a fly buzzing through the air, and added, "He's everywhere, he's everywhere."
"Now Hanson's definitely not gonna get any sleep tonight," Hoffs snorted.
"Hanson, is in the room, Judy," Tom said condescendingly, "He can hear you." He turned to Jenko and explained, "Sir, all due respect, this guy isn't stupid, I think he suspects we're cops and that's why he keeps pushing everything back, he figures if he holds out long enough, we'll lose interest and go away and he can go back to whatever the hell it is he's doing with his goon squad every night."
"Yeah," Doug agreed, "Smashing mailboxes, setting people's lawns on fire, robbing graves, biting the heads off chickens and whatever else is in Voodoo Vogue."
"Very funny, Doug," Jenko remarked, "Have you even been able to get close to this guy?"
"We tried," Hanson pointed to his eye, which had lost some of its nice black and blue color since the beatdown they took last week, "We've actually gotten to be within his presence a couple times but he's not saying anything and he hasn't invited us to go with his guys at night."
"We've tried trailing them but…where they're going, it ain't easy to get in and out undetected," Doug added.
"And what about you, Judy?" Jenko asked.
Hoffs just shrugged, "Dead end with my girls, apparently their boyfriends turned out to be a different wild bunch, and I don't think we're going to be a bonus bust out of it either, they're out there but I don't think they're criminals."
Jenko turned to Ioki and said, "How about it, Harry? We striking out completely?"
"Maybe not," Ioki told him, "My gang's been slow too, but I think tonight I'm finally going to be able to bust them. I got word that they're going to be picking up something new and flashy real soon."
"Beautiful," Jenko replied, "Alright everybody, have a good time at school," he grinned to himself at their less than cheerful responses, "And hey, since you asked for it, 'Let's be careful out there'."
"Very funny," Doug groaned as they headed for the door.
"Everybody's always picking on me, I don't know why everybody's got it in for me, but I didn't do anything wrong," Hanson was explaining to the principal after being called into his office again.
"You are here, Mr. Bower, because the janitor caught you starting a fire in the wastebasket."
"Wasn't me, man," Tom shrugged.
"He identified you."
"Wasn't me, must've been somebody else."
"Like who?"
"I don't know, I wasn't there," Tom shook his head.
"Mr. Bower, do you have any idea what the odds are of one other student in this school looking remotely like you?"
"Um…" Tom scrunched his face up like he was trying hard to come up with the answer, then flat out answered, "Nope."
The door to the principal's office opened and the secretary stood in the doorway anxiously and said, "Mr. Turner, two of the students are fighting in the stairwell."
Beautiful.
"Don't you go anywhere, Bower, I'll deal with you when I get back," the principal warned Tom as he got up and stormed out of the office.
"You want a bet?" Tom asked once the man was gone.
Small favors. With them gone, Tom decided to do a little snooping while he had the opportunity. First he'd start with the papers on the desk, and if he didn't find anything there and there was time, then he'd go through the files in the filing cabinets on the other side of the office. Busy school, already there were open reports sitting out on several of the students: absent, absent, disorderly conduct, absent, absent, out sick, discipline problem, suspension, suspension, suspension, pending expulsion…holy cats.
Tom managed to get out of the principal's office unseen, and now was off to find Doug. He checked his watch and knew by this time they should be in gym class, so that's where he went. He busted in through the doors like the place was on fire, and saw Doug in his gym clothes talking to one of the lunk heads from Pembleton's gang, and the two of them were yakking it up like they were old buds.
"Doug, Doug, I gotta talk to you," Tom told him.
"Later, twerp, later," Doug shooed him away.
"Now, Doug," Tom grabbed him.
"Would you go away?" Doug asked, and turned his attention back to the other student.
Tom grabbed the back of the waistband on Doug's sweats and jerked on them to get his attention. Doug grunted and said to the other guy, "Would you excuse me for a minute…"
Then Tom accidentally yanked Doug's sweats down.
"While I kill my little brother," Doug said, fitting it in his original sentence. He pulled his sweatpants up, turned around, put Hanson in a headlock, and walked him over towards the door.
"This better be good, Tommy," Doug warned his 'brother', "Or so help me when we get out of here I'm going to rip your head off."
"Doug," Tom said in an aggravated whisper to get his partner's attention, "I found out something that I think is important. When I was in the principal's office, I got to looking through his files on the desk…Doug…Terry Livingston is a student in this school.
Doug's eyes went blank and his jaw dropped, "What?"
Tom nodded, "Not only that…the school records show she hasn't been to school for the last 8 school days."
"Wai-wha-who—huh?" Doug asked, "Wait a minute, if she's not here…then where the hell has she been for the last 10 days?"
"And where is she now?" Tom wanted to know.
The two cops looked at each other, their brains unable to process anymore questions to actually give voice to, but plenty were racing around in their heads at that moment.
"Doug," Tom said, "Her parents are out of town, if they're still gone, then nobody would know if…"
"We gotta get out of here," they said simultaneously.
