He awoke from the inky blackness of sleep, still dazed but somewhat regaining his composure. Hall’s mind raced to a thousand conclusions about his situation, but as minutes passed he began to remember what had brought him to be sitting on this hospital bed, bruised and sore from a hundred different points of pain. Suddenly, the door to his hospital room opened and Hubbard entered his sights.
“Here to finish the job?” barked Hall.
“What are you talking about?”
Hall stared at him intensely,“How long have I been here?”
“Around two days,” responded Hubbard.
“That means that two days ago, while I was out and off the job, a couple men who I assumed worked for you came up to me and asked about O’Brien and probably about the skull too, but I walked out before they could finish. Those same guys ended up knocking me out cold on the street later. So what’s this all about?” Hall’s question pierced the air and Hubbard’s psyche.
“I’m promising you, those weren’t my men.”
“Well then it was someone else, which makes it worse doesn’t it? We’ve got a lot more to worry about now, since apparently things are slipping and info is getting out.”
“More like the population we’re dealing with back there is getting angry and took it out on you. Or at least wanted to know where we put the skull,” Hubbard stated bleakly.
“Well you better talk to those freaks in the woods about letting us do our job, even if they don’t understand our methods. First they go and kill that girl, next they beat up a detective investigating that exact case? What even was that skull, sir? How am I supposed to explain this to my partner, because I’m finding it harder to keep him in the dark.”
Hubbard’s mind raced, but he attempted to be civil and keep the situation cool, for any second someone could walk in and the true nature of the entire police force could be revealed.
“Let me take care of the cult, you can figure out O’Brien,” Hubbard said as he attempted to assure Hall.
What the two men did not realize was that just outside the door stood O’Brien himself, his previously unfounded suspicions becoming reality. These two men were accomplices of some kind, and there was an even larger game going on in the woods. And in his own police department. He had numerous ideas, but one stood out the most. He would have to trail Hubbard to the woods and see for himself who he was meeting.
Weeks passed as the healthy detective worked diligently in the company of no others, constantly haunted by the idea of a conspiracy underlying the whole task force. This was the predicament that only plagued Hollywood cinemas, yet it had weaseled its way into the real life situations of Officer O’Brien.
As he hunched over his desk, filling out paperwork and sorting out leads and suspicions regarding Katherine Greene, a chair scraped on the marble beside him.
“What’d I miss?” asked the disheveled Hall.
“Welcome back from the dead,”responded O’Brien, “Nothing much, still stuck on this case. Maybe now that you’re back we can get the case moving again.”
Hall struggled opening his computer, the cast on his arm weighing him down.
“Yeah, I’ll try my best. I came up with a couple ideas at the Hospital.”
“Share,” replied O’Brien, cooly, trying to masquerade his disgust towards the crooked partner.
“We should go check out the High School,” said Hall. “Ziegler didn’t give us shit but we can figure some stuff out there, talk to some teachers, check out the woods, it’ll give us something.”
“Yeah we can do that,” replied O’Brien. “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll head to the school, maybe ask some teachers some stuff.”
“Sounds good,” retorted Hall. “Go home man, get some rest, I’ll finish up the paperwork. You’ve been working really hard.”
O’Brien almost burst, but controlled his emotions. He knew that there was nothing at the High School, that it had nothing to do with the disappearance of the popular teen. This group of people were clearly in charge of everything that was happening and now Hall was asking to him to go home early? Something was bound to happen as soon as he left, but he did not have the energy to argue at this point.
“Thanks,” he muttered. “See you in the morning.”
A familiar feeling washed over O’Brien as the squad car holding him and his corrupt partner drove up to the entrance of the high school. Going through the entrance doors, they happened to run into Amy Palmer, who was going about her usual classes, obviously trying to recover from the loss of a dear friend.
“Hello, Amy!” Hall chirped.
“Hello, officer,” Amy responded quietly and with little confidence
“I know this is hard for you, but we’ve been told from trustworthy sources that Katherine was involved in some kind of high school drama and that could’ve lead to her disappearance.”
“I don’t know much about that, everyone liked Katherine…Noah and her were in a fight, but I already told you that”
“Are you sure you can say that about everyone else?” O’Brien inquired, attempting to throw his partner off of any possible notions that the truth had been discovered about his late night activities.
“Pretty sure. Maybe ask her teachers? They would probably know more about it,” Katherine responded
Inside the teacher’s office of Mr. Lerry, a tall, thin, and semi-handsome man, Hall and O’Brien continued to do their work and asked him questions concerning his student.
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary for Katherine, possibly something troubling her?”
“I don’t notice those kinds of things very easily, but she seemed normal from what I remembered. Happy and chipper to be in class, which is more than I can say for most students,” Mr. Lerry responded with confidence.
“Did you also have her boyfriend, Noah Calvin?” asked Hall.
“Yes, in another one of my classes. Not the most bright of the school, and not the most respectable either. But I didn’t pay much attention to him. Seemed rude, and a little strange.”
“Thank you Mr. Lerry, that was helpful,” O’Brien said, cutting off the conversation.
The two men returned to the squad car, where Hall seemed more excited about the case than usual. Obviously, he seemed to think the veil was slowly being pulled away concerning his involvement in the case, and maybe an attempt at acting would help downplay O’Brien’s possible suspicions. In reality, it only made them worse.
“Hall, I’ll be honest and say I’m feeling really under the weather today. The wife brought us food from a local restaurant yesterday and its just now starting to hit me,” laughed O’Brien.
“You want me to take over? I can,” Hall looked at his partner suspiciously, realizing the story he was being told was most likely one of misdirection.
“Thank you, yeah that would be nice. I just can’t keep my mind straight right now, and I’m not gonna be any good on the job, you know?”
“Yeah, we all get days like that,” smirked Hall.
As O’Brien and Hall went into the car and drove back into the station, with Hall exiting at his stop and O’Brien apparently going back home, Hall stared at the car as it peddled away. The air loomed heavy with disdain, but mostly worry coming from the involved detective.
O’Brien set himself upon the hill, giving him a tactical vantage point of the meeting that would take place below him. The tracker on Hubbard’s car had led him straight to here, and this open clearing of land a couple miles behind the high school seemed to make sense for some sort of conspiring discussion. Suddenly, O’Brien was forced to duck down as Hubbard entered view far below him. The superior stood, waiting. His patience was answered by what appeared to be over a dozen men with dirty and haunting deer antlers upon their heads. As O’Brien watched, both parties mouths moved. If he could hear the conversation, it would still be foreign to him, one consisting of accusations and questions. Why Hall was attacked. Why they continue to make the safety of their own people harder to maintain. But O’Brien only could see the ongoings, and in doing so, saw a heated and strange argument between Hubbard and a tall man, apparently the leader of the antlered group, who blended in with the rest, only standing more forward than the others. O’Brien pulled out his camera and captured pictures of the meeting. This was the beginning of his investigation, and he knew it would be dangerous. What he still didn’t know was how high this could possibly go.
The next day, O’Brien returned to the precinct and was quickly stopped by Hall, who caught his arm in an almost forceful way.
“We’ve got a new lead, a woman just called saying she’s seen Katherine Greene. This could be it. Someone’s found her O’Brien,” Hall spoke with glee.
“Where?” questioned O’Brien
“Couple miles from town, says her name is Deborah Herring, lives in the rural part of this state. We have to go now if we have any chance of finding Katherine.”
The two men jumped into their vehicle and drove at breakneck speeds towards the farm by which Deborah lived. Hall bit his nails consistently while O’Brien sat in a dazed state of confusion and shock. None of this was making sense, especially after the pictures he had taken and the images of the antlered man talking to his superior just a couple hours earlier. The car pulled up to the spot, a land devoid of much life, if at all. O’Brien’s eyes intensified, and his mind focused upon the lie he was told. There was no lead. There was no Deborah. Hall was attempting to kill him.
He slowly stepped out of the car, his mind racing at any way to escape his fate. Gun in his holster. Seconds to reach it. Hall plans to do the same soon. Keep him talking.
“So…”
“This is the spot she told us. I don’t know where that barn would be,” Hall assured O’Brien this was real.
“Well I don’t see it,” O’Brien explained. Hall pointed across the land, in front of both of the men
“Is that it?”
There was nothing to see, and both men had come to realize that no secrets were being held from each other anymore. There was no reason to act, as there would be no audience to see the spectacle of violence about to be enacted.
“How’d you know what I was doing?” O’Brien finally broke the veil.
“Hubbard’s not an idiot. He knew that tracker was on his car the second you placed it,” laughed Hall.
Silence blew between the men, with O’Brien’s head firmly placed a few feet forwards of Hall’s pistol. The wind began to die down, and only a quiet hum of far off cars and traffic entered their ears. No words were to be exchanged. No apologies would be made. And in an instant, all changed. The sound, the smell, the body count. The sound of a gun firing echoed throughout emptiness.
