The pretty blonde girl slung her purse over her shoulder, shot her boyfriend a dirty look, and said, "It's over."

Her boyfriend, Chad, shoved the drunk redhead off of his lap and staggered to his feet, his hands gripping the padded arms of the chair. The reek of booze wafted off of him in sickening waves and his knees gave out, spilling him back into the chair. "Leah, listen," he slurred. "It's not what it looks like."

"It's exactly what it looks like," Leah said. She was aware of everyone else packed into the living room looking at them, red solo cups in their hands and stupid expressions on their faces. The music coming from the radio in the corner covered what she was saying, but even a bunch of drunk teenagers at a house party could tell that she and Chad were arguing.

Leah wasn't the partying type. She would rather go to the mall, cheer practice, or hell, anywhere but a house party. Tonight, though, her friend Stacy convinced her to come, and for whatever reason, she agreed. What did she see when she walked in? Her boyfriend, who claimed to be home studying so he didn't get cut from the football team, making out with some slut. Leah was devestated, but her shock and heartbreak instantly turned to rage. She stalked over, shoving partygoers out of the way, and slapped him in the side of the head.

She wanted to gouge his eyes out too.

"Leah, I swear," Chad said, "I -"

"Fuck you," she spat.

Spinning on her heels, she shouldered her way through the kids gathered around, tears forming in her eyes. Near the door, Stacy grabbed her arm. "Hey," she said, "you okay?"

"I'm fine," Leah said tightly and pulled away.

"Where are you going?" Stacy called.

"Home," Leah said.

"Do you want a ride?"

"No," Leah said, "I'll walk."

A walk, she decided, would help clear her mind. By the time she got home, she would be able to think calmly and rartionally, and this wouldn't seem like such a big deal. Right now, in the heat of the moment, her heart was broken and she felt like her life was over even though she knew it wasn't. She was pretty, she was popular, and she could have any body she wanted.

Just like she once wanted Chad.

But apparently she wasn't good enough.

She sniffed and wiped a tear from her eye.

Outside, the night was warm and breezy, the trees up and down the street ruslted in the wind with a sound like whispering. Leah tucked her honey colored hair behind her ear and went down the stairs. She followed the flagstone path to the sidewalk and started in the direction of home. Her stride was long and hard, her eyes shimmering with tears. She was clearly a girl lost in her own thoughts, and if she passed anyone on her way down Pine Street, she did not notice them.

At the park, she turned left and passed beneath the wrought iron archway. The grounds were dark and silent, the playground equipment abandoned. The wind pushed a swing idly back and forth and the faint song the bullfrogs made in distant Pine Marsh seasoned the fragrant air.. A scraping sound rang out behind her, and her heart jolted into her throat. She wheeled around and scanned the path.

She saw nothing.

"Hello?" she asked. Her voice sounded scared and small to her own ears, and she forced a smile, more to disarm her own mounting fear than because the situation was funny. Of course there was no one back there. What was this, a dumb horror movie?

Shaking her head, she turned around.

A branch snapped and she whipped around again. "Stacy?" she called.

No reply.

"Chad?"

Still nothing.

She started to say This isn't funny but that sounded exactly like something a girl in a horror movie would say. Instead, she turned around and hurried along the path.

A second later, a future peeked out from behind a bush. It was black against the shadows, its shoulders hunched and its knees bent. A thousand fevered and twisted thoughts raced through its head and its white gloved fingers drummed on the wooden handle of an ice pick. Its breathing came in short, hot gasps and its heart pounded against its chest.

When the time was right, it ducked out from behind the bush and flew at its prey, the night rushing headlong to meet it. Its feet barely touched the ground and the wind rushed over its misshapen head. The girl got closer and closer, whooshing up to meet the monster, and at the last moment, she turned and began to scream.

The creature hit her full force and knocked her to the ground, pinning her to the dewy grass. The icepick flashed up and then down, piercing the girl's soft, delicate throat. Blood oozed out and she shrieked in pain and terror. The monster rained a frenzy of blows down on her face and chest, sticking her in the cheeks, chin, and breast, leaving behind tiny pinprick wounds, none of which were fatal, save, perhaps, for the one to her pumping jugular. Rich red blood spurted out and splattered across the monster's white face. Its frenzy grew, and, throwing away the ice pick, it began to pummel the girl, smashing her pert nose like a wine glass in a velvet bag and breaking one high, arrogant cheek bone. The girl whipped her head from side to side, her screams turning to wet gurgles as blood filled her lungs. The monster brought its fist crashing down onto her mouth, splitting her lips and knocking her teeth out, and the girl's eyes rolled back into her head.

Reaching out, the monster grabbed the ice pick again and stabbed blindly, ripping and tearing flesh. The girl's body went limp, and the killer jammed the ice pick into one eye, then ripped it out, the bloody orb attached to the blade like a cocktail olive in hell.

Such a pretty eye. Hazel and clear.

The monster stabbed the other eye out and shoved it into its hooked beak to absorb its beauty. Leaning over, it dipped its beak into the hollow of the girl's throat.

By now the girl was beginning to mutter and stirr. Her face was an unrecognizable mess of hamburger meat and her breathing was labored.

The monster wrapped its big hands around her throat and squeezed. Blood poured from her empty eye sockets and her body tensed. She fought and thrashed for a moment, then the life ran out of her.

Releasing her crumpled throat, the monster got to its feet and stared silently down at its victim. She had been pretty in life, and now, that beauty belonged to it.

Shoving the icepick into its belt, the monster staggered away, leaving Leah, once the most beautiful girl on the cheer squad, for the bugs.

The alarm clock went off at 6:15am like always, and like always, Duncan Harris snoozed it.

A tall, gangly boy of fifteen with unruly reddish brown hair, Duncan didn't like getting up early...and he didn't like school either. Both of those things were for losers and if there was one thing he was not, it was a loser. In fact, if you asked him, he was the coolest guy in school. He had a wall of C- report cards, participation trophies, and honorary ribbons to prove it. Sure, his grades weren't the best, but what did that matter? It's not like you're gonna be hit with random pop quizzes in the course of your daily life. Most of the stuff they taught in school was useless anyway. Even his Dad agreed and while Dad was wrong about literally everything else, he was right on the money this time.

When the alarm went off again, he slapped the OFF button and buried his face deeper into the pillow. His boner poked the mattress and he hummed in the back of his throat, pretending it was Mia. Mia was the hottest girl in school and she was totally into him...or as much into him as her textbook radical feminism would allow. His grades stank, he had zero motivation, and his family was kinda dumb, but when Mia looked at him with those sultry brown eyes and that Shrillex cut, he was the luckiest guy in the world.

He'd be even luckier if she let him do her tho.

Eyes closed, mouth open, more asleep than awake, Duncan began to hump the bed. In his mind, Mia was bent over with her hands splayed on the bed. She was wearing little pink booty shorts that stretched tight across her dump truck of an ass and his bone jutted out the front of his boxers. His wood pressed into the hollow ident between her butt cheeks and he moaned her name. Something brushed his cheek and he opened his eyes to find his sister Jing staring at him. Letting out a scream, he jumped up and covered himself with the blanket. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I was just watching you sleep," the little girl said. "And planning our wedding."

Duncan rolled his eyes. Three years ago, when she was two, Mom and Dad adopted Jing from China. The story he heard was that a Christian missionary (heh, like the sex position he wanted to try with Mia) fished her out of a rice patty where her family had dumped her, Apparently it had something to do with China only letting people have one child each and girls being less desirable than boys. He didn't know, he didn't really pay attention to dumb shit like politics, geography, or history. A few months ago, Jing "fell head over heels in love" with him (her words, not his) and decided that she wanted to marry him. He tried to explain that siblings don't get married outside of cringy Loud House fan fics but she always started crying, so he had to play along. Sure, sis, I'll marry you, and we can have sin kids together. Oh yay.

"What have I told you about watching me sleep?" he asked.

Jing looked down at her feet and shrugged one shoulder. "I dunno."

He fixed her with a stern look. She couldn't see it but she could sure feel it. "Not to," she finally mumbled.

"Then don't do it."

She exploded. "YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! I WEAR THE PANTS IN THIS RELATIONSHIP!"

Duncan jabbed his finger toward the door, and she stomped away red-faced and angry. He sighed, ran his fingers through his messy hair, and got up. She may have been adopted, but Jing was a natural born weirdo just like all the Harrises. Except for him. He was totally normal. Maybe kind of slacker but that wasn't really a bad thing. Overachievers wasted their entire childhood following the rules and doing schoolwork, and where did it get them? Waiting tables and drowning in student loan debt because, like seatbelts, college kills more people than it saves. Pfft, miss me.

Going over to his dresser, he bypassed the stacks of clean clothes his mother had folded and put neatly away to put on yesterday's pants, though he did put on a different T-shirt. He pulled on a green zip-up hoodie, a pair of socks so crusty that they could stand up and walk away on their own, and his decaying Nike tennis shoes. He put on some deodorant but he didn't comb his hair or brush his teeth. None of that stuff mattered. Only preps worry about their appearance.

Another thing that didn't matter was homework. At the end of every day, he trashed it on his way out the door and took the L. Like seriously, you have me for eight hours a day. Isn't that enough? Because of this, he didn't have to worry about grabbing a backpack because he didn't need one. Thinker harder, not smarter.

Downstairs, Kimberly and Jing sat at the kitchen table while Dad made pancakes; he wore his graying hair in a lame ponytail and a white chef's apron over his grimy checkered work shirt. He hummed Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp, probably the dumbest classic rock song ever made. Mom, dressed in a uniform consisting of black slacks, a blue button up shirt, and a yellow vest poured herself a cup of coffee and took a sip. "Got a long day of catching bad guys ahead of me," she said to no one in particular.

Duncan rolled his eyes. "Mom, you're a meter maid, calm down."

Mom stiffened. "Parking Enforcement, Dunky," she corrected. "Parking Enforcement."

"Your mother enforces laws," Dad said, "therefore, she's just as much a law enforcement officer as any homicide detective."

"That's right," Mom said and patted his butt.

Ew, gross.

A lover of cop shows, crime novels, and Cops (filmed on location with the men and women of law enforcement), Mom harbored dreams of one day becoming a detective. Her conduct as a meter maid, however, was kind of a stumbling block. Sometimes she was obsessively by the book, ticketing people for the smallest infractions; other times, she was a "loose cannon" (her words, not his). Her sergeant once said she made Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon look like Barney Fife, and she took that as a compliment. That was the time someone drove off while she was ticketing them and she commandeered a passing car to chase them down. When the real cops arrived, they found the offender in a pair of handcuffs that she bought off Amazon and carried against regulation. She still carried a pair now, along with a retractable baton and a can of mace. She used to carry a gun, but it got taken away when she whipped it out on BLM protesters passing by the house on a march.

Duncan shivered at the memory of his mother on CNN.

RACIST KAREN ON BLM: "BLUE LIVES MATTER."

"I gotta go," she said. She pecked Dad's cheek, then kissed Jing's forehead. She looked at Kimberly and then Duncan. "Good grades, no skipping, you know the drill."

"We know," Kimberly and Duncan said in unison.

On Mom's way out the back door, she bumped into Duncan's friends, Wolf, Bax, and Yangzi. "I told you I'm a girl," Bax raged to her two companions. God only knows what they said to her on the way over.

When Wolf noticed Mom, he nodded. "Hey, Mrs. Harris, new hair tie? Nice."

Mom touched her hair and smiled. "Thank you. I got it from Wal-Mart. It comes in a pack of ten."

"Cool," Wolf said.

She slipped by them and went out the door. "You ready, Dunk?" Yangzi asked.

"Yeah," Duncan said and got up. He was kind of hungry, but he'd just eat at school.

Dad looked at him, bottom lip stuck out. "You don't want my pancakes."

"Sorry, Dad, I gotta run," Duncan said, "I'm gonna be late."

Kimberly snorted. "Since when do you care about being late?"

"Since your mom," Duncan retorted.

"We have the same mom, genius."

Oh, right.

Outside, Duncan and his friends cut across the backyard and went through an opening in the fence separating the Harris property from the nameless side street running behind it. The street was gravel and lined with trash cans and parked cars; two houses down, an El Camino was propped up on cinderblocks. "Was your dad crying?" Bax asked.

"Yeah, I noticed that too," Yangzi said.

"He was crying," Wolf said. "You should have eaten his pancake."

Duncan's face flushed with embarrassment. As a fifteen year old boy, there was no more humiliating person on the face of the earth than Dad...aside from Mom. He didn't normally defend his parents (in fact, he shit-talked them all the time), but if he didn't play defense for Dad, he would look bad. "He wasn't crying," Duncan said. "He was just stoned. That's all."

"Your dad doesn't smoke weed anymore," Yangzi pointed out.

"He was upset because you didn't eat his pancake," Wolf said.

Deep down in Duncan's chest, something stirred.

It felt almost like guilt.

He handled it the way all mature grown-ups like him handled uncomfortable emotions.

By lashing out. "I didn't want the fucking pancake, okay? I hate pancakes."

"Why do you hate pancakes?" Yangzi asked. "They're light, fluffy goodness."

Duncan sighed. "Not the way my dad makes them."

"I've had your dad's pancakes," Bax said. "There's nothing wrong with them. Except he's stingy with the syrup."

"I'd eat your mom's pancake," Wolf said.

Duncan shivered in disgust. "Shut up."

The high school, a blocky building with even rows of windows, sat on Springfield Street, flanked to one side by the football field and to the other by a gas station. In the cafeteria, the low, chattering din of a thousand voices bounced off the walls and that peculiar smell of school permeated the air. Duncan and his friends grabbed trays and went through the line. A lunch lady with a mustache slapped a stack of flapjacks onto Duncan's tray. "Sweet," he said, "pancakes."

"I thought you hated pancakes," Yangzi said and arched his brow.

Duncan didn't have a response for that.

They sat at an empty table near the door to the hall. Duncan drowned his pancakes in syrup and fell in with hungry gusto. Syrup coated his lips and chin and mushy bits of pancake dotted the front of his shirt. Suddenly, Yangzi rammed his elbow into Duncan's ribs, making him choke. "Mai alert," he hissed, "Mia alert."

Before Duncan could make himself presentable - not that he would know how - Mia walked up accompanied by a white guy with blonde dreads and a natty beard. "Hey, guys," she said.

Duncan's throat swelled closed and his stomach did a kick flip that almost knocked him over. Tall and shapely with chocolate skin and dark eyes, Mia was smoking and Duncan couldn't help pop an erection right there. Thankfully, no one could see it under the table. "Hey," he said.

"This is Zeke," Mia said. "I met him at Wanee last year and then I bumped into him in the hall a few minutes ago. He just randomly moved here. Isn't that crazy? He's really socially conscious and hates the system. Cool, huh?"

Zeke nodded. "What's up? Fight the power."

To Duncan's horror, Mia took Zeke's arm and leaned into him. "I've been showing him around. He has all the same classes as me."

All of them?

As in...they would be together all day long?

For some reason, Duncan felt like he was going to throw up.

"Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and say hi."

"See ya," Zeke said.

They walked away, and Duncan stared after them with a pained expression. Yangzi winced and Bax gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"He's gonna eat her pancake," Wolf said.

Duncan hung his head.

I know, he thought miserably.

Annie Harris trawled the streets of Oakdale in her cruiser - really a glorified go-cart - in search of parking violators. She wore a pair of tinted sunglasses and a steely expression that dared someone, anyone, to double park. Near Old Oakie, she spotted a pick-up truck with its ass end sticking two inches too far into the street. "Go time," she said and put on her siren; it was orange and silent. She cut across the street, parked in front of it, and got out, her hand hovering over the can of mace on her belt. She hoped she got to use it today.

Ever since she was a little girl, Annie had dreamed of becoming a police detective, just like her hero Lenny Briscoe from Law & Order. She imagined herself chasing down bad guys, investigating murders, and solving tough cases that stumped even the best inspectors. She devoured true crime documentaries on Netflix, cop shows on ABC, NBC, and CBS, and read stacks and stacks of thriller novels. One day, she was going to head the Oakdale PD's homicide division, just you wait.

For right now, though, she was stuck in Parking Enforcement. It wasn't glamorous but she told herself that it was just as important as homicide, if not more so; people don't get killed every single day in Oakdale, but they do park like assholes, so really she was providing a much more needed service.

Whipping out her notepad, she started to write a ticket. A man carrying a paper bag in both arms ran up. "What are you doing?" he asked, a hint of fear in his voice.

Scared, dirtbag? You should be.

"I'm writing you a ticket," she said.

"Why? I still have ten minutes left on the meter."

"Your rear end is jutting into the street and presenting a hazard for passing motorists,": she said.

The man looked from her to his bumper and back again. "No it's not. No one's gonna hit that."

Just then, Annie's radio crackled. "1090 Oakdale Park, request all units."

Her hand froze.

1090?

Homicide.

Annie snapped the notebook closed and a look of relief washed over the man's face. "You got lucky this time, punk. Next time I'll have you towed."

"Thank you," the man said.

Shoving her ticketbook into her vest, Annie hurried back to her cart, jumped in, and hit the gas. Instead of peeling off in a squeal of tires as she would have liked, it buzzed off at a snail's pace. Five minutes later, she reached the front gate of the park. Police cars, lights flashing and doors standing open, were parked at funny angles. She pulled in next to one, got out, and started into the park, but the mom in her took over and she went around closing all the doors. Just past the gate, she met Sgt. Wiles, a beefy man with a walrus mustache. "Annie Harris, reporting for duty."

He looked her up and down, bemused to see a meter maid here. "Go work crowd control," he said and waved her toward a group of people standing around. They were looking at something, and following their line of sight, Annie saw it: A body under a sheet, one bare foot sticking out. A gangly man in a tan suit flipped through a book and nervously rubbed the back of his neck while uniforms combed the scene. Annie tilted her head and caught a glimpse of the book's title. Homicide Investigation for Dummies.

Oooh, she read that book.

It was very informative.

Going over to the crowd, she held her hand up as it to say stop and moved them back a few feet. "Alright, folks, there's nothing to see here that you won't be able to see on Investigation Discovery in a few years."

She turned around just as the detective bent over and picked something up, clutching it in his hand.

An ice pick.

"I found the murder weapon," he said proudly.

Annie's jaw dropped. "NO!"

Hands up and clawed into talons, lending her the appearance of a madwoman, she flew over, and the detective jerked in surprise. "You're not supposed to touch it!" She swatted his hand. "Oh my,God, you just contaminated the evidence. Now your fingerprints are all over it." She pulled at her hair and sucked great gulps of air. "You just ruined the best piece of evidence we have, Jesus Christ, were you born yesterday?"

The detective flashed a nervous smile. He was tall and rail thin, about thirty, with a knobby Adam's apple, soft doe-like eyes, and a crooked nose. He looked goofy as all get out and holding the murder weapon up, his grubby little mits all over it, he looked even goofier. "Ma'am, I think I know what I'm doing," he said smugly.

Annie put her hands on her hips. "What's your name?"

"Detective Ryerson, ma'am."

Annie opened her mouth to speak, then stropped. "Wait a minute...I think I know you."

Ryerson slumped his shoulders almost like he was embarrassed to be recognized.

Tapping her chin, Annie thought, then it hit her. "You were the resource officer at my son's school."

The man sighed and nodded. "Yes, I was the resource officer at the high school for a couple months, then I transferred to homicide."

Hm.

Strange.

"Whose butt did you have to kiss to go from being a hall monitor to homicide?"

"No one's," Ryerson said tightly. "I might be young and new but I'm perfectly capable of handling this investigation."

"You have no clue what you're doing." She said. "This is the sloppiest crime scene I've ever been to. I haven't been to many but I've seen a bunch on TV, and this is inexcusable." She spotted something in a bush, went over, and plucked it out. "I bet you didn't even see this."

She held it up.

A long, white feather.

Ryerson looked like a little boy who'd just been chastised by his mother. "I saw it," he mumbled. "It's just a feather."

"Just a feather? It could be an important clue!"

The detective rolled his eyes. "Sure, because an overgrown bird murdered a girl with an icepick, gouged her eyes out, and beat her face to a pulp."

Annie cringed. "Ouch. He did all that?"

"Yep."

Annie's eyes went to the body. "I bet you're exaggerating."

"No, ma'am, I'm really not. It's pretty gruesome."

Oh, yeah? Annie would be the judge of that. She went over, knelt, and reached out for the sheet. Ryerson waved her off. "You don't wanna do that."

Annie pulled the sheet down.

As soon as she saw the girl's mashed, pulpy face, her gord rose. She whipped her head away at the last minute and vomited onto the grass. Ryerson walked over and put his hands on his hips. "Told you."

"Jesus," Annie panted. "This is the work of a maniac."

Ryerson shook his head. "I think it was a mugging gone wrong."

A what? "Ryerson...do you seriously think a mugger did that?" She pointed at the corpse. "It's too brutal. Whoever killed this girl either had a personal grudge against her, or they're some kind of psychopath. They're also very strong. Look at this. They did...that...with their bare hands. As soon as you ID her, you need to talk to all of her friends and find out if someone had anything against her."

Ryerson rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh...yeah, I was gonna do that anyway." From the tone of his voice, he was not going to do that anyway.

Remembering the feather in her hand, she examined it closely. "Hmm."

"What?" Ryerson asked.

"It's fake," she said. She brushed her fingertips over it. "See? It's not real."

The detective furrowed his brow. "Then where did it come from?"

Flipping it over, Annie scanned the stem.

There was tiny writing on it.

She held it up to the light and squinted. "J.S. Stamford and Sons," she read. "And there's a series of numbers and letters." She looked up at Ryerson. "This is from a costume shop in town. My husband gets my jewlery there."

Ryerson prodded the inside of his bottom lip with his tongue as he mulled over this new discovery. "I can check it out later, but first -"

Annie got to her feet. "I'm checking it out. You'd probably lose it."

He shot her a dirty look. "Listen, Miss…?"

"Annie Harris, Parking Enforcement."

"...this is a homicide investigation and I'm the lead investigator here. If the killer double parks, we'll let you know. Until then, let the professionals do their job."

When Ryerson reached for the feather, Annie danced back. "I found it, I'm investigating it," she said.

Looking annoyed, Ryerson held out his hand. "Hand it over."

"No."

"In the name of the law, I order you to -"

Annie held the feather close. "Nuh-uh. This is my chance to prove to the department I can be a homicide detective and no one's going to take it away from me, especially not some little upstart who can't even properly secure a crime scene. Look."

A man in a Hawwian shirt and sandals was posing for a selfie next to the body.

"YOU'RE CROWD CONTROL!" Ryerson yelled. "THAT'S YOUR FAULT!"

"Blame everyone but yourself," Annie said. "Ok zoomer."

She turned around and started toward her cart. For a moment Ryerson did nothing, then he lunged at her, and she boilted. "Give me back that feather!"

"No!"

Uniforms watched them streak past and exchanged puzzled looks. Annie tore through a line of yellow crime scene tape, got wrapped up, and ripped it off of her. Ryerson's dress shoes slipped on the grass and he fell on his ass. Annie reached her cart, jumped in, and backed up. She swung right and started down the street. Ryerson got up and ran after her, eventually drawing alongside her. His tie fluttered over his shoulder and he gasped for breath. "You're interfering with my investigation."

"You're interfering with mine," Annie shot back.

Slackening his pace, Ryerson went behind the cart and climbed into the passenger seat. "We're both going to wind up losing our jobs over this."

"Correction," Annie said. "You're going to lose your job. I'm going to be promoted."

"Good luck with that," Ryerson said in a tone that indicated promotion didn't come easy.

J.S. Stanford and Sons costume shop sat on the corner of Main Street and Lawndale Drive. The proprietor was a little old man with glasses and shaky hands. Annie handed him the feather across the counter and, adjusting his glasses, he studied it. "Why yes," he finally said, "it is a feather."

"But what kind?" Annie asked.

Ryerson crossed his arms like a sullen little boy and pouted.

"A fake one,' the old man said as though that should be obvious.

Annie sighed. "We know it's a fake feather. It came from this costume shop -"

"It did?"

"Yes. There's a production code on it. Can you trace it?"

The old man smacked his lips. "Yes, actually." He pulled out a big leather bound ledger and slapped it on the counter in a puff of dust. He opened it, moistened his thumb and forefingers, Annie read him the production code and he looked it up, taking his sweet time; didn't he know she had a murder to solve?

"Ah, here it is," he said, and Annie's heart jogged. "It's from a swan costume that was shipped to the high school theater department."

Before the old man could even look up from his book, Annie was out the door and climbing into her cart. Ryerson ran over and jumped into the passenger seat. "Looks like we're going to your neck of the woods, Hall Monitor."

"Great," Ryerson said sarcastically.

The theater department was housed in a suite of rooms behind the stage in the auditorium. The teacher was a thin woman with short gray hair and big Coke bottle glasses. She crossed her arms and looked down her hooked nose at them. "That costume was stolen," she said haughty, "six months ago. Only the head was stolen, rather." She looked at Ryerson. "You worked that case, as I recall. And you didn't solve it."

Ryerson blushed. "I had no evidence to go on," he said defensively. "It was in a closet in a locked room. There was no sign of forced entry and no -"

"Did you dust for prints?" Annie asked.

That caught Ryerson off guard. "No," he said, animation creeping into his voice, "it was just a costume, I-I-I didn't think I should go that far."

Annie pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "Was that costume ever used?" she asked.

"Yes, we used it in several productions, including last year's rendition of Swan Lake...which, as you may know, received a glowing write up in the Bostonian." She held her nose even higher.

Oh brother. "Do you have a list of who used it?"

The woman touched her chin. "Actually, yes." She searched for and found a log book. "I make every student sign for their costumes. That way we can avoid theft."

Annie studied the ledger. There were ten signatures over the course of a year.

The last was entirely illegible. "Who is this?" Annie asked.

"I can't recall," the woman said. "That was for a production that wound up being canceled. It was stolen shortly thereafter."

Annie's cop senses, honed by years of hour long dramas and mystery paperbacks, began to tingle. The last person to have the costume was certainly the killer. They had to be.

In the parking lot, Annie put her hands on her hips. "Alright, Hall Monitor, here's what I want. A handwriting sample from every student in the school. Staff too. I want surveillance footage from the day the costume was stolen. I want -"

Ryerson held up his hand. "Alright, look," he said in a tone of confession, "you're a better detective than I am, alright? I'm a fuck-up and I'm in way over my head. That doesn't change the fact that this is my case to solve and it doesn't change the fact that you're parking enforcement. You're probably going to get reprimanded by your superior for taking off and -"

Annie shrugged. "I don't care. This is big. A homicide. If I can solve this -"

"You're not going to solve it," Ryerson said. "The fact of the matter is, I'm probably not going to solve it either. The entire homicide squad working together, collecting data, interviewing witnesses, and making phone calls will solve it. Life isn't an episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets -"

Annie brightened. "I love that show."

"I suggest you go back on duty and leave this to homicide. You've been a big help and I'll make sure you get an honorable mention."

Not giving her a chance to respond, Ryerson turned around and walked away, leaving her standing there alone. When he was gone, she scrunched her lips from side to side in thought. This was the biggest case she had ever worked on and she intended to see it through, no matter what.

To hell with him and to hell with parking enforcement.

Getting back into her cart, Annie drove away.