CHAPTER THREE
She was in the middle of a foggy street, and she could hear sounds coming from an alleyway to her right. Her partner, Roy, was panting as he ran up to her.
“Let’s go, Tia. Let’s get back to the car,” Roy urged.
Tia put her finger to her lips and drew her weapon. “Did you hear that?”
“Homeless people go missing all the time,” Roy said, looking around uncomfortably. “It sucks bad enough that we have to patrol this neighborhood. Come on, our shift will end in twenty minutes.”
She ignored Roy’s whining and whinging. She might be a rookie cop, but she took her oath and her job seriously. She would serve and protect the people of the city to the best of her ability. She would not sit idly in the patrol car for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was plenty of time. They were still on duty.
Tia glanced at her overweight partner and contemplated asking him to go wait in the car. But any backup was better than no backup at all.
She just hoped that when push came to shove, Roy wouldn’t panic and shoot her in the foot. So far the only thing she had seen him do with speed and enthusiasm was polishing off a whole box of donuts.
She and Roy had been assigned to patrol one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Almost every alley was filled with homeless people sleeping in cardboard boxes.
The residents of this run-down, neglected neighborhood didn’t trust the police but they never gave Roy and Tia any trouble. Tia had seen quite a few of the residents come out and feed the homeless on some cold nights. They were poor and they didn’t have much, but they didn’t forget those who had even less.
The crime rate in that neighborhood was surprisingly low. And Tia realized that the residents actually looked out for the people living in their neighborhood. The homeless community was also part of the neighborhood. They were homeless and destitute, but they were people and the residents saw them as such.
But in recent weeks, a few of the residents had come up to Roy and Tia and reported in hushed tones that there was something strange going on. Homeless folks were going missing. Those people had simply disappeared without a trace. “No one knows what happened to them. One night they’re there, the next day they’re gone.”
Tia had filed a report with her superiors, but no one took any interest in the case. “Homeless people go missing all the time,” was what her boss said before closing the file. “We don’t have the resources to investigate a non-case, Tia.”
It wasn’t a non-case to Tia. If the higher-ups wouldn’t investigate, she would. She had sworn to serve and protect the community, and she would do her job. The homeless were part of the community too.
“We don’t have to patrol the alleys, you know. Just the main streets,” Roy groused. But he came along anyway. He didn’t leave her and go back to the patrol car. Roy wasn’t a bad guy, but after being passed over for one too many promotions, he couldn’t remember why he became a police officer in the first place.
The muffled scream was what made Tia draw her weapon. She knew that Roy had heard it too. The fear in his eyes gave him away, even though he did his best to avoid her question.
“In there.” Tia gestured with her gun.
Nervously, they pushed into the alley together. There were overflowing dumpsters, shopping carts and overturned cardboard boxes lining the dark alley.
From the spilled food and discarded shoes and clothes on the ground, it looked like the inhabitants of those cardboard boxes had vacated the alley in a great hurry.
Tia saw a shadow move at the end of the alley and aimed her gun at a target she couldn’t quite see. “H-help...”
The whimpered plea was abruptly cut off. Tia rushed deeper into the alley, but was stopped by a vicious blow to her face. She dropped to the ground and managed to roll away just before a broken baseball bat smashed down at the spot she had been just a heartbeat ago.
Tia scrambled up and fired a shot. The figure moved and the bullet lodged in the wall behind him.
She blinked hard and saw a thin man wearing a black hoodie emerging from the shadows. He had a pale, thin face and there was a zigzag scar between his eyebrows. He threw the baseball bat to the side and snarled. “Get lost. You saw nothing. Understand?”
“Y-yeah,” Roy squeaked behind her. “Tia, let’s go!”
Tia pointed her gun at the man and saw that there were two of them. His accomplice was standing behind him, holding two homeless people by the scruff of their necks. One seemed to have lost consciousness, but the other was struggling weakly, blood trickling down his face.
“Let them go,” Tia ordered.
The man took a step back but his eyes remained on Tia. “We don’t like to kill cops. Too messy. But we will do what is necessary.”
Tia’s finger tightened on the trigger. That thug had just threatened an officer.
“Put your hands up where I can see them,” she shouted. “Let those people go. Roy, cuff him. Roy!”
Roy stammered and began to shuffle away. “Tia, I don’t think...”
Tia turned to glare at her partner over her shoulder.
Big mistake.
The thug came at her and slammed her to the ground. She squeezed off a shot but unbelievably, she missed. The guy had managed to dodge her shot, even at such close range.
“Go!” the thug hissed to his accomplice.
“No! Stop!” Tia yelled and fired again.
But they had vanished.
The accomplice had literally disappeared with the two homeless people. One second they were against the wall at the end of the alley, the next second they were gone.
Where could they have gone? It was a dead end.
How the hell could they have gotten away?
The thug with the zigzag scar was retreating into the shadows, and she fired furiously at him. She couldn’t let this one get away as well.
“Roy!” she screamed, hoping her partner would move his butt and do something.
To her shock, Roy charged forward. Maybe he finally found his courage. Maybe he remembered his oath. Maybe he didn’t care any more.
Two shots rang out.
Both Tia and Roy dropped to the ground. Tia managed to raise her arm and fire one last shot, and she thought she saw the thug’s eyes glow with an eerie red light before her vision blurred.
Tia was young, fit and fast, but Roy wasn’t. She had moved just a fraction to her right when the shot sounded, and that movement saved her life. The bullet tore into her shoulder, instead of through her heart.
She looked up again, and saw just the wall.
The alley was completely empty.
Only Tia and her dead partner lay in that dark, dirty alley.