Friday – 5:34 p.m.

  Midtown’s Capitol Avenue was filled with the sound of wailing sirens as a trio of black and blue Sacramento police cars pulled up.

  Several yards of the avenue had already been marked, forensics busy carrying out evidence collection while the officers closed down the area—just enough time before the squad cars were joined by a fourth vehicle. A black 2011 Dodge Charger. It came to a screeching halt, leaving the asphalt disturbed with rising dust.

  One officer rushed over towards the Charger as the driver’s door swung open and out emerged a fairly short man whose grey suit revealed he perhaps needed to go easy on his carb intake.

  “Ayayay,” the short suited man exclaimed, his round, trim-bearded face tightening. “What the hell happened here?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the officer shot back, annoyed. “This is an active crime scene. You need to clear from this area immediately, sir.”

  The man in the suit grunted, shaking his head. This only further agitated the officer who was about to add something before the Charger’s other front door flew open.

  “That won’t be necessary, officer,” a firm voice followed, directing the officer towards another man who was already coming around the car.

  The first man, who appeared even shorter once the other one stood beside him, pulled aside his coat and the setting sun caused the badge strapped to his belt to glint.

  The officer’s face flushed red before quickly masking it with a frown. “Apologies. . .” He switched his gaze between the two men. “What are you—”

  “It’s Detective Ramirez,” the shorter man pursed his lips before flicking his thumb to his side. “My partner over here is Detective Barone.” His partner nodded with a slight twist of the lip. “We’ll be taking over from here.”

  “Wait, what?” the officer shook his head. “It’s only a car accident. Pretty sure we’ve got it covered.”

  Detective Ramirez turned to his partner with an “I told you so.”

  “Only a car accident, huh?” Detective Barone scanned the scene with his eyes. “This is what ‘only a car accident’ looks like to you?”

  The officer did a similar take on the scene. There were half a dozen wrecked light poles, fallen tree branches, scattered concrete debris and the torn up asphalt.

  “Well, just because there are no cars doesn’t mean it can’t still be an accident.” The officer levelled defensively.

  “I never said it wasn’t.” Detective Barone brushed past the officer, walking all the way to the yellow ‘Crime Scene Do Not Cross’ tape. “Clearly, even your own guys think they know something else happened here.”

  Towering at six feet, Detective Barone circled the scene, his eyes blue and dark under a set of thick eyebrows that matched his short black hair which ended in a wild curl over his forehead. His once casual demeanor had turned solemn in an instant, accentuated by his all-black suit.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” Detective Ramirez asked the officer.

  “Yes, but I’ve already done a couple of weeks—”

  “That explains a lot,” Ramirez sighed, waving off the officer. “Like my partner said—we’ll take it from here, kid. Now go make yourself useful.”

  Ramirez left a dumfounded-looking officer wondering what had just happened before joining Barone.

  “Ah, these wannabe beat cops,” Ramirez spat, hovering over his partner.

  “And you think you were any different when you started out?” Detective Barone returned, his eyes still fixated on the torn asphalt.

  “What would you know about my rookie years?” Ramirez frowned. “You hadn’t even started at the training academy while I was doing my damn rounds.”

  Barone raised his hands in a defeated gesture.

  “The kid’s not that far off though.” Ramirez pointed to a marked section on the asphalt. “There was a car here.”

  “Sure,” Barone returned with the same monotonous response. “But where was it going?”

  Ramirez pinched at the area between his eyebrows before casting his hand at his partner. “Don’t start again, Mike. You really think this is like Front Street, don’t you?”

  Barone ignored him, maintaining his eyes on the asphalt then turning to the nearest forensic and beckoning her over. “What’s the trajectory?”

  “Oh, God, here we go again!” Ramirez brushed a hand over his close-cropped brown hair.

  The forensic knelt before the marked area where there was a set of what appeared to be tire tracks. She flipped through the pages of a notebook she was carrying, all while exchanging glances between the paper and the asphalt. Finally, she turned to Barone with a puzzled look on her dark-skinned face.

  “They don’t lead to anywhere, do they?” Barone took the words out of the forensic’s mouth.

  “Given the impression,” the forensic traced a gloved finger over one set of the tracks, “the vehicle was definitely speeding before losing control right at this spot and was coming from that direction.”

  The two detectives looked ahead of Capitol Avenue. It was the in the opposite direction from which they had come.

  Barone stood up, slowly turning his head from that direction, almost as if he was envisioning a car hurtling past him, its tires screeching then. . .blank.

  He frowned, a thin crease forming below his forehead. He turned back to the tracks. “There was some disturbance.”

  “Yes,” the forensic answered, and, just like the officer, amused Detective Ramirez at just how young these people were. Or was it he who was getting old? Screw you! Fifty-four wasn’t that old.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “This kind of disturbance could only have been caused by an external force,” the forensic went on while Barone listened keenly, “as you can see how the tracks move away from the road and end just before that.” She pointed at a wrecked light pole which was dented in a way that it gave off a vertical omega shape.

  Barone walked over towards the pole. He ran his eyes along its silvery surface, all the way to the kerb which was surprisingly undisturbed—not a single concrete block out of place.

  “We’re wasting our time here, Mike,” Ramirez shook his head. “It’s probably just an adrenaline junkie fooling around.”

  Barone remained unconvinced and the forensic caught on that. “There’s something else you should see.”

  Ignoring his partner’s woes, Barone followed the forensic into the heart of the crime scene where they stopped at another marker.

  “That’s—”

  “Blood.”

  Barone looked down at the shiny red liquid spattered across the torn asphalt.

  “The person/victim/driver or whoever was here must have hurt themselves and obviously fled the scene, given the cast-off pattern.”

  “They were bleeding while moving,” Barone observed the pattern, how the drops spread in increasing amounts from the presumed point of impact. He stopped at where the spatter ended, noting the change in the pattern.

  “There’s a lot of pooling here,” the forensic pointed at the end of the spatter with a pen she pulled out from over her ear, tucked in a bit of her afro.

  “The victim must have stopped.”

  “But, just like the tracks, there’s no further cast-off,” the forensic shook her head, “the trace just vanishes.”

  Barone let out a low grunt, the crease between his eyebrows deepening.

  “That’s it detectives,” the forensic sighed, taking out a small notepad from her left breast pocket and for the first time, Barone caught the white nametag against the navy blue coat she had on—Brooks, CSI.

  “Apart from the forces applied on the ground and displacing the asphalt, there’s nothing else. Whomever you were hoping to find is long gone, I’m afraid.”

  “There,” Ramirez chimed in with his most casual tone ever, “you heard her”— He smiled at the forensic — “Thanks by the way” – then to Barone, “This is exactly like Front Street. It’s nothing.”

  Ramirez then got into a frenzied talk about the number of dead end occurrences in cases like the one they were currently on but Barone never heard him as his eyes were back on the blood spatter.

  Just as the forensic had elaborated, the pattern indeed showed the victim moving away from the scene, only for the trail to be cut off unexpectedly. He settled his eyes at the end of the spatter, but only for a second before creating an imaginary pattern of his own. He extended the spatter with his eyes, tracing it past the enclosed area, all the way to the kerb, where, as he had expected, connected perfectly with the wrecked light pole.

  Without another word, Barone followed this new invisible pattern but he did not make it to the pole. No. He stopped just before stepping over the kerb. And that was when he saw it. He signaled with his hand, beckoning. Ramirez and the forensic exchanged puzzled looks.

  “Both of you,” Barone pressed, already crouching next to his latest finding.

  Getting a pair of tweezers from the forensic, Barone reached out for what he had found. He clamped the tweezers around the object, plucking it from where it had been etched just below the extended edge of the kerb.

  “Wait, is that. . .?” the forensic was the first to react, her eyes widening.

  “Well shit, Mike,” Ramirez exclaimed, staring at what appeared to be an arrowhead caught between the tweezers’ metallic prongs.

  Barone’s lip curled, “There’s always something.” He observed the object. It cast off an unusual glow when the sun’s light fell on it.

  “There’s some red patches on it and— is that red smoke coming off it?” Ramirez asked.

  “No way!” the forensic was ecstatic.

  “What?”

  “What are the odds that I found the same thing somewhere else?”

  “Let me guess. . .” Barone narrowed his eyes objectively towards his partner, “Front Street?”

  “Exactly!” the forensic shifted her gaze between the detectives. “Wait, I knew I had seen you two before! You were at that crime scene yesterday!”

  “And you’re saying you found something like this?” Barone pressed.

  “Yes!” the forensic’s excited face turned into a mysterious frown. “Except that one didn’t glow or anything. But it’s the same exact design as this one. Holy shit! It’s like a trail of deadly breadcrumbs! It’s—”

  The forensic’s elation dwindled the moment she caught the blank unamused gazes the two detectives were giving her. “Sorry,” she muttered, doing a terrible job at trying to mask her own embarrassment.

  Barone returned his attention to Ramirez, who was quick to brush him off. “Okay, okay. There’s always something. I get it. This wasn’t a dead end case. So, what are we gonna do about it?”

  “For starters,” Barone handed over the object to the forensic who quickly dipped it into a Ziploc bag, “you will take this to—”

  “The lab, do Kastle-Meyer tests, check for prints!” the forensic burst out, “Way ahead of you!” She was already walking away.

  “Dammit,” Ramirez slipped his hands into his pants’ pockets, “I swear it’s like they’re hiring toddlers now!”

  Barone barely smiled before turning to his partner. The two suddenly turned solemn.

  “You really think this is going to lead somewhere, huh?” Ramirez accentuated his chin, his eyes narrowing.

  “Well,” Barone looked at the platinum wrist watch on his left hand, “we’ll find out in the next. . . two hours.”

  “In that case,” Ramirez was already walking off towards the Charger, “let’s get some drinks. Tab’s on you, in case this leads to nothing.”

  “I’m driving,” Barone hurried over.

  “What?” Ramirez stopped, the driver’s door halfway open.

  “You know you’re not supposed to be driving.”

  “I brought us here, didn’t I?”

  “Only because we were in a hurry and somehow you managed to pick my keys.”

  “So, you’re saying my driving’s shit?”

  “No. I said you’re not supposed to be driving.” Barone brushed past his partner and slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Yeah, you’re definitely calling my driving shit,” Ramirez got in shotgun, evidently slamming the door shut in agitation.

  “I let you have a go at it and. . .” Barone said defensively, reaching out to shut his own door.

  “And. . .?”

  Barone was pulling at the door when he caught something flash in his side view mirror. He paused, looking outside at the kerb. The flash vanished in an instant, giving off a strange golden radiance. But that was it. He never had time to make out what it was. It was gone. . .just like before. . .

  “And. . .?” his partner was still ranting.

  “I’m just saying I’m not the one who rammed their BMW into a truck,” Barone said coolly, quickly recalling what they were talking about.

  “Oh, come on!” Ramirez lamented, “you’re still on that? I told you I was feeling a little tired and needed some sleep. I only had one beer, plus it happened like a month ago!”

  “Uhuh, sure,” Barone shut the door and revved the engine. “Seatbelt.”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?” Ramirez yanked at the seatbelt then, muttering to himself, “Twelve years older and I still have to take this shit!”

  “Now look who’s acting like a toddler,” Barone twisted his lip before he too buckled up and revved the Charger’s engine.

  He turned around the car and drove back into the way they had come. The wrecked light pole was now behind him as he stole another glance from the side view mirror. The only flashing lights he saw were those from the squad cars which grew smaller and less discernible until he could no longer see them.