A Fair Distance. Running on Empty. Chapter Three

Saturday night shift usually meant somebody would end up acting like an idiot and, sure enough, tonight's catch was Mark and Sherry White, our favorite fighting couple for the last month. This time they were being brought in on a 10-57 from the Hide-Away Hole, where they'd proceeded to assault the other patrons, after sparring with each other. Randall and I got a standing ovation from most of the other clientele when we cuffed Mr. and Mrs. White and proceeded to place them in the back of the car. Randall took statements from the folks who had been on the receiving end of the punches and kicks, and I talked to the owner about banning them from his place or getting a restraining order.

Of course we had another problem when we returned to the station…

I walked back to our currently occupied holding cell to wake up our temporary guest who was staying with us courtesy of the state of Washington. I had no choice but to move him out in order to move one of the Whites in. We had two holding cells, but Mrs. White was goin' in the other one. The way those two whaled on each other at the drop of a hat, we couldn't chance bunking them together until they could be transported up to the Davitt County jailhouse in the morning. Mr. White and Blair together – that'd be a bad idea.

Blair was curled up asleep on the bottom bunk. I wondered about him. It wasn't hard to see he was down on his luck, but the more common reasons for being troubled didn't seem to fit him. Most likely not a drug addict, as his tox screen had been clean and he didn't have needle marks on his body. He didn't have the ten miles of bad road look of a meth addict, either, and his skin wasn't riddled with sores. Not an alcoholic, for he hadn't the smell of alcohol oozing out his pores or gone into withdrawal while in the cell. Judgin' by the calluses on his hands and muscles on his arms, he weren't scared of hard work, so he didn't seem to be just a bum.

He was smart, too; the cooperative way he handled himself when he was arrested showed intelligence. He caught on quick when I used his size to show just how ridiculous the idea was that he'd coerced those football players into stealin' a car. He'd made himself look even smaller; I swear he'd shrunk himself down another two inches while he gazed at the parents with a wide eyed, innocent look. That look had a touch of the practiced to my eyes; I bet Blair could be a handful when he weren't so beaten down. Old J.D., who'd picked him up hitchhiking, had told us that "Blair was a talker 'bout a lot of far-away stuff." The boy had struck him as a lost soul, he'd said, and the old feller had wanted to send Blair over to his preacher for help. Instead, Blair'd insisted politely to J.D. that he had to leave town that night.

Something about his old hometown sure spooked that boy. It wasn't so much about the death of that woman but more over who was coming to interrogate him about her death. He'd had the one panic attack, and Mike told me he'd been pretty jittery for the rest of the day. Jittery; and then he'd be passed out sleeping. Mike said he'd slept a whole lot and eaten about nothing. Mike acts like a junkyard dog most of the time, but he told me we'd better keep an eye on the kid 'cause he thought he was gettin' sick.

Mike and Randall also thought the order to hold him was a little strange. Usually, a warrant was issued, and the prisoner would be picked up by the regular prison bus and eventually transported right back where he was wanted. And if it was just for questioning, why not ask us to help feed him the questions and see what he'd got to say for himself. Besides, if it was so all-fired important that this detective do the asking in person, why hadn't he jumped on a plane and been here by now?

Well…I hated to disturb the boy, but he couldn't stay in the cell with Mr. White. Mr. White seemed to hate just about every kind of people there was, and Blair here would be on his shit list once Mr. White looked at him and heard Blair's last name. Hippies, Jews, Gays… and basically anybody who wasn't just like him. Didn't matter if Blair was gay or not, Mr. White would tag him as such just because of his long hair. Mr. White was drunk as a skunk and mean as a snake and all too inclined to hurt people for me to leave Blair in there with him. I thought to put him in the Police Chief's office on the couch; I'd have to put ankle shackles on him, but he could go back to sleep and I could easily monitor him while I was holding down the fort. I was done with my patrol shift and for the rest of the night I'd be at the station doing paperwork, watching our prisoners, and handling walk-ins.

Blair looked blearily up at me when I shook him awake. "Dave, man…what's up? Is the Cascade guy here?" I helped him get out of the bunk; he wasn't any too steady on his feet while I explained he was moving to the couch in the Chief's office for the rest of the night. He thought that was funny and started listin' all the couches he'd slept on for the last year. I don't think he was really awake, and he lost his own train of thought halfway down the hall. I got him settled and then decided to satisfy my growing curiosity about this boy and where he came from in Washington.

~oo~oo~oo~oo~

xxx

"Well! Dave Findley, haven't seen you in a month of Sundays. And who have you brought me today?"

Maddie Long was the most talkative nurse in the whole ER rotation, and when she was curious about something, she would keep on pesterin' a person till they gave in. Or most folks did. I liked to think I was immune to her talents, but I was probably just kiddin' myself. Still, she had a good heart and was partial to strays; so I looked for her to want to adopt Blair, who was sitting cross-legged on a gurney looking rumpled and sleepy. That hair of his was wilder than usual and just begged for somebody to tackle it with a brush.

Blair answered for himself. "Hi, I'm Blair Sandburg, and I don't see why Dave thought I should get checked out. I'll be fine."

I shook my head and told Maddie the list of symptoms Mike and I had noted. "Sore throat, no appetite, sleeping almost round the clock, but when he's awake he looks like he's still exhausted. He keeps rubbing his head like it hurts. And he's started runnin' fevers. I took his temperature at the station and it was 103.2."

Well, that was enough to set Maddie off and running and she started making notes, asking questions about how long this and how much that, and whipping out blood pressure cuffs and that ear temperature gadget and her stethoscope. Blair was in for it now.

After he'd woken up, an hour after daybreak, he'd admitted to having a sore throat to me when he asked for some salt so he could gargle with it. And he'd had fever dreams, apparently, while he slept with his ankle fastened to the frame on the Chief's couch. I'd watched him tossing back and forth and had listened to him going on about a blue jungle, hiding, and some animals. He kept asking to see some guy named Jim, and then telling him sorry, and mixed in all that was him telling this Jim guy to leave him alone and to forget him. He really put on quite a show, but the couple of times I tried to wake him up, he maybe quieted down for a short spell, then he'd be right back talking about hiding and running in the jungle again. His cheek and forehead felt hot to me, so when he woke up for good I took his temp and decided he was maybe sick enough for the doctor to check him out.

I'd done some investigating on the computer while he slept and what I found was interestin'. Poking around on several search engines, I'd found and printed out everything I could on one Blair Jacob Sandburg, sometime truck driver, anthropologist, police observer and consultant. I'd checked the Cascade papers; there were newspaper articles on his being kidnapped and almost killed by a serial killer, and other ones involving casework. There were photographs of him working at Rainier University looking a whole lot happier than what I'd seen so far in person. He'd been a teacher and had gone on expeditions, according to the various captions under the photographs. I found references to his work cited in other people's articles, and I printed out articles he'd written himself on different tribal cultures that were published in journals. I'd been right about him being smart, although, he didn't seem old enough to have done all the things I found listed under his name; evidently he'd been a busy, busy boy.

Not an entirely ethical boy, either, according to what the news stories had had to say about him. Blair had cheated on his research about sentinels, people with better senses than most folks, but he'd gotten an attack of conscience and had come clean about it on TV, no less. And apparently, some folks had made a pretty big to-do over the book he'd written about sentinels. Before he admitted to being a fraud, he'd been offered a whole lot of money and a shot at the Nobel Prize. Afterwards his school hadn't been too happy with him and had kicked him out. Rainier University had printed a disclaimer about Blair's work in the paper; that place was also where Marie Edwards had worked. Well, Blair had said he'd known her; she was the one who'd put the disclaimer in the paper.

Blair a fraud… now I thought that was an interestin' notion, as he hadn't tried pulling any of the usual jailhouse con crap on us. People's personalities don't change much from location to location, as I've ever noticed. If he was a conman type, he sure wasn't any good at it, or he wouldn't be hitchhiking across the country. He was a charmer; even Mike didn't despise the boy as much as he did the other prisoners, and I did think Blair could be persuasive, and probably good at getting his own way by cajoling or battin' those big eyes of his, like he was trying right now at Maddie.

I watched as Maddie laughed at him and patted his cheek. He'd tried to get out of the blood tests, but Maddie was immune to pleading when it came to doing her job. Like I figured, though, she had taken a liking to Blair.

I pondered over what I had learned so far in my computer searches… One thing - I kept finding a name tagged with his in those newspaper stories where he'd been listed as a police observer and when he'd been kidnapped by Lash, the serial killer, and in the stories about his sentinel studies being a fraud.

Jim Ellison...

I was betting 'Blue Jungle Jim' was the same fellow. While Blair was sleeping on the couch, I'd looked up his address from his CDL license and did a reverse phone number search for it. I'd called it. Without much surprise, I'd listened to Blair on the answering machine, in a cheerful tone of voice, saying that this was the residence of Blair Sandburg and Jim Ellison and to leave a message with a phone number. Jim Ellison hadn't changed his phone message for well over a year, even though Blair had left the state. Why was he hanging on to it? Especially when it had the voice of the guy who'd lied and told the world his friend was this mythical sentinel. If he were angry with Blair, you'd think he would have erased it long ago.

Jim Ellison.

Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg… they'd lived together, so what had been their relationship to each other?

He and Blair had worked closely together at the Cascade P.D., although what Blair did there seemed a little vague. He wasn't listed as a profiler in the articles, but he did consulting for them. Jim Ellison was a Cascade detective; and a good one, since he'd been listed as cop of the year in several of the stories. Would Cascade send Blair's old partner to interrogate him?

Maybe they would send Ellison and Blair was panicky over meeting up with him; in fact, he seemed downright scared about it.

The articles about the press conference where Blair had denounced his own research were from a year and a half ago; Blair said he'd been moving around the country for a year, but he'd kept Jim Ellison's address on his license. Had Blair continued to live with this Jim Ellison for six months after he'd admitted he'd put false evidence about Ellison in his research?

To allow Blair to stay, this Jim must've been very, very tolerant and forgiving, or maybe Blair had moved out and not changed his address on his license. If Ellison was the one coming and he was so tolerant and forgiving, then why was Blair so nervous about talking to him? Were they enemies or friends today?

Ellison was either out working tonight or he was on his way here, because he hadn't answered his phone. Cops don't have the luxury of ignoring phone calls; he'd have answered if he were home. So there was a real good chance he would be here soon to investigate the guy who'd lied about him.

I needed more answers, but I had run out of time this morning to do any more checking on the Internet. A lot of the other guys at the station were intimidated about getting out into cyberspace; but I found it to be quite handy and I intended to run some searches on Jim Ellison and Marie Edwards to see how they fit into this puzzle. Also, I thought it was time to call the Cascade PD and find out when their detective was going to show up; this time I'd make them confirm a name instead of telling us to expect an anonymous 'detective.'

Maddie was finished with her medical exam and was patting Blair on the shoulder, telling him he could lie back down if he wanted while we waited for the doctor to come in. She bustled off, saying she was going to fetch him a blanket.

I walked over to the gurney and eyeballed him.

"You doing okay?" I asked him.

Blair was yawning again as he held a cotton ball on his arm where Maddie had stuck him to take blood, and I reached out to feel his forehead. Still running a fever; still tired, even though I knew he'd slept away most of the night.

He looked up at me. "Maddie said she thinks she knows what I have, but that it's up to the doctor to do the telling. Man, hospitals are not my favorite places to hang out. Neither are jail cells and I've only got till Monday afternoon to make it to North Carolina. Do you know when the Cascade guy is supposed to show up?"

"I'll be checking with Cascade when I take you back." Blair hadn't told me anything about his life in Cascade, and I was keeping what I had learned to myself for now. I didn't think Blair was going to get that trucking job he kept talking about even if the legal complications could be cleared up in time; he didn't look like he would last two minutes driving a semi before passing out. I kept that thought to myself, too, though. It wasn't my business to disabuse Blair of his hopes and dreams.

~oo~oo~oo~oo~