by David Somerset

I was coming in from a long night when I was pulled up short by the ruckus around the house. The lights of the police cars were eerily beautiful in the mist of the early dawn and, after assuring myself that none of it was for me, I moved carefully along the sidewalk and stood by the old oak tree to wait and watch.

There were three police cars in all, each parked haphazardly at the curb in front of the house or, in one case, angled across the street to discourage passersby. There was an ambulance van at right angles to the sidewalk, its rear wheels touching the cement curb. With the exception of the ambulance, the interior of which was the only thing ablaze, all the vehicles had their roof lights switched on and the lights spun relentlessly, bathing the immediate area in a spookily undulating luminescence. I looked around and spotted the usual busybodies amongst the ranks of onlookers. Many of them hugged their threadbare robes about them as though they were freezing but, even in the early morning hours, the warmth of what was sure to be another scorching mid-summer day made it unlikely that they were so much cold as feeling a little fragile at the moment.

The two-way radios in the police cruisers droned endlessly on, engaged in conversation I couldn't always understand. The cops themselves paid little attention to them, using instead the miniature radios that were clipped on their belts opposite their guns. Occasionally one of them would cock an ear and pull the clipped microphone from the shoulder strap of his uniform shirt and issue a comment or command into it with a kind of bored manner which belied the situation. I didn't much like the guns and moved around the tree to get more into the shadows.

By the time I'd positioned myself again, the paramedics had been signaled by one of the policemen who'd been stationed near the door of to the house. With reluctance they pushed themselves away from leaning against the side of the van and pulled the stretcher out from inside the ambulance. Soon they were clattering up the short flight of steps that led up to the front porch and had disappeared through the open door, eventually reappearing with a small body strapped beneath the stark white sheet. At the top edge of the bed I could make out Cindy's tiny face sticking out from under the cloth. Her light hair was spread out in tangles across the fabric and her face was very still. Forgetting my fears I ran forward. The medics looked briefly at me but didn't stop. I knew the police would stop short of letting me get inside the van with her so I could do nothing but stop and stare like the people who now pressed forward against the police barricade, trying desperately to get a glimpse of what they really didn't want to have to see anyway. Human nature.

Movement near the house caught my eye and I looked back that way to find a man coming out of the front door. He was dressed in a suit jacket that didn't match his trousers and his shirt and tie were wrinkled and a bit stained in turn. His face hadn't had the luxury of a morning shave as yet, probably having been called out of a deep sleep a few long hours earlier, into the blackness of the then night. To confront the deeper darkness of the human soul.

"What's it look like, Jim?" the uniformed officer asked the man. Jim let pent up air out of his lungs and the expression on his face became even more disappointed as he looked at the younger man. He reached inside of his jacket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one free. As he pulled his coat open to put the packet back I could see the gun holster strapped to his hip beneath the coat. He looked briefly at me as he dug inside a different pocket for his lighter but then concentrated instead on flipping the switch of the thing until a miniature flame popped up. He touched it to the cigarette and it flared brightly for a moment as he got it burning. Dropping the lighter back into his pocket, he took a long pull of smoke into his lungs and let it out in a hiss. The uniformed officer was still looking at him expectantly and Jim's lips turned slightly down at the corners. "Looks like hell," he said.

"Any ideas what happened?" asked the officer, his interest strong. Perhaps someday he'd like to be the man in charge, I supposed.

Jim looked at me again and then out toward the street. He smiled ruefully at the numbers of ghouls who had somehow managed to come from nowhere and congregate there. "The little girl says it was her mother's boyfriend," he said without looking back at the officer. "The mother's gone and so is he."

"Do you think she was involved? The mother?" said the officer, his eyes thoughtful. I tried to read the name on his badge but couldn't.

"No," said Jim, looking again at me and then at the officer. He seemed to decide all at once to confide in the man. Or perhaps he just wanted to hear his own theory out loud. "It's my guess that the mother caught her boyfriend molesting the kid." I flinched and the hair raised on my neck. "They argued and it looks like things got out of hand. Judging from the amount of blood in there, she's either badly hurt herself, or dead." I took a couple of involuntary steps backward at the sound of that and the detective looked at me again.

"You must be Mallory," he said, holding out a hand. I gave him a wary look. "I thought I recognized your picture inside. Terrible twist of fate that this should happen in your own home," he added.

I walked past him and into the house. "Mallory's something of a detective himself," Jim told the officer who'd stepped aside to let me pass. "We've used him on a few cases. Almost like a bloodhound when he gets the scent," he continued, though I wasn't really.

Inside was worse than I'd imagined. Lamps were overturned in the living room and several pictures had either been knocked from the walls or slung in fury across the room to be smashed against the opposite one. The blood didn't start until in the hallway and then there was only a few specks of it until I reached the master bedroom. There it was splattered on the walls in blotches that peppered the surface and ran downward in tiny rivulets that trickled almost to the floor. The comforter had been ripped off the bed and lay in a pile beside it. Underneath it I found a kitchen knife, its blade thick with gore. Jim called a technician in to snap some pictures of it where it lay before picking it carefully up by its edge and dropping it into a plastic bag. He scribbled something on a white label and slapped it on the bag.

I didn't much want to go in Cindy's room but knew I had to. (To Be Continued)

(The rest of this story is in New Mystery Magazine Volume II#1. Order here.)