The End is Nigh

Caliban provides an excerpt from the novel he is currently writing. A Detective is called back to work after a year in retirement to solve the murder of child in St Petersburg that resembles a series of murders he worked early in his career.

For Buster,
the kindest soul I have ever known.
You’re gone and everything is worse now.

I miss you, Bubba.

For Danielle,

One of the most loving people I know, and my closest friend.

You’ve seen me at my worst,

 and have been there supporting me every step of the way while I’ve been finding myself again.

I hope I’ve been just as good a friend to you as you have been to me.

I love you, Dani.

Thank you for understanding me.

I

December 16, 2030
St. Petersburg, Florida

I stared deep into the holocaust.

Bodies danced as shadows in the blaze. Their screams ripped through the night as their flesh was charred and sloughed off the bone.
I looked into the flames and I saw the eye of a dead god. 

“Mr. Sherman!”
I snapped back from my daydream into Dr. Ellie Woods's small and dimly lit office. The lights hummed and flickered and the fan shook loudly as it beat the air. The noise felt like a blanket. It made me drowsy. I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the inkblot I was holding in between my big brown thumbs. I needed glasses and the lighting didn’t help. The blot reminded me of a dying bird I‘d shot with a friend’s BB gun when I was young. The image of a little yellow-breasted chat twitching on the asphalt, the glint of the metal bb embedded in the damn thing’s chest, and its plumage stained red with blood was vivid in my mind.
“A bird,” I said, smoke from my cigarillo spilling out of my mouth further clouding my vision. I set the card down on the Bamboo coffee table. I wasn’t exactly lying, just withholding enough truth from my evaluator. 

This was my second meeting with my new shrink, Dr. Ellie Woods. The psychiatrist I’d been seeing before her, had a heart attack in October.
Dr. Woods was a tall woman, she had curly dark shoulder-length hair and amber skin. We went to school together a long time ago, but she never acknowledged it. I didn’t think she remembered me from those days, so I left it alone. I could remember almost every single person I’d met even if it was just in passing. Not many people had that gift. I had always thought of it as a curse. 

I took another inkblot card from the package she’d had waiting for me at the front desk.

I squinted again at what looked like two figures in the black. I saw myself and a man I called brother once, 14 years ago. We would be strangling each other if it weren’t for the red. There was red ink around what I saw as our necks. Stabbing each other? I couldn’t decide on our instruments of bloodshed. Brothers killing one another. Maybe only one of us was doing the killing, and the other was just dying. Like Cain and Abel. 

“Brothers. Me and Mine.”

I put the card down over the previous one. I looked around Woods’ office. The room was small and white, more akin to an interrogation room than a psychiatrist’s office. No art on the unpainted walls. No bookshelf lined with psychology books and alike. No magazines. No personality of any kind except for the wooden desk which made Woods look larger than she was. I guess that’s what this digital age was. Blank and devoid of humanity.

“How have you been sleeping, Mr. Sherman?” she asked.
“Not as much as I should.” I sighed.
“How many hours?”
“Who keeps track of that?”

I hit my cigarillo again and ran my big brown hand through my hair. I kept my jet-black curls high and tight these days. My hair and nose had given me a degree of ethnic ambiguity my whole life. I’d been mistaken for the wrong type of Indian or Arab most of my childhood because of it. I stopped caring what people assumed I was when I got to be a man. I was a mutt, an amalgamation of every fucking thing, but I’d always maintained that I was a black man. It’s what my family always told me I was with their own blackness. It’s what always made the most sense.

Another Inkblot.
I saw a baby. A baby that’d been swung against a wall. Painted it red like Hermann Nitsch. It looked like a horrific sculpture made by a deranged artist.  Pieces of her little skull were embedded in the wall and blood was dripping back down onto what was left of her body. Looked like someone kicked her till she burst. I decided to lie.

“A smiling child,” I said.
“Any particular reason.” Dr. Woods asked.
“That’s just what it looks like.”
“Your sleeping habits Mr. Sherman. Is there any reason behind the lack of sleep?”

I said nothing, I just brought the cigarillo up to my lips again and took smoke into my mouth. I was bored. I tolerated the shrink that was all, but I couldn’t stand repeating myself. I’d interpreted enough inkblots and I’d answered enough probing questions over the past year, and the process was wearing on my patience. I’d done it all before. The department wanted to make sure I was sane. That they weren’t setting some deranged animal loose. It was procedure now, going in and going out. 

Dr. Woods regarded me with uncertainty and mild annoyance.

“Mr. Sherman, I want you to tell me about your time with the St. Petersburg Police Department,” she said.
“I was a detective,” I said, scratching the short beard I had let grow during my retirement,

“Worked homicide and kidnapping cases. I’m sure all the details are in my file.”

“They are,” She said as she uncrossed and recrossed her legs, “At least the records of your work from 2019 to 2025.  After that, the details are extremely lacking, aside from a motion to transfer and a letter of resignation.” 

We both sat there looking at one another.

“So...we’re done with the inkblots?” I said breaking the silence.
“Mr. Sherman, you need to answer my questions.”

At that moment I decided I didn’t like her very much. She was no fun. 

I said nothing, but I held her gaze coldly. I continued on saying nothing for a long time. Woods started to show discomfort and shifted in her chair before I asked,

“What do you want to know?”
Her eyebrows shot up, I guessed she’d expected me to be more resistant.

 “What happened in 2025?”
“I was pulled off homicide by Baker. He wanted me on the task force he was putting together. They started calling it something as I was on my way out, but I only ever heard it once or twice. Most of the time I was there they said we didn’t exist.” 

I made air quotes with my fingers when I said the word “exist.” and my cigarillo dropped ashes onto the white tile floor as it bounced in my right hand.

“Children were going missing. Girls, boys, whatever you call those ones between, 12 to 14. Some younger than that. They knew about it over there in the cybercrimes division but they were getting swamped on all sides in those days.” 

“Why you?”

I shrugged and said, “I guess he liked me. I should’ve said no. I could’ve kept going with homicide, but I don’t like motherfuckers that hurt kids.” 

Woods uncrossed and recrossed her legs again. I guessed she did that when she was about to ask a question she wasn’t sure a patient was going to answer. A nervous tick. Something like that.

“Why did you quit, Mr. Sherman?”
I took the remains of the roach from my mouth and set it on the table. I took the cigarillo tin from my pocket.

“Do you have kids, Doctor?” I asked.

“No, I don’t,” she said. 

She sounded sad when she said that. I thought maybe she couldn’t have children for whatever reason. I nodded. I opened the tin and pulled another cigarillo out. 

“I was partnered with Ray Brent. On the task force, we saw a lot of kids. We saw the shit these evil motherfuckers like to do to ‘em. These kidnappers and traffickers and pedophiles and shit. That last case, the missing little boy. Ian Gardner. Five years old. He’d been missing a few days, no word from his abductors. So Baker set us loose and Brent and I went hunting, breaking rules, and breaking bones ‘till we had a name and address. That’s how we did things.”

I brought the cigarillo to my lips and lit it. I puffed on it briefly before I continued. 

“This one motherfucker told me about a house on Dartmouth and 23rd. This fucking grey boxy thing that didn’t belong in a neighborhood like that. Said he had dropped kids off there more than once before he got out of the game. The house was dark and the door was unlocked. I cleared the first floor, with no sign of the homeowner and no sign of the boy. I cleared the second floor. I saw nothing. Then, I heard him. I’d gotten sensitive to the sounds they make. The little whimpers. I followed the sound. They were coming from behind a wall. I put my ear up to it and I heard the boy loud and clear, and I heard the heavy breathing of a man.”

I puffed the cigarillo and smoke coated the inside of my mouth. My head went light and blew twin clouds from my nose. I went on.

“I kicked the wall. My foot went straight through. I stuck my arm in and twisted the lock. I found the boy with an old white man’s dick in his ass. He pulled his manhood out of the boy and put up his hands. He started to bark something but I didn’t want to hear it. I punched him in the throat. Hard. I felt his windpipe collapse for a second against the vertebrae in his neck. I dragged him out of that room, and away from the boy as he choked. The boy was naked in that closet and crying. I calmed him down and called it in. The whole time I wasn’t thinking, just going through the motions. I had to make him wait for the paramedics and the rape kit with all that sin in him. On the ride home, I decided I didn’t want to see shit like that anymore. I didn’t want to know any more about all that disgusting shit.” 

I sat back in my uncomfortable chair. Telling that story took a lot out of me. I was suddenly very tired. Woods didn’t look like she had anything to say but then she crossed and uncrossed her legs again. 

“Mr. Sherman,” She swallowed and tried again. “Mr. Sherman, can you tell me about the Yelegna case in 2024?”

I said nothing And kept saying nothing until her alarm went off. She reached across and clicked stop but kept the voice memo app running just in case I decided to answer her question. I didn’t. We sat for a few moments before I stood and loomed over the desk. Anyone who looked at me could see that I boxed for exercise; I had a lean build and a medium frame. My muscles were compact and hard, facilitating function and strength oversize. I took my parka off the back of the chair, and Dr. Ellie Woods stood to meet me extending her hand.

“I’ll see you next month Mr. Sherman unless you prefer we see each other more frequently.”

I took her hand and swallowed it in my own and said nothing. I didn’t say anything until I had made my way down the hall and made my next appointment with the secretary. I, in fact, did not want to meet more frequently, as much as I tolerated the shrink. I didn’t like seeing anyone too often, I liked being alone. I was a solitary creature by nature, and the recurrent company of others annoyed me.
I slipped the parka over my dark polo shirt in the elevator. It fit my shoulders well. The outer layer had a waterproof coating, as bad as the rain had gotten over the years I was grateful for it being insulated. I wore a pin over the left breast where the jacket had saved my life once. Under the pin, the graphene lining had been exposed via a bullet hole. I always thought myself lucky that the parka had done its job, I knew guys who weren’t so lucky.
The elevator chimed and announced “Ground Floor” in a cold metallic voice. I stepped out and walked through the lobby. The woman at the front desk looked up and opened her mouth to say something. I assumed she was going to say “Sir, you can’t smoke in here!”, or something like that. I was out the lobby doors and under the awning before I could hear her bitching. My cigarillo went out as I stepped out into the rain. My hair was wet and slicked against my head by the time I found JWags. 

The bar’s aesthetic hadn’t changed much since it opened in 2012. The building was split down the middle like a duplex. The other half housed a dispensary. There was a mural of three birds on the Southside of the building. I knew two out of the three birds to be a Bluejay, and a Cardinal nestled amongst colorful abstract shapes. The last bird I had no idea. The city had crammed a goddamn recruitment booth up against the wall. The fucking thing covered up half the Cardinal. As I walked past it the booth blurted out its message in a young woman’s voice, “Join the United States Military!” The military had been having trouble recruiting since 2016. Now we were in another damn war in the Middle East, fighting about some goddamn thing, more than likely oil or power or no damn reason at all, and those who could fight didn’t want to fight. They never did. I’d got to thinking they might need to bring back the draft this time.

I sat at the bar with my back to the sidewalk two seats down from an old man slumped on the bar. The awning gave me a break from the rain that’d been beating against my skull, chilling me to the bone as I walked. The street lamps marinated me in blue light. They were installed years ago after some bullshit study found that blue light reduces the number of violent crimes and suicides in a given area. I never saw any improvement, but I was sure some asshole who went to college longer than I did would tell me that the statistics said something different. 

I stuck my Amex in the slot on the kiosk to my left. I wiped raindrops from the touch screen before scrolling through drinks. I tapped on the Dark 'N' Stormy, with Dark Jamaican rum. The kiosk asked how many before charging me, I changed the number from 1 to 4, confirmed, and pulled my card. A pretty mixed girl came up and began to prepare my first drink behind the plexiglass. That was the standard practice since the worldwide pandemic of 2020. She tried to start a conversation but I stuck to my silence. I returned her smile when she slid my drink through the slot. I downed it and she slid me my second. 

I was thinking about that boy and about the Yelegna case, and I wanted to stop. With every sip both Sol Yelegna, Ian Gardner, and all the other names in my head quieted, becoming whimpers instead of screams. I threw back my second drink, without savoring it then set the glass back down on the bar. The chill I had started to dampen as the drink slid into my stomach. I hated the taste of alcohol. It tasted like weakness and an early grave, but there was something deep in me calling out for it my whole life. Calling before I could taste it for the first time and it called more and more with every drink I had. “A man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, the drink takes the man,” that’s what the Irish said. I didn’t normally drink despite it, but some thoughts deserve to be buried.  

I raised my hand from the bar and the girl prepared my third. She slid it to my waiting hand, it landed and a feminine hand grabbed my wrist. I used to be able to hear people walking up on me, it’s amazing what you lose with a year out of practice and two drinks. I let the glass go, and half turned around to see Amanda Nicole. Amanda was a tall woman with angular features. She matched me inch for inch. Her dark hair was pulled into a long braid. She looked a lot older right then. I had 2 years on her.

“No,” I said. Before turning back to the bar and ripping my hand away. I reached for my glass again. She reached out and pinned my wrist to the bar. I felt her press her weight down on me as she hopped onto the barstool next to me. 

“No, what?” she asked.

“No to whatever it is you’re going to say. No, you can’t buy me a drink. No, I won’t buy you one.”

“You really know how to treat a girl Teddy,” she said as she used her credit implant at the kiosk. 

Most people knew better than to call me that, but it wasn’t worth fighting about. We were family in the way all cops are family. And family always gets a pass.
I took my drink in my left hand and I threw it back. 

Too fast. 

I raised the glass for another. The girl came back over and made mine, then Amanda’s; she smiled at us both. I returned her smile again. Women always smiled at me. I always guessed that meant I wasn’t ugly, ‘cause I damn sure wasn’t nice. 

Amanda and I sat sipping our drinks for a while, alternating sips, stalling, saying nothing. I was good at saying nothing. I didn’t like talking much. To anyone. About anything.

I took the last sip of my drink and asked, “So, what do you want?”

She turned to me and the blue streetlights reflected in her glasses.

“What?” Amanda asked. 

“Don’t do that,” I said. My words were cold.  I repeated my question, “What do you want?”

“I want to finish this drink,” She said. “They want me to bring you in.”

“Who’s they?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“What else do you want me to be?”

“You could play nice."

…

I didn’t like cars that drive themselves. Amanda sat in the driver’s seat and turned around to face me. I was holding tight to the grab handle. She was looking at me like I was crazy. I didn’t care. I appreciated the possibility of human error. At least there was the illusion of control. The allusion of the ability to change course.

The ride was smooth and slow. My head swam from the liquor the whole way. I closed my eyes and it got worse. I was a functional drinker, not so functional physically, but enough so in the mind. The car parked itself in front of the station. I followed Amanda out of the car. The doors pulled closed behind us. 

I staggered a little, Amanda noticed, and went back in the car. She came out with a stim and handed it to me. I held the black rectangular thing to my neck then pushed the button. I felt six needles enter my veins for a second before retracting, and the effects of the alcohol were almost immediately counteracted. I shoved the stim into my coat pocket. I followed my younger cousin inside the big open building. When it was built I remembered them saying some bullshit about it being a ‘Yes building, not a No building’. Making the public feel more comfortable with the force and all that.

The metal detector went off for us as we passed through to the stairs. Amanda pulled her badge and showed it to the security officer behind the glass. 

I followed behind her up the stairs and down the hallway. People had put up their various holiday decorations on the doors. Most were for Christmas, but there was always a Hanukkah in the mix with these things and some assholes who didn’t believe in anything. We stood there for a moment. The shade was pulled behind the glass, I stared at the words etched in it. Chief Orlando Martinez.

Amanda opened the door for me. The Chief and Captain Julian Baker sat across from one another at Martinez’s desk. He thanked her without looking up as I strode through the door. I pulled my cigarillo case from my jacket pocket and took one out as I moved. I lit it as the door was pulled closed behind me. I stood right under the ceiling fan and puffed. Martinez motioned for me to sit.

I shook hands with Baker as I slid into synthetic leather. He was too big for the chair, it was like he put on more and more muscle every time I saw him. He played football when we were in high school and he’d never really lost the look. 

The desk was nothing to be impressed by. It was simply made from whatever wood they used to make desks out of before things started to move towards bamboo. At the edge, there was a circular hologram display. We sat waiting on Martinez who had his big bald head in his hand.  He was a tall Latino in his 60s. He’d been chief a short time. Before him, Chief Holloway had been the face of the force in St. Pete. I’d liked the man. He was an old retiree now.

“Anastasia, show the file from Friday,” Martinez said. 

“Which one?” a woman’s voice asked. It was reserved, almost cold but asking an honest question.

“The one Baker sent over.”

The lights dimmed and the hologram display cut on. We were greeted with a timestamp then, a school photo of a little girl. She was a cute kid. She had highlights in her hair that didn’t compliment her brown skin but that was on the parents.
I asked for an overview while we viewed the photos. Anastasia told me about what happened to little Fernanda Nieves and a wave of anger washed over me as she spoke.

She’d been found that morning in Flora Wylie Park. A photo of the scene came up. The girl was hung upside down. The whole of her weight hung on her ankles attached to a tree with rope. Her legs splayed like a deer. Like a hunter did it. She’d been disemboweled. Jagged cuts. Emotional and impatient, almost inexperienced. The cuts went from her genitals to just below her rib cage. Her mangled vagina hung into the cavity between her legs. Her guts lay in a pile beneath her. Her colon ran from inside her down to the pile of viscera. 

I went on listening to the A.I.'s overview and scrutinized the photographs for a minute before waving my hand when I decided I’d seen and heard enough.

Anastasia closed the file and the lights came on.

“Shit,” I sighed. I was struggling to push the anger down. All that rage and desire to hurt something or someone for what had happened.

We sat saying nothing again for a long time. There was nothing to say after seeing something like that. There never is.

“The fuck’d y’all show me that for?” I asked.

My voice was small then. Came out as a croak. Martinez raised his head up out of his hand to look at me.

“What do you make of it?” Baker asked.

“Looks a lot like the ones from ‘24 but you knew that already.”

“The motherfucker’s back,” he said.

“Nobody’s saying that,” Martinez said, backpedaling from Baker’s statement. 

“But we need you on this one.” 

“Nah,” I whispered. “You need somebody else. Call Brent, I’m sure he’d be up for it.”

“You believe that?” Baker inclined.

“I ain’t your man,” I said as I pushed myself up out of the faux leather. 

“You also seem to believe you have a choice,” Martinez bellowed.

He stopped me with that. There was something about another man raising his voice at me that I never liked. I had an urge to jump across that desk and crush Martinez’s throat until his voice was a whisper. I dug my fingernails into my palms until I felt blood start to pool beneath them. I hadn’t seen the shrink’s reports but I knew I didn’t test well. Martinez could get me put on a list saying I wasn’t sane. Restrict my movement. Violate my privacy and imprison me within St. Pete’s walls. It was the price for trying to leave without clearing the table. 

I half-turned back to them.

“Anastasia start pulling together the files from the Yelegna case,” Martinez ordered while he dug in his desk drawer. “Have them ready for Detective Sherman in the morning.”

Martinez’s hand came back up with my badge in it. I took it from him and clipped it on my belt.

“Send them to me tonight Anastasia,” I said as I turned back and walked out of the office.

I found Amanda waiting for me. She took me back to where she found me and spent the whole 6-minute drive asking me about the case. I said nothing.

I sat back down on the same stool. I stuck my Amex in and ordered four shots of Patrón. I’d drank to forget before, now I was drinking trying to remember what it was like to have a stomach for homicide. For human beings turned into butchered carcasses. I hadn’t seen a body in well over a year. 

I sat there nursing a drink for a while and reading over the Yelegna case on my tablet. My memory didn’t need refreshing. Memory was the one thing I did have. I was checking the m.o. making sure it fit before I jumped on the bandwagon with Baker.

 I lost track of time. It could’ve been 8 it could’ve been 9. I sent for a car on my phone then crossed my arms and laid my head down on the bar. I rested my eyes behind their lids, not thinking, and not remembering. I listened to the city. The night was beginning to stir, bringing out the degenerates. The noise was comforting. The cars, and the sound of heavy rain on asphalt. The early arguments, and the sound of shoes slapping against wet concrete. I listened to her for a time while I waited for the car I ordered. Saint Petersburg was a lonely place, always was, always would be. A bunch of lost dreams. Lost people. It all collided there in the city. I listened a little while longer to the concert 4th street was putting on for her patrons before a loud horn cut through the noise.