Chapter 4
Jason Roberts could not believe that he had actually gone to Grace Winters. It was not normal for him to admit that he needed help. There was something about the way that she handled different cases that she had that was going to be very important to the case at hand. She was not well known or seen on the television as so many of the police force had been. This was how she was going to be so useful to him. He needed someone to follow the leads that they had without bringing attention to themselves. She already knew how to do that and therefore was going to be useful.
Jason was looking forward to working with Grace. He was not sure what it was about her that made him excited to work with her. Maybe it was the fact that hardly anyone knew who she was and so she could do the undercover work that was going to be needed to crack this case. It also did not hurt that she was easy on the eyes. He did not know if there was going to be any chance to get to know each other, or if she would even be interested in getting to know him. He had hopes that she would at least enjoy the time that they were going to spend together because it was going to be a tough time and they needed to be able to work well together. The one thing that he knew for sure was that they were going to be working very close to each other.
Jason Roberts had been Chief of Police for Grangeville for about five years now. In fact, he would be celebrating his fifth anniversary in just a little over a week. That is why this case was so important for him. The city had been asking the mayor to rethink about his appointment as Chief of Police. He had not had the best track record. It was true that he solved the cases, well most of them, with the help of the detectives and the men in blue but they were not always solved as quickly as the people would have liked. He always caught the man, or woman, that he was after. That was is motto, “Catch them and lock them up.” However, things did not always go the way that he wanted. With the increase of media cover of the way that the police department handled the cases, the police were unable to keep their undercover officers undercover. It was frustrating and it caused all his problems, at least that was how he saw it.
While growing up Jason had a picture perfect life. He had a mom who stayed at home with him and his sister, Jean, and a father who was a factory worker. He saw his dad come home every night dirty and tired and complaining about the pains that he was having in his back due to the hard labor. It was then that Jason decided that he was not going to work a manual labor job like his father did. As he looks back, Jason realizes that it was when he was about twelve years old that he decided that he wanted to work as a police officer. It is hard to believe that at the age of 32 he had already spent twelve years on the force in one aspect or another. His parents were very proud of him and often bragged to other members of society about him. It was embarrassing and flattering at the same time. As he moved out of his parents home he thought that he had it made.
Jason had life that he shouldn’t complain about, but it was not like the one he thought he would have as he was growing up. He felt that he was going to have the perfect life. What police officer doesn’t have a perfect life? He figured he would have a wife at home waiting to see if he is going to return safely every night after work and maybe even a child or two as well. This is how his world turned out however. He came home to two cats and a tank full of fish and that was it. Of sure he had had girlfriends while on the force, but none of them wanted to have to wonder if the phone would ring to tell them that the man that they were with was not going to be coming home again.
He loved his cats Socrates and Plato, but they were not the same as a human to come home to yet he did at least have someone to come home to. He had named his cats after his two favorite philosophers. He felt that if he named them esteemed names that they would not be as stupid of cats as the ones that he had had while growing up. The unfortunate thing was that it didn’t happen that way. If possible, it appeared that by naming them these revered names they had actually decided to dumb down their own names. There were many time when he would come home, only to find them stuck with their heads in the backs of the kitchen chairs. They were just stupid, but they were the only family that he had. At least he had someone to come home to and tell about his day. He would hold them and tell them about his day and then they would run off and act as if he had just tried to kill him.
Before he became the Chief of Police, he had worked as a beat officer for seven years. He had loved being on the streets. Getting to know the people of the street and being able to find informants. It was not easy to then move up to the role of Chief when the people of the streets saw it as a slap on the face. They thought that he was giving up on them and trying to get the higher powers that be to like him better. He no longer had the connections with the people he had had previously and this killed him. He had tried to get back to the streets, when the bureaucracy of the office would allow him to, so that the people would realize that they could still relate to him. It just didn’t seem to make that much of a difference. They had a set opinion of him and there was nothing that he could do to change that. They saw him as a traitor. There was really nothing that he could do except to except it and move on with his job.
When ‘El Diablo’ first reared his ugly head in Grangeville he could not believe that it was happening while under his watch. He believed that he knew who was causing all of the problems because he had been warned that something like this was going to happen while he was on the streets. A young man, George Hawkins, had been a known gang member and had not really done anything that bad when he ran into Officer Roberts. He was caught stealing a carton of cigarettes from the 7-11 downtown. Roberts just happen to be on patrol when Hawkins came running out of the convenience store. Roberts got out of his patrol car and caught him. Because he was a known gang member this arrest put him away for a minimum of five years.
As George Hawkins was being booked at the police station, he kept stating that something bad was going to happen on day in the streets. He would mutter to himself, saying, “It is going to happen. The devil will not rest until he has cleansed the earth of the corrupt. Just you wait until that time comes, it will be worse than anything you have ever seen.” Roberts didn’t know what to think. For all he knew Hawkins was high on some sort of drug and was not in his right mind. It was often hard to know if what an offender was saying held any merit or not. Unfortunately, it was often after the booking that it would become clear if they were under the influence or not.
It was not until four weeks earlier that Jason remembered George Hawkins. He did some research as to where he was and found out that Hawkins had been released from prison just two months ago and his parole officer could not find him. This was not a good thing. ‘El Diablo’ had already killed three innocent members of society. The three victims had nothing in common except for the fact that they were all wealthy. It did not seem that they knew each other or ran in the same social circle. If the murderer kept to his pattern that he had used so far, he was due to hit again in about four days. That was why it was so important that he got his task force together.
Now that he had Grace Winters on his team, he had the entire task force. It was going to include himself, Grace, William Young, a new detective who had been assigned the case, and Veronica Moore, the local D.A. who would prosecute ‘El Diablo’ if he was ever caught. He hoped that by having his group together that they would be able to pool their resources together and catch this monster. Jason was not looking forward to having to tell the people that the madman had struck again. There was only one way that they knew that the murders were all interconnected; the killer always drew a devil’s head with horns in charcoal next to each of the bodies. It was his calling card. Now all they needed to do was stop him before he struck again.
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