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Local cops find a crime scene that defies explanation |
| “John, I think we got a problem here.” John Verdel sat up quickly in bed, looking around the room apprehensively, disoriented. He had been in the blackest of sleeps, insular and dreamless, when the voice of his partner rang in his head with startling suddenness, echoing from some ethereal concrete tunnel. His heart was beating a little too fast, his muscles a little too tense. Fight or flight, he thought absently, still surveying the room. Fight or flight. He scanned the room out of long habit: far wall, by the bedroom door—nothing; the east corner of the room, by the closet—nothing. He scanned the other side of the room, near the window—nothing but the black felt sky in the footlights of a crisp summer three-quarter moon. The room was empty, noth— In the light cast by the lunar profile, John glimpsed, from the corner of his eye, something—some shape his mind didn’t want to admit—edge further into the shadows. Before he could ask the tired old question—”Who’s there?!”—a voice gurgled from the direction of the window. “John, I think we got a problem here.” The voice was guttural and slurry, but sickeningly recognizable as the voice of his partner, seeming to warn John from the bottom of a grave, warn him of— ---------- “Uh! Shit! Shit!!” John sat straight up in bed. Again. His breathing was sharp and rapid, his heart pounding like a marathon runner’s. He was covered in a thin film of cold sweat. He didn’t scan the room this time; instead, with a massive effort of willpower and courage, he looked directly at the window, and the wall and curtains surrounding it. Nothing but black and stars. The moon must have set already, he thought. He looked at the bedside clock. 5:29...5:30. The clock radio clicked on for John’s morning alarm—but in lieu of the usual inane morning show, a tinny, distant, very familiar voice said: “John—” ---------- “Augh! FUCK!!” John sat straight up in bed. Again. Sweat was pouring from his body, running down his face, pooled in his navel. He felt like he was raging with some exotic, hallucinogenic fever. He jumped from the bed and whirled, staring at it in the crisp summer moonlight like he expected to find it full of snakes and shrunken voodoo heads. He frantically reached across his body with his left hand and pinched the inside of his upper left arm. Hard. “Ow. Shit!” he hissed. John Verdel, veteran Deputy Sheriff of Davidson County, North Carolina, six feet seven inches of lean black muscle, shook in the dark like a plucked guitar string, nude, so scared and disoriented that tears ran unnoticed down his face. His partner, Dean Harris, had been missing-in-action for three years. @-----@-----@ The 17-year-old “auto-emancipee`” from Melbourne, FL, was destined for the life of an artiste. He struck out on his own in his step-father’s Buick to navigate the backstreets of America in search of the niche that he was convinced had been reserved for him. But Brad Reynolds never made a name for himself in the art world. The sad fact is that the only time his name was ever in bold type was was at the top of a routine missing-persons report broadcast to all law enforcement agencies in the southeast states. Antonio Gomez was the one who reported his stepson missing. No, he didn’t want to press charges for theft of the car. No, he didn’t care that Brad had rather permanently and clandestinely borrowed his credit card. He just wanted to know that his son was safe, that he would be coming home soon. To his stepfather, Brad was the top priority; along the southeast seaboard, he was just another statistic. For a while. @-----@-----@ At the morning briefing, between dick jokes and your-mother rebuttals, the only item of interest Captain Brand had mentioned was that an older-model Buick fitting the description of a Florida run-away’s car had been reported out along Nat Conrad Lane, near East Holly Grove Road, on Tuesday. He mentioned it in passing, like he wasn’t very interested. He probably wasn’t, John thought, sipping coffee number three of a boring-sounding July Thursday. These tips never pan out, anyway. Summer day-patrol usually turned into a game of “Speed Trap Nap Time.” All the kids were down at Myrtle Beach or Dunes Village, and everyone left behind was too hot to stir up any trouble. Business traffic picked up on Old US 52 around lunch time, but by early afternoon, the place was about as exciting as milk. Warm milk. John Verdel was looking forward to an early lunch and a little break, maybe out in the median of I-85. He’d been sleeping poorly for nights, now, plagued by bad dreams that were always just out of reach of his memory in the morning. At first it was a little funny, in an ironic way, but quickly became annoying. Lately, it was actually becoming something of a (we got a) problem. He shifted in the seat uncomfortably, his train of thought vaguely disturbed. Sleep deprivation does this, John thought. They taught you that in the academy. Makes you think you see the boogeyman and shit. John decided thinking was bad idea; a doze in the sun with the AC on, however, was feeling like a better and better idea. He never would have even considered something like napping on the job back in ‘96, when he started. And not just because he was a rookie: Spider Cop would have found out and had his ass. Spider Cop—Sheriff Hege—always seemed to find stuff out. Hege was like a slacker bloodhound... John was actually starting to doze in the passenger seat as he reminisced about his first few years on the force. The patrol car was warm and purring like a kitten, and John was comfortable, and back when Hege was in charge— “John, if you can schedule it between naps...” “What...?” John fuzzed back to the present and looked sleepily at his partner. Dean smirked a little at him. “Sorry to interrupt whatever little chocolate bunny you were dreamin’ about over there.” He returned his attention to the road. “Long night?” John shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “Naw...yeah. I don’t know, man, I keep havin’ this dream, bad dream… but when I wake up, I (got a problem)— You know? It’s gone.” Dean had been partners with John for four and a half years, the blond-haired, freckle-faced half of a cliche Southern Oreo police partnership. They knew each other better than any of the women in their lives—Dean’s wife Pamela or the many “little chocolate bunnies” with whom John still had the luxury to consort. Dean chuckled at his partner. “Must be dreamin’ about your mom.” John’s look more than adequately conveyed his disapproval. Dean chuckled harder. “So, hey,” started Dean after a few minutes’ silence (during which John has actually begun to drift again). Verdel turned a well-known scowl on his partner. “What, man? You gonna ask a question this time?” Dean took his friend’s irritability in stride. They had been working cheek-by-jowl so long now, Dean knew when to take John’s temper seriously and when he could have a little fun with it. For now, he forsook the opportunity to needle John, though, and spit out what was on his mind. “I’ve seen that car, John.” John stared at Dean with utter vacancy. Then he looked around, then back at Dean. “Dean… What car, man?” “The Florida car, the one the Cap’n was talking about this morning. I seen it over at the Food Lion by Big Lots a week and a half back.” Dean’s tone had changed. He was all business now, the jokes left behind at the last mile marker. He sounded interested. And a little nervous. John recognized this aspect of his partner. Dean Harris was a good cop, and would make a very good detective within a year or two, probably. He could piece together a case when half the suspects hadn’t even been identified yet. And that process usually started with a weird conversation like this. In short: Dean had a hunch. As the wheels in Dean’s head turned, John was cogitating basically just one fact—an early lunch was out of the question. Hell, if Dean’s hunch got a bite, lunch at all might be out of the question. John rubbed his dry, sleep-scratchy eyes as Dean left the interstate from Thomasville and headed into the tangle of dead-ends and farm roads at the northern reach of Hedrick Grove.. He wanted to know why Dean had decided to follow up on this crappy two-day-old lead, but he held his tongue. All in due time, John thought distractedly. He was absently registering surroundings as he chased a crinkle in something Dean had said. Due time… Over at the Food Lion... A week ago… Due time... Over— TIME! John sat very straight in the seat, and looked hard at his partner. “Dean. We didn’t get—” “—The BOLO until four days ago, I know,” Dean finished. “Two days after the kid ran off. Three days after I seen his car.” Dean didn’t look at him, but John felt his partner’s intensity anyway. Cops don’t like mysteries; cops like patterns. Cops don’t like complicated; cops like timelines that flow nice and straight and easy. Cops don’t like seeing cars in North Carolina before they ever leave Florida. A random chill traced John’s spine. He nervously broke the silence: “Look, Dean, maybe you saw it wrong, y’know? It...it ain’t like we gotta (we got a)... I mean, if...if we…” John was scared. He didn’t know why; but he knew that when people got scared they started babble, just like he was now. That scared him even more. More or less, John had a hunch of his own: something was (a problem) wrong. “...And that there ain’t Old Lamp Road.” Dean saved his partner from rambling on uselessly by pointing out an old-looking asphalt turn-off on the right. "We're still a mile or two from there." John looked at the turn-off, shocked and scared for the third or fourth time in about two minutes. He stared at the tire tracks—one set, one-way—that led onto this turn-off-to-WTF. “Uh-huh…” It was all he could muster for a reaction. His partner didn’t reply; in fact, Dean didn’t even look particularly surprised as he turned the wheel and proceeded slowly down the unnamed, unmapped road. @-----@-----@ “John, I think (we got a problem here) you should come here and take a look at this with me.” Deputy Verdel jumped like he’d been bitten, hearing the echo of a dream overlay the words of his partner in his head. He wrinkled his face at the radio with a particularly John-Verdel-is-Annoyed look and unfolded himself from the front seat of the patrol car. He didn't bother putting his cap on. Out here at the dirty end of a dead end road that wasn’t supposed to be there, nobody was gonna care anyhow. He joined his partner at the end of the road. They both stood silently, staring helplessly at the inexplicable object in front of them, baffled and speechless. “Plate matches,” Dean finally said. John nodded his head, but found nothing to say, not even a grunt this time. He was tired, surprised, hungry, and just damn confused. Sitting in front of the two police officers was the rear third of a 1988 Buick Regal, painted an ugly old burnt orange with a tasteless brown pinstripe, Florida license plate YHL-0090. The edge where the front two thirds of the car should have joined it was severed with a precision that defied belief: no grind marks, no snags in the upholstery or cushions, no torch-burns or knurls or jagged burs. The edges were as clean and bare and smooth as if the assembly line had built and buffed them that way. Nor were there any signs of disturbance on the ground where the chassis had rocked forward on its rear axle and was touching the slowly merging asphalt and dirt. No drag marks or metal gouges; not even the leaves around this strange partial artifact were disturbed. As he sidled around the right side of the anomaly, Deputy Verdel’s foot nudged something that crinkled. He squinted his eyes toward an unnatural whiteness among the brown straw and tangled green foot vines. He squatted down on his hams and peered into the brush near the still-inflated right tire. From the bottom of a pile of leaves and sticks protruded the corner of what appeared to be a composition book—black spine, black-speckled white foreground. John nodded toward it. “Whassat?” “A fuckin’ notebook’d be my guess,” his partner offered, sounding uncharacteristically impatient, night and day from his methodical, introspective self of ten minutes ago. He was rewarded with the same scowl John had offered the radio a moment ago. “See, this is why I say you shoulda been made detective years ago. Your astute observational skills.” “Yeah? And?” Short and mean, like he was talking to a misbehaving child or dull-normal recruit fresh out of the academy. “And?! And what, dammit?” John stood up quickly, suddenly infuriated with his partner. He noticed for the first time how damn hot and humid the day had become, this morning’s light breeze stifled completely. He didn’t want to play verbal grab-ass out here. He wanted to tell the real detectives they found the kid’s car—his plate at least—and get the hell out of here. He was hungry, he was hot, and he was mad, and he was fuckin’ tired. And god damn it, it was Dean’s fault for turning down this stupid un-road instead of radioing in! Dean slowly straightened his posture, staring into the brush out past the end of the broken macadam, and took a deep breath. He turned to face John—again, agonizingly slowly, like he was stalking his partner without moving. His eyes narrowed slowly at the outside corners. His face was set, but not in the theatrical I’m-a-mean-cop way he used with the bozos and winos in town. This was a dangerous look. John had seen it before, but not on his partner; the only other time he had seen this face was when Jack Barton realized he had nothing left to lose and slowly, calmly aimed his .38 Special at John Verdel and put a bullet three inches above the deputy’s heart. Danger be damned today, though,and prudence with it—John was ready for a fight. If Dean didn’t want to act like a cop, fine: John would treat him just like the hoods that thought they were tough back in town. He took a couple steps back, loosening his shoulders and neck. But when he started to settle into a good, balanced fighting stance—he realized he wasn’t angry anymore. He and Dean had been partners long enough now that all the rough edges had been worn into comfortable routine a long time ago. John wondered, then, why he was—or had been—so thoroughly angry with Dean. But the time for answers would have to wait; Dean was quite clearly still looking for some blood to spill. John switched roles smoothly, like cops have to do: one second ready to fight to the death, the next as cool as a counselor. This was defusing time, like talking someone off a building. “I’m sorry, Dean,” he said calmly, keeping eye contact with his partner. “I didn’t mean to disrespect you, man.” Dean considered this in seething silence, then slowly turned back to the strangeness at hand, staring at it blankly. Then it was John’s turn to play a hunch. “Hey, Dean,” he called as naturally as he could. “Hey, I think I got a idea. C’n you help me back at the car a minute?” He turned and walked as calmly as he could back to the cruiser. Dean appeared on the driver’s side almost a full minute later—quite a long time to travel a distance of forty feet or so. He looked across the roof at his partner. “What’s up, John? You got a theory?” He sounded normal. Confused and a little nervous, but ready to think something through rationally. John looked closely at Dean. “You still mad, man?” Dean looked away, embarrassed. “Naw. Look, I dunno…” John cut him short. “Me either. I was pissed at you, though, for a minute. Hundred percent, and for nothin’, man. Then I stepped back—away from that thing—and I was fine.” He paused. “And I would swear you was ready to shoot me a minute ago—” Dean dropped his eyes, and visibly paled. “—But now we’re cool.” Both men were quiet for some time. Then John spoke again: “There is something a country mile beyond hinky about that fuckin car. Part.” When he tagged the last word on the end, like that, both men chuckled a little. Dean looked back up at Verdel. “You think we should call in the Marines?” he asked. John looked sharply across the roof of the cruiser at his partner. “No, brother. I do NOT.” Dean looked puzzled, then nodded his head in understanding. “Yeah, I guess a whole truckload of SWAT douchebags suddenly berserk with anger would make things a little worse.” “A little, yeah.” @-----@-----@ “You tell me if you’re thinkin’ about nightstickin’ my black black ass, right?” Dean’s lips twitched in a ghost of a grin as he nodded. The two men were slowly walking back toward the tail end of the Buick, and both were feeling the heat of the day. The collars and chests of their blue fatigue uniforms (another legacy from Hege—no button-down shirt and pants for the working folk of the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department!) and the brims of their blue baseball-style hats had grown sweat-trees. They had both left their sidearms in the cruiser: better safe than shot by your crazy partner. John stooped and gingerly picked up the notebook the men had found earlier, holding it by the corner. It felt...bad. Nasty. He wanted to recoil from it the way he recoiled from the smell of rotten meat, or the unexpected sight of maggots under a bag of trash. He flung it on the trunk where the cover flopped open. “Hey, easy!” Dean barked at him. John felt a deep red spike of anger rise in his chest and clenched his teeth. But he was ready for it; he breathed deep and stepped back two steps. He blew out his breath and closed his eyes. It was affecting them quick, this time... “Dean, maybe one of should always stay a couple—” Dean interrupted him: “John.” Dean’s voice was an octave higher than usual, and very quiet. He didn’t look angry anymore; he didn’t even look nervous. He was staring at the open notebook—and Dean looked scared. “John, I think we got a problem here.” @-----@-----@ The notebook was written in a smooth, constant hand, so even it could have been a printed computer font. The ink was the color of old rust, irregular and rough-looking; but there were no impressions in the pages where a pen or pencil would have been, no slightly-raised ridges of printer ink. John was nonplussed by the sight at first; then he read the first word...and he was lost. He couldn’t look away. He tried to look over at Dean, shift his attention to the brush beyond the car, anything—but he was physically, psychologically, unable to look at anything but that perfect, rusty print in that immaculate, disgusting notebook. John didn’t need to look at his partner to know he, too, was focused on nothing but the notebook. Dean began reading the words in the notebook aloud, in a vacant, monotone voice, a sleepwalker’s voice. John didn’t think he was even reading the book, just kind of staring near it. There are few signs to suggest that this was once a town—vacant cellar holds gawping at the eye; tumbled bricks of broken graffiti; and everywhere: weeds, weeds, weeds. No clean green grass for this place, only the snatching handfuls of sharp, coarse scrub; goldenrod and rotting thistles. Nearby, a steel beam hints that man was here; along its edge and fading on the ground, a stain that must be blood proves that he is gone. “Dean, stop.” John was sweating, but not from the July North Carolina heat. He was cold, and he felt sick. “Stop readin’ that shit. Now, man. Somethin’s wrong with it.” He reached out to close the book. Dean’s hand moved faster than John would have believed possible, and seized his partner’s wrist in an implacable iron grip. After a slight pause, Dean resumed reading in that same disconnected, distant voice, like someone was reading through him. John was a captive audience, unable to retreat from Dean’s incredible grasp, helpless to block out the sight, the sound—the feel—of the words robotically issued from Dean’s mouth. This place is haunted not by ghosts...but by possibilities and restless vacancies. An unnamable swamp of sadness surrounds and permeates this abandonment, at once to be pitied and hated, lamented and loathed. Something was lost here...taken; stolen. Didn’t anyone ever aspire for something better here, only to languish in the comfort of their own stagnation? Did a woman named Pamela ever balance the love of her children against the secret anger of an early miscarriage? Did a man named John fight the good fight despite the futility haunting him from the hiding-dreams? Was there ever the cry of Joy sounded among these barren concrete walks, the triumphant scream of Grief? Intimations, specters, illusions of what may never have even been… Now there is only silence so still it takes shape: at the corner of one’s eye, at the base of one’s neck. Is this a glimpse of what is to come for us all along the road we have chosen, the road that we pave? I never wanted to be on this road. None of us ever wanted to be on this road. John didn’t want to be on this road, that was for damn sure. Yet there was nowhere he could go. His eyes were running with tears—he could not look away from the ancient, perfect words, couldn’t even blink. Dean turned another page, and John was able to make out that it was the last; the next page was blank. He was so thankful he choked with emotions he could not identify. But Dean would finish the page soon, and they could get the Christ back to the station and make up whatever story they had to to cover their asses and never come back to this weird shit again. Dean continued his apocalyptic reporting with eerie detachment. I have always been on this road. We are ALL on this road, with no lamp to pierce the fumes hanging in the air, the cracks in the stones. No exits, no signs: only mist... and weeds… and here and there the stark frame of some abandoned hulk. These fantastic ruins resist the struggle to be mapped, to reveal through the crowded emptiness some light beyond the haze. I mount a precipice today like a hundred others I have climbed this week, this eon. Stretched before my feet, dank and reeking mud. Once a riverbed; now a fetid mire seeping miserably through the chasm. A distance, an eternity of fog - constant and cold. The familiar scents of disillusionment and failure cling in my nostrils. Beside me on this rampart to the wastelands is at last a shape somewhat familiar — the front of what might once have been a Buick: burned out, tires gone, barely recognizable but for some left over paint on the battered steel of the trunk lid: the color of sunset in a dust storm. A dulled gold chain hangs desultory from a stub on the dash—the charm, despite the ash and the char: Go Gators. Do I dare remember it? Could I have ever driven that chariot of death? John Verdel was beyond scared now. He was nothing more dignified than freaked-the-hell-OUT! That notebook was describing this car, this ugly shade of brown, this refugee from the God-forsaken Gator state! John tried to talk to his partner again. His voice was dry and harsh, and his throat burned with a cruel fire as he croaked out each word. “Dean, my man. Look, brother. We got to be goin’. It...it’s gettin’ late, man.” John rasped the last with genuine surprise. They had arrived on-scene no later than a quarter of noon; now it was drawing-down dusk. There was no way they had been here eight, nine hours! John tried again to look away from this deathbook, and was again unsuccessful. But just as his peripheral vision had recognized the terrain earlier today, he could tell from the corners of his eyes that the light had dimmed, and that a rapidly-rising ground fog had already reached Buick’s the rear bumper. Mist, a voice noted in John’s head. It’s mist. From the weeds. The voice didn’t feel like John’s usual talking-to-himself-to-process-things voice. This voice was like it came (from the mist, from the weeds) from outside. John shivered convulsively. He was consumed with the lonesome, isolated fear of a child awake in the dark past bedtime. Dean’s grip on John’s wrist loosened and fell. John wanted to pull his arm back, rub the wrist soothingly, or finish his earlier effort to close this blasphemy before them. But the arm fell dead at his side, numb but for a clammy tingling where his partner’s fingers had dug into his flesh. Night had claimed the deep (weeds) brush beyond the end of this...road. Something in the shadowed scrub seemed to take a stealthy, careful, heavy step. John’s mind and nerves spun toward the sound; but neither his nor Dean’s bodies moved a tic. John heard Dean crying, whimpering; he could imagine the painful tears pouring from his friend’s eyes. He could imagine them, but could not look up and see them. Though the last page must have been read, could not possibly still have any writing left on it, whatever malignant spell was on the air remained unbroken. The two deputies were still as stone, weeping through burning eyes still drawn in the unfocused direction of the notebook, its pages starkly white in the evening gloom. In a terror utterly atavistic and overpowering, John saw what all the philosophy books had long claimed: the last page was not finished; before his anguished eyes, it was still being written. The blank page opposite was filling with writing, ghost writing that was fading in, blowing in from some unknown, unseen debacle of humanity’s wreck and ruin: flecks of rust and crumbs of rot desperately, delicately clinging together into that smooth, galling script to tell the story of the damned. Beyond this funereal hearse, I shudder at the monotony: row upon row of rubble and no one, rowhouses of the lost and the forgotten. The creeping mist, the twisted ribs of rust: a warehouse annexed for a mausoleum. All around, discarded shafts proved useless to any end. The words were no longer coming from Dean’s mouth; they were inside John Verdel’s head, inside his mind, his soul! He felt the hot tears rolling down his own face, heard Dean somehow stepping away from the remnant of the Buick—not toward their cruiser, but toward the weeds...toward the weeds… John wanted to stop his partner, wanted to help him, wanted to scream at him not to go in there! But was stuck to the earth below him, a statue of mahogany in an unlit room of obsidian. Amid the wrack of careless consequence, I find absurdity defined: in all this surrealistic farce, the uneventful regularity of a common file drawer. How can this one object have survived, pristine and shiny black, alone among this cataclysm? What awful truth might be recorded inside. The question is more fantasy; I know I cannot stop myself from opening this vault. Inside is one file, one untarnished folder from which nothing good can be learned. I should drop it here, burn this improbable page. I should run from this unlikely artifact, in any direction, at any cost! Fight or flight—but neither was ever really an option... I am controlled by the levers of damnation. Inside the folder, staring back at me from a crisp white page in color so clear it violates this corrupt air, is a face undeniable to me: it is the face that I see every morning in my own mirror, the same clothes, the same jewelry. And in the pocket of the shirt, a gold badge. And hair. And blood. Dear God what have I done... Someone is coming. Someone is here. “Dean, NO!” John finally managed. But Deputy Dean Harris was gone. John was alone in the inky night, humid as fear itself, toxic with unknowns and unknowables. “Dean…” His voice cracked, and John Verdel fell to his knees, released from the unseen grasp that had held him fast all day. A sadness overwhelmed him, threatening to swallow him whole. He tried to think. He knew he must stand. That was first. Then he should look for Dean, radio in. He had to do something, anything to break this paralysis. He had to let them know, had to tell them about (failure, failure) the bizarre events that had transpired today. He put his hand on the ground to push himself up. There was no longer any asphalt beneath him. He felt around in the utter darkness: only dirt, and a filthy, greasy-feeling substance like leaves covered in moss and (blood) rain. He fumbled at his side for his large flashlight, finally unclipping it on the third try. In the stark white beam that hurt his eyes with its suddeness, John saw that there was no road at all. No asphalt, not even a dirt path. He flashed the beam around frantically, snatching desperately at the thought that he might have gotten disoriented. But there was only the surreal scene of the severed back half of the car, the notebook, and stunted, gnarled, (weeds) brush in every direction. As the beam skimmed the ground about a foot in front of the abbreviated car, John saw a small glint of metal reflect back at him. He stepped over gingerly to investigate. He reached down as if in slow-motion and picked up Dean’s badge. It was ice-cold, warped and dented with impossible age. And covered with smears of old blood. Though the night was as still as the dark side of the moon, with not even a rumor of a breeze, the pages of the notebook on the car rattled: perhaps it had in store some grisly epilogue for John Verdel... John reflexively flicked his light toward the sound and saw, across the lid of the Buick's trunk, another glint of metal on the other side of what had somehow become no more than a small clearing: the bumper of his own cruiser, valiantly peeking through an incredible intaglio of vines and leaves. John hurried over to the car in a crouch, sneaking to avoid some sentinel to which he didn’t want to admit, and giving the Buick and the notebook both a wide berth. He reached the cruiser and saw in the beam of his flashlight that it looked as ancient as the badge still in his hand—pitted paint and body panels, dry-rotted tires flat and crumbling, a thick vine growing through the left side of the Force-4 light bar. It was a hulk, a relic, reclaimed almost entirely by the (weeds) land. John’s knees buckled, and he hit the ground, bowing his head in his hands. As he shivered and despaired in silence, a familiar sound lit the wick of faintest hope in his heart: the crackle of the police radio. But the spark quickly faded, and he tumbled over the edge in his own personal abyss as he listened to the broken, distant transmission from the derelict cab. “John. I think we got a problem here.” @-----@-----@ John Verdel sat straight up in bed, looking around the room apprehensively, disoriented. He had been in the blackest of sleeps, insular and dreamless, when the voice of his partner rang in his head with startling suddenness, crackling from some ethereal PA system in an impossible maze of echoing hallways. His heart was beating a little too fast, and his muscles were tensed for action. Fight or flight, he thought absently, still surveying the room. Stand or run. Just not into the weeds. He shivered at the strangeness and randomness of the thought. He looked out the window—nothing but the black coalsack sky threatening freezing, destructive rains for the (lost, the forgotten) unfortunate and displaced. John shook his head to clear the strange cobwebs left behind from whatever dream he didn’t know he’d been having. Just as he was about to lay back down, the cell phone on his nightstand buzzed with an incoming text message. He reached for it impatiently, reflexively. He read the text incredulously, unable to believe his eyes, unable to stop the feeling of his stomach dropping from some evil height. It was a text from his partner. “John, I think we got a problem here.” He shook in the dark and released his bladder like a young child alone in the watches of the night who is powerless to stop or explain away the stupendous power of the thunder outside his window. John Verdel, veteran Deputy Sheriff of Davidson County, North Carolina, six feet seven inches of lean black muscle, was scared to his very core. His partner, Dean Harris, had been (lost, forgotten) missing-in-action for four and a half years... Notes ▼ |
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