His mother had left when Jaxon was three. All he remembered was yelling between his parents and then nothing. He knew that his father treated his mother badly often, but he never laid a hand on Jaxon or mistreated him in any way. Someday, he’ll have the courage to search her out to ask the burning question, “Why did you abandon us?” And it was not the “us” Jaxon wanted an answer to; it was the “me” part. Or maybe it was better to just not know and speculate, with outlandish fantasies, how she must have been kidnapped and refused to tell where her family was so was never allowed to leave her captors.
His dad wanted to live vicariously through Jaxon and encouraged him to lean toward law enforcement. Jaxon worked at the main Denver police office, focusing on finding missing criminals that had been tagged as cold cases with outstanding warrants, even if they may be less than a year old. His career began as a beat cop but slowly moved to some undercover work, and ultimately, where he is today. He had a natural hard side to him that made him able to relate to people but not necessarily empathize with them. So now cold cases. Usually, these were files that other officers had been unable to solve, so they ended up in the pile for someone else to deal with, namely Jaxon and his partner, Peter Galbreth.
Peter was Jaxon’s eighth partner in the last ten years. He always treated his partners very rudely and liked to leave them out of the loop, so they always wound up requesting a change from the captain. But Peter was different. He had a mild temperament and had been able to sidestep Jaxon’s idiosyncrasies, so he had lasted. Peter was a young (twenty-six years old) redhead Irish officer who was top of his class at the police academy, married for only a couple years to his wife, Julie, who was pregnant with their first. His main focus was always his family and work was just that—work. Jaxon was his first partner, so he didn’t even know how a partner should act, however, he did know Jaxon’s reputation as a great investigator and figured he could learn the ins and outs of investigating from him, thus, preparing him for later years, possibly in another department, or even as captain. He loved his job from day one, even with a tough partner. He also wore jeans every day, however, unlike Jaxon, Peter wore button-up shirts instead of T-shirts.
Jaxon had always had a knack for finding these missing criminals, easier than most of the other officers, mainly because he had a great mind for details and piecing together all the parts to make a mental picture of a case just like a jigsaw puzzle. He just couldn’t bring himself to ever acknowledge defeat and hand the file over to someone else. Definitely not how he planned to finish the final case of his career before retirement.
However, this recent case involving Johnny Markus was beginning to make Jaxon feel like he had lost his observatory skills. This was always his knack because he could see how things should be, and that allowed him to notice what was out of place, even when very minor. Johnny was a notorious thief who spent years getting away after holding up numerous banks, liquor stores, and any other small shops he felt he could slip in and out of easily. His last robbery though pushed him to the top of the pile when he murdered someone. The bank teller had snuck her hand onto the silent alarm, not realizing that Johnny noticed the sleight of hand. He spent all of three seconds deciding she needed to die.
This was where Peter and Jaxon came into the picture. Other teams of officers had made attempts to apprehend Johnny after every job he perpetrated. But each team that failed simply passed the file to another team, who again failed. The cycle kept repeating until it came to the last resort—Peter and Jaxon—where it would be solved or remain permanently in a stack that no one would ever touch again.
Chapter 2
On this particular morning, when Jaxon was riding the light-rail to work, which he tried to do at least three times a week instead of driving his car, he noticed something new. He liked that he didn’t have to change lines to get where he was going. The W line, a fare train, took him all the way to downtown Denver where his office was. It ended at Union Station, so Jaxon was able to walk a short distance to the office, which was nice most days. On really bad weather days, he would just drive. Jaxon liked to take the train because it allowed him to sleep a few extra minutes or close his eyes and relax while going over all the random thoughts in his brain, or the one thought he could never turn off—the death of his fiancée. He had never shared this tidbit of information with anyone. It had haunted him since it happened more than twenty years ago. That night was the first time in his life where he had wished he was dead. Life had never been complete or the same since. He knew this was ultimately why he had always maintained a fearless bravado in the job—because he really didn’t care if he died. Jaxon knew he should have sought counseling years ago, but he never did. He preferred to keep his private life just that—private.
While sitting in his train seat, Jaxon opened his eyes and began taking into account all the paid advertising around him. He noticed an advertisement for a bank on the billboard above the window of the train that caught his attention. It advertised free checking and a free $100 for opening a new account. While scrutinizing the ad, Jaxon began to notice other ads for other nearby banks and surrounding stores. The names began to cause his fingers to tingle as connections started to appear in his mind. All the ads on this train were locations that Johnny had robbed. Jaxon would not have found this abnormal except that the banks and stores Johnny robbed were not huge chains. They were all small privately owned businesses that don’t do much advertising because they flourish in small communities. Yet Johnny had robbed each and every one of them. There were multiple ads for larger chain-franchised businesses, but those would appear around the country, not focused only in Denver. Jaxon now knew that Johnny must have ridden the light-rail.
With a look of alarm, Jaxon began to look around the train and noticed the types of people on it. Many wore their monkey suits as they headed to their nine-to-five jobs, making good money, with the majority probably having a wife at home making sure their dinner was on the table the moment their man walked in. There were numerous young people wearing clothes that would represent that they worked in the food industry area, probably waiters and waitresses. They wore uniforms showing they were heading to probably spend their time taking orders by asking people “What can I get for you today?” and then cleaning tables after people were done eating and leave. Jaxon recognized all of these types because he had eaten at these places. Jaxon was always happy that they had jobs and were not out making his life more difficult, or showing up in the hands of another officer, hands cuffed in front of them as they were forced to sit in a chair next to a desk and begin to explain why they did what they did. We needed this younger generation to ensure that our older generation was able to eat a meal made at the hands of someone else, or enjoy an alcoholic beverage delivered by someone that would usually fall between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two.
That left just a choice few who Jaxon knew would wind up in the system eventually, those that didn’t want to work, that believed that society owed them and therefore should hand them everything for free on a silver platter—the ones that felt it was okay to take from others as long as they didn’t get caught. They were usually marked from head to toe, representing all the things they had accomplished in this short life of theirs, from having children to tears on the face representing the number of kills they had committed. Sadly, they were proud of this. Jaxon would have happily taken these people outside and have a few choice words with them before beating the shit out of them. But Jaxon new he was not allowed to do that, even though society, in general, would be better off if he would. These choice few were the ones that Jaxon scrutinized the most because they were the category where Johnny would fall.
From his picture, you could see the tattoos up his arms and the one on his neck that stood out. It was a cross with barbed wire around it and the name of a woman written inside it in Gaelic letters. It looked like Maria, though it is hard to read unless he stood still for you. Hell, it could have been Mario for all Jaxon knew. But this was how Jaxon was going to find Johnny, after all this time, riding this train line.
the stakeout begins!
Chapter 3
Jaxon