Audio:

 

Text:

Damien sat on his couch, wearing a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

Raquel took his Class B uniform and immediately threw it into the washing machine. That was followed by her sprinkling the house with holy water to keep the spirit of the dead woman from following Damien home.

She was devout in her faith and wasn’t going to take any chances. She believed in a life after this one, in Jacob’s God and all that came with it. She worried about the spiritual, while Damien focused on the tangible. She was concerned for Mandy’s soul, Damien, with her killer.

Ted sat next to him and, on the coffee table in front of them, were their combined yearbooks from middle school to high school.

Raquel appeared from the kitchen, holding two cups of coffee.

“I think it will take more than one washing to get the odor out of your uniform,” she said. “That’s what a dead body smells like?”

“Yeah,” Damien said, taking one of the cups from her hand.

He lifted the brew to his nose and inhaled, but the scent of Mandy’s corpse remained in his nostrils, the smell of dark roasted coffee beans infused with her rotting flesh. Disgusted, he placed the cup on the table.

“What are you guys looking for?” she asked. “Suspects,” Ted said.

“From high school? Isn’t one serial killer enough for our class?”

“Just doing what the Lieutenant ordered,” Damien said.

Raquel sat on the arm of the couch next to her husband and leaned forward.

“Did you tell him?” she whispered into his ear.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t seem appropriate at the time.”

“You’re right,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Sorry. I’m just so excited.”

“Excited?” Ted asked. “About what?”

Damien glanced at Raquel and gave her an approving nod.

“We’re pregnant,” she said almost apologetically.

“Really?” Ted said.

“That’s great. Welcome to the wonderful and exhausting world of parenting.”

“I’d just found out when you called,” Damien said. “Wow. Denise is going to go nuts. She’ll want to help

you so much you’ll end up hating her for it.”

“I doubt that,” Raquel said with a laugh.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Ted said.

“When it comes to babies, my wife is ka-razy. When are you due?”

“About seven and a half months.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she said as she stood. “I’ll let you two get back to work.”

She playfully ran her hand through Damien’s hair as she left.

“You’re going to be a dad?” Ted said to Damien.

“That’s bat-shit insane.”

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“Think about it this way. Your dad set the bar so low that you can only succeed.”

Damien turned to him with a baffled smile. “Thanks.”

“That’s why I’m here, buddy. To build you up.”

Damien skimmed through the pages of his junior year book. Even though Hayeston was a small town, he hadn’t kept track of most of the pimply faces in front of him. When he dropped out of school, he dropped out of life. Ted, Jacob and the bookstore were his world. After that, Raquel joined them. No one else.

“We should ask Jacob about this,” Damien said. “He may have heard something.”

“Are you crazy,” Ted said. “He’d never break the seal of the confessional.”

“I’m not talking about that. He knows these people. He was friends with everyone back then. I wasn’t. As a priest, he probably knows more about their lives than anybody else.”

“Not everyone was a grumpy, sarcastic a-hole, like you,” Ted said. “I had other friends too. Kept in touch with a few of them over the years.”

“Okay then, Mr. Wonderful, who, out of all these people, do you think had the best chance of becoming a killer?”

“The loudest mouths and shadiest characters that spoke up after Mark was arrested belonged to…” he pointed at each person. “Ron Carter, Dustin Farrier and Hank Modell.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Damien said. He quickly stiffened as a name popped into his head. “And Matt Plank.”

“Matt who?”

“Plank, from shop class,” he said as his memory filled in the blanks. “Thin. Gangly. Remember? After I left school, he’d come by the bookstore and talk about the murders, how cool it was to happen in our town, put us on the map, things like that. Odd guy. How did I forget Matt Plank until now?” “Don’t beat yourself up,” Ted said. “We all tried to forget what happened. Otherwise we wouldn’t be looking through these yearbooks.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just… I thought I handled it better than that.”

“Personally, I think we’re wasting cycles here,” Ted said. “Mark didn’t breed killers. He was a lone psychopath. We should be doing something more productive.”

“When you’re the chief, you can run the place any way you want,” Damien said.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

“Oh, I know you have. Look, removing suspects is just as valuable as finding them. Let’s do what the Lieutenant says and see what happens.”

“I guess you’re right,” Ted said as he stood. “I’ll give Decker our list.” He leaned back and stretched, then checked his watch.

“It’s later than I thought. Denise is gonna be pissed.”

“Tell her thanks for letting you come over to play.” Damien handed Ted his stack of yearbooks.

Ted paused, his fingers tapping against the hard book covers.

“You think they’re going to make us talk to the investigating detective?” he asked.

“Probably,” Damien said.

Ted looked down and nodded, silent for a moment. “Better you than me,” he said.

“I’ll take care of it,” Damien said. “I’ll take that bullet for you.”

“Thanks.”

Everyone in town knew Detective Sanders Grace for solving Mark’s murders.

Ted’s family knew him for something else.

When Damien and Ted were eleven years old, they were playing in Ted’s backyard, throwing a football, running and tackling each other, imagining they were on opposing teams. Boys imaginations could do that. Make up a world of play to escape a life of challenges.

Damien was planning on spending the night. His dad was on the road that week and Jacob and his mom were out of town at a soccer tournament. He could have gone with his brother, but Damien took every opportunity to hang out with Ted and his family. Ted’s home had a peace about it back then.

Some time between the ninth and tenth overtime, Ted’s mother ran out of the back of the house and grabbed them both by the hands. Frantic, and without explanation, she escorted them to her car, put them in the back seat and sped out of the driveway.

They were heading to the police station.

Ted’s father, Trevor, had been arrested for the murder of a white woman named Nancy Jones. The thought of it was absurd. Trevor wasn’t a violent man. But, on that night, they didn’t see Trevor for the content of his character. They saw him for the color of his skin. Even though the Civil Rights movement had changed most of America forty years earlier, there were still pockets where ignorance and fear fueled decisions and, unfortunately for Trevor, the Hayeston police department still had more bad apples than good.

One of those was a detective named Sanders Grace. From evening to night and into the next morning, Sanders refused Trevor a lawyer, an opportunity to call his wife, or the luxury of sleep. He pressed him for hours, trying to convince him of his guilt of a crime of which he had no knowledge. He seeded Trevor with enough informationtion about the murder to confuse him, enough mental rope to tie his own noose, but Trevor remained strong.

He wouldn’t succumb to Sanders’ threats. The more the detective yelled, the more Trevor grew quiet. He was scared, of course. He admitted as much to Ted years later. Yet, he couldn’t give Sanders the pleasure of showing him his fear. Despite the corruption in the Hayeston Police Department, Trevor had greater faith in the system. He knew he would be exonerated. Maybe not today. Or next week. Or years later, if it came to that. But eventually.

Fortunately, thirty hours later, an informant called the station to tell them he overheard the victim’s spurned lover at a local dive bar bragging about the murder.

A few hours later, the killer was behind bars, passing Trevor as he was released from Sanders’ custody.

Before that day Damien didn’t understand the difference between the races. Ted was his friend. His family, like his own. He didn’t understand that others looked at people differently. Why would they?

Afterwards, Trevor had lost his smile, and Damien, some of his innocence.
Trevor remained gentle and forgiving, yet in that inter- rogation room, he lost a part of himself.

It was the injustice of Trevor’s arrest that inspired Ted and, eventually Damien, to become police officers. Many people yelled for change from the outside of the station, but he and Ted were determined to fix it from the inside.

Almost a decade later, Sanders arrested Mark for two murders of young women. Notoriety soon followed. Sanders’ name and picture were in the paper and on the national news. He was a local hero. The police department even named a jail cell after him. They call it Grace Chapel. It was where Mark spent his first night in the city jail.

Shortly after the buzz of the arrest subsided, Sanders retired, deciding to enjoy his police pension, and faded from the limelight. Last Damien heard, he picked up an occasional security consultant gig here and there, most recently for the mayor.

If these new murders forced Damien to cross Sanders’ path, he wasn’t sure what he’d do – Ask him for his personal notes on Mark’s case or punch him in the face.

He wouldn’t have long to decide. Damien’s cell phone rang.

It was Lieutenant Decker.

Damien was meeting Sanders first thing in the morning.