Detective Davis' Visitor05:36 Dec 30 2009
Times Read: 556
Jerrod Tzelekie.
The name haunted her. Dozens of counts against him for child abduction, beating, coercion, drugging, endangerment, fornication, genital mutilation, harassment, indecent acts...she let out a hollow chuckle as she realized that in a very black sort of way, the list of crimes the man racked up was almost humorous...as they seemed to cover every letter of the alphabet.
They had evidence. Blood, semen, hairs, testimony, even several films of the horrific things that the man...no, the MONSTER...had done to that group of kids. And the cherry on top was, at the scene of the crime, Jarrod himself confessed. Of course, the scumbag had later recanted under advice from his lawyer, but all the same!
A sigh of utter, soul-crushing disgust escaped the Detective as she reached forward to grab, and then eat from, the half forgotten ham sandwich on her desk, reveling in the momentary distraction of slightly stale bread and salty ham that was possibly just past its use-by date, or maybe just too warm for proper consumption. A quick swig of her room temperature, store brand orange soda, and the taste of the food is covered over by the not-citrus flavor of the beverage. She rested her head in her hands and just breathed for a few moments, and her eyes closed as she tried to drown out her own thoughts with her surrounding atmosphere, taking in the quiet bustle of the Station at midday...the muffled voices outside her office, the faint scent of fresh coffee and donuts (oh how she HATED that amazingly accurate cliche!), the cursing of random criminals being brought in, and the ever so faint scent of the heavy industrial cleaning products used to clean up the various fluids expelled from the various individuals who passed through the Stations not so hallowed halls.
She took another deep breath and raised her head, just in time to see a Junior Officer...Tom? Was that his name?...raise his hand to knock on her door. She closed the file on Tzelekie for now, making a mental note to come back to it at a later point, to find something, ANYTHING, she can use to get around double jeopardy and nail this son of a bitch to a wall.
She waved the officer in as he knocked, and leaned back in her chair casually, so as not to scare the new guy by being too intimidating.
"How can I help you, Officer?"
It either worked, or the young man had brass balls, as he walked right in and got to it immediately without missing a beat.
"Detective Davis, there's an older man here, says he has some information on the Tzelekie case. I informed him that the case was closed, on account of the trail and acquittal, but he seems pretty insistent, and I thought that, since, er..."
At this point, the calm facade DID break a bit and he suddenly seems very nervous...no doubt hesitant to speak of the Detective's obsession with this case, which was rapidly becoming something of an in-joke/sad story around the Station. To save the brave young pup from the faux pas he was about to make, the Detective slapped on a singularly false smile, more a smirk, really, and spoke.
"Since, er...I am so obsessed with a case that can't be tried again, so obsessed with catching this Tzelekie in something that we CAN try him for, that I might want to talk to him, and would likely stick whoever DIDN'T put this guy through to me in the basement Archives for the rest of their career, that you should show him through?"
The young officer blushed bright red, an interesting contrast to his police blues, a fact noted absently by the Detective, and nods vigorously, and made an over-the-shoulder thumb motion towards the front of the building, and managed to stammer out....
"Uh..yes Ma'am, something like that. Shall I...?"
Whatever he was going to finish saying never quite makes it out of his mouth, as Davis cut him off with a curt nod of her head, an action that caused one stray piece of brown hair to fall free of its clip and in front of her eye. After he left, she fixed the straggler and put the file on Tzelekie away in it's drawer, not wanting to give this fellow any more information than he already had. Despite her own opinion, vigilantism was still frowned on.
After a few moments, no doubt as he was being processed as a visitor, the young Officer came back with a man. Nothing, absolutely nothing, about this man stood out. Roughly 5'7", about 150 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, simple features with nothing prominent, blue jeans, a tan shirt with a simple black coat, and brown and tan sneakers. If 'unremarkable' had a picture next to it in the dictionary, it was this man right here. Only his age was difficult to place, somewhere between 50-70 years old, an older man indeed, who obviously looked after himself.
Davis shoo'd the officer out of the room, and waved casually with her right hand at one of the two seats in front of her desk, and then leaned forward, this time trying to be a BIT intimidating.
"I'm told you have some information about Jerrod Tzelekie for me?"
The man smiled at her, then, and there was something in it...pity? No, that wasn't it...sadness? Perhaps. She'd have to think about it...but later, as the man spoke with a soft, unassuming voice that seemed, somehow, to be...missing something.
"Hello, Detective Davis. My name is Jonathan Liebermann. It's a pleasure to meet you too."
Detective Davis said nothing in response. Perhaps she had been rude to jump right to the point, perhaps she could have been a bit friendlier to this guy bringing her information. Perhaps she also didn't care. She remained silent, and waited for him to get over the heartbreak of her having not engaged in social niceties.
"I see. Right to business, then. This man, Jerrod Tzelekie. You hunt the facts around him, searching for something, anything that your fellow investigators missed. Something that you can use to bring him back to trial, and punish him for the horrific atrocities he committed on those children. Am I correct?"
She narrowed her eyes a bit and nodded. She was reluctant to admit her obsessive hunt for some way to destroy Tzelekie, but this man seemed harmless enough, if a little...odd. Jonathan opens his mouth, and his oddly...crippled? Was that the word?...voice quietly filled the room again.
"You need to stop. You know there is no more information. No more facts. You know there is no more crime left to uncover. The beast had all his secrets unearthed, and even armed with that and a confession, recanted or otherwise, you could find nothing."
Her eyes widened at that, and she almost laughed out of sheer incredulity. When she spoke, her voice was as inflamed as his was cool, rage leaking around the edges of police-trained control like water in a leaky dam.
"Now you listen here, bub. You have NO IDEA what you you're talking about. NONE. There is ALWAYS more information, always something else to uncover. Someone like Tzelekie doesn't just happen overnight. They don't just wake up one day and decide "Oo, you know what sounds fun? Destroying a bunch of children!" All but ONE of those kids is DEAD now, AND the Doctor who was trying to save their lives is dead too, by the same chemical! That man has caused more damage in the span of six months than I can even begin to think about! And then, he gets off the hook after a Jury acquits him on all counts, AND the Judge puts a stop to all re-trials?? And you want me to just give it up, mm? Justice is served, is that what you're telling me??"
If fury had a scent, the room would have reeked of it. If anger had a flavor, both of them would have been gagging on it. It poured from her like heat-waves in the desert, such was its intensity. But amidst the barely bridled storm of her anger, Jonathan sat quietly, a solid piece of ice in the smelter of her rage. Once she had finished, he spoke again, his tone utterly unchanged.
"Doctor Thompson is dead? That is a tragedy, indeed. But yes. That is exactly what I am telling you, with one exception. Justice has not been served. But it is in the process of it, right now. Literally, as we speak, Justice moves to correct the wrongs perpetuated by the beast. But that's not why I am here, not directly."
He leaned forward, and that's when the Detective saw it. Six small scars, two on his forehead, and two on either side of his upper face, one directly on either temple, and one directly underneath those two.
"You might have noticed I am somewhat...calmer...than most people you have noticed. That is because I was like you, once. Once, I suffered a tragedy. A terrible thing, so terrible it roused from its slumber something...both worse, and so much better. This man destroyed what had destroyed me, destroyed my life, when no one else could, when the one who had destroyed me thought himself untouchable. What happened to him...lets just say that because of his punishment, no one will ever want to follow in his footsteps."
The Detective, her fury calming itself but still present behind her eyes, leaned back again in her chair, the old man following suit. She spoke, and when she did so, this time, it was MUCH calmer than before.
"And that has what, exactly, to do with me? I've very sorry for whatever it was you went through...I really am...but I fail to see how that, or your mystery man, or any of it has anything to do with my case."
He smiled again, the exact same smile that he had before, and that was when she caught it. The thing that was in his smile was the same thing that was wrong with his voice. There was no emotion. Nothing. Not a scrap. What she mistook for sadness was simply loss...a loss of emotion that she had never seen before. The complete lack startled her, and she felt the rest of her anger dribbling away, replaced by a mixture of..fear? No, anxiety.
"He came because of my rage. 'The fury of a righteous man.', he told me. I didn't want him to do what he did...I wanted to do it. I wanted to break the man beneath my fingers, grind his bones to powder and put his family into a meat grinder, for what he had done, to me, and the others. I wanted to obliterate him. And he...he destroyed him. He made an example of him. He did more than I ever could...and yet, it was not enough. I wanted more. I wanted to bathe in his blood and drink his screams."
At this point, he lack of emotions was positively disturbing. The old man spoke of murder and torture with all the emotional intensity of someone making a shopping list. Less, even. Detective Davis just remained in her seat, somehow riveted into silence by the story being told to her.
"The hatred I held contained within me was slowly driving me mad. It would have destroyed me, as well as anyone around me. It may even have made ME into a lunatic, and who knows what I would have done then. It was unreasonable, unthinking rage, the kind of thing that makes monsters of men. When he was done with the monster that destroyed me, he returned, for me. He told me what he had done to the person who destroyed me, and offered me a choice...be happy with the result, or have my rage taken from me. Of course, I could not let it go. It wasn't enough for me. I attacked him. It was...foolish, of course, no one could stand against him, not an army, and certainly not one starved prisoner. He batted me aside like you would a fly, and then...he reached into my mind. Literally, reached in. I could feel his fingers in my mind, in my skull, and he took it. My rage. But...there was a price. Rage like that, it doesn't stay in one part of you. It infects, infests, all of your being, working its insidious way throughout every fiber of who you are...until all that is left is the rage. So he took that, too. He took everything, absolutely everything that I felt, and left. I have not seen him since. But I know, now, that he has awoken again. When I heard about Jerrod Tzelekie, when I heard what had done, and the insanity that lead to his acquittal...I knew he would awaken. That he would walk the earth again, to punish this man. The others have confirmed it. And he will erase all things that brought him here, making an example of him so that it never happens again. So I beg you, Detective. Let. This. Go. Or he will come for you, as well, to silence your rage, your hate. To take it away, so that you are at peace...forever. "
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open. She...couldn't believe what she was hearing. She can't fathom or understand this...black faerie tale that this old man was spouting. But...something niggled at the back of her mind. She could always, ALWAYS tell when someone was lying. ALWAYS. And she didn't get that from this man. Gun to her head, she would've said he spoke the truth. And she didn't know how to handle that. So, she responded as any Detective might. With questions.
"Who? Who, and what, is this 'man' you keep speaking of? What others? Who are you, Jonathan, really? What's going to happen to Tzelekie?"
He smiled again, that same empty smile, though maybe he pushed it up a bit more in a futile attempt to add a warmth that was just no longer there.
"His name is Ahz'real. He is the Firstborn Son. The best description I could give him is that he is...the older brother of Man. He doesn't speak much of himself, you understand. We call ourselves the Children of Ahz'real, those of us who have had our lives touched, saved, by him. As for the fate of the beast...I do not know. But if Ahz'real hunts him...even the Devil would blush at what is going to happen to him."
She stared, her natural skepticism, for the moment, replaced more by curiosity. Again, she could not tell that the man is lying, but still. It was too much. She raised an eyebrow when Jonathan mentions the mans name, and cocked her head to one side.
"I thought Azreal was the name of some angel, like war, or pestilence, or something."
Jonathan shook his head, and a normal person would likely have chuckled, but he did not, as he longer possessed the desire to.
"No, no. You're thinking of the Angel of Death. He pronounces it Ahz'real, and from what I understand, the Angel was named for him, not the other way around."
She blinked at the now almost matter-of-fact conversation about angels, Satan, and some guy with a vigilante streak. She shook her head as if to clear it, and smiled somewhat sardonically at the older gentleman seated across from her.
"Well, Jonathan...I will certainly take what you have said into account. I have to admit, I am somewhat skeptical, but you are drooling less than the average lunatic that comes through here, so I will take what you say with a grain of salt. Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do."
Quietly, with a grace belying his age, Jonathan rose seamlessly from his seat and made for the door, and turned one last time before exiting...
"Please. Listen to what I have to say. Let go of your rage, your anger. Know that justice will be done. Let it go...or it will be taken. And nothing happens without cost, Detective. Nothing."
..and with that, he walked out of the office, and out of the Station, leaving a slightly flabbergasted Detective sitting in her chair. She reached down to the drawer with the Tzelekie casefile, and began to open it, and then stopped mid-grab.
"Maybe I'll go get some lunch. Clear my head, first."
And rose, walked out of the office, and out of the Station.
COMMENTS
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TalithaTensai
07:04 Jan 15 2010
Most excellent. They get better each chapter. :)