5. Breakfast of Champions

Read from the Beginning
Read Part 4

It was almost 7:00 A.M. before Gilbert had completed his work at the precinct house, which put him perilously close to breaking Parme’s first rule. Since his first day with his new partner, he had been required to meet him every morning at 7 o’clock sharp for breakfast at the cafe down the block. He hastily gathered the notes he had made and bolted from the office he shared with Parme and two other detectives, one of whom was Tremayne White, an imposing block of a man he nearly collided with at the door.

“Whoa, where you goin’ in such a hurry, Rookie?” White asked him with a smile and a clap on the shoulder.

“Gotta meet Parme,” Gilbert replied without slowing down. “I’m late.”

White watched him go, still smiling. “You’d better run, Rookie. You don’t wanna piss Walter off. He’ll shoot you.”

By the time Gilbert blew into the cafe, Parme was already mixing up his eggs and fried potatoes, while a stern looking, middle-aged or better waitress filled up his coffee cup. She looked at Gilbert without smiling, held up the coffee pot for him to see and raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, coffee, please,” he said as he slid into the booth.

Parme didn’t look up. “You’re late.”

Gilbert started to order, but Parme cut him off. “I already ordered for you.” The waitress -- Barb according to the yellowed, plastic tag above her left breast -- finished pouring his coffee and went in search of his breakfast. Parme finished making a mess of his plate and then looked up at his partner. “Jesus, kid. You look like shit.”

Gilbert grabbed two sugar packets and ripped them open over his steaming coffee cup. “That happens when you work all night.”

“Worked all night on what? I like Eagan for this.”

Gilbert stopped pouring his sugar. “What! How do you get that? No evidence at the crime scene…”

“Kid, you’re over thinking it. We have a murder perpetrated by a crazy guy and three weeks later a crazy guy turns himself in. These cases aren’t that hard. All we have to do now is go back to his apartment and ask him some questions and he’ll break down and tell us the whole story. He wants to get caught. That’s why he turned himself in.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“You’re not so experienced. Give it a few days and everything will come to light. It’s always the same with these guys. He probably knew he was going to get caught, so he came up with this crazy, sleepwalking late night writing crap in a book thing to support an insanity defense, mark my words. We’ll go out to his apartment today to visit with him and you’ll see.”

Barb came back and dropped a platter with a couple of over easy eggs and a pile of greasy, fried potatoes in front of Gilbert. A shriveled up brown thing may have been a strip of bacon. He turned to thank her, but she was already gone.

“We don’t have to,” Gilbert said. Gilbert moved his fork through the eggs. He didn’t really like what he saw. He put his fork down beside his plate.

“Don’t have to what?”

“Don’t have to drive back out to his apartment. He’s still in the lockup.”

“Why? Who charged him?” Parme was beginning to get that look in his eye. It was the same look Gilbert saw when his partner realized they had missed out on the shooting that cost them the collar in their first case together.

“Nobody charged him with anything. He just didn’t want to go home.” Gilbert answered the unasked question in Parme’s face. “He said he was afraid to go home.”

Parme sniffed and went back to the ugly pile of breakfast food on his oversized plate. “He’s playing games. At least we caught him before he started working down his little list.”

“That’s the other thing,” Gilbert took a sip of his coffee as he worked out how he was going to broach this. He had only intended to think through the evidence a bit more when he returned to the office, but the more he got into it, the more he kept going. He realized he may have stepped over a line somewhere. He also realized Parme was looking at him, waiting.

“I spent some time on that list last night. That’s why I didn’t get to bed, actually. Well, that’s part of it.”

“What did you do?” Parme asked quietly.

“Well, I wanted to find out what I could about the people on that list. So, I ran them through our computers.” He paused but Parme didn’t say anything. “And the state police database.” Parme’s eyes started to narrow. “And the FBI…”

“Jesus Christ, Rob!” Parme threw down his fork. It landed in his breakfast pile. From across the room, Barb shot Gilbert a disapproving glance, which he tried to ignore. “Tell me you didn’t find anything so we don’t have a goddam paper trail that requires us to start reporting to every law enforcement authority in the country.”

Gilbert hadn’t considered that. In the aftermath of 9-11, all law enforcement agencies were tasked with improved communication and collaboration, which meant that management was tasked with measuring said communication and collaboration efforts, which meant more paperwork. In most cases a lot more. The result had been the typical unintended consequence that the agencies actually collaborated less to avoid the deluge of paperwork involved. But in light of what he had discovered overnight, it occurred to Gilbert that it might be worth it in this case. He decided to tell him everything quickly, in an attempt to get it all out before his partner pulled his service revolver and shot him.

There were 23 names on the list, not counting the victim in their case. Of those, 18 were not in the database, 4 were currently registered as missing in one or more of the three databases and 1 was the subject of an active murder investigation. He had requested a copy of the file from the state police.

Parme didn’t say anything, so Gilbert told him the rest.

“I figured that just because the names weren’t in our database didn’t mean they shouldn’t be, so I took the list down to Becky Carter to see if she could find out if they matched anyone living in our jurisdiction and what connections, if any, there were between them. Becky works in crime stats down…”

“I know who the fuck she is. What else?” Parme’s tone was low and dangerous.

“I did some research on the symbol on the front of the book. It doesn’t match anything we have in the gang sign database or any of the graphics libraries we have, but it reminded me of something I came across in college, so I did a pattern matching search and came up with this,” Gilbert pulled the folded up sheets of paper from his pocket, pushed his uneaten breakfast out of the way and unfolded one in front of his partner.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s called the Sigillum Dei, or Seal of God. It dates back to the late Middle Ages, 15th Century or so. As you can see, the symbol is quite complex and is composed of two circles, a pentagram, and three heptagons.”

“Stop,” Parme growled. “What the fuck are you talking about? This doesn’t look anything like what was scratched into that book.”

“Well, right, it doesn’t really, but look at this.” Gilbert unfolded another piece of paper.

“What kind of crap classes did you take in college?” Parme asked.

“I don’t know, it was all part of the pre-law curriculum,” he replied.

“Why did you take pre-law to be a cop?”

“I didn’t.” Gilbert finished smoothing out the sheet. “This is the print out of the picture I took with my camera phone. The lighting wasn’t good, there’s a shadow…” Parme made a gutteral sound that served to speed up his partner’s explanation. “See how these marks along the inside of the circle line up with the vertices of the heptagons.”

Parmes eyes rose slowly from the pages to his partner. There was great menace in them.

“Look,” Gilbert said, quickly unfolding a third sheet of paper. “Here is a printout with the camera phone image in red over the Seal in black and white. Look at the overlap. It’s perfect.”

Parme glanced at the printout and then went back to his eggs. “It doesn’t look anything like it.”

Gilbert looked more closely at his work. “Well, you’re right, but that may have been the point. In the Middle Ages, occultists would often bend religious symbols to their own use by changing them. The most famous is the pentagram, but we also see it in the upside down cross and the use of cups as a suit in the Tarot. Although some say the Tarot pre-dates…”

“Will you shut the fuck up,” Parme said. He voice was calm, uncharacteristically so. It made Gilbert lower the paper he was studying and look at his partner. Parme went on calmly. “What you’re talking is a bunch of horse shit and it doesn’t have anything to do with this case. This is a bunch of crazy shit that anyone can look up on the Internet, which is exactly what Eagan did. It all plays into his defense strategy. Besides, there were no occult symbols identified at the crime scene and Wayne’s team handled it so we know he would have found them.”

Gilbert nodded slowly. It made sense that if this were part of the case and had any link to the murder, there would have been some sign at the crime scene. He also had to admit to himself that if it had been there, Singleton and his team would have uncovered it. If they knew what they were looking for.

“Now, let’s forget about your middle ages art class and focus on the case,” Parme said.

“Okay, it’s just that…” Gilbert began.

“Jesus Christ! Who did you share this with?”

“Just an old friend from college. He wasn’t in pre-law, but we crossed paths in Medieval Signs and Symbols. It was a psych class really, focused on how mass psychology is impacted…”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Right. Anyway, he transferred out to a Jesuit school shortly afterward and he actually became a Catholic priest, if you can believe that.”

Parme reached down toward his pistol. The action made Gilbert speak faster.

“His name is Miller, Father Sean Miller and he’s not working with any law enforcement agency...that I know of.”

Parme’s hand returned to the table top carrying his wallet. He raised his other hand over his head for a second, without looking to see if the waitress noticed. She did and made her way over with the check. She dropped it on the table without a word and turned away. Parme pulled out a twenty for an eight dollar check and dropped it on the table. He didn’t look at his partner.

Gilbert realized that, for a second there, he actually thought his partner might shoot him. It was a horrifying realization, but the short burst of endorphins that had resulted from the fact that he hadn’t been fatally wounded by a small caliber weapon at close range emboldened him to change the subject.

“Why do you always tip her so much? She has to be the worse waitress I’ve ever seen.”

Parme pointed to the twenty, “Don’t touch that. I’m going to the office. You’re going home to shower and change. Be back by nine. Then we’ll interview our suspect and put this case to bed before the avalanche of paperwork you’ve created ruins both our careers.”

Parme got up and left without another word. Gilbert shook his head and folded up his notes. He suddenly had a burning desire to take a closer look at the photos Singleton’s team had taken at the crime scene. Just to be sure, he told himself.

Barb reappeared at the table, clearing Parme’s plate and coffee cup. “Can I get you anything else, sweetie?”

Gilbert was shocked by the kindness in the voice of a waitress who hadn’t given him or Parme the time of day in the many weeks they had been meeting there. The surprise must have been visible on his face.

“I’m actually not the worst waitress you’ve ever seen.” Gilbert felt himself turning red. “I’m the best. I know all of my customers and I treat them exactly the way they want to be treated.”

Gilbert had to admit, that made sense. Her borderline rude behavior was just the kind of service Parme would reward.

“I’m sorry, I thought…”

“No, you didn’t,” she answered brightly. “But then, thinking about me isn’t your job, is it? You haven’t touched your breakfast. You want something else? We have pie.”

Gilbert reached into his pocket and pulled out the first bill he touched. It was a five. He dropped it on the table and started to get up. “No thanks, Barb. I have to go try to save my job.”

She laughed. It was a surprisingly youthful and pleasant sound coming from a woman who had to be well past the halfway mark. “The name is Pat. Barb hasn’t worked here in years. And you don’t have to worry about keeping your job. Just keep on doing what you’re doing and Wally will stay happy.”

“Wally? Happy? He almost shot me.”

Pat, the waitress Gilbert had previously thought of as Barb, because that’s how she had been labeled, laughed again. “He was impressed. You didn’t notice?” Gilbert's mouth fell open.

She grabbed up the two bills and the check from the table and turned back toward the cash register with a smile. “You really are new, aren’t you?”

Read Part 6