The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) by Neil Rochford

nudged loose recollections that had been trapped under the weight of his subconscious. His previous “excursions” were revealing themselves in his mind’s eye in bloody detail, and he was enjoying it.
    He felt the voice, or its owner, recoil in his mind. Who the hell...? What have you done?
    There was a curious feeling of inspection, like fingers riffling through his mind as if it were a file drawer.
    Frank then felt a sensation of pain like he had never felt before. It was like his eyes were crossing but farther back in his head, and simultaneously that both sides of his brain were trying to pull away from each other. He screamed out, the noise deafening in the bathroom.
    His right hand came up and slapped him in the face, hard. He looked in the mirror and saw a stream of blood trickling from one nostril. He tried to stop himself from doing what he knew to be coming next, but it was no use. Motor functions were no longer under his control. He gripped the sides of the sink and launched himself at the mirror headfirst.
    He was still banging his face against the shattered reflection of himself when the orderlies burst in and grabbed him. Frank was still unsuccessfully trying to scream when they finally managed to get a needle into his arm. Darkness swam up from the puncture and his mind gratefully escaped into black nothingness.

11
Appointments
 
    Andrea sat in her living room, photos and papers strewn across the floor in the center of the room. More papers were piled on the table. The way she saw it, she had less than forty-eight hours to try to make some headway before news of the murders was leaked. She was surprised that no one at the mayor’s office, or someone from Solas’ crowd had done it already.
    Afterward, she was sure of two things.
    First, all the crazies would come crawling out of the woodwork. They would claim to be the mastermind to the murder, as well as a slew of other murders. Then they would confess to being the reincarnation of that rock-and-roll singer who’d died fifty years before, brought back to life by alien technology and cigarette smoke. Policy would dictate that she would have to at least take an interview with each one of these crackpots, more than likely on her own. From what she could gather, the budget had been sliced again this year. Everybody was doubling up on duties, unpaid overtime, and good luck if you wanted sick pay. She had reached an agreement with Cap not to be back on the payroll just yet, as a favor, and he had paid this month out of his own pocket. Which was fine with her right now, but she doubted it could go on for long.
    Second, the city would be in an uproar. This would be a final straw on a tired donkey’s back. There would be marching in the streets, riots, and strikes. With all the crap that was already around about scandals in the halls of government and police, and the murders that had already happened since last year, the people had had enough. Every newspaper, every pundit had nothing but bad things to say about the people running the city. The murder of the son of one of the last few honest-seeming political voices would be too much.
    Andrea rubbed her eyes and looked over the mess of information in front of her. Laurence Kale, dead in a bathtub in a hotel not fifty feet from an unknown body. The same word on his chest as the supposed perpetrator of the Solas murder-suicide. She leafed through the papers on the desk and found the file on Kale.
    Single, never married, thirty-four, no children. Not much in the way of family or assets. No criminal record, no tattoos, no known associates. Spotty employment record, his last job had been two years before, working out of some warehouse outside of the city on a construction contract.
    She’d found quarterly payments made to him since he had left that job on the sheet with his bank details. The amounts were more than the usual unemployment package, and there was no name for the source of the funds.
    Andrea tossed