Warning: Graphic Images, Language

"So, if we take down the ceiling and raise it to the roof line, the room will look a lot larger and you will have that grand feeling you're looking for."

Madeleine nodded, not needing Mac's explanations in order to envision the beautiful results. Not that they had much of a choice. To tell the truth, the ceiling looked about ready to collapse without needing their help.

"That sounds fabulous. When can you get started on that?"

"Right now."

Mac nodded to Sam who was dragging in a ladder and his toolbox with him. Thanks to Turtle's help, they were ahead of schedule and moving on to the most exciting part of the project so far. The place was now a blank canvas with which she could unleash her creativity.

Mac and Maddie watched from the sidelines as Sam climbed up on the ladder, armed with a sledgehammer until he was directly beneath the large brown stain in the ceiling. With the amount of rot throughout the building, she never gave much thought to the condition of the ceiling. Now that she had noticed it, however, the size of the stain seemed a bit disconcerting.

She tapped Mac on the shoulder. His head tilted toward her as they watched his man. She pointed out the stain. "Hey Mac, do we need to be worried about that?"

Mac shrugged. "Most likely from water damage. No surprise really, considering the state this place is in. Won't know the cause of it until we get through."

"It's sagging." She noted.

"No worries. We'll fix whatever caused it. I'm kind of surprised that it hadn't collapsed before now," He said conversationally as he gnawed on his chewing tobacco. When he spit on the floor, she jumped back.

"Oh, sorry," he muttered. "I'll grab an empty soda can"

"I'll forgive you this time," she told him, "but only because I'm in such a good mood."

He shook his head, amused. "I still can't believe you managed to take down all those walls last night by yourself."

Maddie smiled. "Oh, I wasn't by myself."

"No?" Mac asked, but he was distracted by the action going on in front of him.

Sam punched a hole in the ceiling with the sledgehammer before handing it over to Lauren. "You all might want to take a step back. It won't take much to bring this all down." he told them. Then, reaching up with both gloved hands, Sam began pulling down large pieces of rotting particle board.

Plaster and wood dust rained down around him, coating him and the floor beneath him with a layer of white. It reminded Madeleine of snow falling - until the dust made her sneeze. Mac handed her a mask to protect her lungs as he donned his own.

"What the h-he-eck?" Sam yelped. Startled, he barely remembered to curb his inclination to curse. "There's a bunch of stuff stored up in here."

Mac waved him away as he wrapped a chain around the last support. "Get out of there," he said. "We'll lose the support and bring the whole thing down. We can haul it all out of here after that."

Propping the front doors open, Mac attached the chain to one of trucks and pulled the support right out of the floor. Without the post, the rest of the ceiling caved in, pouring insulation, plywood, and rotting 2x4s into the center of the room. As the dust cleared, however, they discovered more than just the 2x4s rotting in the pile of debris.

Madeleine and the crew gaped in silent horror at remains of a host of decomposing human corpses, all of them dressed in security guard uniforms blackened with old blood. The faces were slacked jawed in death and the ones with eyes remaining stared back at them as if they were just as surprised as the living at what had occurred. Between the bodies, a multitude of pests emerged in a panic and with them, an eyewatering, stomach-turning stench akin to rotten eggs and manure that had been left out in the summer sun for a few days.

But, oh, so much worse.

The mask she wore over her mouth and nose did nothing to abate the smell. From across the room Dale choked in the effort to keep his lunch down while Lauren ran out of the room gagging.

"Holy fuck! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What the fuck is that? Holy shit!" Brian shouted hysterically. He waved his arms wildly, pointing as he exclaimed as he stumbled away from the bodies.

Sam clamped a hand over the younger man's mouth to end his cursing.

"Language, good buddy," he murmured in Brian's ear as he struggled to calm him. It wasn't working out very well what with the tangle of wood, drywall, and mangled limbs strewn about in that pile.

"Wow," Mac mumbled, his chewing no longer audible. "That's a lot of bodies."

Madeleine tried counting the bodies but stopped shortly after reaching double digits. Some were in pieces and there was no telling from here how many victims there really were. Who could have done something like this? All those poor people! There was only one suspect that came to mind, however, and fury rose up in her swift and hot.

"THAT DADGUM RABBIT!" Maddie screeched.

Mac startled at her outburst, "Um, do you mean dagnabbit?"

"No." She growled out between clenched teeth. "I meant what I said."

Easy. Calm down. You're okay, Maddie repeated this mantra in her head a few times. This is no time to lose your cool. Remember what Dr. Sigmund said, 'If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you' Closing her eyes, Madeleine tried the deep-breathing exercises Dr. Sigmund had showed her back when she had first met him. The exercise might have been more effective had she not been able to smell . . .

Mac scowled down at the dusting of a red-brown flakes coating everything. "What is that? Dried blood?" he guessed aloud.

Oh gracious . . . "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. . ."

"What are you doing, now?" Mac glanced over at her.

"I'm counting." She informed Mac. Dr. Sigmund had instructed her to do this whenever she was beginning to feel stressed out . . . "Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten." Deciding she was calm enough; Maddie opened her eyes. Although the bodies were still there, as was the need to take a bat to a certain animatronic that was sitting in the storage room, she thought she could control it.

"Sooo," She said with a sigh. "I'm guessing this is going to put us behind schedule again, isn't it?"

Mac raised an eyebrow at the woman. "Yeah. I think we can say that."

"Fine," she said, trying not to pout. "I suppose this is what one should expect when one attempts to renovate old buildings. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have a phone call to make."

When Madeleine finished her call with the police, she gently placed the phone back into her purse like the sensible woman she was. Her calm demeanor didn't last, however, and she hurled her purse into the wall with a snarl. She stomped out of her soon-to-be office and straight into the safe room where the men had moved Turtle that morning.

The door banged loudly against the wall when she shoved it open, the sound reverberating down the hall. Her eyes homed in on the one object in the virtually empty space. The robotic bunny sat in its corner looking innocuous and innocent of all wrongdoing. To the uneducated observer it seemed as lifeless as the bodies that covered the floor of her lobby, but Madeleine knew better.

The robo-rabbit didn't bother to look at her as she approached, but that only accomplished in infuriating her all the more.

"Don't you dare ignore me, you lousy rabbit! I know you can hear me," she snapped.

The clang of the metal toe of her work boots connecting violently against Turtle's leg echoed against the concrete block walls. It didn't react, didn't move at all.

"Answer me, darn you!" she shrieked in anger.

It didn't. Of course, it didn't. The stupid robot was trying to make her look foolish, but she knew – she knew he was responsible for that pile of death. He thought this would stop the theater from becoming a reality. It was right there in his beady, little, robotic eyes - his laughter. Why he was keeping it to himself? Well, it didn't matter. It would take more than this to derail Maddie's dreams.

"You think this is funny, don't 'cha?" Maddie jabbed a finger into his chest plate. "I know what you did. Might as well fess up."

She waited for a reaction, something - a twitch, a snicker, his eyes to light up like they did the night before. Anything! She was fully expecting him to gloat; he'd seemed like the gloating kind, but instead he sat there imitating an inanimate object.

"Really? The silent treatment, huh?" Madeleine narrowed her eyes. "Well then, let's see how much you laugh after I get through with you."

Christopher Wright, or Detective Wright as of this moment, grimaced at the smell emanating from the pile of corpses in the center of the construction zone. The mask he wore did nothing to provide relief. He pulled it off and dropped it in one of the many plastic bins sitting about the place.

He wasn't a squeamish man. You couldn't work in homicide without developing a strong stomach. He lit a cigarette, letting the smoke drift out of his nose, burning the smell of rotting human corpses out of his sinuses. He had promised his wife he would stop with the cancer sticks, but they were much more effective at hiding the stench than the mask had been.

He scowled at the sight of dozens of dead bodies. Forensics were busy now picking through the rubble and separating the bodies out, laying them on sheets of plastic, putting a few of them together like pieces of a puzzle. Out of those, some were still missing pieces. God! He had never seen such a gruesome massacre as this and knew this scene would follow him into his nightmares for years to come.

Fifty-seven bodies, the forensics guys thought. At a glance, they said the victims appeared to be all male, most of them Caucasian, and all of them security guards. Wright looked at the case file he held in his hand. It was a thick mother that held various details of numerous other reports, all missing persons, all of them cold cases.

Numerous, he snorted. Fifty-seven fucking missing persons was a damned crowd. Looks like they're not missing anymore. This was not the kind of closure he wanted to give to these men's families . . .

That wasn't all there was, however, in the history of this cursed building. A few decades back, there was an arrest of a murderer of a group of five children. Only for the case to be reopened a couple years later due to newfound evidence that ended up creating enough doubt that it secured the release of the perpetrator. Whether or not that guy was the actual killer and had gotten off lucky remained an unknown. Wright was, however, going to look the guy up – for old times' sake – just to see what he had been up to on the fifty-seven nights that these security guards went missing.

The original murderer had chosen to kill children. Unless he changed his MO, it seemed as though they had an entirely different serial killer stalking the city. What was with all the crazies being attracted to this site, though? Wright had a working theory that the killer was using the building's haunted reputation to keep folks away. Unfortunately for him, the new owner's renovation had uncovered the killer's lair.

Wright pulled out his little pocket notebook and opened it to his list of suspects. He had several officers checking out the construction workers while he had listened to their version of what had happened. He had called up two of the building's previous owners, now retirees for four or five decades, and made appointments to speak with each of them.

Who was left? Detective Wright scrolled through the list to the building's newest owner, Madeleine Ward. While he had trouble believing a woman could be responsible for this, he couldn't cross her out without questioning her first. A woman serial killer wouldn't have been the craziest thing he had seen during his years on the force, but the amount of raw physical power that was necessary to tear grown men's limbs from their bodies was greater than any normal woman could muster. Hell! He couldn't think there could be very many men out there that might have that sort of brute strength either.

Returning his notebook back into his pocket, Wright wandered off in search of Ms. Ward.

"I don't recommend walking through this place without a hardhat, officer," a voice said from behind him.

"That would be detective," Wright corrected as he looked the fellow up and down. "Mr. MacGregor, I presume?" He held out a hand to shake only for the foreman to shove a yellow hardhat into it. Wright stuck it on his head. It was a little big and shifted over his eyes, forcing him to push it back out of his way. "Uh, thanks."

"Mac is just fine." The foreman turned to him, his eyes looking tired and wary. "And, you're welcome. I already gave my statement to the other detective that's running around here."

This guy looked burly enough to do some damage. The detective's eyes dropped down to the claw hammer on the man's hip before moving back up to his face.

"That would be Detective Sawyer. That's fine. I was actually hoping you could tell me where I might find the owner of this property . . . Ah, a Ms. Madeleine Ward? I heard tell she was here when this" Wright waved at the chaos that was supposed to be the new lobby, "all came down. I imagine she's all shook up."

"Not the word I'd use," Mac shrugged.

"Really? What word would you use, then?" he asked, curious. Most women he knew would be at the ER getting prescribed some valium after witnessing something like this. He reached in his pocket for his car keys.

"Fury," one of the construction workers blurted out as he walked by.

Mac sighed. "Sam . . . Why don't you and the others head on home when the officers are done with you. I've got this." He turned back to Wright, pausing to spit tobacco juice in a paper cup. "I'd say 'outrage' would be more like it. Now then, the last I saw of Ms. Ward, she had been heading back toward her office in order to give you guys a call. She tends to like to lock up each night herself, so I doubt that she's left yet."

"She'd stick around after something like this?"

Mac snorted. "This place is her baby. She'll not leave until she has to. Just follow the hall in that direction," he pointed to the left. "It'll be all the way down and on your right. I can show you if you like. This place can be a bit of maze if you don't know your way around."

Wright gave an amused smile. "I think I can find my way, thanks. You might as well tell your boys to take the rest of the week off. This is going to take a few days."

Mac whistled, grimacing. "She ain't going to like that," he muttered. "Good luck, detective," Mac told him as he turned to give the word to his crew.

Wright moved off down the hall. It didn't take more than two turns when he understood the foreman's remark wasn't an exaggeration. This place, even torn apart as it was currently, was indeed a maze. But it was the other remarks made by him and the other men about their absentee boss that intrigued him. Not your typical female, he was concluding, and he found himself eager to see if his assumptions about her were correct.

He found a room he determined would have been designated as the office space finally. Flipping the light switch, the only thing the detective found in the empty space was a cheetah-print ladies' handbag lying in the middle of the room. Frowning, Wright kneeled beside the bag as he reached into his pocket for a pair of latex gloves. Carefully, he opened the bag enough to peer inside. He found a phone, a matching cheetah-print wallet, and a set of keys along with some bits and pieces of female toiletries. Wherever she was, Wright didn't think she would have left the premises voluntarily without her belongings.

The sound of shouting brought his head up sharply. Definitely feminine and most definitely angry. Remembering what the foreman said about Ward's anger over the delay in renovations, he leapt to his feet in anticipation. Loud metallic banging alternated with those sharp furious yelling.

Could it be possible that Ward knew the killer and was foolishly confronting him?

Wright pulled his gun out. Whatever was happening, he felt there was a very good chance he would need to intervene. He peeked out of the office doorway into the hall. Several officers were arriving on scene as well, having been drawn here by the noises. They lined the hall outside of a heavy metal security door. The exit sign illuminated the door to the outside. What the hell was this door containing? A safe? Something else?

His partner, fellow detective, Joshua Sawyer, pushed his way to the front of the line, his own weapon drawn. He met Wright's eyes and nodded in the direction of the door.

You want to take lead?

The two had been partners for close to eight years. They could practically read one another's minds in situations like this. Wright nodded and moved to the other side of the door. He waved a command at the other officers to stand ready. Sawyer reached out with one hand and touched the door handle. Unlocked . . . No need for a battering ram. That was good because from the sound of things, having to wait for the ram might be too late for whomever was being assaulted inside the room.

Wright tried to understand the words he was hearing but the voice was muffled by the heavy metal of the door.

CLANG!

There was no mistaking that sound. Something metal just hit the concrete blocks that made up the interior walls of this 'safe room'.

Madeleine Ward's voice didn't sound like a woman in distress, however. Whatever violence was occurring sounded like she was likely the cause of it. Enough – Time to stop whatever was going on and rescue whoever was taking the brunt of Ms. Ward's temper.

Sawyer saw his decision in his eyes and turned the handle, cracking the door slightly. The furious muffled sounds instantly became recognizable.

"YOU ARE DETERMINED TO RUIN THIS FOR ME, AREN'T YOU!"

When there wasn't an immediate reaction to the door's movements, Wright waved for Sawyer to push it the rest of the way open. Guns drawn and ready, the two detectives stepped into the room and to either side of the doorway to open a path for the other officers backing them up. No one was prepared for what they found, however and several weapons wavered as a result.

"I AM SO GOING TO KICK YOUR UGLY, RUSTED METAL BEHIND FOR THIS!" The woman shrieked.

BANG! BANG! CLANG!

Wright and the others winced at the unhindered sound of metal slamming repeatedly into the wall.

"YOU'RE MORE TROUBLE THEN YOU'RE WORTH!" the woman continued screaming into the face of . . . of . . . "I SHOULD HAVE LEFT YOU IN THAT TRASH BIN! I SHOULD HAVE LET THEM DUMP YOU IN THAT TRASH COMPACTOR AND SQUISH YOU INTO A CUBE!

Wright rubbed his eyes with one hand. Was he seeing what he was seeing?

BANG! CLANG!

"I COULD USE YOU FOR AN END TABLE," she screeched, "AT LEAST THEN YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL INSTEAD OF CAUSING ME NO END OF HEADACHES!"

Madeleine Ward, Wright assumed, was currently sitting straddled across the lap of a rusted, rotting, animatronic as she shrieked and slammed its robotic head into the wall behind it. One of the ears was quirked off kilter, one of the eyes had fallen out of the socket and was bouncing wildly from a couple of wires. All in all, it looked as if it was ready to fall apart any second – and that was without the added abuse Madeleine Ward was heaping upon it.

"SAY SOMETHING, DARN YOU! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!"

"What the fuck's wrong with her?" Sawyer whispered at him.

The Ward woman's head snapped around in response, although Wright didn't know how she could have heard anything after all that banging. His ears were still ringing. The absolute rage in her eyes made him raise his gun back into position.

Wright cleared his throat. "I don't know if that thing can hear you or not, but I assure you the rest of the neighborhood can."

The fury bled out of her face so quickly, he blinked. The woman's expression morphed into a bright, friendly smile the moment their presence registered in her brain.

Sweet . . . he thought amazed. She looked sweet and innocent with a gentle, disarming smile. No one, by looking at her now, would ever suspect this woman of the sort of violence he had just witnessed. He was hesitant to lower his gun, but there was no law out there that prevented the woman from destroying her own property.

"Oh, hello," Madeleine greeted them with delight. She let go of the rabbit's head only for it to fall loudly one last time into the concrete blocks at its back. "Were you boys looking for me? If I had known that, I would have come out to greet you."

"Uh, right, about that . . ." Wright reluctantly returned his gun to the holster under his jacket. "Is, um, everything okay in here - Ms. Ward, I'm presuming?"

"You want that I should call for a paramedic?" Sawyer whispered.

"Oh no," Ms. Ward laughed lightly. "He's fine." She reached back blindly, patting the broken and battered robot on its nose. "Everything's fine. Not to worry. We're all quite alright in here."

"Or perhaps a therapist might be a better idea?" Sawyer asked in a quiet aside.

Not quietly enough, apparently. "Oh, don't bother. I have a therapist. His name's Dr. Sigmund." Ms. Ward announced breezily.

Sawyer choked on his next comment, wisely deciding to keep it to himself.

"Not too fine, considering what you found in your attic space," Wright mentioned, watching the woman's reaction to his words.

Ms. Ward shook her head sadly. "No, no. It's not fine for them, poor souls."

"Indeed," Wright murmured. "I came looking for you, Ms. Ward, in order to ask you a few questions - If you don't mind, that is?"

Her face lit back up, the mournful look dropping away instantly. "Of course," she said. "Happy to oblige." She twisted around to face them but remained in place on the animatronic's lap. She placed her hands on her knees and looked at them inquiringly. "Okay, shoot."

Wright looked at the animatronic uneasily. The robot was emanating a pungent odor similar to the one in the lobby. He pointed in the direction of the hallway with his thumb. "Outside?"

"But, of course. I'll be out in a moment," she agreed.

Turning back to the robot, she took a moment to straighten its ear and popped the dangling eyeball back into its socket. The eye didn't appear to want to go for a minute, but Ms. Ward smacked it with the flat of her hand, and it moved back into place with a light crunch. She used the contraption to help herself to her feet and patted the concrete dust from her jeans.

Wright ran into a crowd of officers as he left the room. He had forgotten they were still here so caught up as he was in the surreal environment of the safe room. His confusion morphed into annoyance, and he snapped. "What does this look like, a side show? Get back to work!"

Although the officers broke it up immediately, it didn't take a fortune teller to know this scene was going to be retold repeatedly throughout the precinct in the coming weeks. There were times when cops resembled a gaggle of old women with their gossiping. Not what he needed to be dealing with on a case like this.

He grabbed Sawyer's arm. "Remind them this is an ongoing investigation and to keep this to themselves. Last thing anyone needs is the media getting wind of this."

"What do you think of this Ms. Ward?" Sawyer asked quietly. "Are you going to be okay handling Ms. Nutcase on your own? I can hang around back here, if you need me to."

Wright gave a wry smile. "I've got it covered," He said, patting the bulge under his jacket. "She won't get near me."

Sawyer laughed at the irreverent cop humor, appreciating the break in the neck-deep tension they had been wading through since walking through the front door into that grisly scene straight out of some horror flick. In this line of work, one had to develop a brand of dark humor in order to deal with some of the gruesome and often downright evil that they faced on a day-to-day basis. Giving a two-finger salute the other detective followed the rest of the officers back in the direction of the crime scene.

Wright tugged out his pen and notepad of suspects. Flipping it open, he circled Madeleine Ward's name several times over, scratching down a couple of fat, bold question marks beside it.

As soon as the two detectives left the room, Madeleine's cheerful smile twisted into a snarl. She spun around and leaned down into Turtle's face.

"You better watch yourself, buddy," Maddie whispered to him, waving two fingers back and forth between her eyes and him as she backed out of the room. "I'm keeping my eye on you."

The officer was waiting beside the exit door. "I don't think we've been properly introduced yet, Ms. Ward, isn't it? My name is Detective Wright."

"A pleasure, I'm sure," she said. "You can call me, Ms. Ward. Everybody does."

"I thought we might chat outside," Detective Wright said, pushing the door open to allow her to pass on their way out of the building.

"Oh, you mean outside-outside," she clarified as she stepped out into the weak sunshine of the mid-September afternoon. She breathed deeply as she tipped her head up to the sky in appreciation. The breeze lifted the stray hair out of her face. "Yes, I'll admit, it smells much better out here."

The officer grunted, glancing back inside before letting the door close behind them. "Is there anything I should know about that robot?"

Maddie laughed and waved him away. "Oh, don't worry about Turtle. I'm certain I just need to change up my medication."

The detective's brow rose in response. "You take medications, Ms. Ward?"

"Every day. Dr. Sigmund prescribed them to me. He thought it would make transitioning easier."

"'Transitioning'?"

She smiled cheerfully. "That's right."

When nothing else was forthcoming, he prodded a little more. "Transitioning from what, if I may ask?"

"You may," Maddie told him.

He frowned. "I may – what?"

"You may ask." She took off her pink hardhat and pulled the band from her ponytail, shaking her hair out and running her fingers through it. "Ah, that's better. It feels good letting your hair down at the end of the day, doesn't it?"

Detective Wright frowned as he watched her, then shook his head. "Yeah, it sure does," he muttered in agreement despite the fact that his haircut was regulation Marine. "Er, what was I talking about?"

Maddie tossed her hair back one more time. "My medications."

"Okay, yeah, um, would you mind giving me a list of those medications and their prescribed dosage?"

"Not a problem. I keep a couple of lists in my purse. Remind me to give that to you when we're done here," she said.

He blinked. "You keep a list of your medications and dosage in your purse?"

She smiled and corrected him. "I keep two."

"I'll make a note of that," he said, flipping in his notebook to a new page. He scribbled something at the top of the page.

Maddie craned her neck but straightened when he looked back up at her.

"This won't take but a few minutes of your time, Ms. Ward. Now then, how long have you owned this building?" Wright asked her.

"Um, what day is it?"

"The fourteenth."

She waved that answer away. "No, no. I mean what day is it?"

"Wednesday," he told her.

She nodded briskly. "A week."

"A week," he repeated, writing this down. "And, how long have you been living here?"

Madeleine laughed. "Oh, I don't live here! That would be silly. We're in the middle of a construction zone." She leaned in conspiratorially and winked. "Seriously, the dust would get everywhere."

Wright frowned at her, then taking a deep breath, clarified his question. "How long have you been living here – in this town?"

"What month is it?"

He glanced up at her from his notebook. "September."

She counted back on her fingers, then paused. "The year?"

One of his eyebrows inched upward. "Really?"

"Would I have asked?" she told him in the same fashion as his third-grade teacher, Mrs. McGurdy.

"2027," he said.

Then, it's been about a year and a half."

Scratch, scratch . . . went the pen.

"And, where were you living before this?"

"Santa Fe."

"New Mexico?"

"Is there more than one?" she asked, intrigued.

"Yeah," he nodded. "There is."

"New Mexico," she said with finality.

Scratch. Scratch.

Maddie eyed the notepad. What exactly was he writing down?

"Do you have family nearby or are they all back in Santa Fe?"

Madeleine caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "No family," she said a little hesitantly.

He glanced up from his notepad. "No? None? You hardly look old enough to be out on your own."

"I've lived in a couple of foster homes during my junior and senior years of high school. After that, I moved out on my own."

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

He looked at her sympathetically. "Is that when you lost your family?"

"No," she answered briefly.

"Who were you living with before then?"

Madeleine shrugged. "I was living at the Tabula Rasa PRC."

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

"PRC? What's that stand for?" He asked, frowning down at his notepad.

"It's a psychiatric rehabilitation center," she told him.

Lifting up on her toes, Maddie peered over his arm to see what he was writing. "No. It's not a psych ward," she corrected, pointing at the mistake on his pad. "It's a psychiatric rehabilitation center. You spell rehabilitation, r-e-h-a-b-i . . ."

"I know how to spell 'rehabilitation'," he interrupted her snappishly, pulling his notepad closer to his chest. "How old were you when you first moved there?"

Madeleine's mouth twisted. "Old enough."

There was an awkward silence before Detective Wright realized she wasn't going to answer him and let the topic go. "Very well." He could look this information up later back in his office. "What exactly do you do for a living, Ms. Ward?"

Maddie. "Currently, my job is renovating this building. That, and I've been taking care of my boyfriend for these last few months."

Scratch. Scratch. He glanced up at her again. "You have a boyfriend?"

"His name is Roger," she told him. "Strickland."

The scratching halted. "How do you spell that?" Wright asked.

"Oho, now you want me to spell something for you!" she smirked. "S-t-r-i-c-k-land."

Scratch. Scratch. Went Roger's name.

"Why has he needed you to take care of him?"

Madeleine cleared her throat uncomfortably. When Detective Wright looked up at her again, she dropped her gaze. "Oh, um . . . He was in a tiny little car accident."

"That's too bad," Wright murmured. "Hope he's doing better."

"Are we about done here, Mr. Wright?" Maddie asked politely. "I have several more things I need to do before the day ends."

"That's detective," he corrected. "And, yes, that will be all for now, Ms. Ward. Thank you for your time."

She perked up, her earlier sunny smile back in place. "Thank you, Detective, and you can call me Madeleine."

He blinked, confused, as he tucked his notepad and pen away in his jacket's inner pocket. "Sure. Thank you, Madeleine."

"You're welcome," she told him. "It only seems fair, after all."

This only seemed to confuse him more. Detective Wright moved to open the back door only to see there was no handle on this side.

"It locks automatically from this side," she explained, waving at a path through piles of old construction material and equipment. "We have to walk around to the front."

As they made their way toward the parking area, she asked him, "Detective? Just how long do you think all this is going to take?"

"We'll let you know," he told her, tipping his fingers to a nonexistent hat. As she began to walk away, he called to her. "And, Madeleine . . ." he said, waiting until she turned to look back at him. "Don't leave town."

Would love to hear some reactions! :) Happy Memorial day everybody!