The Mind Virus

Chapter 11 - Part 3

Miller huffed and puffed as he did his curls. At least, Jim imagined he was huffing and puffing. He couldn't hear anything from where he was sitting, in the Camry in the parking lot of the gym, but through the building's all-glass facade, he could see Miller's chest contracting rapidly after each curl. Poor technique. Or was that the proper technique? In spite of his name, Jim had never been one for gyms. In fact, he'd never been one for working out at all, though clearly, Miller was. Jim wondered why Miller was using a public gym instead of the modest one they had at the station. Perhaps it was to avoid the other officers. Maybe deep down inside, Miller was just as much of an introvert as Jim was. He chuckled at the thought. No one was as pitifully introverted as Jim was.

The clock in the Camry just turned over a new hour. Since Jim had been following Miller, he had gone to a fast food joint to have a burger while Jim stared hungrily from the parking lot. Then he went to the bank. Jim liked to imagine that Miller was transferring blood money he'd gotten in exchange for closing the cases he was investigating, but he'd never know the truth since there was no way to go into the bank and stand close enough to hear what was going on without being spotted. Realistically, he was probably just paying his rent anyway.

After the bank, Miller had gone to his house. Well, Jim had assumed it was his house. There were no other cars parked outside, and the lights had been off before Miller entered. Jim had spent a good amount of time parked down the road, wondering how he was going to spy on him while outside his home. People came and went, keeping him skittish about showing his face outside. He even thought that Miller was going to have a guest at one point, as a woman in a large hat walked down the road and leaned over the detective's car, but she then walked off without knocking on his door. I guess she dropped something, Jim had thought to himself.

He eventually left the car at one point and started walking toward the house with no real plan but to try to snoop into his windows, but as he was walking down the road, Miller re-emerged and started walking to his own car parked in the driveway. Jim was sure he had been spotted, but in the end, the detective took no action. Whether he hadn't recognized him, hadn't spotted him, or simply hadn't guessed that he was being tailed, Jim felt like he was in the clear, so he carried on following him. This had led them both to the gym, where Jim had been mentally swimming upstream through a river of boredom while watching his nemesis pump iron.

The Camry's clock glared back at Jim, reminding him once again how much time he'd wasted and how he'd gotten nothing useful. As he wondered what the point of all of this was – what he had realistically hoped to achieve – Detective Miller finished up his workout and began leaving the gym.

Finally! The car's engine let out a purr as Jim fired it up, preparing once again to tail Miller, probably back to his home. Miller did not, however, take the road in the direction of his house. Instead, he turned a left that would take him out of town. This was interesting. Jim thought about what he could be doing at this time of night. Maybe he'd finally catch him in the act, doing... well, something bad. What it could be remained to be seen.

The next fifteen minutes involved the two men slowly treading through Cedar Grove and into Daisyville. Miller was driving really slow, and Jim was keeping a distance. He wondered whether Miller was at all suspicious by this point. In retrospect, Jim should have made use of Miller's time at the gym to zoom back to the station and get another of the undercover cars, but it was too late now, and there was no point in thinking about it.

Jim was focused intently on Miller's car as it started nearing the far-side city limits of Daisyville and going into unincorporated territory. As he thought about how he might finally have the chance to get some dirt on Miller, something caught the corner of his eye. An overpass to the East looked out over the steep drop of the side of a valley, and on the edge of the overpass stood a man.

This was no place to take a walk – not at this time of night – not ever. The overpass didn't even have a pedestrian walkway. Jim's stomach dropped. This man was going to end his life. Time seemed to slow down as the gears in Jim's head turned. He could keep on following Miller and possibly catch him in the act of doing something that he shouldn't be doing, or he could attempt to save this stranger's life. The choice was a heavy one, not because of any amorality that might reside in Jim, but because of the uncertainty of the outcomes of either choice. Sure, the ethical side of him was screaming to go to the overpass and save the jumper, but the coldly clinical side of his brain was reminding him that there was no guarantee that he would succeed, and if he should fail, not only would he have achieved nothing there, but he would have also lost Miller and never found out where he was going.

The metaphorical entity on his other shoulder made a different argument. Miller hadn't done anything abnormal so far that evening, and that trend probably wasn't going to change, regardless of where he was driving now. He could be going to his favorite out-of-town restaurant or to the big casino at the county border. But more than that, talking to the man who was about to jump would be a boon to his investigation even if the man did end up jumping. It sounded cruel to think of it that way, but Jim would finally be able to directly talk to someone who had reason to take their own life and find out what the reason was.

He was coming up to the last intersection where he could make a U-turn for a mile. It was time for a decision. He couldn't just sit there while the light was green. He got to the turn. He slowed down. Hesitating for just a minute, he put on his turn signal and did a 180 around the center island. Miller was old news. He was going to do the right thing, and if that meant gaining some insight into what had been going on, then that would be a welcome bonus too.