SANITY LINE

Today's Special

 

Baldwin’s was one of those rare bars so old nobody knew just when it had opened. It was a Kraterburg institution, nestled away in a street-corner in the heavily urbanized (and frankly, economically diminishing) North Fen neighborhood. For all its lack of polish, and the seedy divishness of the place, it had never had much problem with the organized crime element, nor disorganized crime, nor indeed was it at any point of any kind of diminished reputation, for one very simple reason – it was the favoured watering hole of the homicide division of the Kraterburg Police Department, and those fine men and women often made the bar neutral territory for members of the National Police Force. Such cross-jurisdiction co-operation was rare, mind you, and restricted to those accompanied by such members of the NPF as had once worked for the local company.

 

Thus was the justification for the presence of a certain Detective Niles Clayton, NPF Homicide (and former Sergeant in the homicide division of the KPD), current evening’s reigning darts champion. So good was his trade at the game that challengers had stopped approaching, and for now, briefly between friends with whom he could catch up, he had retired to a stool on the bar for a few ounces of Makers Mark over ice. The national smoking ban on public places would have been an obstacle to the cigarillo he had in hand, if anyone was about to walk into a bar populated almost exclusively by current and former police officers, being a police officer themselves, and thereby cause trouble.

 

“Kiwi!”

 

His eyebrows reflexively rose – such a ridiculous nickname could only have been his old call-sign from well back in the day, and he looked behind his shoulder with a dawning grin. “Weh-heh-hell now, look what the cat dragged in. What’s happening?”

 

The woman – Claudia Booker, a fitly-set 40-something local, eased herself onto the stool beside his. “Not a whole hell of a lot. Private sector now.”

 

“No shit? You retired?”

 

“Wouldn’t go that far. Private security now. Slipher Corporation. Good pay, decent hours. Better gear than we used to give the patrol runts.”

 

The two shared a laugh, and Niles had another sip of his bourbon while Claudia ordered her customary beer. “Still wasting hours a day on your boots, detective?”

 

“Don’t take but a few minutes to polish your boots,” Clayton countered. The two shared a laugh at the over-done exchange, which like the minutes of small talk, passed as so much immemorable droning.

 

“What brings your fancy ass to town, Niles?” Claudia sipped her beer, and when he didn’t answer, pressed the point. “Come on, I know how you and the bottle are. Only reason we wouldn’t see you here for months at a time would be you’re working somewhere else. Tererra, maybe.”

 

Niles smirked on the far side of his face. “You’re the smart one, there, Detective Sergeant Booker. You tell me.”

 

She stared at him for a long while. “Fuck me, they handed you that murder at the cannery, didn’t they? The staged accident?”

 

Niles shrugged, an exaggeratedly uncertain frown on his face that made it obvious she’d hit the mark. “I have a reputation for liking them bloody.”

 

“No wonder, considering your first case.”                    

 

“It was the third,” Niles said, staring past the end of the bar as he sipped the last of the whiskey. “KPD H-2002-143.”

 

“How in the fuck could you possibly remember the case number, drinking like a fish as you do?” Claudia shook her head. “I didn't even tell you which case. How could you know?”

 

Niles gave his former partner a long look. He had given the case considerable thought over the years, both because he found it less remarkable than he thought he should, and because it was, in fact, remarkable. “… How could I not?”

 

---

 

Niles opened the glove box, pulling a fresh notebook out of the compartment to tuck into his breast pocket, under the front of his coat. He was still unused to such marvelous things as unmarked cars and civilian clothes. “What the fuck’s his problem?”

 

Claudia Booker, his side-partner and tutor in the lofty ways of Homicide Investigation, shrugged somewhat, getting up out of the car. “Maybe it’s not as fresh as we were hoping.”

 

The responding officer wiped his mouth with a napkin the concerned-looking woman nearby handed him, and emerged more fully from behind the dumpster he’d hid behind to dispose of his breakfast, walking toward the two detectives. “You’re going to have fun with this one, Detective Booker.”

 

“I bet I am,” she handed her badge to the man, who needed to note the number for his report. “Make sure you mention the vomit behind the dumpster in yours. I’ll be filing it in my report as well.”

 

“Yes ma’am.” The officer, a certain Officer Price, looked to Niles. “This must be your greenhorn.”

 

“Be nice to Detective Clayton, officer, he’s good police.” She offered her hand to the civilian woman. “Claudia Booker.”

 

“Chelsea Beckham,” she countered. “I’m the General Manager. Is this going to take long?”

 

Price and Niles exchanged looks, which the junior detective then passed to Booker. His mentor’s temperament was legendary in the KPD, and here he saw an opportunity to cut it off at the pass. “It will take as long as it takes, Ms. Beckham. You would be more comfortable if you wait for us inside the restaurant, I think.”

 

They watched her go, Niles taking the clipboard from the responding officer as Claudia took her badge back. “Who the hell does she think she is?”

 

“I dunno, Claudia, I think if I ran a restaurant with a rep like Lower Haven, I’d probably get a bit antsy when a body turned up in my dumpster, too.” Booker glared at Niles for a long interval, and the younger detective sighed. “… I’m the one taking a look in the dumpster, aren’t I?”

 

“Greenhorn always gets the first look,” Booker said, adopting the tones of the well-known Commissioner of Police – more noteworthy for funding KPD's Press Office than for a reduction in crime. “After all, in this post-’98 world…”

 

Niles tuned her out, handing off the clip-board as he walked toward the dumpster. To be fair, he couldn’t quite remember what she had said, these days. 2002 was a long time ago, and a lot had happened since then.

 

He’d been young, then, just a few years on the job, and only a few weeks at his new Homicide posting after years of patrol service. He’d done well, top of the first class to have come out of the academy since 1998’s troubles, which had made him top of a class with a wealth of competition. Law Enforcement all across the country had gotten deep boosts in funding, and the job had become a popular cause for those too dumb, lazy or poor to become professionals. The first class of '99 had been more choosy – they were considered, on the whole, the last of a dying breed of Old Guard police who wanted to be police for the sake of the general good.

 

For Niles, it ran deeper than that, and therein lay his general problem with the whole affair.

 

The dumpster was open on one side – from the report, it had been opened by the general manager – and the report had also steeled Niles for what he would face as soon as he looked in. Still, the clinical nature of the writing didn’t do much to dampen the shock of the sight. He’d seen death before, but the rictus-grinning, rat-eaten face glaring up at him from the dumpster was something out of a cheesy eighties horror flick, whose true weight was found only in its greasy, half-coagulated and half-rendered realism. He turned immediately – the smell was overpowering as well as the sight, and gave his eyes a moment to stop watering, face scrunched powerfully as though he could close his muscles.

 

He no longer blamed the First Officer for vomiting, and perhaps even felt a bit sorry he ever had. “Green? Is that why Frankenstein is green?”

 

“Not to get pedantic, but-”

 

“Oh, Shelley can bite the fattest part of my ass,” Niles muttered. Booker was a reader through and through (so was Niles), and never missed a chance to get pedantic about it. “I know the book.”

 

Booker moved toward him, frowning slightly, and Niles immediately turned to fling open the opposite cover of the dumpster, and stand up on the lug meant to allow the arms of the disposal truck to lift the damn thing. Thusly-perched, he waited for her to arrive. Her reaction, frankly, was no better than his.

 

“Maybe he crawled in there himself,” she offered, with no faith in her tone. Niles, however, knew she was baiting him, and pulled away the two trash bags that had hidden the rest of his body from view, moving them to the other side of the dumpster.

 

“What,” he countered, “completely in the nude, in May? Not that hot yet.”

 

Sitting at the bar even ten years down the road, Niles was sick just at the thought of the case, which automatically imposed that image, clearer in his mind than any modern camera could have captured. The smell, the noise of dismissed flies. The man’s chest had collapsed impossibly inward, as though he had been emptied out – quite possible, considering the absence of a belly and the things which should have been behind it. He ended rather abruptly at his rib cage, skeletal from there down, save for his feet. His arms were similarly skeletal – the left arm was missing completely.

 

To this day, he was determined that he wouldn’t throw up at the sight. He didn’t then, and he didn’t now. And that just made it weirder – that his only concern, really, was nausea.

 

Booker stepped back, her words indelibly etched in Niles’ memory. “… Some kinda rats hereabouts.”

 

Turning, she looked to the first officer. “Medical Examiner. Priority one, my badge number.”

 

---

 

Cheap coffee was an institution in Kraterburg, and it turned out Lower Haven was no exception. This, Clayton decided, was the silver lining of the case. He liked his coffee the cheapest possible, in terms of quality, burnt too. The cup was something for him to hold onto and keep his hands steady. He wondered how Booker was holding her composure, without her own vice to cling to.

 

Then again, maybe her sin was rage. He could hear the argument in the office at the front of the dining room from here, at the far end of the bar, where one of the cooks had come out of the kitchen, and had agreed to pour the detective a cup, since he was getting one for himself.

 

“Hope you don’t mind, detective. I like it gross.”

 

“Hey, man, I like it burnt.”

 

The cook turned, aiming back for the kitchen, though he paused, in the end, turning back around to face Niles. He was a little man – inch or two shorter than average, and wire-thin besides, with garishly blue hair barely hidden under his cap, and an ear full of steel in the usual Lipan fashion. “Anything we can do to help?”

 

“You could talk to your boss, get her to give us permission for a search,” Niles sipped his coffee coolly, tucking his free hand into a pocket. “Get this all over with today, so I don’t have to go wake up a judge.”

 

The cook offset his jaw slightly, a thoughtful relaxation of his brow crossing his face. “Chel’s giving you trouble? Hold on a minute.”

 

Niles watched as the young man walked down the bar and to the door of the front office, which he opened without so much as a courtesy knock, leaning into the room. He did not maintain that posture long before he came walking back, smirking behind the edge of his mug as he took a sip. “You’re good to go, detective.”

 

He extended his hand. “Locke LeCruset. Chef-Owner.”

 

Niles smirked slightly, shaking firmly. “Niles Clayton.”

 

---

 

“Come on, now, Chef, no need to fuck with us now.”

 

Through no fault of his own, and in fact, somewhat contrary to his own instincts, Niles often fell into his current role of the good cop. It worked well, frankly – he could play the foolish and freshly-minted detective well, being as he was at the very least freshly minted. So, while Claudia was busy cajoling the suddenly reticent Chef-Owner, he was helping himself into a casual and seemingly-disinterested inspection of the basement prep-kitchen.

 

“Ma’am, I’m not trying to fuck with you. What you’re asking would sink my business. Now, solving crimes is your business, but me, I’ve got to make bank.” The chef set his hand against the free-standing vacuum-packing machine he was standing beside. It was used, going by the analog dials, but very well maintained. A credit to his staff, at the very least. “If this had happened two days ago I’d have no problem with it. Or two days from now. But tomorrow’s my protein order day and I’m going to need this equipment.”

 

“What’s a day or two here or there?” Claudia demanded, folding her arms.

 

Niles crouched down for a better look at the floor near a meat grinder, while the chef launched into a spiel he sounded like he’d given folks before, about the failure rate of new restaurants and what the acceptable bottom line in the early years looked like. There was red in the grout between tiles, though Niles seriously doubted even a test would show that it was human blood. It wasn’t as though other forms of blood ever flowed in this room, besides human.

 

Still, it almost seemed the point of cause for search. Or at least a good time for a quip. “Blood on the grout here.”

 

Claudia frowned at the Chef, who seemed entirely unconvinced. “My protein order comes tomorrow morning at six. All of the red meat and poultry that I'm going to need this side of Tuesday. Unless you can guarantee I’ll have my equipment back and working tomorrow, I can’t let you take it without a warrant, because I won’t have anything to feed my customers.”

 

“So I take greenhorn here, ride all the way back downtown, find a judge, get the warrant, come back, and now we’ve wasted… what, five, six hours before we can even start the tests? You still aren’t going to have your machines.”

 

Locke shrugged his shoulders. “If we were only playing with my money, I’d send the equipment right now. As it stands I have investors to consider. I’m one of maybe three restaurants in the country without a processed meats supplier. I found a few people who are willing to take that gamble with me. At least with a warrant my investors know our hands were tied.”

 

“Alright, we hear you. Sure hope we can find a judge soon, though, it being a Sunday and all.”

 

As they were leaving, Niles saw Locke pull his phone from his pocket, muttering in their wake. “Scamwell’s probably good for a murder, politician that he is and all.”

 

Niles pouted appreciatively as he lowered himself back into the car, watching the bagged body vanish into the back of an OME van. “… Kid’s not entirely wrong.”

 

“Yeah, except we don’t have cause for a warrant yet,” Claudia muttered, as she put the car into drive. “Come on, kid. We’ve got work to do.”

 

---

 

In a city of the size of Kraterburg, there were plenty of deaths to keep the city Office of the Medical Examiner busy through bankers’ hours pretty much all the year around. To Niles, it was the one and only familiar thing in his offsite routines as a Homicide investigator – like many on the murder track, Niles had spent much of his patrol career on transportation duty, moving bodies here from wherever they had attracted attention.

 

He had expected it to be easier; to see today’s body here, in the clean and clinical environment. But as he was, perched up on the stainless steel table with a washing-down sink at his feet, something about the bland reddish-brown floor tiles, the abundance of stainless steel, and the obsession with cleanliness tied together in the junior detective’s mind with the gleaming kitchens at Lower Haven and created a deeply disturbing connotation. The Chief Medical Examiner, going over the body in fine detail on the other side of the table, would likely not have appreciated any remark Niles had in mind.

 

For once, Kiwi was without his customary wit. Booker seemed to notice that herself, glancing at him from time to time as she paced around the table, looking for her own clues. “… Nothing was found on the body?”

 

“Your boys brought him in completely nude, detective.” The medical examiner looked up, briefly, glaring at Booker with her emerald green eyes. “Are you usually in the habit of hiding your wallet in your rectum?”

 

Niles couldn’t help a slight chuckle, picking up the doctor’s preliminary notes. The tension broke, and (not for the first time), he felt as though he was watching a movie of his own life unfolding before him. So far as he was concerned, Esmerlda West was the best ME they’d had in a while. She was thorough, and completely comfortable elbow-deep in the dead. When she’d had the years for her pension he wouldn’t be surprised to see her teaching anatomy or working as a mortician. “No identifying marks?”

 

“Skeletal tissue aside I only have half a body here. Even if he did have some tattoos or something, that’s a fifty-fifty shot their gone.” Dr. West straightened. “Besides, Johnny Doe here might not have been old enough to have them. I want to study it more conclusively, but between what’s left of his face and his overall skeletal structure I’m prepared to say mid-to-late teens. Early twenties at the absolute latest.”

 

Niles looked at the young man’s face, unable to see it. Male, itself, was a stretch when they had picked him up, but perhaps,having been cleaned up, it was possible that a good photo could be taken and run through the various local, precinct, and national databases. It wasn’t more than a few months ago that a court order had forced Agency Division to share their fancy facial-recognition database with rank and file officers such as himself.

 

“Should run that face through ASICS, see what we get.”

 

“I already sent a photo off to your division,” Dr. West countered. “But that’s not what’s interesting. Stop being shy of him and come here.”

 

Niles and Booker leaned in, significantly more reluctantly than the jaded Medical Examiner, in order to examine a blemish on the man’s left femur, near the knee. “This is a very interesting mark. It’s a tool mark. Not pest damage.”

 

Booker glanced up to the woman as soon as she was able. “What killed him, maybe? Cut that artery in the leg and you bleed out pretty quick.”

 

“No. It’s postmortem. Happened AFTER he died.” The examiner straightened too, gesturing to the man’s neck. “That’s what probably killed him. I have the cause of death as oxygen starvation of the brain, to wit, exsanguination through a wound to the neck. Bruising around the ankles – what’s left of them – is either from or after the time of death and suggests he was being hung upside down from his ankles as he died.”

 

There was a fire in those eyes Niles could not have expected in the typically detached examiner. “This is the most brutal homicide I’ve seen in my entire career. Somebody knew what they were doing. Put that somebody away, would you?”

 

Niles glanced to Booker, smiling through her obvious distress. None of this could any longer be real. It was all too cliché. He was almost able to see the special effects crew working at the edge of his peripheral to make it all work. “Sounds like PC to me.”

 

“You’re fucked in the head, kiwi.”

 

“Yeah, but that’s why I’m good at this job.”

 

---

 

“She actually said that?”

 

Niles shrugged dismissively. He hadn't objected at the time – you were expected to take a fair amount of shit from your superiors until you had enough shit of your own to throw around. That a superior would say such a thing to him at the time was normal. And all things considered, where she wasn't far off the mark, she wasn't about to drag anyone's name through the mud over it again.

 

“She wasn't, entirely, wrong.”

 

After all, if psych screenings were as rigorous on admission then as they were now, Niles knew he never would have made the force in the first place.

 

---

 

Locke was unhappy, and that much was clear, but he was either genuinely possessed of the “chill” attitude his eclectic sense of style suggested, or else had taken the polish of his trade well. Niles couldn't have blamed the man, watching like a hawk while his equipment was dismantled and tested, wincing here and there when he saw some procedure, some method of handling, that he didn't like.

 

“Whatever you don't take with you is going to have to be taken apart and cleaned properly,” he griped, finally, when Niles handed him a cup of black tar coffee.

 

“I'd have thought you'd be more worried about the damage to your good name when we find out our victim was killed here,” Booker countered.

 

“Names can be changed,” Locke countered, ambivalently. His connections isolated him of easy suspicion, and what was more, he genuinely had no horse in this race. “What happens now? Presumably you find some human blood somewhere on some of my equipment, maybe even do a quick field test to match the blood type to murder victim. Then you clean me out and warehouse my equipment for years.”

 

“Warehouse you, too.”

 

“Categorically impossible,” Locke said, flatly. “Ignoring, for the moment, the detestable business of politics, I have an alibi for last night.” He proffered a compact disk in a cheap-looking jewel case, holding it out to Niles. “The last week of footage from the camera that covers the back alley, dumpster, and stairwell. Because you're the good cop, right?”

 

Niles smiled softly, and watched the chef stalk away. He wasn't under arrest – frankly, the junior detective of the pair had already written him off as a bystander of circumstance. Booker, though, was willing to press. “Alibi, huh?”

 

“I was at the Centennial Gala with my mother and a few dozen other people,” Locke sipped his coffee. “Afterward I retired home with my partner.”

 

The chef drifted away, gesturing his thanks to Niles with the coffee cup, half-mumbling something about having workers to supervise upstairs.

 

“What did he mean by politics, I wonder?”

 

Niles glanced up to Booker, giving her a thoughtful look. “He's Justice Scamwell's godson. Probably thinks having a judge with a famous name in the family gives him some kind of immunity to prosecution. Moreover, he's a Le Cruset. As in Frau Deborah LeCruset's son.”

 

Booker folded her arms, no doubt about to pontificate, in her irritatingly correct way, on her low view of nepotism and the long record of the same among both those families, when Niles cleared his throat, offering the slightest of gesture down the hall, toward the stairwell at the front of the building. Locke had stopped, and was conversing in a suitably low tone with a member of his staff. Booker gave Niles a deep and abiding frown, but was suitably distracted by the arrival of a tech at her shoulder.

 

The weedy young man gave a nod, and Booker sighed. Niles, needing not concern himself with the tedium of a plan for seizing equipment, turned to follow Locke down the hall. “Hold up, Chef. Going to need some more information from you.”

 

---

 

“Answer me this most basic of questions,” Booker said, while the pair rode an elevator to the seventh floor of KPD's headquarters at the Pickman Building. She had taken on her authoritarian tone – a tone almost always reserved for those in need of a good shove during questioning. As a rule, police did no turn their tools of interrogation against one another. Her candor in this regard as irritating to veteran police and hell on rookies.

 

Niles, in that land in between, simply remained derealized, as those who would come later put it. He was still processing the events of this morning, which seemed a life time ago. The only way to focus on the work of the moment was to detach himself completely from it having happened and focus on the case as an academic problem only. It was a reaction he was so used to that it was borderline automatic. He still knew it really happened, but he knew it the same way that one knows the acceleration due to gravity was independent of the masses involved; academically. In such a state, he wasn't about to get offended, or intimidated, by his partner similarly coping.

 

“Go on, then.”

 

“Why are we interviewing a witness to a crime in an interrogation room?”

 

“This particular suspect,” Niles subtly emphasized, “was disinclined to answer any questions, even with his boss's urging, until he was discovered to be in possession of a small amount of THC resin. Or so says Officer Campbell's report.”

 

Booker glanced at him thoughtfully, “Lucky break.”

 

This, Niles did resent, practically bristling at the suggestion. “I'm not in the habit of manufacturing luck. If we didn't talk to him today, I suspect we would have probable cause for an arrest once we've had a chance to look at that video tape.”

 

The two had reached the interview room now, and Niles walked past it, into a small observation room with camera feeds of the various interview rooms on this floor. Booker stepped in by herself, and Niles watched with some admiration as she immediately took complete possession of the space. The Booker family were as close to royalty as either Zaxtonians or Police could come – veritable Pinkertons. It showed, from the way she carried herself right down to the natural touch she applied to all of her work.

 

“I hear you didn't much feel like talking to Officer Campbell when he came looking for you today.”

 

The suspect didn't say much anything. Niles took a good hard look at him – comparing his current, clean-cut look to the much more bedraggled file mugshot from his last booking photo. Locke must not have run a criminal record check before giving his prep cook keys to the kingdom, though to be fair, he'd cleaned himself up very well. Three years ago, the man had done six months for the misdemeanor crime of attempt to purchase human remains without just cause. A year before that, felony assault, paroled early for good behaviour.

 

Felony Assault charges with addenda, taking place in 1998? It set Niles' skin crawling before he had time to look any deeper.

 

“You don't look like my lawyer.”

 

Niles glanced at the screen. The guy knew what he was doing, surely. Standing procedure was to drop an interrogation until a lawyer arrived, once it was asked for. Claudia, however, would be balls deep into her bad cop routine, by this part of the day. Method acting, she was unlikely to care about such niceties as the Articles of Unification and their associated Addenda on the Rights of Persons.

 

Niles sighed, wished getting drunk on the job wasn't a prosecutable offense in his line of work, and rose to go stop her. If the pricking of the back of his neck was accurate, they were going to want this one to stick. There could be no small legal technicality, divorced from Justice, which some crafty Ramheart and Company defense lawyer could unravel the case.

 

---

 

If there was one thing on which detectives of all levels of seniority, in all departments, could be convinced to agree upon, other than the twin truths of Overtime Solves Cases and Beer Solves All, it was that the worst way to spend any period of time in the Pickman Building was to find oneself in possession of an analysis session n the Video Records Room.

 

DVDs were relatively new technology, mind you. It had taken a while to even find the right piece of equipment to play Lower Haven's security footage back, and longer still to get the hang of its various functions well enough to get close to the right record. The disk wound up being full of individual, motion-detection-trigered recordings, and while the time was displayed in the file name, it wasn't visible in the frame, and had to be deduced.

 

Eventually, Niles got the hang of even this, and was going through the many dozens of records from the night of his murder, chiefly finding little more than feral cats and stray dogs. It had turned a long day into an increasingly late evening. Coffee's charm was wearing thin, and the importance of the work precluded breaking to smoke, leading to those earliest stages of nicotine withdrawal in which the irritability was still a fresh scar.

 

He was at the point of remembering that even overtime had limits and that murders not yet covered by the press could be solved without rushing when he opened a file that showed anything even remotely interesting.

 

The video clip was dated for about three in the previous morning – well after even the bar staff had left – and showed one of the millions of unmarked and nondescript old vans that crisscrossed the city carrying questionably-professional tradespeople, current and former drug dealers, and anyone who could afford the minimal blue book value at the lot and really needed a set of wheels. This was before the congestion legislation of the early twenty-teens, and such cars were one in a milion.

 

The van parked under the seemingly always-on lighting the restaurant had erected in this back alley, and Niles reflexively made note of the tag number, to run later, if this proved to be something that was actually of interest, and not merely an interesting break in the pattern.

 

The driver got out. The quality of the video was rather poor, in this respect. It had rained, and evidentially some rain was on the lens, for the man's face moved in and out of focus to quickly for too solid of an ID. That was the problem, thought Niles, with all this fancy digital CCTV. Give him a proper analogue system with fresh tapes any day.

 

The driver extracted something from the back of the van – something heavy enough to carry slung over a shoulder. He vanished, and after a few seconds, the record ended.

 

Niles wrote down the file number in his notepad next to the tag number, and then the number of the next file, which he opened. It had started with the appearance of the driver from before in the corner of the frame, carrying a trash bag in one hand and another, seemingly, slung over his shoulder. These he disposed of in the dumpster, before vanishing from frame long enough to collect two more bags, which he delivered to the van, before vanishing once more, returning, and starting the engine. A few seconds of empty alleyway followed, before the file ended.

 

Niles slid a cigarillo out of its sleeve, jotted down this file number, and decided to call Booker from the balcony while he smoked. It was only one in the morning – surely, still early enough to wake up a judge.

 

---

 

The rain irritated Niles. If this was really happening, then art imitated life and tropes held true, which he hated to acknowledge. If this was merely a dream, which was closer to how he felt, then it was a cheap attempt at pathetic fallacy, which was equally detestable. The rain had stopped, but it still dappled the windows and played tricks with the mostly-blue light that drifted though the partly-exposed glass and played shadow-games over the scene.

 

“Was that the longest episode you ever had?”

 

“The longest one I'd had up into that point, anyway. You have to understand, this sort of thing happens to everyone. It's only when it lasts as long as it does for me that people start to look at you funny.”

 

“Is this real?”

 

Niles glanced over his shoulder to his interrogator, and back out to the skyline visible through that thin crack. At least, he thought, it's raining. Maybe the fallout from the Eruption would be milder than the pundits thought. “I'm not even sure if I'm real, anymore.”

 

---

 

The warrant had come more easily than either detective had expected. Scamwell had been easy to get a hold of, even so early in the morning. He tried to play it off as nerves – a new judge with only a year on the bench, and in his turn on the rotation of “on call” judges ready to issue warrants on a moment's notice.

 

Niles, though, couldn't help but find it suspicious. Scamwell had known that they were looking at Locke's business, because he was the one who signed the original search warrant. Niles knew there was at least some small conflict of interest, because of the close relationship between not just the Scamwell and Le Cruset families, but between these two individuals, and the involvement of Locke in the case, even idirectly.

 

Still, the video fairly clearly showed an alternate suspect under strange circumstances, and between the evidence that the victim had been at least mutilated in the restaurant, if not actually killed there, and the appearance of the suspect on the video record, that was enough to kick in a door, execute a search and maybe arrest a person or two.

 

He rested in the back of one of Tactical’s delivery vans, left palm full of etched pieces of tumbled and polished cow shoulderblade. In the cultural mythos of the Terrik people, these were useful pieces of soothsaying kit. For him, they were a gift of convenience. He had no knowledge of their use – they had been given to him half in jest by a friend from Patrol and he had fallen into their use as a worry-tick to use when a cigarette was out of line. Used to be dice, once. He’d done it with almonds before.

 

The objects didn’t matter. Already, he was starting to feel divorced from the situation. He was watching a newsreel history of a part of his life he hadn’t yet experienced, filmed through his own eyes, but, already, things were about to get weird.

 

“Okay,” he said, responding to a voice in his ear, before turning his head laconically to the sergeant of this particular Tactical team. “Take me a door.”

 

---

 

Niles, even at this early stage in his development as an agent of justice, would have had to give Kraterburg Police Department credit where it was due – no other police in the country took doors quite like they did. His ears were still ringing from the concussive blast of what were, by his count, three separate flash-bangs that were now a few dozen shards of plastic scattered around the ground floor of the building. He stood in the kitchen, at the rear of the house, having personally cleared the livingroom, breakfast nook, and now this very room on his way through.

 

The fuzziness of having stepped outside the bounds of what was real began to withdraw as the adrenaline of the moment became little more than a lingering, metallic bitterness at the back of the palate. He lowered his arms, then, after a breath, holstered his weapon. Shouts of “clear”, in various different voices, echoed through the house.

 

It took less than two full minutes to determine that the person they were looking for was not in the building.

 

He licked his lips in frustration, and brought his hand-held radio to his jawbone. “Claudia, we have separate search and detention warrants, right?”

 

“Right.”

 

Niles nodded, to himself, and dragged open the freezer door of the refrigerator. Its overflowing contents spilled immediately to the floor of sandy tiles.

 

---

 

Niles found Booker in the basement of this suburban house, standing in her arms-folded way, staring at a plain expanse of drywall as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. He approached her from behind, tucking his service arm into the holster strapped to his hip, and fishing out a cigarillo to offer her.

 

She took it without looking away from the plaster. Niles’ mouth narrowed thoughtfully, offering her a disinterested light as she glanced around the half-furnished basement. It was like an extra living-room, but only half completed, and as far as he was concerned…

 

“I’d have thought this wall went further back than this.”

 

The problem that was irritating Booker seemed to come into focus, crystallizing at the mere jolt of an idea. “Windows in all three walls but this one, at ground level.”

 

“Patrolman in back said they covered the back doors. Plural.”

 

The two turned and scrambled to make their way to the back yard.

 

---

 

Deciding Niles was to be the first down the stairs was an easy decision to make. Normally, you never sent your rookie in first when you were half-expecting hostility on the other side, but unlike Booker, Niles actually had Tactical certification, even if he had never served on the city’s team – he’d acquired the qual in the last round of testing before he made detective, as part of what he told her was a “backup plan” to transfer to an opening in the NPF if he failed to make the cut this time around.

 

She took the handle of the unlocked storm-cellar door, lifting it just slightly to confirm it wasn’t bolted from the inside. Niles was relieved to see it wasn’t. The suspect being too cheap or thoughtless for a five-dollar bolt had just made his day a hell of a lot easier.

 

He nodded, and she swung it open fully, the pair of them bellowing their presence as police down into the rear half of the basement even as he vaulted to the steps themselves and began to descend, handgun drawn.

 

The basement was dimly illuminated in weak orange light – candlelight, Niles guessed, before he’d even entered it fully. That was the first sign something was going wrong – and already, that divorce between practical and academic reality reared its ugly head.

 

Time crawled, with Niles entering 'the zone' as he descended the steps physically. The divorce from realness let him notice more of what was happening around him, without really being jarred. The dark, ruddy-brown markings on the walls, crude and arcane and terribly familiar since the '98 Attacks. A heap of candles in the far corner of the room, arranged around god knows what. The crouching figure near the candles, turning abruptly toward him. There were fifteen, maybe twenty feet between the pair. Niles planted his feet calmly. At the sight of the knife, he raised his weapon calmly.

 

“Better believe they train us police better than that,” he heard himself say.

 

Franklin Markus – the man he had questioned yesterday – now looked more like his file photo. His hair was messy, eyes wide and wild, eyebrows unknit in a substance- or religion-fueled fervor. He saw the gun – Niles could actually see the man lower his eyes and then look back up to his face, having registered the weapon.

 

The bastard saw the gun, knew the danger, and began to move forward anyway. From outside the scene, Niles dimly registered that he had a death wish – knew that the slightest wrong move would have Niles shoot him, and knew that in defense of his own life, a police officer shot to kill. He was, perhaps, even banking on that.

 

The detective pulling Niles’ strings wasn’t about to let this particular twisted bastard have the satisfaction. His hands dropped a fraction. The canon of a firearm in his hand roared, the concussion in the small space practically tearing the colour from the scene. Crimson alone remained, on the walls, in the candles, and it blossomed in brilliant violence from the assailant’s left leg, just above the knee. Markus buckled as though the limb was severed, collapsing to the floor.

 

Reality came rushing back in as Booker lay her hand on Niles’ shoulder. She was pale, looking all around the room, and nervously at the suspect, who lay, roaring in pain, on the ground. Niles holstered his weapon, stepping forward to kick the knife further away from Markus, before he crouched down beside him.

 

“You motherfucker,” the man spat through gritted teeth, “you were supposed to shoot me.”

 

“I did shoot you,” Niles said, darkly and angrily. “You’re going to have to live with that forever. Every night, when the cold walls of the prison are closing in on you, and all you can feel is the stiffness of your knee, you remember that.”

 

Tilting his head, he depressed the thumb-switch on the radio handset strapped to his shoulder. “Ambulance at 539 South Acrewood. Suspect down.”

 

Booker was still staring at the walls when he rejoined her. “… You're going to get charged for this.”
“Charged and disciplined aren't the same thing,” Niles heard himself say. It was going to be a long time before he felt like anything other than a spectator in his own life.

 

---

 

It was preposterous to cling to any sort of mistrust of restaurants, but Niles always had an extra-long squint at his sandwich when he stopped for lunch at the café across from the Pickman Building, had ever since that case last year. People eating people… shouldn’t happen. Left a bad taste in his mouth.

 

Wasn’t about to go all vegetarian just because he bumped into the one crazy person in all of Kraterburg, though.

 

“Detective Sergeant Clayton?”

 

Niles looked up from his newspaper at the young woman who was standing beside his table. “You must be Ms. Dowd. Have a seat.”

 

“Thanks. I wanted to meet with you in person to go over the terms of your transfer to the National Police.” Dowd was professional, clean cut. Looked like she'd jumped out of stock photos for sale to those HR people in the fancy offices in the Outer Valley district. She was, frankly, the last thing Niles had expected from the NPF. Almost too professional – more lawyer than cop.

 

National Police Force tour sounded good anyway, around now. It would be a chance to get posted to some quiet little 'dorf' in the middle of the Terrwald and get some good, back-to-basics casework done.

 

“Have you ever heard of the Sharona Family before, Mr. Clayton?”

 

Clayton’s mood fell straight through the bricked in patio and he frowned, taking a deep sip of stale coffee. “Yeah.” He certainly had.