Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Drew Id" data-source="post: 1182279" data-attributes="member: 12175">Session 5 (6/4/2003) Episode 1 EpilogueEpisode 1 EpilogueTraffic still moved on Highway 280. The sound of gunfire must have been lost in the open space. The smell of diesel exhaust was slow fading away on the wind. The night was getting cool. Brother Cooper flipped his cell phone closed. “The police are on their way. I didn’t give anything in the way of details, but they are definitely on the way.”Willie and Crystal exchanged a nervous look, as they hastily shoved their guns into their holsters. Joe had returned to standing over Taylor’s body, chewing his lip. He had taken off his jacket and silently placed it over her body, and was otherwise ignoring everyone else. Scorse rubbed his wrists where the rope had cut into his skin. He glanced at each of his rescuers with a knowing look. “Something tells me that I don’t know half of what’s going on here… and that you might not be too eager to tell the police everything you know…” Willie met his gaze, and wordlessly confirmed his suspicions. Scorse rolled his eyes in a pained expression. “And the last thing I need right now is further scandal…”The wind shifted. Sirens could be heard in the distance.Scorse cleared his throat, “All right… when the police arrive, follow my lead.”“Here comes the cover-up,” said Joe, with a deep grimace and a dead look in his eyes. The preacher moved over to Joe’s side, and began tending to Taylor’s body. After a moment, Joe helped him. The others heard him faintly praying over her, as his hands moved beneath the makeshift shroud.Scorse turned to Willie and Crystal. “Is there anything else I need to know? I mean, that will need explaining to the police?”Willie blushed, and sighed heavily. “If they check my gun, they’re gonna find bullets matching some they probably found at McWane Center – ““That was you?” Scorse seemed surprised.“Um… yeah, on the defending side of course… and another bullet at her place,” Willie said, pointing to Garcia’s body. Scorse rubbed one hand through his hair, and inhaled deeply. “Anything else?”Then Crystal saw it. What she’d said a dozen times before about white men, and here she was actually seeing it in person. She looked at the ex-businessman, clearly exhausted and trying to recover from his near-death experience just moments ago, and yet, as he stood their before her, she could see the wheels turning. He’s constructing a lie to get out of this. She stood transfixed. It was like watching the nature channel, seeing an animal perform some task that it had been evolved specifically to perform. She had to interrupt, if only to see it as a test of his skill. “They probably found a bullet or two of mine at McWane as well…”Scorse just nodded, as his face was lit by a brief flash of red and blue lights on 280. The siren was much closer now. “Trust me. I can take care of it. I need to borrow a phone… quickly.”The businessman dialed a number into Crystal’s phone. After a moment, he spoke, “Rich? This is me. I need to call in that favor.”Willie and Crystal both looked at each other and silently mouthed, “Rich?” Scorse did not seem to notice.“I have a crime scene here. I was nearly killed… and kidnapped…long story, and no time to tell it now…” Scorse glanced up at the approaching police cars. He could make out their headlights approaching on the service road now. “I have two people here, with guns that should not be connected to them. They need … their guns were stolen from them, and they have just recovered them here. I need you to file a report for when they were stolen…sometime last week… Right…Right…Thanks, Rich…Alright, the first is a man named Willie Lamar…”There was a pause, and Scorse looked at Willie with further surprise. “Were you involved in a library break-in last week in Vestavia?”Willie gulped hard. He nodded. The four police cars were skidding to a stop about 30 feet away. “Yes, that’s him…and the second is a girl named Crystal Lassiter…No kidding?…Yes, I think so… Alright, that’ll work…”    He hung up the phone, as the first police car emptied out two uniforms, their guns and flashlights out, shouting orders.  Everyone raised their hands into the air. . . .As the door to the shop opened, the morning was pierced by the screeching, eye-wateringly loud sound of trumpets blaring the Star Trek theme song coming from several hidden speakers.Joe bent down behind the counter for a moment, flicked a switch to disable the alarm, and came back up with a cold Mountain Dew from his mini-fridge, as the other three exhausted investigators spilled into The Griffon Comic Shop. The sun was just barely rising under a heavy blanket of pink clouds, and the shop was eerily quiet. As Guyzell closed the front door behind them, the police cruiser that had dropped them off slowly pulled away into the early Southside morning. “So I still don’t get exactly what was up with that phone call,” Joe said. “The cops asked me about what happened, but I refused to give them anything more than my name, rank, and serial number.”“Rank?” Crystal raised an eyebrow.“Junior Star Fleet Captain, First Class,” Joe recited, with the tired remains of a proud grin on his face. He glanced down to see the Necromonicon was now in his shop’s front display case, surrounded by Star Wars figures in a circle posed so they were bowing down to it. He knew he had not put it there, but he wasn’t surprised by finding it there. “Anyhow, I guess when they figured out that I wasn’t gonna say anything, they stopped asking. But on the other hand, that means I don’t know what they told you guys”Crystal half-grinned, and slumped exhausted into one of the chairs surrounding the shop’s main gaming table. “It’s a cover-up, so it should be right up your alley.”Brother Cooper explained as he began to brew some coffee, “He called the gentleman from the Vestavia Police Department. Rich Hall. Mr. Hall changed the police report on the library attack. If you were to go get a copy today, it should say that Willie’s and Crystal’s guns were stolen in that attack by somebody that got away before the police got there.” Willie then continued. “Scorse’s lawyers met him down at the station, and I’m guessing, filled him in on some other details from our man in Vestavia. Anyhow, according to rich boy, he hired me a few weeks ago to check out a stalker he had been threatened by. Which is why I was supposed to be staking out the library when we were attacked. Scary part is, this brother moves fast. When I called my cousin from the station, the lawyers had already talked to him. He’s got records now of when we were ‘hired’.”Crystal finished the story, “So then the rest of us were innocent bystanders at the library, but we have since apparently (according to Scorse) become friends or a support group or something. We were hanging out together trying to help Willie with this stalker case when we were driving over to 280 and we just stumbled onto this whole scene.”Joe thought for a minute. “So the stalker lady, along with some bums, stole your guns, used them at McWane Center, and again at her apartment, and then used them last night. But we beat them anyway, and got your guns back… For a cover-up, it’s pretty good… better than Roswell at least.”The group silently waited for the coffee to finish brewing.Crystal frowned into her cup. “We should be able to get our guns back from impound in 24 hours. It would have been nice to keep those rifles though…. And now what about the library? How are we supposed to get into the attic?”Brother answered by pulling keys and several licenses from his pocket. “I have the keys to the library. And these were in Taylor’s wallet, and I thought it might be best if they were not found.” The licenses were all fakes, identifying Taylor variously as a private investigator, police officer, and other similar identities.Willie looked up from his cup. “Nice work, preacher. So, if y’all are plan on going back to the library regular, we might want to make it a habit to meet there every now an’ then. You know, keep in contact like once a week or something, if we figure out any more of this coin-collecting stuff.” The others nodded in agreement. They each had plans of returning to the library attic in the near future. “So, do you think Scorse knows about the library and everything?”Crystal answered, “I don’t think so. I saw him making up the whole story. I think he is just so used to people around him doing things that they don’t want people to know about, that he just covers things up all the time. I kind of got the impression, like he was just trained for this, you know? Just like he was trained specifically for covering things up, maybe even driven unconsciously to always cover things up, and he doesn’t even know why. ”. . .The Birmingham Post-Herald newspaper covered the story that same afternoon. Page 2. “Scorse survives Stalker”. According the article, he was kidnapped from his residence and then rescued by “private security forces.” Everyone involved declined to comment. There were no pictures taken. The media never contacted any of the members of the “Class of 1924.”. . .The rewards arrived later that same day. Four identical checks, dropped off to each of the investigators, at home, by a delivery boy from South-Medical. Ten thousand dollars each. A note sent with Joe’s check stated that a similar check has been delivered to Taylor’s family.</blockquote>

Verification