Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of Third Watch
Author's note: Happy Halloween.
~The Dead Of The Night~
~Wednesday, two days 'till Halloween
Autumn comes, bringing with it a cool fresh feeling of change. The time of year when you get to wear your old comfortable sweaters again, perfumed with the scent of cedar. The kids go back to school, and the city is skirted with a fringe of color as the leaves change. This is Faith's favorite time of the year. Each year at this time, she and Fred load the kids in the car and cruise through upstate New York to see the fall foliage.
But Bosco looks at it differently. To him, autumn is an ending. The days get shorter, the nights get colder, and the leaves die and blow around the city like litter. Then it ends with the worst night of the year...Halloween. Even as a child...Bosco hated Halloween. Like there wasn't enough to be afraid of in the world...people dress up as goblins and prowl around in the dark, scaring kids and causing mayhem all over the city.
All the freaks come out.
He spent so many nights of his childhood cowering in the dark...cowering from a real monster that was his father. Listening from the dark corner of his closet, to the horror of his father's angry ranting, the sound of the house being torn apart as he hunted down his family inside, and then the screams in the black void beyond as he found them.
He lived through it, grew beyond it...but it's still there within him...whispering it's presence in the dead of the night.
***
55-David are on patrol. Bosco is driving as Faith fills out a report form about the last call they responded to.
"Are you done with that report already?" Bosco asks surprised.
"Almost." She answers him without looking up.
"Make sure that you emphasize how crazy that witch lady was." Bosco instructs her.
"I did."
"Don't leave anything out."
She gives him an annoyed glance. "I know what I'm doing."
"I don't want her to be released from Belleview with only a physical. I don't want to see her back on the street. Make sure they know they have to keep her."
"Do you want to finish this yourself?" She says getting annoyed.
"No...but don't forget to say how she threw that pumpkin at our RMP, and write in there, that she attacked me with her broomstick."
"I put in that she is mentally disturbed and a possible danger to herself and others. That should do it. They'll know the minute they examine her."
"Don't you think these details are important?" He says in a huff.
"Yah...but it don't fit. And since when do you care what goes into a report, that you didn't have to write?" She says raising her voice.
"Alright don't get your knickers in a knot, I'm only tryen to help."
She looks at him for a moment, then decides not to let him get under her skin. She shakes her head and turns her attention back to what she was doing.
"Look at that jag-off." Bosco says pointing.
"Where?" Faith asks, looking up from the report.
"There...driving in the ghoul outfit."
"It's almost Halloween. He's probably going to a party."
"I'm pulling him over." He gives him a quick blare of the siren.
"Why? What'd he do?"
"He's a moron, that's what he did."
"Bosco..." She doesn't finish her statement. He's been in a bad mood for the past few days, and there is no talking to him when he gets like this.
Bosco walks briskly up to the car, leans down to the window and raps on it with his knuckles. The power window goes down, and the head of the driver slowly turns in his direction. Bosco finds himself nose to nose with a rubber mask, molded in the face of the phantom of the opera, frozen in a lifeless look of horror, mouth open in an anguished scream.
"Boo." The man says calmly. A burst of laughter resounds from the spaceman and the monkey riding in the back seat.
Although Bosco is expecting to see the mask, something about the way it turns to him, dreadfully slow...something in the fact that the eyes are real, but the face has no human expression...makes him feel creepy. He shivers, as an eerie feeling runs down his spine, as slight as a spider crawling on your hair...a momentary sensation of fear, that you need to shake off of you quickly. He instinctively, overreacts with anger.
"Out of the car...now!" he screams at the young man.
The guy starts to open his door, and Bosco grabs it, flinging it open. He reaches into the car in a blind fury, grabs him by the shirt and pulls him out, jacking him up against the back window, and ripping the mask off his head. "You think this is a joke?" he hollers at the guy, who...when unmasked, appears to be about sixteen years old.
"Hey...take it easy...I'm sorry...I didn't mean to scare you officer." He mutters innocently, holding his hands in the air, and hiding behind them.
"Scare me! Scare Me? You little pin head...I'll show ya scared." he threatens. Bosco pulls the kid forward and spins him around to the back of the car, and slams him face down on the trunk, and bounces his face a few times to emphasize his anger.
"Bosco...Bosco, let him go!" Faith yells, hurrying around the car, and pulling him away from the boy by his arm. She shoves him out of ear shot and whispers "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He glares at her for a second, then he relaxes, looking a little embarrassed. He knows his reaction was unwarranted. "The kid has a smart mouth." he says, lying to justify what he did.
"Well what do ya wanna do with him? We can't arrest him for that."
"I don't know, just...just let him go." He answers, waving his hand at the car in disgust.
**
Soon they are back on patrol, and Faith breaks the awkward silence by asking, "Is everything ok? You've been really on edge lately."
"Yah...everything's fine. The kid just mouthed off to me...that's all. Pissed me off."
"Well...what did he say?"
"Never mind...I'm not gonna repeat it." He's too ashamed to make eye contact with her but a few minutes later he hears her chuckle and he glances over. Her face is leaning casually on her hand and she's gazing out the window, laughing to herself and grinning.
"What?" He says annoyed, figuring that she must be laughing at him.
She lets out a small laugh and looks back at him. "When I let that kid go...I apologized to him, and told him we made a mistake. That he matched the description of someone we were looking for." She pauses, and laughs. "He said he understood." She squints her eyes and laughs a little harder.
"Yah...why is that funny?"
"He was wearing a mask when you stopped him...who did he think we were looking for...Lon Chaney?"
******
Three hours into their shift it is already dark and the wind has picked up threatening to bring rain. That is the topic of Bosco's complaining, when Faith interrupts him.
"What does this jackass want?" she says as more of a statement than a question.
Bosco looks over, and sees a guy on the sidewalk trying to flag them down. He pulls up to the curb as Faith rolls her window down to talk to him.
A blast of cold air blows through the car, causing her to shiver. "What's wrong sir?"
"It's down here." He says in a heavy New York accent. His seems hurried as he waves and turns, ready to lead them to whatever 'it' is.
"Hold on...what's down there?" she hollers into the wind.
"I can't believe you got here dis fast. Dat's great...It's freeken cold out here." He starts walking away unaware that she is talking to him.
"Sir...stop...and tell me what you're talking about." She yells, as the wind once again carries her voice away.
He turns back, "What?" and walks up to the car again, stuffing his hands into his pockets and shrinking his head down into the collar of his coat. He bends over to look in the window and asks, "Are you comen or what? I'm freezen my calzones off out here."
"What exactly is the problem?" Why did you stop us?" She growls.
"I found a stiff...down there." He shouts, pointing with a nod of his head, keeping his hands warm in his pockets. "I called 911."
She glances back at Bosco. "Should we follow this goof? We didn't get a dispatch."
"Let's check 'him' out first...in the car" Just then the radio puts out a call for them to 'see the man about a body' and it gives the location they are parked in front of.
"Crap." she mutters, pulling her jacket up around her neck as she gets out of the car. Then it starts to rain. It's a cold, wind blown rain that sprays in your face then changes direction and then in your face again. The kind that drenches you instantly.
"Hey...why don't I wait here while you check it out? No point in both of us getting wet." Bosco calls as she closes the door.
She bends down to the window, and answers him with a glare...her hair already wet and stuck to the side of her face.
"Ok, ok. I'm coming." Then he grumbles something illegible as he zips up his coat and climbs out to follow her.
Faith asks the guy a bunch of questions as they walk with him towards the body. They stop at the mans feet, shining their lights on him. "Jesus." Is all Bosco can muster to say. And at the same time, there is a bolt of lightning followed instantly by an earth shaking boom of thunder, flickering the scene to light in true horror movie style. All three of them duck.
The victim looks to be in his fifties or older, sprawled on his back. He's been stripped of his jacket, shirt and shoes. He is wearing tattered pants and a dirty undershirt that looks too small for him. The rain soaked shirt clings tightly to his bloated belly, and through it can be see numerous bruises, darker then the death blue color of his skin.
His eyes are open in a haunted stare, and his mouth is open, as if rigger mortis set in as he said his last word. The few teeth he has stand out like pickets, around his blackened gums. The fatal blow must have been to the temple, which is caved in. The skin is peeled back at the wound, as is the flesh, exposing the shattered bone, now rain-washed white.
Faith calls in to central that they need the coroner and a detective. Bosco wanders off with his light, searching for any other clues before the rain washes them away.
Faith crouches down, and looks the body over with her flash light. "Hey Bos...look at this."
"No thanks...I don't want to look at it again."
"This guy has bite marks on his arm."
"It's probably rats." He says, wandering back over out of curiosity.
"No...they're not nibbles...they're teeth marks, like human teeth."
"Maybe he did it himself. These people are all crazy." Then he shines his light on the man's face again.
"He don't have enough teeth to have done this himself...what do you think?" Faith asks.
"What do I think? I think if I was down to my last three teeth, I take better care of them then he did." He wanders back off into the alley to search around the dumpster. Next to the dumpster he finds a large box. The outside is littered with empty liquor bottles, and the front of it has a slit cut in it for a door.
"I think I found where he lives." he says disgusted. The flap is closed, but protruding through it about two feet off the ground, is a wooden handle. "Hey...I think I may have found the murder weapon too."
Faith stands up and shines her light over to him. "What do ya got?"
"Looks like an ax handle." He crouches down and gives it a pull, but it doesn't budge. "It's caught on something." Setting his light down, he grabs it with both hands and pulls hard.
It pulls out of the box, and throws Bosco off balance, knocking him to the ground. And with it comes the object it was stuck into, bursting the flap open and landing on top of Bosco, wrapping him up and pinning him to the ground.
"Ahh...Faith! Help...get him off me. Faith...get him off!"
At first sight it looked to Faith as though someone lunged at Bosco from inside the box. She runs to help him, but as she gets close, she momentarily stops in horror when she sees what it really is.
A body, frozen in rigor in a crouched position, is straddling Bosco cheek to cheek, the ax still embedded in it's head, and it's face covered with dried blood that the rain is turning into a dark sticky ooze.
Bosco's legs are kicking frantically from underneath, and his arms are trying to lift two hundred and fifty pounds of bloated, dead weight off of himself. Faith pulls the body from it's side and rolls it off of Bosco, who quickly leaps to his feet and starts brushing himself off as if to shed the horror.
They stare at the body teetering on it's back, arms and legs bent and pointing skyward with the ax dividing his face evenly. Bosco is pacing quickly in circles, swearing and shaking himself off, like the body is still on him.
"Are you alright Bos?" She asks hiding a grin.
"God Damn it! I hate that. Oh man...I thought I was a goner. Auh...it was all over me."
Faith tries not to laugh, but she can't help it.
He calms down once the detectives arrive, and tries to act real cool about it in front of them. She lets him explain to the detectives, how without concern for the rain and lightning, he bravely searched in the dark alley and found the second body.
Then she mentions to him quietly, "You still got some dead guy on your face." then she smiles, as she watches him go back into his 'get it off me' frenzy.
***
The next chapter will be posted Tomorrow afternoon
***
Author's note: Happy Halloween.
~The Dead Of The Night~
~Wednesday, two days 'till Halloween
Autumn comes, bringing with it a cool fresh feeling of change. The time of year when you get to wear your old comfortable sweaters again, perfumed with the scent of cedar. The kids go back to school, and the city is skirted with a fringe of color as the leaves change. This is Faith's favorite time of the year. Each year at this time, she and Fred load the kids in the car and cruise through upstate New York to see the fall foliage.
But Bosco looks at it differently. To him, autumn is an ending. The days get shorter, the nights get colder, and the leaves die and blow around the city like litter. Then it ends with the worst night of the year...Halloween. Even as a child...Bosco hated Halloween. Like there wasn't enough to be afraid of in the world...people dress up as goblins and prowl around in the dark, scaring kids and causing mayhem all over the city.
All the freaks come out.
He spent so many nights of his childhood cowering in the dark...cowering from a real monster that was his father. Listening from the dark corner of his closet, to the horror of his father's angry ranting, the sound of the house being torn apart as he hunted down his family inside, and then the screams in the black void beyond as he found them.
He lived through it, grew beyond it...but it's still there within him...whispering it's presence in the dead of the night.
***
55-David are on patrol. Bosco is driving as Faith fills out a report form about the last call they responded to.
"Are you done with that report already?" Bosco asks surprised.
"Almost." She answers him without looking up.
"Make sure that you emphasize how crazy that witch lady was." Bosco instructs her.
"I did."
"Don't leave anything out."
She gives him an annoyed glance. "I know what I'm doing."
"I don't want her to be released from Belleview with only a physical. I don't want to see her back on the street. Make sure they know they have to keep her."
"Do you want to finish this yourself?" She says getting annoyed.
"No...but don't forget to say how she threw that pumpkin at our RMP, and write in there, that she attacked me with her broomstick."
"I put in that she is mentally disturbed and a possible danger to herself and others. That should do it. They'll know the minute they examine her."
"Don't you think these details are important?" He says in a huff.
"Yah...but it don't fit. And since when do you care what goes into a report, that you didn't have to write?" She says raising her voice.
"Alright don't get your knickers in a knot, I'm only tryen to help."
She looks at him for a moment, then decides not to let him get under her skin. She shakes her head and turns her attention back to what she was doing.
"Look at that jag-off." Bosco says pointing.
"Where?" Faith asks, looking up from the report.
"There...driving in the ghoul outfit."
"It's almost Halloween. He's probably going to a party."
"I'm pulling him over." He gives him a quick blare of the siren.
"Why? What'd he do?"
"He's a moron, that's what he did."
"Bosco..." She doesn't finish her statement. He's been in a bad mood for the past few days, and there is no talking to him when he gets like this.
Bosco walks briskly up to the car, leans down to the window and raps on it with his knuckles. The power window goes down, and the head of the driver slowly turns in his direction. Bosco finds himself nose to nose with a rubber mask, molded in the face of the phantom of the opera, frozen in a lifeless look of horror, mouth open in an anguished scream.
"Boo." The man says calmly. A burst of laughter resounds from the spaceman and the monkey riding in the back seat.
Although Bosco is expecting to see the mask, something about the way it turns to him, dreadfully slow...something in the fact that the eyes are real, but the face has no human expression...makes him feel creepy. He shivers, as an eerie feeling runs down his spine, as slight as a spider crawling on your hair...a momentary sensation of fear, that you need to shake off of you quickly. He instinctively, overreacts with anger.
"Out of the car...now!" he screams at the young man.
The guy starts to open his door, and Bosco grabs it, flinging it open. He reaches into the car in a blind fury, grabs him by the shirt and pulls him out, jacking him up against the back window, and ripping the mask off his head. "You think this is a joke?" he hollers at the guy, who...when unmasked, appears to be about sixteen years old.
"Hey...take it easy...I'm sorry...I didn't mean to scare you officer." He mutters innocently, holding his hands in the air, and hiding behind them.
"Scare me! Scare Me? You little pin head...I'll show ya scared." he threatens. Bosco pulls the kid forward and spins him around to the back of the car, and slams him face down on the trunk, and bounces his face a few times to emphasize his anger.
"Bosco...Bosco, let him go!" Faith yells, hurrying around the car, and pulling him away from the boy by his arm. She shoves him out of ear shot and whispers "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He glares at her for a second, then he relaxes, looking a little embarrassed. He knows his reaction was unwarranted. "The kid has a smart mouth." he says, lying to justify what he did.
"Well what do ya wanna do with him? We can't arrest him for that."
"I don't know, just...just let him go." He answers, waving his hand at the car in disgust.
**
Soon they are back on patrol, and Faith breaks the awkward silence by asking, "Is everything ok? You've been really on edge lately."
"Yah...everything's fine. The kid just mouthed off to me...that's all. Pissed me off."
"Well...what did he say?"
"Never mind...I'm not gonna repeat it." He's too ashamed to make eye contact with her but a few minutes later he hears her chuckle and he glances over. Her face is leaning casually on her hand and she's gazing out the window, laughing to herself and grinning.
"What?" He says annoyed, figuring that she must be laughing at him.
She lets out a small laugh and looks back at him. "When I let that kid go...I apologized to him, and told him we made a mistake. That he matched the description of someone we were looking for." She pauses, and laughs. "He said he understood." She squints her eyes and laughs a little harder.
"Yah...why is that funny?"
"He was wearing a mask when you stopped him...who did he think we were looking for...Lon Chaney?"
******
Three hours into their shift it is already dark and the wind has picked up threatening to bring rain. That is the topic of Bosco's complaining, when Faith interrupts him.
"What does this jackass want?" she says as more of a statement than a question.
Bosco looks over, and sees a guy on the sidewalk trying to flag them down. He pulls up to the curb as Faith rolls her window down to talk to him.
A blast of cold air blows through the car, causing her to shiver. "What's wrong sir?"
"It's down here." He says in a heavy New York accent. His seems hurried as he waves and turns, ready to lead them to whatever 'it' is.
"Hold on...what's down there?" she hollers into the wind.
"I can't believe you got here dis fast. Dat's great...It's freeken cold out here." He starts walking away unaware that she is talking to him.
"Sir...stop...and tell me what you're talking about." She yells, as the wind once again carries her voice away.
He turns back, "What?" and walks up to the car again, stuffing his hands into his pockets and shrinking his head down into the collar of his coat. He bends over to look in the window and asks, "Are you comen or what? I'm freezen my calzones off out here."
"What exactly is the problem?" Why did you stop us?" She growls.
"I found a stiff...down there." He shouts, pointing with a nod of his head, keeping his hands warm in his pockets. "I called 911."
She glances back at Bosco. "Should we follow this goof? We didn't get a dispatch."
"Let's check 'him' out first...in the car" Just then the radio puts out a call for them to 'see the man about a body' and it gives the location they are parked in front of.
"Crap." she mutters, pulling her jacket up around her neck as she gets out of the car. Then it starts to rain. It's a cold, wind blown rain that sprays in your face then changes direction and then in your face again. The kind that drenches you instantly.
"Hey...why don't I wait here while you check it out? No point in both of us getting wet." Bosco calls as she closes the door.
She bends down to the window, and answers him with a glare...her hair already wet and stuck to the side of her face.
"Ok, ok. I'm coming." Then he grumbles something illegible as he zips up his coat and climbs out to follow her.
Faith asks the guy a bunch of questions as they walk with him towards the body. They stop at the mans feet, shining their lights on him. "Jesus." Is all Bosco can muster to say. And at the same time, there is a bolt of lightning followed instantly by an earth shaking boom of thunder, flickering the scene to light in true horror movie style. All three of them duck.
The victim looks to be in his fifties or older, sprawled on his back. He's been stripped of his jacket, shirt and shoes. He is wearing tattered pants and a dirty undershirt that looks too small for him. The rain soaked shirt clings tightly to his bloated belly, and through it can be see numerous bruises, darker then the death blue color of his skin.
His eyes are open in a haunted stare, and his mouth is open, as if rigger mortis set in as he said his last word. The few teeth he has stand out like pickets, around his blackened gums. The fatal blow must have been to the temple, which is caved in. The skin is peeled back at the wound, as is the flesh, exposing the shattered bone, now rain-washed white.
Faith calls in to central that they need the coroner and a detective. Bosco wanders off with his light, searching for any other clues before the rain washes them away.
Faith crouches down, and looks the body over with her flash light. "Hey Bos...look at this."
"No thanks...I don't want to look at it again."
"This guy has bite marks on his arm."
"It's probably rats." He says, wandering back over out of curiosity.
"No...they're not nibbles...they're teeth marks, like human teeth."
"Maybe he did it himself. These people are all crazy." Then he shines his light on the man's face again.
"He don't have enough teeth to have done this himself...what do you think?" Faith asks.
"What do I think? I think if I was down to my last three teeth, I take better care of them then he did." He wanders back off into the alley to search around the dumpster. Next to the dumpster he finds a large box. The outside is littered with empty liquor bottles, and the front of it has a slit cut in it for a door.
"I think I found where he lives." he says disgusted. The flap is closed, but protruding through it about two feet off the ground, is a wooden handle. "Hey...I think I may have found the murder weapon too."
Faith stands up and shines her light over to him. "What do ya got?"
"Looks like an ax handle." He crouches down and gives it a pull, but it doesn't budge. "It's caught on something." Setting his light down, he grabs it with both hands and pulls hard.
It pulls out of the box, and throws Bosco off balance, knocking him to the ground. And with it comes the object it was stuck into, bursting the flap open and landing on top of Bosco, wrapping him up and pinning him to the ground.
"Ahh...Faith! Help...get him off me. Faith...get him off!"
At first sight it looked to Faith as though someone lunged at Bosco from inside the box. She runs to help him, but as she gets close, she momentarily stops in horror when she sees what it really is.
A body, frozen in rigor in a crouched position, is straddling Bosco cheek to cheek, the ax still embedded in it's head, and it's face covered with dried blood that the rain is turning into a dark sticky ooze.
Bosco's legs are kicking frantically from underneath, and his arms are trying to lift two hundred and fifty pounds of bloated, dead weight off of himself. Faith pulls the body from it's side and rolls it off of Bosco, who quickly leaps to his feet and starts brushing himself off as if to shed the horror.
They stare at the body teetering on it's back, arms and legs bent and pointing skyward with the ax dividing his face evenly. Bosco is pacing quickly in circles, swearing and shaking himself off, like the body is still on him.
"Are you alright Bos?" She asks hiding a grin.
"God Damn it! I hate that. Oh man...I thought I was a goner. Auh...it was all over me."
Faith tries not to laugh, but she can't help it.
He calms down once the detectives arrive, and tries to act real cool about it in front of them. She lets him explain to the detectives, how without concern for the rain and lightning, he bravely searched in the dark alley and found the second body.
Then she mentions to him quietly, "You still got some dead guy on your face." then she smiles, as she watches him go back into his 'get it off me' frenzy.
***
The next chapter will be posted Tomorrow afternoon
***