I don’t immediately recognize the black uniform, but I do recognize the badge.

The cops.

I roll down my window, hoping that the smell of death is being blown away from the window by my air conditioner. I raise my hand to shield my eyes from his unnecessary use of a flashlight. “Can I help you?”

He clicks the flashlight off and holsters it. He spreads his feet and sinks into a typical police officer stance while resting his hand on the butt of his gun in his belt. “Ma’am, we’ve had a complaint from the neighbor stating that someone has been creeping around this abandoned house. Since your car is in the driveway, and you are sitting in it, I can only conclude that it’s you. Am I correct?”

I feel like I have only one option here. “Actually, officer, I’m glad that you’re here. Yes, that was me. I work at McLeigh Publishing House, and I am in search of the author, Blake Randolf. I was under the assumption that this was his last known residence. When I went up to the door to knock, I saw the foreclosure sign. I thought I heard someone inside and I figured it was Blake hiding from us inside. I was able to look in the window through a gap in the paper and saw someone standing there staring at me. I knocked on the window and yelled but the person didn’t move. I thought the person staring back at me was dead and possibly hanging from a rope which would explain their upright stance. I tried to get in to help them and was able to get in through the basement door. Sir, you should go in there. I’m afraid I’ll need counseling after what I saw. You should know, that’s a mannequin standing in the living room, but there’s a head in a box in the green and pink room.”

The stunned look on his well-worn face was almost worth the word vomit. I had to add some made up reasoning as to why I broke in. I’m pretty sure “morbid curiosity” wouldn’t cut it and would just land me in a special room behind bars until they can figure this out. Although, I’m not so sure I won’t land there anyway.

The police officer sighs, grabs his microphone on his shoulder and calls in some mumbo jumbo that I’m sure only other officers understand. He looks back at me and says, “Ma’am, what’s your name?”

Hmm. Okay, maybe word vomit wasn’t the place to start. “Effervescent Graber, I mean, Strapinski. I’m divorced. I use my maiden name, but my official name is Effervescent Strapinski. Oh, but I go by Effi.” I need to not talk so much.

The officer clears his throat, changes his stance, and smoothes his short greying hair beneath the rim of his hat. “Effi, I have some other officers coming to help me look through this house. I also have a female officer who is going to sit with you, but I will need to have you get out of the car.”

My stomach drops and I immediately feel a panic attack coming on. “Wait, am I under arrest?” I want to roll my window up and lock the doors, but something tells me that I would look very guilty if I did that and I’m not even guilty of this one.

The aging officer takes a step back making room for my door to open all of the way. “No, Effi, you are not under arrest, but we don’t want you to leave just yet. We may have some more questions for you once we see what you saw. Is that okay?”

I can tell that he’s done this a lot. He’s very calming. He would probably be good at hostage negotiations but in a small town like this, there probably isn’t many hostage situations. “Yeah, okay. I can do that. And maybe you can help me find Blake?” I turn off my car and open the door. I grab my purse and slip the keys inside along with my phone. When I open the door, the officer grabs the top of the door, and then sticks his hand out toward my purse.

“We will try to do what we can. Effi, I will need to take that for a little while.”

Before I can say another word, two other police cars pull up to the house, blocking my car in. I mindlessly hand him my purse and get out of my car. He closes the door behind me as I turn and watch the other officers get out of their vehicles. One is a younger man, taller than the officer who tapped on my window, and he has blonde hair and a surfer’s tan. The other officer is a woman, much shorter than the blonde officer, and she has dark brown hair tied back in a bun that peeks out underneath her hat.

“Monroe, this is Effi. Would you mind keeping her company while Mack and I check out the house?”

“You got it.” Monroe, the woman officer, motions for me to get into the backseat of the initial officer’s car. I wish I knew his name. I didn’t think to read his name tag.

“Effi? Would you come over here please?” Monroe stands next to the original officer’s car, holding the door open to the backseat. I would’ve thought she would’ve put me in her car.

“Oh, right.” I walk over to her with my hands up. I don’t want her to think I have a gun or something.

She smiles and says, “You can put your hands down. This is just protocol.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I slide into the backseat of the cop car, and she closes the door behind me. The backseat of the car smells atrocious. It’s like sweat, body odor and…urine? I don’t even want to think about how many people have peed their pants back here. Just the thought makes my skin crawl.

Monroe opens the front passenger door and sits sideways in the seat so that her legs are still outside the car. The open door allows for there to be fresh air, so the pee smell isn’t quite so pungent.

“You went in there?” Monroe glances back at me and then goes back to watching the officers walk to the back of the house.

“Yeah, I was looking for an author who used to live here.”

“An author, eh? Why you looking for an author? Are you a fan or something?”

“What? No, definitely not a fan. I work for McVeigh Publishing House. He signed a contract with us and received an advance. He has fallen behind in the number of chapters he was to provide and I’m down here to make sure he’s okay.”

Monroe looks back at me, her eyebrows furrowed as she says, “Oh yeah? You’re quite the caring publishing house. You sure you didn’t come here to make him pay back the advance? Ya know, give him the old one-two?”

I don’t feel as comfortable with her as I did with the first officer. I feel like she’s pushing me to admit to something and I didn’t do anything to Blake. “I honestly just need to make contact with him and find out what his plans are for the next chapters he owes us.”

I look out the window up at the house and see flashlights flickering around inside the living room. The mannequin gets lit up a couple of times and I can see the creepy drawn-on face from here. Monroe’s radio goes off, but I can’t make out what they said. “Did they find her?”

Monroe answers the other officers, but she’s got her face so close to the mouthpiece that it’s muffled. Plus, she’s talking codes with them, and I have no clue what any of the codes mean. She looks back at me again and cocks her head to the side. “Her who?”

Shit. It was different telling the older cop. He felt safer. Monroe acts like she’s just out to get me to admit that I killed someone and put their head in a box.

“There’s a girl’s head in a box in the green and pink room.”

“Oh really? How did it get there?”

I look at her and shrug my shoulders. “I have no idea. There’s also a pile of boxes downstairs filled with sex toys and lingerie, but I don’t know how that got there either.” Oops. I need to slow my mouth.

Monroe smirks at me. I can tell that she thinks she’s onto something, but I hate to tell her, she’s not onto anything with me. All I can tell her is what they’re already going to find in there.

“Yeah? You went poking around in the boxes? Did you think the author was in there?”

She’s really starting to piss me off. The bad thing is that I really can’t act pissed off because I’m already in the backseat of a cop car. I can’t exactly get out and walk off. “No, that was curiosity. I’ve been told the author has switched up his genre from romance to erotica.”

Monroe nods her head as she turns back toward the house. “Ah, okay.”

Thankfully, she stays quiet for a few minutes. I’m afraid what I would end up telling her out of anger the more she talks. I turn to look toward the house too. I don’t see the flashlights in the living room anymore, but I do see them flashing around every now and then as they must be making their way through the rest of the rooms.

“Hey, what’s your partner’s name? The one who found me here?” I really didn’t want to start up a conversation with her again, but I’d like to know his name.

“Patrick. That’s his last name. Just like Monroe and Mack are our last names.” Monroe’s radio goes off again and she mumbles something back. She gets out of the car, turns around and then leans in to look at me in the backseat. “I gotta go in to help with something. Stay here.”

I look down at the door and then back to her. “Where else am I going to go?”

“Good answer,” Monroe says as she slams the car door.

She walks up the driveway, her hand resting on the butt of her gun in the holster. This must be something they teach in cop school. They all do it. Someone from inside opens the front door and she walks in.

There’s a caged wall in front of me that separates the backseat from the front seat like the old-school cop cars. I’m pretty sure most of them have plexiglass now. Not sure why Patrick doesn’t have it. Maybe he doesn’t like the wall of plastic. Or maybe he thinks he’s such a bad ass that he doesn’t need it. Or maybe he’s just that good at calming people down that he really doesn’t need it.

I look around and see my purse in the front seat. I don’t even remember him handing it to Monroe or maybe he put it in his car. The backseat area is very clean. I don’t see anything in the backseat. It’s spotless. There’s not even a crumb on the floor back here. He must clean this out every day before he goes on duty. Maybe they have to? I wish they had to make the backseat smell better. I guess I’ve never looked into what it takes to be a police officer on a normal day. I would hope finding a head in a box and the smears of blood everywhere wouldn’t be normal. That would be really hard to deal with on a daily basis. Do they get used to it?

The random thoughts bunny trail me back to me and my brain. I don’t want to say that I’m used to seeing blood, but it doesn’t bother me like it did when I was younger. The fights with Mike certainly did callous me to a lot. And then the whole killing him thing also made me numb to blood. It made me numb to a lot. Even killing the truck driver didn’t really bother me. In both situations it was them or me, or Kendra. It’s not like I’m just killing them for fun.

But I am killing for money. This new job with Viv feels like it’s going to be complicated. How am I going to just go and “take someone out” for her? These other two I had an issue with. I’m not some random sniper sitting on a hill waiting to peg someone when they come out of a building. Although that might make it easier. Maybe I should take up sharpshooting.

The front door to the house opens. Monroe walks out and then Mack comes out right behind her. He has gloves on and is carrying the bloody cardboard box that looks like the one in the closet that had the head in it.