Day 271 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 15.1 (1329 Words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 15.1

Detective Joe Bell was in the main room and waiting for the uniformed officers to come in and take everyone present into custody. Joe was having a hard time processing the scene in front of him and he could not even begin to imagine what George was thinking from the roof top. They had hastily decided to have him cover the occupants from above while Joe climbed down the fire escape and came in through the side door, the one with the video camera above.

The sight of what looked like George holding a gun on the men in the warehouse was odd enough, but on closer examination the oddity of doppelgängers and identical twins did not end there. There were two other sets of 'twins' in the room, and in either case one of each had a fresh facial scar, presumably to tell them apart. When he got down there and cleared the room and checked the bodies for signs of life, there were none, he took a deep breath and looked up at the hole in the skylight. George was peering in apparently unfazed by the sight of seeing an exact duplicate of him in clothes from a day or two ago, being shot and killed in front of him.

The man they shot had no duplicate that they could find, and the room off to the side held a third body in some kind of glass coffin arrangement, airtight and preserved, presumably dead. Joe waited until the uniforms started cuffing people before bringing George down from the roof and into the room.

Reactions from the men were varied, from the shock of seeing a man they had just seen die walk back in the room, to the ambivalence of someone who could not be shocked by such details. This was well beyond whatever the norm could be declared to be.

He watched George's reaction to checking the body that looked like him carefully and watched for signs of imbalance that had to be a possibility. The resemblance was beyond uncanny and was back to doppelgänger territory.

“He looks just like me.” George said and then using a pen from his pocket tugged at the lapel of the deceased man's shirt, trying to look inside. “Give me a hand here would you?”

Joe had crime scene gloves on and opened the shirt and peeled it back a little, his eyes on George more than the corpse. “What are you looking for?” he said.

“I had a run in with a … well I go shot to be blunt, back in my last precinct, before you knew me and it, it left a decent scar. An odd one and ...” He nodded and stood back from the body. “Fuck me.” he whispered under his breath.

Joe looked down to see a medium sized crescent shaped scar just below the collarbone, it was old and only slightly raised, it had obviously healed years ago. He looked at it closely and tried to recall if he had ever seen such a scar on George before. It was not like they hit the showers at the gym that often or had much of a chance to be shirtless in each other's company. “Is it like yours then?” he asked finally and when he looked up George had opened the collar of his shirt and showed the scar to detective Bell.

“Woah.” was all he could think to say.

“Yeah, it is.” George said and buttoned up his shirt. He turned to the men assembled and cuffed with the policemen guarding looking at them like they carried some infectious disease. “Any one of you fine folk want to tell me what the fuck is going on?” He started off quite calmly, but by the time he got to the f-word the anger in his voice was palpable.

“Lawyer.” croaked one of the men, the one who had the worst of the facial wounds and who's eyes had not stopped dancing around the room since they had come in.

“Well you are certainly entitled to legal representation, that is your right.” Joe piped up and signalled to one of the officers and asked if they had been read their rights. The officer nodded and then stepped back, they were a little spooked by the oddness of seeing their colleague both dead on the floor and standing in front of them.

“Well then you can all ask for a lawyer any time y'all want, but let me tell you this, we have a dead ...” Joe stopped and then looked straight at George with a mirthless smile on his face and amended the body count. “We have two, that's two dead cops and we all know how much the prosecution is going to want to make an example of someone, so here's the situation.” Joe opened his hands and spread them wide like he was about to sell them a used car. “Whoever spills first gets the best deal for themselves, and everyone else? Murder. Accessory to Murder.” Joe folded his arms and eyed the weaker Harold White who looked the most scared of the lot of them. “You know what they do to cop-killers in the... hey do I know you”

The bank manager went even whiter in the face, a feat you would have thought impossible given how pale and shocked he already looked.

George walked over and stood next to Joe, shoulder to shoulder while the officer who had searched them pulled a wallet from a plastic baggie and showed the ID inside to the officers.

“Harold White? Harold, Harold.” Joe was tapping the wallet on his hand in the gloves to leave no fingerprints while he tried to place the face and the name. “Oh yeah the Bank, the first national up at the Plaza, you know the one?” Joe was talking to George who was nodding, but he had no idea who the man was.

“He did it – he did it!” Harold was pointing at the body of the man they had shot, he had no ID on him but they were confident that he would be in the system and his identity would be known soon enough. Harold was frantic to try and pin the blame on the man on the floor, and the detectives were not sure if he was telling the truth or just trying to pin the blame on a guy who could not argue.

“Shut your mouth White.” Snarled one of the other men, and Joe was not surprised to see it was the man who had cried for a lawyer in his first words.

“Take them out of here boys, back to the station for processing, and put them in separate cells. Hell, take them in separate cars, I want no communication between any of them.” Joe was directing the moving of the suspects when one of the other doubles, the ones that were large, muscled and menacing started laughing. This was the one that had no facial scar and looked like out of all the people assembled he was the one who understood the most and liked what was going on the least.

The laughter was not based on humour or hysteria, it had a bleak darkness to it that managed to unsettle the detectives and the already spooked officers. One of them roughly man handled him towards the door but as they bundled him towards one of the cars he shouted over his shoulder.

“They have no idea what is going on. Say nothing!” then he was gone and officers took the others one at a time until the shivering, shaking Harold White was left alone with the detectives.

“Well then?” George asked and the sound of his voice made Harold burst into tears.

“I want a lawyer.” he finally said through sobs and deep breaths.