The Umbras Read online

  “It’s nice to meet you Mr. Brussels. Please forgive me for being so forward, but where is Nathan?” Walter implored.

  “He’s on vacation. I’m not normally a mortician. They just needed someone with experience to fill in for Him while he’s gone,” Edward stated. “And please, call me Eddie,” He added.

  “What do you do, normally?” Walter asked.

  “I’m a research scientist,” he answered.

  “Interesting work?” Walter asked

  “Very much so,” Eddie replied. Edward Brussels was a tall and lengthy stick of a man. Wild red bushy eyebrows and a moustache that seemed to flicker with fiery torment at the end of each of his sentences. Freckles clung tightly to the skin of his body in uncountable quantities. His eyes hung low and sleepy with dark bags. The stress of a being mortician had obviously gotten to him. He sat awkwardly in his chair which squeaked every time he moved. “Please, come in. Take a seat.”

  Walter entered the office and relinquished the collar from his nose. “Do you mind if I smoke? The smell of this place really gets to me,” Walter said pulling the chair from the desk and sitting in it.

  “As long as you don’t mind if I join you?” Eddie said. He pulled out a small, rectangular red box. A big horseshoe and a four-leaf clover adorned the front of the box, symbolizing luck. An unusual word in bold green letters at the top of the box caught Walter’s attention.

  “Finis?” Walter read. “Never heard of them.”

  “They are imported, very hard to find,” Eddie said with a smear of sophistication. He pulled a cigarette from the box. Across the side of the entire cigarette was printed, in bold green, ‘Finis’. A brown filter with a small diamond shaped pattern entered Eddie’s mouth.

  “Need a light?” Walter offered, holding his lighter toward Eddie.

  “Thank you,” Eddie said puffing greatly from the long cigarette. It’s filter was immensely small in proportion to the rest of the cancer stick.

  The lighter Walter` used to light his cigarettes was a gift given to him by his ex-wife for their one year anniversary, as was the cigarette case. It was sort of a set. Made of high polished stainless steel and engraved with his initials: W.P., he carried it with him always. Mainly because he was a regular smoker. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was a gift from his ex-wife.

  The room, which was poorly lit to match the eerie quality of the morgue, was set aglow as Walter drew in a lung full of the satisfying smoke. With little results he blew the smoke out in a solid stream, moving his head back and forth trying to cover as much area with the scent as possible. Reaching across the desk, Walter flicked his cigarette, splashing ash onto neighboring papers.

  “So what would you like to know about Neil Darden?” Edward inquired dusting off the stray ash.

  “Well, for starters, a minute ago you shook your head and said something about it being a strange case; what did you mean?” Walter answered and asked curiously.

  “Um…let’s see. How do I put this?” he pondered scratching his chin, which seemed to echo violently in the tiny office. “It was determined by the on-site examiner that Neil Darden died naturally. But after I checked him out, I found there to be a single injection hole at the top of his spine. Made from a very small syringe. After finding this out, I did some tests to see if maybe he was poisoned. My results were unusual at best,” Edward paused and waited for some sort of recognition from Walter.

  “What did it turn out to be?” Walter replied anxiously, sitting up in his chair and taking another drag from his cigarette.

  “Well…That’s what turned out to be unusual.” he paused once more. This time pushing a piece of paper in front of Walter and tapping on what appeared to be a chart or graph. “This is something science has never seen before.” His eyebrows lifted suddenly as he said this.

  “And I take it you assume that this is what killed him?” Walter chimed.

  “Well…uh?” Edward stuttered, nervously shuffling his eyes around for an answer. “Well…no. I would say…I would have to agree with the on-site examiner, based on Neil’s age and health,” he pleaded. At this moment Edward’s skin became flush and beads of sweat were scattered about his forehead. Walter could tell Edward was lying, or at least holding something back. “It probably had something to do with that ‘top secret experiment’ he was working on, maybe a self-test gone wrong.” Edward’s eyes opened large as he realized what he had just said. A brief silence followed as Walter drew in the moment and another drag from his cigarette, which lit the room into an orange blaze.

  “How did you find out about the top secret project? It doesn’t seem so top secret if you know about it.” Walter put simply.

  “I…uh. Heard it through the grapevine. You know how these things get passed down from one person to the other. Kind of like that game, telephone,” Edward rambled.

  “Yeah…I know,” Walter remarked looking Edward up and down in his chair. He could tell something wasn’t being said. Information wasn’t being released. He didn’t want to press too hard with the questions. But the detective in him was clawing to get out. The tension in the room began to grow as the silence became longer.

  “I’m only doing my job. I’m not the bad guy here, remember?” Edward said.

  “Yeah I know. Well, if you see anything else that you think I should know about, here’s my card. You can call me anytime,” Walter said handing Edward a business card. Edward let out a deep sigh and glanced over the card.

  “Yeah…I’ll do that,” He replied.

  “Thank you,” Walter uttered reaching his hand out toward Edward’s for a shake.

  “No problem,” Edward said grasping Walter’s hand loosely.

  As Walter threw the door to the front of the Morgue open, he took a deep breath, bringing relief to the smell that he had endured inside. But the relief was temporary as he shook his trench coat and noticed the smell was deeply embedded in his clothes. “That’s not coming out,” he thought. The night air chilled the detective to the bone. A heavy fog had set over the dark streets, strangling away any clear view. Every twenty-five yards or so, pale streetlights beamed vibrantly at the ground, which made the streets in between that much darker. The rain had finally stopped its downpour. But it left the streets soaked. The entire night just felt weird, much like the case felt to Walter.

  “Pssst…sir,” a voice from behind him whispered. Walter quickly jerked his head back, placing his hand at his hip onto his pistol; a beautiful .357 Magnum that packs a loud punch. His eyes scanned the foggy abyss that surrounded him, he saw nothing. He slowly and as quietly as he could unsnapped the holster. “Over here,” the voice said again. This time Walter could vaguely see a man standing in the alley adjacent to the morgue. The alley was about ten feet across, with walls that chased towards the sky with imprisoning accuracy. A single light flickered on and off and rocked back and forth gently with the wind. Garbage cans and dumpsters littered the alley. Yet most of the garbage was thrown carelessly onto the ground. Walter kept his hand on his gun as he entered the alley. He hated a lot of things: the smell of morgues, grieving families, and even spiders. But one thing he hated more was having to use his gun to take the life of another. Killing wasn’t in his blood, investigating was. To Walter, life was too precious to be taken away by anyone, under any circumstances. And besides, he thought it was a harsher punishment to put someone into a cell and have them reflect on their life wasted, instead of killing them and having them get off ‘easy’. Walter’s shoes squeaked on the wet pavement as he passed a dumpster. The sound reverberated throughout.

  “What can I do for you sir?” Walter shouted at the man who was still about five or ten yards away from him.

  “Please, I’m not going to harm you,” the man said obviously noticing Walter’s hand fixed onto his gun. “I just have some information I think that you should know.” Walter cautiously withdrew his hand from his gun and came in closer to the man. He was a short man with stubby little legs. His arms waved Walter in c
loser, flapping each time. The man’s hair was a dark brown, and laid straight down onto his ears. It shined with a greasy sheen as if it hadn’t been washed in days. As Walter stepped in close enough to see the man’s face he noticed his eyes bulging and his movements running amuck with fear. The man’s hands trembled and ripped at his hair, trying to straighten it out, only to mess it up even worse. He wore a pair of old bloody scrubs, with the blood splatter mask pulled down around his neck, stained thoroughly.

  “So what’s this about?” Walter asked bringing one eyebrow up confusingly.

  The man quickly looked around, as if someone was watching them in the alley talking. The man was clearly paranoid. Walter thought this was a weird night to begin with, but this was certainly beginning to finalize the deal.

  “I have some information on the case you are working on,” the man answered quietly still looking around suspiciously.

  “Is that so. And just who are you?” Walter asked sternly.

  “My name is Thomas. Thomas Webster. I am the mortician’s assistant.” He stated proudly.

  “How come I’ve never seen you around here?” Walter questioned, still trying to figure out the situation at hand.

  “I just started here about three weeks ago. Plus they kind of keep me out of sight.” Thomas said.

  “Why is that” Walter replied. Thomas gestured by pointing to his clothes. “Makes sense.” Walter chuckled. “Alright…so anyways, continue.”

  “Well…About a week ago, a body comes rolling in. We were running through all the normal motions, when I found an injection hole,” Thomas stated.

  “Wait, so you found the injection hole?” Walter interrupted.

  “Yes,” he stated abruptly. “We were studying the injection mark after I found it on the victim. We were working fast to try and gather evidence. I knew the case was closed, but after finding that mark, I urged Eddie to at least do a preliminary examination. He didn’t want to do it, he said we could get into a lot of trouble. But I figured something was up.”

  At that moment a car’s headlights broke the darkness of the alley as it drove by. A breath left Thomas as he walked further into the alley, still searching for eavesdroppers. Walter was beginning to feel like he too was being watched, or listened to. His paranoia coaxed him into following Thomas. Walter stepped into the dark shadow Thomas was hiding in; he could barely see his silhouette.

  “As I was saying, we knew the case was closed. So we were working fast. Eddie instructed me to go into the supply room and get a couple things for the examination. It only took me maybe like five minutes. But when I got back he was very shaken up,” Thomas said.

  “Why? What happened?” Walter asked.

  “Eddie said someone came into the room with him. He said he was the lead investigator of the Darden Case. Apparently Eddie started telling him about the injection marks and how he had reason to believe that Neil Darden did not die naturally, but was murdered.” Thomas got quiet for a moment. Walter noticed him looking around nervously.

  “So he was lying to me?” Walter declared.

  “He had to. They threatened his life,” Thomas interjected defensively.

  “Wait…Who threatened his life?” Walter asked stunned.

  “The lead investigator. He told Eddie that the men died naturally and that he had to stop any further examination of the bodies. At that point he said he got very offended and started telling the lead investigator about bringing this information in front of a judge. Then the man slammed Eddie up against a wall and told him that if he didn’t forget about what he’d discovered, it’d be him lying on the examination table with injection marks.” Once again Thomas became silent, frozen still in the shadow of the alleyway like a mannequin.

  “Then what happened?” Walter asked curiously.

  “The man left. He took the film out of our camera, and took our notes. This really made Eddie mad, so he continued with the examination even with these threats. He ran all sorts of tests. Nothing really came up until he ran a toxin test. It seems that Neil Darden died from some unknown toxin injected into the top of the spine, killing him instantly.”

  “Have either of you told anyone about this?” Walter implored. The eeriness of the alleyway disappeared as Walter was enthralled further into Thomas’s story.

  “No. Eddie was going to say something about it to someone, but decided against it,” Thomas answered.

  “Why?” Walter prodded further.

  “He didn’t want to die,” Thomas explained.

  “So why haven’t you said anything to someone?” Walter asked.

  “Well, I don’t want to die either. And I’m telling you aren’t I? Standing in this dark alley, fearing for my life,” he replied.

  “Try not to worry so much, I doubt anyone is watching us.” Walter said trying to comfort Thomas. “Is there any information you could give me on the person who threatened Edward Brussels, a name or…anything?”

  “Yeah…” Thomas motioned Walter close to him and whispered, “ Eddie said his name was, Detective Frank Barlow.”

  Chapter 3

  Where It All Started

  The room was crowded with stale cigar smoke. It stung at Walter’s eyes, which was abnormal considering his smoking habit. Angry cops and suspects littered the station filling the atmosphere with a dense effervescence of hatred, and complete and utter confusion. Conversations cluttered around each other, blending together in a harmonious symphony of anguish. Walter could make out a few words: talks of jail-time, court dates, plea bargains, and freedom. All the normal things Walter had gotten use to in the five years he spent as a cop at the Francis City Police Department. But the current scene of the station, if you didn’t know what was happening, was total chaos.

  The wait seemed like forever. The solid white oak bench he sat on offered no support; his cramped backside showed the evidence. As he tried to adjust himself, he thought he heard someone talking in his direction. As his head twisted sharply toward his right he caught the eyes of the receptionist, who was at that time staring into his eyes from about three feet away.

  “Detective Barlow will see you now,” she said with a concerning look in her eye. The kind of concerning look only a small elderly woman with vibrant, white, curly hair could give.

  “Ok,” Walter said standing up and following the woman. Frank Barlow’s office was in the back right of the station, through a sea of desks, cops, and convicts. Every street hardened criminal of Francis City glared at Walter as he passed. “I must look like a cop,” he thought. A mean looking man with scars covering his face and hands snarled at Walter. “Or maybe I smell like one,” he wondered. A plaque hung sadly from the center of Frank’s door: Detective Frank Barlow Lead Investigator F.C.P.D. It was the office every cop ‘dreamed of’. Walter knocked briskly on the thick wood door and could faintly hear the deep raspy sound of Frank telling him to come in. It wasn’t the first time he had heard Frank utter those words.

  “What’s this all about, Pierce?” Frank said pouring himself a drink as Walter shut the door. Frank Barlow was a drinker. There was no doubt about that. He had the look of an age hardened alcoholic bent on personal destruction. His eyes hung low and dark, shattering the kind souls of anyone daring enough to stare into them. His swollen body fit snuggly inside the unwashed brown mess of a suit he wore. A few buttons on his shirt were missing and he wore his tie loosely around his neck. He was a disaster, that was for sure. But, he was probably the only cop in the city with a good collection of expensive gin and whiskey. This much he was good for.

  “May I?” Walter asked insinuating that a drink was in order.

  Walter wasn’t much of a drinker. But being back in this building brought on a sudden thirst for a stiff whiskey on ice.

  “Help yourself, just don’t make a mess,” Frank replied sitting himself into his chair. Walter looked around the room sarcastically. The place was a veritable pigsty.

  “I don’t think I could do much damage,” Walter said jokingly.

>   “Hey, if you got a problem with it, get the hell out,” Frank snapped. “What do you want anyway? I’ve got a lot of work to do and it seems like once again your wasting my time.”

  “Actually, I was wondering about the homicide case you closed so quickly,” Walter said casually. His boldness brought a sickening look over Frank’s face.

  “What in God’s name are you talking about?” Frank asked.

  “The Neil Darden case,” Walter answered.

  “Oh…I see. Let me guess…Marcia Darden?” Walter said bringing his drink up to his mouth and drinking heavily, spilling ice and streams of aged whiskey out the corners of his mouth and onto his suit. He stood from his chair and began to pour himself another drink, this time twice as big. The antique crystal decanter rung out vibrantly as he rattled it up against the whiskey glass. The notes the crystal produced were angelic, mesmerizing, a sonata of light cascading across a tidal wave of sound that finally comes together between an ocean of ice and spirits. His glass was half-full, but the expression frozen on his face suggested that it was indeed, half-empty.

  “Yes. It was Marcia that brought this case to my attention,” Walter affirmed. “And according to this police report, you attest to the validity of the examiner’s decision that Neil Darden died of natural causes. Who was the medical examiner at the time in question?” The mood in the room had changed, it sounded more like an interrogation was going on, with Walter on the interrogating side.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Frank mumbled angrily. He took a resentful sip from his whiskey and set the glass down on the desk.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure?” Walter pressed.

  “Well, F.C.P.D. wasn’t the first on the scene. When I got there the place was crawling with government types. They were all sifting through Neil’s personal belongings. And when I mean sifting, I mean they were pretty much just tearing the place apart,” Frank explained. “I was furious. First because I had no idea who these people were and no one would give me any answers. And second because they were destroying a crime scene.” He plucked a long thick cigar from a wood box and lit it, spewing smoke out of his nose and mouth in long whimsical columns. “Would you like one?” Frank asked.