Most police precincts aren't very easy to break into but Emirene knew the Seventh like the back of her hand. She knew that the jail cells shared the basement with the well guarded armory. The first floor held row after row of desk officers and holding rooms. The third floor was home to three interrogation rooms, a few offices, and the file room. She also knew which windows could be shimmied and which grates were lose. Every angle watched by the security cameras was known to her. She had made it a habit of avoiding them before, back when she and Brinker use to sneak cigarettes out the second story windows when they were suppose to be guarding an interrogation room.

There was one interrogation room with a broken window latch and a rusty grate. Understandably, it had always been the least used room in the whole building. She doubted the department had gotten around to shelling out money to fix the problem, so she placed a healthy bet that it would be empty when she needed to get in. She moved easily past the outside security cameras and slipped around the back of the building.

For a brick building, the amount of foot and finger holds were few. She tested a few mortar lines as she looked around for a close tree but found her fingers easily broke through when enough pressure was applied. She doubted that this was because of badly made mortar. More likely she had well made fingers, stronger and less prone to pain than most. She took another look around and reached up, jamming her fingers between a pair of bricks high above her head. The simplicity she found in pulling her weight up by those few fingers was amazing. She had always had impressive upper body strength for a woman, but this was ridiculous. She braced her feet against the wall, more out of a need to do something with them than necessity, and threw her other hand up. She was above the first floor windows in under a minute. There wasn't even the slightest hint of fatigue in her hands or arms. Spider-man. Cool.

She secured herself beside the second floor interrogation room window before curling the fingers of her free hand through the grate and shaking it. Rust and dirt knocked itself loose and hissed down the brick wall to the ground below. With one yank, the grate came free with a pathetic sigh of protest. One stubborn latch stopped it from crashing earthward. Since it didn't hang in her way, Emirene moved her attention from the grate to the window. She could just make out a table and chair in the dark room beyond. She struck her palm against the window frame and few times and it easily gave to her prying. It lifted without a sound.

Her boots were silent as she stepped into her old precinct. She moved around the long table, her hand sliding along the surface. She found a round coffee stain. The air smelled slightly of old cigarette smoke. She cracked the door open and looked out into the well-lit hallway. Empty.

The light seemed to glare against her skin as she moved quietly down the hall. The lack of shadows was almost painful and she nearly retreated back into the dark interrogation room a few times. She passed every door-window carefully, checking to make sure each was safe. One was occupied but the man was furiously typing away at a report. She moved past undetected.

The file room was locked. A quick strike to the lock fixed that. The crow fluttered in over her shoulder and flew around the file room. The thrash of wings seemed deafening in the enclosed space. It flew around the towers of cabinets just barely missing crashing more than a few times on its rounds. It finally alighted on a tall grey filing cabinet and squawked in accomplishment.

She yanked open the cabinet and started rifling through the files, flipping quickly with skilled fingers. She started pulling relevant files and tossing them on the table behind her. She found Bateman's file and Brinker's file. And a file on Biondo. She found her own file and flipped through it right then.

Pictures of her house. One of the cracked family picture with the bullet hole in it. The fence post that had been abandoned in the open front doorway. There were pictures of the back door and lock that had been skillfully broken. Even pictures of the unpacked groceries on the kitchen floor, still in their paper bags.

The strangest pictures were the ones of her own dead body, bloody and mutilated on her cellar floor. She stared at them but avoided actually touching them. No reason to relive those. She already had every detailed memory echoing around her head at any given moment. Her mind turned to Martin and how he would have come home later that evening after a pressing day of work. He would have seen the open door and would have immediately known something was wrong. He would have run past the fence post and the destroyed family picture and into the kitchen. He would have known that his anal-retentive wife would never have left the groceries unpacked unless there was a reason for it. He might not have headed immediately to the basement, but would have run through the house, calling out her name. Each time he called for her, the panic would have doubled in his voice until he was screaming. Then the basement would be the only place left unchecked. He would have hurried down, perhaps stumbling over the cracked stair, shown clearly in this picture . . . and he would have seen his wife . . .

Emirene slammed her thoughts closed in that instant. She realized she didn't even want to think of what Martin would have done. What he would have said. How he would have screamed until he had no voice left. She closed her file and placed it on the table with the others before turning back to the filing cabinet to search for the rest.

- - - - -

The man who noticed that the file room lock was broken was a respectable man. He had been on the force for nearly thirty years now and could no longer remember his time in the police academy. It had been so long ago. It was like the memory of when he first rode a bike or first kissed a girl. Distant enough to be sweet without remembering any of the trouble and difficulty that must have gone along with it.

He put one hand on the knob while simultaneously moving his other to his gun. He opened the door silently and pulled out his issue piece. There was nothing amiss in his initial line of view so he began to move silently down the line of files cases, dark eyes darting around and taking in every detail.

When stepping into the aisle containing the lock breaker, the first thing he saw was the person at the end of the aisle, going through confidential files. The second thing he saw arrested the words in his mouth. The large crow, easily the size of a healthy cat, cawed at the sight of him and shook out its inky wings in greeting. Its skinny legs danced at its talons skittered around on top of the file cabinet.

Slowly, the experienced policeman lowered his pistol, his jaw going slack. ". . . Eric?"

The figure standing down the aisle straightened and closed the cabinet it had been looking through. "Hey, I know it was a joke around the precinct that I had balls . . ." it turned around with a smirk on its face. " . . .but that just hurts, Lieutenant."

Edward Albrecht wasn't aware that his hand had replaced his gun in its holster. He recognized the woman immediately. "Mendoza."

His dead second officer cocked her head to the side. The look on her face was slightly amused. "You seem a lot less surprised to see me then I would have expected, boss."

Albrecht looked back up at the crow which was hopping around like a happy little kid. "Me and your bird go way back."

"Then you probably know more about what's going on then I do."

"Maybe," Albrecht took a deep breath to slow his rapidly beating heart. He was too old for scares like this to be revisited on him. "I'm a captain now."

"Congratulations, sir." Emirene smiled. The copper skin tone he remembered had been replaced by one so white it almost had a blue tinge to it. He immediately recognized the dark marks down her face as both a sign of grief and a symbol of something much darker.

He nodded and ran a hand down his greying moustache and mouth. "Was it Biondo?"

"Damn right it was Biondo."

Albrecht sighed and moved down the aisle. He stopped at the far side of the table, arms crossed over his chest. "I figured it was. We all did, but we couldn't find a damn way to pin it on him. Whoever he got to do it, they were good. They left foot prints in blood but nothing more. We assume there's at least three of them."

She nodded. "Yes. There was three of them."

"Can you give me some descriptions? I can - -"

"I'll take care of them, boss."

Albrecht bit the inside of his cheek a moment before sighing. "Yeah, I suppose you will."

"I found all of our files but I haven't been able to find Callahan's."

He blinked. "That's because you're looking in the homicide files. Callahan isn't dead."

Emirene turned, stunned. "He . . .he is? But that doesn't make sense . . . if Biondo had the rest of us killed, why would Sean still be alive?"

"It does make sense," Albrecht shook his head sadly. "Biondo thinks Sean is dead. He was beaten to the point of death and left. He was able to get to a phone. They saved him at the hospital. Barely. They beat him so badly that he didn't remember the men who attacked him. He couldn't even tell us if they were white, black, Hispanic, Asian. Nothing. We decided to put him in the Witness Protection Program and leak it to the newspapers that he'd been killed, like the rest of you. Otherwise, Biondo would have sent his men after him again. Probably would have gotten the job done the second time around, too."

"Sean's alive," she breathed softly. "Maybe I should go see him . . ."

The response was immediate. "No. No, Emirene. You don't want to just show up after being dead for five years. It might be the last straw."

"What do you mean 'the last straw'?"

Albrecht shook his head sadly and sighed. "Sean recovered physically, but mentally . . . he lost all of you. He lost his partners and his best friends and he survived. He started blaming himself and tried to hurt himself a few times. Sean's not stable, Emirene. Even if he hadn't been relocated, we wouldn't have been able to keep him on the force. He went straight out of his gourd."

Emirene felt sick. She put her arms around herself and bowed her head towards the floor.

"Look, it's just best if you stay away from him. If you show up, I don't even know what he would do. He might think you're haunting him. He might just end up killing himself. Promise me you won't go see him."

She nodded. "You're right. I should just leave him in peace."

"Thank you, Emirene. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Emirene turned and grabbed a blank paper from a small table next to a copy machine. "You can lend me a pen."

Albrecht didn't question her. He gave her the pen from his pocket and watched in silence as she wrote out something in block letters on the blank paper. She handed the pen back to him and went to the copy machine. In a moment, she had four copies of what she had written. She folded them all together and put them in her back pocket. "Biondo's file says he's at Jackson."

Albrecht nodded. "Yeah. He had a stroke a few months back though. He's been in the infirmary, collecting bedsores."

She nodded. "Good. I'd be pissed if he died before I could 'ask' him where his hired men are."

Albrecht reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He tossed them at her. She snatched them out of the air reflexively. She looked down at them quizzically then lifted the look back to his face.

"It's the black Taurus. There should be enough gas to get to Jackson Prison and back. I get off shift at 6:00 a.m. I'll report it stolen then."

Emirene folded her fingers around the keys and nodded. "Thank you, sir."

"I assume your next stop was going to be the armory," he nodded to her empty holsters.

"Yeah."

"Give me ten minutes. I'll clear the way."

The bird squawked. Emirene spoke for them both. "Thank you."

Captain Edward Albrecht nodded. His back straightened and he lifted his hand up to the side of his head. Emirene stiffened visibly, then her face turned solemn and she silently saluted him back. He turned and left the file room. He would never see Emirene Mendoza again.

- - - - -

Emirene didn't know how he did it, but when she had stolen down to the basement, the weapon cage was unguarded and the key that matched the lock was laying on the counter. She didn't hesitate. She pulled the caged door open and stepped into the room that held all of the assigned weapons of the seventh precinct. She moved quickly, filling the rest of her holsters with pistols and her belt with as many rounds as it could hold. She took two more knives and one of the M-16s that she had used as part of the Special Weapons and Tactics unit. You never know when you're going to need a fully automatic, high powered, gas turbine rifle. Sometimes, those situations just jump out at you. Better safe then sorry.

Fully armed, she carefully made her way out of the precinct. She had to wait a half hour while the patrols changed and the parking lot emptied before she was able to find Captain Albrecht's car. She put the M -16 on the passenger's seat and the crow happily sat on top of it. She started the car, turned the radio off, and drove out of the parking lot, heading to I-94.