Crimson Falls (The Depravity Chronicles) by Joshua Grove Page A

meeting the professor.
        
    * * * * * *
    4
     
    Michael Mullins
pulled up to the payphone to dust for prints. The Laundromat was small, sitting
between the office of an insurance agent and Loaves of Love, a popular deli.
Only two cars were in the parking lot. He faced the buildings, looking to his
left. Dense bushes and trees glared back at him, representing the edge of the
Brickton Estate. He didn’t like being so close to where Acorn Alan had been
murdered.
    “Shit,” Michael
said to himself. He hadn’t expected the streets to be as quiet as they were
tonight. He returned to the cruiser to grab the necessary equipment needed to
lift fingerprints. As he walked he kept an eye on the trees, thinking that at
any moment someone would emerge, bent on killing him. He cursed himself for being
afraid.
    “Get this done
and then get the hell outta here,” he grunted.
    As he began
dusting, he tried to ignore his discomfort. “Fingers are coated with oil and
stuff. Touching a surface causes friction and the perspiration and oil is left
behind,” he told himself as he remembered his training. He returned the small
brush to its rightful place in the box and took the cellophane tape to lift the
prints.
    “Michael!” a
female voice said loudly.
    Michael fell on
his behind, screaming as he landed. “Jesus!”
    Michael looked
around, but no one was there. He listened to the sounds around him. A large
woman walked out of the Laundromat with a large pile of clothes in her arm.
After a moment he recognized her as Mary Sue Winters, the second grade teacher
in town. She caught Michael’s movement from the corner of her eye.
    “Hi Michael!”
she hollered. She threw the clothes into her trunk and walked toward him. He
rose to his feet.
    “Hi ya, Mary
Sue,” he said, relieved.
    “Whatcha doing?”
she asked as she surveyed the equipment. “Are you looking for fingerprints?”
Worry spread across her face.
    “No, no,” he
said. She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, yes, I am dusting for prints. But it’s
nothing serious,” he lied. “Some kids have been making some prank calls to the
station so we’re trying to figure it out.
    “Oh, I see,” she
said, eying suspiciously. “Well I try to teach them right,” she laughed.
    “Indeed!” he
smiled.
    “Well, I gotta
get these clothes home,” she said as she began walking away. “Have a good
night, Michael.”
    “You too, Mary
Sue,” he waved. He was grateful for his brief respite from obsessing about the
dead body he had just seen less than an hour ago. He continued lifting the
prints and hummed to himself as he worked.
    “Michael!” the
same female voice roared again. He froze in the middle of removing the
cellophane. It came from the same direction as before. This time he realized it
was coming from behind the trees. He waited to see if the voice would call to
him again. It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
    Silence.
    He finished
lifting the prints, sealing them, and closing the kit as quickly as possible so
he could get the hell out of there. The moment the case snapped closed, the
voice called to him again.
    “Michael,
please!” she screamed, desperate.
    “Who’s there?”
Michael called. He waited, expecting the trees to begin moving or horrible
sounds to erupt from the darkness.
    Only silence.
    “Jesus Christ, Michael!
I need you!” she shrieked. He suddenly recognized the voice. It was Sheriff
Blackwood.
    “Oh, shit,
Sheriff!” he cried as he ran toward the edge of the Brickton Estate. Something
must have happened when he left for the station to get the fingerprint kit. He
hadn’t had the balls to tell his boss that he had forgotten to put it back in
his car the previous month. He stopped dead in his tracks when he reached the
first group of bushes and trees.
    “Anna?” he
beckoned. “Anna, are you there?”
    “Yes, Michael,”
she answered more calmly. “I’m stuck here in these weeds, and I think something
was coming toward me.