High Road

Chapter 1
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Chapter Description: LaCrone begins the case, but things get interesting sooner than he expected. Meaning he never expected it to get interesting at all.

The Inspector’s villa was characterized by its copious foliage and jutting stone architecture, which led Lieutenant Hughes to suspect that he would be too absorbed in his hedonistic affairs to care about the goings-on of the world, but despite this, he ventured deeper into the lair that housed the man of yester-year’s renown, Inspector LaCrone. Mr. LaCrone was by no means decrepit or unfit to serve, which led Hughes to be even more uneasy. At the relatively young age of thirty five, it was curious that LaCrone would take so much time off. Once the hero of the American people, it seemed that the Inspector had done his best to fade into obscurity. Perhaps it was his unusual rise to notability that drove him? Who was to say?

Hughes burned these thoughts from his head as he remembered the facts: it had been eleven years since LaCrone’s crowning achievement, as the year of 1997 truly brought his career to light with the catching of the Trapdoor Killer, a murderer with infamy for infiltrating houses by cutting holes in the roof. Hughes granted that for the past eleven years LaCrone had proved indefatigable in his ability to solve various crimes, but he couldn’t get past the early recline. As he reached the balcony of Mr. LaCrone’s manor, he realized that the grounds and house as a whole merely appeared larger than they were because of the encompassing effect. Nonetheless, he proceeded to address his superior.

“Inspector LaCrone, I was asked to hand deliver this case file to you, and only you,” the Lieutenant reported shortly, but the return was a mere, “Yes... you may leave the file on my table. I’ll look into it, and thank you.”

Somewhat disappointed, Hughes returned a curt nod and left obediently, stopping only to leave behind the sealed case file. What Mr. Hughes did not know is that Peter LaCrone did not shirk the line of duty, but merely grew bored of it, as he had with all things in time. LaCrone had accepted this case specifically because it had left previous investigators unsure of where to even begin. I do hope this will provide some hint of a challenge, he thought to himself, breaking the seal and releasing the papers within.

Peter LaCrone was not a showy man. He did not exercise prodigality, nor did he suffer servants for tasks he could complete himself. He purchased his house to encompass him and let him escape, not to earn the respect of others, and so it was small, but gave the impression of being large. Similarly, when Peter decided to begin in New Jersey, he did so by driving himself to the train station, where he padded the stationmaster’s palm with a generous tip to ensure his car would be watched carefully during his absence. The case file on disappearances in the New England states regions, primarily, but it listed possible links as far West as Michigan. Most of it, he suspected, was completely unrelated, as were many cases similar to this. An investigator would see two similar scenes, assume they are linked, and file them accordingly. Peter sighed, realizing this case would probably be a simple work out of bureaucracy, then the hunting of numerous small timers, even if it would occupy his time.

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Around two o’clock on the sunny Sunday afternoon, Peter found himself in the nineteenth consecutive hour of his trail. Much like the vines that latticed the rails of the Italian coffee shop he now camped, ever pursuant of the sun which shone through the crystalline windows, bleached a yellowish white from years of filtering rays. New Jersey had been a bust. The man he was looking for showed up with amnesia, but his property was undamaged and he had lost no possessions. The police checked him for physical or mental damage, but he appeared to have suffered none, and resolved to keep tabs on him to ensure that nothing strange revealed itself. Michigan, likewise, had resolved itself. A woman who had stumbled upon a drug ring importing cheap pharmaceuticals from Canada was bound, gagged, and tossed into Lake Superior. Peter realized there was something decidedly shady about the woman he was shadowing, but kept his distance, trying to glean clues to what the woman was up to.

LaCrone opened his wallet, revealing a mirror, and he tore his eyes away from his mark for a moment. He examined himself. He was by no means an unattractive man: his eyes and hair were black (the ladder with a generous complement of gel, which served to hold it in a formal position), and a medium-sized mustache, no beard, made him look handsome, if stereotypical for a detective. Peter mused a moment, considering whether or not one needed a good mustache to be a good detective, but then banished the ridiculous thought. He traced one of his sideburns before flipping his wallet closed again and diverting his attention once more to the woman.

She was finished paying, and was pushing her child’s stroller toward the door with her left hand, coffee in right. Mrs. Coel was his target, a woman with no official criminal history, but with suspicious reports from the neighbors dating around six months ago around the time of her husband’s disappearance. She was a suspect for quite some time, but when no evidence or motive could be found for his murder, the case was dropped. Shortly after the investigation ended, she adopted a child aged about one and a half years old, which would now make him two. He noted, however, that despite his age he was still seated in the stroller. Based on his psychology classes, he attributed the adoption initially to loneliness, but after interviewing the neighbors, she seemed actually happier after he had disappeared, and overjoyed with the adoption.

This didn’t particularly bother Mr. LaCrone, but he did think it strange. It was stranger still that while about five out of six cases in his file were closed on completely unrelated reasons, about one in six had these same details... suspicious behavior, police give up, and then the suspicious spouse, significant other, or relative adopts a young child, usually very young. He did consider, shortly, that it could be coincidence, or perhaps that maybe a celebrity had just adopted another child (he didn’t particularly pay attention to such things), but with no leads, it seemed like a curious connection to look into. After all, it’s not like there could be a ring of assassins that requires you to adopt a child as payment... at least he strongly believed there wasn’t. It was his open-mindedness, his willingness to look into the strange and believe the far-out that led Mr. LaCrone to success in his field. If he hadn’t thought to look into curious spider depopulation, he never would have caught the Trapdoor Killer, who had been actually living in the houses of his victims for weeks at a time before their murder, unlike what most investigators believed, and his severe arachnophobia led him to spray houses with stolen poison. While most investigators dismissed this common thread as ludicrous, Peter found success in it, which was why he was now shadowing what could be a completely innocent, caring woman.

He closed his eyes and listened again. He had dropped a penny in the stroller’s pocket earlier that served a dual purpose. The penny was carved out inside and carried a broadcast signal as well as a low-quality microphone. This allowed him to track, and listen in. Most of the speech was muffled, but now the woman was talking to her child, face close enough to reveal her words. There was no way she suspected anyone could hear her, that’s the only certainty he had, for what he heard her say was one of the strangest things he had heard in his career. “You stupid animal, I hope your prison gives you a LOT of time to think. After all, your body matches your brain, eh?” She subsided into chuckling, withdrew, and began to depart.

He turned the words over in his head. Of course she couldn’t expect the child to comprehend her, but she clearly was speaking to him... But when he spoke with the neighbors, despite their uneasy feeling about her, they said they had heard nothing but good things from her house. They never suspected abuse, and the child seemed to be perfectly healthy, if growing somewhat slowly. Knowing that his years of psychology would be key to this case, he stood, quieting the squeal of his chair, and followed the woman out to her car, but then passed her and got in his own vehicle. He’d need to find a better way to listen in: a way to get the whole story.