The whiskey flowing down Theo’s throat was like the nectar of the Gods. The sting had become a familiar companion and something he liked to focus on. He felt like it kept him grounded and fixated on the moment instead of drifting back into the nightmare that was his memory. However, the sting was fading with each drink, thus requiring more with every slug.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been there, sitting at his booth in the Endless Wit. He couldn’t tell if it had been days or weeks. He knew the bar wasn’t open 24 hours, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember where he was staying while it was closed. He simply knew it wasn’t at home. For a brief moment, Theo had forgotten why he didn’t want to return to his home. He started thinking about it. His gut told him that he just didn’t want to bother Kara, but he knew that wasn’t it. As his thoughts began to dwell on his wife, a terrible feeling started to rise, and as if it were a highly trained skill, Theo’s muscle memory kicked in, guiding his arm to effectively bring the drink to his lips and finished off the spirit within.
After setting the empty glass back down, Theo knew he would be needing another very quickly. He reached into his inside coat pocket for his stylus, but was unable to find it. He searched the opposite pocket, then started patting down all of his pockets, and searching around the table. The only physical object on the table was the empty glass, but it was also cluttered by a virtual ashtray brimming with butts, a couple boxes of cigarettes, Theo’s digital companion, Chess, and a few of her toys. He couldn’t exactly see through them, but without his stylus, he had no way to remove them.
“What the fuck?” Theo said, growing angrier by the second. The bartender arrived, replacing the empty glass with a freshly poured one, and startling Theo in the process. “Oh! Uh... thank you... Is this on the house or what?”
“Not even a little bit,” the bartender said, “in fact, I’ve been considering charging more, but I don’t think it would deter you.”
“That it would not. Keep ‘em coming.” Theo picked up the new glass and saluted the bartender before he left the table. He took a swig from the glass, and sighed with relief. He watched as his companion took a sip from her own glass. Theo furled his brow. “How long has it been since you got a refill?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not something I keep track of.” Lily said.
“I’m pretty fuckin’ sure that’s a lie.” Theo nearly shouted with a laugh. “Whatever, what were you talking about? Prison or something?”
“I was actually asking you what you thought about punishment in general. Do you think prison is the best kind of punishment for serious crimes?”
“I, uhh, I don’t know.” Theo thought about Ellis. “I suppose there was a time when I would have said yes, but after learning a bit more about how fucked up the prison system is...”
“That is true. There is a lot wrong with the American penal system, but if we tear away all the human decisions and greed that made it this way, and break it down to the very concept of incarceration... what do you think?”
“I think about that sometimes. I thought, like, maybe we should try and stop looking at it as punishing a person as a response, you know, like intentionally causing harm to a person in proportion to the harm that they caused. Instead, we should look at it in sorta a scientific way, if you know what I mean. Maybe it’d be better to watch them with an insanely close eye, study them and figure out why they did what they did and find ways to prevent it from happening again in the future.”
“Study them, like rats in a lab?” Lily asked.
“Yeah, sure, why not? If you want to really want some punishment, then fuck it, experiment on them too.”
“That seems a little callous, doesn’t it?”
“Ah who cares?” Theo waived his hand forcefully. “I guess I had a change of heart recently.”
“How do you feel about eye-for-an-eye type punishment?”
“Ah, yes, the ‘golden punishment’ I think it’s called. I dunno, I guess in some cases it’s not so bad. I think a lot of rapists maybe might not do it again if they knew what it was like to be raped.”
“I’m not sure about that. I’ve seen studies showing that perpetrators of sexual assault have a higher likelihood of having been victims of sexual assault in their past.”
“Is that so? Well, I’m not a rape-scientist, so maybe I’m not the kind of person that should be making decisions on such things.”
“What decisions?” Lily said. “I’m just speaking hypothetically.”
“Sure you are.”
“But what about murder, hm? Is that something that should receive eye-for-an-eye justice?”
“You’re talking about capital punishment?” Theo asked, then rolled his eyes. “I’m pretty sure that there hasn’t been an execution in Massachusetts in over a century, and I don’t think it’s much of a punishment anyway. You can’t execute someone and then turn to them and say, ‘that’ll teach you that murder is wrong!’” Theo shook his head with a laugh. He saw that Lily was going to say something else, but he cut her off. “And don’t even think about the whole ‘deterrence’ idea. Nobody that goes to torture and murder people stops to think, ‘this could get me the death penalty, I’d better not...’”
“Yeah, I agree on that point, but what about... you know...”
“What about... what?”
“What about... them?” Lily said with a raised eyebrow. Theo had a confused look, so she continued, “the person that did this to you? To your wife?”
It took a moment before reality started bleeding its way back into Theo’s mind. As soon as the unsettling memory started making its presence known, Theo tried to wash it back down with a large gulp of whiskey, but this time it remained. The image of Kara’s corpse in his arms caused panic to start taking hold of him. His fight-or-flight instinct was growing, uncontrollably, but with nothing to fight or flee from, he was locked in a state of suffocating stillness. That is, until he began thinking about the person that did this to her.
Synapse, the piece of shit psychopath that forced his wife and God-daughter to suicide, was still out there. As he imagined the image of a smug-looking overweight neckbeard laughing at his despair, the fight response inside him took over. Theo started gritting his teeth and vibrating with rage. He was gripping his drink so tightly that a crack formed in the glass. If he had gripped it any harder it would have shattered, but Theo didn’t notice. He set the glass down on the table and slid out of the booth, then left the bar in a huff, saying nothing to Lily or the bartender and throwing open the door on his way out.
The cabin of his vehicle was littered with beer and liquor bottles that clinked together as it came to a stop in front of him. If it were an average auto, other passengers might have sent it to be cleaned and would likely have reported Theo, thereby increasing his usage fees, or being banned from the service altogether, but Theo was still taking advantage of the replacement police cruiser, of which he was the only user. He was greeted by the vehicle’s automated voice asking for his destination. Theo answered before it had time to finish.
“Take me to work.” He said. The vehicle complied. Theo scoured the floor for bottles that still had a cap on them, hoping to find something to drink, and finding his stylus in the process. He was ultimately unable to find a drink by the time the vehicle arrived at his precinct. He stumbled as he exited the vehicle and went inside, straight to the captain’s office while avoiding every gaze along the way.
“Jesus, Theo.” The captain said. “You look like death.”
“You’re lookin’ mighty fine yourself, cap.” Theo replied. It was a joke that neither of them laughed at.
“How can I help, detective?” Captain Richardson did his best to remain cordial, politely motioning for Theo to have a seat in the chair across the desk. Theo plopped down in the chair with little grace. The captain wasn’t exactly surprised at the state of Theo less than a week after his wife’s death.
“I want to know what the status is on Synapse. Have you found out anything more about him?”
“Ohh... Theo...” The captain let out an uncomfortable sigh. “Synapse is not your concern anymore.”
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘not my concern’? He killed my wife, who’s concern is it, if not mine?”
“Actually... well, the case hasn’t been closed yet, so I shouldn’t be sharing any information with you, but I do think you have a right to know. Synapse wasn’t involved in your wife’s murder.”
“Bullshit!” Theo shouted with a wave of his hand. “You think my wife and goddaughter being killed within hours of each other was just a coincidence?”
“It wasn’t hours, really. I mean, it was, but when we looked over Kara’s BSI traffic, it seems that the person that sent her the fake documents had been talking to her for months in Wanderlust and had been seeding her discontent for you for weeks beforehand.”
“What?” Theo said in disbelief.
“Kara had been talking to her killer long before you began the investigation into Synapse and the suicides.”
There was silence for a moment as Theo processed the information.
“So, Synapse has been watching me for longer than I thought...” Theo said. His conclusion drew a sigh from the captain.
“Theo... God dammit. You want to talk about coincidences... That would be a big fucking coincidence. Look, you said it seems that Synapse probably lives in or around Boston, due to the forums he was on, right?” The captain waited for a nod from Theo before continuing, “the guy that was communicating to your wife was out-of-state.”
“You found him?” Theo said, lighting up at the prospect of Synapse’s location, and clearly not hearing what the captain was actually saying. “Where?”
The captain stood up from his desk, uncomfortable and getting more frustrated at Theo’s stubbornness.
“Stop, Theo. Obviously, I’m not going to give you that information.”
“You’re going to deny me the right to know where my wife’s killer is?”
“I don’t care how plastered you are, that’s not a right, and you know it. However, the suspect has a right to due process, so even if I had his location, it would be irresponsible, illegal, fucking insane for me to give it to you.”
“If...?” Theo asked. “What do you mean if? If you know the guy is out of state, then you should know what state he’s in, if not the exact address.”
“I did, in fact, see an address, though I can’t remember it.” The captain didn’t wait for Theo to make his own conclusion, and just came out with the part he knew Theo didn’t want to hear. “As soon as we knew it was out-of-state, we handed the case off to the feds.”
“You... What?!” Theo stood up from the seat as his rage was building.
“Come on, now,” the captain said with placating hands, “you’ve done the very same thing for many of your own cases in the past.”
Theo paced the office with his fist clenched. He wanted to destroy the place and beat Captain Richardson to a bloody pulp. Had he had another drink in him, he might have, but Theo breathed as much of his stress out as he could.
“Okay. Fine. You say that my wife’s killer is in another state and is unrelated to Synapse. I think you’re fucking wrong and you’re making a mistake that can get more people killed...”
“That’s alright, detective. That’s your prerogative.”
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“So, that implies that that we’re still investigating Synapse, right?”
“Yes... we are still investigating the suicides case you started.” The captain said, causing Theo to stop pacing and look at him through squinted eyes.
“You... Are you taking me off the case?”
“Yes. We already discussed it following... what happened... It’s understandable that you don’t exactly remember.”
“What the fuck, captain?” Theo was dumbfounded.
“C’mon, man, you can’t really expect us to hold off the investigation until you’re ready to come back, right? I mean, you just mentioned the possibility of more murders. What better way to let that happen than to stop an investigation into a possible serial killer?”
“Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about that, because I’m ready to come back right now.” Theo said, crossing his arms and looking at the captain with determination, but the captain laughed and shook his head.
“I could smell the whiskey on your breath the second you entered the lobby.”
“Right, like you don’t have a half-empty bottle in your desk right now.”
“You wanna have a breathalyzer-off, Theo? Really? I bet your BAC is 5 times higher than mine, but even if it wasn’t, you’re not coming back to the case.”
“What do you mean... ‘not coming back to the case’?”
“It’s pretty obvious, detective. We even talked about it after what happened to Amelie. The case isn’t yours anymore.” The captain said. A range of conflicting emotions welled up inside Theo, freezing him in place. The captain continued, “you’ve got nothing on your plate. Just go home and get paid to keep drinking for the time being.”
When Theo’s body let him move again, Theo said nothing and left the office, throwing the door open on his way out. The clattering of the door hitting the glass wall caught the attention of everyone on the floor. Theo didn’t care. After leaving the captain’s office, Theo made a beeline to the window at evidence lockup.
“I want to retrieve something.” He said with as polite a tone as he could muster.
“Uhh...” The officer working the station was clearly uncomfortable with the situation already. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here...? Shouldn’t you be off the clock?”
“It’s my wife’s wedding ring.”
“Oh... uhh... I dunno...”
“Come on, man? I just... I just want to see it. I want to make sure the assholes that collected it didn’t misplace it.”
“Hmm...” The officer pondered for a moment. The two knew each other, but they weren’t very well acquainted. Were she not wearing a nametag, Theo wouldn’t have known her name at all. The officer, however, was now quite aware of Theo. “I suppose... Just know that I’m signing you in.”
A few moments later, the door buzzed and Theo entered. The officer then guided him through the shelves to the boxes he was looking for. Theo took a deep breath as he opened the first box and began sifting through the evidence bags filled with the clothing Kara was wearing when she died. Theo felt the grey tank top through the bag; her top of preference for the past few years. The dried blood staining the fabric around the neckline cracked and crunched in his hands. Theo placed it back in the box and slid it back into the shelf, then moved to the second box.
It was heavier. Theo already knew at least one of the objects contained within before he opened it. Sure enough, the first thing he noticed was the large bag containing his revolver, still covered in his wife’s blood. Theo froze. The officer noticed what he was looking at, then slowly backed away, trying to give Theo a little space. After the urge to breathe brought Theo back to reality, he reached into the box and grabbed the smaller evidence bag. It was his wife’s ring. He idly felt it with his thumb through the bag and closed his eyes.
The Officer stepped even further back and turned around to give Theo some privacy. Theo tried to remember all the good times, their life with Alice, high school and college, the sweaty summers and cuddly winters they spent in his room. Some of the memories were getting through, but his mind, instead, would sadistically playback her end, and the incredibly violent things he wanted to do to Synapse. He opened his eyes and stared into the box.
“Is everything there?” The officer said from a distance after a few moments.
“Yeah... It’s all here.” Theo responded as he slid the box back into place and fixed his coat.
“That’s good. I heard the FBI was taking over your wi-... uh... th-the case, but they didn’t make any requests for the physical evidence, so, I think we’ll be able to give your stuff back soon. I’ll personally make sure nothing happens to it.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Theo said, shaking the woman’s hand.
After leaving the station, Theo returned to his vehicle and set his destination to the Watertown Bridge over Charles River. He was able to find a non-empty bottle of cheap bourbon now that his buzz was starting to give way to a headache. He took to it like medicine.
As soon as Theo felt sated, he twisted the lid back on and opened up the city CCTV system, finding that nobody had bothered to remove his access or change any permissions. He brought up several live streams for cameras near the locations where Theo had suspected Synapse of visiting. He left those open near the top of his vision and then began viewing the history of those same cameras, one at a time. Before he realized it, the vehicle stopped at the destination. Theo stepped out and walked over to the railing of the bridge.
It was one of Kara’s favorite places. They spent hours on the bridge on their first official date, and it was where Theo proposed. Visits to the spot had fallen off since then. Theo breathed in the fresh air and earthy tones of the river, bringing him back, and allowing him to visualize Kara in the way he wanted to remember her.
After taking a few deep breaths, Theo pulled an evidence bag from his inside coat pocket and retrieved the revolver from within. He looked at it intently as a range of emotions consumed him. Just beyond the overwhelming lust for revenge running through him was a very small, but calm and collected voice telling him to toss the bloody gun into the river. Once he finally made the decision, he returned to his vehicle and focus on finding Synapse, and maybe finding a little more drink along the way.
After making a couple of short stops, he was headed toward the location in Mattapan, where he had found Amelie, to pick a location for a stakeout when he was alerted to artifacts detected in the live footage of the very same location. Theo immediately sent an instruction of urgency to the vehicle and was pushed into his seat as the car quickly accelerated. He kept a keen eye on the camera as he prepared himself for a confrontation, mostly by returning to a comfortable level of intoxication.
However, his vehicle took an unexpected exit, catching Theo’s attention. His first instinct was that, somehow, Synapse knew he was after him, but a flashing indicator on his HUD revealed that wasn’t the case. Instead, his vehicle had been rerouted to his police precinct. Furthermore, his access to the CCTV footage was cut, as was the rest of his police network access. Theo expected this was going to happen, he just hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Captain Richardson shouted.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Theo replied. This time, they weren’t alone. Theo was flanked by two other officers. “I’m doing the job that nobody else seems to want to do. I’m doing my goddamned job!”
“Is your interface malfunctioning?” the captain asked. “Does your cochlear implant need maintenance or something? I would wonder if I was speaking Spanish, but I know your interface can easily translate it anyway. I told you, not even a half-hour ago, you are not on the case anymore!”
“How much did this asshole pay you, huh?” Theo asked. The captain laughed at the accusation.
“You’ve completely lost it, Theo.”
“This whole fuckin’ place is just filled with rats trying to make a quick buck and cower at any sign of trouble.” Theo waved his hands around, nearly hitting the officers behind him. The captain shook his head.
“Where’s the gun?” he said.
“What gun?” Theo snickered to himself. The captain flew around the desk and threw a fist at his face, but pulled it before connecting, instead opting to grab Theo’s lower jaw. The captain could do no more than giving him a gentle squeeze before it could reasonably be considered assault. The action was awkward, but the captain’s fury was on full display no less.
“Hold him!” The captain says to the two flanking officers. They comply, but Theo quickly pulls away from their grip.
“Whoa, I don’t fuckin’ have it, alright?” Theo said, opening his coat while presenting his palms. “You’re going to rough me up, or what?”
“That’s fine. Let me repeat my question. Where. Is. The. Gun?”
“It’s in the Charles, okay? You’d think the front desk would take away a blood-covered gun when I tried to enter with it.”
The captain rolled his eyes and shook his head as he stepped away from Theo and back around his desk. He started using his chair’s headrest as a stress ball.
“And your badge?” He said. Theo had an expression of shock, but he fully expected something like this was going to happen. Still, he received some sick pleasure from making the encounter as awkward and difficult as possible. He angrily reached into his coat pocket for his badge as the captain continued, “You’re on administrative leave pending an investi-”
“I’ll save you the paperwork.” Theo said, punctuating his words by dropping his badge in the garbage next to the captain’s desk. In his mind, it was the way every cop in history had quit their job. It wasn’t original, but it was extremely cathartic, and it left the captain speechless, nonetheless. He turned around and pushed his way through the two officers behind him and across the Division floor.
“I should have you arrested!” The captain yelled after him. Theo just kept walking, further frustrating the captain. “Don’t leave the city!”
It seemed to Theo that he was no longer tied down by anything, excepting Synapse of course. He felt free, until he realized he had been standing at the curb for more than 30 seconds and checked on the status of his vehicle. The momentary feeling of relief was gone as soon as he realized his vehicle privileges had been revoked. His change in attitude deepened upon feeling a raindrop on his bald spot.
Theo would rather have walked to his next destinations than sign up for a rideshare service, but remembering that Synapse had possibly been sighted before he was pulled back in, Theo was pressed for time. He was annoyed and impatient with the process, but when the auto pulled up after a few minutes, Theo set his destination to the nearest corner store for some more liquid sustenance. Once he was stocked up, he disabled his wireless firmware and went another location before finally dropping himself off near Synapse’s last suspected sighting.
It was probably going to end up getting him in even more trouble, but he couldn’t risk having his location tracked by Synapse, nor the police lest they know that he is continuing his search outside of lawful boundaries. Furthering the interest of hiding his identity and location, Theo avoided all the camera’s he could see or remember, or where it was unavoidable, all Theo needed to do was splash some rainwater on the lens from out of frame, just enough to muddy the image and make things difficult for facial recognition software.
Theo kept a lookout for anyone he assumed to be Synapse, but his primary goal was finding a dark, preferably dry hole for a classic stakeout. It didn’t take him long to find one with a decent view of the street. It wasn’t uncommon to see vagrants or drug addicts in the area, so after neglecting his appearance for the past several days, Theo blended in perfectly.
The hope was that Theo would find Synapse leaving what was likely a dead drop across the street, but he had the sneaking suspicion that Synapse was in and out by the time he got there. After over an hour of watching, drinking, and playing with Chess, Theo was sure that he had missed his mark. Theo continued waiting anyway, not having anywhere to be, and knowing that Synapse had visited the spot on several occasions previously, breaking arguably the biggest rule of dead drops: changing the location every time.
It was several hours after the sun had gone down, and Theo was still able to keep himself at just the right level of intoxication that he didn’t become sleepy and could still maintain a reasonably solid grasp on reality. A few people had passed by, none seemed to notice his position just outside of the street lights. Theo watched them closely through zoomed and light amplifying settings in his eyes.
One of the passersby seemed drunk, catching Theo’s attention, but the man walked past the dead drop without batting an eye, and then passed close enough for Theo to smell the alcohol on their breath. It wasn’t his mark, but only a few minutes later, another prospect came down the street. It was a woman of small stature wearing a hoodie. Her gait was unique, but not distinctly intoxicated, indicated by her quick reaction to ambient sounds and how she navigated the obstacles in her path. As she approached, Theo wasn’t sure she was a woman quite yet, but a teenaged girl. Since she didn’t have the distinctive lurch of Synapses control, Theo was ready to write her off as a suspect as well, until the girl turned down the alleyway where the dead drop was and returned to the street a few moments later.
He still wasn’t sure that this was Synapse, but Theo was certain that she had some connection. He began to follow her, a much easier task under the cover of night. About 45 minutes of walking later, while avoiding the girl’s gaze and that of the cameras along the way, Theo observed her making her way into a derelict apartment building. The girl walked right past the ‘Condemned’ and ‘No Trespassing’ signage. Theo didn’t follow her in, instead finding a new spot to observe from across the street. Again, Theo watched and waited. The cold was only bearable due to the drink that sustained him, but the comfortably warm feeling of his blood vessels dilating also brought him to sleep in the early morning hours.
As if on cue, Theo awoke to find the girl leaving the building and heading down the street away from him. Theo had been asleep for a few hours at least, judging by the intensity of his headache, and alleviated it by downing some more liquor while he waited for the girl to turn a corner and move out of his view. He waited a few more minutes, finishing the bottle he was working on and opening a new one. He took the inaugural swig and headed to the apartment building.
He moved slowly and carefully on his approach, and spotted a small camera that was observing the front entrance, so he circled the building looking for another point of ingress. There was a side entrance and a back entrance, but both were chained and boarded shut. All of the windows on the first floor were also tightly sealed, and the only option left to Theo was the fire escape, the ladder to which was raised off the ground, inaccessible until he rolled a nearby dumpster over and climbed atop.
He still had to jump to reach the first rung, and had to do it a few times before he finally caught a grip. He then grunted, heaved, and cursed his lack of exercise and upper body strength until he climbed his way up to the first platform where he found a more easily accessible window. He pulled a couple of creaky boards off and gently pushed in a few already broken shards of glass to climb into the room.
Searching the apartment building wasn’t a difficult task. Theo felt confident after only a few minutes that there weren’t any other people in the building. Still, he searched quietly and methodically until he found a closed door on the fourth floor that had another inconspicuous camera pointed at it. Instead of trying to get in through that door, he went into the apartment beside it, made his way to the fire escape and crawled over from outside. The windows, while still containing full panes of glass, weren’t locked, making an easy in for Theo.
The main room of the apartment was a mess of wires, electronic components, and simple digital displays surrounding a reclined chair that looked like it was stolen from an unlicensed dentist’s office. The rest of the apartment didn’t appear to have been used much at all except as a place to collect refuse, mostly empty bottles of MRS and, horrifyingly, what seemed to be makeshift colostomy bags which seemed to be preferred over the seldom used toilet. Theo heaved as he noticed what they were and decided he didn’t really need to pour over the place as if it were a crime scene.
After taking a cursory glance into the empty bedroom, and mostly unused kitchen and bathroom, Theo hid himself inside a dark closet with a view of the chair and produced his bloodied Taurus revolver. He opened the cylinder and loaded six .44 magnum rounds, and in the darkness he waited.