3

The NYPD guys call us "bug cops" 'cause we work with aliens. If a job has any alien involvement at all, it gets turned over to StarNet. The police really don't like getting all hot and heavy into a case, then suddenly getting yanked off of it like a dog on a leash that just discovered something nasty to roll in. They also dislike the fact we carry sidearms and sometimes have to break the laws a little to accomplish our own jobs. Because I'd wanted to be one of them when I was a kid, I still knew a few and was friendly enough with them, mostly off the clock. So I was pickin' up a pie at my favorite pizza place when I overheard a table full of them discussing a rash of particularly gruesome murders that had begun Halloween night. The only connection between them seemed to be their astonishingly horrific nature. They rued the fact that the FBI would likely get involved if there was any evidence it turned out to be the work of one or more serial killers.

"Serial killers don't organize," one guy was insisting, gesturing as he spoke over a basket of glistening garlic knots. "I mean, sometimes you hear of someone training someone else to kill—usually someone younger like a kid relative—but unless you're talking about a cult or something, most serial killers work alone."

"I think it is a cult," piped up a cop who must diet like crazy once a year to pass the annual physical, a very fine piece of mozzarella dangling from the side of his chin like he was trying to grow a one-hair beard. "None of the murders have been identical. I mean, there's no recognizable style. Serial killers find a way that feels good to them, something efficient they can refine like an art. These killings look like the work of several different, twisted, sadistic minds, each one trying to outdo the other."

Then one I'd thought was male until I heard her voice added, "Maybe it's a competition."

"It feels more like experimentation," said a solemn-faced guy with thinning hair. "There's also the fact we've found no prints of any kind, no trace of the killer or killers. That one that looked like the guy must've swallowed a live grenade? Like someone painted the walls with him after running him through a blender? How was there no foot print? No tread print made in blood? There's no sign of breaking and entering. Most of them had their doors locked."

"It is New York," the youngest one pointed out.

"Thank you," thinning hair guy said. "There were what? Two that seemed to've been killed by something that ripped out their guts, but without any marks on their bodies aside from some explosive force? One whose insides were Jell-O like she'd been dropped from the top of a high-rise, but her exterior was intact. I mean, some of this stuff just doesn't make any sense."

To them, maybe, but I knew things about a specific alien we dealt with that I had yet to reveal to my supervisor.

"Ask the Bug Cop!" I heard, and watched everyone at the table turn my way.

I blinked at them blankly. "What?"

"You heard about these murders lately? Freaky stuff goin' on since Halloween?"

"Freakier than usual?"

One of the guys lifted a hand as if to wave then let it drift downward as he uttered a syllable of derision.

I persisted, "Like what?"

"Like nothin'," the female grunted. She told her comrades, "We don't even know for sure this stuff's connected."

"Somehow…it is," the youngest guy muttered.

"Thirty even," said a blonde behind the cash register, pushing a flat box toward me.

I looked skeptically at the box and lifted the lid to reveal the steaming disc inside. "What, for this? I said extra-large. This is a medium at best."

She shrugged, chewing gum, one hand waiting for a payment.

The cops at the table were laughing at me. I didn't care. Sounded like they could use a little levity.

"You're tellin' me this is an extra-large?"

She was maybe twenty. Hair chopped and messy. Makeup looked like she'd slept in it. I had no idea if her appearance was intentional or not. "We got large, we got extra-large, we got two XL. You wanna two X? Be another twenty-five minutes."

I raked my fingers through my wallet for cash. "Oh, I get it. Small is now large. Medium is extra. Large is what you call your double XL. Rip-off."

She smiled as she grabbed the bills from me. "Nobody sells a small pizza. Nobody's even seen a medium before. Maybe you're thinkin' of a personal lunch-size pizza."

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. Whoever heard of a fourteen inch pizza being called extra-large? Before I'd left for deep space ten years back on a special mission, people weren't trying so hard or so blatantly to rip other people off. I thought I'd be grateful and ecstatic to be back home. Often I was angered, amazed, and just plain frustrated. I held my palm out for the change and the girl smiled at me again as she dumped it in a plastic coffee can with the word TiPS scrawled on it in Sharpie. When she turned away to grab another pie, I reached in and fished out my ten. Psychically, I knew the cops had seen me do it. Irritable, I left no tip and stalked out the door. I'd gone half a block before I remembered I had left Amanda sitting on a bench along the wall, watching football on a TV mounted over the counter. With a grunt, I turned back to retrieve her.