Chapter 7: Talk of Vampires
32Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOTWNtcJRHV
Cassidy was not sure what to think about the regulars at booth three. The thought of these well dressed and arguably elegant people dragging bodies out into the Greenbelt wilderness did not fit inside any motive that she could imagine. She searched for a theoretical reason why these socialites would want to kill attractive strangers. The weakness in that idea made her far more inclined to believe that the crime was the work of a disturbed loner or a drug crazed cult. Nonetheless, when she returned to her home precinct, she did a name search in the New York State Department of Motor Vehicle database. It did not take her long to attach the two faces she saw in The Cavern to the pictures connected to the registration records for Ryan Sandoval and Alexandra Hays. The remaining four names were harder to pin down because she had no idea what they looked like, but she was able to find four individuals with these names who were in the right age range, who lived in the vicinity and had residences that were equivalent in value to Ryan’s and Alexandra’s. It became clear to Cassidy that Brooke Chapman, Ronald Hollis, Christine Meyer and Evan Pritchard, along with Ryan and Alexandra, were comfortably fixed financially, so much so that their financial portfolios did all the work. Cassidy also checked to see if they had any local police records or any warrants and found none. Finally, she submitted a request to the NCIC database for any criminal records anywhere concerning these six individuals, then she set off for home with the understanding that the findings were likely to arrive at her desk by Monday morning.
It was a quarter to three, Sunday morning, when Cassidy parked her car outside of her home. The street on the block where she lived and the streets leading up to it were quiet and still. Her only memories of being up so late as a NYPD Police Officer went back to when she worked the overnight shift with a partner. Back then, it was usually shortly past sunrise when she would return home and, more often than not, it was on a weekday. She was not accustomed to seeing her home block this quiet. The dark stillness of the moment caused her to feel alone and that the houses up and down the street were vacant. This feeling was supported by the realization that her house was empty.
Cassidy had just reached the landing at the top of the stairs leading to her front door when a darkness seemed to soar by overhead in total silence. It was like a shadow flying through the air. She had only perceived a hint of it at the top edge of her vision. She looked up in a hurry to catch sight of it, but it was already gone from view, assuming it was anything at all. She thought that it was just a flicker from one of the streetlights or a bird. She shortly dismissed the thought and opened the front door to her house. All the lights inside were off, and she had no reason to change this condition. She was neither hungry nor thirsty. She had eaten a candy-bar and drank some water at the precinct. She groped her way up to the second level to her bedroom and turned on the light there. After setting her watch, wallet, keys and cellphone on the nightstand, she took off her overcoat and blazer and put them away in the closet. She then removed her belt holster and handgun and put them away in a lower nightstand drawer and then took a seat on the end of her bed. When she prepared to remove her shoes, a creak from the house rafters caught her attention. Cassidy came to an immediate standstill and waited for more of what she just heard to break the silence. She sat still to prevent the noise of her own movements from drowning out the sound a second time. After several seconds of waiting, she decided to abandon the effort. As she reached down to unfasten her shoe, a vibration startled her back into an erect posture.
Cassidy routinely set her cellphone to vibrate while it was on her person, and she regularly forgot to change the setting when she put it down. Its reverberation on the top of the nightstand took her by surprise. She whipped about in the direction of the sound with a momentary expression of shock and then relaxed when she realized it was only her cellphone. Then it dawned on her that this was a strange time for someone to be calling. She was not on-call at the precinct. Her mind jumped to two possibilities: it was a wrong number call or something of importance had occurred. Cassidy opened the line after the third ring.
“Hello.”
“Hi, I am calling for Detective Tremaine,” the voice on the other end of the line declared.
The connection was bad, but Cassidy was still able to comprehend what was said by the caller and the foreign accent in his voice.
“Speaking, who’s this?”
“I am Grigore Stefanescu,” the voice on the other end answered.
“Who?” Cassidy asked before thinking.
An instant after her question, she recalled the name from the Romanian file.
“Grigore—Stefanescu, I need to speak with you,” Grigore stated, a little desperately.
Cassidy remembered Grigore Stefanescu’s name from the Romanian police file, but she did not understand why she was getting this call. She made no request to speak with him, and she could not think of a need to.
“Who gave you my number?”
“Poliția Română,” Grigore returned in his Romanian tainted English. “They say you investigate my case.”
Cassidy noticed the concern in the man’s voice and suspected that he thought her interest in his case was about him. She promptly attempted to dissuade his concerns.
“No, no, I was doing research for a crime that was committed here in New York,” Cassidy explained earnestly.
“I need to tell you what happen,” Grigore returned with growing anxiety.
“Sir, this is something different. What happened to you has nothing to do with the case I’m investigating,” Cassidy quickly explained.
“Yes, it does,” Grigore contradicted just as quickly. “You have to know. I have to tell you.”
Cassidy began to believe that she was speaking with an unstable person. By her assessment of his voice, he seemed to be bordering on paranoia. She quickly concluded that it was better to let him speak so that she could be done with him.
“I have to know what?” Cassidy asked with a hint of exasperation.
There was a notable moment of silence before Grigore spoke again. His speech was less hurried, but his voice was shaky.
“We let them out. We did it.”
Cassidy recalled what he had told the Romanian authorities and surmised what he was speaking of.
“You mean the, ah—Strigoi?” Cassidy asked, disbelieving she was actually having this conversation.
“The vampires,” Grigore countered with alarm.
“Vampires?” Cassidy questioned back with a shake of her head.
“Yes,” Grigore confirmed with a hint of hysterics. “We dug them up. We let them out.”
Cassidy was not prepared for this conversation. It took her a second of thought to determine how she should respond to his assertion.
“Are you saying that vampires are responsible for the murders here?” Cassidy questioned suspiciously.
“Yes!” Grigore insisted excitedly.
Cassidy took a second to consider his reply and then spoke to Grigore in a condescending tone.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Stefanescu, but thank you for…” Cassidy returned before he broke in again.
“You have to listen to me,” Grigore interrupted with a shrill voice. “I’m telling you the truth.”
Grigore’s interruption freed Cassidy from the fear of offending him. She no longer felt the need to soften her responses. The only thing she felt at this moment was a need to be done with him.
“Listen, Mr. Stefanescu,” Cassidy spoke in a challenging tone. “I’m a New York City Police Detective. I don’t believe in ghost stories and monsters.”
“You will,” Grigore insisted an instant behind Cassidy’s remark.
“And why is that?” Cassidy countered with exhaustion.
“Your city is infested with vampires,” Grigore answered with a surprisingly stern delivery.
The dread in Grigore’s delivery took Cassidy by surprise. The thought of hanging up on him was momentarily halted by the intensity of his sincerity. Shortly, she reacquired her unstable opinion of Grigore, thinking his story preposterous, but she elected not to hang up on him out of regard for his feelings.
“So, are you saying I should start sharpening wooden stakes and wearing a crucifix, Mr. Stefanescu?” Cassidy questioned with a bit of ridicule in her tone.
"You must listen to me. You must believe what I say," Grigore insisted with desperation in his voice. “You are in danger.”
Exasperated by the fact that her effort was not dissuading her caller from his objective, Cassidy asked a question she expected to bring their conversation to an end.
"Okay, Mr. Stefanescu, let’s say I believe you. What should I do?"
There was a moment of silence behind Cassidy’s question before Grigore gave his reply with a stark one-word answer.
"Leave."
Cassidy took a moment to absorb his dire warning, and then she responded to it with a somber address.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Stefanescu, but I don’t believe in vampires.”
“You will,” Grigore returned gravely.
Grigore’s last response had convinced Cassidy, finally, that their conversation was over. She was no longer willing to entertain the rantings of an emotionally unstable man.
“Goodbye, Mr. Stefanescu,” Cassidy responded with stern brevity.
Cassidy disconnected the call behind her last word. Nothing that Grigore Stefanescu said gave her reason to believe that there was a common cause between the death of her victims and the four bodies in Romania. It had to be a freak coincidence. Shortly after hanging up the phone, she relegated the entire conversation to a bizarre incident best forgotten. A short time later, Cassidy was asleep in her bed.
Despite the late hour when Cassidy went to bed, her internal clock would not allow her to sleep past 8 a.m. the next morning. She was in no hurry to retrieve her children from her parents. She already knew that her mother and father had no plans for the day, so she decided to use the remainder of the morning attending to household chores. Shortly before 2 p.m., Cassidy arrived at her parents’ home to collect Cynthia and John. Margaret promptly invited her to stay for dinner. Her offer was motivated by the fact that Cassidy’s older brother and his family were also coming to dinner. Margaret was already preparing a big family dinner with the assumption that Cassidy would stay.
Aaron Tremaine and his wife, Diane, arrived shortly past three in the afternoon with their children: Joseph, 10; Sharon, 8 and Mark, 5. It was a rare opportunity for Cassidy to visit with her older brother and his family. Aaron’s home was in the Bronx which made casual and coincidental meetings between them unlikely. They were never to incline to visit and reminisce much anyway. Their chance meetings usually came about when visiting their parents’ home. This was one of those occasions.
“How’s the investigation going?” Aaron asked.
The kids were outside at this time, and Aaron felt free to bring up the subject now that the adults were comfortably situated in the living-room and fixed with soft drinks.
“Would you believe me if I said it was going okay?” Cassidy questioned back.
Cassidy believed everyone expected her to fail. It was her insecurity that prompted her response.
“I probably would have if your response had come in the form of a statement,” Aaron returned with a smile.
“Those types of crimes are never easy,” Daniel casually interjected.
“Are you talking about those bodies that were found in the Greenbelt?” Diane asked with a confused look.
Diane rarely paid attention to the specifics of her husband’s work. Generally, she took it all in as a whole and then dismissed it. Crimes and criminals were normally a distasteful subject for her. Despite her general feeling of distaste, the news of the Greenbelt Nine, and her sister-in-law’s involvement with it, stuck in her memory. It was that recollection that prompted her query.
“Yeah, it’s the only thing I’m working on right now.” Cassidy told Diane.
“Do you have any leads?” Diane asked inquisitively.
“We’re investigating a suspicion,” Cassidy answered with a noticeable absence of confidence.
“Why were they killed?” Diane hesitantly asked.
Diane was not sure if it was okay to ask Cassidy about her investigation. Being a police officer’s wife, she understood that speaking of an active investigation to anyone outside of the immediate family was not allowed. But she was not sure if Cassidy was aware of her discretion in such matters or if it made any difference to her.
“My partner thinks they were robberies,” Cassidy answered without hesitation.
“But you don’t?” Aaron asked knowingly.
Cassidy gave the question a moment of thought before answering without conviction.
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“Trying to understand why these people do what they do is a waste of time,” Daniel grumbled with indifference.
“I hear you went to a few clubs last night,” Aaron said casually. “Do you think that something is going in the clubs?”
Aaron’s inquiry was motivated by the need to advance the conversation. He was not particularly interested in the state of Cassidy’s investigation, and he doubted that she would give him all that she was doing.
“There is support for that thinking,” Cassidy returned. “But we haven’t been able to find a club that connects these nine victims.”
“You won’t,” Daniel disputed with an ‘I told you so’ tone. “Those killings are the work of some random nutcase. He’s a stranger. Somebody that nobody knows.”
“I don’t think so,” Cassidy returned in defense of her investigation. “I think they all knew this person, and I think they trusted him or them.”
“Them? You think that it was more than one person?” Diane asked with surprise.
Still in a defensive mode Cassidy answered Diane’s query with more than a hint of resolve.
“I think it might be.”
Aaron was still taking it all in with casual interest. He did not share his father’s opposition for Cassidy’s chosen profession or for detectives in general. He was aware of the ongoing dispute between his father and sister, but since it did not involve him, he never engaged in it. His curiosity about the case prompted him to ask another question.
“Do you at least know what happened?”
“No, not a clue.” Cassidy responded with a shake of her head. “We’re still waiting on forensics for that.”
“I take it you have no information on their movements?” Aaron’s question assumed.
“The missing person investigations did the footwork on that,” Cassidy explained with a puzzled look. “There’s no record on where they were going or how they were planning to get there.”
“MTA, taxi…?” Aaron inquired.
“They weren’t dressed in clothes that suggested they were traveling by mass transit,” Cassidy returned. “I suppose it’s possible, but the missing person investigations found nothing on CCTV to confirm it. A couple of the victims had cars, but they were found at their residence. Several of the victims frequently used a transportation service, but there’s no dispatch records for a taxi or an Uber or a Lyft car going to the addresses of the victims on the days they went missing.”
“So, someone picked them up?” Aaron questioned more than stated.
“That’s the prevailing theory,” Cassidy answered back.
Aaron was a little surprised that he did not get a more definitive answer to his question. After a pause to display his confusion, he continued his inquiry.
“No eye witnesses?”
“A couple, but one is not sure he was seeing the victim and neither had information about the car other than it was a dark colored sedan.”
Aaron went silent. He did not know what more to say or think about Cassidy’s investigation into the Greenbelt Nine. Shortly, Diane seized the moment and asked a question.
“You don’t have any suspects?”
“I have some people of interests,” Cassidy confessed with some show of reluctance. “But I haven’t been able to find a way to make them fit the crime.”
“But you think they could have done it?” Aaron asked.
“To be honest, it’s more likely that I’m just trying to find a way to attach a strange group of people to a bizarre crime.”
“What’s your next step?” Aaron asked.
“Tomorrow I’m going to interview more friends and family members of the victims and hope that I can find something that connects these nine people.” Cassidy explained with a slight shrug.
Diane was intrigued by Cassidy’s strange group of people. The subject had taken on the flavor of a murder mystery in her mind. The fact that Cassidy made no mention of them in her plans for tomorrow prompted her to ask about them.
“What about your strange group?”
“I’m in the process of peeling away their life story as we speak,” Cassidy explained in a matter of fact manner. “I should know by the end of the day tomorrow if they have any criminal records or were a person of interest in any crimes. And I will continue to look into their backgrounds, but if I don’t find something that sends up a red flag, then I will have nothing to support investigating them any further.”
Diane was a little disappointed with that answer. This strange group of people had captured her imagination, and she had some hope that there was some secret to be uncovered there. Cassidy’s response deflated that hope a great deal, and she settled back into the reality of the moment and inquired no more about it. The other family members could think of nothing more to ask Cassidy on the subject either. It was clear to them all that she had nothing concrete to say about her investigation and thought it best not to dwell on it any longer. The conversation moved to a new topic and never returned to the Greenbelt Nine.
It was approaching nine o’clock at night when Cassidy stepped back inside her home with Cynthia and John. She shortly put the children to bed and then followed them into slumber. When she awakened, it was Monday morning. She started her day as she had a hundred times before. She arrived at work, early as usual and began reading through the E-mails that had accrued since she last viewed her mailbox. She found the translated Romanian police file from Dr. McCullough and reluctantly decided to read through it. She needed to be thorough even though she had abandoned the idea that it had any relevance to her investigation.
“Good morning bright eyes,” Alan greeted as he approached his desk.
Cassidy looked up from her computer monitor and sent him a smile and a “good morning.”
“So, what’s on the calendar for today?” Alan questioned as he hung up his coat.
“We go back to questioning friends and family and try to find something that connects these victims.
“Sounds like a plan,” Alan endorsed with artificial optimism.
Alan sat down behind his desk and had just turned on his computer when he noticed Cassidy concentrating deeply on something she was reading.
“What are you looking at?”
Alan’s question awakened Cassidy from her study. She gave Alan a quick look and then turned back to her monitor as she responded to his question.
“I’m reading a translated version of that Romanian file.”
“I thought we abandoned that as a possible lead,” Alan returned with a little surprise.
“We did,” Cassidy returned. “But it’s here, so I’m giving it a look through.”
Alan acknowledged her answer with a nod. He had turned his attention to the E-mail in his own mailbox when Cassidy told him about the call she received from Grigore.
“He called you?” Alan asked with a stunned expression.
“I think Janice referenced me when she did a search for indentations that matched what she found on our victims.”
“What did he want?” Alan queried.
“He wanted to warn me,” Cassidy answered with a smile and slight shake of her head.
“Warn you of what?”
“He says New York is infested with vampires,” Cassidy returned, still smiling.
“Vampire, vampires?” Alan questioned with incredulity.
“That’s what he said,” Cassidy answered.
“So, he’s telling us to start looking for Dracula?” Alan questioned.
Cassidy gave his question a nod as she continued to read. Alan turned his attention back to his own E-mails so she could read without disruption. The silence between them lasted for several minutes before Cassidy snatched up her phone and dialed out.
LINE BREAK
“Dr. McCullough,” Janice announced into her desktop phone.
“Janice, this is Cassidy. In one of the pictures, there is writing on the cave wall, but I can’t find a translation for it.” Cassidy stated without hesitation. “Where is that?”
“The pictures in the Romanian file?” Janice asked for clarification.
“Yeah, there’s some writing on the cave wall in one of the pictures, but I can’t find a translation for it,” Cassidy affirmed.
“The Romanian authorities probably didn’t think it was important enough to include the translation in the file,” Janice reported with little interest.
Cassidy was confused by her explanation. It took her a moment to figure out her meaning.
“So, the writing isn’t Romanian?”
“No, it’s Latin,” Janice explained matter-of-factly. “Whoever wrote that was probably alive when the Roman Empire stretched across Romania.”
“Can you find someone who can translate it?” Cassidy asked.
“I’m sure I can dig someone up, but why?” Janice asked back. “It’s just a two-thousand-year-old scribbling on a cave wall. What relevance could it have to the case.”
“Someone took the time to photographic it,” Cassidy answered passively. “I want to know what it says.”
“Okay, I’ll find someone who reads Latin and get back to you,” Janice said.
“Thanks, Janice.”
LINE BREAK
Cassidy hung up the phone and went back to reading. She abandoned the file after several minutes more of study and then turned her attention to Alan.
“Are you ready?”
Alan had just finished with his E-mails and acknowledged that he was ready to continue their investigation. They readied themselves to leave for another day of questions and answers with the acquaintances of the Greenbelt Nine when Alan brought up an observation from one of his E-mails.
“I noticed that the background checks didn’t find anything on those six Cavern Nightclub regulars you spoke of. Are we crossing them off the list?”
“Not yet,” Cassidy answered as she slipped into her trench coat.
“Why not?” Alan asked. “There’s no police records concerning them, no arrests, no warrants, no investigations. There’s not even a speeding ticket on any of their records.”
“Yeah, but I still find something odd about them,” Cassidy explained with a thoughtful look.
“What’s that?” Alan asked as they began to move toward the exit.
“I don’t know,” Cassidy responded, looking confused.
Alan thought for a moment before responding with a bit of pessimism.
“Well, here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. I think investigating the six of them is a waste of time.”
“You could be right,” Cassidy acknowledged as they moved into the hallway. “But I can’t shake the feeling that something is off with them.”
“What?” Alan wanted to know. “Name me one thing that is out of place with any of them?”
“That’s just it,” Cassidy returned with a more confused expression. “They’re too clean. Their names don’t come up anywhere.”
“There’s nothing uncommon about that,” Alan challenged.
“Not for one person,” Cassidy countered. “But I would expect to find a black mark on at least one of them—a minor notation, a ticket, a jury summons, something.”
“Okay, maybe that’s unusual,” Alan began in a conciliatory tone. “But I wouldn’t call it odd.”
“You want odd?” Cassidy questioned back with a hint of defiance. “Try this. All six of them were born in the same year.”
“What’s odd about that?” Alan disputed. “They probably met each other in high school or college.”
“No, they didn’t,” Cassidy quickly disputed. “They grew up in different states, and they attended different colleges. And now here they are all together and the best of friends.”
Alan thought another moment before giving it a one-word response.
“Coincidence.”
Alan and Cassidy spoke no more on the subject for the remainder of the day. Cassidy was not convinced of her position and Alan could not dispute that the coincidence of their mutual birth year and super clean footprints were not peculiar. For the rest of their workday, they tracked down and interviewed seven more friends or family members of the Greenbelt Nine. Despite their effort, they found nothing to connect the nine victims other than their nightclub hopping pastime. They returned to their precinct with nothing of interest to show for their efforts.
Alan was not at all dejected by the failure of the day. He was not expecting any great discovery to arise. He believed that anything of significance would have popped up in the first twenty-four hours of their investigation. Experience taught him that evidence was either there to be immediately discovered or not there at all. He had long concluded that this case was in the latter category. For Alan, it was just another day of accrued work hours.
Cassidy was in a different frame of mind. She hated that another day had passed without a break in the case. It was not an unusual occurrence for a detective’s investigation to fizzle out. What made this failure especially disturbing to Cassidy was the feeling that she was on the clock with this case. This investigation felt like a personal challenge.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Alan assuaged. “No one expected you to solve this case.”
“I expect to solve my cases,” Cassidy lashed back at her partner. “You can sit on your ass and wait for retirement if you want, but I still have three more days and I will figure this out.”
Alan was not hurt by Cassidy’s offensive and angry outburst. Life, for the most part, was something he took in his stride. He understood that Cassidy’s anger reflected how she felt and really had nothing to with him. He had no doubt that she would shortly feel guilty for her words and he forgave her as soon as she said them.
“I will see you tomorrow, Detective,” Alan said with a smile.
Cassidy was still in the heat of her anger and could not bring herself to produce a pleasant response. After a moment of silence, Alan turned away and left the squad room. Cassidy continued to mope at her desk for a minute or two more, then she grudgingly got up to leave. She was in the 122’s parking lot, just a few steps away from her car, when her cellphone began to ring. She promptly pulled it out of her coat pocket and answered.
“Hi, Cassidy, this is Janice. I hope you don’t mind me calling after hours, but I just got the translation.”
Cassidy was at first confused by this declaration. She had already been through the translated version of the Romanian police file and did not understand why Janice was bringing it up again. It took her a moment to remember the writing on the cave walls.
“Oh, the cave walls,” Cassidy acknowledged with a start.
“Yeah, I thought you wanted that,” Janice returned with a hint of confusion. “You made it sound important this morning.”
“I wouldn’t use the word important,” Cassidy corrected. “I was annoyed that it was there and there was no translation for it.”
“Well there is now,” Janice returned with an upbeat tone. “I sent it to your inbox just now, but I can tell you if you want to hear it.”
“What’s the translation, Janice?” Cassidy asked.
“This is not a word for word translation and the pronunciations and accents for the names are probably off,” Janice qualified beforehand. “But it reads like this: ‘I, Christian Domitius Norbanus, declare before man and god my undying love for Constance Ofella. 817 A.D.’ Can you believe that? It’s a twelve-hundred-year-old love note.”
Janice joyfully concluded her report. Cassidy was surprised rather than humored and had no reply. After a few seconds of silence, Janice continued.
“Apparently, the dark age of Romania had its share of Romeos,” Janice suggested with delight.
Cassidy found nothing amusing. Her feelings were quite the opposite, and she gave voice to her feelings a moment later.
“He loved her,” Cassidy returned as though speaking to herself. “He knew he was going to die, and his final thoughts were of her.”
Janice took note of Cassidy's serious tone and brought her own tone closer to her level.
"I suppose it is sweet," Janice imparted. "Who would have thought there were men like that back then?"
"I was beginning to think there were never any men like that," Cassidy mumbled back.
"You know what your problem is, Cassidy," Janice began in a lecturing tone. "You're a romantic. You have to learn to take men as they come."
"No, I don't," Cassidy corrected with finality. "Thanks for the translation."
Cassidy disconnected the call.
LINE BREAK
Griff’s Place was a sport’s bar that Alan frequented after work. Prolonging his time away from home was his primary reason for going there. This pastime was not the result of any hostility between his wife and himself; he and Helen Mercer were looking forward to his retirement. They were making joint plans to travel the country and the world. His visits to Griff’s Place had more to do with an absence of passion. With over twenty-seven years of marriage, they had become comfortably apathetic toward each other. Because of Alan’s hunger for social interaction, Helen’s indifference to his absence and the concentration of people he knew at this bar, it became a popular after work destination for him.
When Alan walked into the bar, he was greeted by several people. Each welcome alerted another of his presence. There were a couple of jests made at his expense and one serious inquiry regarding the disposition of his one and only investigation. He entertained them all with humor and casual indifference. He made his way to a section of the bar where two other detectives were seated. He positioned himself at the end and joined in the conversation. He maintained their society for the better part of a half an hour before the two detectives took their leaves and set off for their homes. Alan stayed behind and contented himself by watching the sports news displayed on the monitors in front of him.
“Do you mind?”
The question came from the attractive young lady that had been sitting at a table across the room from Alan. He had noticed her sitting there, as did all the other men in the bar. Her presence in Griff’s Place seemed out of place. Alan had never seen her there before. Most who came to Griff’s were regulars. She looked too well dressed for a late Monday afternoon, and there were no large office buildings in the area. For a while, he entertained the idea that she was a schoolteacher by the way she was engaged with something on her computer tablet as she nursed a white wine.
“Ah, not at all,” Alan responded as he gestured to the seat next to him.
Alan never considered the idea of saying no to the young lady, but it did seem odd to him that she wanted to sit next to him. There were other open seats at the bar. A few of them would have provided her with an open seat to either side of her. He briefly thought that she was coming on to him but dismissed it in favor of her possible interested in what was being aired on the TV monitor in front of him.
“Are the Yankees any better this year,” the young lady softly asked as she leaned slightly toward Alan.
The question took Alan by surprise. Her interest in baseball was expected, but her willingness to converse with him on the subject took his thoughts back to the idea that her move to his side was about him and not the television. Flattered by the idea, this renewed thought had him momentarily at a loss for a reply. He shortly dismissed the thought as wishful thinking and became amused by his own gullibility. With a smile on his face, he produced a reply.
“Who knows? To hear these guys tell it, we’ve made some improvements, but half the league has made improvements too.”
The attractive young lady gave Alan a pleasant smile in reaction to his reply, then she turned back to sipping her wine. After a brief silence, she asked Alan another question.
“Am I correct in believing that you and your friends are police officers, or is that a misinterpretation?”
The fact that this young lady had listened in on his conversation had Alan newly amused by her attention. His revised suspicion was that she wanted to talk to him because he was a police officer.
“Yes, we are,” Alan confirmed with a nod.
The young lady responded with a broad smile, then submitted another question.
“So, am I in a police hangout?”
“Our precinct is nearby and a lot of us like this spot,” Alan explained after making a half turn toward the young lady.
In response, the young lady leaned forward onto the counter and a little in Alan’s direction and asked another smiling question.
“What kind of police officer are you?”
“I’m a detective, second grade, homicide,” Alan answered without hesitation.
The young lady continued to hold her smile through Alan’s answer and put a new question to him an instant behind his reply.
“Homicide, I’m impressed. Are there a lot of homicides in your precinct?”
“We are a little above the national average,” Alan answered with a seemingly automatic reply.
“So, you must have multiple cases that you’re working on?” The young lady leaned forward to ask while holding a winsome smile.
“No, I only have one right now,” Alan instantly returned with a slight shake of his head.
Alan could not stop himself from giving direct answers to her questions. There was something about the way she spoke, or the way she looked at him, that made him feel compelled to give answers.
“Really? I would love to hear about this case,” the young lady sweetly professed.
In the past, talking about his work with civilians was taboo, but for some nebulous reason that his mind had trouble recognizing, that rule did not seem to apply to her.
“We’re investigating the Greenbelt…”
Alan was cut off from his reply by a sweetly spoken interjection from the attractive young lady.
“No, Detective Mercer. Tell me while you drive me home.”
“Okay,” Alan agreed automatically.
Alan got up from his seat, paid his tab and escorted the young lady out of Griff’s Place with a look of hypnotic obedience.
ns216.73.216.13da2
and then Add to home screen.