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Writer
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Redditch, Worcestershire, England
Posts: 33
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MANOR OF EVIL first chapter, parts one and two
CHAPTER ONE
‘RIVERS! Get in here!’
Kate Rivers frowned. Her workload had gotten unusually tall over the last month, so the last thing she need right then was an ear-bashing from the Chief. Muggings, burglaries, rape – she’d seen it all over the last several weeks. The world seemed to have gone crazy.
‘RIVERS,’ the stern voice repeated.
‘Ok, ok, I’m coming, she shouted back, rising from her desk with a start. She spat her gum into the wastepaper basket and made her way to the door at the far side of the office, the one marked CHIEF BURNQUIST. It was ajar, so she shouldered it open without knocking, before stepping through.
Inside, she found a dishevelled-looking Chief Burnquist sat at his desk.
‘You ok, Chief? You stressed.’
But that was an understatement. If she was honest, she would have said Jesus Christ Chief, you look like you’ve been sleeping in the staff car park.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just overworked as usual.’
She’d never known the Chief to be organised or tidy, but he usually made some tiny effort, but today, his desk looked like a missile had struck it. Covered in loose stacks of papers and unlabelled folders, it was an absolute mess - but then, administration had never been a strongpoint of Steve Burnquist, everyone knew that – the man was a police officer first and a bureaucrat second.
He motioned to a chair opposite his desk and, obediently, she dumped herself down.
As she waited for him to say something, to perhaps enlighten her as to why the hell she was in his office, she became aware of how unhealthy he looked. His skin was grey and pallid like a...
Zombie?
It was probably just flu, she told herself, but all the same it concerned her. ‘You sure you’re ok, Chief,’ she asked again.
‘I said I’m fine,’ he snapped in his deep, Texan drawl, before quickly changing the subject. ‘Just been on the phone to the Assistant Director of the FBI.’
Rivers stared back plainly. ‘And?’
‘Thorn Manor, d’you know it?’
She nodded. ‘Big place down by the lake. Belongs to the Government doesn’t it?’
‘Not no more. Owned by a pharmaceutical (Always a struggler with long words, he pronounced it farma-zoot-gul) company called ReGen nowdays.’ He glanced fleetingly at his watch without any real attempt to read the time – a nervous habit of his that she had cottoned on to some years back.
There’s something he’s not telling you, said a paranoid voice in her head. Something he’s trying to hide.
‘Well, I’ll get to the point anyway,’ he continued. ‘Apparently, the practises of this drugs company have been called into question. Haven’t been presented with the finer details, but what I have been told is that three days ago, a pair of FBI field agents were dispatched to investigate the Manor and haven’t been heard from since.’ He glanced across the table at her, making sure she was paying attention. ‘One of these agents, er...’ He consulted the papers in front of him. ‘A Doctor Theodore Alver, is very important to the Government and they want him found quickly.‘
She cut in before he had the chance to say anymore. ‘So, what does this have to do with us? Or more importantly, me?’
He smiled at her, shaking his head. ‘As impatient as always I see. Very well, I won’t waste anymore of your time. The Bureau aren’t able to dispatch one of their own, until tomorrow, so they’ve asked me to send a couple of uniforms to check things out. If these agents are in some sort of trouble then perhaps a day could make a lotta difference.’
‘Can’t you send someone else? I have far more important things to do than going on a wild goose chase.’
‘I know you do, but my hands are tied. You know what its been like the last few weeks. I don’t have an officer to spare.’
She sighed, knowing he was right. ‘Ok, I’ll get going as soon as I can.’ She stood from the chair and made to leave, but Burnquist ushered her back down.
‘Listen, Kate. I don’t care beyond my ass if two FBI agents have been caught skulking round someone’s basement. They’ll turn up either unharmed or dead, so nothing we do will really make a difference. Once you’ve knocked on the front door, kick under a few bushes, then leave, ok? The FBI can deal with their own damn problems. D’you understand?
‘Loud and clear, Boss.’ She snapped off a sloppy salute, then turned toward the door.’
‘Hold your horses.’
She turned back, irritated. ‘Yes?’
He was looking at her with an odd expression, like he never expected to see her again or something. It made her feel awkward.
‘You sure you’re ok, Chief? You really do seem worried.’
‘For the last time, I said I’m fine. Just forgot what I were gonna say is all.’
‘Ok, but if you need to talk, you know where I am.’
He forced a smile. ‘Yeah. Yeah I know that, Kate.’
She smiled back at him, hoping to conceal the worry that loomed in the back of her mind. ‘So, did you remember what you wanted to say yet?’
‘Oh, er, I meant to tell you to take these papers and go find Officer Kealy.’
‘The Rookie?’
‘Yeah, you’re takin him along. Kid could do with some legwork, been a tad shaky on assignment, so do him a favour and take him with you.’
‘Great,’ she said, dryly. ‘Babysitting duty.’
Chris Kealy stared blankly at the monitor. After fifteen minutes of struggling to gain some kind of friendly understanding with his ill-tempered computer, he’d finally given up. He flopped back in his chair and took a deep breath inwards, letting it out slowly. He enjoyed the soothing flow of the air escaping his nostrils, it was something he had control over.
It’d been a quiet day at the precinct. Most of the other uniforms had been called away on assignments or were on holiday, leaving their desks empty and bare. Officer Jolson and Chief Burnquist were both upstairs manning dispatch, whilst Sergeant Banks was downstairs filing reports a few desks away – but other than those three men and himself, the office was empty. Detective Rivers may have been lurking around somewhere too, he guessed, she never seemed to leave the place after all.
Three days! Three days he’d been stuck at his desk sipping coffee. One more hour of routine paperwork would surely send him mad. He never joined up to sit at a desk, he wanted to be out there on the streets doing something useful. The Chief was punishing him, that much was obvious, but for how much longer...
As he peered around the office, he caught the eye of Sergeant Banks, who was scribbling away furiously with a biro. Banks was ‘old-skool’ and never used a computer for anything. There’s nothing a computer can do that I can’t do my bloody self, he recalled the man saying more than once.
It was state policy that all police personnel receive basic computer training, but the Chief never pushed the matter with Banks on account of the man’s track record – fifteen years at Scotland Yard, apparently, before finally emigrating to the USA. Chief Burnquist had made Banks second-in-command of Fox Town almost as soon as he had arrived. Apparently, there wasn’t a thing about police work that Sergeant Banks couldn’t tell you, so if the man didn’t want to use a computer, he sure as hell didn’t have to.
‘Buggered your computer again have you, Rookie,’ Banks asked from across the room. ‘Not worth the trouble if you want my opinion, son.’
Kealy pulled himself up straight. ‘Er, um, no...its fine. I um. I-it’s fine, Sergeant, really.’
Way to act casual, he thought to himself.
For a while, Banks continued to look at him, studying him as if he were some new and interesting species. It was uncomfortable being stared at for so long and he tried his very best to act as though he hadn’t noticed – but it was impossible, almost like he could feel the sergeant’s stare scorching a hole in the side of his face, peeling away the skin to reveal bone.
When the Sergeant finally did look away, Kealy sighed relief, easing back into his chair and closing his eyes to think. He tried to imagine something positive, something calming, something to clear away the tension that scratched at the back of his eyeballs - but instead he worried.
I just know it’s gonna happen soon. Any day now. Maybe this very minute. It’s gonna happen, I can feel it.
He’d only been on the force three months and each day of that had been a long list of clumsy mistakes. His whole life he’d dreamed about being a cop, certain he would be the very best, and at the academy he’d finished top of the class, just as he knew he would.
But you’re in a man’s world now, Junior, and it’s time for you to step on up, said some cruel and teasing voice from the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t there speaking to him, but failed. The voice was right after all.
He couldn’t allow himself to dwell, it only made the coals in his belly burn hotter. He forced himself to snap out of it by trying to blank his thoughts and relax, to allow nothingness to filter through his mind until there was nothing left but sweet oblivion...
‘KEALY!’
He flinched upright, sending the coffee mug in front of him tipping across the desk and onto its side, as the firm hand now clamped around his shoulder jolted him awake.
A frozen slice of terror stabbed him in the face as he realised that he had just knocked coffee down the trouser leg of...
‘Detective Rivers! I-I’m sorry. It was an accident. I er-‘
‘You clumsy son-of-a-’
He fumbled erratically, searching for something to soak up the spill – but everything on his desk was sodden a mucky brown.
He stopped still and tried to face her, trying to withstand the burning-hot glare of her deep brown eyes – eyes famous around the office for their ferocity.
Instead of exploding with verbal abuse, as he had expected her too, she instead shoved a crumpled slip of paper into his hands. ‘Go requisition a car, then get yourself a piece,’ she said. ‘We’re going on a picnic.’
It was raining heavily outside and the afternoon sky was growing dim beneath a ceiling of black clouds. Thunder even seemed likely as soft rumblings in the distance seemed to draw nearer.
Rivers handed over a manila folder. ‘Look through this,’ she told him. ‘Haven’t had time to read it myself, so give me the gist.’
‘Ok,’ he replied, opening the folder and starting to thumb through the papers inside. He found a fax from the FBI about a couple of missing agents, accompanied by a photograph of each, an FBI profile on a drugs company called ReGen, and a blueprint of a place called Thorn Manor along with its location on a map.
‘So,’ Rivers asked.
He cleared his throat. ‘Apparently, two FBI agents are missing, assumingly inside a building just out of town. By the look of these blueprints the place is immense, so I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone managed to get lost there.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There’s a photograph of each of the agents. One of them looks too old to be a field agent, but apparently he’s some sort of super-scientist. That’s pretty much it.’
He placed the papers back inside the folder, except for the photographs, which he kept in the breast pocket of his police jacket. ‘So what are our orders, exactly?’
Rivers glanced at him icily. ‘Well, Cadet Officer Kealy, your orders are to do whatever I tell you to do.’
‘Yes, Detective...of course.’
Moody Bitch, he thought to himself as he stared vacantly out of his window at the rain.
They sat in silence for the next few minutes, Rivers concentrating on the road ahead and him watching the windscreen wipers going back and forth. The weather outside was getting worse.
The roads were empty, a delivery van or two but not much else. He supposed most people were either at work or stuck indoors. The high street certainly wasn’t as busy as it usually was on the weekends. The shops were deserted and most of the public benches were inhabited only by discarded chip wrappers and burger cartons.
Ghost town.
He’d looked forward to moving to Fox Town. It was exciting moving away from the hustle and bustle of the city to live in an idyllic, little town – but he had never counted on just how lonely a place Fox Town was.
One of the great things about the city is that no one ever feels completely alone. There’s people everywhere you look, always a stranger in a bar willing to talk or a friendly bus driver to chat with. In the three month he had lived in Fox Town, he’d barely spoken to a soul outside of the precinct. He spent his nights alone.
Rivers broke the silence as she took the corner into West Avenue, heading out of town. ‘So, d’you know anything about this company, ReGen?’
‘Not a thing,’ he told her, which was the truth, he’d never heard of the company until that day.
‘Me either, but they’ve obviously been busy enough to get the FBI interested in them.’
‘Do you have any idea why?’
‘Need to know basis and apparently we don’t need to know – but what I do know is that Banks filed a report last week on two missing campers, last seen near White Lake-‘
‘The lake next to Thorn Manor?’
She looked at him and nodded. ‘Uh huh. I wouldn’t be surprised if the two things were related.’
He thought about that for a moment. Was there really more to this routine check-up than they had been told? Detective Rivers was renowned for her hunches, and if she proved right...well, then they could both be heading for trouble.
Before that day, he’d never really spoken to Detective Rivers, and anything he knew of her was just what the other officers had told him. Although, everyone sung her praises as being a credit to the force and a damn fine detective, he had gotten the distinct impression that she wasn’t well liked. Mostly it seemed people just avoided her if they could – except the Chief. The Chief had a relationship with her that no one fully understood. At times it even appeared that the two were ‘close’.
Rivers took her eyes of the road for a moment and turned to him. ‘D’you get a piece?’
‘Yes, a 9mm.’
‘Gosh now, and here was me thinking that they’d give you an air-rifle.’
What is her damn problem? I get it, ok. You’re a mean and humourless bitch and I get it, so can you just give it a rest, please?
‘Know how to handle it ok,’ she asked.
‘I was top marksman at the academy.’
‘That’s mighty impressive.’
‘Thanks.’
Ok, well maybe she’s not a completely humourless bitch.
‘So, if we encounter any tin cans on fences, I’m sure I can rely on you.’
Or maybe she is.
He made a mental-note to speak as little as possible from then on. She wasn’t going to get anymore ammunition out of him, no sir! He would just shut up and look forward to the end of the day.
‘Look,’ Rivers said in a tone a little softer than usual. ‘The first thing you wanna do is take yourself down to Tommy’s Guns and buy your own weapon. Pick one your comfortable with and then take good care of it. You’ll trust it a lot more than some handout from the armoury.’
‘Ok, Detective. I’ll do that on the weekend.’
‘That wasn’t an order, Kealy. I’m just trying to give you some advice, so chill out, ok?’
He remained quiet, unsure of River’s motives. For all he knew she was just reeling him in for another put down.
‘We were all shaky as Rookies,’ she continued. ‘Its human nature - but you can barely tie your shoes right. Sort it out, Kealy, or you’re gonna get yourself killed.’
‘I know, I know. I just can’t seem to get a hold of my nerves.’ He found the sound of his own voice pathetic. Why the hell am I whining like a pussy to one of the toughest cops ever to walk the beat?
‘Look, I’ve read your file. It’s my job as a Detective to know everything about everyone, so I’m quite aware that you were some sort of prodigy at the academy. The Chief knows it too and expects a lot from you.’ She looked him square in the eye. ‘But if he doesn’t see what you’re made of soon, Rookie, you’re going to get shown the door.’
She wasn’t kidding and he knew it. He didn’t want to believe it, but he sure as hell knew it.
‘You can do better than this, kid, so let’s see you pull your finger out, ok?’
She cleared her throat and began staring hard at the road ahead. ‘It’s not usually I have anything nice to say about anyone, so appreciate that much at least.’
Kealy smiled to himself, pleased at the semi-compliment he had received, but she soon caught sight of it, promptly extinguishing it with a glare.
‘I’ll do better from now on, Detect-‘
‘And for Christ’s sake stop calling me Detective! Try calling me Rivers once in a while. You’ll get a lot more respect off the other officers if you stop brownnosing. Use their names, not their rank.’
‘Ok, I’ll call you Rivers,’ he grinned, ‘if you stop calling me Rookie.’
She glared at him crossly, before – unintentionally, he imagined – betraying her icy exterior and letting go of a smile. ‘Don’t you get cocky with me, Kealy.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Rivers.’
Wow! Five minutes ago you thought this woman was an utter witch and now you’re messing around like friends. Talk about mood swings.
To his surprise, Rivers kept hold of her smile for a short while, before finally letting it ease back into a scowl. It was nice while it lasted.
He looked out of his passenger window at the buildings passing by. The town still seemed deserted.
Indicating left, Rivers pulled out of West Avenue and onto a small side-road, lined evenly on both sides by well-pruned maple trees.
‘We’re almost there,’ she announced. ‘Check your weapon.’
‘Um, ok. D’you really expect I’ll need it?’
‘There’s always a chance, Rookie. There’s always a chance.’
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They held hands until they were no longer people anymore, but piles of dust floating free on the wind. - MANOR OF EVIL by Iain Wright
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