Sketch of a Murder

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

"Run, Nita!" Chelsea screamed as a monstrous hand snatched her. Nita turned, almost falling to the rough ground. A tidal wave of red swirled around Chelsea. She began running towards her friend. The air thickened until she could barely lift her feet. Something heavy dragged at her. The red tide was spinning now. Rising with each spiral, becoming a whirlpool.

"Chelsea!" she cried out.

Suddenly, she was standing in the middle of a field. She knew she should remember this field, but she couldn't. All she could see was blackness. No sound disturbed the ominous silence.

Laughter, vicious and low, rolled from the darkness. She spun around, peered into the night. Laughter, maniacal and shrill, burst from the darkness. She spun around again, peered into the night. Laughter, cruel and deep, swelled from the darkness. She spun around once more, peered into the night.

A scream shattered the darkness. She spun, around and around. Nothing except blackness. "Chelsea!" she called desperately. "Chelsea, where are you?"

"Run, Nita, run!"

Then she was running. Stumbling. Falling. Scrambling to her feet. Running. Breath rasping. Lungs hurting.

One moment she was running; the next moment, something smashed her to the ground. A monster with fetid breath perched on her back. It leaned over her shoulder, breathed on her cheek. She felt its claws pierce her skin, clasp her hips... She screamed...

From somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed shrilly.

Too late...too late...

Nita struggled to force her eyes open. Her throat felt raw. Had she done it again? She hoped no one heard her this time. A fast peek at the bloody digits of the clock on her bedside table told her it was a few minutes past two in the morning. She looked over at the window. The un-curtained pane let in the pale gray of the city's never-night. Shadows wavered on the blind brick wall of the secondhand shop that squatted within spitting distance of the window.

A shrill ringing snatched her attention. That's what must have pulled her from her nightmare. She flopped over on her side, reached for the phone. "This better be good," she grouched.

"Nothing good about an eleven-year-old girl being raped by grown men," Lieutenant Williams growled.

She swung her feet to the floor. With the phone squeezed between shoulder and cheek, she grabbed a clean pair of slacks and a short sleeve shirt from her closet. "Since when are we the rape squad? And what the hell was a kid that age doing out at this time of night?"

"Didn't you read the SCaT handbook I gave you the first day?" She heard a car engine whining as it tried to start.

"Fuck, no. You're the head honcho. Figured you could read that kind of shit and tell the rest of us what you wanted us to know."

"Yeah, well." The car roared to life. "You should've read it. You're the second on this team."

"Like that really matters."

He let that slide. The sound of a garage door opening almost drowned out his next words. "The reason you and I got a handbook, Sergeant Slowater, was to tell us the scope of SCaT's responsibilities."

"I thought we were only supposed to handle this serial whacker." She trotted down the stairs and hustled into the kitchen. Phone cradled against her shoulder, she threw together a pot of coffee and flicked on the gas burner.

"SCaT really is the shit patrol. The governor slated us to take over certain crimes that would generate a lot of heat. There is a list of criteria in the back of the book. All the precincts in the state got a copy of the criteria. This fits the criteria."