Here is what I got done for day 1. It’s 1538 words, so it fell a bit short of my goal (2000 words), and the minimum daily word count (1666 words, assuming a constant rate), but I’m not worried about it. I did what I could in one sitting without any prep work to speak of.
The worst part so far is the anxiety that comes with a task this large. All day, long before I even started, it gnawed at me. I think it’ll be a bit better tomorrow, since I’ve gotten the first day out of the way and at least I’ve got a little direction.
Please keep in mind that this was written straight out with no editing, and all I’ve done is dump it from my Alphasmart to my laptop, so it’s going to be very rough and could contain lots of errors and and typos.
Idle Hands (working title) Part 1
One minute after midnight, I’d been up for thirty six hours, and I could already tell that today was going to be a long day. The way I figure it, there are three kinds of people in the world. The types who think that there’s essentially no difference between city folk and those who live in small towns like this, that people are people no matter where you are. Then there are those who’ll claim that city dwellers and those who chose to live here are as different as night and day, that we don’t have to deal with the kinds of problems that plague the cities. Then there are those who know that those first two are full of it.
People are people, sure, but out here people don’t rub elbows so often as they do in Boston or New York, or even a half assed city like Portland. City people bump up against each other day and night, and they either learn to deal with it, maybe even enjoy, or they go crazy, or they just shut it all out. Around here you could walk from one end of the village to the other, from where the sidewalks begin to where they end, without coming across another person on foot. So people don’t have that constant pressure, and people here don’t have to retreat into themselves for fear of being driven insane by the throng.
But then, as I said, people are people. People go crazy for all kinds of different reasons, and people withdraw into their own heads, losing touch with the rest of humanity, for just as many. Fewer people means less friction, less crime. But any people means some.
In a bad year the town of Idle Maine might suffer two hundred thefts, seventy or eighty burglaries, twenty stolen vehicles, a dozen rapes, eight or nine assaults, and one murder.
One murder. In a bad year. And here it was.
Her name was Yadira Cheevers. Officer Cheevers. I’d known her well, and she’d seen better days. I figure there are three kind of cops in the world. Those who don’t take private investigators, like myself, seriously. Something about us not being “real” cops, as if that wasn’t the whole point. Those who are actively hostile towards us, and with some of the jokers out there with PI licenses, I can’t say I blamed them, though the benefit of the doubt never seemed to go my way with these types. And then there were the third type, those who saw some value in what we did and even helped out occasionally, on the condition that we reciprocate when we could. Yadira was the third kind. She was a good cop, and we’d helped each other out many times. And now she was dead, and by some fluke chance I was the first one on the scene.
“This isn’t fair Cheevers,” I said to her corpse, “PIs don’t do murders.” She didn’t answer, though I supposed I preferred it that way.
Movies and TV and too many cheap mystery novels have left most people with the impression that we spend most of our time fighting our way through bars full of thugs, chasing people in high end sports cars, and shooting it out with mobsters and world class assassins, all the while tirelessly pursuing cold blooded killers and international drug dealers. Yeah, right, and my mechanic spends his days repairing F14s for the Airforce and bedding beautiful Russian spies.
Of course, that would explain why Harvey always seemed a bit happier than he should have been, being 45 years old and working for some punk with an attitude problem half his age, making peanuts, and still living with his mother.
No, most of our days are spent doing paper work, filling forms, sifting through phone records, poking around internet databases, or sitting in a car with a pair of binoculars and a camera with a high powered lens trying not to draw any attention to ourselves. Not exactly a glamorous life, especially when you find out how much we make. So why do I do it? I’m good at it, and it beats flipping burgers, the only other marketable skill I possessed judging from my work history.
“Nick!” Derrick shouted from the road, too loud for this time of night, even if there weren’t any houses nearby. It was a crisp, still night, and it seemed wrong somehow to disturb the peacefulness of the scene. The quarter moon had fallen behind the trees a short time ago, and the mostly cloudy skies offered little light, deepening the sense of stillness.
“Nick!” he yelled again as he jogged down the slope towards me.
“Shut up,” I said, “show a little respect for the dead.”
He pulled up short at my side, not even breathing hard, the punk. I’d been pretty rugged in my youth, but I was 46 now and a run like that would have winded me, if my right knee hadn’t have given out on the slope down from the road.
“Sorry Nick. So, Officer Cheevers huh? That sucks, she was pretty cool.”
“Yeah, she was.” I didn’t want to go down this road, not now. If Derrick had done as I instructed he’d called the cops already, and I was going to have to answer a few questions. Under the best of circumstances, Detective Gunn didn’t like me - he was the second kind of cop, the kind that hated PIs - and this time I was calling in to report that one of his own had been killed and tossed in the woods. I could mourn the loss of a friend later, after I’d helped her out this one last time.
“So, how did you find her Nick? I mean, this is a bit out of the way, and I couldn’t see you from the road, let alone her. If I hadn’t seen that rust bucket of yours up there I would’ve kept going.”
“You hold your tongue about Bertha,” I stabbed a finger at him, “she ain’t pretty, but she’s been good to me. You can crow all you want about that domestic POS you’ve gotten yourself, when it takes you to three hundred thousand miles, then you can talk like that.”
He just looked at me for a moment, a tiny little smile on that pretty boy face of his. “About that, I spotted a muffler back up the road a bit, had to swerve around it actually, and it looks like ‘Bertha’ is a little like under the skirt. Coincidence?”
Damn. I’d heard the thunk, and noticed that the noise level had gone up a bit, but I’d hoped she was just protesting the cold, or I’d hit a raccoon or something. No big deal, old Harvey and I were seeing more and more of each other lately, but Derrick wasn’t going to let this go for some time now.
“I’ll check it out when we’re done here,” I didn’t look at him as I said it, I knew he was smirking at me.
“So, how’d you end up out here?”
“I got a call.”
“And?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve figured it out myself. Did you make the call?”
“Yeah, they’ll be here any minute now. Why did you call me? I mean, why didn’t you call them directly?”
I didn’t say anything and he realized I probably wouldn’t. I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t call the Idle PD directly. I guessed I just wanted an extra few minutes alone before they arrived, and I knew Derrick wouldn’t make the call until he was parking, just to be sure he got here before they’d roped off the scene. Like I said, we get a murder here maybe once in bad year. This was an oddity, it’d be the talk of the town for months, and he was still young and stupid enough to think it would be cool to say he was the second on the scene. Might even get him a little play. I didn’t know if he was that type, and I didn’t care to ask, but I sure as hell know I was at his age. Oh well, he was a smart kid really, smart enough to be of use to me anyway, and he was always so damned eager to help.
As I considered this I could hear the cop arriving up on the road. The trees around me started to pulse red and blue with increasing chaos as more and more arrived. They ran silent, no sirens, there was rarely anyone on the roads at this time of night, at least these side roads, as I supposed there was always someone on the three major routes that collided in the center of town. No sense in waking everyone up and causing a fuss at this hour, better to give themselves a little time before the news hit the News. They didn’t spare the breaks though, and it sounded like they’d called out every cop in town, and maybe a few from Westbrook to assist.
“Come on,” I said to Derrick, turning towards the road. “Let’s go find Gunn and get this part over with.”
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