Chapter 4

Bobby Miller, Pete Donnahugh, and Peter LaFrey, were dead. Their toe tags said as much, but the three shared something more than the cold slab chilling their corpses down in the morgue. They were also friends, and it only took three salons, two barber shops, and a couple miles of poverty to prove it.

"I know them," barber Kenny Miles, local talent and hair cutting enthusiast, explained as he looked at the pictures Officer Annie Cofield presented. "People in these parts call them the midtown boys."

And apparently, they had a long standing hobby of harassing the homeless.

"Those boys would come into my shop, laughing and carrying on about those poor folk on the corner," Kenny continued. "It was wrong, the way they treated them. I saw it myself a few times and told them I wouldn't do their cuts anymore if I caught them again, but they just moved on to where I couldn't see them."

It was the first real lead Annie had in hours.

"You see, those boys struck it big in a team battling tournament held downtown last year. They were good enough to win but not good enough to ride the circuit. Won enough to change their clothes but not their zip codes, if you know what I mean."

Annie understood perfectly. Second rate pokemon trainers too lazy to work but too addicted to the game to admit they didn't have any real talent made up most of the assault, nuisance, and disturbance calls received by dispatch back at the precinct. Practicing a tackle through your neighbor's fence or torching the local grocery store didn't settle well with the locals.

"Thank you Mr. Miles," Officer Cofield said as she wrapped up her notepad and tucked it back onto her belt. "If you think of anything else, please call the number on that card."

With another ring of the entryway bell, Annie closed the shop door behind her. She paused under the small red and white awning to fasten the hood of her poncho around her chin and checkered police hat. She never meant to stray so far from the precinct, but when the first salon didn't know anything and referred her to a barber shop down the street, and they to another, and another, and another, she couldn't help but follow the bread crumbs before they went stale. Her appetite for investigation was just too strong to go unsatisfied.

Lightning strobed overhead. Annie looked up but didn't bother counting the seconds between the flash and the following thunder. She wasn't afraid of going out in a storm. Her poncho kept her dry and the lightning kept its distance. Getting struck by lightning was reserved for only a special few and she wasn't important enough to reunite heaven and earth like that anyway.

A steady stream of water dribbled off of the edges of the awning. It hadn't stopped raining since yesterday and wouldn't for the next couple of days. Floods were expected to carve new gutters and ditches into the streets by the end of the week. They'd wash the streets clean and sweep away anything unattended, including a handful of coins, without bothering to consider what any of them were worth.

Annie looked down at her hand and imagined the gold, silver, and copper coins that once filled it. The man in the black baseball cap from yesterday had neglected to tell her that he knew the first murder victim. Black eyes and busted lips didn't dispense themselves after all, and given the midtown boy's reputation, she'd bet her wages they were the source of his injuries. But was Mr. Black Baseball Cap at the scene of the crime yesterday as a victim enjoying the sweet cycle of karma or the killer reveling in his work? What if it was both?

Annie clenched her hand into a fist. The only way to clarify Mr. Black's involvement in this case was to find him and question him about it, properly this time.

A bright white bolt suddenly cracked across the sky, splitting the sound barrier with an ear shattering boom. Several car alarms went off. A customer inside the barber shop screamed and the street lights flickered down the block. Pet pokemon started howling and barking across the entire neighborhood. Annie quickly trotted out into the street, searching for any signs of fire or destruction caused by the strike.

The rain dampened any sign of damage, not that there was any to begin with. The lightning struck the top of a large nearby building that rose above the smaller rows of apartment complexes and storefronts in front of it like something out of a horror novel. Lightning rods at the top created pointed spires fit for a swarm of ghosts. The thick flat sheets of metal it was made of wept rust in the rain, mourning the days when its face used to shine. Filled with cobwebs and shadows, the only thing missing was the organ music.

Reynold's Power Plant shut down several years ago after an explosion killed 13 workers and injured 22 others. Safety and health investigations discovered that the catastrophe could have been prevented and the resulting lawsuits crippled the company. With millions of dollars in fees and fines, the plant never reopened, Reynold's went bankrupt, and a jurisdictional disagreement prevented the dismantlement of the facility. The abandoned plant quickly became the skyline's biggest resentment ever since. It was empty, isolated, and the perfect place for someone to sort through the voices in their head.

It was a bread crumb too tasty to miss.

Annie jumped onto the sidewalk and looped around the neighborhood until she came upon the padlocked front gates of the power plant. Two oversized quarantine signs met her at eye level, dispensing a lengthy list of hazards one would be exposed to from this point on. Red and white danger signs were posted every ten feet on either side. 24 font "No Trespassing" signs marched along at every five. Warnings of every type from every agency linked the spaces in between.

It was Annie's duty as a citizen to adhere to them but it was also her responsibility as a policeman to make sure others did the same and that there was no one of interest squatting inside. A few minutes investigated the property wouldn't hurt. Annie touched the padlock holding the chains together and a small shock bounced her hand away. She yelped and rubbed the offended fingers, scanning the danger signs again. Not one of them warned of an electric fence.

Reynold's was on the verge of a natural energy breakthrough when the catastrophe happened. It was possible that the converter survived the explosion and was still harvesting energy with every lightning strike. Annie wasn't an electrical engineer but she did have enough sense to pick up a stick and poke around the fence. With no further spark or sizzle, she deemed the shock an instance of static discharge and shimmed through the gap between the two gates. Being small had its perks.

Trash and abandoned materials littered the ground around the property. Debris from the original explosion peppered the yard with crumpled bits of metal and twisted machinery. Bent screws, chipped bolts, and broken washers were all that remained of the central core. Hollowed out shells of smaller buildings off to the side marked the graves of many a lost investment but most of the main facility had remained intact. Annie walked the perimeter, checking for any signs of entry or lodgings hospitable to the desperate. Glass crunched underneath her boots where the windows had blown out in the original concussion.

Around the side, next to the loading dock, one of the large service doors was left open. Whether it was opened before or after the accident, she couldn't tell, but its empty face was utterly black and unrestricted. More abyss than portal, it was big enough to swallow a tractor trailer whole. Annie cautiously crept up along the side and peeked around the frame.

"Hello?" she called. Her voice echoed into the cavern and vanished. Annie pulled out her flashlight and shined it inside with a hard swallow. The darkness deteriorated the beam into a dim gray glow.

"Is anybody in there?" she called again.

Something suddenly crossed the beam, causing Annie to flinch. She recovered quickly and shined the torch from side to side but there was nothing left to catch. Whatever it was had disappeared in an instant. There was only darkness and the sound of rain as it tapped against her plastic poncho. Annie positioned herself in the center of the large open doorframe for a better look and slowly reached her hand into the darkness. The energy in the building was tangible. Her body practically hummed with it, stirring a queasy feeling in her gut. Something didn't feel right. Annie slowly stepped away from the door and something told her not to turn her back to it. She carefully reached for the radio pinned to her shoulder.

"284 to 14."

Crackling static answered the call. Annie continued her retreat. Every step took her a little farther from the door, but the intensity of the darkness only grew. "284 to 14," she tried again. A distorted frequency broke the static with a blip. There was too much interference from the lightning, maybe even the plant itself, to connect. She was on her own.

But she wasn't alone.

Annie suddenly back stepped into a muddied hole and fell to the concrete with a splash. She yipped faster than the puppy pokemon tucked on her belt and broke eye contact with the door. By the time she wiped the mud from her eyes and looked up again, the uneasy feeling was gone and nothing came out of the shadows after her. The door was just a door. Thoroughly embarrassed, Annie got up, fixed her poncho, and put away her flashlight. It was a good thing there weren't any witnesses because her fellow officers would've never let her live it down. She would forever be known as the biggest baby on the force. No adult in their right mind was afraid of the dark. Determined to act her age, Annie brushed herself off, moved on from the door, and investigated the rest of the property.

Going inside without a partner was against policy anyway.

There wasn't much to see from the outside aside from the occasional architectural carnage and there was only so much scrap Annie could safely navigate between bushels of weeds before it all started to look the same. The power plant proved to be a bust until a small break in the fence alluded to an unofficial means of access and egress from the plant. Stacks of rotting pallets kept it well disguised. Small scratches on the ground at the bottom indicated someone was repeatedly pushing through the fence, and recently to boot. The surrounding vegetation was flat but still green.

On the other side of the fence, cinderblocks, trash and abandoned equipment created a makeshift pathway off of the property and into the city. It was the closest thing to a game trail Annie would find. She navigated the passage slowly and still managed to rip her poncho in several places. She couldn't imagine a person bigger than herself slinking through unscathed. The tunnel opened up into an alley that eventually expanded into a street. That street then branched off into several roundabout dead ends. One of which was very much alive.

And unhappy.

Just beyond an old clothes line, behind a stack of crates, situated under the bottom of a fire escape, was a cottage, as much as a cottage could be when it was made of tarp and strung up by electrical wire. The roof was patchy, walls removable, and the front door little more than a fourth of a bed curtain. The corner of the surrounding buildings created most of the foundation and one had to bend over to get inside. There was just enough room underneath the tarp to protect a refrigerator box.

The cardboard accommodations must have been quite impressive because there were three occupants vying for the space and one of them just happened to be the man in black from yesterday. Still sporting the same baseball hat, over coat, and grumpy disposition, he shook the box from the outside. A minun and plusle were huddled together inside and only hugged one another tighter during the episode. Mr. Black growled and ventured into the box, roaring and chasing the creatures around until they squeaked in retreat and scurried out of the box. Mr. Black reemerged, scowl as taunt as ever, and shook a fist at the two cheering pokemon when they paused to look back.

Annie couldn't make out what he shouted afterwards but she was pretty sure it wasn't nice. He spoke a mix of words that reminded her of an angry foreigner switching between languages with the flux of his temper, except the second language he spoke sounded more pokemon than human. It was unlike anything she had ever heard before. Annie would be the first to admit that she meowed at feline pokemon and playfully growled at her poochyena during tug-o-war but this level of vocal manipulation was beyond simple imitation. Sure, Mr. Black wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. Annie realized that much after his outburst yesterday when she first caught a glimpse of his colorful vocabulary, but these sounds were composed of a complex articulation using fluctuations and patterns similar to a human language. Not some jumbled mess of nonsense.

"Cool," she whispered.

Mr. Black looked up, spotted Annie, and froze, understanding that he had been caught in yet another private moment. Annie stiffened. She was so fascinated with the exchange between him and the pokemon that she forgot to announce herself again. At this rate, she was likely to catch him with his pants down. The two stared at one another until the shock wore off and Mr. Black's frown dropped to the same low slant as his eyes.

"Am I under arrest?" he barked, cutting straight through formalities. This time, Annie was ready for him.

"Depends," she answered, growing taller and bolder by the second. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about the crime scene you were at yesterday."

"I'm not talking to you," Mr. Black recited. Annie choked on her pride a little. She had practiced that one in the mirror last night.

"Then, I'll have to take you down to the station for questioning," she informed.

Mr. Black raised an eyebrow. They both knew that was never going to happen. She had neither the authority nor the circumstances to do so. Whatever Annie said next had to be sharp enough to raze through his skepticism or this conversation would end even faster than the last one.

"I know about the midtown boys," she explained.

Mr. Black paused, twisted his lips in a snarl, and scoffed so hard that he cut open his busted lip. Minun and Plusle capitalized on his distraction and rushed under his coattails, back into the cardboard box. Mr. Black lost focus, cursed and chased them out again. This time, they ran towards the clothes line and dashed under the nearest safe haven which happened to be the officer's poncho. Annie lifted in surprise as the two pokemon climbed up on her boots to dry their feet. Mr. Black narrowed his eyes, thought hard between the three, and finally settled on the biggest baby of them all.

"I didn't kill anybody," he quickly declared.

"Of course not," Annie blurted right back, surprising herself as much as Mr. Black with the bluntness of her reply. She sould have withheld that knowledge to try and facilitate more information out of him, but it was obvious to her that Mr. Black was innocent. The physical requirements needed to subdue three young men alone ruled him out. It's possible he had a pokemon partner to aid him in the crime, but the only pokemon pals she knew of were the two using the steel in her boots to regulate their discharge.

"I mean," Annie quickly rephrased. "You might have been the last one to see them alive."

Mr. Black jabbed a finger at the bruise swelling his already heavy eye. "If you hadn't noticed, I can't see much for shit," he snapped.

"Still, you might-,"

"I don't."

"But-,"

"Scram!" Mr. Black turned his back on all three of his uninvited guests and used his hunched shoulders to throw up a shield of impregnable distrust. Annie could never hope to break it in this lifetime, but she could try to find a way around it.

"Now, wait just a minute." Annie looked down at her feet and judged the length of her steps against her poncho to make sure her passengers remained dry while she shuffled closer. "I'm not finished yet!"

"Look kid," Mr. Black began, turning around just in time to watch Annie lose her balance while avoiding a puddle. She grabbed the shaft holding up his tent and it shock a squeak right out of her. Annie quickly cleared her throat and waved the pain away from her fingers.

"I can't make you talk to me," she tried again.

"Damn right."

"But don't you want to know what happened?"

"Dead is dead. Don't matter who it is."

Mr. Black swayed off towards a bin of unsorted recyclables that he had collected earlier in the week. Annie hurried after him, smoothing out her walk to meet him on the other side of the container.

"That's a pretty simple answer given your history," she pressed.

"I'm a pretty simple guy. Now, go away."

Mr. Black rummaged through the bin and found some aluminum. He could get half a cooper if he found enough cans and turned them into the recycling station. It was pretty clear he wasn't going to talk so Annie watched his technique and started digging in the bin along with him. She touched something metallic and it shocked her, sparking another squeak. Mr. Black slapped his hands on the edge of the bin.

"Why are you still here?" he demanded.

It was a valid question. How did one end up sorting through garbage next to a stranger on the wrong side of town in the shadow of disaster with two cheering pokemon strapped to one's feet? Annie looked down into the plastics.

"Two people work faster than one," she shrugged.

Annie also placed her hands on the edge of the bin and touched the metal lining running around the inside. This time, the discharge zapped both of them. Mr. Black sharply cursed and walked away. Annie jogged up beside him to apologize, and this time, she didn't even need a conductor to connect them. A spark jumped between their shoulders. Mr. Black flinched, sucked back a few words Annie was glad she couldn't understand and snatched up her poncho, revealing the two giggling pokemon underneath. He took one in each hand, limped over to his box, and shoved them inside. Annie glanced down at her boots and rocked on her heels with an "Oh!"

Every step she took with the oppositely charged pokemon on her feet created a natural alternating current between them. Her wet clothes and steel boots carried the current and caused her to discharge the built up electricity every time she came in contact with another conductor. The mystery was solved. Mr. Black should become a detective.

"Thank you!" Annie chirped, freely kicking out her legs in a show of soggy freedom.

Mr. Black started growling again and continued his march away from the tent. He made it all the way to the clothes line before Annie realized he wasn't coming back.

"Hey wait!" she called, trotting after him and following a step or two behind just in case she still held a charge. "Where are you going?"

"If you're going to follow me then I'm taking you back where you belong," he said.

"You know how to get to the station from here? That's wonderful!" Annie sang. She suddenly bounced into Mr. Black's back, causing them both to stumble a few paces. He whirled around with a flare of his overcoat.

"You're lost?!" he shouted.

Annie tapped her fingertips together. "Not exactly," she mumbled. "I could probably find my way back if I retraced my steps but I took a pretty roundabout way of getting here and my poochyena can't track smells in the rain."

"Don't you have a GPS or something?"

"My phone battery died when I went into the power plant."

"You went into the power plant?"

"I was looking for you."

"Are you insane?!"

Given the nature of the person asking, she might want to consider it.

Mr. Black twirled away and started pacing. "No," he firmly declared a few turns in. "Absolutely not!"

Annie glanced around the alley for another person. There was none. Minun and Plusle watched the exchange from the opening of the box.

"Fine!" Mr. Black suddenly relented, grinding the words between his teeth. "But only until 5th avenue!"

The two cheering pokemon giggled behind the flap. Mr. Black marched on without another word. Annie wasn't quite sure who he was talking to but whoever they were, they were clearly in her favor so she wasn't going to waste the argument. She hopped back into pace and kept a respectful distance in case his temper sparked again.

Mr. Black didn't need another voice in his head so Annie resolved herself to walk quietly behind him until they reached 5th Avenue where she could make the rest of her way home by herself. The rain settled nicely over the silence, allowing a rare opportunity to watch Mr. Black without any hissing or spitting between them. Everything about him was heavy: the way he walked, the slope of his shoulders, even the color of his jacket, especially in the rain, but none of it seemed to bother him. It was as if he had carried the weight his entire life.

Annie lifted her hands and examined them as she walked, pondering what they might have looked like had she grown up carrying the same burdens as Mr. Black. Not that she knew his circumstances or anything. Still, such personal molding reminded her of pokemon and all of the different ways nature had selected them. Perhaps she and Mr. Black shared a common ancestor somewhere along the line. And if they did, how far back would she have to go to find the deviation between dissident and loyalist?

Up ahead, Mr. Black suddenly scratched at his ear using his hand as if it was his foot. Did humans get fleas? Annie supposed it was possible when one lived in a box. Mr. Black then wiggled a finger in his ear. The itch must have been profound because he went so far as to lean into his shoulder to satisfy it. Maybe he had an inner ear problem related to his peculiar mental state?

Or maybe it was something worse.

Mr. Black unexpectedly stopped in the middle of the street. He didn't move for several seconds, and when he did, he started pacing again.

"What is it?" Annie asked.

Mr. Black motioned with his hands, arguing with himself about something of the utmost importance. He nervously bit at his knuckles then clapped his hands over his ears and sobbed. Anybody in their right mind would have fled for higher ground, which is probably why Annie dashed out in front of Mr. Black to help him. Crazy or not, he was in pain, and it was her job to help those in need. She crouched down in front of him so that she fell in line with his downturned gaze. It was a seriously disadvantageous position but they had already established that she was insane so what did it matter? That common thread between them might actually help her understand what was going on.

"I'm here," Annie firmly declared, finally establishing her presence for the first time since they met. "Talk to me." If Mr. Black heard voices in his head, he might as well let them speak. It was the only way to isolate them and it was the only therapeutic tactic she knew to help with this sort of thing.

Mr. Black winced open an eye, following the sound of her voice instead of looking at her face. "It's so loud," he cringed, unable to maintain his defenses under such pain. "They keep screaming, over and over and over."

Annie quickly reached up and touched his elbow, giving him something to tether the voices to. "Talk to me," she repeated.

A look of shock passed over Mr. Black's face. People like him weren't often given such unbiased opportunity, but something pulled his expression tight again, causing him to wince even harder than before. Annie pulled her hand away, afraid that it was her touch that caused it. Mr. Black opened his eyes again. His pupils were shrunken and flattened, pressed by stress into a slit like shape. He whispered something Annie couldn't make out.

"What?" she asked, searching his face for some sort of clue. "What is it?"

"Run," he said again, this time in the common tongue. Annie instinctually snorted. Like she would leave him in such a state. Mr. Black suddenly snatched her up by the lower shoulders, just like he did to Minun and Plusle when they were under her poncho, and shook the humor right out of her.

"Run or I'll kill you!" he warned.

Annie underestimated how strong he was. Mr. Black stared at her again, this time with a new fixated intensity.

"Run," he purred before a smile twitched into the corner of his mouth. "Run so I can catch you."

Annie yanked herself free. This wasn't the Mr. Black she knew. He was too brutally honest and weary for such devious and playful machinations. This voice belonged to someone else. She couldn't explain it but she knew it was true and it terrified her. Annie did exactly what she was told to. She ran . . . straight at Mr. Black and punched him in the face.

"You can't scare me away like your pokemon friends!" she yelled at him. If Mr. Black truly wanted to hurt her, he wouldn't have tried to warn her, but that didn't stop her voice from cracking either.

Frozen by the blow, Mr. Black looked off to the side before he finally thawed and touched the tender spot on his chin. The rain tapped against his back, quieting the rest of the sounds around him. He glanced over at the tiny fists clenched at the officer's sides. One of her knuckles was bleeding, cut by the rough hairs along his jaw. It was little more than a drop all together, but the streets were always ravenous for blood, and tonight, they were on the prowl.

A throaty snarl rippled down the alley, shaking the rain as it fell from the sky. Mr. Black whirled around and saw a Persian stalking towards them not 35 feet away. Unlike most classy cats, it was oil black from tail to nose and the jewel on its head was purple instead of red. It glowed like a demonic third eye, watching their every move. Two four inch fangs emerged from beneath its dark satin lips in the wake of another snarl. A lifetime of cracking, crunching, and crushing bone kept them clean and polished. 110 lbs. of pure killing perfection stalked a little closer. The skulls of the cat's past victims practically popped underneath its heavy paws with each perfectly silent well-placed step.

Annie had never seen a demon rise from the tar pits of hell before but there was always a first time for everything. Mr. Black was a little more versed in the subject. He fled behind Annie and hid in the curve of her back. She wasn't sure what good it would do given his shoulders were twice as wide as hers. He then pushed her forward.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

"Protect and serve. That's what you people do, isn't it?" Mr. Black justified as he shoved her forward again.

Annie tripped, slipped, and face planted into the street, scraping her chin and hands against the ground. A black shadow sailed over her, raking the height of her clumsiness instead of her head and flicking off her hat. Mr. Black dove to the side to avoid the pounce and landed heavily across the sidewalk. He crawled up onto the cement and threw his back against the wall but Persian closed the distance between them with one bite. It snatched Mr. Black by the foot and dragged him into the street.

Annie was back on her feet when she heard the screams. Mr. Black frantically kicked with his bad knee but the cat only winked as if the hit was the bothersome touch of a beautifly. Annie matched his screams and charged. Up above, lightning struck the power plant again. The thunderclap matched the strike of Annie's baton almost perfectly, adding the needed light and sound to turn the hit into a fully loaded manmade electrical attack.

Special contact sensors in the wand trigged the baton's electric capabilities. Blue sparks spat out from it in every direction. Enhanced by the rainy conditions, they raced across Persian with an untamed fury, exploding outward in a fantastic web of plasmic energy. The baton sparked out of Annie's hand and clattered to the ground, shocking them all through the puddles until an internal fuse blew and the jolt ended in a puff of acrid smoke.

The baton released its hold and dropped the three like marionettes cut from their strings. A few seconds later, Mr. Black shot up from the ground so fast that his knees bent upward and his heels popped off of the ground to counterbalance him. Steam drifted off of his shoulders. He looked around, expecting a four clawed scythe to cleave his head off at any second, but the whiskered reaper had already melted into the rain.

Gone as quickly as it came.

An attack of that magnitude wasn't enough to deal any real damage to an ice age monster like that, but even monsters could be taken by surprise. The manmade lightning strike, combined with a real one, probably scared the cat back into whatever crevice it had climbed out of. Either that, or the cat had caught a glimpse of his life when it flashed before his eyes and that horror show was enough to frighten off even the devil. But if the streets taught Mr. Black one thing, it was that they were never safe. Persian would be back to finish what it started and he didn't plan on sticking around when it did.

A little ways away in the street, Annie played on her hands and knees, trying to figure out where her arms began and where her legs ended. It was the first time she was ever electroshocked and her body wasn't used to the crackling kiss of 120 voltz. Disoriented and a little queasy, she waved outward to catch the air and make it help her stand. Surprisingly enough, she caught a person trying to slip past her instead.

"Did we win?" she asked while groping up Mr. Black's sleeve.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he shouted. "You almost got me killed!"

Mr. Black shrugged her off and Annie fell to the ground. She decided to stay there until her body stopped humming. The sound of Mr. Black's footsteps grew farther and farther away behind her. They were becoming quite familiar by now.

Splash. Pause. Splash.

Annie couldn't follow him even if she wanted too, but that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that Mr. Black was back to normal, slinging profanities unfit for a virgin's ears at the same beat as his footsteps. Annie's hands began throbbing even worse than her legs so she looked down at them for an explanation. Blood pooled in her palms where she had scraped them against the cement. The last time she skinned them this bad was when she was eight and fell trying to jump the curb on her rollerblades. It begged an important question:

How did she go from rollerblading down the sidewalk on Saturday afternoons to working a beat that did its best to try and break her around every corner?

Annie looked down at the blue and white checkered police cap that had fallen from her head. She picked it up, shook out the excess water, and strapped it around her chin again.

Because for her, those two streets were one in the same.