Chapter 1: Jim Still Has That New Cop Smell
Chapter 2: Jim Follows Up On A Hunch
Chapter 3: Jim Makes Strudel at the Denzels' Place
Chapter 4: The Denzels Get Wet... With Laughter, That Is!
Chapter 5: Jim Finishes The Job
Programming Note: I would strongly advise you to read previous chapters before continuing.
Chapter 5: Jim Finishes The Job
I saw the Denzels die. Unmistakably they staggered for a second like skeletons preparing to dance before falling in burnt shells, drawing one more breath apiece. The adrenaline I'd gotten from the blast had given me a lucidity and hyper-awareness I'd not felt before. I made my way home, somehow, hearing their last words to me in my head, trying to forget their dying faces but trying to remember their living voices. I'm sure I bumped a lot of people on my way home, covered in mud and bruises. And the doctor I'd sent for, a personal friend, said I looked like death and gave me sanitary equipment and a bed and so on and when I told him the explosion had destroyed the entire city home he said it was all over the news.
I knew I had to send an e-mail or a phone call to my supervisors at the station so that they would know I was alive, but I sent it through a proxy and avoided saying anything specific about location, fearing Dave's prying eyes. I was in imminent danger and unable to effectively defend myself, I argued, and so I couldn't hope to come back yet. Because I feared "potential inter-department violence," I obviously couldn't ask for a police escort. In the meantime I studied cryptography and read Holmes all day.
For two months I could hardly sleep. The bruises made that almost impossible and I'd seen too many painkiller addictions start this way in my family so I toughed it out other than basic medication. I studied cryptography, which morphed into game theory, political strategy, CIA disinformation campaigns, hegemony, abuse patterns, and what is currently known about the psychology of serial killers. I would read and learn little, but I'd read enough to learn something. I had a mixtape with covers of "Blue Velvet" that I would listen to continuously. I would eat from the several months' supply of MREs that the doctor had dropped off, sending a new e-mail each week to the department with topical information to indicate that I was still alive and I would call the doctor indicating new and regressed symptoms.
And then, I began to recover to the point of becoming truly potent. Push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, running through enhanced gravity chambers at dawn underneath endless basements. In my unflagging optimism I'd utterly neglected the petty side of life and so I had the resources of a true builder at my disposal. Millions, the best training on earth, potentially the best support network of agents to marshal... Dave would never know what had hit him.
But I had to be careful. Ensnaring an unstable element like Dave - without disturbing the chain reaction of civilization - had caused much greater men than I to fall. The Denzels hadn't even thought to be careful, nor had I before the fatal blast. I began to wonder if Dave's sociopathic lust for power and at-least-passable machinations had led him effectively to seize the police department. I thought of Moriarty's threads as I contemplated the whole sequence of motivations and means on the gigantic whiteboard in my home showing the entire department.
Whatever the case, I certainly couldn't leave town, which of course was the simplest solution - the Denzels would never have left town if I'd been killed in such a way by Dave. They would have fought Dave with every ounce of strength. Nor was I about to lie low for more than another month - idleness does not befit a man so keen and ready to exact justice on Dave.
I needed more information. Thinking back, Officer Denzel... Tom, my friend, my mentor... he had always respected my ability to think cases through. But he said I lacked... the instinct to empathize with killers. I was just too nice was all.
"Heh." I chuckled by instinct aloud in the workout room. So I did some petty crimes here and there, wrote some cuss words in graffiti, and focused all the hatred in the world on Dave that I could muster. It was somewhat virtuous at its core, but there were hints of brutal vengeance in my cusses. I started to hesitate less. "Fuck Dave."
"Dave can get fucked! That forensics bastard. Heh." I said, punching away at a punching bag I'd painted like Dave. "He killed Tom for no good reason," I said, punching harder.
And then I stopped. Suddenly, all of game theory fell into my lap. I knew the hatred that he felt for me as I symmetrically felt it for him. "No, he killed Tom for a good reason. He hated Tom. He always did. He set me up, and... he must hate me too. The only good reason to hate me is because I represent a threat, but I was nothing but supportive. And I have no good reason to usurp him as head of the department or head of forensics anytime soon. So he wasn't jealous of his own position. No, it was something he could never have. Dave was envious of me and hated Tom. Dave was envious of me because he hated Tom, but didn't always hate Tom. Tom was supposed to make Dave his friend and protege but resisted when he saw the nature of Dave. Dave wanted to kill Tom because Dave resented that Tom was my friend and not his. And Tom knew Dave hated him, and was about to make captain. Tom represented a financial threat to him and I represented an existential threat. So Dave responded with a physical attack."
It all made perfect sense. I could see eight hundred moves ahead. I saw Dave's influence on the police station suddenly as that of a petty schemer who couldn't grasp the good side of human nature. Dave couldn't conceive of a truly virtuous man. Just because he could set some explosives didn't mean he actually understood human motivation in any sort of generality. He planted the blood, and he didn't choose me, but he just knew someone would find the blood-laden strudel fishy. I was just the pawn that came to him to test it.
Dave ran a PCP ring and did the drop at a pharmacy. Dave was also himself physiologically addicted to PCP and pain medications. He lived in pain and couldn't conceive of physiological happiness. Dave didn't control anyone; he just paid and convinced them to do innocuous, slightly illegal acts that he disguised as important forensic investigations. That's why he was such a stick in the mud - basic movements were incredibly painful to him, and emotional shocks were just enough to push him over the edge to require PCP. He barely moved all day and likely barely moved all night. He was a sitting duck.
I bought some morphine from one of the illegal drug connections I'd built, went to Dave's home, and woke him up.
"Hey, Dave."
"Well, hey Jim. Heh."
"Please don't patronize me, somewhat. Heh. I have located and disabled all your bugs in this room. I have the photo and audiovisual evidence you yourself took proving that you did not only the serial killings but the bombing that killed the Denzels three months ago to the day."
"What? How did you know?"
"Because you just told me, Dave. Heh."
"I thought you would never laugh again, Jim. That bomb was supposed to destroy your spirit."
"Well, I did commit some petty crimes... Heh.... But that wasn't very fun, or nice at all!"
"Fuck. Well, I guess you can call the cops then."
"I have a better idea, Dave. Here's a syringe of morphine. Enough to kill you."
"What? No, don't."
"Of course I wouldn't kill you, Dave. That wouldn't be ethical at all. But I know how much pain you're in. I know about the PCP ring and how badly you need it just to stay afloat in this miserable world. I know you've never been happy. I know you failed the one person that was going to raise your condition a little bit. You lied that Tom held you at gunpoint and forced you to smoke PCP. It was always baking soda. It was a joke, Dave. It was a funny joke, and, if you'd just respected him as a complex individual that wasn't just a bad-ass, Tom would have loved and respected you right back and eventually given you your rightful place atop the department one day. And instead you betrayed him again and again until he no longer trusted you. So you saw how we were getting on and got mad. You schemed to inject the serial killer victims' blood - that you yourself had harvested - into the strudel to bring about his downfall. Well, you won. And yet, you failed him, and there's no turning back from what you did."
"How did you figure all of that out?"
"Because, Officer Denzel told me to curse and work out more. Heh. He said I was brilliant at deductive reasoning, but somewhat too nice to predict the less-savory actions of others. I thought of how much I hated you, and all the moves fell into place. It was obvious by the way you limped into that pharmacy and the way you went there four times in the month after that, indicating that a health inspection was your pretense to get drugs. I checked the medical records and tapped the pharmacy's phone."
"But-"
"Finally I had one of my thousands of agents around the city take your wallet. Sure enough, no family, but lots of victims you'd taken the life of, and a small photo of one Officer Tom Denzel."
"Damn it, Jim! That's brilliant. You... you were Tom's worthy successor! If only I'd seen it... I might not have done it."
"Do you care to take this morphine, Dave, or shall I call the cops?"
"I'll take the morphine."
"Do you know how to inject it, Dave?"
"Of course. I'm..." and Dave looked into the distance, "I'm a forensics man."
Dave injected the morphine halfway in and exclaimed, "It's a miracle, I'm cured! That was what I needed to feel something happy, for once! Thank you, Jim! Call the cops, do whatever you have to do. I'm sorry! I just needed that dose of morphine all along. Just... tell the doctors that I can have this much morphine. God... I wish I'd tried this bef-"
Dave stopped talking when my hand moved over to push the syringe's dose the rest of the way in and Dave stopped moving and Dave stopped living and I was made officer the next day and regret not what I'd visited upon Dave. My first official act as Officer Jim was to cook a giant strudel for the department in the department kitchen in honor of the Denzels and Dave.
Killing a man in cold blood didn't cure my infectious chuckle as I'd thought, but still, the chuckle pitched lower for the rest of my life. Heh.
THE END
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