Chapter 5

Sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair in an interrogation room at Homicide Central for the next day and half almost without a break gave me plenty of time to think. I shifted the events of the last few weeks about in my tired skull and all of the known facts around and around into different positions and I thought I understood the entirety of the big picture. Well, a portion of the entirety anyway ... maybe just not the really important part though.

My problem was that I still didn’t know ‘Who’ or ‘Why’. NYPD thought they had their who, especially after I pestered them to try and get in contact with my vacationing partner at their summer house on the coast of Maine. I already knew in my heart that Bad News Bear had already gotten him killed too, but finding out that his wife and young girls had been murdered also with him in a fire with extreme arson overtones on the previous night. Being demonstratively still present in Baltimore at the time, a rather flawless and provable alibi I would have thought, wasn’t bearing much weight with the detectives.

My suspicion of being a dangerously deranged mass murder only increased to a near certainly in their minds once they watched me scream and tear at my hair and even throw a shoe at the office television set which rested upon a file cabinet, muted and broadcasting CNN. The short 30 second news report was discussing the horrible murder of a Catholic Priest in urban Baltimore, showing the front of an older stone church that I could instantly recognize even without the sound. ‘Torture and murder’ the news crawling text at the bottom helpfully stated to the hearing impaired.

Maybe I was raving mad ... by this realization of truth that now there was no one left but me (and Mr. Big) left alive, I might have been well over the divide to half-crazy myself. I wasn’t sure that my sanity could take one more hard push like that again.

I explained the situation after I’d calmed down and one of the detectives made a quick phone call to Baltimore PD and after a long whispered conversation he then hung up and began glaring at me. His obvious thoughts as he looked at me were that I was clearly as deranged as a mad dog and for the public welfare ought to be taken immediately out and shot. Attempted escape, undoubtedly.

Everyone and their dog asked me if I wanted a lawyer. I didn’t. I knew plenty of them but they were all entertainment industry shysters. Besides, I was innocent and eventually, given enough shoe leather work, my various alibis were going to hold up. Airports are full of cameras. So are most taxi’s, especially in crime-ridden Baltimore. I alternated between long sessions in an interview room with a revolving cast of dozens of homicide inspectors and willingly, or at least without much reluctance, rendering forth a chronologically concise version of the events of the last two weeks or so. Names, dates and times and places. Over and over and over again.

Except, there was no direct mention of Bad News Bear, or of Maureen. Like Shakespeare’s bad luck ‘Scottish Play’, the names Macbeth and Bruin Bear were never going to leave my lips. Instead I kept to the story that an anonymous person had told me that a video or a possible set of video tapes perhaps existed that they were willing to protect and preserve at the cost of their own life. I was told that many people who had been involving with these tapes had died, and if ever made public they would constitute a ‘long lost film treasure’ that was potentially worth millions ... and a million reasons for murders in an effort to obtain it. But there were potentially severe issues of authenticity and significant potentially conflicting legal rights involved, theoretically each instigating the potential for massive corporate litigation. One or more party, I had been told, was willing to kill (and had) to obtain those tapes. The alleged anonymous owner of this treasure needed to be legally certain of its authenticity. That established, the legal issues could sort themselves all out later. Heck, that was what Hubert and I did for our living, in our different fields of expertise.

I was quite willing to name names; to an extent ... obviously I couldn’t have killed them all!

First, Hubert Watt, definitely murdered and/or his killing otherwise obscured by arson. I’d said that he’d received and probably made a copy or copies of the dubious material in question and that he was the designated source to attempt to authenticate them. He’d analyze the media and closely examine the production credits to identify the creators, all prior to public announcement and eventual sale for enough of the green stuff to make old King Midas twitch with greed.

Next, Doctor Arnold Welker, in Baltimore was murdered while I was in New Jersey and I remained very unwilling to provide an alibi that could identify and endanger Maureen. I held firm that I could, within an actual court of law produce a witness to my location at the time, but would refrain to identify at this time the anonymous owner of the video in question. Arnie was not only a respectable professor of film studies but also (not coincidently) one of the original below the line technicians of the questionable video property, via his voice editing. He also could easily legally authenticate the creation and potential legal ownership of the alleged video. Death by arson also, along with his family just days after he had been consulted by me as a potential expert witness, and possibly also contacted by Hubert as well.

Sometime on Sunday night or early Monday morning while I was still in Jersey it was my partner’s turn to face the wrath of Mr. Big, along with his wife Mary-Lynn and their two daughters. Dr. Arnold had called to the office sometime last Friday morning (a fact that NYPD could easily and quickly check by getting those records phone records) and because I was still out of the office (verifiable probably via my own cell phone records) he spoke with Pat for about an hour, during which confidential details were unwisely and unnecessarily divulged about that questionable video project. Furthermore, my partner, unwisely seeing dollar signs for acting as the agent for the commercial marketing of those legally questionable tapes, had made a great many industry-wide phone calls, advertising potential commercial availability of a product that possibly didn’t even exist and that he certainly didn’t legally own – and had never even seen or touched before. One of those calls undoubtedly came to the direct or indirect ears of some entity wanting either the possession or extra-legal destruction of those tapes. AKA Mr. Big. Since Pat had claimed possession, inaccurately, it was straight to him that the killers went to try and seize them ... but found nothing instead except more murder in their wake.

No one ever told me what the Maine State Police had found in the smoking remains of the burned-out ruins of that fairly private vacation home at least half a mile away from the nearest neighbor. In my bad dreams I believe that just like Father Dwayne, Pat was tortured first, but since he couldn’t give up the tapes and in truth had no idea where they actually were, the killers then probably resorted to threatening his family. Maybe they cut upon them right in front of his eyes to induce him to confess and then killed his loved ones before his very eyes, one by one ... but he couldn’t produce those tapes, even had he wanted to. The fire was just the final afterthought, to cover the messy crime scene.

Hours later that same Monday evening, just before closing, the killers came to our New York offices on the eighteen floor of a nice commercial skyscraper right at dot of 4:oopm. The killers, three of them I was quietly told later on, came up the freight elevator with a large wooden contractor bin. Dark jumpsuits and ball caps all pulled low over their faces so the elevator cameras saw nothing that could identify them. They looked and acted like contract carpenters and they showed building security downstairs a reasonably believable fake work order for some workspace buildout upon our floor. Once in our office it is believed that they held Shirlene and Ryan at gunpoint while they searched the office desperately for the tapes. They were in a panic by then and the task must have taken at least a few hours. Pat had told innumerable people that we had it ... and they assumed, fairly reasonably, that our office was best place to search for the lost video treasure, since Pat didn’t have it at the summer house. Unfortunately poor Shirlene and Ryan also didn’t have the slightest clue about where the tape or tapes were either. Probably they kept telling the gunmen that I had insisted to them that the tapes in question probably didn’t even really exist ... and that we certainly didn’t have them.

That was my story and I was going to stick to it come hell or high water! The killers didn’t care. My staff was lightly tortured just enough to confirm their stories and since the tapes couldn’t be found there, the killers shot each of them twice in the head and then carted their bodies out in the big contractor bin down the freight elevator and rolled it down to a maintenance room on the very bottom level of the building’s parking garage and dumped them there. A night shift janitor found them there on early Tuesday morning and called the police. Here at least my alibi was starting to become rock solid, going to the college in Baltimore, attending the memorial and then visiting Father Dwayne before spending the night at the airport, under the watchful eye of Homeland Security.

Last, but certainly not least in significance, there was the appalling torture and murder of Father Dwayne, early Wednesday morning. I admitted that he had also been consulted as a potential expert witness due to the revealed fact that he had been one of the three original film editors ... the other two long dead by homicide. I reported to the detectives that his oral testimony to me had been that all original and duplicate copies of the material in question had been destroyed during the 1990’s and that this new alleged copy was undoubtedly a fabrication – but he had not seen the material in question. His murder had been truly terrible, I was later told. Shortly before 1am an insomniac nun came into the church to hear the death screams of the good but stubborn father. He had been severely tortured right there in front of the high altar for perhaps up to an hour the final scream occurring when the villains responsible (at least two, perhaps three) the elderly nun recorded in her statement, heard the loud sound of the side wooden door leading to the dormitory squealing open and her approaching footsteps. She found the father just freshly murdered and saw the backs of his killers as they ran out the front door of the church. The extremity of the torture suggested that someone wanted answers, and was willing to cut off fingers, toes, ears and noses to get them. His hasty death at the last second before fleeing suggested that the priest had remained silent until the very end, keeping his secrets with God unto the very end. A very final and ultimate act of true repentance.

This was twelve distinct murders in total all by the same agents, I kept insisting to anyone who would listen.

A full day, then parts of another two passed while I was still being held for questioning without charges. Officially, I was ‘helping the investigation’. Slowly I began to sense that my alibis were beginning to hold up and the more sensible detectives were starting to realize that I was not going to be the simple solution that they had originally hoped for. Finding my gas station and fast food receipts in my van helped to strongly confirm my story of being in Jersey during the most recent murder spree. Besides, with my being a ‘person of interest’ or not, no one could come up with anything resembling a motive for all of these crimes.

Their boss the station captain still wanted to book me into Ryker’s as a material witness, but the senior detective in charge of the case, Chief Inspector Kramer had more or less decided by then that my story was just too screwy not to be at least 95% true. Smart man, he even got the percentages right.

By late Saturday morning, most of the detectives were even being reasonably polite to me. The meals they brought me started to arrive more regularly and improved significantly in quality. They let me now doze more or less continually in their break room on an oversized sofa rather than push me back into one of the downstairs holding cells inbetween interrogations, which became far less numerous. The captain was still pointedly threatening me that if he had his way, I’d be at Ryker’s being held as a material witness, but the pair of assistant DA’s that had joined our happy throng as of late Friday night kept stating to me that no charges were currently going to be filed and at any time now I could go on home if I wished. I wanted to go ... but I also wanted to learn what if anything the homicide detectives had learned as they compiled on a series a big glass boards the dozen various murders and they strung colored string between the still photos to mark the connections they’d made.

It really didn’t at all amount to much and wouldn’t even be worth the bother of repeating here. Stolen plates photo’d by indistinct street camera on various vehicles of interest, here and in both Maine and Baltimore. Low-quality images taken from a distance that even facial recognition software couldn’t do much with ... but none of the suspect images bore any resemblance to me. More than enough reasonable doubt by this point that helped to confirm that I entirely in the clear, but that wasn’t enough for me anymore. I didn’t want or need vindication - I wanted Mr. Big’s balls ... preferably roasting over an open fire.

I also wanted to call Maureen, badly! I had just enough self-preservation left within me to keep her name away from the police. I could have used one of the homicide office phones, but I’m sure they were ready and eager to trace it. So I sat on my hands and phoned no one. Not even a lawyer. My friends and work family were all gone ... who was there left for me to call even?

Sometime that late Saturday morning Kramer gently asked me if I could answer just a few more last questions, strictly for the benefit of the ADA’s. I didn’t care; apathy had started to take over. For a moment I thought I felt just the way Arnie had, right before his death. Faced with crap on all sides that was frankly all impossible to deal with without resorting to the wholesale use of major street drugs or more alcohol than the liver could hope to safely handle. We had faced a remorseless enemy with more time, money and willpower left than his victims had ever possessed. The insane idea briefly appealed to me that the entire world might just be better off if set entirely on fire, just for the sheer joy of dancing upon the burning embers in final triumph.

Kramer offered me my usual chair in the interrogation room and he straddled his, sitting backward so that his arms and chin could rest upon the top of the metal chair back. The two ADA’s hung back, standing up against the glass by the door, content to passively listen. I don’t think they ever said a word. There was a bit of the silent treatment at first, a psychological technique useful for getting guilty people nervous and worried, so that they’d break quicker under interrogation, but it wasn’t that intense here. Kramer was just collecting his thoughts and then he released them to me with a loud profoundly curious sigh.

“Why?” he asked sincerely, “give me something in all of this, a dozen deaths you say ... that speaks to motive. Is there a tape or tapes somewhere that some crazy homicidal nutjob is really willing to kill twelve people for? Why? And why are you involved in all of this?”

“Why me? The question every religious book and text on philosophy has tried to ask and answer since Joe the Caveman discovered he could draw on a cave wall while he was taking a piss at the same time.” I laughed. It might have been a crazed sort of laugh too, the indecent sort of belly laugh that most technically sane people couldn’t ever wrench out of their lungs without the internal application of a very pointed stick.

“Yes, why you ... and just for starters can you also explain to us in small nontechnical terms just exactly what your company actually does? Why would someone kill over TV ratings ... that is what you do, right?”

“We try to herd the vast horde of cats that makes up the television entertainment industry. The networks, the cable industry and the thousand and one incestual production companies that spew out the crap that ends up on television. We scoop up the shit that’s recorded as factual television ratings, by Nielson and a few other monitoring companies, sift it and shake out the impurities and report the adjusted results. Factually, without bias, to both the industry and to the home viewers. Nearly everyone else in this pigsty of a business has some financial motive to cheat and lie, or at least exaggerate and promote their own version of what the facts are.”

“Is that a motive here?” Kramer enquired, genuinely interested in my explanation.

“For lots of other crimes, certainly fraud on a massive incalculable scale ... but probably not including murder, or so I hope. Producers and network executives all loath each other with a passion, but they’d rather fuck each over with paper and battalions of lawyers and not the long knives. You see the networks all want the highest possible ratings for each and every program broadcast and also the inflated demographics for the almighty and all-important age 18-35 viewer base of consumers, so they can charge insanely outrageously inflated advertising fees. Advertisers need to know that the real actual viewership numbers that the networks are charging them an insane amount of shekels for is accurate, which it invariably isn’t, and furthermore they want the Live+3 and +7 days DVR numbers. In a nutshell, what majority of the claimed viewer just dumped the program off to their DVR and binged watch the show a week later ... and fast-forwarded through all of the commercials, effectively screwing the advertiser out of a viewer, or tens or hundreds of thousands of them, that they paid full rates for but received zero benefit. Thus, demanding a rightful refund of a percentage of the paid advertising. The TV ratings monitoring companies want to gather their own pile of shekels and frankly have enough combined interests in common with the networks that sometimes their line of impartiality gets very fuzzy, or even non-existent. Their business model requires that they keep their primary paying customer, the networks, happy ... and if that means fudging some of the grey area statistics to fit their client’s preferred viewpoint, then so be it.”

“So you sift out everyone else’s lies and publically post the truth and defy everyone to prove you wrong?” he surmised.