Sweet

By Sarah Jane Justice

Abe could feel the waitress’s eyes creeping toward the case notes as she hovered over the booth.

“Milk or sugar?” she offered.

“Just the coffee.” Abe snapped the folder shut in an aggressive motion. He had long since lost any patience for nosy onlookers and saw no need to treat them with tact.

Scowling slightly, the waitress wandered off, leaving Abe with a coffee, a pile of papers, and the judgemental eyes of the younger man sitting opposite him. With far more attitude than Abe was inclined to tolerate, Brown laughed as he stirred sugar into his cappuccino.

“Just the coffee.” Brown shook his head. “That’s so boring. Just the coffee.”

Abe stared at the new recruit as he pointedly sipped his drink, having already developed a sincere distaste for the man in the short time he’d been assigned to his training. The agency’s recruiting officer had insisted that Brown showed significant potential, but as far as Abe was concerned, he was already on thin ice.

“Coffee black, whiskey neat.” Abe put his cup down, narrowly avoiding staining the papers he was attempting to sort. “I want to taste the soul of what I’m drinking.”

He cleared his throat, returning his attention to the mess of handwritten underlines and question marks. Gesturing for Brown to start paying attention, he pulled out a blurry photo and slammed it down onto the table.

“The guy we’re looking for is a cult leader,” he explained. “A real piece of work, suspected of multiple kidnappings. His commune was raided a few months ago, but he managed to slip away.”

“Not a great photo.” Brown picked it up to examine it. “I can lock down his height, build, hair color. That’s about it.”

“Right.” Abe nodded. “For someone who never stops trying to get his name in the headlines, we don’t know much about this guy. We’ve questioned his followers, but they’re all too loyal—or too brainwashed. We won’t get any decent leads from them.”

“Headlines?” Brown looked up.

“He’s a serious narcissist.” Abe glanced over his shoulder before sifting through a handful of newspaper clippings. “Loves seeing his name splashed over the news, so he’s always pulling shenanigans to attract our attention. The only reason we found the commune is because he kept dragging it into the spotlight.”

Brown squinted over the scattered pieces of paper before sitting back in his seat.

“That’s downright bizarre.” Brown ripped open three packets of sugar and dumped them into his cup. “Although, to be frank, no more bizarre than your suggestion about coffee having a soul. Just drink it. Enjoy it.”

Abe sifted through a mess of scratchy handwriting. “We know that he spent most of his life between the walls of that commune. Now that we’ve dismantled it, he’s stuck in a world that’s unfamiliar to him. I’ll wager that he’ll make enough little mistakes he won’t escape notice for too long.”

“Let’s hope.” Brown stared at a plate being carried to a nearby booth. “Man, I’m hungry. Those pies look good.”

Abe peered up from his notes to glare at the younger man, pointedly clearing his throat again. “Hmm,” Abe grunted.

“I’d order one, but it would never be good enough.” Brown tapped his fingers on the table. “Just make me think of the pies my mother made. God, she made the best pies.”

“My mother was a terrible cook.” Abe wiped at a smudge of ink that had strayed onto his sleeve. “Every now and then she’d make a curry. I don’t know, maybe she saw it in a magazine. It wasn’t any particular kind of curry, not korma, or vindaloo, or anything else. Just curry, flavored from a jar with no more than one word on the label. Generic curry with frozen beans.”

“Sounds awful.” Brown chuckled.

“It was.” Abe smiled, in spite of himself.

“Damn.” Brown sipped his coffee. “I can’t imagine curry without the metansha.”

“Metansha.” Abe repeated. He frowned at the casual use of such an unusual word, trying to figure out where he’d heard it before. Moving slowly to avoid suspicion, he ran his fingers over the mess of case file notes. Between vague details on the cult leader’s physical appearance and write-ups of his previous attention-seeking antics, Abe felt a rush of adrenaline as his eyes hit the distinctive word, curled in the scrawl of his own handwriting.

…was observed that the word ‘Metansha’ is used to describe any type of meat, although the logic behind such a…

Abe’s brain whirled into motion. Vague observations started locking together, making them suddenly more significant.

“So, Brown…” Abe looked up from the file. “What are your thoughts? Show me this investigative potential that recruitment keeps telling me you have.”

“Well…” Brown sat up straight. “He’s smart, this cult leader. That much is clear.”

“You think?”

Brown flinched with visible indignation. “Well, yeah. If he hasn’t been seen in months, he’ll have to be pulling something pretty clever to throw us off the scent.”

Abe crossed his arms in silence, staring at Brown with fierce determination. He watched as the younger man squirmed, keeping his eyes pointed away.

“You know, the coffee here kinda reminds me—”

“You trying to change the subject?”

Abe watched as Brown began to sweat. In a sharp, aggressive motion, Abe reached out and grabbed the coffee cup from Brown’s hands.

“I suppose you wouldn’t have any reason to object to your fingerprints being run through the system, would you?”

Abe watched as Brown gulped, his face turning pale with visible dread. The new recruit fumbled out of his seat, attempting to bolt toward the door. With enough well-worn expertise to be ready for such an action, Abe grabbed him by the shoulder, cuffing his wrist in a swift movement.

“Don’t get used to sugar in your coffee.” Abe allowed himself to savor the satisfaction. “Very few things in prison are sweet.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Jane Justice is a South Australian creative whose work has been commended across a variety of fields. Her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and literary journals around the world, including releases from Black Hare Press, The Blue Nib, and Pure Slush. She has also won an array of competition titles as a spoken word artist, and released four professional recordings of original music.

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