“That's not the point. It might be right.”
Sound The Alarm: The City Is Burning
By: William McNeal
As the frustration builds in the streets over the investigation into the death of George Hobbes, the city's police have not felt the need to make an official statement in order to comfort the citizens, and stave off panic. That mistake can be added to a long tally of missteps by the department, which has led to the widespread belief that they are either unwilling or incapable of doing their jobs. That sentiment has been expressed before in these pages, and is not without merit.
The public outcry must have finally reached fever pitch, either that or a sense of guilt has overcome someone in the public relations division, because a formal statement about the status of the investigation has finally been made public. As expected, it is not the transparent account the people deserve from their public servants, nor is it an encouraging sign regarding the future.
The crux of the statement lies in the fact that the detectives working the case have made progress in finding a lead, but that nothing concrete has yet been found. This sounds like rampant spin, the kind that is covering up for the fact that there are no leads to follow, and the case is frozen in place.
That is the official line, but my sources tell me a different story. The information I have been given is that there has indeed been a breakthrough in the case, and the detectives are working on a promising new lead. The problem is that the lead does not come in the form of a clue, but in the form of yet another crime.
I have it on good authority that the deceased, George Hobbes, was the victim of an abduction the day before his murder. Rather than an encouraging sign that the investigation has forward momentum, it is a frightening sign that yet another crime had occurred without the police being aware. The fact that a prominent citizen of this city could be abducted without anyone noticing is profoundly disturbing.
The police will try to explain this development away, they will claim there was no way for them to know about such a crime without someone calling it in. That's precisely the problem. If the police have to rely on the people to do their jobs for them, we are all marked for death.
The police cannot keep us safe. That much is proven. What will we do about it?
Chapter 22
A Lucid Nightmare
Each morning was the coming of a new curse, like a magician performing a mean-spirited trick on an unsuspecting audience. As he lay awake in the moments before forcing himself to rise and face the day, Knox often thought that it would have been preferable if fate had decided to take him in his sleep. Waking to this world, day after day, was a lucid nightmare. It was a form of divine punishment for a sin he could not remember well enough to atone for, to be sentenced, every single day, to the horrible moment of remembering where he was.
To his mind, a perfect day would be one where he did not wake at all, where he would be allowed to forget about the death and disease that ravaged the place he called home. He thought about these things as he waited for the alarm to sound, for the digital bleating to cry out in such tortured tones that he would have no choice but to sit up and let the sleep slough off from his body. It was a pointless fit of indolence, he knew, to spend those minutes consumed with thoughts of what he desired not to do, rather than utilizing them for anything productive. Life was like that, an endless series of opportunities to waste your existence in between mandated stops along the way.
With that assumption in place, Detective Knox wondered what was the point of life, why we made the effort to live and breathe each day, when we got so little in return, and the end could come so quickly. The logician in his head could not be silenced, and Knox became consumed by the ugly thought that perhaps nothing mattered. He tried to shake the thought free, to break the bond tying him to it, but a new shoot grew every time he sawed off the limb.
Detective Knox's internal clock never failed, and as he turned his head to the side, he watched the colors change shape with the passing hour, as the wretched noise rose from the tiny box. He let out a deep rush of air, and threw his hand off the edge of the bed, where it landed heavily atop the clock. Each day he hoped the plastic would grow brittle enough to crack under the pressure, for the circuitry to burst forth like the innards of a fatal wound, but the cheap device persisted. It was, like the roaches, one of the last things in the world that would die.
Kat enjoyed the mornings, the crispness of the air, the singing of the birds. They were her favorite times, not least because her husband was fast asleep, and unable to ruin her enjoyment by pointing out all the flaws. She regretted feeling as she did, but she preferred her husband when he was unconscious, because these were the most intimate times they shared. She could open herself up, tell him all the things she knew he didn't want to listen to, in the hope that some of them would sink into his subconscious.
Every morning, as Detective Knox stumbled into the kitchen, she would stare at him and wonder how two human beings could be wired so differently, could see the same world as such radically different places. It never occurred to her that such a huge difference should have ruled them incompatible. It was a fact, no different to any other, rather than a grand pronouncement on the subject of his humanity.
Kat poured the coffee as her husband took his seat, his mind clearly somewhere else. The dark aroma would coax him back into the world of the living, and perhaps leak through and warm his heart. As he took his first sip, he looked up at Kat, and for the first time in ages did not see the expected smile.
“What's wrong? You don't seem like yourself.”
“Relax, I'm fine. You didn't miss any clues, so there's nothing to worry about.”
“So what is it?”
“It's you, not me.”
“You've been waiting to use that line for a long time, haven't you?”
“I have indeed.”
Kat winked as she said this, an affectation Detective Knox was not fond of. He preferred the plain-spoken, being blunt and honest, without the vagueness that comes from subtext. Despite all appearances, his world was black and white at its foundation.
“So what did I do this time?”
“You didn't do anything.”
“This is getting old very fast. Will you please just tell me what's going on?”
“Read the paper. It's right in there.”
Knox grabbed the flimsy rag, peering to make out the fuzzy type. The Herald was no prestigious bastion of journalism, a fact it took full advantage of. Whether through corporate greed, general incompetence, or a sense of morality making sure people did not realize the extent of the city's problems, the news arrived each morning weak and torn, the type blurred and smeared, perhaps by the tears of the unfortunate delivery people who mistakenly read the headlines as they moved up and down the streets.
The headline was clear, resonating in his head as Knox continued reading. The words were daggers, chipping away at his icy exterior, the anger seeping through the cracks. In all his years as a detective, never before had his abilities, nor his very dedication to the job, been questioned, let alone publicly. The editorial was not just an attack on the police, but on him personally, a broadside that caught him with full force.
“This is absolute garbage.”
“I know it is, but what can you do about it? People are going to think what they're going to think.”
“Thinking it is one thing, but printing it is something else.”
“Did you ever hear of a thing called freedom of the press?”
“That doesn't mean they're free to write lies that are going to cause people to panic. It's irresponsible, it's despicable, and everyone who had a hand in that piece should be praying to their deity for forgiveness.”