21: Don't Leave Me This Way
Tuesday 15th September, 1998
Amber wasn't in a good mood. Her plans for a pleasant weekend hadn't materialised. She'd been called into work early on Saturday morning and had spent the entire day running around looking into assault cases instead of taking Jason to the baseball game he'd wanted to see.
She'd spent most of Sunday at Joseph's apartment, helping Hank and Amelia Frost sort through the last few boxes of their son's belongings. They'd spent the past six weeks clearing out their son's apartment, a process slowed considerably by the fact that his mother would burst into tears whenever a family photo or treasured childhood memento was unearthed, and would have to be comforted for some time before they could continue.
Amber had gone over a couple of times to help them, and one night she'd even gone over there on her own, just to walk around the place where Joseph had lived. It was stupid, but she'd felt a little closer to him, somehow, for being where he'd been and handling things he'd owned. Everything still smelled of him; clothes, cutlery, books, even bath towels and the sheets on the bed. It was as though he still lived there, still picked out clothes from the dresser every morning and went home each night to sleep in those sheets.
Sunday had been the first time since Joseph's death that she hadn't cried. Mrs Frost had been as emotional as ever, and had even sounded insulted that Amber didn't seem more upset. Her husband and Joseph's brother, Paul, who'd come over to help, had both apologised for the words she'd said, but things had escalated from there until Amber had finally stormed out of the apartment, vowing never to set foot in it again.
Not that she needed to. The place had been thoroughly cleared out, and scrubbed until she could see her face in every surface. There was nothing left of Joseph there now; it had all been piled into boxes and carted away in his parents' station-wagon. She doubted that she'd speak to the Frosts any time soon, either. They'd been quite close once, but after Joseph's mother had wailed that she didn't care about their son now that he was dead… well, that was a hurt too deep to forgive easily. She'd sobbed all the way home in the car.
Even Jill had been able to offer little comfort or advice. Amber had told her a little while ago about Tim's money and what she intended to do with it. She'd called Jill last night to ask her where she thought she should start with her counter-Umbrella campaign, but instead Jill had dropped a bombshell:
"I'm leaving town, Amber. I'm heading out to join Chris and Barry out in… well, actually, I'd better not tell you right now. I don't think this is a secure line. I'll call you sometime and fill you in on the details. I've sent word to Brad through one of my contacts and I've asked him to keep an eye on things here."
"You mean me, right?"
"Well, you, my cat, my apartment. Things generally. Maybe not in that order. You know what I mean. He said he would, anyway."
"When are you leaving?"
"I can't say. Not here. Come and see me tomorrow. I'll tell you more then."
It had been a devastating exchange, considering that they'd been best friends right through school and had always told each other everything. She knew why Jill couldn't tell her everything now, and of course she understood, but… still, it hurt, knowing that her best friend couldn't confide in her the way she used to.
But that was the thing, wasn't it? Jill hadn't changed - not really. She was more secretive and more suspicious of others than before, which wasn't surprising, but she was still the same old Jill, full of common sense, subtle humour and the passionate sense of justice and humanity that made her who and what she was. She still liked classic novels, collecting cacti, complaining about the baseball and rolling her eyes at the old sci-fi movies and romantic comedies that she secretly loved watching. Despite all that she'd been through, there was nothing that could change that cool head or that kind heart.
She hadn't changed, either. She was still Amber Bernstein. She hoped and dreamed and feared and believed the same things that she always had. The only differences in her had been brought on by the stress of her situation. In fact, that was the only thing that had changed about her and Jill - the world which they now inhabited. And that was something that they could change right back. Of course they could.
At least, she kept telling herself that, as she mounted the stairs up to the west wing's second floor corridor, passing David Ford on his way down to the darkroom. She reminded herself over and over, as she walked down the corridor, past the weird Greek god-hero-type statue and through the door into the STARS office corridor, that everything would be all right and that the three-man STARS mission abroad would be fine and take down one of the world's biggest and most influential multi-national corporations, while she held the fort at home… entirely on her own. Yeah. No problem.
She knocked on the office door and waited a moment or two for an answer.
"Come in," came a soft, hesitant reply.
Amber opened the door and saw Jill sitting on the edge of her desk, wiping her eyes with a crumpled tissue.
"Jill? Oh, hon - are you all right?"
She rushed over to Jill and gave her the biggest hug that she could. Jill returned it, more feebly, then said:
"Close the door. I need to talk to you."
Amber let go and went to close the door. It shut with a little noise that seemed too loud in the quiet room. Even the hum of Jill's computer sounded louder than usual; it was as though the lack of other sounds seemed to amplify the ones that were still there.
"Are you all right?" she said again.
This time Jill nodded.
"Yeah, I'm okay. Just got a little choked-up back there. I just…"
She stopped mid-sentence, and looked around her.
"I just can't believe I'm really leaving, that's all."
"Well, you said you needed to quit," said Amber. "I mean, you only get so many days' leave for taking down big evil corporations before they start asking you to do it on your own time. And you must be out of sick days and grandmother's funerals by now."
"That's one way to put it. But yeah, I'm going to be gone for a while, depending on how things go, and Irons sure as hell isn't going to hold the job open for me," said Jill. "I want to come back one day, if I can, but until then I'm relying on you to keep things sane around here."
"Things are getting saner," said Amber. "People are starting to wonder more now. They're asking more questions about what's happening out there. Tim's on our side now, too, which is a start."
"Two and a half million dollars agrees with that statement," said Jill. "I can't believe he really did that."
"I know," said Amber. "I still don't know where to start putting it where my mouth is. I don't think anybody's got a mouth big enough for that kind of money."
Jill laughed.
"I'm going to miss you, Amb," she said, a touch wistfully. "I wish you were coming with us. I'm not going to get much in the way of decent conversation for a while. Things in that department have definitely gone downhill since Rebecca left. I mean, Barry's a great guy, but these days he mostly talks about his family, and Chris - well, you know how Chris is."
"Chris talks about Chris."
"Exactly. Have you heard from Rebecca, by the way?"
"Yeah, she says she got in touch with her family and they're doing fine. She mentioned something about coming home for Thanksgiving and meeting up with a friend of hers in the next state."
Amber thought about Billy Coen, and wondered momentarily where the man was now. Had Rebecca managed to catch up with him yet?
"You know what, I'm glad she's out of it," said Jill, interrupting the thought. "Rebecca's a good kid and I know she's more than capable of helping us out, don't get me wrong, but… oh, I don't know. I just didn't have the heart to put her through it all over again. She's been through enough already."
"I know what you mean. I'm glad she decided to take a career break."
If you could call it that…
Jill nodded.
"Me too. Anyway, I'm leaving on the 30th. Chris and Barry are in France and I'm flying out overnight to meet them there. I'll call you when I arrive, but after that, don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. We'll have to keep contact to a minimum to avoid being tracked."
"Maintaining radio silence?"
"Right. But I'll talk to you before then, so don't worry. I'll keep you posted on everything I can."
"Jill?"
"Yeah? What is it?"
Amber swallowed the lump that was starting to build in her throat.
"I don't want you to go," she said, in a small voice. "I know it's stupid - I know it is - but I don't want you to go. I'm worried I won't see you again if you do."
"I know," said Jill, with a wretched look on her face. "I don't really want to leave the city when there are zombies out on the streets, but Chris and Barry need me."
"But I need you here too!" Amber burst out. "I don't know what to do with all this money! I don't know how to undermine Umbrella, or conduct a full-tilt investigation on my own, or what to do when zombies break into my house in the middle of the night! You always know what to do, and once you're gone, I won't have anyone I can talk to about this stuff! I know you keep saying I'll be fine, but I really can't do this on my own! Nobody can!"
This time, it was Jill who got up and gave her a hug.
"Yes, you can," she said. "Believe it or not, I don't know much more than you do about taking on an entire corporation. Chris and Barry say they've got everything worked out but half the time I feel like we're flying by the seat of our pants with this thing. I know it's a lot to leave on your shoulders, but I know you'll come up with a plan. And if you really need someone else to turn to, you can always ask Brad for help. He's a pretty good listener, and he can give you more advice than I can about conducting investigations. Maybe you should give him a call sometime."
She patted Amber on the back, then let her go. Amber looked down at the floor while she digested these words. She glanced back up at Jill, who was thumbing through the letters in her in-tray.
"What if something happens to you?"
"I'll be fine, Amb. I can take care of myself. I'll be back before you know it, anyway. You'll probably be so busy kicking Umbrella's ass that you won't even notice I'm gone."
"I doubt it," said Amber.
"Oh, you will," said Jill, smiling. "You'll be absolutely fine."
Amber noticed something on the desk, just behind the spot where Jill had been sitting. She peered past her friend, and saw that it was a bouquet of flowers; some large yellow ones with broad petals, a few sprays of white flowers, and a couple of pink-red tulips, all neatly arranged in a red wicker basket.
"Oh, would you look at those?" she remarked. "They're gorgeous."
"Rita and the guys downstairs sent them up for me," said Jill, blushing. "Aren't they pretty? I didn't think some of them cared, the way they've been acting around me lately. I know Edward and Carlsen think I'm crazy and Fulham gives me weird looks whenever I go past him."
"Well, the rest of us still care about you," said Amber, picking up the card attached to them. "Maybe Tim and I are the only ones who know what really happened out there, but, you know, the rest of them will come around eventually."
"I don't think the zombies are going to give them much choice," said Jill, her expression settling into a frown. "Those attacks are on the rise all the time. Are they still calling them in as assaults and domestic disputes?"
"And a few road-rages, too," said Amber. "But mostly they're out looking for whatever killed the twins outside City Hall."
Jill sighed.
"Those poor kids," she said. "They didn't stand a chance. The worst thing is, we could have saved them, if only people had been willing to listen to us. We could have followed reports of monster and zombie sightings and taken them out, tried to contain the infection. Now it's just spreading faster and faster."
"Hey, did they give you doughnuts as well?" said Amber, picking up a box marked with the local bakery's logo.
Jill smiled.
"No, those are from Kenny," she said. "He brought them up to me earlier. They're kind of stale. I think they were leftovers. Still, it was a nice thought."
"He's a good kid," said Amber. "I worry about him sometimes. Sounded like he doesn't really have anyone to look out for him."
"I already warned him to leave town," said Jill. "I think he knows something's up. Whether he'll actually leave, well… you know how kids his age are. I think they want to believe that everything's going to be all right in the end."
"I think everybody does," said Amber.
"I wish I did," said Jill, with a heavy sigh that made her shoulders sag even lower. "Help yourself to the doughnuts. The coffee's fresh, Kenny brought it up with him. I can't drink it all by myself and it'll get cold."
She sat back down on the edge of her desk. Amber pulled up Jill's chair and sat down, then pulled a doughnut out of the box.
"Mmm, boysenberry. Must be one of Rita's. She's the only one downstairs who asks for boysenberry filling. Still, this is nice. You know, for a change."
"Yeah. End of your shift yet? I saw you come in early again today."
"Nah, I've got a while to go. We're all on double shifts right now, and I seem to be working extra just to keep up lately. Damn Chief and his restricted duties kept me pinned down with paperwork for a fortnight. I finished it but I'm still trying to catch up with all the other stuff I have to do."
"Are you still on restricted duty?"
"In theory, yes. I shouldn't be patrolling or be involved in pretty much any form of active police work. Unfortunately we're so stretched, two weeks was all he could keep me back for. We need all hands on deck right now, and that's the truth."
Jill looked sympathetic.
"Poor you. At times like these I miss being on patrol, and all the other stuff I used to do. I liked street work."
"Me too. I don't do so much nowadays. Ever since I got the lieutenant promotion, it seems to be more desk work and less of the stuff I actually signed up to do. You know, patrols, catching criminals, all that good old-fashioned stuff."
"You're fortunate you still get to do it. Some people in your position are glued to desks all day."
"I know. Luckily for me, we still need police lieutenants to help out with the practical side of things, what with the ongoing Masefield Park situation."
"Masefield Park is a situation."
"Yep. And now zombies on top of all that. Soon I'll be lucky if I'll have any time to get the admin done at all."
"Out of interest, what are they doing about the zombies they find attacking people?"
"We haven't had any in the custody suite, if that's what you mean. The ones we have come across seem to get taken out because they won't stop attacking people when ordered, or they try going for officers when we get there and they get shot down in self-defence. I think there was one in a police siege in Fairview just the other day."
Jill looked thoughtful.
"I'm actually curious to see how you arrest and interview a zombie. I guess it'll only be a matter of time before someone infected gets brought in and turns in one of the cells."
Amber shivered.
"Don't. I hope we've got the good sense not to bring anyone infected back to the station. The more of them try to assault armed police officers and get shot, the better. Having zombies in the basement is the last thing we need right now."
"Yeah, let's keep them on the outside. Oh, and speaking of keeping stuff… I'm going to lock up the office on my way out tonight. Is it okay if I leave the key with you? I don't trust the Chief not to start going through our stuff the minute we're all gone."
"Sure," said Amber. "I'm staying late tonight anyway. Leave it with me and I'll make sure nobody disturbs anything."
"Thanks," said Jill. "At least I know we'll have something we can come back to if you're keeping an eye on the place."
"Well, you've got plenty to come back to," said Amber.
"I hope you're right about that," said Jill, but then she shook herself. "No, you're right. I'll probably be back before I know it."
"Yeah, here's hoping the Chief'll be gone by then," said Amber. "Imagine how the interview would go for the new job application."
"The words "lead" and "balloon" are springing to mind for some reason," said Jill. "Hmph. Do us all a favour and see if you can get his sorry ass out of the precinct. There are some good people here and they'll only get better when he's gone."
"If there's anything I can do to get him out of here, believe me, I will," said Amber, with feeling. "But right now you should be worrying about keeping yourself in shape. Leave the precinct to the rest of us. It's not your problem any more."
"No, it's not," said Jill, and she smiled. "I'm free now. Free to give hell to whoever it's due."
And the look in her eyes left no doubt in Amber's mind that she would.
xxxxxxxxxx
Amber chewed fretfully on the end of her pen. She was supposed to be catching up on yet more paperwork, but all she could think about was having to go on patrol later. Her last patrol had ended with the discovery of the blood-covered, mutilated bodies of two little girls. The sight of blood on red hair was something that was still creeping back to haunt her during quiet moments…
She bit down hard on the pen. She had to stop torturing herself like this. Doc Fenton had told her, quite firmly, that there had been nothing that she could have done to rescue the twins from their fate. They'd been killed before she and Kevin had even left the station. They couldn't possibly have known at that point that anything was amiss and wouldn't have been able to reach them in time even if they had known. And that was most definitely, as he'd said, that.
She didn't want to go out on patrol this afternoon. She didn't want to know what she and Officer McGraw would find while they were out there. She and David were being sent out to circle Coburg, and the City Hall area in particular. She knew for a fact there were zombies out there, maybe even the ones who killed the twins. And if she found them, she'd have to shoot them with a gun that she wasn't supposed to have, and then have a great deal of explaining to do.
Oh, stop it, scoffed her internal cop. Protecting the public is what you signed up for, woman! If you don't want to go out there because you're scared of danger, then you might as well hand in your badge and call it a day. The reason you're going out there is to make the neighbourhood a little less dangerous. As for explaining, well, in a few days you've got to explain everything you've ever done anyway. So what if you add something else to the list?
"Not like it'll change anything," she murmured.
Tim looked up.
"Huh?" he said. "You say something, Amb?"
"Sorry, Tim, just talking to myself."
"Bad habit, but we've all got 'em, so what the hell. Something on your mind?"
Amber dropped her pen and put her head in her hands.
"Oh, Tim, it's those kids. Those little girls. I can't get them out of my head. I know we couldn't have done anything, but…"
He grimaced.
"I know. Part of you always thinks you could have gone out on patrol earlier, or walked a different way. But you heard what the Forensics guys said. By the time we knew they were gone, they were already dead. We did all we could then, and we're doing all we can now. I'm trying not to beat myself up too much about it."
"Succeeding?"
Tim shook his head.
"Nah. Tears me apart just thinking about it. I shut my eyes at night and I just see those little backpacks, and blood spatters halfway up the wall."
"How's Bob holding up?"
"He's doing okay. Not a good first homicide, but I think he'll be all right in a couple of days."
"No such thing as a good homicide," Amber pointed out.
"Yeah, but - oh, come on, you know what I mean! Hauling a dead coke dealer full of bullet holes out of the river is one thing. You expect that kind of stuff on the job and nobody's too sorry when it happens. But a pair of dead schoolgirls with bite-marks on their necks is definitely at the wrong end of the nasty spectrum. Some murders are a lot worse than others, is basically what I'm trying to say here."
"I know what you mean, Tim."
"Then you're just yanking my chain," said Tim. He rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, but I'm not really in the mood. Kenny's dragging some newbies around the station. That means I've got to give them the union spiel later, and I haven't had enough sleep for newbies asking me lots of questions about pension plans and the RPRA."
The sound of approaching voices and footsteps came into earshot, and stopped near the door of the west office.
"Talk of the devil," said Tim, looking up. "That sounds like them now."
The door opened and five people entered the room. One was Kenny Feng, the high-school intern; the other four were dressed in police uniform but were all young, very clearly new, and looking around them with varying degrees of interest. The first of the three male officers was a strikingly tall man with a swarthy complexion, the beginnings of a goatee and a pro-wrestler's perfectly-honed physique. The second was a shorter man with spiky red hair, who was smirking. The third man had a more friendly demeanour, with dirty-blond hair, bright blue eyes and high cheekbones which would surely attract plenty of female attention. The fourth was a pretty, petite woman with strawberry-blonde hair tied up in a neat bun.
"This is where you will be stationed," Kenny informed the newcomers, with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the office. "Your desks have yet to be assigned, but the Chief will find room for you. The lockers at the front end of the room there are meant to store your stuff, though it's popular among the officers to just use the underneath of their desks."
"Oh, you're not supposed to let out our dirty little secrets, Kenny," Amber whispered to Kenny, getting up as he passed her desk.
Kenny turned around, grinning, but when he saw who'd been talking to him, he looked slightly taken aback. She wasn't sure why he looked so startled, although it had been a while since they'd last bumped into each other. Perhaps he thought she'd left, like Jill and the other members of STARS?
"Listen to the little guy talk so formally to the recruits," said David McGraw, clearly amused by Kenny's efforts to look and sound official, and he clapped a hand on Amber's shoulder. "If I didn't know any better, Kenny, I'd say you're being the bully over here!"
Amber smiled. Good old David. He'd been out on patrol a lot lately, but when he was around, he always seemed to keep people's spirits high. It was a shame he couldn't spend more time in the west office. He was an easy person to talk to, and a good listener if you had a problem weighing heavily on your shoulders. He was also more tactful than Kevin, who had a weakness for inappropriate jokes at inopportune moments, and not as distracted by family problems as Marvin and Tim currently were.
Kenny looked mildly annoyed by this interruption.
"Officer McGraw, I'm trying to do some work here," he said, through gritted teeth.
"You'll have to forgive our Kenny," said David, smiling, as he approached the new recruits. "He doesn't mean to have a stick shoved up his ass, but he's got a killer work ethic. Officer David McGraw here! And I'm lookin' forward to working with the lot of you!"
"And I'm Officer Amber Bernstein," Amber said, following him over and shaking each new officer's hand, one by one. "Kenny's an awesome worker here, and if he was getting paid, I'm sure he'd be making more than all of us."
She gave Kenny's hair an affectionate ruffle on her way back to her desk. Kenny looked more than a little embarrassed by this, but he smiled at her anyway. She noticed that the new female officer was smiling as well, while the blond guy whispered a question to David about how old the station's intern was. He looked surprised by the reply, and she noticed an uncomfortable-looking Kenny mumble a correction about his real age.
"Well, we'd better let you guys finish up the tour of this place," Amber said, deciding to cut in before Kenny sank into the ground from the sheer weight of teenage embarrassment. "You have a lot of ground to cover. It was so nice meeting all of you!"
"It's time to check out the second floor of the west wing," Kenny said hastily, leading the new recruits past the lockers and out of the room, "after which we will have a short break and recommence with a tour of the east wing and the basement levels…"
The door closed behind them. No sooner had they gone then Rita gave a loud sigh and started fanning herself with the report she was supposed to have been writing.
"Did you see the new blond guy?" she announced. "Boy, was he a cutie! I hope they put him on patrol with me…"
There was laughter from the other end of the room.
"Damn, Rita, talk about hot pursuit!"
"Keep Rita away from the handcuffs! Remember what happened last time!"
"Hey Rita, you should ask him out! Maybe he'll let you hold his nightstick!"
"I bet she'd teach him a thing or two out on patrol…"
"Aww, shut up," she said, waving the comments away. "I just said he was cute. Can't a girl show a little interest any more?"
"New girl was a real hottie," remarked Officer Carlsen. "Shame we'll never fit her and the others in here. There's hardly enough room to move in here as it is."
"Carlsen's right, we're never going to fit any more desks in this room," said Marvin, with a glance around the office. "Space is going to be a real issue once these guys start work. I think I'm going to have to ask the Chief if we can start moving people upstairs."
"What? You mean the STARS office?" said Amber, horrified. "Marvin, no!"
"No, he's right," said Rita. "Jill's leaving now, so there's a whole office upstairs sitting empty. If we can take that over and put Kevin, Neil and Elliot upstairs, and maybe two of the newbies, then we should have about enough room down here for everybody."
"But that's the STARS office!" protested Amber.
"Was," Rita reminded her. "Today is Jill's last day. Once she's gone, that's it. It'll take a while to form another STARS unit, assuming there's going to be another STARS unit, and until then, we really need the space. We can always clear out of there and find another spot if we have to make space for new STARS members further on down the line."
"I don't believe this!" Amber said, staring accusingly down at Rita and Marvin. "Jill hasn't even walked out of the building yet and you're already talking about taking over the office and giving her desk to somebody else! It's like you can't wait for her to go! Like you don't even want to admit STARS exists any more!"
"Amber, I hate to break it to you, but it doesn't," said Rita. "The unit's disbanded. Jill's the last one, and now she's gone too. I know it's not a nice conversation and we're all sad about what happened to STARS, but we're desperate for office space. Half the officers in this station are sharing desks as it is."
"How can you be sad about what happened to STARS?" said Amber, her voice rising almost to a shout. "You don't even believe what happened to them! Nobody does! You all called them liars and idiots and drug addicts and now that they've been driven away, you're even taking away the space they've left behind!"
"Whoa, Amber," said Elliot, looking up at her in astonishment. "Calm down, we're not trying to kick out STARS! All we're after is a little extra elbow room, that's all. The office is going to be empty soon."
"Well, it's not empty yet," said Amber, narrowing her eyes. "No thanks to a whole bunch of people here…"
"I think maybe it's time we went on patrol," said David McGraw quickly. "It's getting cooped-up in here and everyone's tired and grouchy. A little more breathing room will do us all some good."
He took Amber by the arm and ushered her out. His grasp on her arm was gentle, but she got the impression that his grip would tighten if she tried to pull away. She took a deep breath in and allowed him to lead her out into the foyer.
"What's got into you lately?" he said, once they were outside the office. "You've been acting strange all day. Is this about Jill leaving? I know she's your friend, but maybe you should - "
"I'm fine, David," said Amber, exhaling. "Sorry. I guess I've just got too much stuff on my mind and too much to do. Here and at home. And I could really use some more coffee."
This time she got a small smile out of him.
"You and everyone else in the building," he said. "Well, we've got time before we need to head out. Why don't we stop off for some on the way?"
xxxxxxxxxx
They called in at Fiorelli's on Main Street and ordered two coffees to take out. David watched as she picked up her cup from the counter and took a sip.
"Feel better?" he said.
She nodded.
"Yeah. I'm sorry about earlier."
"It's okay. Everyone's under pressure back at the station and things are getting a little het up. We're all in the same boat right now, though. I understand exactly what you're going through."
I've lost the love of my life, my best friend's leaving town and going on a mission she might not come back from, my little brother is living on my couch, and on top of all that, I've got to hold down a job protecting people from zombie attacks which we can't predict and, in my own time, work to take down Umbrella in secret using several million dollars of someone else's money, which I have no idea how to start spending. Somehow, David, I don't think you know exactly what I'm going through!
She wanted to shout it out, but swallowed down the angry words instead. Much as she wanted to start venting about her problems, it wouldn't accomplish anything, or at least anything good. She didn't want to risk alienating a good friend - especially now, when she needed good, trustworthy people around more than ever.
David handed the cashier some notes and a handful of change, and they left the café.
"You shouldn't worry about it, you know," David continued, as they walked down the street. "You're not the only one having problems with stress. I heard Kevin had a pretty big blow-out yesterday. You hear about that?"
Amber nearly dropped her coffee cup.
"No! What happened? Is he okay?"
"Yeah, he's all right. He just kind of lost it and started yelling when someone in one of the offices upstairs said something about that case. You know, the one with the twin girls."
"Poor Kevin," said Amber, relaxing again. "I know how he feels. It's the most heartbreaking, frustrating thing, knowing that those girls needed us and we couldn't help them in time. He was so upset about what happened."
"Yeah," said David. "Those poor kids. I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of whoever killed them. If they're attacking children in broad daylight, right by a public place… whoever they are, they're not afraid of getting caught."
"You got that right," said Amber.
She took a sip of her coffee.
"Still don't understand how nobody in City Hall heard anything," said David, shaking his head from side to side. "If they'd been dead for a couple of hours before they were found, then you'd think someone would have heard them yelling at the time, right?"
"Depends on the timing. City Hall closes at four on Thursdays," said Amber. "Might not have been anyone left in the building by the time the kids came by."
David looked incredulous.
"What, nobody working late? Not one person?"
"Guess not."
"Huh," said David. "Well, that's civic service for you. But what about the shopping district? The newspaper office down the street? There must have been people still around, someone who must have heard something…"
"Oh, we had some calls afterwards," said Amber. "Two or three people who said they heard some yelling off in the distance. One guy said he thought it was just some neighbourhood kids fooling around outside the store where he works. He said they're always playing along that stretch, so he didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary. Another guy said he looked out of the window but couldn't see anybody, and someone else said they thought it was just their neighbour's TV turned up too loud."
"Oh, man. You can't help thinking if just one of those people had gone to check it out - "
"Doc Fenton told me that one of the girls died right away and the other didn't survive the attack for very long," said Amber hurriedly. She didn't want to start dwelling on it again. "Even if someone had reached them sooner, they wouldn't have been able to do anything to save them. Odds are, they would have been attacked too."
"Too late to wonder now, anyway. It's done," said David. He took the lid off his coffee and dropped it into a garbage can as he passed by. "Hey, is this a latte? Damn, I thought I ordered an americano. Or whatever they're calling regular coffee these days. Is regular coffee the same as americano, or is that something different?"
"It's still coffee, David. If you'd rather have mine, we can switch."
"Nah, you've been drinking it."
"I don't have cooties."
"Sure, you don't, but you've still been drinking it. Germs and stuff, you know. I'll stick with the latte. What the hell. It's still coffee, right?"
"Yep. Sure is."
They carried on down Main Street. It was a beautiful clear day, although the sunshine didn't feel quite as warm now that they were heading into mid-September. In another week or so, people would stop heading outdoors without jackets on and start thinking about getting their winter coats out of the wardrobe. There would be rain, and greyer skies, and then the Michael Festival at the end of the month.
Ah, the Michael Festival. Back when she was a kid, they'd called it the Raccoon Festival. She had fond memories of the picnics, the annual elementary school play commemorating the story of Raccoon City, the empty patch of land in Haines where they pitched the funfair every year, and best of all, the St Michael Parade, dedicated to the town's patron saint.
She'd loved those parades. They'd been as much a part of her year as Christmas and the Fourth of July. Those memories of silly hats, novelty balloons and showers of bright confetti were as vivid as if they'd happened yesterday. If she closed her eyes, she could almost smell the popcorn and cotton candy, and cordite from the fireworks, and see the smiling beauty queens waving from carnival floats while the Raccoon City High School marching band played "Liberty Bell" and "Stars And Stripes Forever". Most of all, she remembered being a little girl, clutching her father's hand, full of awe and breathless excitement as Main Street became a riot of colour and laughter and music…
"Hey, you all right?"
Amber snapped out of it, and shook her head vigorously to clear out the visions of party streamers and pageants.
"I'm fine," she said. "I was just thinking about the Michael Festival."
"Always wondered why it was called that," said David, as he finished off his latte.
"Wasn't always," said Amber, tossing her empty cup into a garbage can. "Used to be the Raccoon Festival, back when I was a kid. One year they changed it to the Saint Michael Festival, because he's the patron saint around these parts and the parade was named after him anyway. Then when Mayor Warren got himself elected, he decided to drop the "Saint" part. He said people of other faiths might be offended by the religious connotations."
"So he made it sound like the day was all about him instead?"
"He didn't exactly disassociate himself from the festivities when they were renamed, put it that way. There's no connection, of course, but I think he's happy to let everybody think it's the day we get to celebrate his glory. And he isn't exactly in a hurry to set the record straight."
"Huh," said David, sounding disgusted.
"Couldn't have put it better myself. I mean, renaming the town festival after yourself, pretending you didn't, and then acting like you were meant to be the star of the show all along? Talk about conceited."
The conversation tailed off as they walked, and the city noise started to fade back in. Amber had started thinking about the preparations for the Michael Festival security and the altered patrol rosters that Marvin was probably pulling his hair out over even now.
But there'd been a time when the festival had meant more to her than a mildly inconvenient blip in the police force's calendar. It had been about civic pride, celebrating everything that was good about their community and its citizens, and generally being grateful that Raccoon City existed. Part of her still thought of it as the Raccoon Festival, and yearned silently for the sense of childlike wonder that she'd lost somewhere along the years. Back then, the popcorn and the floats and funfair rides had been pretty much the happiest part of the year; drawing her family that tiny bit closer together, and closer to their neighbours and friends, by that great big shared sense of belonging.
She smiled as she let herself remember everything. In her head, memories took over and Main Street became the one she remembered as a child. There were party-poppers, kite shows and treasure hunts, and everywhere she looked, there was noise, colour, music, glitter and joy.
And then something cut through the memory, ripping it apart. The pop of fireworks became a more sudden, violent sound, and the cheers morphed almost seamlessly into cries of terror.
Shocked, Amber looked over at David, and then they started to run towards the sound of the commotion. Screams filled the air ahead. They tried to run faster, to catch up with the sound and whatever was making it, but they slowed their approach when they saw the scene ahead of them.
There was a crowd standing on Main Street, but it wasn't the one she remembered from those crisp autumn evenings. About fifteen teenagers were standing in the street outside a grocery store, and they were staring in shock at a plump, middle-aged man standing in the doorway. The man was holding a shotgun in trembling hands, which was still pointing at the group. On the ground that stood between them was the motionless body of a teenage boy, lying in the centre of a pool of blood.
David paled, and cursed out loud.
"Please tell me the stupid son of a bitch hasn't just done what I think he's just done… damn it, he must have seen the newspapers!"
"Huh?"
David ducked behind the nearest car, and prompted her to do the same. The sound of sirens was already in the air, somewhere off in the direction of the precinct, and the wind was carrying it towards them.
"I had a feeling something like this was going to happen," he said, reaching for his radio. "What with all the zombie stories floating around lately, I figured it wouldn't be long before some stupid bastard took someone for a zombie and put a couple of rounds in their head, but… man, I don't believe this."
His voice was low, quiet and urgent as he spoke into the radio.
"Officer McGraw here… requesting urgent backup and an ambulance down on Main right away. We've got a shooter here and a kid down outside Wrigley's Grocery Store. Suspect is armed with a shotgun and may be unstable."
"Confirmed, backup is on the way. A patrol car should be with you in two minutes. Hang tight."
They got up, drawing their pistols, but didn't rush towards the crowd. They wanted to, desperately, but running towards a man armed with a shotgun and with a group of teenagers still in his sights could easily have provoked more violence or startled the suspect into fleeing. Instead they approached quietly, until they were right on top of the crowd, and tried to position themselves behind the nearest available cover.
One of the girls, a pretty, dainty blonde, was sobbing hysterically beside the boy's body. Her clothes and hands were covered in blood. On either side of her were two boys, trying their best to console her.
Two more girls - a blonde and a Latina girl with dreadlocks - were weeping and hugging another boy, a handsome dark-haired youth who also looked close to tears. However, the rest of the group were angrily confronting the shopkeeper, as though the shotgun in his hand and the fact that he was possibly out of his mind didn't matter in the slightest.
"Look what you did!" snarled a girl with frizzy brown hair, pointing to the body. "You killed him, you idiot! Did you even look at him before you shot him? Well, good job, mate, you got rid of your zombie, 'cause he's dead all right!"
"You murderer!" yelled a boy with a blue baseball cap on his head. "You'll pay for this!"
"Yeah, you ain't gettin' away with this!" shouted another girl with dyed-blonde hair and too much gold jewellery, running up the street from a nearby payphone booth and rejoining the crowd. "I just called the cops! They'll be here any second!"
"Everyone, remain calm," said David loudly, moving closer to the group and pointing his gun in the man's direction. "Sir, put down your weapon and put your hands on your head."
"Whoa!" exclaimed the dark-haired boy with the two crying girls hanging onto his shoulders, turning round to look at him. "You turned up fast! You run here or somethin'?"
"What happened here?" said Amber, taking the boy by the shoulders and ushering him behind the car. The two girls were still hanging on to him, still wailing loudly; she made sure they were safely behind cover as well, then returned her attention to the man with the shotgun.
"He killed him," wept the girl sitting on the floor. "We were - w-we were walkin' down the street, talkin' 'bout what we saw in the newspapers today, an' Valerio started horsin' 'round, pretendin' to be a z-z-zombie, an' we were all laughin', then all of a sudden… bang! He killed him! He shot him, an' then he just fell down… and now he's dead! Valerio's dead!"
She burst into a fresh flood of tears and tried to hug the head and shoulders of the dead boy.
"He said he thought he was a zombie!" said a boy with spiky red hair and several piercings, darting behind the car to safety.
"Is that true?" said Amber.
The boy nodded, his brown eyes huge with fear.
"He said his wife died from this disease or somethin' an' he said zombies were spreadin' it 'round the city! He shot our friend 'cause he said he thought he was undead, even though he was talkin' to us an' stuff!"
"I think it's a lousy excuse," snapped the girl with frizzy hair. "He just wanted to take it out on us 'cause he hates skaters!"
"Yeah, he keeps pickin' on us every time we come by here, sayin' we kids've been stealin' stuff from his store an' we ain't allowed in here no more, even though we never stole nothin'," complained a boy with glasses, who was sitting next to the sobbing blonde. "I didn't think he hated us enough to start pickin' us off with a shotgun, though!"
The man seemed frozen to the spot, despite David's order. He didn't seem about to move from the position he was standing in, even with the sound of police sirens fast approaching.
"Sir!" said David again, louder this time, but without any emotion in his voice. "Please drop your weapon and place your hands on your head."
"Hey, officer, maybe you should take him downtown 'stead of us for a change," said a Hispanic-looking boy, shooting a resentful look at David. "You keep blamin' us for stuff we ain't done, but it sure as hell ain't our fault this time. Valerio didn't do nothin' wrong an' this pendejo shot him down."
The man with the shotgun looked petrified at this.
"No - I - I didn't mean to kill him!" he said faintly. "I didn't know he was just a kid! I thought he was a zombie! I was in my store and I heard all this noise outside, so I went to investigate, and I saw him groaning and stumbling around, and I heard that girl calling out that he was a zombie and to call the police and the army, asking people to save them from the zombies! I thought they were in trouble, so I ran back inside and grabbed my shotgun from under the counter, and I just - "
"We were just kiddin' around!" screamed the girl, still clutching her dead friend. Tears were pouring down her young face. "He was playin', damn it! He was just a kid, and you shot him 'cause he was playin' in the street, makin' jokes 'bout zombies! I joined in! We all did! We were just havin' fun on our way home from the skate park, an' then you had to go an' - an' kill him!"
The man looked as though he was about to pass out from terror. His face was paler than she thought was even possible, as though someone had plastered him with white clown make-up and then failed to paint the rest of the features on.
"I - I shot him… oh, God, I shot him!"
"Drop the weapon," ordered David once again, as emotionlessly as before. "Sir, drop the weapon. I repeat, please drop the weapon."
The man's hands twitched, but they tightened around the shotgun. His face was covered in sweat; his thinning brown hair lay damply on his scalp, and perspiration glistened from every pore.
"Please drop the weapon and put your hands on your head," said David, a little more sharply this time.
Amber bit her lip nervously. The teenagers - whose faces, she realised, with ever-increasing horror, she recognised from one of the local skater gangs - were all staring at the man and David, waiting for one of them to make the next move. Even the girl who'd been crying was staring intently at the scene unfolding ahead of her.
Three patrol cars tore up the street and screeched to a halt, feet away. The man jumped and several of the teenagers ducked, crying out in alarm. One of the girls screamed as seven armed police officers burst out of the cars and assumed positions behind them, positioning their weapons on the hoods and roofs.
"Police!" bellowed one of the new arrivals. "Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head! That's an order! Drop your weapon!"
Sweat glistened on the man's face, giving his pale, wrinkled skin a horrible sheen. He still seemed unable to move, and his hands were trembling so much that the barrel of the shotgun was dancing around in a rapid figure-eight pattern.
"Drop your weapon!" screamed another, female officer, at the top of her voice. "Drop it and put your hands on your head! Drop the weapon! Hands on your head! Drop the weapon now! DROP IT!"
Amber held her breath.
"For the love of God, man, just drop it! You're going to get yourself killed!" shouted someone from a neighbouring store, who'd come out to see what was going on.
"Drop it!" the female officer screamed again. "DROP IT NOW!"
The whole world seemed to be holding its breath now, and still the man didn't move. The orders to surrender the weapon were repeated at increasing volume and intervals, over and over.
Seconds passed. They felt more like minutes. Amber couldn't take her eyes off the sweating, balding, middle-aged man with the look of desperate terror on his face. He reminded her of a deer caught in the hunter's sights, knowing the certain doom that awaited him and yet, gripped with fear, unable to escape it.
But then, shaking, he collapsed to his knees. He placed the shotgun on the ground ahead of him and, very slowly, he put his shaking hands on his head. Tears and sweat mingled together as they dripped down his face.
The world seemed to breathe out, and then the armed police officers moved all at once, some escorting the assembled skaters away from the scene and others clustering around the kneeling shopkeeper, moving the shotgun out of his reach and pinning him face-first to the ground.
David unhooked the pair of handcuffs from his belt and fastened them around the man's wrists. She heard him solemnly reading out the man's rights, but her concentration was broken by the sound of anguished screams. The blonde girl who had been weeping over her friend's body was being separated from him.
"No! Valerio!" she howled. "Don't make me leave him like that! I want to stay with him… let me stay with him! Please! No, no! Let me go! Valerio!"
The last syllable became a long, loud wail as she was pulled away, kicking and struggling, by a police officer in full riot gear.
Amber put her gun back in its holster and went over to examine the body.
The boy was lying on his back and staring up at the sky, his eyes still wide with surprise. Blood was starting to seep into his blond hair and had already soaked through his shirt. She noticed that the pattern on the material was faded and that the boy's sneakers were similarly worn and scuffed, although his jeans looked rather newer. They were a little too large around the waist; probably hand-me-downs from an older brother or cousin, nothing unusual for a downtown kid. The only reason her old clothes hadn't been passed down to Jason was because he'd objected so loudly to wearing pink.
The worst thing was, the kid looked so desperately young. He couldn't have been any older than fifteen or sixteen. He would have had a favourite band, a teenage crush, hobbies, friends, posters on his walls, and the dreams of future greatness that all teenagers had. He had a family, too; he was someone's son, someone's brother. They would have had such big hopes for him, and so much pride. But those angelic features would never have the chance to age and mature into something handsome as he got older, because his future life had been snatched away from him in an instant. He'd never be any older than fifteen, or sixteen, all because of that one shot.
Of course, she'd seen it all before.
But that had been different…
She thought of chalk outlines, and skateboards without owners, and felt her heart wrench in her chest. Suddenly the simmering violence of ten years ago didn't seem that far away. She remembered Dmitri, who'd done nothing except belong to the wrong gang, whose death had sparked months of bloody warfare on the streets of downtown. She remembered the torrent of anger, grief and hatred, but most of all, she remembered the fear that had gripped the town for almost a year before things began to subside.
The funny thing was, she could feel that fear returning. Panic was starting to sweep through Raccoon City's streets, albeit in a different guise, and innocent people were paying for it with their lives once again. The unfairness of it made her want to weep. After ten years, things should have changed so much more than this…
"Poor kid," said David, behind her. "Hell of a way to go. How old was he?"
"Just a kid," said Amber. She took a deep breath, to control the swell of suppressed emotions. It was such a painful reminder of the trouble she'd witnessed first-hand in the downtown districts around her home. St James East had been relatively unscathed by the gang wars, compared to most parts of downtown, but two close brushes with violent death had brought the cruelty and pointlessness of them close enough to home to hurt. She'd known people who'd lost their lives; she'd had to sit next to empty desks at school, go to memorial services and grow up wondering what kids like Troy, Ruby and Dmitri would have done, had they somehow managed to escape their fates.
But this wasn't about skating, or gang territory, or old rivalries. The boy had died because of a stupid mistake made by a man half-crazed by fear. That seemed even more unfair, somehow. There hadn't been a reason for his death, just a cause, and not even one that had been worth dying for.
"Poor kid didn't deserve this," she murmured, looking down again at the body.
If we'd only been there sooner, to stop the guy before he could shoot, this kid might have lived and -
No. She wasn't responsible for this death. It had been too late for her and her partner to prevent the tragedy from occurring, as it had been with Hilary and Jessica Ratchet. The only thing they'd been able to do was respond to the incident and make sure nobody else was in danger.
Except everyone in the city's in danger. Umbrella's the cause of all this fear, and ignorance and denial is fuelling it. If we don't stop this, and soon, there'll be more deaths and things will spiral even further out of control…
"Is there anything I can do?"
She'd said the words out loud, without thinking. David turned to look at her.
"Sure," he said. "They're putting the guy in the back of the car so we can take him back to the station. Go and check on him, see how he's doing. Guy still looks a bit twitchy. Try to calm him down and see if you can get any sense out of him while you're at it. I'm going to ask Gibson and Hunt if they can cover the rest of our patrol. We need to get this guy out of here."
Amber nodded.
"Okay."
"You all right? You look kind of…"
"I'm fine. Go talk to Gibson. I'll see how our perp's doing."
She crossed the street and opened the front passenger door of the police car. Three other officers were standing nearby, looking at the person inside with expressions ranging from distaste to disinterest.
"Hey, Bernstein," one greeted her. "I'm kind of surprised you're here. I would have thought you'd have had enough of dead skaters by now."
"Yeah, real funny, Briggs," Amber snapped.
"Hey, who's laughing?" Briggs replied, leaning back against a rear passenger door. "I'm on unpaid overtime and double shifts, and now we're scooping up middle-aged psychopaths from Main Street in the middle of the day. What next? Is Hell going to start overflowing?"
"If there are baby-murderers like this one in the middle of our city, then I think it already is," the second officer said, and she spat very pointedly on the ground.
"Got that right," the third, Gibson, agreed.
"Hey, cut the chat," David ordered. "You keep an eye on her while she tries to get some sense out of the guy."
"Don't worry, McGraw," said the second officer, nodding in his direction. "If he so much as looks at her funny, he'll be riding back to the station tied to the roof."
"No need for that, Harlane," said David sternly.
"Yeah, whatever you say, sir," said Harlane, but she glared at the suspect through the window. "Bernstein, if this asshole gives you any trouble, lemme know. I can slap him on the roof and practise a couple of PIT manoeuvres on the way home. I'm sure nobody'll mind if he falls off on the way there."
"Uh… that won't be necessary," Amber assured the scowling woman. "And Harlane, you really need to work on keeping your personal feelings out of cases. It's important not to get too involved in stuff like this. Innocent till proven guilty and all that, remember?"
"I'm surprised you can say that, considering how close you are to the skaters," said Harlane, unwrapping a stick of gum and popping it in her mouth. "Still, you deal with it pretty good. I guess I could learn a few things from you."
Amber was going to reply that she wasn't that close to the skaters, but the officer's attention seemed to have wandered elsewhere. Instead, she climbed into the front passenger seat and shut the door behind her.
"Wh-who are you?" came a tremulous voice from the back seat.
She looked over her shoulder at the middle-aged man. He was still covered in sweat and looked no less pale and shaky. His hands had been cuffed very firmly behind his back, so that all she could see of his arms were the tops of his shoulders. There was a police officer standing in front of each rear passenger door, too; even if he hadn't been handcuffed, he clearly wasn't going anywhere.
"Lieutenant Bernstein," she replied to her captive audience. "And you, sir?"
The man looked down at his knees.
"Wrigley. Rodney Wrigley. I own the grocery store."
Amber knew the name. She stopped by the grocery store sometimes if she was on the patrol route. She dimly recalled a friendly middle-aged guy offering her a free can of soda as part of some in-store promotion deal, a few weeks back. Was he the same trembling wreck sitting in the back seat with cuffs on his wrists?
"Hey, I know you," he said, after a minute. "You're Ray Bernstein's daughter, right? You live over in St James East. You stop down at the store sometimes."
Amber nodded.
"Yeah. How's business, Mr Wrigley? Store going okay?"
"Not so good lately," he said shakily. "Not since all that trouble in the mountains. You know, with the attacks. Ever since the trouble started down here, business has been down. Real down, the past week or so."
"I heard your wife passed away, Mr Wrigley," said Amber, remembering something she'd heard a few moments ago. "I'm sorry."
She didn't think someone's shoulders could slump any lower than his already were, but he managed somehow. He looked more weary now than frightened, although the terrible sheen and pallor of his skin remained. She could smell the damp, acrid smell of sweat starting to permeate the hot afternoon air in the car.
"I miss Beatrice so much," he said. "Ever since she - she died, in the hospital, things haven't been right. I feel like the whole world's falling apart."
The last word sounded as though it had caught in his throat. Amber turned round more in her seat, and saw him swallow, trying to catch his breath.
"Mr Wrigley, I hope you don't mind if I ask, but what happened to your wife? How did she die?"
He shuddered. It could have been horror, or disgust, or perhaps the sheer unhappiness of the recollection.
"It was a rat," he said, after a second. "It got into the kitchen somehow while she was cleaning. Bit her on the hand. I took her to the hospital and they fixed her up. It didn't look bad, but then she got some kind of infection… even the doctors didn't know what it was. No matter what drugs they gave her, it wouldn't clear up. She started acting weird. She was hungry all the time, and irritable, and tired, and then when she was babysitting the neighbours' kid, she got sicker and the kid's parents had to take her to the hospital. She - she only lasted a couple of days. She got worse and worse, and then she just…"
"I'm sorry," said Amber, seeing him grimace.
"The doctors at the hospital said it was some kind of new disease," he said, looking fretfully out of the window. Seeing only a police officer's back, he turned around to face the front again, then dropped his gaze again to the floor. "It's some kind of flesh-eating, degenerative condition. The people who get infected… they end up like zombies. They even bite themselves, and other people, like they're rabid. There's no cure. And the doctors think it's spreading. They said that they keep getting more cases coming in all the time."
The T-Virus. She wanted to tell him, so much, that it was a real disease and that she knew where it was coming from, and what caused it. She was starting to wonder what was stopping her. Surely he deserved to know?
"Why aren't they warning people about this?" the man said plaintively, sitting up straighter in his seat. "Isn't an outbreak of an infectious disease a public health issue? Shouldn't there be some kind of quarantine? Something?"
She gave a small, hopeless shrug.
"Maybe. I don't know for sure. Not really my field of expertise."
"No," he said, subsiding. "I guess not."
"You said you thought that the kid you shot was a zombie," she said, twisting the topic slightly. "What did you mean by that?"
The man looked startled.
"It's like I said," he said. "Whoever gets that disease, the one that killed my wife… it turns them into a zombie. They try to bite people and it spreads the infection. And they don't even know what they're doing, because their minds are completely gone. Beatrice didn't even know her name at the end! She just kept talking about being hungry. Damn it, she even started trying to bite off her own fingers! Her own fingers!"
"So you thought the boy was a zombie? Infected by that mystery disease?"
Mr Wrigley started to tremble again.
"I know you must think I'm crazy," he said, swallowing. "But I saw him stumbling around, talking about eating people, putting out his arms in front of him - all the things that my wife and the people in the ward with her were starting to do, right before they died. I thought he was infected! I really did! That girl was even calling for help! I thought he was going to start attacking people, and I didn't want him to spread the disease and kill more people! I thought he was going to attack me! He was right outside my store and I - I didn't want to - to - "
"To what?"
"To end up like my poor wife!" he burst out in anguish. "My poor Beatrice died in agony, not even knowing who I was, when we'd been married for so many years… I'd rather die than end up the same way!"
"But instead of waiting a couple more seconds to see if he really was infected with a dangerous disease, you shot a kid who was messing around with his friends, making fun of the zombie stories in the news," said Amber. "I know you didn't want to die, Mr Wrigley, but neither did he. Unfortunately for him, that's how he ended up. And unfortunately for you, you're going to have to explain that decision to the courts."
The man's mouth dropped open.
"But I - I didn't mean to kill him! Not if he was just a kid! I wouldn't kill anybody! I've never hurt anybody in my whole life! I never meant to hurt him, even if he was just one of those no-good skater kids! And besides, I thought he was already dead!"
Amber bridled at this. How dare he say something like that about a teenager he'd killed without even really thinking? How could he take someone's life, even by accident, and then talk about it as though a downtown kid wasn't the same kind of human being as everyone else?
"Mr Wrigley, I think perhaps I should impress upon you the seriousness of the charges you're facing," she said, trying hard to stay calm. "It's possible that you'll be facing manslaughter charges, and that's if you're fortunate. The DA might even decide to prosecute you for second-degree murder."
Mr Wrigley's face whitened to an even more ghastly shade.
"Murder? Me? But - but I…"
"You shot and killed a minor, by your own admission, Mr Wrigley," she reminded him. "And he might just be a skater kid to you, but he was a person as well. His name was Valerio Schiaparelli. He was sixteen. Lived with his family in Coburg and went to St Michael's Catholic High. Those kids he was with are the Street Rats. And I know you think all skaters are troublemakers, but most of them are just kids. Kids with names, and families, and the same hopes and ambitions as you and me."
The man's eyes were as wide as saucers now, and rimmed with tears.
"You said he was just a kid? Sixteen?"
"That's correct."
The man started to cry, suddenly, ferociously, and then he slumped to one side, sobbing bitterly into the black leather of the seats.
"He was just a kid, and I - I killed him! Oh God! Oh God, I killed a kid… what have I done?"
Amber sat there in an awkward silence, trying to work out what to say. The man's hysterical sobs from the back seat showed no signs of subsiding. She felt almost sorry for him. Should she be feeling sorry for him? Surely what had happened to him could have happened just as easily to her, or to anybody…
Before she could work this thought any further through her head, David returned. He opened up the door and climbed into the driver's seat.
"Okay," he said. "Let's get back to the station."
xxxxxxxxxx
Mr Wrigley had cried almost the whole way back to the precinct. At times Amber wasn't sure if he was crying over what he'd done, or over what was going to happen to him, or perhaps both at once.
They'd gone through the usual process of checking him into custody and now he was sitting in one of the cells in the station's basement area. They didn't normally get well-off store owners like Mr Wrigley down in the cells. He looked out of place sitting between Crazy Jeb, one of their drunk-tank regulars, and local down-and-out Offbeat Oscar, who'd been caught trying to steal a rhinestone collar from someone's dog in Raccoon Park "to stop it transmitting the government broadcasts", as he'd explained frantically to the arresting officer.
"So who's going to interview him?" said Amber, as they headed back upstairs.
"I think one of the detectives is going to bring him up later for questioning," said David. "Not me, anyway. I've got to leave early tonight. You going home too, or are you pulling another double shift?"
"Nah, I'm going to finish up my report and then I'm going home."
"Don't blame you. You've been spending a lot of extra time in the office lately. Go home and get some rest."
"That's the plan."
"Okay. See you later."
They parted company, and Amber went back to the west office. It was quieter here now. The only person still left behind was Marvin, who was finishing up some admin before he want home. Ten minutes after she sat down to her report, he got up and put his jacket on.
"Well, I've handed over your suspect to Detective Buck for questioning. Better get back or Lilly'll wonder where I am… see you tomorrow."
"Night, Marv."
And that left her with the office to herself. She sat alone in the office, slightly self-conscious about being the only person in a room full of desks, and tried to concentrate on her report.
This was one of the toughest ones she'd had to write in a while. Things like the Rove and Ratchet incidents had been hard, with all those gory details going round in her head, but this one had dredged up a lot of painful memories, ones which she would have preferred to remain buried.
She couldn't help thinking about the gang wars, and the fear and trouble they'd stirred up in downtown. Even while she concentrated on the here and now, the past was still alive and well in her head. Memories of people ten years dead loomed large, wanting to be remembered and linked with the events of the present.
Like Dmitri. Ten summers ago, she'd been hanging out with a couple of classmates who skated with the PriMadonnas gang. Skating had been a big thing in the neighbourhood back then and everybody had wanted to get in on the act, including her, even though she couldn't skate at all. There had been a disagreement a few days earlier with Underworld, a rival gang with a taste for violence and retribution, which nobody had taken seriously at the time.
She remembered that hot, muggy afternoon only too well. She, her friends and the PriMadonnas had been hanging out somewhere in Coburg, enjoying the last rays of sunshine before the sky faded into evening. Dmitri Marovski, a talented young Russian who had joined the gang a few months before and was already tipped to go pro, had been showing off some tricks he'd invented when a couple of Underworld members stepped out of a side alley, gunned him down, and fled the scene. Shot five times in the head and chest, Dmitri had died next to a fire hydrant while his friends struggled to revive him. In tears and horror, she'd looked away as the ambulance pulled up, not wanting to watch them load the boy's body into the back, only to see his skateboard rolling, riderless, down the street, until it was out of sight.
That was the point when everyone started going around armed, and simmering rivalries and local scuffles between rival gangs erupted into months of bloody warfare. She'd ducked out of the scene days later, not wanting to get caught up in gang warfare and possibly killed herself because of some vague affiliation with a group she didn't even rightly belong to.
And then there was Troy McCall, the kid from her class who'd survived the ambush on the Skate Dogs. It had happened a few months after Dmitri's murder… she'd been on her way home from school when she'd peered past a police cordon and seen him standing helplessly in the street outside the Fairview Motel. His fellow skaters had been stabbed and shot by rivals for no other reason but pride, and lay dead in the street all around him. Unable to cope with the trauma of the incident and the loss of his friends, he'd jumped off the motel roof a week later and left a hole in the world shaped like a chalk outline.
The recollection made her shiver now, but the haunted look in his eyes and his subsequent suicide had shocked her so much that she'd realised she couldn't turn a blind eye to downtown's problems when she was living in the midst of them, and so she'd vowed to become a cop when she grew up, so she could try to protect the people and things she cared about… which brought her straight back to the here and now.
She shook her head, and looked down at her report again. She wasn't entirely sure that what she'd written would still make sense in the morning, but she put the unfinished page in her out-tray nonetheless. She'd sign it off and file it in the morning when there was someone around to read it.
Meanwhile, there was nothing left to keep her here tonight, and Jason would be waiting for her to come home. She hoped he wasn't worried. She should have been home about half an hour ago.
What the hell was she thinking? Jason was probably so deep in the middle of playing whichever was his current video game that he wouldn't even notice her come in. He wouldn't notice if nuclear war broke out while he was gaming, let alone look up from battling virtual dragon-lords and wonder why his sister was slightly late home from work.
Still, she didn't want to give him any reason to worry. She tidied up her desk, put her jacket on and went home.
xxxxxxxxxx
"… Main Street remains closed while crime scene investigators comb the area around the grocery store for evidence. Demonstrations are planned outside City Hall tomorrow by local anti-gun campaign group Moms Against Violence, with several protests likely to be staged throughout the coming week. The Mayor and several community leaders have appealed for calm. Meanwhile, the Raccoon Police Department have been praised by locals for their swift response to the incident and for managing to safely disarm the lone gunman."
Jason switched off the television.
"I remember when you used to just, you know, tell me how your day was, instead of showing me on the news," he said. "How come you do all this dangerous stuff now? You never used to before."
"Never used to be like this before," said Amber, kicking off her shoes. "Things were quiet when I first joined the force. A few gang scuffles, parking violations, picking up petty criminals… maybe a couple of neighbour disputes, but that was about it. The only time we had anything major was the big bank robbery on Stormtiller Avenue. Remember that?"
Jason laughed.
"Yeah, I remember that! They closed Green Street High for the afternoon so we got out of class early! We all went to the video arcade across the street and played air hockey and Home Invaders III till we heard it was safe to go home. It was totally awesome. I wish they'd robbed the bank every day…"
"Jason!"
"What? We had a whole afternoon of math and science. Science is lame. You can't give people electric shocks and you can't blow things up any more. Dad said they used to blow stuff up all the time in chemistry class. All they let us do was write down equations and stuff and maybe turn things purple once in a while. Big deal."
"They probably stopped doing it because they heard you were hitting tenth grade. I guess they wanted the roof to stay on the building."
"Shut up. I never blew anything up. They didn't let me!"
"That's why."
"Whatever. But anyway, how come everything's going crazy? What's with all the people shooting people? Shouldn't they be shooting zombies?"
Amber sighed.
"Yeah. They should. I think the guy just got mixed up with who was who. He shot someone who was fooling around pretending to be a zombie."
"Poor guy," said Jason. "I mean, how are you supposed to like, tell who's real and who's pretending? It could have happened to anybody."
"I think it just did," said Amber. "He's probably not the first."
"Probably won't be the last, either."
"Jason, I really wish you were wrong about that. But you're right. I have a feeling we're going to see a lot more cases like this before long…"