Crusade

“Arnie wake up! Arnie… Arnie?” A faint voice ringed through the man’s ears but seemingly bounced off.

Kyle vigorously jostled Arnold, “Hey Arnie, hey wake up bud”.

Arnold woke up to see the influx of officers and his colleagues, the precinct was bustling. It took him a while to see the sunlight and understand the whole night had passed.

“Seriously? Don’t tell me you kept working your way through the files, the entire knight and slept here?” still unable to believe the man he called his friend.

“Did he find anything?” Arnold asked, these words fell as naturally as though he had been hearing those words in his dream.

“Who?” Kyle was as puzzled as a man can be after being confronted with something completely out of context. He didn’t have the perfect morning himself, apart from his usual sleeping troubles, his toaster gave up on him to top his troubles with a cherry. Empty stomach coupled with a bad night can drive a person crazy but not an experienced person, and as far as the experience came in the field of bad luck you could say that Kayle had the worst of them all. He’d seen and experienced enough to call himself a veteran in this field where everyone to his eyes was mere novice crying they had it rough, Kayle would smirk and proudly flaunt his superiority with his chest puffed. He was the blackest of black cat that crossed your path just a step before success. If it were the standard of merit in the department, he would have been pretty high up the ladder with his seniority.

“Kobayashi” Arnold replied squinting his eyes which were still surprised to find the sun.

“Oh…” As the hermit atop Himalayas, the Buddha himself who had just realized the truth of the world just uttered a single syllable to reflect his immense intellect. Kyle spoke. At this moment it became harder to differentiate who had just woken from sleep. “Nope” He replied with a glimmer on his face. “He’s as Kobayashi as we thought he was”.

Kyle’s disdain for Kobayashi was puzzling to most but it ran deep, a thing as natural as seeing a mirage in the desert and as complicated as explaining the scientific concepts of reflection and refraction behind it to a 5 year old to elucidate why it’s not magic because to him - it is. Just like to most people who knew even a bit about Kyle, automatically knew about Kobayashi, Kyle highly doubted whether they both even knew the origins of their long-standing feud but he never bothered to ask just as he never actually bothered to listen to Kyle’s incessant pecking of trivialities. Some people just don’t get together and they are like oil and water, never mix, never touch, never indulge.

“We have to do something, we have to keep him here. That’s our only chance. I didn’t find anything on him but I’m sure there must be a leaf within the piles of our archives that will attest to his crimes, one brave testament that will defy dread and greed, but I don’t have the power to do it alone. We have to divert manpower from the Amy James case”. Arnold enumerated aloud all the points that had dawned on him during the time working on the case. He was trying nail-and-teeth to bite at the opportunity he had created for himself after all this hard work he had encountered a wall, there was no passage around it, and the way he put the above statements appeared to Kyle as Arnold trying his best to pretend the wall didn’t exist.

“We have to do something, we can’t let him free”, he repeated himself.

“Nope, he’s got covered, we won’t scratch him, His lawyer is on the way to the precinct, they’ll bail him out before we can blink, but let’s enjoy the moment while it lasts.” Kyle said with a forced optimism. He wasn’t very good at it, but Arnold liked the way every time he tried to conceal his real emotions to no avail.

“Couldn’t we stall him a bit more?”. Arnold said disappointed.

“Aren’t you surprised how he is still here? Shouldn’t his lapdog have come wagging his tail, barking at us right after his master was arrested. We kept him here for an entire night, do you know what that means, we have already crossed to the other side. No one dared lay a hand on him, and we kept him in a shabby precinct interrogation cell for an entire night.” Kyle certainly posed a question everyone at the station had in mind.

No matter how much they contemplated this question, none of them could reach a satisfying conclusion, why exactly did such a man get stranded at a local police station. Did he? No, it’d be better to say he opted to stay the night at the station. But why? What purpose did it serve him? .Whatever theories he concocted in his mind couldn’t survive this one question, his entire cognitive capabilities seemed stuck against one blockade, traffic unable to flow, neurons unable to fire in their intricate web of networks. Arnold’s mind couldn’t think past this question – Why?

“If you’ve got time for idle chatter, better be of any use” a monotone voice found them as its recipient from someone from the back tables. It was not hoarse or high-pitched, but displayed a firm texture. It was delivered in a flat tone, however strangely it did not take away emotions glued to it.

The duo turned backwards then looked at each other and shared a smirk, Kyle was too anxious to pass a comment on that person, which resulted in the desks being in uproar.

I assumed that was because of Kyle’s slight remark, but when the upheaval continued in that generally nonchalant place didn’t stop, I noticed there were some black coats in the station, several burly, serious looking guys accompanied by what seemed to be a team of lawyers passing the passageway to visit the chief. After a few counted moments, one man was being escorted by the black coats to the exit.

“Customer has checked out of Poste de police de l’hôtel, I thought we’d have to give him a tearful farewell” Kyle chuckled on a lighter node.

“That’s all? That bastard just walked away, after all we went through to book him, he comes stays for a while and walks away like nothing happened surrounded by his men like a royalty who graced us with his visit.” Arnold felt pure anger and disappointment at the same time within him, these two emotions gnawed at him, and he muttered “Does any of this matter?”

Arnold remained adamant about achieving his target at all costs. He knew it was not something he had chosen on a whim, that one case may mean nothing to another investigator but to him this was everything, his only shot at achieving the dreams he so lovingly nurtured even when everyone discouraged him in the face of the harshness of reality there was one thing that kept him unwavering on his pre decided path. A strange feeling began welling inside him, hope of a forlorn dream reawakening, a dream that seemed so improbable, lying dormant quietly inside him, no it didn’t die the flame remained although now reduced to a spark it had been reignited again. Refueled by his recent victories, his spirit rekindled, now appearing achievable. This was how he truly felt, he wanted to grasp this moment in his fist and make the best out of it. Just like a sailor on the wanting to reach the horizon, he estimates the distance thinking he will soon reach his destination, he invigorates all the crew projecting the same dream on them. When all the crew tries their best and the captain charts the way, the ship sails forward, it cruises towards their shared goal, inching closer to their dream. After measuring some distance, when the seer ascends the tower on the mast. How heartbreaking it must be for him to see the horizon just as far, the fact that they aren’t nearing their goal, that the distance between them and their destination isn’t reducing, all their efforts have gone to naught, accomplishing nothing at all. How crushing will this experience be for him when these facts dawn on him all at once.

“Think about it bud, we did the best we could, even better than anyone else could I’d say.” Kyle’s expressions had turned pensive, he was not joking in the least bit. He focused on the dejected Arnold and said, “What we did does carry weight, it is a message from the police that we are here, our hands can reach you, mind you think twice before doing anything that’d make us your enemy, it sent this message into every dark and obscure trenches of the underworld”.

“Screw him. BTW, don’t worry, I covered for you, so the chief doesn’t know about it, still the plan was reckless as heck, you better remember the dinner you owe me from last time.”

“Which one?” Arnold asked, laced with an inherent innocence.

“Fuck you! Putting my life on the line every time to get what? Nothing… Null….Nada…not so much as a thanks from this fuck-face who’ll lecture you every time on everything!”. Kyle cursed Arnold and arnold was receiving it with a half spirited smile.

“Chief has called you”, Teresa marked Arnold