The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

Sweeping the beam along the narrow pathway, and then across the raised concrete pavement in front of the building, he found nothing more than additional bits of scattered trash. Slowly, he passed the light across the windows and doors, looking for signs of vandalism or forced entry. Aside from some scratched graffiti etched long ago across two of the windows, John saw nothing else unusual. His hand resting near his baton, John moved closer to the third door.

He found it closed. Shining his light through the tinted window into the office space beyond, the interior appeared dark. A faint glow came from something deep within the office.

Someone probably left a computer on . . .

John tried the door, surprised to find it unlocked. It swung open with a quiet screech of metal against metal.

Shit.

He had reset the alarm. Now, he had at most a minute to locate the inside panel and override it again. John was sure that he run and reach the panel on the side of the building in time, but that would not solve the problem. He still needed to check inside the office.

Playing the beam across the walls of the office, he searched for either a light switch or the alarm panel. Although the latter was more critical, turning on the lights would make it easier for him to find the panel.

“It’ll either be up front here,” John reasoned quietly, pausing with relief until he realized that his flashlight had located the thermostat. “Or in the back.”

He hoped that it was not hidden away in a locked storage closet. It would not be the first time he had run into that kind of setup. There was, he knew, a rear door as well, so he could still head for the outside panel without having to go all the way back through the office.

Assuming it’s not locked.

Some of the business owners, in violation of several state and local safety codes, felt themselves to be more secure if they left those rear exits locked and bolted at all times. Since they never used those doors, the owners often forgot to provide copies of the keys to the security company.

Josh moved quickly through the dark office space, trying to avoid bumping into desks and other office furniture. He stumbled, but caught himself, swearing in hushed tones. Automatically, he swung the flashlight down to get a look at the unseen leg of a chair that had attempted to trip him. He froze for an instant, his breath coming to a stop, when he saw a dark-suited man sprawled across the carpet.

Not again.

That was his first, absurd thought. Then, his training took over and he knelt, reaching down to check for a pulse on the man’s neck. Even before he failed to find one, John knew it was too late. The man’s skin was cool and papery. He considered for a moment turning the man over, just to be sure, but the strong hints of other scents convinced him that what had once been a moderately successful businessman was now definitely a corpse.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

He tapped the radio control.

“Los Altos Apartments,” he reported in. “I’m just finishing my circuit.”

That was not entirely true, John knew, but no one would know if he completed it on his way out to wherever they needed him to go.

“Copy that,” the dispatcher replied. “There’s an alarm event at the property at Paxton and Smelt.”

John brought up the map on his tablet. He already knew the property was a small strip mall southeast of his current location. The app reported that he should be get there in about eight minutes.

“Copy that,” he responded back. “I’m en route.”

Shifting the car into gear, he headed for the exit. Heading directly to that intersection would take him out of his way from the three other sites he was scheduled to patrol that night. Going back to them after he dealt with the alarm event would require a somewhat convoluted route back.

Maybe I can tackle them in reverse order . . . ?

He tried to map that out in his head as he drove, although his fingers itched to tap it out on his tablet.

Both hands on the wheel, he cautioned himself.

Although there was almost no traffic at that hour, it was exactly the kind of time when a drunk or overtired driver would do something stupid, such as running through a red light or stop sign, not expecting there to be any other cars on the road in be in their way.

Eleven minutes later, after being forced to wait for two unmetered lights, John arrived at the location. He slowed, surveying the empty parking lot. His hand remained poised over the spotlight control, ready to trap someone in its intense glare if they seemed suspicious. He saw nothing, though. The interior of each of the shops and offices appeared dark. He pulled around to the side of the building, coasting to a stop adjacent to the external alarm panel.

Leaving the car running, he grabbed his flashlight and climbed out of the car. He played the flashlight beam around the area, but it revealed nothing more than scraps of garbage and two large empty glass bottles. Each was a different shape and color. One of them he guessed had held vodka or gin; the darker one had probably contained rum.

Using his key to open the alarm panel, he saw that the alarm on Suite 3 had been triggered. Playing back the building signs in his mind, he tried to remember whether that was the tax office or the small Asian herb store. He reset the alarm, waiting to see whether it went off again, and then closed and relocked the panel.

Returning to the car, he turned it off and removed the keys. Retrieving his baton from the passenger seat, he slid it smoothly into its holster on his belt. He locked the car and headed toward the front of the building, his flashlight aimed out before him.

“Silent Night”

Author’s Note: This was a piece I did for the A Merry Little Apex Christmas Flash Fiction Contest. I didn’t win, so I’ll publish it here for you. Happy, um, holidays.

---

Gerard barreled down the stairs.

I’m first! I’m FIRST!

He reached the landing and skidded to a halt. The tree was dark. Even the lights strung along the mantle were out, resembling a black, tangled vine in the dark.

Gerard’s heart thumped in his chest. He hated the dark. Things lived in the dark, in its shadows.

“Not on Christmas,” he whispered. “Not on Christmas.”

It really was Christmas morning; he was certain of it. Yet, underneath the tree, there was nothing.

“There have to be presents,” he mumbled angrily.

Looking toward the mantle, he saw six stockings hanging there. Gerard approached them. Unlike the others, which remained flat and empty, his clearly bulged with . . . something.

He grinned. “That’s how it should be.”

Gerard grabbed it down, his eager grin changing to a look of confusion when the contents rattled.

He dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor in a patch of gray-white light and poured out the stocking’s contents. Five small, dark shapes clattered against one another as they tumbled onto the carpet. Each one was about the size of his finger and perhaps twice as wide.

He examined one, turning it slowly beneath his fingers. Its edges felt rough, almost sharp. He stared down at it, recognizing the shard for was it was.

Coal!

He nearly flung it away. In the reflected light, though, from within the black substance, his mother’s face stared back at him.

Gerard began to scream.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

It was nearly midnight when his patrol route returned him to the apartment complex from the night before. He drove slowly through the parking lot, seeing nothing unusual. He brought the car to a stop beside the same garbage enclosure where he parked the day before. A startled cat darted across his headlight beams, a quick black and white dappled flash of motion, before disappearing into the shadows of the landscape shrubbery.

John stared up the stairway toward the apartment. It seemed to be dark. At least, no light came from either the small kitchen window, or from the large sliding door that led to a narrow balcony. If lights were on deeper within the apartment, he could not see them.

I probably wouldn’t want to be alone in there either right now, he thought with a vague shiver.

He wondered if she was alone up there, and whether he should check on her.

I could call it in as a welfare check.

He settled back into the seat to think about it, recognizing that he really had no justification to make such a call.

I’ll probably take eight sorts of shit for it too, he knew, thinking of at least one fellow officer would persist in making rude and suggestive remarks about John and the young woman.

She wasn’t that bad looking, he decided.

It had been difficult to tell for sure between the robe and her puffy face and eyes. There had been something about her face, though. Even through the blotchy complexion brought on by fear and crying, it had been oddly familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

Thinking through his collection of friends and acquaintances, he knew that perhaps one or two of them might live somewhere in this part of the city, but he had never visited this apartment complex before the last night. His uncertainty told him that he was probably looking in the wrong place. If he had ever seen her before, it had not been among his friends.

Where then?

“Car Twenty-Seven, what’s your ten-twenty?”

The dispatcher’s voice broke him from his thoughts.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

He was not sure that he liked it—nor was he entirely certain that he did not. Based on rumors he had overheard, she sometimes liked to bring her work home, as it were—complete with handcuffs. John could not quite figure out whether the idea intrigued him . . . or terrified him.

Probably both, he decided, and then shoved the whole idea forcibly from his mind. That is so not happening.

Snapping the keys onto his belt, he looked down to his clipboard. With mixed feelings of relief and reluctance, he saw that it was the same patrol assignment as he had received the previous night. Although there were plenty of other places along the route where a dead body could turn up, he found the consistency somewhat reassuring. So far, he had only encountered when he had been assigned to a different patrol route

And let’s keep it that way.

John knew, though, that this patrol assignment would probably change tomorrow—or certainly within the week. Although he had not thought to ask whose route it normally was, he guessed that it probably belonged to someone was out sick, or on vacation, and he would be assigned somewhere else when that person returned. For the moment, though, he took it as a sign that the evening would hopefully be far less eventful than some of the previous ones had been.

He climbed into the patrol car, dumping his computer bag and lunch onto the passenger seat. Starting it, he saw that the gas tank showed as nearly full.

About time . . .

His two of his last three shifts had all started with him having to locate an open gas station so that he could complete his full patrol for the night. Most gas stations, he thought, were open twenty-four hours a day. Apparently not in this part of town, he had discovered much to his initial aggravation. Once the tank was filled, and he was feeling more charitable toward the owners of the stations that he had found closed, he decided that it probably did make sense. Getting robbed on a regular basis was probably less profitable than remaining open all night in a neighborhood with a high crime rate.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

Peering around the doorway, he checked the large numeral digital clock on the dresser. He was at little risk of being late for his shift. As he finished toweling himself off, he tried to decide whether he had time to have dinner there or if he should grab something at a drive-through before heading up to pick up his patrol car at the dispatch office.

He tried to remember how much cash he had in his wallet . . .

. . . probably like three dollars . . .

. . . and how much he had in his bank account . . .

. . . probably even less than that.

John checked the clock again. Unless his father was earlier than usual, John would already be on his way by the time his father arrived home from work.

I guess I can text him, John decided. He’s going to lecture me either way.

A speech by text—while no less annoying—was, at least, was a little easier to ignore.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he padded barefoot back to his bedroom, once again wishing he could remember where his slippers were. The fake wooden floors were cold this time of year.

Later, as he drove to the dispatch office, with the aroma of fast-food burritos mixing with the other stale scents in his car, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder where he might be assigned to that night.

My track record lately has been . . . well . . .

He trailed off, unable to find a good way to rationalize that nearly all of his patrol shifts over the past few days had involved someone being dead. Tempted to call ahead, to see whether they would tell him which assignment he had drawn for the night, he resisted, afraid that he might just turn around and go home if he knew.

When he walked into the dispatch and signed in for his shift, John had the distinct feeling that he was on the receiving end of several sidewise glances. He caught no one at it, specifically, but was certain that it happening. Carole’s customary smile seemed a little wider and, John thought, almost predatory. Her eyes appeared a bit brighter as well when she handed him the keys. John the smile noncommittally, feeling uncomfortable.

In the past, she had been friendly enough—in a cordial, yet professional sort of way. She had, however, never really teased or flirted with him the way she did with most of the other men. Although she was not really at all his type, being a bit too lean and with a narrow face that he did not find particularly attractive, he still felt a dull stab of jealousy and disappointment at the perceived rejection.

Tonight, however, seemed different. It was a poorly kept secret that the night dispatcher preferred “bad boys”. His getting hauled in for questioning by the police the night before had evidently now placed him into that category in her mind.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

The first he had almost casually discarded it, glancing only briefly at it. It was not until they had found the dead man at the upscale house that the sergeant had seemed to actually read what was printed on the sheets. John remembered the sergeant’s puzzled expression, and then his sudden, urgent reaction.

John was certain that the sergeant had expected to find a snake in the bag delivered to the dead woman at the office complex’s bag—sure enough so that he was willing to involve Animal Control. Once the bag had been proven to be empty, the sergeant had immediately called it a homicide.

And then the same thing at the apartment last night.

So the sergeant clearly saw the pattern.

But what did those sheets say?

If they were already secured as evidence, then John knew that there was little chance that he would be allowed to see them.

Would they let my attorney see them?

Possibly, he decided, but the problem with that idea was that he had never actually been charged with anything. He had only been questioned and then released.

“Damn,” he swore softly, rubbing his closely shaven head with the towel. “I should have thought of that last night.”

He then pondered whether it would have been worth the several hundred dollars it would have cost him just to satisfy his curiosity.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

He also suspected, though, that he would find out that the victims had nothing in common. Thinking back on the guest lectures in the his Administration of Justice classes, he tried to remember what the officers and detectives had said about serial killers—that it usually turned out that there was some kind of pattern even to the supposedly random ones. It was usually when the profilers were called in that it became obvious—often much too late for subsequent victims.

“Well, this guy seems to have a thing for workout bags . . .” he murmured, also unable to recall the last time he had made it to the gym for more than one day in a row.

The moment he spoke the thought aloud, though, the connection became apparent to him. An instant later, he tried to dismiss it.

For sure that sergeant must have picked up on that.

Playing back the scenes from two of the murders in his mind—the most recent one at the apartment, and the one at the expensive home—John saw the sergeant had recognized it.

It’s like a calling card . . . he’s sending them gym bags with something inside.

John turned off the water and stood there, frowning while he dripped. This was the part that did not quite make sense.

Each of the bags contained something different.

He thought back through them: a snake (probably), a bottle of expensive liquor, a box of (presumably) poisoned brownies, and . . .

Damn.

That was where it kind of fell apart. That one bag, shipped to the woman in the office complex and unopened, had contained nothing but a bunch of papers.

The papers?

John thought about those. There had been several sheets of paper in each of the bags.

What the hell were they?

He had never gotten a good look at any of them. The one set that had actually passed through his hands looked like a college term paper or something.

Some kind of manifesto?

That kind of document was not at all uncommon from being issues by serial killers—particularly among the more severe whack jobs.

So what had it said?

John remembered the expression on the sergeant’s face when he had read it.

No, wait, he told himself, reaching for a towel.

The sergeant’s reaction had been different each time.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

Even as he shuffled down the short hallway to his bathroom, he found his mind returning to memories of the day before.

Why the hell did they think I did it? He pulled on the shower control. I know all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time—I did almost a month in Juvie for it. But this . . .

He could see a certain logic to the sergeant’s suspicions, but he also knew that he was completely innocent—not just innocent, but totally uninvolved.

It’s not my fault I got assigned to those patrols.

He paused in mid-step out of his pajamas, trying to convince himself that the notion bubbling through his thoughts was just a side effect of not yet being fully awake.

Did someone deliberately send me to those sites?

John knew that he had not requested any of those patrol sites. They had all been assigned by his supervisor. Sure, he had expressed a desire for ones closer to where he lived, but only of them—the man in the expensive house—had been anywhere near his neighborhood. Even then, it was a good fifteen minutes distant, up in one of the more exclusive private communities up in the hills.

Frank? he wondered.

He considered the possibility whether his supervisor might have manipulated his assignments. It seemed a reach. Frank Marshall was an ex-cop, retired from the force, who had started his own security company. While it was entirely possible that the man had made enemies while he was part of the police force, John had a lot of trouble imagining that any the people he had seen killed would have been among them. It just did not feel right.

John stepped into the shower, letting his mind roam while the water ran down on him.

If they truly were not random killings—and he still had no good reason not to believe that there were not—then all of the victims must have something in common. It was not, he felt, something immediately obvious, for the victims had spanned a variety of ethnic origins and age groups. The age of the first set of victims seemed to cluster around the forties or fifties, but the most recent one was at least a decade younger than that—maybe two. It also did not seem to be a grudge against a particular gender, as was often the case, as there had been both male and female victims.

He considered next what he had seen of each of the crime scenes. For several of them, though, he had seen very little. They were all radically different: an underground parking garage, a luxury home, a corporate office complex, and an economy apartment. There had been only one snake. The cause of death for each of the other ones had been . . . what?

John realized that he did not know. Only the first one had been obvious. He had never heard the results of any testing or autopsies from the other ones.

Of course, he thought. Why would I?

If there were evidence in a trial, they would not be released. Even if they were not, they might still not be a matter of public record. Or they might be, if he knew where to look.

That could be a problem, John considered. He had never learned any of the victim’s names.

Easy enough to find out, he realized—if he was truly interested in finding them out.

He discovered that he was, particularly now that he had been dragged in for questioning about it.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

So far, there had been nothing in the news about any unusual murders in his area. Feeling a bit ghoulish, she had gone online and checked the local obituaries, but they were generally useless. Most of them were maddeningly vague in regards to the cause of death. Phrases like “passed peacefully in her sleep” or “accepted into the arms of the Lord” provided no useful information, and were particularly unhelpful when the person was well under fifty. One listing did sadden her, though. It was an entry for a colleague that she worked with a few companies back and mostly lost contact with. The cause, Sabrina surmised based on the request at the end of the listing, must have been from some kind of cancer.

Sinking back in her chair, Sabrina felt an even deeper sense of melancholy and frustration now. If he was out there murdering people—and, so far, there was no conclusive evidence that he truly was—she had absolutely no idea how he might be doing it. She doubted that it would be anything violent: a knife attack or shooting.

What then? she wondered, feeling like she should know the answer. And who?

She glanced at the chat list on the screen and saw that Samantha was still offline.

Probably with a client . . .

Sabrina found that only mildly frustrating, as she doubted that Samantha had any more insight than she did right then.

Still, she wished, it’d be nice to have someone to talk to.

She stared down at her phone again, resisting the urge to toss it against a bulkhead.

Why the hell won’t he answer me?

Turning to look out the porthole, she wondered what she would say to him if he did.

HEY, WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING TO DO WITH THOSE GYM BAGS?

YOU KNOW WHAT.

She jumped, the phone nearly tumbling to the deck when it vibrated in her hand. Looking down at it, she forced herself to breathe, to take slow and steady breaths.

That would have been just eight sorts of creepy . . .

It was, in fact, a message from one of her work colleagues in California. He was asking her if she would be so kind as to check her work e-mail as he was, once again, having issues with the team based out of Taiwan.

Sabrina sighed, and then paused.

California.

Chewing lightly on her lower lip, Sabrina considered the idea further. Bringing another person into this would mean having to divulge some of the background. In this case, she was convinced that a little knowledge might truly be a dangerous thing.

Checking her work messages would distract her, for certain. It would also be equally likely to enrage her—not a particularly conducive frame of mind for what she was dealing with on the other front.

Still . . .

She was in the process of switching computers when Samantha popped up online. It took nearly all of Sabrina’s control not to pounce the moment her chat window became active. Then, she waited. After nearly three minutes during which Samantha did not contact her, Sabrina’s fingers began to itch. She held them poised above the keyboard, hesitating only because “Where the hell have you been?” seemed like an impolite way to open a conversation—even with Samantha.

ANY NEWS?

Sabrina sighed. Even knowing that it was unrealistic to expect that Samantha might have discovered something before she did, Sabrina still felt a deep twinge of disappointment.

NOTHING. HE’S STILL NOT ANSWERING MY TEXTS.

A long delay followed before Samantha’s response appeared on the screen. It showed that she was typing, but Sabrina suspected she kept editing, or kept delaying on sending, her reply.

IS IT TIME TO CALL THE POLICE?

Sabrina sagged at her desk. She had been wondering the same thing, but also recognized that she was deeply in denial about it—for several reasons.

AND TELL THEM WHAT?

She stared at the words, hoping that they did not come across as sarcastic as they appeared. They, in fact, represented her heartfelt, agonized plea for help, for advice—for any guidance of what to do next.

Samantha response came quickly. Sabrina relaxed slightly as she read it, relieved that her tone had not been misinterpreted.

I DON’T KNOW. STILL.

CAN I CALL YOU?

A moment passed before Samantha answered.

SURE.

Sabrina clicked on the camera symbol in the chat window. The modulating trill of the connection being established sounded from the speakers. Her screen flickered and Samantha’s face appeared. Even given the uneven quality of the image, it looked like Samantha had slept as badly she had.

“Hi,” Sabriina said, feeling that her usual bright “Good morning!” seemed out of place here.

“Hi,” Samantha replied flatly.

Her expression was similar to ones that Sabrina had often seen on individuals who suffered from migraines. As far as Sabrina could remember, Samantha did not.

“You look like shit,” Sabrina said, unable to stop the thought before she voiced it aloud.

“I feel like it,” Samantha replied drily. “It’s a matched set.”

“Didn’t sleep?”

“Not really.”

Sabrina frowned. She had managed a few hours of mostly fitful sleep. Although she had awakened reasonably, she knew that she would pay for it later in the afternoon.

“So,” Sabrina said, going back to their original subject, deciding that she really had nothing useful to add to the current one. “What are we going to do?”

Samantha visibly sighed. “You know what Alex thinks.”

Sabrina stared back at her numbly. Despite what Samantha’s partner had said, she could not see them going to the police without facing ridicule.

We have no evidence—no proof . . . of anything.

“We need to find him,” she said, with a certainty that told her that every part of her being believed it.

Samantha stared back at her for several long moments. Finally, she nodded wearily.

“Do you even know where to begin to look?”

“No,” Sabrina admitted, but feeling more hopeful than she had during the past few days. “But I know someone who might be able to help us out.”

#

John awoke to the shrill cadence of his alarm. That it had switched to that tone told him that he had managed to sleep through its first cycle. He turned and looked at the clock, blinking several times in order to get his eyes to focus. His mind was slow in doing the math, but it finally determined that he had slept nearly fourteen hours.

Damn, he thought tiredly.

He had more than three hours before he needed to report to his next shift at work. That was plenty of time to eat, shower, and dress. Despite the events of the day before, the company had made no change in his work schedule. Tempted as he was to turn over and try to go back to sleep, he roused himself, reminding himself that he had the next day off.

You can sleep all day if you want to, he told himself. And then, with less confidence, added: You just need to make it through the day.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

“This is now officially a crime scene,” the sergeant said tightly. “Call it in.” He turned toward Sabello. “And then,” he added, his eyes turning to John, “take this man into custody for questioning.”

John’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to protest, but the sergeant cut him off.

“You have the right to remain silent . . .” he warned John.

John closed his mouth. It was not as if he had anything potentially incriminating to say; he knew that he was innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Shit, he thought silently. Not even that. I’m supposed to be here. It’s my job!

“Called in, sir,” Sabello said. “Team’s on their way.”

The sergeant nodded and then gestured toward John. “Take him down to the car,” he said. “I‘ll be right there.”

Sabello reached toward her cuffs, but hesitated. She looked questioningly toward the sergeant. The sergeant looked at John with a fiercely pointed expression. John lifted his hands slowly away from the vicinity of his belt, but made no move to place them behind him.

The sergeant shook his head slightly the Sabello. Her hand moved away from her cuffs and gestured John toward the front door. John glanced at the sergeant, who returned his look with an iron stare, and headed for the door.

He tried to look casual as he made his way down the stairs.

After all, he told himself, there’s nothing all that unusual about a security officer being seen with a police officer.

He was, however, uncomfortably aware of the female officer close at his back. He also knew that the charade would only last until they shut him into the backseat of the patrol car. Someone might think that they were just giving him a lift somewhere, but it was unlikely that was the conclusion that most people would come to.

I could lose my fucking job for this, he realized. And I didn’t do anything!

He tried to imagine explaining it to his supervisor.

Shit, he realized. I should call it in.

Waiting next to the patrol car for Sabello to open the door for him, he wondered whether he should dare ask her for permission to report in. He partly hoped that, if he did, she would not grant it, for he could not figure out any way to explain it that sounded even remotely rational.

“Um,” John said. Sabello turned to him, questioningly. “My car,” he said, nodding in the direction where it was illegally parked in front of the trash dumpster. “My supervisor will get pretty pissed if it gets towed.”

The female officer’s face broke into a smile. John saw that she was even prettier than he had originally thought.

“I’ll take care of it,” she told him. “You have the keys?”

John nodded.

He waited, for some reason expecting her to remove them from his belt herself. The prospect of having her be that close to him was definitely appealing. Instead, she held out her hand. Masking his disappointment, he reached down and unfastened the keys from his belt. He dropped them carefully onto her open palm.

#

Neither officer spoke to him during the drive to the main police station. John noticed that they did not say much to each other, either. He wondered if that was typical, or the result of him being in the backseat. John suspected, though, the sergeant was probably not particularly chatty even on the best of days.

After parking the patrol car near the entrance—a perk, John guessed, of bringing in a passenger. They escorted him into the building, earning him a few curious glances. Had he been cuffed and not in uniform, John wondered whether he would have been the subject of more or fewer looks.

“Run his records,” the sergeant told Sabello. John wondered why they had not requested that while they were en route, so that they would be waiting when they arrived. “I’ll join you shortly.”

Sabello gestured down a hallway to their left. John saw a series of enclosed booths on each side. The doors to most of them were closed, but light leaked out from only a few.

“Eight,” Sabello said.

John checked the signs mounted next to each doorway. With white letters etched into plastic wood grain surface, many of them were cracked or chipped. John suspected that they had probably been installed when the building was first completed. Room Eight was the second booth from the end of the corridor on the right.

Sabello reached inside it and checked the lights. They flickered on. At least one of the tubes continued to pulse erratically even after it had warmed up. Sabello paused in the doorway, preventing John from entering it.

“Are you sure you don’t want an attorney present?”

John hesitated. He knew that he had done nothing wrong—and that he was in no way involved in these strange murders. Being completely innocent of any wrongdoing here, he could not see how he could say anything that might incriminate him. That thought, though, brought forth a not wholly unexpected wave of resentment toward the sergeant.

Why didn’t he just ask me there? John wondered angrily. Why go through all this official crap?

“We’ll see,” he told Sabello.

Sabello nodded. “I understand.”

John knew that he could stop at any time during the questioning and ask for one. It would probably annoy the sergeant, he knew, but he suspected that the older officer was a stickler for protocol. As it was, John could only think of two attorneys that he knew—and neither of them came cheap. He was not even sure that one of them had not finally retired. The last he had heard, his daughter had taken over his business—and was charging even more.

Sabello allowed him to pass and gestured toward the table. It looked to be about the same original vintage as the door signs. Four metal, mismatched chairs were also present in the small room. Two of them were positioned on one side of the table, with a single one on the opposite side. The fourth chair was shoved into a corner. The room was cold and smelled faintly of lightly oiled metal.

John entered and moved to the single chair at the table. He pulled it out and sat down, but did not slide it back so that he was actually seated at the table. Sabello remained at the doorway, occasionally glancing up and down the corridor, apparently looking for signs of the sergeant’s return. John could see the change in her expression when she spied him. Her dark eyes lost a little of their shine and her expression transformed into something more guarded.

The sergeant appeared in the doorway carrying a short stack of folders and loose papers. He entered, placed the stack on the table, and then sat down. Sabello closed the door, but, to John’s surprise, remained standing, positioned next to it.

“It looks like you have a little bit of a history, Mr. Reiter,” the sergeant said, opening one of the folders. “Illegal possession of a firearm . . . illegal possession of a controlled substance . . .”

John’s cheeks begin to burn. His stomach twisted into a knot tight enough that he nearly winced. He felt a drained, leaving him suddenly hollow inside. He knew about the charges, of course, but they were years in the past—one when he was still a minor. Still, he could see that it would not help redeem him in the eyes of the sergeant. He began to reconsider the option of having an attorney present . . .

“That was—” he began.

“Some time ago,” the sergeant interrupted him. “Yes.”

John had to look away from the older officer’s piercing gaze. Looking to Sabello, he found not comfort there. She refused to meet his eyes.

So much for any chance of a date there now.

The movement of the sergeant’s chair brought John back to the moment. He sat up straight up in the chair, staring hard to John.

“I have reports here that place you at the scenes of four other unusual deaths,” he tapped the stack of folders on the table in front of him.

John looked down at the folders, finding it hard to swallow.

“I had nothing to do with it!” he protested, his voice rising more loudly than he intended. Taking a quick breath, he tried again. “I don’t make my schedule,” he explained. “My supervisor does.”

The sergeant eyed him skeptically.

“Honest!”

The sergeant exchanged a glance with Sabello.

“Check it out,” he told her.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and quickly left out of the room.

The sergeant turned back to stare at John. He felt suddenly very vulnerable alone in the small room with officer. He did not believe that the sergeant would deliberately rough him up; the veteran officer seemed too honorable for that. Yet, John had seen that dark anger in the man’s eyes back at the apartment after he had opened the gym bag.

And accidents happen . . .

“There’s a certain amount of truth,” the sergeant began, “to the saying that criminals return to the scene of their crimes.”

He spoke carefully, almost like he was presenting a preamble to a classroom lecture. John watched him warily. He had heard the saying, of course. Some of the textbooks from his Administration of Justice courses even suggested that it might be true—although there was much debate on the matter, depending on the type of crime involved. Serial killers, for example, were among those who often did.

“So you can see how I might be more than just a tad suspicious that you have been on the scene of, according the records now, five of these deaths.”

“Those can’t be the only deaths in the entire county,” John argued.

This outburst earned him a sardonic look from the sergeant that clearly said, “Thou doth clearly protest too much”.

“I didn’t even know those people,” he offered weakly.

It was true. Even now, he did know the name of the dead woman in the parking garage or the man in the expensive house. Their names were probably in the official records, but he had never bothered to learn them.

The sergeant said nothing, but continued to stare at her.

Great, John thought. He thinks I’m some kind of random serial killer.

John shut up. Not because he had anything to hide, but because he could not think of a damned thing to say that might convince the sergeant of his innocence. He just stared in the direction of the sergeant, but avoided looking at him directly. The sergeant read through the folders again, his eyes occasionally glancing up at John. Something in his expression, though, told John that the sergeant was not finding what he was looking for in the files.

The silence between them was interrupted by Sabello’s return. John did not know how long she had been gone, but he was certain that it was much less time than it had felt like. She entered the room and handed the sergeant a short stack of printouts. He read through them quickly and then looked up at Sabello for an explanation.

“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “As far as I can tell.”

She closed the door and leaned against the frame. Her gaze, when it went to John, had lost some of its earlier harshness.

“Their system is semi-automated,” she went on. “Officers without regular assignments are automatically assigned to open patrols based on seniority and a few other factors. The supervisors can manually override it, but I don’t see any of those for his recent assignments.”

The sergeant read over the report again. His expression told John that he was forced to believe Sabello’s explanation.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he responded tightly. “Not this many of them.”

He rose from the table, paced for a moment along the far wall of the room, and then turned back to John.

“And you swear that you knew none of the victims?”

“None of them,” John replied. “I’d never even been to some of those sites before.”

“A frame up?” Sabello offered. “Could someone be trying to set you up?”

John looked up at up, startled by the idea. Before he could reason it out, though, the sergeant interrupted him.

“It’s too complex,” the sergeant said. “And there’s nothing other than his presence to implicate him in any of the deaths.”

He turned and studied John again. He was silent for several long moments. It went on long enough that both John and Sabello began to grow uneasy.

“There’s got to be a connection here,” he said, “between you and these deaths.”

He had that look, John thought, of someone who has the word they want on the tip of their tongue, but cannot quite remember it.

Sabello looked dubious, but apparently had enough respect for the sergeant not to voice her opinion aloud.

Or least, John decided, not in front of a civilian.

While he wore a uniform, John knew that he was not truly part of that community. He saw in the sergeant’s eyes a mixture of frustration and determination. How much of it was directed at him, John was not sure.

The sergeant dropped the sheets on top of the folders already stacked on the table.

“Release him,” he told Sabello. “Give him a ride back to his car. Clear him with his company.”

“Yes, sir.”

She looked relieved, John thought. Stepping back, she opened the door and waited for him to get up from behind the table. As he stood, John became aware of heavily he had been perspiring, despite the relative chill of the small room. He flashed Sabello a grateful smile as he passed her on his way through the doorway. She either did not notice it, or chose to ignore it.

John took a quick glance back at the sergeant. He remained standing there, his fingers tapping slowly against the stack of folders. He did not look up as John and Sabello left.

The drive back to his car was nearly as silent as his trip to the station had been. Sabello did not seem interested in having a conversation, and John did not know how to start one. There was one key difference this time, though. He was seated in the front passenger seat rather than in the back. That, at least, allowed him to distract himself by studying the various controls and devices mounted inside the vehicle. He was sorely tempted to touch one or two of them, but had a strong mental image of Sabello slapping his hand back if he tried to.

He pulled out his phone, chiefly to verify the time, to discover more than a dozen messages waiting for him. Most were from personal contacts; a few were some his supervisor and co-workers wanting to know just what the hell was going on.

I wish I knew.

The sergeant had not told him that he could not discuss the cases with anyone, but he suspected that he probably should not—particularly if there was still the possibility that someone was trying to implicate him in them. It gave him a strange chill to consider that. His days of dealing with anyone who might adopt a serious vendetta against him were over—as far as he knew.

Besides, he considered. It makes no sense. I don’t know any of those people. They’re just . . . random.

That, he knew, was often the sign of a seriously disturbed serial killer. But, like the sergeant, he had trouble completely dismissing as pure coincidence that he had been present at five different sites where mysterious deaths had taken place.

Well, he corrected himself wryly. Maybe not mysterious . . ., he decided, but definitely unusual.

There was not, as far as he knew, any obvious connections between the victims. Each had died in an entirely different way. (He was still not convinced that the woman in the office complex construction zone was not some kind of freak accident.) Granted, he had not had access to the police reports, but he doubted that their investigation had gotten that far.

Not if that sergeant felt the need to haul my ass in for questioning . . .

The patrol car lurched slightly and came to a stop. John looked out the window to discover that they were back in the apartment complex. His patrol car was still parked where he had left it. He was relieved to see that it had not been ticketed or, worse yet, towed.

Of course not, he chided himself. She wouldn’t have brought me back otherwise. Would she?

He reached over and opened the door. Starting to climb out of the car, he paused and turned to Sabello.

“Thank you.”

She smiled at him. Something fluttered inside his John’s stomach.

“No problem,” she told him. “I told your supervisor we needed you to come down to the station to file an official report on what you saw here. They’re paying out the O.T.”

John blinked in surprise. He glanced at the dashboard clock and realized just how much time had passed since he had first pulled into the parking lot to check out a bunch of flashing emergency lights.

“Thanks,” he said, realizing that he was probably grinning like an idiot.

She kept watching him and John had the absurd notion that she was waiting for a good-bye kiss or something.

“Stay out of trouble. Okay?” she told him, still smiling. Her eyes twinkled in the reflected light.

“I’ll . . . try,” he managed to get out.

Turning, he closed the car door. He stepped back and, after a moment, she pulled away. He could not tell for certain, but he thought he saw her watching him from the rear view. Even if she was not, he decided, what difference did it make?

He approached his car, checkly surveying it for any signs of tampering, but found none. Starting to reach for the door, he froze.

Oh, shit.

He had given the keys to Sabello so that she could move it into an actual parking space. The sergeant had interrupted her before she could so, but . . . she still had the keys.

Great. Just . . . great.

Now he was going to have to call Dispatch and have someone bring him an extra set of keys.

“As if today hadn’t sucked enough,” he murmured, reaching for the volume control on his radio.

He did so without looking, so was surprised when his hand brushed against something that jingled. Looking down, he saw his keys hanging from their clip on his belt.

When the hell did she do that?

Checking his memory, he could find no moment she had returned his keys to him. Reflexively, he checked for his wallet. It was still in his back pocket. Laughing softly, he shook his head and lifted off the keys. Only once he had unlocked the door and seated once again in the driver’s seat did he relax. In that instant, the events of the day caught up with him.

He sat, his hands poised on the wheel, nearly shaking with exhaustion, anger, and confusion. If he had been home, he was sure that he would have crawled into bed and slept for most of a day. He really wanted to do that, but needed to return the patrol car first before he could head home.

Taking several deeps breaths, he managed to regain most of his control. He looked at the steering wheel and willed his hands to stop shaking. They obeyed him, but then he wondered how long it had been since he had eaten.

Way too long, he decided, remembering that he had eaten a light dinner before the start of his shift, with plans for something more substantial during his break—that break that would have happened had he not returned to the apartment complex to see what all of the excitement was about.

All of the excitement . . . he mused sourly. Oh yeah. Right.

He put the car into gear and drove forward, turning onto the street. There was a decent burger place on the way to the dispatch office. He could stop there on his way. The car was already hours late in being returned; they could wait a little longer.

#

Sabrina stared at her computer screen and then at her phone. It had been three days since anyone had heard from him. He had not returned any of her messages nor, as far as she could tell, had he even received them. Somehow, so far, he had managed to remain off the grid. Or, at least, he had from all of the simplest and easiest means of detection. That he had done so both frustrated and, secretly, delighted her.

I thought him about those tricks.

Frankly, she did not know how much she should worry. Working with Samantha, their list of possible victims was remarkably short. This either meant, she suspected, that he had no intention of using all thirteen of the gym bags or, more likely, they were gravely ignorant about the criteria he might use to select his possible victims.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

“This is now officially a crime scene,” the sergeant said tightly. “Call it in.” He turned toward Sabello. “And then,” he added, his eyes turning to John, “take this man into custody for questioning.”

John’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to protest, but the sergeant cut him off.

“You have the right to remain silent . . .” he warned John.

John closed his mouth. It was not as if he had anything potentially incriminating to say; he knew that he was innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Shit, he thought silently. Not even that. I’m supposed to be here. It’s my job!

“Called in, sir,” Sabello said. “Team’s on their way.”

The sergeant nodded and then gestured toward John. “Take him down to the car,” he said. “I‘ll be right there.”

Sabello reached toward her cuffs, but hesitated. She looked questioningly toward the sergeant. The sergeant looked at John with a fiercely pointed expression. John lifted his hands slowly away from the vicinity of his belt, but made no move to place them behind him.

The sergeant shook his head slightly the Sabello. Her hand moved away from her cuffs and gestured John toward the front door. John glanced at the sergeant, who returned his look with an iron stare, and headed for the door.

He tried to look casual as he made his way down the stairs.

After all, he told himself, there’s nothing all that unusual about a security officer being seen with a police officer.

He was, however, uncomfortably aware of the female officer close at his back. He also knew that the charade would only last until they shut him into the backseat of the patrol car. Someone might think that they were just giving him a lift somewhere, but it was unlikely that was the conclusion that most people would come to.

I could lose my fucking job for this, he realized. And I didn’t do anything!

He tried to imagine explaining it to his supervisor.

Shit, he realized. I should call it in.

Waiting next to the patrol car for Sabello to open the door for him, he wondered whether he should dare ask her for permission to report in. He partly hoped that, if he did, she would not grant it, for he could not figure out any way to explain it that sounded even remotely rational.

“Um,” John said. Sabello turned to him, questioningly. “My car,” he said, nodding in the direction where it was illegally parked in front of the trash dumpster. “My supervisor will get pretty pissed if it gets towed.”

The female officer’s face broke into a smile. John saw that she was even prettier than he had originally thought.

“I’ll take care of it,” she told him. “You have the keys?”

John nodded.

He waited, for some reason expecting her to remove them from his belt herself. The prospect of having her be that close to him was definitely appealing. Instead, she held out her hand. Masking his disappointment, he reached down and unfastened the keys from his belt. He dropped them carefully onto her open palm.

#

Neither officer spoke to him during the drive to the main police station. John noticed that they did not say much to each other, either. He wondered if that was typical, or the result of him being in the backseat. John suspected, though, the sergeant was probably not particularly chatty even on the best of days.

After parking the patrol car near the entrance—a perk, John guessed, of bringing in a passenger. They escorted him into the building, earning him a few curious glances. Had he been cuffed and not in uniform, John wondered whether he would have been the subject of more or fewer looks.

“Run his records,” the sergeant told Sabello. John wondered why they had not requested that while they were en route, so that they would be waiting when they arrived. “I’ll join you shortly.”

Sabello gestured down a hallway to their left. John saw a series of enclosed booths on each side. The doors to most of them were closed, but light leaked out from only a few.

“Eight,” Sabello said.

John checked the signs mounted next to each doorway. With white letters etched into plastic wood grain surface, many of them were cracked or chipped. John suspected that they had probably been installed when the building was first completed. Room Eight was the second booth from the end of the corridor on the right.

Sabello reached inside it and checked the lights. They flickered on. At least one of the tubes continued to pulse erratically even after it had warmed up. Sabello paused in the doorway, preventing John from entering it.

“Are you sure you don’t want an attorney present?”

John hesitated. He knew that he had done nothing wrong—and that he was in no way involved in these strange murders. Being completely innocent of any wrongdoing here, he could not see how he could say anything that might incriminate him. That thought, though, brought forth a not wholly unexpected wave of resentment toward the sergeant.

Why didn’t he just ask me there? John wondered angrily. Why go through all this official crap?

“We’ll see,” he told Sabello.

Sabello nodded. “I understand.”

John knew that he could stop at any time during the questioning and ask for one. It would probably annoy the sergeant, he knew, but he suspected that the older officer was a stickler for protocol. As it was, John could only think of two attorneys that he knew—and neither of them came cheap. He was not even sure that one of them had not finally retired. The last he had heard, his daughter had taken over his business—and was charging even more.

Sabello allowed him to pass and gestured toward the table. It looked to be about the same original vintage as the door signs. Four metal, mismatched chairs were also present in the small room. Two of them were positioned on one side of the table, with a single one on the opposite side. The fourth chair was shoved into a corner. The room was cold and smelled faintly of lightly oiled metal.

John entered and moved to the single chair at the table. He pulled it out and sat down, but did not slide it back so that he was actually seated at the table. Sabello remained at the doorway, occasionally glancing up and down the corridor, apparently looking for signs of the sergeant’s return. John could see the change in her expression when she spied him. Her dark eyes lost a little of their shine and her expression transformed into something more guarded.

The sergeant appeared in the doorway carrying a short stack of folders and loose papers. He entered, placed the stack on the table, and then sat down. Sabello closed the door, but, to John’s surprise, remained standing, positioned next to it.

“It looks like you have a little bit of a history, Mr. Reiter,” the sergeant said, opening one of the folders. “Illegal possession of a firearm . . . illegal possession of a controlled substance . . .”

John’s cheeks begin to burn. His stomach twisted into a knot tight enough that he nearly winced. He felt a drained, leaving him suddenly hollow inside. He knew about the charges, of course, but they were years in the past—one when he was still a minor. Still, he could see that it would not help redeem him in the eyes of the sergeant. He began to reconsider the option of having an attorney present . . .

“That was—” he began.

“Some time ago,” the sergeant interrupted him. “Yes.”

John had to look away from the older officer’s piercing gaze. Looking to Sabello, he found not comfort there. She refused to meet his eyes.

So much for any chance of a date there now.

The movement of the sergeant’s chair brought John back to the moment. He sat up straight up in the chair, staring hard to John.

“I have reports here that place you at the scenes of four other unusual deaths,” he tapped the stack of folders on the table in front of him.

John looked down at the folders, finding it hard to swallow.

“I had nothing to do with it!” he protested, his voice rising more loudly than he intended. Taking a quick breath, he tried again. “I don’t make my schedule,” he explained. “My supervisor does.”

The sergeant eyed him skeptically.

“Honest!”

The sergeant exchanged a glance with Sabello.

“Check it out,” he told her.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and quickly left out of the room.

The sergeant turned back to stare at John. He felt suddenly very vulnerable alone in the small room with officer. He did not believe that the sergeant would deliberately rough him up; the veteran officer seemed too honorable for that. Yet, John had seen that dark anger in the man’s eyes back at the apartment after he had opened the gym bag.

And accidents happen . . .

“There’s a certain amount of truth,” the sergeant began, “to the saying that criminals return to the scene of their crimes.”

He spoke carefully, almost like he was presenting a preamble to a classroom lecture. John watched him warily. He had heard the saying, of course. Some of the textbooks from his Administration of Justice courses even suggested that it might be true—although there was much debate on the matter, depending on the type of crime involved. Serial killers, for example, were among those who often did.

“So you can see how I might be more than just a tad suspicious that you have been on the scene of, according the records now, five of these deaths.”

“Those can’t be the only deaths in the entire county,” John argued.

This outburst earned him a sardonic look from the sergeant that clearly said, “Thou doth clearly protest too much”.

“I didn’t even know those people,” he offered weakly.

It was true. Even now, he did know the name of the dead woman in the parking garage or the man in the expensive house. Their names were probably in the official records, but he had never bothered to learn them.

The sergeant said nothing, but continued to stare at her.

Great, John thought. He thinks I’m some kind of random serial killer.

John shut up. Not because he had anything to hide, but because he could not think of a damned thing to say that might convince the sergeant of his innocence. He just stared in the direction of the sergeant, but avoided looking at him directly. The sergeant read through the folders again, his eyes occasionally glancing up at John. Something in his expression, though, told John that the sergeant was not finding what he was looking for in the files.

The silence between them was interrupted by Sabello’s return. John did not know how long she had been gone, but he was certain that it was much less time than it had felt like. She entered the room and handed the sergeant a short stack of printouts. He read through them quickly and then looked up at Sabello for an explanation.

“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “As far as I can tell.”

She closed the door and leaned against the frame. Her gaze, when it went to John, had lost some of its earlier harshness.

“Their system is semi-automated,” she went on. “Officers without regular assignments are automatically assigned to open patrols based on seniority and a few other factors. The supervisors can manually override it, but I don’t see any of those for his recent assignments.”

The sergeant read over the report again. His expression told John that he was forced to believe Sabello’s explanation.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he responded tightly. “Not this many of them.”

He rose from the table, paced for a moment along the far wall of the room, and then turned back to John.

“And you swear that you knew none of the victims?”

“None of them,” John replied. “I’d never even been to some of those sites before.”

“A frame up?” Sabello offered. “Could someone be trying to set you up?”

John looked up at up, startled by the idea. Before he could reason it out, though, the sergeant interrupted him.

“It’s too complex,” the sergeant said. “And there’s nothing other than his presence to implicate him in any of the deaths.”

He turned and studied John again. He was silent for several long moments. It went on long enough that both John and Sabello began to grow uneasy.

“There’s got to be a connection here,” he said, “between you and these deaths.”

He had that look, John thought, of someone who has the word they want on the tip of their tongue, but cannot quite remember it.

Sabello looked dubious, but apparently had enough respect for the sergeant not to voice her opinion aloud.

Or least, John decided, not in front of a civilian.

While he wore a uniform, John knew that he was not truly part of that community. He saw in the sergeant’s eyes a mixture of frustration and determination. How much of it was directed at him, John was not sure.

The sergeant dropped the sheets on top of the folders already stacked on the table.

“Release him,” he told Sabello. “Give him a ride back to his car. Clear him with his company.”

“Yes, sir.”

She looked relieved, John thought. Stepping back, she opened the door and waited for him to get up from behind the table. As he stood, John became aware of heavily he had been perspiring, despite the relative chill of the small room. He flashed Sabello a grateful smile as he passed her on his way through the doorway. She either did not notice it, or chose to ignore it.

John took a quick glance back at the sergeant. He remained standing there, his fingers tapping slowly against the stack of folders. He did not look up as John and Sabello left.

The drive back to his car was nearly as silent as his trip to the station had been. Sabello did not seem interested in having a conversation, and John did not know how to start one. There was one key difference this time, though. He was seated in the front passenger seat rather than in the back. That, at least, allowed him to distract himself by studying the various controls and devices mounted inside the vehicle. He was sorely tempted to touch one or two of them, but had a strong mental image of Sabello slapping his hand back if he tried to.

He pulled out his phone, chiefly to verify the time, to discover more than a dozen messages waiting for him. Most were from personal contacts; a few were some his supervisor and co-workers wanting to know just what the hell was going on.

I wish I knew.

The sergeant had not told him that he could not discuss the cases with anyone, but he suspected that he probably should not—particularly if there was still the possibility that someone was trying to implicate him in them. It gave him a strange chill to consider that. His days of dealing with anyone who might adopt a serious vendetta against him were over—as far as he knew.

Besides, he considered. It makes no sense. I don’t know any of those people. They’re just . . . random.

That, he knew, was often the sign of a seriously disturbed serial killer. But, like the sergeant, he had trouble completely dismissing as pure coincidence that he had been present at five different sites where mysterious deaths had taken place.

Well, he corrected himself wryly. Maybe not mysterious . . ., he decided, but definitely unusual.

There was not, as far as he knew, any obvious connections between the victims. Each had died in an entirely different way. (He was still not convinced that the woman in the office complex construction zone was not some kind of freak accident.) Granted, he had not had access to the police reports, but he doubted that their investigation had gotten that far.

Not if that sergeant felt the need to haul my ass in for questioning . . .

The patrol car lurched slightly and came to a stop. John looked out the window to discover that they were back in the apartment complex. His patrol car was still parked where he had left it. He was relieved to see that it had not been ticketed or, worse yet, towed.

Of course not, he chided himself. She wouldn’t have brought me back otherwise. Would she?

He reached over and opened the door. Starting to climb out of the car, he paused and turned to Sabello.

“Thank you.”

She smiled at him. Something fluttered inside his John’s stomach.

“No problem,” she told him. “I told your supervisor we needed you to come down to the station to file an official report on what you saw here. They’re paying out the O.T.”

John blinked in surprise. He glanced at the dashboard clock and realized just how much time had passed since he had first pulled into the parking lot to check out a bunch of flashing emergency lights.

“Thanks,” he said, realizing that he was probably grinning like an idiot.

She kept watching him and John had the absurd notion that she was waiting for a good-bye kiss or something.

“Stay out of trouble. Okay?” she told him, still smiling. Her eyes twinkled in the reflected light.

“I’ll . . . try,” he managed to get out.

Turning, he closed the car door. He stepped back and, after a moment, she pulled away. He could not tell for certain, but he thought he saw her watching him from the rear view. Even if she was not, he decided, what difference did it make?

He approached his car, checkly surveying it for any signs of tampering, but found none. Starting to reach for the door, he froze.

Oh, shit.

He had given the keys to Sabello so that she could move it into an actual parking space. The sergeant had interrupted her before she could so, but . . . she still had the keys.

Great. Just . . . great.

Now he was going to have to call Dispatch and have someone bring him an extra set of keys.

“As if today hadn’t sucked enough,” he murmured, reaching for the volume control on his radio.

He did so without looking, so was surprised when his hand brushed against something that jingled. Looking down, he saw his keys hanging from their clip on his belt.

When the hell did she do that?

Checking his memory, he could find no moment she had returned his keys to him. Reflexively, he checked for his wallet. It was still in his back pocket. Laughing softly, he shook his head and lifted off the keys. Only once he had unlocked the door and seated once again in the driver’s seat did he relax. In that instant, the events of the day caught up with him.

He sat, his hands poised on the wheel, nearly shaking with exhaustion, anger, and confusion. If he had been home, he was sure that he would have crawled into bed and slept for most of a day. He really wanted to do that, but needed to return the patrol car first before he could head home.

Taking several deeps breaths, he managed to regain most of his control. He looked at the steering wheel and willed his hands to stop shaking. They obeyed him, but then he wondered how long it had been since he had eaten.

Way too long, he decided, remembering that he had eaten a light dinner before the start of his shift, with plans for something more substantial during his break—that break that would have happened had he not returned to the apartment complex to see what all of the excitement was about.

All of the excitement . . . he mused sourly. Oh yeah. Right.

He put the car into gear and drove forward, turning onto the street. There was a decent burger place on the way to the dispatch office. He could stop there on his way. The car was already hours late in being returned; they could wait a little longer.

#

Sabrina stared at her computer screen and then at her phone. It had been three days since anyone had heard from him. He had not returned any of her messages nor, as far as she could tell, had he even received them. Somehow, so far, he had managed to remain off the grid. Or, at least, he had from all of the simplest and easiest means of detection. That he had done so both frustrated and, secretly, delighted her.

I thought him about those tricks.

Frankly, she did not know how much she should worry. Working with Samantha, their list of possible victims was remarkably short. This either meant, she suspected, that he had no intention of using all thirteen of the gym bags or, more likely, they were gravely ignorant about the criteria he might use to select his possible victims.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

A noise in the living room behind him interrupted John’s thoughts. He turned his head to see the female officer guiding the young woman in the bathrobe toward the sofa. John wondered why she was not in a hurry to follow the ambulance to the hospital to be with who he assumed was the young man’s boyfriend. She seemed distraught to the level that it seemed to be that kind of relationship, but John got the feeling that there was someone more to it. He could not pin down what it was, and watching the young woman closely for several additional moments did not help to provide him with an answer.

The radio on the sergeant’s belt crackled with a burst of codes and updates that went too fast for John to follow. He had been paying attention from the beginning, he was certain that he could have pieced them together. The sergeant reached up and silenced the radio in mid-report, following the remainder of it privately. He listened intently, nodding almost imperceptibly, his expression slowly becoming even more of a mask than it seemed to John that it normally was.

His hand dropped slowly from his earpiece and he turned back toward the doorway. He glanced for only a moment at John, but there something like steel in it that sent a chill down John’s spine. The sergeant moved back toward the living room, apparently not caring whether John followed him or not. John assumed that he should.

The sergeant stopped at the doorway. The female officer, still seated on the couch with sniffling young woman, looked up, studying the sergeant’s expression. The sergeant shook his head slightly, silently, but sending a clear message to his partner.

The female officer’s mouth formed a tight, grim line. She turned back to the young woman, but, before she could speak, the young woman broke into a renewed bout of sobbing. The sergeant watched her for only a moment before he half-turned toward John.

“Come with me,” he said. His tone contained no doubt that he expected to be obeyed.

John followed the sergeant through the living room and back toward the kitchen. They entered it fully this time. The sergeant paused when he stood in what was approximately its center. He turned his head slowly, examining each item and surface in the room.

John tried to follow the direction of the sergeant’s gaze as it swept across the room. It was, as his brief glimpse had told him, neat and tidy, with all of the small appliances and containers of large cooking utensils all tucked into what seemed to be their designated places. The surfaces appeared to have been recently cleaned, but the air lacked that sharp antiseptic tang of someone overly fastidious about it. John could see that seemed unusual or strangely out of place in a normal kitchen.

The sergeant took two short steps forward, taking a better look inside the sink.

Looking for signs of body parts shoved down the garbage disposal?

John had heard stories of such things being done, but he typically dismissed them as grisly urban legends. It was not that he could not envision some psychopath doing it, but it seemed like an awful lot of work.

While he was pondering that, the sergeant stepped back again. For a moment, John thought he might start going through each of the cabinets. Looking for what, though, John could not imagine. He realized, then, that he had no real idea what was going on. Someone, presumably the young woman in the other room, had called 9-1-1. Something had happened evidentially to whoever had been rushed out on the stretcher—something involving large amounts of blood and other, more unpleasant, body fluids.

Some kind of accident? He slipped in the shower? Alcohol poisoning? . . . The Plague?

Nothing from what he could piece together from the sergeant’s radio call gave him a clue. If the sergeant knew—and John guessed that he probably did—he was not talking about it.

Finally, John surrendered to his curiosity.

What’s he going to do? Arrest me for asking? I am a registered security guard and I do have a right to be here. It’s on my published patrol schedule.

“Officer . . . sir?” he managed to get out, trying not to cringe for how his voice quavered. “What are we looking for?”

At first, he thought the sergeant either had not heard him, or was choosing to ignore him. Then, the officer turned slowly to face him. The sergeant’s eyes fixed on his, seeming to bore into him.

“Poisoned.”

John tried not the flinch. Something in the sergeant’s gaze made John wonder if the officer thought that he might somehow be involved. John knew that he was not, other than through the coincidence of happening to be present on yet another site where a death had occurred when the sergeant also happened to be present.

John glanced toward the archway, in the direction of the living room.

The girl?

The sergeant shook his head, evidently reading his expression.

“She didn’t do it,” he declared confidently, although his voice never rose.

John stared at him, wondering how he could be so certain. It was clear, though, that he was.

“An accident?” John murmured aloud, not feeling convinced enough to ask the question outright.

“Perhaps,” the sergeant replied, surveying the kitchen again. John could tell that he did not believe it.

If not the girl, then who? And why?

They both turned at the sound of someone else entering the room. Even before he saw her, John knew that it had to be the female officer from the sound of her boots on the linoleum. The young woman had been dressed in slippers.

“What did you find out?” the sergeant asked her, looking past her into the living room.

“Not much,” the female officer said, pulling out her tablet.

Josh could see now that her name tag read “Sabello”. From the color of her hair and complexion, he could be certain sure whether its origin was Italian or, possibly, Spanish.

“They had a party,” she reported, as if this was an expected fact. “Lots of drinking,” she went on. “And apparently some marijuana, but I haven’t checked the apartment for any yet.”

She glanced up at the sergeant, checking to see how he would respond to that. He merely nodded slightly, but John thought he saw the line of his mouth tighten just a little. The female officer must have noticed it too, he decided, because she hesitated slightly before continuing.

“She said they all ate pretty much the same things.” She consulted her list. “Chips, popcorn, cheese dip . . . and the alcohol.”

“Did she say what he had been drinking?”

Sabello looked down at her notes again. “Just rum and Coke, she said.” Looking up, her eyes surveyed the kitchen. “She said empties were still in the kitchen.”

Josh looked around, but failed to locate any empty bottles. His eyes then turned toward the cabinet under the sink.

Probably there, he decided. It was the most common place for people to store garbage and recyclables out of sight if they did not want them out in the open.

“She wasn’t sure if anyone else had any of the rum or not,” Sabello went on. “She said she wasn’t the one making the drinks.”

The sergeant nodded.

“Did she say anything else?”

Sabello flipped through her notes, pausing a moment later. “When I asked her if she had noticed anything unusual, she did say that they had received a package earlier today.” She checked her notes again. “Brownies. She said the box is still here in the kitchen: dark brown, with gold lettering.”

John surveyed the kitchen again, his eyes settling on a short rectangular box resting on the counter next to the refrigerator. The sergeant moved toward it, but did not touch it.

“Have the lab check it out.”

“Yes, sir,” the female officer responded promptly.

“Where’s the box it came in.”

Sabello checked her notes again. “She said she’d already thrown it out—in the community dumpster.”

“Find out which one.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else?”

The female officer scanned through her notes one more time before answering. “No, sir,” she finally replied. “Nothing else relevant.”

Her last comment earned her a curious look from the sergeant. To John’s surprise, he said nothing. Instead, he took another look around the kitchen.

“Bag the box and empties for the lab,” he told her. “I want to talk to her.”

The female nodded. “Yes, sir.”

She seemed uneasy about the sergeant questioning the young woman. John thought her understood why. The older officer did not have much going for him in the way of people skills or a bedside manner.

“Stay with me,” he told John, startling him slightly by addressing him.

John did not get a chance to respond before the sergeant back toward the living room. Josh followed him quickly. Once they were through the archway, the female officer moved a little faster, apparently wanting to reach for young woman first, before the sergeant started in on her. John respected that; he might have done the same thing.

“Rachel,” the female officer said softly, seating herself next to the young woman. “I know I already took your report, but the sergeant has a few questions for you.”

Rachel lifted her head and looked up the sergeant. Her eyes red and swollen, Rose-colored splotches dotted her cheeks. Her reddish-tinted hair hung in long snarls across her shoulders. John wondered if she was pretty under better conditions.

“Sure,” she replied. Her voice sounded breathless and hoarse.

The sergeant glanced over at Sabello, who waited grimly.

“Officer Sabello told me that you already threw out the box the brownies came in,” the sergeant stated, watching the young woman’s face.

Rachel nodded. “Out in the dumpster.”

“Do you remember where the package came from?”

The young woman stared up at him, giving the matter a great deal more thought than John felt was necessary, even under the circumstances.

“No,” she answered finally. Her voice sounded weak and tired. “We never figured it out.”

Sabello exchanged a surprised and concerned look with the sergeant.

“Which dumpster?” she prompted the young woman, seeing the renewed importance of locating it now.

Rachel’s eyes flicked toward the front door. “The closest one,” she said. “To the right.”

John saw another look pass between the two police officers. He could tell that it would fall to Sabello to dig through the garbage to locate the box.

“Was there anything else in the box?”

Rachel seemed confused by the question for a moment. After a moment, she seemed to remember something.

“Yeah,” she said, brightening slightly. “There was. A bag—kind of a like a small gym bag,” she explained. Her expression took on a look of puzzlement. “It was a kind of weird. The box with the brownies came inside it.”

Even as she said it, John felt an invisible hand tighten around his stomach. He saw a similar reaction on the sergeant’s face.

“Where’s the bag now?” the sergeant asked, almost urgently.

“In the bedroom,” Rachel said, her eyes turning toward the bedroom door. “I was going to use for the gym.”

“Where there anything else in the bag?” the sergeant asked.

“I don’t think so,” Rachel said, sounding tired again. She slumped slightly. “I didn’t look.”

The sergeant’s lips formed a grim line. “Did you see it?”

It took a moment before John realized that the sergeant was addressing him. John stared back at him for several long moments before nodding dumbly.

“Bring it,” the sergeant ordered him.

John remained frozen in place, and then broke into a run, clearing the short distance from the sofa to the bedroom in well under three seconds.

Behind him, he heard the sergeant ask the young woman, “Are you sure you don’t remember where it came from?”

“No,” she replied quietly. “I mean, we couldn’t read the label. It was all scraped up.”

“We need to find that box,” the sergeant said, presumably to Sabello.

If the female officer said anything, John did not hear her response as he entered the bedroom.

It took him a moment to reorient himself. He turned on one heel, trying to remember where he had seen that stack of workout clothes. His eyes located it quickly, a few feet from the bed, piled next to what was certainly at least a second-hand dresser. He strode over and reached for it, stopping suddenly when his fingers were only a hairsbreadth from the handle.

“Idiot”, he murmured, straightening to survey the room for something he could use for makeshift gloves.

His eyes paused on a pair of socks crumpled and laying on the floor just a short distance from the workout clothes. It was possible that there might be a pair of latex cleaning gloves in the bathroom, he realized, but the thought of having to going in there to search for them made the back of his throat burn.

The socks’ll do, he decided, and picked them up.

As he slid them over his hands, he tried not to think about the condition of the feet that had occupied them before. The notion, while unpleasant, was several orders of magnitude preferable to facing what he would encounter in the small bathroom.

John gripped the handles carefully, holding the bag away from his body. It felt empty. Nonetheless, he tried very hard not to think of snakes as he carried the bag gingerly into the living room.

Everyone looked in his direction when he reentered the living room. John stopped, waiting, several feet away from where everyone was either situated near the sofa.

“Is that the one?” the sergeant asked Rachel.

She nodded and then looked away from the bag.

“Over there,” the sergeant ordered John, pointing to the far corner of the room.

John looked and then went over to where the sergeant had indicated, still dangling the bag as far away from his body as he could manage. He could see the sergeant’s reasoning. There was large empty space between that corner and any of the furniture in the room. Should there be any kind of reptile contained within the bag, they would theoretically have enough time to react before they were in immediate danger from it.

Slowly and carefully, John lowered the bag onto the carpet. Releasing his hold on it, he stepped cautiously back, breathing a soft sigh of relief when nothing in its shape shifted of its own accord. He waited there, and then turned his head to face the sergeant and Sabello. The sergeant and Sabello exchanged a long look and whispered something between them that John could not hear. Sabello nodded, looking grave, and rose from the sofa. Her hand, John noticed, now rested on her weapon.

The sergeant strode toward John, and then kept going, heading for the bag. “Let’s do this,” he said as he passed, not bothering to wait for a response.

John watched the sergeant’s back as the officer approached the bag.

He can’t be serious!

He suspected, though, that the sergeant was always serious—at least while on duty. John wondered whether he was one of those officers who never truly went off duty.

The sergeant crouched before the bag. John stood two hesitant steps forward and then waited. He felt woefully underequipped to deal with this situation. Not his taser, pepper spray, or baton would be of much use, he suspected, against a venomous snake.

Unless I just want to piss it off . . .

That, to him, did not seem like the wisest goal.

He started to step back further, but then froze as the sergeant began to slowly open the bag. Somewhere, he had read that snakes were more likely to strike a moving target than one that remained completely still.

Or, he considered unhappily, that might just be one of those stupid things they say in the movies.

John tensed as the sergeant reached toward his waist. He relaxed slightly when he saw the officer draw his flashlight instead of his weapon. The sergeant had opened a small gap in the top of the bag. It was, John guessed, maybe three or four inches wide. The older officer lifted the flashlight and aimed its beam inside the bag. John held perfectly still, feeling the tension from the top of his shoulders all the way down his back.

Nothing leapt from the bag.

The sergeant reached down and opened the zippers the rest of the way. He then thrust his free hand into the bag. John held his breath until the sergeant’s hand rose, clear of the bag. Clutched within it was not a writhing length of poisonous serpent, but perhaps a half dozen sheets of regular white paper. Something seemed to be printed on them, but John was too far away to make out any of the text.

Still, the chill he had experienced earlier ran once more through his body.

Just like the other bags . . .

He had not made the connection until that very moment. All of the bags at the other scenes had also contained several sheets of paper. The sergeant was reading these. His expression turned hard. His eyes seemed to grow dark with rage.

“Sergeant?”

Sabello’s voice brought John back. He glanced at the female officer, seeing her look of puzzled concern, and then back at the sergeant.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

They slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, with one of the EMTs jumping in first to guide it into place. They were done within seconds. The second EMT slammed the door closed and then quickly entered the cab and started the engine. He backed the vehicle out of the driveway in a single smooth maneuver. John was still impressed, even knowing that it was a much smaller vehicle than the fire engine had been. Its amber lights flashed, but the siren did not sound until the ambulance reached the street.

John turned back toward the stairs, watching as two paramedics exited the apartment. One of them carried several cases of equipment; the other guided a young woman dressed in a thick pale bathrobe down the stairs. Her long hair, appearing to be some kind of darkish red in the weird lighting, was snarled and loose. She was sobbing, but trying to hold it in.

The police sergeant stared meaningfully at his partner, and then nodded toward the stairs. She nodded silently in return, straightened, and then moved toward the stairway. John watched her go, admiring the lines of her buttocks and lines as she walked. He then realized that the sergeant was looking at him. His cheeks burned with embarrassment and he looked away.

Probably time for a discrete exit, he decided. Not much I can do here.

He turned, prepared to leave, when he heard an authoritative voice sound from behind him.

“Hold up, son.”

Even before turning around, John knew it belonged to the police sergeant.

John turned around slowly, automatically careful not to have his hands anywhere near his weapons or his belt. Swallowing against a sudden lump in his throat, he addressed the officer.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m kind of surprised to see you here, son,” the sergeant said. John really wished he would stop using the word “son”.

“I, um,” he hesitated. “I get around, sir. Wherever they assign me.”

The sergeant studied him closely for a moment.

“So it seems . . .”

The sergeant’s eyes shifted for a moment to where his partner conversed quietly with the young woman, and then turned back to John. He studied John for several long seconds—a period that felt like minutes to John.

“Come with me,” the sergeant told John, gesturing ahead of him. “But touch nothing.”

John hesitated for an instant, his legs unwilling to move. After convincing himself that he had done nothing wrong, he headed toward the sergeant.

The officer began moving toward the apartment before John even reached him. John found that he nearly had to jog in order to keep up with the older man.

The sergeant paused next to his partner. He gave the young woman with her a momentary, if somewhat guarded, sympathetic glance. He then said something to the female officer in quiet tones that John could not quite make out, gesturing with his head up toward the apartment. The female officer nodded and then said something to the young woman. The young woman nodded slowly and the sergeant headed toward the stairs. John took long strides in an effort to catch up with him.

John found the interior of the apartment to be unremarkable. It was perhaps a bit tidier that he had expected, but it was also bit more empty. The main room contained only a single well-worn sofa and a long wide coffee table, clearly from an earlier decade of design. Several stacks of overlarge decorative pillows apparently served as additional seating. On the far side of the room was a narrow dining table that looked it could seat six people. Only three chairs, only two of which clearly matched the set, were positioned around it. John quickly surveyed the space but any additional ones, but did not find any.

The sergeant remained standing just ahead of him, also assessing the room. Everything in his posture and demeanor radiated a mild wariness, but nothing that put John on instant alert. His gaze paused occasionally as it swept the room. By the time John could focus on what it might have been that drawn the older officer’s attention, the sergeant’s eyes was moving again.

Apparently having completed his initial analysis of the situation, the sergeant strode toward the narrow open archway that presumably led to the kitchen. He only glanced inside before turning and heading toward what John presumed was the main bedroom. A second door to its left John guessed was either the bathroom or a second bedroom. The door to it was closed. The sergeant, John noticed, pretty much ignored it, giving it only a quick glance.

John followed him to the bedroom, nearly colliding with him when the officer stopped just inside the doorway. The sergeant studied the room with a fierce intensity that made John found unsettling. The room was in a state of major disarray.

Nothing surprising, John mused. Considering half a dozen emergency personnel just trampled through.

Small indications here and there throughout the room made him think that this space was probably not kept as tidy as the main area had been. He gotten only the briefest glimpse of the kitchen, but it too had looked to be generally well-organized and maintained. Trying to look past the older man, John tried to see what the sergeant might be finding of such interest.

Apparently sensing John’s close proximity, the sergeant took another step into the room and then paused again, looking around. John moved a little further inside, but tried not to crowd the officer again. He stopped, holding his breath suddenly, as he caught the whiff of something foul. He struggled not to cough, but was finally was forced to inhale. He did so cautiously, but it did not help. The odor made him think of a newborn’s diaper left out to ferment in the midsummer afternoon sun. He glanced at the sergeant, but, based on what John could see of his expression, it did not seem to affect him at all.

Probably lost his sense of smell years ago . . .

John fought back the urge to gag. Although the smell was not strong, it was powerful enough to trigger some basic physiological responses.

He followed the sergeant further into the room. Getting a quick glimpse into the attached bathroom, he wished that he had not. The visible surfaces were smeared with large patches of several dark fluids. John recognized some as being blood and feces; a few he guessed were from vomit. The rest . . . he did not want to even guess at their source.

What little control he had managed to regain over his primal nearly failed him completely. John felt bile burning the back of his throat. Somehow, and he was not sure exactly how, he prevented himself from revisiting the fast-food burritos that had been his dinner. Moving deeper into the bedroom, he positioned himself so that he would not accidentally get another peek.

The sergeant slowly walked through the room, pausing to take a closer look inside the bathroom. John noted that even he remained outside it.

Maybe even he has his limits, John considered.

He did wonder, though, about what kind of things the sergeant had witnessed during his years on the police force that might have inured him to a scene like this.

The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

He became aware of a voice; it sounded a lot like Rachel’s. His vision swirled and blurred. Not matter how hard he tried, he could not focus on any one thing. Cool dampness against his spine told him that he was sprawled across the floor. He did not remember falling, but reasoned dimly that he must have. Rachel seemed to be shouting . . . touching him. He wanted to respond, but nothing seemed to work. He might have managed to say something to her; he did not know.

His next memories were of blurs of motion and bright lights. There seemed to be several around him, clothed in a variety of bright and drab hues. He was being lifted, moved . . . or thought he was. He could not be certain. His mind seemed detached from his body.

I’m not dead, he thought, for he seemed to still dwell within it.

He felt distant stabs of pain throughout his body: his arm, his belly, his head, his spine . . .

Gray fog encroached on his awareness, masking the churning mass of the other muted colors. It enveloped them all in a swirling opaque haze. At the edges of his vision, the fog thickened, darkening to the color of angry storm clouds. He expected to hear rain. It became darker still. Joel felt his awareness slipping away.

Isn’t there supposed to be a light?

But there was only darkness.

And then nothing.

#

John heard the response to the 911 call and stopped the car. Checking the map on his GPS, he confirmed that the address was on the other side of the complex where he had just completed his schedule patrol.

That explains the sirens . . .

They had sounded, he had thought, as if they were coming from somewhere very nearby. Glancing up at the apartment buildings, he thought that perhaps he could see the reflections from the strobing red and blue lights. It could also be his overactive imagination, he realized.

He called Dispatch to let them know that he was going to check out the situation and would be delayed in reaching his next scheduled patrol schedule location. John thought he heard a hint of bemusement in the dispatcher’s tone as she acknowledged his report.

Turning the car around, he cut through the central parking lot instead of the taking his usual route along the perimeter. By the time he had completed the full diameter of the rough curve, there was no mistaking the source of the brightly flashing series of lights.

He pulled to a stop adjacent to one of the enormous garbage bins. There was a sign posted there that prohibited any parking there, but he doubted that there would be any garbage pickups at the hour. Even if there were, the truck would have a tough time making its way past the emergency vehicles that crowded the narrow roadway.

Grabbing his notebook from the passenger, he climbed out of the car and approached the collection of vehicles. There was probably little that he could do, he knew, except perhaps assist the police officers in keeping other residents of the apartment complex away from the scene. Still, it was likely to be more interesting than driving slowly through yet another dimly lit apartment complex.

The fire engine immediately caught his attention, chiefly due to its size. Also present was a police patrol sedan and a paramedic van. Just pulling up was dark blue ambulance.

Must have been a general 9-1-1 . . .

With the limited number of available units, the area dispatchers tried to send only the services that were required for a particular call, John knew. If the details were unknown or unclear, then a general dispatch call was made.

John approached the scene, receiving a quick, curious glance from one of the two police officers. She was a young woman, not much older than he was. Her long, dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail that hung down between the shoulders of her uniform. She regarded him for a moment and John felt himself blush in the chill of the autumn night.

Two EMTs from the ambulance made their way noisily up the stairs with a stretcher. Everyone else present pretty much ignored them. The crew from the fire engine climbed back on board it, preparing to leave the scene.

No fire then, John concluded, watching as its driver expertly backed the enormous vehicle out of the parking lot and back onto the street.

He continued to move in closer until he stood a few yards away from the patrol car. From there, he could peer up the stairway toward the apartment into which the EMTs had disappeared. In the windows of many of the surrounding apartments, shadows watched the events outside them unfold.

John glanced at the two police officers, and then took a closer look. The one standing with the female officer looked familiar. At first, John thought it was a trick of the light. Then, he saw that it was, in fact, the sergeant from the parking garage. He did not seem to recognize John, although John attributed that as much to the mildly flurry of activity and the inconsistent lighting. John considered walking over and reintroducing himself, but thought better of it.

Although . . . , he considered thoughtfully. I might get her name and badge number out of it . . .

His musings on the dark-haired female officer were interrupted by a loud bustle and shouts from the apartment above. The EMTs appeared again, carrying the stretcher quickly down the stairs. John breathed an unexpected sigh of relief when they reached the bottom, in admiration of their expert maneuvering of the awkward contraption down the narrow stairway. He could only imagine how many hours of practice and experience that required.