M Sellars - Miranda

He shook his head to stave me off while he concentrated on the call. “But you’re both okay, right? Good…”

His vehicle hadn’t been parked very far away, so we arrived at it quickly. He let go of Constance’s suitcase and hurriedly dug around in his pocket for his keys, which he immediately handed to her. She proceeded to unlock the van, but my attention never wavered from him.

“You call it in ta’ Major Case? Yeah… Well don’t let the locals fuck with anything. Just have ‘em secure the scene until MCS gets there…” He continued. “Yeah… Good… Okay, so what about the vic? Are ya’ sure? Yeah, sounds just like the last one… What? Jeezus… Okay… Yeah, well hang tight. We’ll be there in twenty.” Ben folded the phone and slipped it back onto his belt. A look of distress now hardened his features, and his hand shot up to smooth back his hair.

His silence was punctuated by a sharp click as Constance pushed down the pull handle on her luggage. We both stood watching him and waiting. However, I didn’t hold out for very long.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I demanded. “What happened?”

His side of the conversation had been enough for me to figure out that Miranda apparently hadn’t waited to kill again and that somehow Felicity was involved. Obviously, that latter fact had put me immediately on edge, especially considering all the possible implications. However, it was my friend’s sudden switch in demeanor that disturbed me most. Something about it said there was more going on than just the discovery of a body.

He sighed. “Listen, Row, Felicity’s okay. She’s just fine and Charlee’s with ‘er. So don’t worry about that.”

“What the…” I started. “Okay…but, what’s going on? Why is she even involved? She… She didn’t…”

He shook his head and then gestured at me with one hand. “What? No… No, she was with Charlee. She didn’t go all kinky Twilight Zone or anything, so that’s all good…”

“Then what’s going on?”

He sighed. “Apparently your front yard just became the killer’s latest dump site.”

I muttered, “Damn that bitch…” I sighed heavily as I closed my eyes then reached up with both hands and began massaging my scalp. Oddly enough, I think the gesture was more out of habit than anything else because there was no pain.

I still felt nothing.

In fact, I realized in that moment that not only did I feel nothing, but also for the first time in a very long while, the din inside my skull had fallen quiet. No screams, no murmurs, not even a whisper.

The voices of the dead were gone, and it seemed I was very much alone.

Ben had affixed his magnetic-based emergency light to the roof of his van, and it was sending out oscillating waves of bright red as he whipped the vehicle through quiet intersections, completely ignoring speed limits and traffic signals in the process. Riding with him was always an adventure to begin with, and when an emergency was involved, it was akin to being aboard a runaway train. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic to get in his way at this hour.

In my usual attempt at self-preservation, I cinched my seatbelt even tighter and tried to keep my eyes focused forward through the windshield. However, even with that, I could feel the bottom drop out of my stomach when we arced along the ramp from I-70 to I-170 Southbound. For a moment or two, I found myself wishing I had one of the airsickness bags from my recent flight handy.

I couldn’t see the speedometer from where I was sitting, but my best guess was that we had to have been traveling at better than eighty miles per hour because by the time all was said and done, it had only taken us five minutes to reach I-64. Shortly after that, we were turning down my street, and although we were still a few blocks away, in the distance we could already see the flickering lights of the squad cars in front of my house. Their stark flashes of red and white strobed like an ugly blemish on the night, and once again the pit of my stomach was gone.

Blowing through the stop signs as the blocks ticked past, it took less than a minute for us to reach our destination. My friend had barely started braking the van when I unbuckled my seatbelt and grabbed the handle on the sliding side door.

“Dammit, Row!” he shouted. “Hold on a sec! Ya’ can’t get…”

I didn’t hear the rest of his comment because I had already levered the door backward on its raspy tracks and then launched myself through the opening. The vehicle was literally still rolling when my feet hit the pavement. Although I stumbled, I somehow managed to keep my footing and started jogging toward my house. I probably would have stepped it up and broken into a dead run had it not been for the uniformed officer who met me at the end of the driveway.

“Whoa!” he barked, one hand out toward me and the other resting on his sidearm. “Hold up! Where do you think you’re going?”

I stumbled to a halt and spat, “Where does it look like?”

“Lockup if you keep being a smartass,” he replied without missing a beat. “Now how about answering my question?”

My next response was more in line with what he was after but still flat and succinct. I pointed past him and said, “In the house. I live here.”

“Okay. Are you Mister O’Brien?”

“Gant, actually,” I replied. “Felicity O’Brien is my wife. Is she still in there?”

He nodded. “Calm down. The detectives are taking her statement. I’m going to need to see some ID, sir.”

I sighed and reached for my wallet. Before I could fully extract it from my pocket, however, Ben drew up alongside me, his badge hanging around his neck on a thick cord.

“Detective Storm, Major Case Squad,” he told the officer while flashing his official ID. Then he wagged his thumb at me. “It’s okay. Go ahead an’ sign ‘im in, he really does live here. And besides, he’s actually a consultant for the MCS.”

By now I had my driver’s license in my hand and was holding it out to the cop. He went ahead and gave it a cursory glance then nodded.

“Okay, you can put that away now, Mister Gant,” he told me, then made a half turn and called to another officer who was positioned at the opposite corner of the yard where the crux of the activity was going on. “Yo, Foreman. I need that log over here for a sec… Hey… Foreman…” He glanced quickly back to us as he started trekking toward the man with the sign-in sheet. “Hang on…”

Once he was out of earshot, my friend grumbled at me, “See, Row? I tried ta’ tell ya’ ta’ fuckin’ wait.”

I didn’t respond. I was too busy being mesmerized by the gruesome carnival that had taken up residence in my front yard. A sagging ribbon of bright yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off my property line, extending out past the sidewalk and even beyond the curb itself. Spotlights from a pair of squad cars were aimed at the area, and a stark pool of light filled the lawn. Swimming in it was a woman wearing a windbreaker emblazoned with the words CRIME SCENE UNIT, a clipboard and numbered tent-shaped markers in hands. The true centerpiece of the entire spectacle, however, was the nude body sprawled on the grass.

As much as I hated to admit it, over the years I had become increasingly jaded about crime scenes. Once you’d stood in the middle of enough of them, the experience tended to take on a clinical edge. It was always surreal in its own way but dispassionate nonetheless. Each scene was different, and each was the same. Every one of them had a story to tell-and often times even more than one if you listened closely enough. You just had to figure out which voices were telling you the truth.

But, this one was different.