Mr Bears

‘And where did you get this?’ Michelle inspected the teddy, admiring his gingham shirt and black, flashy eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen this one before. Did daddy get him for you?’

David was one of the good ones. Michelle had seen her share of shitty boyfriends, and she was lucky enough to get pregnant with the only one worth making a father. She ran her hand over Em’s forehead and, from under the cover, so only eyes and hair were visible, a voice squeaked,

‘No.’

‘No?’ Michelle tried to keep her baby voice on, but her work voice was taking over, ‘Where did you get it then?’

‘Not it,’ Em corrected, ‘Mr Bears.’

Michelle instantly disliked Mr Bears.

‘Where did you get Mr Bears from?’

Em shrugged, ‘The man.’

Heat was flooding Michelle’s ears. Had she heard that right? ‘What man?’

‘The man at the door?’

Her eyes were narrowing. Children could take small changes as big ones. You look at them wrong and they think you’re criticising them. Telling them off. Michelle needed information, not tears. She tried to smile.

‘And this man, did he knock?’

Em nodded.

‘You answered the door? Not daddy?’

‘Daddy was in the garden.’

‘I see.’

‘And the man wanted to give me Mr Bears.’

Michelle deeply disliked Mr Bears. He was an intruder. A parasite in her home.

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Just Mr Bears.’

‘And he didn’t want to come in? He didn’t want to speak to daddy, or invite you anywhere?’

‘Just Mr Bears,’ Em repeated.

Something was sticking in Michelle’s throat the way it did when she was going to interview someone truly heinous. That bobbing that always happened when she watched them through the glass, knowing they couldn’t see her. Thinking of the questions she’d ask. Of the responses she’d get.

Of the crimes they had committed being so awful that even she was put off by it.

Michelle kissed Em on the forehead and waited for her to fall asleep. When she was sure Em was out, and her grip had loosened on the teddy sitting on her chest, she took Mr Bears downstairs.

David was where she had left him on the sofa. Remote. Beer. Sitcom.

The curtains were drawn, but for how she was feeling, they could have been wide open. The whole world watching them, prying into their lives.

‘Do you know anything about this?’

‘What’s that?’

The remote clicked. The numbers on the TV were descending.

‘This toy. Some man gave it to Emily. I found it in her bed.’

David’s face paled. ‘You’re joking.’

‘He didn't come in. He didn’t try to put her in his car, or van, or god knows what. He just gave her this,’ Michelle stared into Mr Bear’s face and thought she saw him blink, ‘Mr Bears.’

*

‘My name’s Detective Mercer-‘

‘Where’s Toby? Where is that idiot?’

Michelle took a deep breath, ‘Mr Wren is just coming out of holding cell three. There will be a bit of paper work to do in regards to his bail payment, and-‘

The woman’s heels clicked across the bullpen to the area marked as ‘Holding Detention.’

‘Toby? Toby! Get over here!’

Trailing behind the woman, in a pink dress and crocs, was a miniature version of her. Less than half her height. Circular face. Pale brows.

And in her hand was a bear. A stuffed teddy with a gingham shirt and black voids in his eye sockets.

‘Hi,’ Michelle lowered herself. That was the first thing she always did when talking to children on the job. Get to their level. ‘That’s a nice bear you have. Where did you get that?’

‘Don’t talk to my daughter, you creep.’

‘No, I- That bear, where did you-‘

‘Didn’t you hear me?’

Michelle stood and stepped back, ‘Only, I had one,’ She said loud enough so the child could hear without addressing her directly, ‘And I lost it. He was called,’ She watched the child’s face, ‘Mr Bears.’

It was more than a light bulb going off. It was the whole of Times Square being switched on for Christmas- tree included.

And that smile- Michelle had never been so happy to see a kid smile. But the fact that she recognised the name only dug the pit in her stomach deeper.

‘The park,’ Whispered the child, ‘Under the bridge.’

Michelle smiled. The mother’s hand wrapped around the child’s, and she stormed off, screaming, ‘Toby? You dead beat son of a-‘

*

‘So we just wait in the park until what, we see a man with a big bag of teddies approaching kids?’

‘We’ve waited in worse places for longer.’

‘Michelle, you can’t be serious about this? We’ve got cases. Real cases. You know- the ones we get paid to solve?’

‘This could be something!’ Michele turned to Kit, though he was too busy scratching his beard to see the intensity on her face. ‘Prevention of crime is just as important as resolution.’

Kit sighed.

They waited.

‘You could have at least let me grab my coat.’

‘Aw, is it too windy for the big, scary detective? Should I get you a blanket? Hot chocolate?’

Kit gruffed.

They waited.

The bridge looked scarily quiet. Like the shadows under it would move when they weren’t being seen; like the bricks could open up and reveal a new world under our own.

‘Tree.’ He said.

‘You tried that already.’

He paused. ‘Tennis racket.’

‘Where do you see a tennis racket?’

‘There could be one.’

‘Play properly.’ Michelle teased.

‘Teddy.’

‘Oh, real nice.’

‘No, seriously, Michelle, look! Teddies!’

He was down the path and the big bag was actually a backpack, which he was slinging off his arm and unzipping. A child’s ball had rolled towards him and as the kid went to get it back, the backpack opened and out came-

‘Mr Bears. Shit.’ Michelle ran towards him, throwing out her police badge. Kit was faster, but also louder, shouting at the man, ‘Stop it! Get away from the child!’

What would most people do? Stand there, confused? Give the kid their ball and wait for the police to get to them to protest their innocence?

The bear dealer scooped up his bag, pulled down his hood, and broke into a sprint. He was darting for the far exit. Michelle reached the kid and took the bear from them. Kit carried on with the hunt. The dealer dashed across the bridge and started up the fence, but as he was half way over it, Kit latched onto his ankle and tried to pull him down.

The foot knocked Kit’s head back and while he tried to stop his nose from bleeding, the perp sailed down the other side, landing poorly on his knee.

From where Michelle was standing, it looked twisted, but he got up, flipped them off, and ran.

Michelle turned to the bear. What was so special about it? Was it a mark? A way for this pervert to leave a part of himself with children? To make it clear that they belonged to him? Or was it something else?

Those eyes caught Michelle's. She hated them. The name, the gingham, the secrecy, and yes- those damned black and red eyes.

She looked closer.

Red? She thought. They were black, they had always been black. Flat, black circles.

And yet in this one, it was red. Red in the middle, like it was…

She tore off Mr Bears’ head. Buried amongst the stuffing was a small black square lodged inside his skull. It ended in two protruding lenses.

When Kit had joined her, Michelle had cast Mr Bear’s insides to the floor. She was examining the camera. Trying to find a serial number, a make, a model- anything that would be a clue.

‘What’s that?’ Kit asked, out of breath and clutching his nose.

‘This is our lead.’

‘And that bit?’

‘What bit?’

‘The part you left in the body.’ Kit picked the bear up and rummaged through it’s chest. ‘I use one of these. It’s for running, it tracks your route, tells you your time and what not.’ Kit placed it in Michelle’s hand, ‘It’s a GPS.’

*

‘Hello, Miss,’ Michelle was trying her kindest, softest voice. It usually worked on the elderly, but this lady wouldn’t budge, ‘We’ve been following an investigation and were wondering if we could take a look inside? It would only take a minute-‘

‘Investigation?’ She had an accent, something Michelle couldn’t place. ‘What you investigate?’

‘There was a crime. Tech based. Technology. We followed it, tracked it using an IP. It lead us back to this building.’

‘Technology? Building?’

‘Can we take a look? We go inside?’ Kit was talking loudly like the lady couldn’t hear him.

‘She’s foreign, not deaf.’

The woman’s brows touched and Michelle knew what she was thinking. But just as she was expecting to be turned away, the woman opened the door further and tutted to herself in words that had no meaning to the detectives.

‘Helps all the same.’ Kit shrugged, going in.

Michelle was hoping the lady could help them; that it would be different with her. But they had knocked on every door in the building. Some people ignored them even though their TV was playing. Some people shouted at them, told them not so kindly, and not in so many words, to please leave them alone. Only a few had let them in, but what did this woman- this older woman who barely spoke English- know about GPS or spy cameras? She could hardly have been fence hopping at her age, let alone running from the cops.

She shuffled to the kitchen, which in an open plan apartment was only a few steps away, and pointed at the sofa.

‘We’ll stand.’ Kit replied. ‘Stand.’ He repeated.

‘Do you know anyone who was out yesterday, Miss? Someone who visits the park?’

There was no reply.

‘Do you live alone?’ Michelle followed.

There was silence. Then an intake of breath and a long stream of dialogue, so fast that Michelle couldn’t keep up with it, but when the lady was done a door crept open. An eye looked out from the darkness within. The shouting continued. A man replied. Michelle’s heart was racing. That had to be him- it had to be.

The man stepped into the living room. He was slender, all shoulders and bones. His fingers were long. Why was Michelle looking at his fingers? But damn it, they were long. The nails untrimmed. So was his hair. And he was pale. Pale like he hadn't seen the sun since he turned twenty.

And that could have been a long time a go.

‘How’re you doing?’ Kit said, ‘Come take a seat for me.’

He was like rotting food. You didn’t have to take a bite to know he would taste awful. It was the smell. The discolouring. The blemishes. The way everything else in your fridge seems to be crawling away from it when you’re not looking.

He had to have that effect on people. Adults would want nothing to do with him, but kids? Maybe he felt something when he spoke to them because they were the only people who spoke back.

The man looked to his mother, and after she nodded, he sat down.

Michelle couldn’t look at him any longer. Was this the man who had been at her door? Who had spoken to her child? Who had put a GPS on her? A tracker- a god damned camera?

Kit was giving him the usual spiel. The man was giving it back.

His room was dark. Unusually dark. And there were colours like LED’s in there. A computer whirring. Light up keyboard.

He was a nobody. A complete nobody.

Michelle’s stomach was turning. There would be a hard drive. A USB.

Her mouth watered.

Kit put something in her hands and hissed ‘Focus.’

It was a picture. The man, maybe a decade or so younger, holding a bronze medal.

‘What did you play?’ Michelle asked.

‘Field sports. Running, hurdles, relay. That sort of stuff.’

Michelle’s tongue waved over her teeth.

‘Do you still compete?’

‘No.’

The room went quiet.

‘What about this one? You’re educated.’ Michelle traded her photo for one with graduation robes.

‘Computer science.’

‘Say,’ Started Kit, pointing at the man’s shorts, ‘That’s a bad cut. How’d that happen?’

‘You had that treated? I can see it broke the skin,’ Joined Michelle. ‘Did you fall? Scrape your knee on something? Couldn’t have been in here because of your-‘

‘Carpet,’ Finished Kit, ‘Unless you’re telling me that’s a carpet burn.’

‘I also noticed your shoes have mud on them. There a lot of green spaces near here? I didn’t think this part of the city had too many.’

‘Probably from the park,’ Said Kit.

‘Probably. When were you last there?’

The man’s face was stolid. He looked to his mother, who was talking to him in their language, and then he turned to the detectives. ‘I fell. In the bath.’

‘Big cut for the bath.’

‘Must have bled in it, no? Got red on the porcelain?’

‘And what about the mud?’ Kit followed. They were getting him. They had to be. Just a few more squeezes, a few more turns of the screw.

‘That’s from a long time ago. I don’t clean my shoes very often.’

‘Can I see your computer?’ Michelle asked.

‘No.’ He shot up and closed the door. ‘Do you have a warrant to be here?’

Michelle couldn’t move. ‘We were invited in by-‘

‘Then I think it best you leave.’

*

Watching the building’s main door took them into the night.

‘Maybe he won’t come out.’ Kit said, ‘Maybe he’s spooked.’

‘No, he’ll come. You don’t put out that many GPS without wanting to follow their trail.’

‘He had a big night. He could want to-‘

‘This is his relief, Kit. This is what he gets off on. Children. Fucking children, Kit! My child! That creep gave one of his little robot bears to my goddamned child!’

The car rocked until the echoes of Michelle’s shouting had faded.

‘I’m not going anywhere. I can’t.’

She could hear Kit breathing. That big intake of breath like he was going to speak.

But he never did.

*

‘Kit. Kit! Wake the fuck up! That’s him!’

‘Huh?’ He shook himself awake and grabbed the binoculars, ‘He’s got a hood on. Could be-‘

‘It’s him.’ Michelle jumped out of the car and chased him down. He was turning into an alley. He was walking quick.

Athlete. Field runner. Computers. Lives with his mother. Cut knee. Mr Bears. Em. Rotting. Park. Shoes. Nose. Fingers. Em.

Michelle ran harder, so hard her heart was coming out of her throat. She could hear Kit slamming the car door behind her, but it was so distant- The whole world was.

Everything meant nothing in that moment.

Everything but him.

First, she tackled him. The black bag skidded across the ground.

Then she was pulling back a punch, and before she could remember that she was a detective- a civil servant- she recalled that she was a mother, too. Her knuckles dashed his face. Once, twice. He was shouting, trying to kick her off, but she was over him. Punching, swatting, hitting. Dull vibrations ricocheted up her arm. Something hurt. Her knuckles looked like popped blisters, and somewhere one of them was bleeding.

His face, her hand… It didn’t matter.

‘What’s this? What’s in here?’ Kit threw open the bag and dumped it out on the floor.

Shoes bounced over one another.

‘Shoes! It’s just shoes! Get her off me!’

There it was again. Sticking in her throat.

Kit picked them up. They were clean, scrubbed spotless, but they were the shoes.

‘What’s the move Michelle?’

‘What do you have on me? What’s my charge? Taking out the trash?’

‘That’s destruction of evidence.’

‘Oh, please. Evidence implies that you have a leg to stand on. Fact is, you don’t have shit. You got a lot of somethings that add up to nothing. Meanwhile you’ve just assaulted me. That’s battery. Abuse of power. I could take your job. Both of yours.’

‘Can you hit him again?’ Kit asked.

‘What-‘ But the fist came down.

He didn’t live in a good area. No gated community. It wasn’t unusual to see someone getting beat down. It was late. People weren’t going to get involved. They’d look the other way.

They didn’t look when two detectives pinned him down in an alley.

They didn’t look when the male detective held him down, while the female took his keys and marched up to his apartment.

And nobody looked when she came back out with a hard drive tucked into her pocket.

They left him there. He was trying to speak, but the last few swings must have dislodged his jaw.

‘Hey Michelle, did we do the right thing?’

Michelle looked to her knuckles. She had broken at least one of them on his nose. Cut open the skin on his cheek. Given him a black eye. ‘I know I have,’ She replied.

*

Michelle tucked the teddy into Em’s arms. ‘Isn’t she pretty? She has hair! I think it’s better than mine. And her dress- it’s so soft!’

Em was giggling. She giggled and laughed for the next fifteen minutes until Michelle could convince her to sleep.

When she finally went downstairs, David had set the hard drive on the coffee table. Michelle had told him everything.

He was only remiss that he couldn't help more.

‘Don’t you want to look at it? Make sure it was really him? You said you did a number on him.’

‘If he was innocent he would have come forward already. Filed a complaint at least. I haven’t heard a peep out of him. I don’t think anybody will.’

‘But you also can’t arrest him. He’ll say what you did.’

‘I’d do it again.’

David smiled softly, ‘I know you would.’