Honeybun One and Done

CHAPTER TWO-2

SHE LOOKED AT THE DEAD man’s name badge and swore. Brita thought she was looking at the uni who was supposed to have been at the front desk.

She moved to the window and looked outside, seeing the rusty metal fire escape hugging the wall a few feet down.

The killer had used the fire escape.

She left the bathroom and hurried toward the stairs, Moxie bouncing at her heels. She’d heard voices on her way upstairs so she knew that somebody was in the bullpen. First she needed to warn them, though she thought the killer was long gone. And second she needed to start a manhunt for whoever killed the Sarge and Brent Madris, the young uniformed cop in the bathroom. Madris had left behind a wife and two small kids. Rage flared at the thought. Brita would find whoever killed the two cops and she would make sure they paid for it.

Moxie ran to the bullpen door and stopped, yipping with excitement. Brita scooped her up and pushed the door open.

The stench hit her first. Feces, urine, and fear.

The first cop was draped over the copy machine, the whir and click of the copier a constant accompaniment to the flash of light each time the machine took another copy of whatever Detective Red Gordyn was lying on. Pieces of copy paper floated from the tray and scattered like flower petals across the already littered floor.

Alarm flashed through Brita, sending her senses into overdrive. The copier’s constant drudgery sharpened until it was like the roar of a train in her mind, each click at the end of the copy cycle twanging across her nerves like the c*****g of a loaded pistol.

She searched for a pulse, finding one that was very faint. She would call for an ambulance but first she needed to finish securing the scene.

She settled Moxie onto the floor by her feet. “Heel,” she ordered in a harsh whisper. The doxie trembled, her frilly tail drooping on the floor behind her. Even Moxie’s overblown sense of adventure seemed to be outraged by the c*****e in the station.

Brita crouched low and moved quickly past the first row of desks. She peered under each scarred wooden desk before moving on to the next and then the next. She found the second body lying face down between two desks. His desk chair was overturned behind him, the rusted wheel still spinning. She felt for a pulse on Detective Bill Bris’s throat but knew it was no use.

His slightly bulging brown eyes stared sightlessly ahead, a trail of blood coating the bridge of his pug nose from the hole between his eyes.

She found no more bodies and, by the time she reached the door to the interview rooms at the back, she was finally able to breathe.

Brita started to dial nine-one-one. As her finger hovered over the last digit, Moxie suddenly shot sideways with a growl and Brita turned. The little dog yelped.

“Moxie?”

Movement to her left. A blur of motion. Then Brita’s head snapped sideways and pain shattered outward, bringing her to her knees on the hard, dirty carpet.

She never felt her face hitting the floor.

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