Smoke in the Fields

So... yeah. I am still working on Book Four of The Deep Space Chronicles. I'm also crankin' along on Sabin'es story (nearly 25,000 words at last count).... But as you regular readers know, when the words come, I have to get them out of my head. This snippet came to me after completing Season Two of HBO's True Detective last night. Let me know what you think. Perhaps I'll have to tuck this one away for a proverbially rainy day....

 

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It had been a few weeks since he'd smoked a cigarette, yet the acrid burning in his throat felt just as comforting as the last drag he remembered having taken. He'd long ago tried to give up the crutch on which he'd lean during times of stress, but in moments of weakness the vice returned tenfold. Given what had just happened, he was proud that he'd only reached for a cigarette at seven o'clock in the morning and not for the bourbon, or both.

 

With each inhaled breath of carcinogenic mist, his nerves seems to settle that much more until he'd nearly burned his knuckles with the smoldering remains of his Marlboro Light. He extinguished what was left in stale beer that occupied the bottom of the red plastic cup on the end table to his right. It had been a fine party, right up until about one-thirty. Thankfully he'd been a guest that evening and not on duty, and he was even more appreciative that he'd been drinking in the barn when it had happened.

 

In the hours that passed since, he'd retrieved from his car his badge and service pistol, its holster now affixed to his belt in plain sight. In some ways, as grateful as he was to have not been involved, he wondered if the evening would have had a better outcome had he not left the evidence of his profession locked in his truck for the festivities. He knew better than to second guess, though he did so just the same.

 

Rising from his folding chair at the back of the barn took far more energy than he'd expected. Being awake for nearly twenty-seven hours wasn't an experience he'd had since college and there was reason for that. Thankfully the party's hosts had made fresh batches of coffee, though the dark, acidic liquid burned his throat just as badly if not worse than the cigarette had done. The coffee at least woke him up.

 

Not much had changed outside in the several hours he'd been in the barn interviewing party guests – The hills in the distance were still adorned with the expanding hues of autumn, and the scent of roasted meat still lingered and clawed its way skyward from the smoker. Cups and plates were still strewn about the tables beneath the party tent, and even the lights beneath the tent's canopy still twinkled. The only difference between the scene now and the scene at the height of the family's fall festival was the path cut out into the corn, and the two makeshift posts that flanked the path's entrance with yellow police line draped between them.

 

"Hell of a party, eh detective?" one of the uniformed officers asked him.

 

"Apparently. They get the body out yet?"

 

"Yeah, forensics is combing the scene now."

 

"I'm gonna go take a look."

 

"Suit yourself."

 

With a heavy sigh he ducked under the police tape and made his way about forty feet into the corn field before he stopped short. He'd seen murder crime scenes before, but nothing like this.  Blood was everywhere. The yellow leaves of the dying and drying corn stalks were splattered in crimson. The attack had been swift, brutal, and silent. The poor young woman, who'd yet to be identified, had been eviscerated, stabbed hundreds of times until her basic human form was nearly unrecognizable. Thankfully what had been left of her had been carefully photographed and removed from the scene before he ventured out into the field. Still, the sheer amount of blood surrounding him was unnerving and he found it hard to believe that any trace of it remained in the body. And it had all happened barely fifty feet away for where over a hundred people had been singing, dancing, and laughing. None of them heard a thing.

 

"Anything?" he asked.

 

"Got me on this one, detective. It's been so dry out here, and with the kids running out here through the corn during the party, finding foot prints is going to be nearly impossible. I feel bad for the kid that found her."

 

"Yeah," he replied absently. "So there's really no way to tell how she and whoever did this got this far into the corn without being seen or heard?" 

 

"We're working on it. This one's gonna take some time, I'm afraid."

 

"Do what you have to."

 

"You got it."

 

He turned to go when something caught his eye. To most, the tan color of the cigarette's butt would have blended in with the yellows and browns all around them. To a former smoker and frequent recidivist, especially one that was always conscious of ensuring he didn't litter the remains of his habit, the butt stood out to him like a sore thumb amidst the crumbling corn stalks.

 

"Hey, get me a bag and some gloves!" he called out. A uniformed officer brought him the requested items and carefully, after pulling on the blue latex hand covering, he lifted the cigarette butt, placed it in the small evidence bag and sealed it. "Make sure this gets checked."

 

"You got it."

 

As the officer took the evidence away, the detective hunched down and looked around again. This time he found nothing more. When he closed his eyes all he could envision was the blood, and he wondered why he ever became a homicide detective.

 

"So you were here the whole time," a voice said from behind him. "And you didn't hear a thing. Brilliant detective work, Fish."

 

"Fuck you, O'Malley."

 

Stan Vigoda hated to be called "Fish," which was exactly the reason Detective Collin O'Malley continued to do so. The moniker stemmed from Abe Vigoda's portrayal of the eccentric policeman on Barney Miller. Other than sharing a surname, Stan and Abe had nothing in common. Making the jibe even worse was the fact that O'Malley hadn't even been born before the show ended in 1982. To Stan, Collin O'Malley represented everything that had gone wrong with modern policing. He was young, overly ambitious, and too eager to participate in high profile cases for no other reason than to bolster his own career. O'Malley couldn't have cared less about the victims; all that mattered for him was the adoration that accompanied solving a high profile investigation. Vigoda would often joke that the most dangerous place to be in all of upstate New York was between Collin O'Malley and a television camera.

 

Vigoda didn't care about all that. A twice-divorced alcoholic in denial, Vigoda did the job because he had to: he had nowhere else to go. And every single victim still took from him a piece of his soul. Had he not seen so much of it first hand, he'd have never believed the depravity with which one human being could treat another. There was something especially disturbing about this one, though. Maybe it was because it happened while he sat and drank fifty feet away, unknowingly and obliviously. Perhaps it was the particular brutality with which this woman's life had been stolen. Whatever the cause, Stan Vigoda vowed that he'd find the monster.

 

"Why are you even here Vigoda, seriously? This is going to be high profile."

 

Vigoda stood and smirked. "Well, O'Malley, I wouldn't want you to get any more blood on those pricey Italian loafers of yours than you already have," he remarked as he headed back down the path from the crime scene towards the barn

 

O'Malley looked down in horror to see if his Gucci loafers had truly been soiled. They hadn't been. "You're an asshole, you know that, Vigoda?"

 

"So I've been told," Vigoda called over his shoulder without looking back. When he returned to the barn, the property owner, and San's host the evening before, was on the phone in the back corner. Stan approached him, and when the man noticed Stan nearing, he abruptly ended his call. "Everything alright, Gray?"

 

Gray Spalding was a life-long friend of Stan Vogoda's. They'd known each other since grade school. Whereas Gray had followed in his father's footsteps and took over the family's commercial farm, Stan had entered the military. After two tours in the first Gulf War, Stan returned home and joined the County Sheriff's office. From there he moved to one of the local town's police department where he his instincts quickly allowed him to graduate from patrolman to detective. Stan held that a rank for the better part of the last decade and a half.

 

"Yeah, yeah. Just talking to the insurance people. Trying to figure out how this is going to affect the farm, that's all."

 

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I should have notice something. Seen something."

"For the love of God, Stan, don't. You had no idea. You were a guest here like everyone else. And everyone is accounted for. What happened, it didn't happen because of anything you did or didn't do."

 

Stan's police instinct told him otherwise. "I know, but still."

 

"When's the last time you slept, Stan?"

 

"I don't know. Thursday?" It was now mid-morning on Saturday.

 

"Well I'm guessing that they're not making you stay here. Why don't you go home and get some rest?"

 

The truth was that Stan could have left at any time. He had no obligation to stay and assist with interviews, or anything else. He stayed out of an unwavering sense of obligation. If there was anything good that had ever come out of Stan Vigoda's life, it was his police work. It was all he had, and that was why he stayed. There was that, and the fact that he couldn't pass up an opportunity to get under O'Malley's skin, of course.

 

"Yeah, you're probably right. Anyway, I'm sorry all this is happening." Stan gave his friend a back-slapping hug and headed towards his car, but not before lighting another cigarette. The lighter's flare caught O'Malley's attention and he glared at Vigoda as he walked. Stan climbed into his silver Ford Fusion, the interior of which reeked of second-hand smoke and stale despair, and exhaled a puff of smoke that struck and dissipated across the windshield's interior surface.  The effect had coated the windshield with a translucent glaze, a fitting metaphor for Stan's life. Everything he saw he saw through a haze, regardless of whether it had emanated from the smoke, the booze or his general apathy. The job mattered. That was the only thing that kept him going and drove away the thoughts of placing his service weapon to his temple.

 

Stan drove the short distance from the Spalding farm to the cottage apartment he rented on the inlet side of the bay. The place was remarkably neat considering its occupant. Single men didn't exactly have a reputation for tidiness; single, male cops in their forties? Less so. Notwithstanding, Stan had good taste and self-respect; the only thing typically out of place were the prior evening's dishes in the left side of the sink.

 

He was so exhausted by the time he reached the bed, he simply collapsed face first into his pillow-top mattress and expired. He wouldn't wake until the following morning, when a pounding on his door rattled his skull. Instinctively he reached for his sidearm, which still resided in the holster affixed to his hip. Cautiously, Stan made his way to the door, and a wave of discussed washed over his face when he saw the source of the pounding. He was certain to ensure that the look of disdain remained evident when he opened the door. "What the hell do you want, O'Malley?"

 

"Jesus, Fish!" O'Malley replied. "Have you ever heard of a shower, or a change of clothes?"

 

"Have you ever heard of a phone? Why are you here?" Stan asked, ignoring the jibe. It was only then that Stan noticed, in addition to O'Malley, Detective Mike Reardon, O'Malley's partner, standing on his porch as well. "What is this?"

 

O'Malley's voice grew uncharacteristically soft. "Stan, look, uh, the DNA came back on the cigarette butt you found. They got a hit."

 

Stan's eyes widened in surprise. "That was fast. The DNA must have been in the database."

 

"Yeah," O'Malley answered softly.

 

"And?" Vigoda prodded.

 

"Stan, result came back quick because the DNA match was one of ours." Stan probably should have been more surprised than he was.

 

"Who's was it?"

 

O'Malley looked down and way. Reardon answered. "Stan, it was yours."

 

For a few frozen moments in time, the three men stood on the porch and stared back and forth at one another until O'Malley spoke to break the silence. "Chief wants to talk to you."

 

Stan nodded. "Let me grab my phone and keys."

 

"Stan?" Stan looked to Reardon, who'd said his name. Reardon raised his eyebrow and nodded to Vigoda's sidearm.

 

"Right," Stan said with a sigh as he removed the weapon, holster and all, and handed it to Reardon.

 

"I'm sure you'll get this right back," the detective said apologetically. Stan stepped inside and reappeared a moment later with his keys, his phone, and his indignant defiance.

 

"You're goddamn right I will."

 

 

© 2015 J.J. Goodman. All rights reserved.