Riker's Calling - Episode 19

Riker Wednesdays

I FELT UNEASY leaving Jaime, then again, I’ve never felt completely confident in doing so. L.A. was my soul, darkened by experience, the city lights like the thrill of bringing down evil, while she was my heart, nestled in a boat yard, secretly kept from all that was bad. Or so I liked to believe. In reality I had no idea if he knew where she was, but if he did, it meant he would be able to find her anywhere. I had contemplated moving her out to stay with me the last time he had struck, but doing so could have created more harm than good, especially given the line of work I’m in.

Lately I’ve been emailing, texting, calling her twice as often as I normally do, not yet ready to tell her my reasoning behind it. That based on events of the past, I believe this ninth month of the year, this ninth year since he was last active, will be when he chooses to resurface.

She really has no idea, too young at the time to pay attention to news reports. But the day I have dreaded for so long is now fast approaching, and knowing Jaime, knowing the respect she has for truth, she’s going to want details. Details that if not given by me, will be given to her by the world. Oh how I long for the days before the internet.

As I pulled into the parking lot of Union Station I knew I had to get focused. At least one life was depending on me to do so, maybe more. There was no evidence to prove Dory was even alive, having been kidnapped a decade earlier at the age of thirteen. Something was telling me she was. Maybe just that small thing called hope, transferred to me from her desperate parents when they came into my office six months ago.

As with all my cases, I couldn’t help my first thought being he was somehow behind it. He, the elusive psychopath who, for reasons I couldn’t understand, had latched onto me like a disease I couldn’t shake. A dark shadow, that for nearly half my life now, has been looming over me from a distance. But sooner or later I always end up finding the same conclusion; if it doesn’t involve a Spyderco, it’s not him.

Like a superstitious pre-game ritual, whenever my leads take me to the downtown area I make a habit of parking at Union Station and going in on foot. The walking time gets my juices flowing, my mind in the right place, and tonight was no different.

These streets hold a million different secrets, the gutters lying there as timeless witnesses to the modern day savagery of humanity. A fact that can drive you insane if you let it. You can only do so much, one case at a time, and hope that by the time your lights go out, the street sweeping you were able to do made at least a little difference.

I had my latest  hot spot narrowed down to a two-block radius, which if you consider every alleyway, every dark corner and squatter space, would be at least four times the area. It was for this reason that I just had to take my time and roam, waiting for a rat to come crawling out and offer his assistance for a price.

“Hey man, what you lookin’ for?” It was a junkie, no doubt in between riding high, chariots of smack. “Nose candy? Pussy paradise? A deep throat?”

“How ‘bout cherries?” I asked. “Just about ripe? About to get picked any day now?”

“Yo, can take you to cherry pie a la mode! No joke! New batch be bakin’ right now, know what I’m sayin?!”

I held up a hundred dollar bill. “Take me to the bakery.”

Through my deep jacket pocket I held my nine millimeter, following him through a maze of alleys. Past a cesspool of human parasites, scrounging, feeding of one another, until we reached the shell of what once could have been a factory, my guide taking me no further than a broken out window that was ground level.

He pointed to the palm-sized flashlight I held. “You take that, go down in there. It’s like a combo lock- three rights, one left, one right, stop. Sometimes they have a slice right there, ready and waitin’. Sometimes you’ll have to put in an order and wait awhile.”

I handed him the hundred, and just like that he scurried off, back into the filth of the forsaken.

Inside, it was like one of those if-these-walls-could-talk kind of places, more haunting than any battlefield, more eerie than any cemetery, for you just knew that the loss of innocence that had occurred within these walls was staggering. There were stained mattresses atop rusted bed frames, each ornamented with four pairs of handcuffs for a four-point restraint. Before the final right turn I stood there and listened, picking up on one pair of hands preparing drugs, another pair occasionally striking the keys of a laptop.

As I turned into the room