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Wow, he thought, Barry was right. It does hurt to be the favorite boy in the room.
When he had told his friend that the chief of police had summoned him to a meeting to discuss a special assignment, Barry had whistled.
“You’re the force’s golden boy, now. Our own .007. But don’t think that’s doing you any favors, Mack. You’ve got a life to live, so much life. These people at the top have lived theirs, and some of them want to live some more. They’ll use you till they’ve sucked your life right out.”
“Oh, come on, Barry,” Mack had protested. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, we’ll see. But I’m telling you, it hurts to be the favorite boy in the room.”
On his way back home, Mack’s mind was already beginning to spin as it tried to process what he was about to get into. He hadn’t read full details, yet. He’d do that once he got home. But he recognized the name that’d been attached to the bio on the first page.
He was sorely tempted to take a peek at the files, but he wasn’t a fan of working in the back of taxis whose drivers are fairly large men that like to take regular sneak peeks at the rearview.
***
Setting up shop on Palm Island was as easy as spreading butter over bread. Mack had been given the name and phone number of a reliable contact in the police force. Word of Mack’s coming had been passed on to Palm Island’s sheriff, and he in turn had passed it on to the rest of the police.
Mack met up with Detective Boyce, who was in charge of the investigation that Mack was there to help with. Boyce was a small man with wrinkles on his face, which people figured were there because he wore more scowls than smiles. His colleagues joked that something fundamentally wrong had happened while his parents were making him.
Mack set to work as soon as he’d checked in with the sheriff. Over coffee, Boyce filled Mack in on the progress of the investigation. Mack took care to hide his disappointment. For such a lengthy period of time, Boyce had come up with an awful lot of nothing.
But that’s why I’m here, he thought. We’re turning this narrative around.
Just then Boyce’s phone buzzed. He listened intently for a few seconds and then started packing his things.
“I’m on my way.”
“What’s happening?” Mack asked the moment Boyce got off the phone.
Boyce sighed.
“There’s been another murder.”
Chapter Two
The number of disappearances and murders that happened in Palm Island seemed to pour in one after the other. Mack could only be amazed at the number he was experiencing versus the volume that had been going on before his arrival. What really shocked him about it all was the attitude of the police towards these cases. They were all like this since the first case he experienced his first day there.
Mack and Boyce drove to the beach to find the washed-up body of a man on the shore. Apart from the man’s bloated body, Mack noticed a number of cuts on his arms and chest. The oddest thing Mack experienced was Boyce marking the cause of death as an accident, right there on the spot. Without inspection, autopsy, or other evidence that could aid a forensic investigation, the case was closed.
“It isn’t an accident?” the short detective replied when Mack asked about it. “Hell, I thought it was. You know people often drown in the ocean when they disregard the safety regulations.”
“Still, Boyce,” Mack said, “it’s not right to put these bodies away without proper evidence.”
He couldn’t believe he had to talk to a detective like that, especially when they were digging into a case.
But the same thing happened, over and over again. The disappearance of a little girl. A bloody body in a bookstore. A dead priest. And on and on. The cases were handled so poorly that Mack had to report to the sheriff. The sheriff had met his claims with a humoring smile, lots of nods, and promises to look into them.
But that was it.
The families of the victims Mack tried to visit didn’t offer much more than the police. The aura of hopelessness and fear that persisted in the houses he visited was crushing. And each time before he left the house, he noticed the glimmer of something else in their eyes. The look was always the same wherever he went. A sorrowful clouding right there in the eyes, but he got the strange feeling that those looks of pity were directed at him.
He finally got an inkling of what was going on one day when he brought in a suspect to the precinct. Multiple families had reported seeing this same guy around before their children went missing. He was easy to pick out thanks to the lotus flower tattoo on the side of his face. Mack had built a case and brought him in for questioning. As he brought the guy in in cuffs, everybody fixated their eyes on him like he was walking around in a Halloween costume.
After briefly meeting their awkward stares, Mack decided to look straight ahead, until he placed the guy in jail. Mack found it a little unnerving that the guy had had looked at the spectators with a toothy grin on his face the whole time. If there was some other way he could flaunt his confidence, Mack was sure the guy would’ve taken it. Mack shut his eyes temporarily to get over the jolt of shock that’d travelled through him. He shut the guy in his cell and turned to find Boyce right at his face.
“Jesus, Mack, what do you think this is?” he asked.
Boyce had his characteristic scowl plastered on his face. Mack had long since come to learn that the scowl didn’t always mean Boyce was upset. It didn’t take him time to go along with the jokes Boyce’s colleagues made about him, even though Mack didn’t participate in any of them. He didn’t participate in any of the social life of the precinct. There was an aloofness to the way they treated him. Personally, Mack liked it. It afforded him the time to chase down the truth, but it also proved an obstacle when he wanted cooperation from some of the cops.
