Was this civilization? Is this how far humanity had sunk? She listened to the bluster of threats hurled at whoever was in the line of sight of a large angry man. He was upset and screaming about the injustice that people had suffered and how he would see justice served for every man who had been falsely thrown in here by the powers that upheld the rigid ways of the status quo. He repeated the same three sentences over and over again in various order and just scrambled how he said it. There would be no reasoning with such a man and the cop behind the desk, who had been joined by two other cops, didn’t even seem to notice him after a while.
The doors crashed open and two cops, one a rather short woman, wrestled a large white man in handcuffs through the lobby. The man was kicking at everything he could raise his feet to hit. The woman held his hands behind his back while the large cop to her left kept a tight hold on the prisoner’s shoulder as they powered the man through the doors back into the heart of the police station.
Was this law and order? Is this how humans had learned to behave? Like a disjointed group of rabid animals, where the strong tried to bully the weak, and the weak were left to fend for themselves? She hadn’t been to this city much since she had been forced to move here from India. She watched the chaos around her and wondered what had gone wrong. This was not civilization; this was something else.
These people acted more like insects, going from one topic to the next, shouting in agreement over one thing one moment, and then at each other’s throats over another thing two minutes later. A young boy was shoved into her at one point. She steadied the boy, keeping him on his feet. The boy pushed back into the fray of shoving people without even a thank you.
She had always wanted to help people, to show them the way to a better understanding of life, to push people to make themselves better, more productive. She had wanted her people to rise again as the proud strong people that had defeated and pushed back Alexander the Great. The strong people who had resisted British rule for a hundred years before finally coming under their sway. They had become lost and listless since then. She saw much of their failures in these desperate people around her. In India, people did starve in the street. These people, it seemed, fought because they had everything handed to them and had absolutely nothing to lose.
Her musing was interrupted suddenly by a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Jason’s green eyes smiling down on her through a dense spattering of freckles. “Ansuya, what is a lady of your caliber doing in a place like this?” His voice was deep with concern but low so only people extremely close to them could hear.
“I was waiting for a fire scene investigator to help me with the case of my burned house from a week or two ago,” Ansuya answered easily.
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The man flushed with embarrassment, “If I had known it was you, I would have come down a lot sooner, I’m sorry.” He lowered his eyes to the floor.
Ansuya stood up, “You mean to tell me you weren’t working hard in your office trying to solve your presumed ‘stack’ of arson cases which I am sure have your desk in a perpetual state of being buried?” She smiled at the red-haired man, “It’s good to see you Jason and thank you.”
“I’LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!! YOU DON’T KNOW ME!!!!” A rather petite woman screamed at the cop behind the desk. Ansuya was impressed that such a small frame could even produce such a volume.
Jason grabbed her arm gently, “Come on,” he whispered, “I’m not armed and I’m not going to have someone come down on me if you get injured right next to me.” Ansuya let herself get led through the doors into the heart of the precinct away from the escalating scene in the lobby.
Jason seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as two cops exited past him into the lobby where they had just entered from. The woman would either calm down or get arrested and spend some time in the holding cell till she cooled off. Ansuya couldn’t understand what could possibly have been so important that the woman thought intimidating tactics would get her anywhere, especially in a police station where everyone had a firearm as part of their uniform.
“Come on back to my office,” Jason said almost jovially as he led her through the various offices and cubicles through the main floor. The place was already busy with activity. The air was filled with the jarring sound of phones constantly ringing. The sound of shuffling paper being collected added to the cacophony of sound that assaulted her ears.
Jason led her around the maelstrom of human activity and through a door. They entered an elevator and rode up one level. The doors opened on a scene of calm and quiet. After the chaos of downstairs, anything would seem calm by comparison. Here there were no phones ringing, no papers being shuffled, here was the calm of order and discipline.
Jason led her to a large cubicle with a computer, a few notebooks, and a massive amount of books crammed into every available space. There were books on chemistry, architecture, art, and history. Ansuya was impressed at the amount of knowledge crammed into such a small space.
“You’ve done well for yourself, Jason. Have you had a promotion?” Ansuya asked looking over the work space.
“Well,” he began, “Not so much a promotion as just being handed more work to do.” He said sitting down, idly awakening his computer. “So,” he said suddenly, “What brings you here this fine, chaotic morning?” he asked with a smile.
Ansuya did not return the smile, “I have this,” she said holding up the phone sim card. “I need for you to tell me everything you can about this man.”
Jason took the sim card looking at it skeptically. He plugged it into his reader and pulled up the file folders on his computer. He dug around the sim card directories till he found the right pictures folder. He opened up the pictures.
“Who is this?” he asked studying the man’s, face from different photos, some out of focus some not.
“I am told his name is Brian,” Ansuya answered also studying the man. She was certain that he was one of the vampires that had helped Kenneth assault her that long ago night on the rooftops. There was something in his eyes that she couldn’t help but recognize.