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1
“Heard from Sally?” Chief Connor pokes his head in the door of my office. He’s sporting a full beard, one so rich and lustrous I know he hasn’t shaved in a whole twenty-four hours. The man grows hair the way an abandoned fridge grows mold.
We all call my partner Sally when she’s not around. She’d hate it if she knew. She prefers to be known as Detective Holmes, because Sally is too girly, and she is the exact opposite of a girly girl. She, like me, is a tough as nails New Yorker, a detective with years of experience under her belt and a big, dirty secret she never had to make me swear to keep.
“No, sir.” My response is worried, reflecting my inner concern. Sally has been missing for far too long. Technically, any time missing is too long, but she’s been gone a good bit now, and for a woman who never missed a day of work since I met her, that’s bad. Very bad. I know she’s mixed up in some seriously strange stuff. The same stuff I am working very hard keeping my mouth shut about.
Chief is staring at me with a piercing gaze. He gives me serious dad vibes. Not like, hot daddy vibes, though I guess he is hot, but more like, father I hate to feel like I’m disappointing vibes. I grew up in the system, so I never really had the chance to disappoint someone this way before. It’s kind of a new feeling, and I absolutely hate it.
“We know she was heading to Virginia, and that’s it. With a dumpster. Is she fucking around? Is there some guy involved?”
“Could be, sir, but it’s not like her to just not show up. I haven’t heard from her.”
I am worried. I’ve called her phone a hundred times, and she never answers. Knowing Sally, that phone is lost somewhere. She loses everything. But as long as I’ve known her, she’s never gone so far as to lose herself.
“Alright,” he says. “Let me know if you hear anything.”
Obigor, my ancient emotional support dog starts snoring in his sleep. His little ginger body is now tipped with white in all the wrong ways. I hate that he’s getting old, but I’m grateful for every day I get with him. Right now, he’s curled up on the bed I have for him on my desk. My walking stick is next to him, the hook of it balanced over the edge of the basket.
Nobody expects much of me, including Chief Connor. He was kind enough to hire me when no other department wanted anything to do with me, but when you walk with a limp and you’re not cleared for field work, you start to fade into the background in most precincts. At this point, I’m as much of a fixture of what’s always referred to as Sally Holmes’ office as the plastic pot plant we stuck in the corner once as an ironic sort of joke. Secretly, I like the way it looks. I guess I have a lot of secrets.
Connor leaves without closing the door, and I shift uncomfortably in my chair. I know what I have to do, and I really do not want to do it.
Sally’s disappearance is a mystery, but there is someone who probably knows where she is and what has happened to her. Someone I’m more than a little scared to go see myself. Someone who made a real impression on me the first time we met.
I can’t send other units to this guy’s place either. Not without fundamentally changing humanity’s understanding of what it means to be human forever. Yeah, it’s that big of a deal.
I think I am out of time. I have been hoping that Sally would just show up. I know she can take care of herself. But Chief is starting to get antsy, and so am I.
“Fuck it,” I mutter under my breath, putting both hands to the somewhat sticky surface of my desk to lever my body out of my chair.
“Where are you going?” Connor barks the question at me as I head out of the office, one hand on my walking stick, the other tucked under my little dog.
Obigor is more than a pet. He’s the rest of my soul. I take him everywhere. Always. I don’t think either one of us would know what to do without the other. Some people call that codependence. I call it luck. My bond with my dog is going to transcend time and space, and I’ve decided he’s going to live forever.
Obigor might have only a handful of teeth left, he might be mostly blind, and kind of deaf, but he knows how to do his job. He heard the bass in Connor’s voice and starts yapping at the top of his little dog lungs setting up an infernal howling that makes the simple act of thinking entirely impossible.
Connor slams his door to avoid listening to it, and I get to leave without answering any inconvenient questions. People think yappy little dogs are useless. But that’s because people lack imagination, and maybe because they can’t think while yappy dogs are yapping.
“You and me forever, Obigor,” I tell him. He does not react, because this is not news. It has always been me and him. Except before I got him. Back then it was just me. It’s better with him.
I used to be braver, before my body was scarred with by bullets. Now I know that death lurks closer than you think, and not just intellectually, but physically. That knowledge has been branded into every cell of my body. It’s why I ride a desk now, or did until my partner dragged me into this particular, I’m just going to say it,supernatural,mess.
My car is parked out front. It’s like the one perk of having been left wounded. I get to park wherever I want, basically. It’s a shitty superpower, but I’ll take it at this point. I set Obigor down in his little car seat and attach his seat belt. You literally cannot be too careful.
* * *
Driving to what feels like might be my fate, I am nervous. I am not carrying a weapon, though I wish I was. I don’t like guns anymore. I’m around them all the time, but I spend my day avoiding looking directly at them. I tell nobody this. It is one of many shameful secrets I keep to myself. It’s best that others aren’t aware of the contents or processes of my mind. As long as I can mimic normality, that’s all that matters.
My GPS issues instructions at periodic intervals, but I don’t really need them. The way to this place is burned into my memory.
In an hour or so, maybe more, maybe less, who really cares, it’s New York and distance of destinations is immaterial because traffic flow is what matters, we arrive at an old storage bay near one of the many ports. It’s also a maze of shipping containers. A random person venturing here looking to find what I am looking for would have next to no chance of discovering it, but I can’t help but know it all already.
Obigor is fast asleep when we arrive at the shipping container yard, but I scoop him up anyway. I don’t go anywhere without him, and he doesn’t go anywhere without me. We have each other’s backs, always. As I pick him up out of the car, he opens his eyes and looks around, immediately alert. He can’t actually see that well anymore, especially at night, but that won’t stop him from trying his best to defend me. I’d die for this dog, and he’d die for me.
We walk into the maze of shipping containers until the tell-tale signs of occupation become clear. We’re talking massive spiderwebs, big, thick wall hangings of spider silk. I bet they’re worth some real money or would be if they were sold for industrial applications.
“Hello?” I whisper the word softly, almost hoping not to be heard. The last time I came here I was not alone. I had my partner to look after me, or to at least be witness to me. This time I am entirely at a very strange predator’s mercy, and I have no guarantee he will show any of that quality at all.
