VI: Heated Breaks
Detective Anderson leaned against the one-way mirror, his forehead resting against his forearm as he intently watched the person of interest they had brought in for questioning. It had been two full days now since the presumed-dead woman had flown through the window of the abandoned building. The other victim now brain dead at the hospital. They had lucked out the night before and found a lone store had captured footage of the only white van in the vicinity of the warehouse that matched the time frame. A few hours later, the white-van owner sat in interrogation room one. Anderson was completely lost in thought, replaying the conversation he had had with the suspect. He finally snapped back into the present when he caught a dark hand holding a mug of coffee hovering out of the corner of his eye.
“Spoke with the captain, says he’s going to work with the D.A. and a judge on a search warrant but it’s unlikely we’ll get much more than a courtesy meeting and tour of gilded cage. It’s all very touchy. The grounds are out of our jurisdiction so anything we find will be very hard to build a case with, even if we do find anything,” Detective Cooper said as he attempted to cool down his own coffee.
“I, for one, didn’t see this coming. Thanks for the coffee Jim,” replied Anderson as he grabbed the mug from Cooper. “So this guy has no ID, the van is registered to shell company out of the UHR. He’s not in any system here at all and the only thing we dug up on him was a medical exam on a John Doe from like 80 years ago that happened to have his prints. Coincidentally he said he went by that name,” stopping to take a breath and a sip of his coffee.
“You buy this immortal bit of his story, Tom? On that same note, you ever hear of retriever? I know I haven’t.”
“Everyone knows that for the most part, you can’t really tell most immortals apart from just regular humans. I guess the quickest way to find out if he’s lying or not about that would be to shoot him and wait ‘til he revives. Can’t do that now, can we? The whole retriever thing though, never heard of that. They play everything fairly close to the vest, so as far as we know, they do have these sleepers everywhere just waiting for an immortal to die for the first time so they can pick them up. But that’s just what he says; he could just be jerking us off and taking advantage of the lack of public knowledge on immortals.”
Setting his coffee on a near buy table, Cooper grabbed the closest chair and sat facing the window. “I guess once whatever paperwork comes through, we can go pay a visit to the gilded cage and have a look around. That is, if anything comes down.”
“I’m hoping we get lucky on that front, otherwise all we can pin on this guy is disturbing a crime scene. The DA’s office will have to try and sort out whatever other charges they can throw at him, but without a body or anything else I’m not sure what they can do,” Anderson said as he set down his now empty mug near Cooper’s. “The guy has no record at all that we’ve been able to find so far, we’re still looking down. There’s some old analog stuff I asked law enforcement from UHR to dig through, maybe there’s something there. That may take a while though, even with the request I put in. Our own analog stuff got put into storage down stairs a few years back, that’ll take a bit too.”
“Or he really is an immortal like he says he is,” Cooper cut Anderson off. Cooper leaned back in his chair and started to hum. Anderson had been around Cooper long enough to know that this was his way of getting lost in thought. After what felt like hours of them just staring and thinking about the suspect sitting in the other room, the phone broke their silence.
“Observation room one, Detective Anderson speaking… No, me and Cooper figured as much. We don’t like any of it either but thank you for getting us that much…. Yes, I understand thanks. We’ll let you know how it goes. Talk to you later,” Anderson sighed as he hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Cooper asked, sitting up in his chair again.
“That was the captain. Seems he got us a meeting and a tour by the caged bird himself. Technically the place is listed as an embassy, but very little embassy works comes out of there. He wants you come with me as back up.”
“The Red Butcher, or so some history book called him that. Alright then, let’s see what the Butcher has to say.”
The ride to the gilded cage was uneventful. Neither man talked much after they had gotten on the road; the only sound came from the police radio. They sat parked outside the large fenced-in property for what felt like longer than the ride there. Pulling farther up to the intercom just before the gate, Anderson had started to reach for the button when the gate opened itself up. “I guess they know we’re here,” Anderson said as he brought his arm back as he drove towards the house.
“You’d think that there would more guards about; it’s technically listed as an embassy so you’d think there would be more of a stronger security presence. This doesn’t seem all too secure to me, feels like anyone can just waltz up to the door.”
“Yeah, seems a bit odd. I’m getting the exiled-rich-guy vibe from the house itself, at least from the outside appearance. Okay, let’s get this over with,” Anderson said as he parked.
They made their way to the main entrance and just like with the gate moments earlier, the doors swung open before either men could alert the residence of their presence. Before them stood what appeared to be a maid.
“Welcome to the Gilded Cage. Please come in. We have been expecting you gentlemen,” the servant said as she gently bowed before them.