The Innocents, Nathan Senthil [best life changing books .TXT] 📗

“Be louder. I can’t hear you.”

“I stopped sharing info with the feds when they made me solve their biggest case all by myself, spending my own money for gas, motels, food, and snitches.”

“No one asked you to,” Raymond remarked. “Don’t change the topic. How did you tap Jake’s phone? I don’t remember a warrant coming by me.”

“Who said anything about a warrant?”

Raymond laughed again. “I’m your captain, you know?”

“Well, Captain Asswipe, my work is to protect innocent people. I don’t care how I go about doing it. As long as I save someone from getting practically decapitated by Lolly’s elephant gun, nothing I do is wrong or unethical.”

Raymond sighed. “I must ask. To get this one lead, which might turn out to be nothing, you solved nine carjacking cases in three different states? On your own time and expenses?”

“Uh-huh.”

There was nothing but silence on the other line.

Did Raymond just hang up?

Joshua looked at the phone. The call timer was still running. “Hello? Captain Ass—”

“You’re a ram,” Raymond said.

That gave Joshua a pause. “Ram? The Hindu deity?”

“No. Ram as in goat.”

“Why am I a goddamn ram?”

“Rita and I went to Bali last year for our holidays.”

“Yeah, I know. My missus never lets me forget how romantic you two are.”

Raymond laughed. “Apart from the coastline, we also toured parts of the Indonesian countryside. In a village, we watched two rams fighting. They just bash their heads, walk back a few yards, then run and bash their heads again. Blood drips down the thick skulls of these vindictive bastards, and they still go at it. Even when they are hurt, even when they know they will probably die from a gaping wound in the head.”

“Wait… are you telling me that if I don’t let go, I’m gonna die with a gaping wound in my head?”

“All I’m saying is that you just don’t know when to give up.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

This time, Raymond did hang up.

Chapter 17

November 25, 1994. 02:30. A.M.

Joshua stared at their bedroom door, which his wife had closed after her. The slap still tingled his cheek, but the subsequent hug had more than compensated for it. His wife emanated a unique scent. A mix of rosewater and sandalwood. The smell of purity. Must be how heaven smelt.

Amidst this pleasant sensation, his heart imploded in agony. It could very probably be the last time he would be allowed within close enough proximity to his wife to inhale her angelic waft.

The separation, although painful and humiliating, was not shocking in the least. It had been a long time in the pipeline, and wholly attributable to Joshua’s negligence. He was designed like that, he presumed. Manufacturing defect, so to speak, having been programmed to give more importance to the overwhelming responsibility he felt towards the homicide victims than to the love towards his wife. The murdered themselves didn’t bother Joshua much but the ones left behind, their families, did.

Not their fault though. Even imagining losing someone dear to a violent crime disquieted Joshua.

One night your mom or dad, husband or wife, son or daughter didn’t come home. You called them, but they didn’t answer. You began to fidget. You made apologetic late-night calls to their friends and colleagues, but no one knew anything. The jitters morphed into dreadful foreboding. You felt in your stomach—not in the heart because these sick premonitions originated only in stomachs—that something was wrong. The next morning your phone rang, and you picked it up on the second ring. The caller began with ‘I am sorry’ followed by empty words that had ‘incident’ in them. Then they told you that someone had yanked your loved one away from your life at the snap of their fingers.

No last words, no amendments, no goodbyes.

But this was the easy part. The hard part came after the burial.

Everywhere you looked, you saw the murdered; their place on the couch or at the dining table; when you got a whiff of their favorite food, listened to their favorite band, changed through their favorite TV channels.

It wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. You were just a regular Joe going about your regular Joe business. You were a good regular Joe. You didn’t even deserve the paper cut you got in the office the other day, let alone seeing your loved one on a gurney, missing a quarter of their head.

And during one of your late-night crying fits, you gnashed your teeth and promised them you would make the son of a bitch pay. But what could you do? You were, after all, just a languished regular Joe. Life rarely mimicked TV. You didn’t don a latex T-shirt with a skull printed on it, pack a bag full of guns, and chase the killer. No. You chased the people responsible for catching the killer.

People like Joshua.

You developed a despondent relationship with detectives. Helpless, it had become your duty that whenever you found free time, you called them. You were now a steadfast believer of the adage involving squeaky wheels and grease. In your eyes, they weren’t detectives anymore. Not cops, but some divine entities. Powerful authorities, the only friends capable of bringing some sort of peace to you. And Joshua was usually the type of friend who delivered.

But not tonight.

Jake was dead, and the lead Joshua had been working on for ten months was now lost forever. The fact that he almost unmasked Lolly made him wanna puke.

An unbridled anger urged him to kick the door down and explain all this to his wife. He wanted to yell that she was being unfair and shake some sense into her. But he couldn’t. She had no obligation to put up with the aftermath of his gloomy crusades.

So he did what his body had been wanting