“G’nite, man. Go home,” Derrick said as he pulled on his
coat and scarf. Gerard waved without looking up from the file on his desk.
Derrick stood there for a moment, then walked away. Gerard heard the elevator
chime and the doors swoosh open and closed.
He stared at the pictures, one by one, as he had every night
for the last four years. He was inured to them by now. The gorge no longer rose
in his throat. He didn’t dream about them any more. That actually made it
worse. The first night he didn’t dream, he pulled out the file and looked at
every page, every photo, to make sure he wasn’t forgetting. He owed them that.
The first case after he made detective. First time lead.
Although pretty soon it felt like everyone had taken a giant step back, leaving
him front and center in the squad room when the call came in. But they hadn’t
known then. No one knew. And the deeper he dug, the darker it got.
No DNA. No witnesses. Every scrap of evidence pored over
with a magnifying glass and scanned into IAFIS. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The scene walked over and over. And the
pictures. Two hundred and seventy three pictures. Derrick knew them frontwards
and backwards, upside down, and sideways. It had taken a very long time to get
over the shock of those photos.
Derrick had seen some shit as a
rookie, as a beat cop, as a DIT. Nothing in this world could have prepared him
for that crime scene. For those photos. He needed them to remind himself it was
real. Not a nightmare. Not something he could allow himself to forget.
He sipped a warm Coke and paged
through the last of the photos. Closeups of some of the wounds. The coroner couldn’t
identify the source—or sources.
The final page. A standard interview sheet. But there was no
contact information in the top boxes. No officer information at the bottom.
Only this in the middle of the page:
A mention was
made about missing owls
#
Note:
Started with the owls, but never got to them. Might have to tackle this
prompt again some time…
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Dogs in House
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Brindle, Houdini
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Music
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Nirvana, “Heart Shaped Box”
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Time writing
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~25 minutes
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March word
count
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5,873
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