Chapter 2

Spike was dead.

That much was certain. Spectators pressed against the police tape quarantining the alley, straining for a better view of the body. The blood. The carnivores.

Zach preferred a much leaner greener diet. He slipped his hand into the nearest unzipped purse and found fruit ripe for the picking. Nobody cared for the misdeeds of the living when there was a dead body to be had. All Zach had to do was position himself a foot or so from the front lines and the unsuspecting mob filled in around him. It was one of those rare times when their eyes were on something other than their coin purses.

Zach had no problem capitalizing on the dead. Someone needed to punch the people's ticket for this macabre show. Otherwise, it was a waste of a good death. Although, Spike might have disagreed if he still had vocal cords to speak from. His throat was ripped open and his blood blended with last night's backwash. A break in the rain kept it from running into the sewers and the local retention pond.

A white sheet covered the carnage from public eye but Zach caught a glimpse of it when the police were still securing the scene. The cuts were so fine that wet shreds of flesh blossomed in several layers from Spike's neck. Not a piece of him was missing. Not one bite consumed. Every ounce of blood was retained in a pool around him, glistening like black ice from a frozen over hell. Every part of the body was wasted. His death was purely killing for killing's sake.

Murder in its truest form.

Zach stuffed his hands into his expanding pockets and feigned interest in the show. He had to maintain appearances if he wanted to continue foraging uninterrupted. Diluted blood stains crept up the white sheet where the edges touched the ground. Red spots grew from beneath the fabric around Spike's neck where the rain kept the wound from drying. It was a terrible, awful, lonely, painful way to die, drowning in your own screams for help.

Good riddance.

Zach wiggled a finger in his ear, closing one eye as if to help it travel deeper into his brain. The voices were especially loud today, both inside and out. Death had a way of tickling the fabric of reality and agitating the subconscious. Especially one as messed up as his. There was no better way to create, maintain, and end madness in Zach's opinion, although, the boys in blue did their best to contain it.

Various police personnel stood around the alley, all straight and official like, holding the buckle of their belts as if waiting for a chance to brandish their pokeballs in front of the crowd. People weren't killed by pokemon as often as they used to be, and if they were, it was normally during the middle of some circuit tournament and televised for the entire region to see. Not outside your local convenience store. The brutal and exciting mystery drew in as many locals as first responders. The red and blue lights kept spinning even though the scene was already picked clean. There were no witness to the crime, no statements to take, so all the police could do was mill about and pretend to know exactly what was going on.

All except one.

This officer had no problem sporting her ignorance. She was young, born with a plain face and perpetually blushed cheeks. Compared to the beer guts and muscle heads surrounding her, she was short, thin, and petite, but sturdy in her own right when compared to the crackheads and hookers normally strutting the alley. She was a rookie by the looks of it. New to life as much as the force. Innocent fascination still glittered in her eyes. Dreams of justice and virtue filled her every ambition. She was still just a baby.

A baby dressed in blue.

Baby Blue's uniform was spotless. Dutifully ironed and shined every morning. She flashed the badge pinned to her chest like her smile, proud and ever conscious of its presence. Every strand of hair was tightly pulled into a bun under her checkered cap and not a single blemish stained her shoes. She looked like she just stepped off of the graduation podium at the academy. Stepped off of the platform right into the biggest pile of dysentery the city had ever shit out.

Murder cases were a great way to get a rookie's feet wet, especially with the backsplash of their own vomit. Most weren't prepared for the ruthlessness awaiting them on the streets. Forensic photos in the academy training room weren't soaked in the blood, guts, and bile that pushed through every orifice of the body when someone got crushed or run over. You didn't feel the passion of murder until you stood over the body in the same place as the killer, wielding the murder weapon as evidence and wondering how you would have done it differently.

The rancid stench of death spooked many officers into keeping a safe distance. It scared even more right off of the force. The glory and honor of public service revealed in one horrifying empty pale faced expression. Some trainees even jumped right out of their boots when they saw it. They ran home before their shift was even over. Zach scored many a memento and good memory those days. But Baby Blue kept her shoes tightly laced. She loyally trailed behind her training officer through the gruesome details to their post without a single gag. But as the minutes ticked by and nothing happened, her nervous enthusiasm settled into confusion. She didn't understand why everybody was standing around, doing nothing, from one side of the crime scene to the other.

The crime scene tape was more than enough to hold back the crowd so officers wandered amongst themselves and huddled in groups trading gossip. Detectives loitered around the crime scene unit van, safe guarding their future promotions and dismissing anyone who wasn't wearing a rain coat and tie. The forensic team had finished taking photos and samples. There was nothing left to do until the coroner, who was presently stuck in traffic across town, arrived. Stalling for time until the next shift change became a priority for all those involved. All but one. It was an hour Baby Blue wasn't willing to waste. The scales of justice had tipped and were in desperate needed of balancing. She took it upon herself to muck about the city's filth for answers.

Baby tip-toed around puddles and shinned her flashlight into their depths to see how far they went. She patrolled the perimeter, nosed around evidence tags, and talked to anyone who would listen. She asked questions nobody could answer, inquired about the investigation in a way that wasn't her job, and quickly ostracized herself from the company of her fellow brothers in arms.

Shoulders turned at her approach. Eyes darted from her glance. To indulge a pestering rookie with their company was an embarrassment no seasoned officer was willing to take. Cast out by the living, Baby Blue moved on to the dead. So far, Spike's corpse offered the warmest of greetings. It was probably the nicest he'd ever been to anybody. Nobody cared how close Baby got to the body as long as she didn't tamper with anything. Her rank made her invisible and that was something Zach could relate too.

What he didn't understand was how Baby picked him out of the crowd the moment she looked up from canvasing the scene. She furrowed her brow and pegged him as suspicious within seconds of spotting him. It was an egregious violation of his character, spawned by an over exaggerated stereotype concerning his appearance. Zach might have been insulted if it wasn't absolutely warranted. He was shady as hell and guilty of a few misdemeanors to boot. More importantly, Baby Blue wouldn't break eye contact. She was dead set on approaching him.

Time to make a full retreat.

Good thing disappearing was his specialty. Zach stepped back and the mob quickly took care of the rest. A late arrival spotted the sudden vacancy and muscled his way in. The people shuffled to accommodate him. Zach fed a shoulder into each step, sliding backwards with every shift forward to keep the chain reaction going until he popped out of the back.

Baby Blue stopped at the police tape. The density of the crowd blocked her way to the other side. No matter which way she leaned or how high her heels went, she couldn't see past the swarm of faces pressing up against her. It was the first time a uniform came within speaking distance since the tape first went up. A surge of questions assaulted Baby about the case. One or two anti-government activists waiting for the chance to start a riot tossed in a few remarks ridiculing the police's response to the scene.

The jeers escalated from there, mixing a bit of poison into the pot of laughter, sobs, and whispers stewing on the other side of the line. Baby Blue considered spraying a can of repel into their mouths. The people were worse than a cloud of gastly wagging their tongues behind a haunted mirror. To dive into their judgments without protection would paralyze even the strongest of wills.

Zach softly cackled to himself from the back of the crowd. There wasn't a checkered cap in sight between the bumping shoulders and bobbing heads. It was yet another successful getaway. Too bad he couldn't leave the voices behind so easily. His earlier chuckle heightened the laughter already in his head, causing the voices to bounce around his skull with new vigor. They echoed and twisted. First, into snickers. Then, into sobs. One of them suddenly screamed.

Zach slapped his hands over his ears and stumbled into the brick wall of a nearby building. He squeezed his eyes shut until the mental supersonic subsided. He dropped his hands, breathless and exhausted from the strain. The usual background chatter came as a relief. He should have known better than to come out with the crowd. These sorts of gatherings always aggravated his condition and created more discord in an already unstable mind.

One giggle was more than enough to derail him. Ear plugs didn't help. Drugs made it worse and booze was too expensive. The only thing he could do after an attack was brace himself for the next one. Zach staggered away from the wall and stuffed his hands into his pockets. It was an unconscious habit meant to hide as much of himself as possible when an episode began.

Normally, the sensation comforted him, but today, his pockets weren't empty enough to hold the baggage. His fingers bent up against the sharp points of the jewelry, coin cards, and wallet clips. They cut his hands in several places. Zach cursed and pulled out his hands, mumbling curses until he ran out of letters in the alphabet. Several coins dropped to the ground in the process, expanding his vocabulary into a completely different langue. And the more he spoke, the louder, sharper, and more judgmental the voices became.

Zach abandoned the stolen treasure and left the scene in an effort to escape them. Several frightened bystanders hurried out of his way. They stared with the same annoying persistence as the voices. Zach pulled down his hat to block their prejudice and licked the blood off of the back of his hands.

Behind him, Baby Blue squeezed out of the back of the crowd. She had become as invisible to them as she was to her compatriots when it became clear her lips were as tightly laced as her boots. She caught a glimpse of a black shadow as it turned the corner out of the alley.

With a quick adjustment of her hat, Baby boldly marched after the suspicious person, but by the time she rounded the corner, there wasn't a black baseball cap in sight. Several people wandered the streets, drawn in to the alley by the excitement, but none of them seemed disturbed by an unsightly passerby. Untouchables were exactly that, in mind and body. Undeterred but in need of a little help, Baby put a hand to the pokebelt strapped around her waist.

Two blocks down, Zach put a hand to his ear. On the street, in the alley, by himself, or in a crowd, there was no escaping it. The voices kept coming. They fluctuated irregularly like bad reception on a radio, scratching and blipping from one thought to another. Jaded insults, backhanded comments, and nonsensical chuckles flippantly toyed with his sanity between the static. Each one reminded him that his life was no better than the corpse he had left behind.

"Shut up," Zach growled, clawing his hands into his hair. "I said shut up!"

"Stop!" one of the voices shouted back.

In an instant, the other voices scattered into hiding. Zach stopped and opened his eyes. He looked down at the ground and dropped his hands from his head. A poochyena stood in front of him, poised to strike with nubby nails and snaggletooth if necessary. He stood maybe a foot from the ground on short stubby legs made thicker by the unshed puppy coat wrapped around his body. It wore a blue collar with "POLICE" written in bold across it. Zach curled up a lip.

"Get outta my way, mutt," he sneered. "Or I swear to God I'll kick you harder than a football."

A voice dared him to try, but another quickly cut in, this time, from behind.

"Stop!" it called.

Zach looked over his shoulder. He should have checked for whiskers this morning when he woke up because he had a tail, and it was surprisingly blue. Baby struggled with the cut in the chain link fence quarantining the private alley from the rest of the world. Having never trespassed before, she tried to push through the break instead of folding it back. Climbing through a briar patch might have been easier and less shameful for the rookie.

"Stop right there!" Baby continued. Luckily for her, she was small enough to squeeze through the gap without getting stuck. She cleared the fence, but lost her chance at regaining any dignity when one of the wires caught her uniform and tugged her to an abrupt halt. Baby reached out with one hand and fumbled around the snag with the other.

"Wait just a second!"

Zach turned his back and left. Given the magnitude of Baby's failure, Poochyena couldn't decide whether to help his trainer or chase down the suspect. But given his lack of thumbs, he choose the latter, and to his advantage, he was more bark than bite. Every accusatory yip broke through Zach's fingers no matter how hard he pressed them against his ears. He stopped and looked down at his feet again. Four paws and two boots quickly dashed in front of them. Baby bent over and put her hands to her knees. One of her blue-green eyes winked up through the blonde hair that had fallen from her hat. Her cheeks were redder than usual. Sprinting a 100 yard dash sure seemed exhausting. Zach was glad he never had reason to.

"Why didn't you stop?" Baby asked between huffs.

"I don't stop for cosplayers," Zach firmly announced, pushing forward with the invisible barrier his handicap created. Baby shifted out of the way and looked down at her uniform. When the insult finally kicked in, Blue turned red and she quickly hopped into stride with new determination.

"I'm not a cosplayer hooker," she quickly clarified. "I'm a cop."

Rookie mistake number one: failure to announce police presence. He'd have a lot of fun with this one.

"Oh, so you're the police?" Zach exclaimed. He bloated the statement with so much sarcasm that it floated right over Baby's head. She brightened with a smile. "In that case-,"

Zach briskly turned on his heels and walked in the opposite direction. Baby nearly tripped trying to keep up with him and Poochyena haphazardly avoided the kick promised to him earlier. Zach couldn't move fast but he had mastered the sway of his gait and knew how to use it. Baby almost bumped into him and Zach prayed another push would send her reeling.

"Am I under arrest?" he spat.

"Ah-Well . . . no," she stuttered.

Baby paused, realizing her second rookie mistake of the day: admitting she was on the verge of harassment. Zach tried to put as much distance between them as possible. Whatever they were teaching at the academy, it didn't include a course on real world practicality. Baby had a lot of growing up to do if she wanted to survive these streets and Zach didn't want to be around when her cherry popped. It would be an absolute bloodbath. He almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

Baby quickly returned to his side.

"I'm not talking to you," Zach declared, unwilling to spare her even a glance.

"But you haven't heard what I have to say yet," Baby exclaimed.

"Don't care."

"But what if it's important?"

"It's not."

"But-,"

"Go away."

"I-,"

"Get lost."

Baby stopped. Zach's resentment was so bitter it puckered her lips. This was a battle she couldn't win and they both knew it. Maybe she'd turn tail and run? But it was too good a thought to be true. Baby ran out in front of Zach, hairball hot on her heels, and blocked the way with an outstretched arm.

"Here," she said, opening her hand to reveal one gold coin, three silvers and half a copper. "You dropped these."

Zach looked at the coins. It was a trap. It had to be. There was no way she was that naïve. She was fishing for information about the case and his presence in the crowd, baiting him into revealing his involvement with Spike yesterday afternoon.

Something suddenly changed in Baby's expression. Zach didn't know what it was but it sure felt like pity. She looked off to the side and tilted her head down as if weighed by an uncomfortable responsibility. "You know," she began, much softer than before. "I know of a place with a lot of nice people who deal with all sorts of things without asking a lot of questions . . . "

Zach raised an eyebrow. Could she get any vaguer? It wasn't until those typhoon teal eyes came back around that it struck him. Baby was one of those rare breeds of people born with a keen eye. She saw everything: the wince he made when his tongue touched his busted lip and the string of abuse that started when little Dorothy Samuels punched him on the playground after he refused to give up his fruit snacks; the inflammation edging the cut on his cheek and the decision to sweat out the infection instead of getting treatment at a clinic he couldn't afford.

She saw a man standing in front of her. A soul calloused by banishment and ridicule. Every drop of sweat and speck of dirt proof of his endurance. Black from finger to foot, his overcoat carried all that he owned. His bulging pockets were proof of his profession. He was a criminal. A thief. A survivor. In her eyes, he was innocent until proven guilty. No mask, stereotype, conjecture, assumption, expectation, or long standing bigotry could tell her otherwise. When Baby looked at him, she didn't see what he was, but who he was.

How dare she.

Zach clenched his teeth and his fangs practically cut across his lips.

"Keep your pity," he snarled. "I don't need any from the likes of you!"

"How dare you!"

Zach looked down at Poochyena.

"Shut your damn mouth!" he shouted. His eyes darted across the road, trying to catch the voices as they fled from him. The pidgeotto sitting on the power lines scattered. Rattata ducked into their dumpsters. "All of you can just go to hell!"

Zach's frustration landed on Baby again. Her eyes were as wide as saucers. It was then that Zach realized his own mistake. He clamped his hands into fists. So what if she heard him talking to the voices in his head? Everyone else assumed he was crazy. Who cared if she actually knew it was true? Baby was just another face. Another set of blue lights waiting to go off the second he stepped back into civilization. She'd condemn him just like the rest of them. She'd take him to that place she knew with the superficial nice guys who didn't ask a lot of questions because they only needed to ask one to have him committed:

Are you insane?

Baby would take him for all he was worth. Zach slapped the glittering coins from her hand. She recoiled as they scattered across the street and filled her fingers with the safety snap covering the holster on her duty belt. Poochyena darted between them and bared his teeth. Zach unzipped a grin. The air was so hot and muggy from the rain that it started to make him sweat. Either that, or the fever was getting to him. He glared daggers into that gold badge shinning a light onto his psyche.

Baby was just like all the others. At least now she had a reason to arrest him. The voices were nastier in prison but seeing that look on Baby's face was worth the torment. Maybe he would keep an eye on her when he inevitably got released after all. He'd like to be there when she finally stepped in over her head. A little blood never killed anybody.

The seconds ticked by, tolling like bells at a funeral. Who would tuck him in tonight? The bite of a pokemon, the pop of a gun, or the jolt of an electrified baton? Surely, Baby had a few toys strapped to that tightly bound waist of hers. She did, just not the ones Zach expected.

"I'm sorry," Baby quickly said, cheeks blazing with embarrassment. She stepped back to give Zach some room, ignoring the coins on the ground at her feet. "I must have been mistaken."

No. Baby was not like the others.

Rain spots darkened the pavement. The pitter-patter of rain began on the fire escapes above. A drop or two brushed past Baby's face, causing her eyelashes to flutter. She looked up away from Zach at the sky. Rookie mistake number three: never take your eyes off of the suspect. At that moment, Zach knew could do whatever he wanted and she would never see it coming. He could throw out a pokeball; pull out a knife; murder her where she stood. And there wouldn't be any witnesses. If he acted now, no one would ever know.

Innocent until proven guilty.

The voices came back all at once, shouting and screaming their way back into existence despite the storm's resurgence. Zach quickly turned away and pressed his head into his shoulders. The voices demanded that he apologize. Leave. Stay. Once again asking, interjecting, and intruding on his life with their incomprehensible babble: Wasn't Baby nice? Wasn't she terrifying? The rain felt good. Did Mr. Oliver forget to put the lid on the trash can again? Baby's still watching. Are you gonna eat that? I thought I told you to leave me alone. Better get it before it molds! I like her.

I should kill her.

The voice from yesterday had returned.

"Are you alright?" Baby asked, edging closer to the black shadow curling away from her. Zach ripped his hands away from his head and gasped for air. Sweat dripped off of his nose and his body trembled with a chill. Had Spike knocked something loose yesterday when he threw him out with the rest of the garbage? It was the only explanation to the rising madness. Something soft touched Zach's back, calming the shudder in his frame.

It was Baby. Her hand was far too gentle for a cop.

Zach looked over his shoulder at her. The storm raging in her eyes could have rivaled the one rumbling from above. She was scared, as she should be when faced with a stranger capable of turning on her as much as himself, but she didn't pull back her hand. Just like those damn coins.

Innocent until proven guilty.

God damn it.

Zach shrugged her off and slowly limped down the road. This time, Baby didn't follow. The rain began to pick up. It would drench them all sooner rather than later.

"Go home," Zach said, remembering how Spike had tried to outrun the last downpour. That white sheet was probably completely red by now.

"I wouldn't want you to get your hair wet."