Still feeling bad about not joining his partner for Christmas day dinner, Steve laid down against the two pillows on his bed, a beer in one hand and reaching for the phone with the other. At shortly before midnight, he'd long lost track of time or cared enough to worry about it, knowing that Mike would still be awake as well.
Munching on a few sunflower seeds and downing them with a gulp of beer that somehow seemed to taste extra well after a long two days' worth of work, he dialed Mike's number, not at all surprised when the Lieutenant picked up after two rings.
"I hope you're good to go on socks now, because it's safe to say the next few days will be pretty busy…", came the flippant response that made him smile.
"All good on socks and everything else important, thanks for worrying…", Steve said smilingly and pulled his knees to his chest, making room to tilt the magazine he was reading up against his thighs, "How was dinner?"
"It was good. A little dry. Somehow, I never get it quite as perfect as my daughter. Must be that female touch when it comes to cooking, eh? How about you?"
"I ate a PBJ sandwich while I was waiting for the wash machine to finish…bread was dry enough you could use it for roof shingles…", he answered absent-mindedly and made a few notes in his magazine, "But there is one thing I need to know from a wise and seasoned Police Officer such as yourself…"
He could hear Mike chuckle on the other end, undoubtedly feeling the same strange out-of-place melancholy Steve did on a day that should be spent with family, not digging into dead people's business.
"And what could that be?"
Drinking another sip of beer before setting the bottle down on his nearby nightstand, Steve cleared his throat and grinned.
"How good are you on Physicists? I need the name of an Austrian Physicists. 97 across. 5 letters, third one is a P."
"Five letters you say?"
There was a pause on the other end as Mike pondered away, giving Steve a second to check the other clues in the dim light of his bedroom.
"Yeah…Or what about an article of furniture, five down, first letter is a t…should be TABLE, right?"
"Is that how you made Police Academy? Calling up all your friends and asking for the right answers?", Mike teased incessantly and switched the phone to his other ear, "Your Physicists should be Maple. Please don't ask me how to spell that. It's bad enough you didn't know that one to begin with, they ask for it all the time…"
Both detectives shared a hearty chuckle as Steve continued to fill out the crossword puzzle, cursing himself for not coming up with the right answers to begin with.
"Alright, alright…", the young Inspector begged, as he read across the other clues, trying to find the more difficult ones. It filled his heart with gratitude to know they both shared, and thoroughly enjoyed, the same pastime, "How about…bombycid moths, three letters…"
"What in the world?", Mike cursed on the other end, "They never ask for strange stuff like that in the Telegraph. What kind of crossword puzzle are you doing? What magazine is that?!"
Steve grinned broadly, balancing the phone receiver between his left shoulder and ear as he reached for more sunflower seeds.
"Oh, it's the Telegraph.", he lied, looking at the headline of the West Californian Intrepid, one of the magazines he bought a month ago on a trip up to Tahoe. Next to the crossword puzzle was the continuation of an article of a recent Bigfoot sighting near Cloverdale. It wasn't the type of magazine he usually read, but for what it was worth, the Intrepid was both, entertaining and disturbing enough to keep him awake if needed.
"Well I can't help you with those moths…", Mike growled on the other end, just as Steve's eyes fell on something entirely different. It was a reference to another article a few pages into the magazine that caught his attention. Forgetting all about the crossword puzzle and skimming through pages in a panicked frenzy, he finally landed on the headline so absurd that it would never capture anybody's attention.
Except for a young homicide detective looking for a clue.
"Mike…I am gonna call you right back. Just give me a minute, please.", Steve begged as he lowered the receiver and held the magazine closer to his eyes. It wasn't the headline suggesting human- devouring Chupacabras that caught his attention; it was the summary above the two pages of text about the topic that brought up a distinctive unease.
"A north-Californian version of the Chupacabra is being blamed for at least three deaths in the last six months, one of them being 23- year old Emily Smith, a camper who disappeared without a trace near a campground at Mendocino National Forest on the 31st of October, Halloween. Two weeks later, the disfigured body of a female was found less than fifty miles away from her last known location, missing all its vital organs."