This scene starts okay, then becomes goofy. But I’ll post it anyway because it introduces the teenagers, who become more important in later scenes.
Ray Andollo had reverted to the dentist’s office. Given that everyone in the place was freaking out, including him, he decided not to stay for his semi-annual drilling.
By the time he got to the precinct it was in chaos. There were robberies happening all over Sacramento. Why is it that the first people to recover from any disaster were robbers? It always happened that way. Any spectacular event that distracted people from their normal business was an opening, and criminals knew how to fill it.
There were remarkably few murders. And the riots that the police had feared didn’t happen. Or hadn’t happened yet, anyway.
Then Andollo got the call from the Captain.
“Andollo here.”
“Got something for you,” Captan Morris Quintz said. “Murder. Two eighty two Anton Court.”
Anton Court? That was where the murder had happened yesterday. The double murder. A cheating wife and her lover. The guy had been caught speeding somewhere in this sticks of Nevada. He had been scheduled for transport home to Sacramento when earth had fallen into the Twilight Zone.
“What do we know so far?” Andollo asked.
“Same two people as yesterday. Zorem Bigote and Faith Roberge. Some of the details have changed, though. Bodies found in different spots. Might be significant. Hard to say.”
“I’m on it. I haven’t seen Patty yet. Is she in?”
“Right behind you,” Patty Yonce said.
“Okay, Captain, we’re ready to go.”
“What is it?” said Patty.
“Double homicide at two eighty two Anton Court. Roberge and Bigote. Sound familiar?”
“Yeah.”
On the drive they talked about what had happened. They had been together in their cruiser, driving to a crime scene, and suddenly they were no longer there.
Ray said, “I was in my dentist’s office. People around me freaking out. I was freaking out. A woman beside me fainted, and her son, maybe four years old, just looked around and said, ‘wicked!’
“I came back here and took the call. How about you?”
“I was… uh… with Kurt.”
Ray laughed. “At 2:30? That’s one hell of a long nooner.”
“Yeah, well, we actually ate first.”
“That’s a good way to get cramps.”
The arrived on Anton Court. A dog met them as they turned onto the street and followed them the hundred yards to the Bigote house. Two cruisers were there. A uniform was talking with two teenage kids.
Ray and Patty got out of their car and approached the uniform and the teenagers.
“Hey, detectives.”
Ray pointed at the two teenagers. “Same as yesterday.”
One of the kids said, “We weren’t sure we heard the gunshots today. There was a lot of noise in our house. Our mom went crazy, and just kept screaming. It took twenty minutes before she would calm down.”
The other teen said, “That’s why we didn’t call right away. We had to take care of our mother.”
Ray asked, “How many shots did you hear?”
“I think three,” the first teen said. “But it might have been more.”
The second teen said, “I think there were only two. Sean made up the third one because we heard three yesterday. I think there were only two today.”
“We’ll get that straightened out,” Ray said. He turned to the uniformed officer. “Anything else out here?”
“Not yet. I’ll let you know if anything turns up. I haven’t checked with the neighbors yet. I’ll do that next.”
Ray and Patty went into the house. One officer was checking the stairway railing for fingerprints.
“Anything?”
“Not yet. Exley and Overton are upstairs.”
They went up the stairs and into the bedroom. Officers Exley and Overton were there.
The dead woman was in a different position this time. She was in a similar location on the floor near the door, but her head pointed away from the door rather than toward it.
The dead man was slumped near the wall beyond the bed. Yesterday he had been half under the bed.
“Looks like Roberge is still angry,” Ray said.
Officer Overton said, “Yeah, it went down pretty much the same way. Some of the details are different. Lover boy’s genitals are still attached to his body, for example.”
Patty said, “That helps to establish the time of death.”
Ray said, “How so?”
“If it’s different, it must be a second killing. This isn’t just leftovers–”
“Leftovers?”
“Sorry, wrong word. I’m still reeling a little bit myself here. What I mean is, if the killing took place before we all came back, before about 2:38, then when everything returned to now–Jesus, it’s hard to figure out how to say that–the killing would already have taken place. If Roberge shot Bigote before that, Bigote wouldn’t have his genitals now. He’d have whatever wounds he had before the thing happened. So these shootings must have happened after we all came back. And that means–I’m assuming that Roberge came back just like everybody else, to the same time–that he killed them a second time.”
“I see. If the murders had happend before we came back, then we’d find them this time in the same condition as last time. But because they are different, these murders must have happened after we came back. And also the original murders must have happened after that time the first time.
“Shit, I see what you mean about how hard it is to talk about timeframes.”
Patty said, “Well, we have a bigger problem than how to talk about timeframes.”
“Oh yeah,” said Ray, “What’s that?”
“We’re dumbasses.”
“Hey, that’s insulting.”
“Well, check this. We’ve been arguing about how the differences in the body positions might indicate whether the murders happened before or after the event, right?”
“Yes, I think you’ve captured it quite nicely.”
“Well, remember when we drove up? Those two kids?”
“Yes, teenagers.”
“They said they heard the gunshots. And they heard them after the event, while their mother was panicking. So clearly the murders happened after the event.”
“Hmmm,” said Ray. “I see what you mean. We’ve been arguing about something we already knew.”
“That’s right.”
“So we truly are dumbasses. How come we didn’t notice that before?”
“Because,” said Patty, “in the last book we weren’t dumbasses. Dale wrote us to be smart. Flawed, but smart. And since our only existence was in those pages, naturally we made the obvious mistake of thinking that that’s how we really were.”
“Now that you say it, it’s obvious! For a dumbass, you’re pretty smart.”
“You betcha,” Patty said, nodding. “Now, if only Dale knew us better, he might know what his story is about.”
Tags: manuscript