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Guns & Churches

By Joshua Jacobs-Rebhun, Age 12
Thetford, Vermont

“Ah, John, I see you found your way here,” said a stocky police officer.

“Quite accidentally, Henri,” John replied. “What happened?”

“Robbery, destruction,” Henri replied. “One of the stained glass windows was smashed, the pews burned, and parts of the organ stolen. Whoever committed this crime wanted very much to make it obvious that they hated this church.”

“What’ve you found so far?”

“Fingerprints as usual.”

“As usual. Well, whoever it is, they’re as good as caught. I think I’ll see for myself though.”

Henri led John under the tape and into Musée Marguerite. The church was in total disorder. The floor beneath one window was strewn with tiny shards of stained glass and the window above that was empty revealing the bleak gray clouds obscuring the sky. There was a pile of ash and embers in the middle of the church, which John guessed, were the burned pews. Turning he glanced at the organ to notice missing pipes. Policemen were milling about dusting for fingerprints or interviewing people and every so often shooing them away.

“I see you haven’t failed to find a crime scene to investigate,” growled a cold voice.

John spun around. “Oh, it’s you,” he grumbled.

“Is there something wrong with me John?” the man inquired. “Or do you think that your brain is twice the size of mine and therefore I’m of no use?”

“Well, my brain is twice the size of yours,” John retorted, “ and therefore I’m of more help than you’ll ever be.

“You watch out, and please remember I’m a policeman and I have power over you.”

“Thanks George,” John said in a fake sweet tone. Henri beckoned for John to follow and they made their way to the chief of police, Jake.

As they neared, they saw the elderly chief was giving orders to some younger policemen and women. He had thick gray hair streaked with white. In one of his muscular arms he gripped a walkie-talkie. His blue eyes were accompanied by small rings of sleep not had.

“And bring these shards of glass back to the lab,” he was saying. “Oh, and someone tell the mayor.”

“Hey Jake.”

“What do you want, Henri?” he asked without even looking.

“My friend, Inspector John Stanford would like to know what you have so far.”

“Well, we’ve found fingerprints on the pews in the blocked off area. We’re going to bring them back and match them to their corresponding owners.”

“Anything I can do?” John took a small camera out of his back pocket and slipped it under the windowsill. It had double-sided tape on it, not very brilliant, but it would stick.

“Go home and get a good sleep.”

“Good idea.”

“Bye Henri.”

“See you later.”

As he proceeded out of the church, he noticed George looking sourly at him. Not unusual. Ever since John had proved him wrong in one crime. If George had been right he would have got a raise. He avoided George’s gaze, getting in trouble wasn’t a smart thing to do if he wanted to work on the case.

Out in the street life went on as usual, as if nothing had happened. People sauntered by and almost completely ignored the church. A few glanced at it but didn’t seem to care, as if churches got half destroyed every day and this was just another victim. The sky was still gray, a dull, monotonous tone that enveloped the city, and turned smiles to frowns. It had been gray for the past two days and hadn’t rained one bit, so it looked like the sky would be perpetually gray here.

As he was walking home he noticed a cloaked man striding purposefully on the other side of the street. The man seemed to be watching him, but every time John looked, he turned away and kept walking, so John could never quite know.

“Hello,” said a friendly voice. John turned to see a man smiling at him. He was dressed in a business-like trench coat, black shoes and a bowler hat. John recognized him as one of the people being interviewed at the church. He was as cheerful as if nothing had happened.

“Oh, hello,” John replied. “My name is John Stanford. What’s yours?”

“Bill Lopez. I saw you at Marguerite and wondered what you were doing?”

“My friend Henri Moor is a police officer and he wants me to help figure out who broke into the church.”

“You solved something like this before?”

“Yeah. I was paid a lot too.”

Bill nodded and looked around. The two men walked along for a few more minutes, then they reached an alley, which was a shortcut to John’s house.

“Well I need t-,” he broke off as he started down the alley.

There was a small noise. Bill suddenly stopped. He looked down at his shirt slowly, looked up at John, then he toppled forward, dead.

 
When he arrived home the sky had finally decided to rain but was coming down slowly as if afraid of the ground. The clouds were now dark and ominous instead of dull and gray, so it looked as if they would finally decide to pour down rain, drenching the city and bringing with it sun. That was what the city needed right now.

As John unlocked the door and opened it he recalled what had happened just an hour ago. The murder right in front of his eyes, and the policemen searching him and everyone around there for weapons, and then letting them go back to what they were doing. He couldn’t stop thinking about that or the fact that that bullet might have been meant for him. Nobody had heard where the shot had come from and the murderer had got away in the crowd of people.

Shaking off these thoughts, he stepped inside. Switching on the light, he trudged through the mudroom, which was fairly bare of the usual coats and shoes, and into the hall outside of the kitchen. He didn’t have the energy to cook anything, so he ripped open the packaging of a frozen pizza and shoved it in the oven. When it was ready he took it out and sliced it.

As he was eating disturbing thoughts came to him.

“Bill was only the first, there will be more.”

Outside the rain was streaking down, splattering across the walkway up to the house and running down the windows. Everything was soaked from the walkway to the roof of his house. All that could be seen beyond twenty feet was the rain relentlessly pounding on the ground.

John finished the pizza and was getting up when he saw a man standing outside. He was cloaked and was dripping from the downpour. He was the same man he’d seen walking along the other side of the street when he’d been coming home from Marguerite. John put his plate in the dishwasher wondering what that man was doing here at this time of night. When he looked back, the man was still standing there. He didn’t do anything, just stood there.

John made sure to lock all the windows and the door. The strange appearances of the man were unnerving. John knew that he wouldn’t fall asleep very easily that night.

The next morning turned out to be very eventful. After a breakfast of pancakes, he decided to go to the police department. He wondered if they would have found the criminal, but something told him they hadn’t.

     It was a sunny morning and the sky was vacant, except for a few clouds studding it far off by the horizon. The sun had not quite risen atop the buildings and the street was shadowed. Moods had started to rise with the sun and all were looking forward to a warm sunny day after a week of clouds obscuring the sky.

     He arrived at the police department fifteen minutes later. The police department was a large part of a large building and as he walked up the steps he could see there was a lot more to this building than most people were allowed to go into. He opened the door and was greeted by Henri.

     “Hi John,” he exclaimed cheerfully. “You want to see what we’ve found?”

     “Yeah. You find the criminal?”

     “Yes.”

     Henri showed him through a door and down a hall. He unlocked a door and went down another hall until he came to a door he pushed it open and showed him through the room. The room was full of machines and he showed John to a computer.

     “This computer has files on everyone in Montréal. It wasn’t hard to hook up the fingerprints with their owner.”

     “So who did it?”

     “A man named Henry Rich. He’s a musician who plays at the church regularly. That would explain how he got into the church.”

     “Do you know his motive?”

     “His group kicked him out when another, better musician was hired. They only hired him because he'd make more money for them. Rich was fine with this. He got more time to rest and have fun. His group liked him so he wasn't mad about that and as for money; he has enough money for a lifetime.”

     “When are you going to make an arrest?”

     “Soon. Other than the fingerprints we don’t have much evidence against him. We’d like to have a bit more evidence. You found anything?”

     “No.” Then John remembered the small video camera. “Not yet,” he said with a smile.

     He had jogged out of the room and down the hall when Henri caught up with him.

     “Where are you going? Did you find something?”

     “When I was in Marguerite, I hid a tiny camera set to record under the windowsill of one of the windows. If empty of information it can hold two–hundred hours of video on it.”

     “So you think that you might have caught him on tape?”

     “Yes.”

“Great. Now we could really have a case against him.”

     “We’d better hurry, someone could have taken it.”

     When he arrived there, John sprinted up the steps into the church. John stopped and looked around. Everything was the way he had last seen it, except for the people. Nobody was there. Not a single guard. He wondered  why there wasn't a guard. Whoever destroyed this church could come back and do it again if there wasn't a guard, and security cameras wouldn't stop it from happening.

      He slowly walked over and pulled out the camera. It looked fine, so he had been right in thinking that nobody would find it. Nobody would see a miniscule camera hidden under the windowsill. He sauntered back out of the church, and walked along the road until he met Henri.

“I got it,” he said.

They walked back to John’s house and John put the tape in the VCR.

     At first there wasn’t anything as John fast–forwarded through the tape. Only the police officers were milling around in the room. Slowly the police officers began to leave as night came on. After forty–five minutes of watching the police in fast–forward there was only two officers on duty. John played the tape and they both watched even more intently. One of the police officers turned around and saw George and the black cloaked man who had been following John! Both smiled friendly and the police officer turned around, though he was obviously confused about who this other man was, and why he was with George. They never knew though. As soon as the officer’s back was turned, George and the man took out guns and George shot him. There was only a tiny amount of sound but the other officer turned around long enough to see his companion fall to the ground before he was shot too.

     The killers smiled and dragged the bodies, one by one, up onto the stage-like raise in the back. He then made to hide them but he went out of the sight of the camera.

     John paused it. “I knew he was up to something,” he said.

“Do you think he is associated with the burned pews and the rest?” Henri asked.

“Possibly.”

“How’d he get past the security cameras?” John asked. “They did put security cameras up didn’t they.”

     “Yes of course, but they were computerized so he could have submitted a virus to them. That would have made them unable to record. There was one on the outside but he knew about that so he could have destroyed it.”

     “That man with him was following me yesterday, at the same time that Bill Lopez was shot. You heard about that, right?”

     “Yes. It would seem that he’s tied to all this somehow.”

     John played it and they kept watching. George and the man returned to the screen a minute later. He looked around and looked at the stained glass window, saying mockingly, “Poor mayor he’ll have to pay for all that’s happened. And he won’t even know who did it. Nobody will suspect a police officer.” The other man smiled and John wanted to strangle him.

George strode over and took something out of his pocket. It looked  like a plastic cube, except it was longer than it was wide. He then squished it on the floor a few times and then put it back. Then he walked out of the building.

     John paused the tape and silence fell upon the two like night upon day. Both were puzzling about what George had done. Nothing had happened like this before. How had he avoided being caught. And how had he framed it on Henry Rich. Finally John broke the silence.

     “I think we should go show the chief now. He’ll have to arrest George. Either way he’s going to be arrested. He killed two police officers, and he practically destroyed an amazing church. Why, I can’t imagine but he did and he’s going to go to jail.”

     “Same.”

     “Let’s go.”

Henri led John down a hall in the police station and when he came to a door, knocked. His knock was answered by a click and then Jake poked his head out. He looked totally relaxed as if he already knew what they were going to tell him.

     “What do you want,” he asked.

     “We’ve found evidence possibly concerning Musée Marguerite,” Henri stated.

     “Where’s the evidence?” Jake asked.

     “On video. John hid a camera.”

     Jake smiled. “I like it,” he said.

     He put the tape in a VCR that Jake kept in his office in case something like this happened, and rewound the tape, John nearly jumping in excitement. He played it and as the video progressed his face changed expressions rapidly. First surprise, then anger as George shot the police officers. Then it changed to shocked anger as he watched George hide the bodies. Next it went to confusion as George squished the cube-like thing on the floor. Finally it stopped at disbelief.

     “Well, I don’t know what to say,” he sputtered, “other than: I’m going to kill George when I find him.”

     “Do you know how he was able to frame Rich?”

     “That thing that he stuck on the floor looked like a mold. He could have molded Rich’s fingerprints onto there and used some kind of oil to make the fingerprints visible.”

     “Well,” John said, getting up, “if I were you I’d go and arrest George before he commits more crimes.”

     “Right,” Jake agreed. “I believe he’s in this building.”

     “Yes, I do believe I am,” said a voice.

     All three whirled around to see George standing in the doorway, a gun in his hand, pointed at them. He had obviously been listening to their conversation.

     “I hope you don’t mind me eavesdropping,” he said.

“Actually, we do,” said Jake.

“Well I’m afraid you don’t have very much choice,” George replied. “And I’m afraid I’ll have to stop you from telling people, which by the way means I’m going to have to kill you.”

“Thanks, we know that,” snapped John. He was about to say more when he got an idea.

He’d have to distract George. If this went wrong he, and possibly others could lose their lives but if he didn’t try, they would anyway. Henri made a sudden move as if to jump out of the window. That gave John enough time.

He jumped at a table kicking as hard as he could at one of it’s legs. The table gave way and fell, but he managed to twist out of the way in time. The racket attracted the attention of the police officers as he’d hoped. They came running in, their guns pointed in front of them. George pointed his gun at them but that gave Henri enough time to pull out his gun and shoot. George screamed as the bullet hit his arm and he fell to the ground with a thud, still clutching his arm and screaming.

After five minutes George stopped screaming. Jake grabbed him roughly and pushed him into an upright position.

“Did you burn the pews?” Jake asked in a harsh tone.

“Y–yes,” George said stuttering from the pain.

“And did you smash those priceless stained-glass windows?”

“And if I don’t tell you?”

Jake squeezed hard on his arm.

“Okay,” George screamed, “I did it.

“The organ parts?”

“Yes.”

“Then where are they.”

“In this building, in Henri’s office.”

Henri kicked him which earned a condescending stare from Jake which clearly told him to stop.

“What about the man who shot the police officers with you?”

“Jacques King.”

“Did he kill Bill Lopez?” John asked.

George looked at him and there was still defiance in his eyes. “I’m not telling you.” Jake squeezed his arm again this time harder.

“Yes.”

“How did you get past the security cameras in Musée Marguerite.”

“Virus. Destroyed the one outside.”

There was silence in the room for a few minutes. Jake got up and looked at John.

“Thanks for telling us so much,” he said, “I’ll make sure you get an extra large pay check. If you want you can go home now you can, the police can handle it from here.”

     “Thanks,” said John. “I was glad to help.”

     He said good-bye to Henri and loped toward the door. As he limped out, a thought came to him. When he got home he was going to have a nice, cold dish of ice cream.

The End