Delivery Driver

The countdown was on – if I didn’t get this notebook across town soon, who knows what the consequences would be.

About 2 years ago I dropped out of a university program I worked my ass off to get into. Not only was it draining my bank account, but it was draining my soul and I needed out. At that point I decided to take a completely different direction with my life, and I got a job as a bike delivery driver in the one of the busiest cities in the world – New York City. Usually this means I’m biking from one side of Manhattan to the next with time sensitive documents, but one spring day in 2020 proved to be more of a surprised. During a regular, less time-sensitive delivery, I decided to take a detour and stumbled upon an abandoned warehouse I had never seen before. I had some time to kill so I decided to check it out – I’ve watched Ghost Adventures since I was in the womb, I figured, I’d be fine. As I wandered the rubble-filled corridors (wheezing from the dust), I heard a moaning in the distance. It was either a ghost or a person and either way this was not the place I wanted to find out, so I reluctantly backed away. At that point it became clear that what I was hearing was someone severely injured, as their weak voice echoed “help” through the halls. I rushed in their direction to find them barely clinging to life. It was a man that had been stabbed multiple times, once in the heart. Horrified, I grabbed my cellphone to immediately dial 9-1-1. To my horror, my cellphone had no connection (being in the middle of an abandoned warehouse can do that). I walked a few feet to the left and to the right trying to find a position where my phone would pick up signal, but I had no success.

I turned back to the man, “I’m going to go get some help.”

“…no,” he whispered back to me “stay.” Barely holding on, he gestured toward his jacket zipper and said “pocket…book.”

“In your inside pocket?” I asked, and he slowly blinked in response. I gently opened his jacket and pulled a small black notebook from the inside chest pocket. “This?” I asked, to which he blinked again.

He very quietly muttered the word “precinct…now” and, just like that, he was gone. In a state of shock, I stood there frozen for a few moments. What was going on here? This had to be a prank of some kind. But if it wasn’t a prank, what do I do? All I knew was that I needed to get out of the warehouse immediately, before I became the next victim to whatever this was. I picked up the notebook and ran back to my bike. I hopped on and rode for a few blocks, before stopping to collect myself. I still wasn’t sure what he meant by “police.” I opened up the notebook to find that the “if lost, return to” address was a police precinct across town and, behind that, was to a badge for a Detective Conrad Butler. I recognized him instantly as warehouse man – but if he was a detective, where was his backup or his radio? Something wasn’t adding up.

I continued looking through the notebook to find it was full of notes about gang-related activity that was going on in the warehouse. Pretty standard for an officer’s notebook, I figured, until I looked at the calendar at the back of the book. In bold letters on a date two weeks before, the calendar said, “DISMISSED FROM WORK.” I immediately knew this was something Detective Butler had been hiding and I needed to get help immediately.

I jumped on my bike and did what I do best – ride. I knew that Detective Butler would only want me to go to his precinct given his last message and, having just watched him die, I was pressed with a sense of urgency like I’d never experienced. Nonetheless, I was the best person for the job. I wove through traffic, drove over car hoods (to the chagrin of their drivers), and drove through farmers markets to use all the shortcuts I knew to get across town. What I wasn’t anticipating, though, was a sinkhole in the middle of Manhattan! In a state of shocked dissociation, I drove directly into a police barricade, causing my bike to flip upside down (with me on it), and the book to go flying into a panicked crowd of onlookers. I lost consciousness and was awoken minutes later by an EMT.

While quickly able to recover and to find my bike, the notebook was nowhere to be found. I tried shouting across the crowd but was met with no responses.

“Hey Mr. Paramedic,” I joked at my EMT.

“What’s up, Stooge?” she laughed.

“I’m going to need your megaphone.” Reluctantly, and to my honest surprise, she handed it over. I stood on the back of the ambulance and turned the megaphone on full volume.

“Listen up everyone! I lost a notebook and it’s really important to me. Did anybody grab it when I fell off my bike?” I shouted, even though I knew the speaker would do that for me.

“I have it!” I heard off in the distance, followed by a hand darting up in the air with the notebook in it.

“Gotta go, doc” I smiled and winked at the paramedic.

“It’s Katie. Katie Butler. See ya, Stooge” she grinned.

While a little banged up, I quickly hopped on my bike and headed on my way. Detective Butler lost his life, the least I could do was deliver his notebook.

“Thanks!” I shouted as I quickly passed by the onlooker and snatched the book from her hand.

A short ride later I finally made it to the precinct. I hopped off my barely working bike and bolted into the building.

“I need to speak with someone about Detective Butler!” A short, balding man approached me. He spotted the notebook in my hand and his eyes widened.

“Keep your voice down,” he said as he opened a door and pulled me inside what ended up being a broom closet. “What happened?” he asked.

I started crying hysterically, finally having to process what had just happened. “I found Detective Butler in an abandoned warehouse across town. He was…stabbed in the heart.”

“Listen, my name is Jay and I’m Conrad’s best friend. He was let go a couple of weeks ago because they thought he was losing it. This proves that he wasn’t, but we can’t let that information out here. The people aren’t trustworthy.”

“What do you need from me?” I asked, still choking through tears.

“I will take the notebook. All you need to do is go up to the front desk and report that you found a body in a warehouse across town. The rest is up to me now.” He grabbed the notebook and left the closet.

After a few moments, still a mess but acceptable for someone who just found a dead body, I slipped out of the closet unseen and approached the front desk to file a report as Jay instructed. They let me go home while they investigated, and on follow up they didn’t mention that who I found was their Detective. While I found this peculiar, I knew that Jay said these people weren’t trustworthy.

From then on, I lived my life as normal as I could and stayed out of places I shouldn’t be. A couple months later, I got a call from Jay. Now the Captain of the same precinct, he filled me in on what had happened since that day – a lot of people were let go and the truth about Conrad had been revealed.

“Congratulations, Holly,” Jay said during the phone call, “you’re being awarded $20,000.00 for what you did to help Conrad.”

“Katie’s gonna be thrilled.” I said, smiling.