The student lifted the lid on the tin and dipped her brush in the white paint. Upon the doors, she began to spread the paint into the shape of the Aryan Fist symbol which had been a consistent message throughout the group’s campaign to expose Lincoln. The cameraman captured her every move and the registration plate of the vehicle she had arrived in.
Lae returned to her car and drove off. Darnell, exhausted from five evenings of staring at an empty building with little hope of catching their suspect, drove away confident that he had the materials to lead to her arrest. He was just gutted he wouldn’t be the one to do it.
*
Forty-eight hours later, Darnell Jackson was invited into the precinct where he had been employed for nearly three decades. It had been a fruitful couple of days for his former colleague, Vanessa, who had managed the arrest, assisted the interrogation with the CIA, and was responsible for the search of the home and business of the Changs; this time through more formal channels.
The blueprints found in the cabin, along with the photographs captured on Darnell’s phone, allowed her to press charges against the couple, who were now locked away in Springfield jail. They found another incriminating artefact in that yard too; a tub of Dexpan. Their engineering expert had claimed Dexpan was the perfect agent to break up concrete without requiring the use of noisy drills, which would have disrupted the neighbourhood and interrupted their plans to steal Lincoln’s body. The association with Patrick Burns, AKA Rick Spabrunt, hardened their evidence against him too. He was their only link to the cemetery and those blue prints.
However, despite their celebrations, they had yet to find the body of the former president, and their suspects were far from giving anything away to the police besides a reply of ‘no comment’.
Darnell was far from surprised to be invited into the station. It was his phone which had captured Lae in the act and he was now officially a witness to the proceedings. When he arrived, he was welcomed into a meeting room where he found his manager and the rest of the working group who had been tasked with locating the missing body of President Lincoln.
Jackson sat down nervously. He felt underdressed in his hoodie and jeans whilst his former colleagues appeared ready for a day in court in their formal attire. A lot had changed since their first meeting, and everyone in the room appeared older than they had just a couple of short weeks before; their eyes were heavy as the investigation took a toll over the task team. The case had really taken it out of the force as they worked tirelessly twenty-four-seven to bring home a significant role model to the United States. Darnell knew exactly how they were feeling; he was drained and that was without the added blow of his family problems. Commander Hill sat at the head of the table and began the meeting.
‘Well thank you all for coming today, including Detective Jackson.’ Hill offered Darnell an approving nod. ‘Vanessa has told us all about your hard work in catching these crooks. It’s amazing, Darnell, that you managed to figure out who was responsible. Your intuition has paid off big time. Whilst I should be annoyed that you carried on looking into the case when you were no longer in a position to do so, I’m certainly not going to nit-pick at your heroic deeds, nor am I going to tell our current President that we overlooked evidence sent to us from a former employee to find a previous president. Your work has been nothing short of remarkable.’
Darnell turned to Vanessa, who winked at her roommate. She had sacrificed the glory, which she rightly could have taken, to allow Darnell to hold the limelight.
‘Well it was a team effort,’ Darnell said, winking back.
‘And Vanessa has also pointed out to us that you were in fact in the pursuit of Poppy Shipman on the evening the email outlining our investigation was sent to the press revealing the news about Lincoln’s body, so it couldn’t have been you who sent the email. While the less said about Poppy Shipman the better, we have to accept that you couldn’t be guilty of letting the press know about the exhumation of Lincoln. So we will need a separate investigation into who hacked your account, but we’re all aware that a security upgrade is required. We are clearly a little vulnerable at Springfield.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Darnell said, he lowered his head to avoid his manager witnessing his moist eyes. He felt exonerated from the cruel accusations which had been thrown his way. Darnell was pretty certain who had sent that email to the press, but he wasn’t going to offer up his son voluntarily. He was still his father regardless of their relationship.
‘So I take it you’ll come back to the case?’ Hill replied.
‘Well, no. I can’t just come back, sir,’ Darnell said, stunning the entire room. ‘You see you got rid of me due to a lack of trust. I can’t work with people who can’t trust me. If I was to come back, I would need your full support. And you know what? I’m gonna make mistakes. I’m gonna mess up. I’m getting older and this will probably end up being the last case I’ll ever work on. So if I do this, I’ll need your help.’
‘You’ve got it, Jackson.’ The Commander stood up and held out his hand to Darnell, who shook it. ‘Whatever you want, you’ve got it. I don’t care how you do it, just bring that damn body home.’
‘Well how are
