Chapter 16: November 25th – New York – Afternoon

 At work quick update



Chapter 16: November 25th – New York –  Afternoon

     Sally’s Diner is one of those diners in New York that is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and open all year round. A place for all-day breakfast, cops to take a break, and waitresses knows all the regulars’ names. The diner is inside of a subway car sitting on an empty street corner several blocks away from the 27th precinct. The diner can only fit thirty customers at a time, is very clean, and is decorated in tacky patriotic New York memorabilia. The food is made fresh and takes a while to come out, and with the small diner floor it ensures the kitchen isn’t too rushed, this will also give Joseph plenty of time to get Naomi’s perspective on what’s been going on in the past several of days.

    “So, Naomi. How long have you worked at the Fox Tail?” Joseph asked, trying to start the conversation. They’ve been quiet since they’ve left the Fox Tail a little over ten minutes ago.

            “Uh, little over a year. I work as a chef, I was never one of those girls.” She uses the term chef loosely since all of her job entails is popping frozen food into the oven and making sure she doesn’t burn them.

    “Ah, so how old were you when you started?” Joseph again asked, she looks really young and might actually not be allowed to work at the strip club. Naomi smiles at the question, her young looks are one of the reasons why the owners of the club wanted to get Naomi into the Fox Tail. She thought about becoming a striper but decided against it after meeting a lot of the girls in the back.

    “Why, twenty-one of course.” She said with a sweet voice purposely batting eyelashes as if she is an innocent little girl playing seductive. Joseph didn’t really care about her answer, it’s not like there is more serious things going on at the moment.

    The only waitress on shift for Sally’s Diner comes up to Joseph and Naomi’s table to get their order. The nametag on the waitress says Flo and she looks like a waitress out of a 50’s film. Flo is middle aged, wears a pinkish waitress dress, and heels to work. She has a small notepad with a pen ready to take their order, indicating that the diner is still on the short hand waitress note system rather than printing out a computer itemized order receipt. Joseph ordered a frying steak with eggs, and Naomi got pancakes and bacon. After Flo left, Naomi got a little fed up with dancing around the subject and why she was picked up from work.

    “So, what’s going on here?” she asked blatantly.

    “Well that depends on how much you know. How do you know Thomas Worthington?” Joseph answered with a question.

    “You mean that… Angel of Death guy? How would I know him?” She’s been at the Fox Tail all night last night, sleeping in the back office. When she woke up this morning the club didn’t have the news on, but several of the early morning customers from the dock who come in for a coffee talked about it.

    “He has blonde hair, Caucasian, and lives in your apartment building. You called about him yesterday following you, and now the officer who came to talk to you was found dead this morning.” Joseph is talking about Jane Brockbank, the officer who was dispatched for the call.

    “What? That’s him? Oh my god. What the fuck?” She panics for a second, realizing how close she was to probably being murdered. Joseph cleared his throat, Naomi calms down.


Which officer got killed?” Naomi asked. Joseph gives her a confused look, the emergency report log didn’t say Jane Brockbank was with a partner last night. 

    “What do you mean which one?”

    “Well, was it the guy or girl who was found dead?”

    “A guy?” Joseph took out his smart phone and began a search for Michael Morrow. He finds an old news article about Michael Morrow being promoted to being the top investigator in New York City, a position that is only trumped by O’Healy’s old commissioner position. He gives the phone to Naomi to look over.

    “Yeah that’s him. He and a redhead came to visit and ask me about the guy who was stalking me. Oh my god, I didn’t know it was him though. I have goose bumps now.” She pulls back her sleeve showing Joseph her arm. Joseph didn’t see anything, he was lost in thought on why Michael was with Jane Brockbank last night. It wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the police logs that he was partnering with her, nor did she mention him in any of her check-ins. It’s a small thing to think about, but it’s often the small things that usually end up ruining everything.
   
    “Well then, they were both killed last night. Thomas Worthington, the guy who was stalking you yesterday claimed credit for their death. We thought it was best if we grab you and put you into protective custody because he seemed fixated on you yesterday.” Naomi paused, this time she took the time to think. She couldn’t believe what was going on, and how close to death she came. She then felt bad for arguing with Joseph yesterday when he came in to take her away from the Fox Tail.

    “Do you know why he’s fixated on you? Why he has a crush or why he may be stalking you?” Joseph asked, trying to get to know what kind of relationship they may have had. Naomi just shrugged back.
 
            “No, I don’t know. I literally only seen him like once in the laundry room. I don’t know what I did.” Joseph sighed, this isn’t going anywhere. He smiled, taking his phone back from Naomi who finished reading the article he had given her.

    “I’ll take you down to the station. You’ll be safe there, plenty of officers just in case.” He smiled. Just as he finished the waitress came by with their food. With both plates on the table both of them began eating, staying silent while they ate. Joseph paid the tab and they both got into unmarked police car, heading towards the 27th precinct.

    The police radio is silent, no new sightings of Thomas Worthington or any news coming from Paul O’Healy. Everyone is still busy sifting through Thomas’s apartment and forensics are probably already looking at his computer. Joseph doesn’t know how much longer it’ll take for them to come up with results that may be relevant to the case. Joseph pulls up front of the precinct and walks Naomi inside.

    The front of the police station isn’t as busy as the day of the attack, but a few people lined up possibly with tips and sightings of a guy who looks similar to Thomas. Most of the people in the waiting room just want the reward money, not to do the right thing. Joseph takes Naomi by the hand and escorts her through the small crowd and into the back of the precinct where the desks filled by detectives work. About 80% of the precinct force is in with most of them doing or planning to do OT to cover the imbalance of man power between shifts. Almost everyone is mourning the loss of their comrades today, but they know they need to career and soldier on.

    Joseph drops Natalie off at the detective who handles witness protection and protective custody.

    “Wait so you’re just going to leave me here with him?” She asks, pointing at the Detective who is more computer surfing than actually doing any work.

    “With any luck this will be over in a few hours.” Joseph says with a fake comforting smile.

    “And what makes you say that?”

    “Call it a hunch.” Joseph said. He didn’t know why but he thought Thomas may be tailing them, although he isn’t a hundred percent sure about it. He assumed the reason why Natalie’s prediction of Thomas attacking the Fox Tail failed is because Joseph ramped up police protection on the bar, a visible deterrent for Thomas. Joseph thought he may’ve been watching the place to see if the police move Naomi, which he did and which leads him to think Thomas may be following him.


    Joseph leaves Naomi with one of the witness protection guys and checks his phone. He had one missed call from an unknown number in Vancouver. He tried calling the number but no one picked up, and there was no voice mail. He looked at the time of the call, and it came while Naomi and him were having lunch at the diner about an hour ago. Joseph put the phone back, and went towards Paul O’Healy’s office to check in his progress and to let him know that Naomi King is now in the precinct.

    Joseph knocks on the office door of Paul O’Healy. The door says Michael Morrow but in times like this there isn’t time for title and name changes, everyone was busy trying to find Thomas. He knocks again, opening the door and finds Paul O’Healy on a laptop with an external hard drive attached. His eyes are glued to the screen, he didn’t even look up at Joseph when he entered.

    “Hey boss?” Joseph asked, O’Healy still didn’t acknowledge him.

    Joseph walked around the desk to try and catch a glimpse of what Paul is looking at on his computer screen. He was able to literally walk behind him and still Paul didn’t react to him. On the screen was a picture of O’Healy’s granddaughter dancing in a night club that she shouldn’t have been in on the first place. The slideshow flips to the next picture that shows her doing coke off a chick’s leg in the club. Another picture shows her making out with a man in his late twenties, almost half her age. Joseph seen enough and slams the computer screen shut. That’s when Paul O’Healy snapped back into reality.

    “What the fuckity fuck Joseph?” Paul’s angry that Joseph shut the computer lid on him. Joseph just shook his head.

    “This is for the better, you don’t want to see your daughter like this. We need to focus on the case.” Joseph replied.

    “This is the fucking case. This is Thomas’s hard drive. I had the computer forensics team to transfer the hard drive so I can look through it while they analyze it. This fucker was stalking her…” Paul O’Healy yelled, Jose wasn’t sure if he was about to tear up at the realization. Instead he took a step back, moving to the side of the room.

    “Oh… I’m sorry…” Joseph stated. Paul O’Healy shook his head.

    “Fucking told you, don’t want your fake sympathies. I want him dead.” Paul O’Healy declared. “I want his wings ripped out, I want him fucking dead.”

    The room went silence. The laptop closed. Joseph leaned against one of the walls looking at Paul O’Healy sitting at his desk alone and broken. Paul takes deep and slow breaths, he is emotionally drained from this case and the last thing he needed was to see pictures of his only granddaughter being followed by the man who murdered her. Joseph didn’t know what to say, little more than two years ago he was in Paul’s position. Broken, a shadow of his former self.