I...write? Maybe?

I haven't written since I blew off NaNo in November. Bad Karen! Time to get moving again. I never got into my second D'Argenzio/Hashek novel, and I've been thinking that it's perhaps because, while I know and like D'Argenzio, I'm kind of "meh" on Hashek. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to get to know her a little better. I'm going to (try to?) rewrite Spilled Blood from her POV. After all, why is she such a prickly bitch a lot of the time? I'm not really sure. Hoping to find out.

I've got a couple of paragraphs down already, starting from the morning of the first day, the same way D'Argenzio's narrative began. Hopefully I can keep this going. Doesn't common wisdom say that books with female narrators do better than male ones?

Novel: Spilled Blood, Redux
Chapters posted: 1, partial
Current novel length: 426
Excerpt length: 426
Editing: None. This is stream-of-consciousness, folks!

My alarm went off with a burst of mixed static and practiced, radio-DJ voices. Without opening my eyes, I half-sat up, reached over my shoulder, slapped the “snooze” button, and fell back into my bed. Normally, I’m an out-of-bed-two-minutes-before-the-alarm sort of person, but damn it, today I was tired. I’d been up late, not doing much of anything besides worrying and playing sudoku on my computer, neither of which had prepared me any better for the day ahead.

Besides, I had time to snooze. My alarm was set for five-thirty, which to meant that I could lay in bed for a whole half hour more and still easily be at work by eight. I’d planned it that way, knowing that I was going to have one of those mornings and that the least I could do was make sure I had enough time to wander around my house aimlessly and burn off some of my agitation.

The newest new guy started today. That was the cause of my worry; I would be getting my new partner this morning, and historically, that never made for a good morning for me. I expected this one to be worse than usual, based on what I’d read in his file. I wasn’t supposed to have access to anyone’s file, including the new guy’s, but my lieutenant, who was probably as nervous about this as me, had slipped the folder to me and looked the other way for ten minutes while I paged through it.

It hadn’t been encouraging.

The last guy, Nievers, had been younger than me, newly promoted to detective. Lieutenant Morgan had paired him with me in the hopes that, being new, he wouldn’t realize what he was getting stuck with when he met me. At least, I think that was his logic. He never put it to me in quite to many words. And anyway, it hadn’t worked. The guy had been insolently sure of himself from day one, and unwilling to stand back while I did my thing. He had also been a slob.

Overall, our partnership had been a resounding flop, which was why he was now working two towns away and I was alone again. Which brought me to the new guy - D’Argenzio, I reminded myself. I couldn’t very well refer to him as “the new guy” at work, or at least not to his face. But what kind of name was D’Argenzio, anyway? Frankly, I preferred “new guy” - it was easier to pronounce.

That's the lot for now, but I'm going to keep plugging on this for some more of tonight, so perhaps more updates to come. Whee, writing!
----------------
Now playing: Bruce Springsteen - Eyes On The Prize
via FoxyTunes

This is three days' worth of writing. SO BEHIND!

Word Count: 5348

I Should be at: ~10,000

Verdict: Not good.

**********

Three-twenty that afternoon found a slight frazzled Kat standing outside the office building Jane DiAngelo's email had described. She'd thrown on makeup and pulled up her long, dark hair into something resembling a french twist. Her suit, though she had had to rescue it from the floor, had survived with only a few small wrinkles in the seat, and overall, she was pretty sure she looked about as good as she was going to be able to with such short notice.

Still, she was nervous. This was the only job prospect she'd managed to pin down this week, and even if it did look like it would be only a short-term position, it could sure help to pay the rest for another month or two while she pursued other, more long-term, avenues of employment.

If, that was, she could talk her way into this job. Twenty dollars an hour for a basic writer's gig was nothing to sneeze at, and she was pretty sure the response email address would have been mobbed by respondants every bit as desperate for a paycheck as she was. In short, she needed to distinguish herself.

How she was going to do that, she had no idea. She had to trust herself that she could come up with something on the spot, once she was in there.

And with that thought in mind, she took a deep breath and pushed open the building door.

***************

"Katja, hello!" The cool looking blonde woman did, as she had promised, meet Kat at the door of the office suite. She politely offered a hand, which Kat took and found surprisingly warm. Jane DiAngelo was going to be hard to pin down right off the bat, Kat decided. The woman couldn't be much over thirty, if that, and she looked like a model, with hair so blonde that it was nearly white pulled back into an exacting ballerina's bun that set off high cheekbones and expertly applied makeup.

THIS was the secretary? Kat mentally revised her opinion back toward her potential employer being a womanizer. With a secretary that looked like this, when the chances were that there had been fifty applying for *that* job who were twenty years older and fifty pounds heavier, chances were good that he hadn't concentrated on evaluating her typing skills in the job interview.

"Miss Wrigley?" the model asked softly, looking at cat with mild concern on her face. "Are you alright?"

"Huh?" Kat belatedly realized that she had been standing there in the office lobbym, staring at the woman. Not the way to make a good impression, she reminded herself. Giving herself a good mental shake, she smiled winningly at Jane. "I'm sorry. I was, uh..." Think fast, Kat! "I was surprised at the size of this place. I was expecting something, you know, smaller." She paused. "Is Mr. Faber the only consultant in this business?"

Jane gave her a quizzical look, clearly not understanding the question. "No, there are a number of competitors in the field -" she began.

"Office," Kat corrected herself hastily. "I meant to ask whether he's the only one working out of this office." **Oh, wonderful,** she thought to herself. **You're here to apply as a writer and the first thing you do is get so flustered that you can't say what you mean on the first try? Yeah, they're just going to beg you to take this job, sure!**

Trying to think of a way to make up for her conversational faux pas, she smiled weakly at Jane and offered the first explanation that came to mind - which happened to be the true one. "I'm sorry. I'm just really nervous. I'd really like to get this job, so I want to ace the interview, and . . ."

Jane smiled. "I know the feeling, believe me. And to answer your question, yes, Mark is the only one here. This is his business, his office. We're a fairly small staff, though, even though the place looks so big. It's mostly me, Mark - Mr. Faber - and two assistants. The assistants are always going nuts asking for help, though, so we may be expanding. That's why we moved into the bigger office here, and -" She stopped there and interrupted herself. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I tend to do that when i try to make people feel more comfortable. Why don't we go into my office and sit down so we can really get started."

"That would be fine, Ms. DiAng-"

"Oh, call me Jane." THe model-esque smiled reappeared, but Kat was starting to think that it really was genuine in spite of its polish. "Would you like something to drink before we get started?"
"Oh, no." Kat shook her head. "I'm fine, thank you. And call me Kat."

"Ok, then, Kat. Let's head in here." Jane gestured toward a plush-looking office off to their right. "Make yourself at home," she added over her shoulder as they made their way into the room. "I know it looks expensive -" She smiled again. "- But nothing's breakable, I promise. I'm such a klutz, I made Mark promise that he wouldn't stock my office with anything I could easily destroy. That's the last thing I need, to trip over my own shoe and fall flat on a Ming vase or something!"

Kat couldn't help herself; she started laughing at the mental image of that happening. "I'm sorry," she managed, regaining control of herself after a few seconds. "It's just . . ."

Jane grinned. "Got you smiling, I see. A smiling interview always goes better, don't you think?"

"Now that you mention it . . . yes," Kat remarked slowly. "Thank you for the joke, then."

"It's what I do. Now, may I ask you a few questions about your qualifications?"

"Of course." Nervous again now, Kat could almost feel the smile slide off her face as she sat up straighter in her chair. "Go ahead."

"Thanks." Jane picked up a copy of Kat's resume that had been sitting in plain sight - not that Kat had seen it - on the corner of the desk. "You have a Masters degree in Linguistics?" the secretary asked, reading. "That sounds complicated! Did you enjoy it?"

The truth was, Kat had hated grad school, and had barely eked out her final thesis. But she'd heard again and again that *that* was not something one wanted to share on a job interview, so she fell back on her usual alibi: "It was stressful, but I enjoyed it. I have such a sense of accomplishment now."

Jane lowered the resume and looked curiously at Kat. "Accomplishment? How so?"

Kat swallowed. No one had every asked her that before. The mostly just accepted the buzzword and nodded. She decided to take a chance. "Grad school and I . . . didn't always get along," she ventured. "I didn't like the poltics that it turned out needed to be played, and I considered cutting my losses and just leaving for the real world a few times."

"But you didn't," Jane pointed out.

"No. I decided that I'd invested enough time and money - and blood and tears - that just to show all of the people who thought I wasn't strong enough for it, I was going to stick it out. So I did, and I did good work, to boot. SO when I say I feel a sense of accomplishment . . . I mean it. I accomplished something that was almost painful to accomplish."

"Is that why you took a degree - two degrees, actually, counting your BA - in linguistics, but now you're applying for jobs as a writer?"

Kat nodded. "I got burned out, I guess. I enjoy linguistics, but after grad school, it was no longer something that I found 'fun.' I've always been a writer, just as a pastime, so I, you know . . . I decided to see if I could make some money this way, doing something I love. I can always fall back on pure linguistics if I get truly desperate."

Jane cocked her head to the side, studying Kat with interest. "How close are you to being 'desperate'? You said you really want to get this job, and I can't help pointing out that while Mark pays well, the position we're talking about here is temporary, and no great shakes."

Wincing, Kat acknowledged the other woman's point. "I'm pretty close. My rent's coming due, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find the money in time if I don't get this job." She stopped short there, horrified at what had just come out of her mouth. You shouldn't *ever* talk money at a first interview. "I mean," she backpedaled quickly, desperately, "that's not anyone's responsibility but mine, of course, and I -"

Jane just waved a dismissive hand at her. "Don't worry about it. You're not the only person ever to be in this situation, I promise you, Kat."

Kat just swallowed and nodded.

"Do you have some writing samples?" Jane asked, obviously aware of her sudden discomfort and trying to move the topic along. "I'd like to see what you can do."

"Of course." Kat handed her the folder of print-outs she'd brought along. "I have some fiction excerpts in there, as well as the blurb I wrote about myself for match.com - it seemed appropriate for what I'm applying for here," she added hastily, not wanting the other woman to think she was attempting to get a date out of this. "I wanted to show that I have experience with personals as well as with regular writing."

"Hmm."  Jane's eyes drifted down first one of the pages, then another, then a third. "You are a good writer, Kat," she finally said, setting down the folder. "You have a talent for expressing yourself with humor, especially in your personal blurb. Mark would like that. I don't think he wants stilted prose when he's trying to get a date, even if he's not the one writing it."

She sounded disapproving, Kat realized. "Do you . . . not like this idea?" she asked cautiously. "His hiring someone to do his personal corresponding for him, I mean?"

"No," Jane acknowledged, "I don't. But he has such limited time that it's starting to seem like this may be the only way. He's lonely," she explained, "and he's such a nice man. I *would* like to see him find someone. It's just that having someone else do the finding for him seems very . . . cool to me, and I worry that the women he corresponds with may think the same. But," she added when Kat began to speak, "I think that if you take this position . . . I think you could help. Your writing seems to have a sense of humanity, and once you get to know Mark I think you could represent him very well."

Kat tried not to gape at her. "Are you saying that . . . um, I mean," she backtracked, "who makes the final decision about who to hire for this position?"

"Me," Jane said with a smile, "and I think I've found her. You meet all of Mark's requirements as to age, demeanor, etc, and you meet all of mine about writing ability." Her smile widened. "The job is yours if you want it, Kat."

Her attempt not to gape failed and Kat's mouth fell open. "Really? Are you serious?"

"Very. Can you start tomorrow morning?"

"I . . . I mean yes, of course . . . are you sure? You don't need to interview me any more?"

Jane shook her head. "I don't think I do, no. And quite frankly," she added, "even if you turn out to be a horrible choice, it's a temporary position. You can be gotten rid of," she said with a twinkle in her eyes that somehow negated the possible threat in the words.
Kat couldn't hold back an answering smile. "I appreciate the sentiment - and your point. What time do you want me here tomorrow?"

"How does nine sound?" Jane said. "Mark and I are both here at eight, and the hour in between will give us time to have our morning meeting and set up a game plan before you report for duty - so to speak."

"Nine is fine for me."

"You'll be on the books," Jane added, "as an actual employee - that's the only way Marlk hires his people - so would you mind bringing your Social Security card with you in the morning?"

Kat shook her head. "Not a problem. Thank you so much, Jane."
She waved away the thanks. "Don't thank me yet - you still have to meet Mark tomorrow. I'll give you fair warning now - he can be intimidating, but he's a sweetheart, I promise. So just don't run screaming, and you should be ok."

"How . . . reassuring."

"Isn't it?" Jane stood up and offered her hand to Kat again, signaling an end to the interview. "I'm sorry to rush you out, but I've got a possible client coming in to speak to Mark in about ten minutes, and he wants me to sit in on it."

"No problem. I can find my way out. Thank you again," Kat said, shaking her hand. "I'll look forward to meeting Mr. Faber in the morning."

*********

Five minutes later, Kat swept past the gloomy-looking doorman and out of the building, whistling to herself. She finally had a paying job! Andrea had been right - for twenty bucks an hour, she could tolerate a womanizing, intimidating sort of guy. Hell, for twenty bucks an hour she could tolerate just about anything. This job was going to work out just fine!

CHAPTER THREE

Katja was up with the sun the next morning, staring at her wardrobe and wondering what one wore for one's first day of doing someone else's romantic dirty work for them. Jeans, since it was likely to be dirty work? A flowery dress, the better to play up how much she resembled the "attractive, well-dressed" female her boss had advertised for? A power suit, to make the "I'm here to work, not play" message abundantly clear?

Finally, she decided on the suit. It was decidedly not anything resembling flirty, which she considered to be a plus, but it was her one designer suit, which covered the "well-dressed" requirement, and if she paid attention to her makeup, she could still cover the "attractive" requirement.

Almost back on track

A mad writing spree tonight has just about caught me up to where I should be. Not completely, but enough so it's not a huge problem. So:

Current word count: 2912

I should be at: 3334

Not bad, right? And the story actually seems to be coming together.

Also of possible interest: I'm using three different text editors to manage this year's project.

1) yWriter3, king editor of awesome novel organization, to manage chapters, scenes, characters, and everything else besides the actual typing. Everything gets pasted in here at the end of the day, scene-by-scene

2) Q10, master of full-screen word-processor-emulating anti-distractionness, to do my actual typing (now with bonus clicky typing noises!)

3) Google docs, workhorse of always-there storage, to keep my progress always available, should I be somewhere other than home at a computer and want to do some writing. Everything gets pasted in here, too, but in one big chunk.

And now, for today's progress, read on...

*********

"It's a personal ad," Kat said, sliding the paper back to Andrea. "So what?"

"It's not a personal! It's a job listing! See," she replied, pointing to the second sentence, " 'work will be done in his office.' It's a job. I got it off the GregsList job listings. It's a reputable website."

"It's also a website where people can post things wherever they want. And this sounds a whole lot like a sneaky personal to me," Kat shot back. "If it's just someone to write stuff for him, what does he care if she's twenty or eighty? Or if she's 'attractive'?"

Andrea shrugged. "Twenty dollars an hour, and you don't have to work somewhere creepy, like out of his apartment? It's worth a try."

"No. No way, Dre!" Kat rolled her eyes. "You'd think the least a 'high-powered corporate consultant' could read well enough to comprehend the instructions and put his ad where it's supposed to be so some poor jobless writer doesn't get taken in by it."

Giving the shabby contents of Kat's apartment a pointed look, Andrea regarded her friend with raised eyebrows. "Maybe it is a personal. Maybe I'm wrong. But do I need to point out that you're getting to the point where you can't really afford to pass up anything that might even resemble a job? Just apply, Kat. See what it's all about. If you're right, then you can come back to me and say 'I told you so' to your heart's content, and if you're wrong, then you can finally start making something that begins to resemble a living wage!"

"With some jerk who can't be bothered to answer his own personals?"
"Honey, he could be 'some jerk who wears his shirts backwards and his pants upside down,' and if he paid twenty bucks an hour I'd still tell you to send your damn resume!"

Kat tried and failed to smother a laugh at that. She'd only known Andrea for a matter of weeks, but she was coming to really appreciate the way this new friend could phrase things just right. Sighing, she nodded reluctantly. "I know I should apply. What's there to lose, right? Except...what if he's a total skeeze? What if his 'office' is, like, his basement?"

"Then you smack him and leave, Kat. I've seen you hold your own with our asshole of a landlord; I have a hard time believing you can't do the same with some swety-palmed guy who can't get a date except to lie about it - IF that's what this guy is."

"Ok, I get the point. You're right, it's not that I'm afraid of him or anything. It's just...have you ever seen the movie Fame?"
"Nope. What's it about?"

"Well, it's about kids at a performing arts high school, but that's not my point. My point is that there's this scene where a girl who wants to be a dancer or model responds to an ad in the paper for a 'photographer,' and she ends up getting there and he's this disgusting guy who makes her pose topless, and she does it because she wants so desperately to break into the industry that she feels like she has to."

"Kat." Andrea shook her head gently and touched her friend's hand. "You're desperate for work, but you're not THAT desperate. You can go to work at McDonalds if it comes down to it. This is just a stop along the way, you know? See if anyone even answers if you send your resume. And if you go to interview and he tries to get you to take your clothes off, you have my permission to brain him with whatever's handy. Or call me and I'll come do it for you!"

She couldn't help but laugh at that. "I don't doubt that you would. Ok, ok. I give in. I'll do it." She paused. "Probably."

"Probably?"

"I need to think about it a little more. But unless I come up with a good reason, I'll apply. You're right, there's no reason not to at least see what happens. Even if the guy IS a sweaty-palmed jerk who needs someone to help him get dates."

"That's the spirit, Kat. Here." Andrea slid the print-out back across the table to her. "Keep this. Call me in the morning and tell me what you decided, ok? And keep me up to date on what happens if you do apply."

"I will." Kat smiled and opened her arms to the other woman. "Thanks, Dre. I know you're trying to help me however you can. I really do appreciate that you keep your eyes open for things like this."
Andrea grinned and accepted the hug readily. "Even if they never seem to pan out, huh? Hey, that's what friends are for. But right now, this friend has to get going - I've got a date tonight and I've got to get ready."

"'Kay. I'll call you in the morning and let you know what I decide, and you can tell me all about the newest Prince Charming you've coralled. Deal?"

"Deal." And with great ceremony, the two women shook hands.

CHAPTER TWO

Kat stared down at the ad Andrea has given her the night before. She'd spent the night thinking it over, and she couldn't come up with a good reason to not apply. So...apply, she would. As Andrea had said, given the current state of Kat's finances, for twenty dollars an hour there were very few things she could justify NOT at least attempting to do.

Resolute now, she downed the last of her coffee and moved to sit in front of her computer. A few clicks called her email program up on the screen, and Kat took one deep break, let it out, and typed in the address the ad had given: seeker@tempmail.com.

And now, to write the actual email.

Maybe she needed another cup of coffee before she could bring herself to do this, she mused, then reprimended herself mentally. No, she'd promised Andrea that she'd call her this morning to tell her her decision, and if she put this off much longer, it wouldn't be morning anymore at all. Hesitantly, she laid her hands on the keyboard, stretching her fingers as if she was about to compose a novel rather than a short, introductory email.

And she wrote.

"To Whom It May Concern:
I would like to express my interest in the writing position that was posted to GregsList website yesterday, November first. The ad did not specify any experience requirements, so allow me to explain mine so that you may decide whether they fit the position you are offering.

I have just completed a Masters degree in Linguistics at the University of Illinois. During my time there, I specialized in Discourse Analysis, a subfield of Linguistics which studies the sociological and psychological aspects that affect who can and should say what, when. I believe that my skills in this area may be useful to you in the writing of responses to personal ads; I have, quite literally, a degree in figuring out what to say, when.

I also worked as a Graduate Assistant to a professor during my time at the University. In that capacity, I functioned as an editor of his research papers and journal articles. I am proficient at grammatical and stylistic editing, and as a side effect, have become wuite capable with most of the text-editing software in wide use these days. Also as a result of this position, I am used to working in close partnership with a supervisor, striving to say perfectly whatever he or she needs to say.

I am a linguist by training, but a writer by inclination. I have written fiction for most of my life, and currently have a completed novel that I am considering submitting to publishers.

In short, I am a capable writer and editor of both fiction and nonfiction.

I am attaching me resume to this e-mail so that you can see the rest of my Curricula Vitae, if you are interested. Please let me know if you have any trouble opening the document, or would like further information on any of the publications listed in it.

As to the requirements that your ad did list, I am, indeed, in my late twenties. I am outgoing, although not a social butterfly, and I have been told that I am not bad looking. As to well-dressed, as a fairly poor graduate student, I never had much use for expensive clothes, and my wardrobe tends to be minimalistic, but I believe that I am fairly good at selecting combinations of what I have to put together decent looking outfits.

I hope this email has provided a good introduction to me for you. I can be reached at either this email address, wrigleykat@tmail.com, or at my cell phone number, 212-555-1274. I would appreciate a response to this email just so that I know it reached you in a timely manner.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Katja Wrigley, M.A."

Sighing, Kat sat back and studied what she had written. Had she sounded too conceited discussing how wonderful her linguistic and editing skills were? She sincerely doubted that whoever read her email would care how many papers she had published. All they wanted was some young chick to write cheesy personal notes. Still, the worst that could happen would be that they'd think she was overskilled for the job, and even then maybe they'd pass it on to someone who needed a real writer, one who just happened to be able to analyze discourse on command.

Right, because there were a lot of those jobs lying around.

No, now was not the time to start pitying herself and her fultile job search again. Kat forced her attention back to re-reading the email
Had the snarky tone that had been in he rmind come through in her description of her physical qualities? She'd tried to tone it down, but she'd just never expected that she'd have to describe her jeans and t-shirt wearing self as "well dressed" just to get paying work. How the mighty grad student had fallen, she mused.

After a minute's consideration, she struck the line about requesting a response to her email. Employers today, she'd learned, would do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever the hell they wanted, and the convenience of the poor applicant was just about the last thing on their list. What did they care if she was on the edge of her seat for six months, wondering if they'd received her resume or not?

The rest of the email was about as good as she could get it. Nothing she could say would make her feel less ridiculous for answering it, and nothing she could honestly come up with would make her sound any better

She held her breath for a long second, let it out, and hit the Send button.

************************

Three hours later, just as Kat was finishing up her first read-through of the day's want ads, her computer beeped, informing her that she had a new email message. Assuming it was probably spam or a message from a friend, Kat wandered over to the machine and checked the bolded message.

She blinked.

The subject like was the same as the email she had sent to "seeker" a few hours ago, although the sender address to this email was different. Had someone really answered her application so quickly, or was this some new form of email interception spam?

Only one way to find out, she decided, and opened the email.

"Ms. Wrigley:
Thank you for your response to the job listing posted on GregsList. My name is Jane DiAngelo, and I am the executive secretary to Marcus Faber, the man for whom you would be working. I presented your email to Mr. Faber and we agree that your credentials are impressive and quite suited to the job you applied for. The need to fill this position is immediate, however, and I would need to interview you this afternoon if at all possible, to start tomorrow morning if we decide you will, indeed, fit in this position. I realize this may be inconvenient, and I apologize for the rush, but Mr. Faber needs the help immediately. Please let me know if you are able to interview this afternoon, any time after two, with me at Mr. Faber's office.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience, and I look forward to meeting you.

Sincerely,
Jane DiAngelo"

Kat stared at the screen. Interview this afternoon? Well of course she *could* do it - the whole problem was that she had nothing else formative to do with her day. And it was somewhat reassuring to know that she would be dealing with an executive secretary, as well as with the man himself. Unless the guy had written the email to her, pretending to be his own secretary. This could still be a Fame situation, she reminded herself, and she would be wise to be prepared for anything when she went in.

Which, of course, she would. An immediate job opening paying twenty dollars an hour, in a reputable atmosphere...she could almost get excited about this prospect. She quickly dashed off an email to Jane DiAngelo, assuring the other woman that she would be more than happy to come to the office today to interview, and whatever time after two was most convenient for Ms. DiAngelo would be just perfect for Kat.

And within twenty minutes, she had received another reply. Whoever these character were, she thought to herself with amusement, at least they read their email promptly.

"Ms. Wrigley:

Wonderful! How does three-thirty sound to you? Our office is Suite 7112 on the seventh floor of 367 East Forty-Third Street, right at the corner of Third Avenue. Please tell the security officer on the ground floor that you are coming to see me. He will call up to the office to confirm, then show you onto an elevator. I will meet you when you come in.

I'm looking forward to our meeting,
Jane"

Three thirty was fine, of course, but - suddenly, Kat felt a tide of panic. Were her job interview clothes clean, or had she tossed them on the floor in disgust after her last failed interview?

She made for the bedroom at a mad dash, tossing off her t-shirt as she went.

Not the Most Awesome First Day...

...but I'm just not having a good day overall, so I choose to hope it'll get better as my morale improves.

Nano wordcount: 575

******

This was end of day thirty. Katja Wrigley pushed aside today's newspaper and sighed heavily. Thirty days she'd been job hunting, and thirty days she'd been continually failing. Her masters degree hadn't done her an iota of good. Nobody cared whether the person applying for a writer's job had an advanced degree. Mostly they just cared about whether she had experience in the industry and whether she'd take twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

Kat couldn't fulfill either of those. She was fresh out of grad school, and "I helped edit a journal for my advisor" didn't cut it for the "Experience" section of the application. Not to mention that twenty-five thousand a year wouldn't pay for an apartment and the health insurance she needed, let alone for anything trifling like food.
She was running out of ideas. She'd been working her way through the want ads in every day's paper. She'd put the word out among the few people she knew in New York. She'd even put her resume on every job-hunting website she could think of. And nothing. The few nibbles she'd gotten had turned out to be false leads or no-call-backs.
She'd go through the paper once more. The few months' rent that her mother had been able to help her scrape up was just about used up, and if she didn't come up with something, anything, she was going to be living in a cardboard box before long.

Before she could reach for the paper again, though, she was interrupted by a knock on her door. Sighing, she pushed her chair away from the kitchen table and headed toward her apartment door.

"Kat!" someone was yelling before she even got the chain unlocked. "You've got to see this!"

Kat pulled the door open to find Andrea Barnes, a downstairs neighbor who she'd become friendly with, waving a piece of paper at her. "Come on in," she said absently, turning to head back to the kitchen and waving the woman in. "You want coffee? And what is it I've got to see?"

"This!"

Apparently Andrea didn't want coffee, then. Plopping back down in her chair, Kat raised her eyebrows and asked again, "What?"

"This." Triumphantly, Andrea slapped a sheet of paper down on the table in front of Kat.

She wasn't going to get any explanation out of her friend like this, Kat decided. She turned her attention to this oh-so-important paper and started reading:

Writer Wanted
35 year old corporate consultant is looking to hire a writer to write responses to my personal ads and keep my personal projects up to date. Work will be done from my midtown Manhattan office during regular office hours. Pay is $20 per hour and job starts immediately. Prefer a woman in he rlate 20s or early 30s, well-dressed, attractive, and outgoing, so that she will be on the same wavelength as the women I'm seeking. Contact seeker@tempmail.com for more information or to submit a resume.

"It's a personal ad," Kat said, sliding the paper back to Andrea. "So what?"

"It's not a personal! It's a job listing! See," she replied, pointing to the second sentence, " 'work will be done in his office.' It's a job."

"Sounds a whole lot like a sneaky personal to me," Kat shot back. "If it's just someone to write stuff for him, what does he care if she's twenty or eighty?"

Watch This Space

It's almost November first. That means I'm really, really going to start my NaNovel soon. And guess where it's going to be appearing as I write it? That's right, here! You know what that means, folks - you might actually get to see me keep my attention on one plotline long enough to (mostly) finish a story! For a whole month, only one story will appear here to perplex and delight you, and it will be going up at a (comparatively) lightning pace. 50,000 words in 30 days, dude. I might actually get somewhere!

Right now I'm trying to outline my plot, so I don't hit any big snags once I start writing. I'm itching to get started, but no, bad Karen, must wait until 11/1. Until then...I shall sit here muttering to myself and hoping that, come Thursday, a quajillion people will suddenly go "OMG! Look at this awesome blog where this girl is posting her novel! Let...I know this is revolutionary, but let's try it...let's READ THE BLOG!"

And then, my friends - then...I shall have more than three hits on this blog. And I shall be a success.

Relatively speaking.

Or, you know, the same three people who've been with me this far can cheerfully enjoy all 50,000 words. I guess that would work too.

NaNo...Ooh!

It's almost that time again. That special time of year when nutjobs all over the world abandon whatever they've been working on for the past year and turn to the complete chaos of (dun dun DUN) NaNoWriMo! Thirty days. Fifty thousand words. Gallons of coffee and kilos of sugar.

And fun. Lots of that.

NaNoWriMo is sponsored by The Office of Letters and Light, a nonprofit that runs programs supporting young writers and libraries in Southeast Asia. They're a nonprofit. A charity. That means they operate on donations, folks. Donations from nice people who write novels during NaNoWriMo, mostly, but then there are those of us who are, um, not so much gainfully employed. It's hard to donate when you've got no disposable income.

Until now! You know how marathon runners get sponsored by people who aren't actually running? Well, NaNo has set up a similar system. All you have to do is click on this link, get out your credit card, and click "Give Now" on the page that pops up. You can donate as much or as little money as you want to the cause, and 95% of it goes directly to tOoLaL.

Yeah, I'm shaking you down. But it's for a totally good cause, and you can donate any amount, from a dollar to a thousand dollars (heh, I wish). If you donate, thank you so much! And if you don't, that's ok - my nanovel will still be going up in pieces on this blog for you to enjoy.

Chapter 6, more

Yep, definitely some sexual tension.Read on...
****

“For being an ass!”

“I wasn’t being an ass,” I protested gamely. “I was -”

“Showing off like a teenaged boy,” she interrupted, finally catching sight of the position of my legs under the wheel. “Freaking figures.”

“Who, me?” I replied as innocently as I could, continuing to work the pedals but leaving the steering now to her. “Hey, you know, we make a pretty good team. We should drive like this more often.” I draped a friendly arm over her shoulder and grinned my best idiotic smile.

She twisted her head around to give me a dark look. “So help me, if you don’t take this wheel and start driving when I let go . . .” She paused to dig a pointed, but not painful, elbow into my bad leg just above my knee. “Then I’m going to just let you go and kill your knees using them to drive the whole way home,” she picked up again. “And you’re not going to get any sympathy from me when you start limping and whining.”

“Hey, I -”

“You could warn me next time before you decide to try any more high school tricks,” she added, shrugging my arm off her.

It took me a guilty second to realize she had been referring to driving with my knees and not the arm I had put around her. “Me? High school?” I protested. “I did no such thing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I bet you never tried that on any of your dates to get them to lean over and have to practically sit in your lap.”

“You’re not sitting in my lap,” I pointed out. And then, before I could stop myself, I added, “. . . Want to be?”

“Oh, shut up.” She released the wheel without warning, and like a good, chastened partner, I grabbed for it.

“You’re such a jerk,” she reminded me without any real heat as I took up all the driving again. “You’re lucky I’m not going to hold that against you and file harassment charges.”

I hit the brakes abruptly and screeched the car to a halt on the side of the road to stare at her. I hadn’t actually considered that, but she was right - what I’d just done could definitely be construed wrong by someone who was overly sensitive. “I didn’t mean -”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, not allowing me to finish. “Lucikly for you, I both have a sense of humor and understand yours. Instead of being pissed, I’m just going to plot ways to get back at you.”

“Um . . . thanks?” I ventured, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Should I be scared?”

She smiled smugly. “Yes. Very. Now, how about driving again so we can get back to headquarters sometime before bedtime?”

I gave her a salute and took my foot off the break. “Yes, ma’am.”

Chapter 6, beginning

Mmm, do I smell the beginnings of some sexual tension?

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 6
Excerpt length: 447
Current novel length: 12,580

CHAPTER SIX - Monday Afternoon

“Talk about clingy,” Hashek remarked, buckling her seatbelt a few minutes later.

“Her?” I asked as I started the car. “Or him?” I checked over my shoulder, put the car into reverse, and starting backing out of our narrow parking space.

She considered that. “Both! He looked like he hated to go thirty seconds without touching her, and she looked like she preferred it that way.”

I palmed the wheel in a circle and headed out onto the road. “You noticed that too, huh?”

“Of course I did.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her directing a haughty look in my direction. “I’m every bit as observant as you, you know - if not more so.”

Keeping my eyes on the road, I lifted both hands off the wheel in ostensible surrender. “Hey, no offense intended.”

She eyed my upraised hands, then the road. “Uh, Tony.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re supposed to be driving, remember? It helps to be touching the wheel when you do that.”

She sounded nervous. But then, she had no idea that as a teenager on Long Island, I’d perfected the art of steering with my knees for short periods while my hands were otherwise occupied with my girlfriend in the passenger seat. I had the fight back a grin as I decided to not reveal this talent, and instead milk this opportunity to get my partner’s goat. “Really?” I asked casually, keeping my hands up.

“Yes,” she said firmly, and waited for me to obey the command in her voice.

I, of course, didn’t. I was good with just my knees unless we came upon sudden traffic or curves in the road.

“D’Argenzio!”

“What!”

“You’re going to hit -” she began, sounding just slightly panicky, then stopped, reconsidered her strategy, and glared at the side of my head. “Stop being an asshole and drive!”

“Hey, I’m just emphasizing my surrender, here, and I think -”

“Fine, if you’re not going to do it,” she said, talking over me and at the same time physically leaning over me to take the wheel she thought I wasn’t controlling, “then I will be the one to make sure that Mack truck coming up in the other lane doesn’t end up wearing us.”

I surreptitiously pulled my knees back and let her make sure we stayed out of the truck’s way, which she did. When we were clear of its grill, and I was trying not to laugh at the bewildered look the trucker had given our two-person driving method, she took one hand off the wheel to smack me in the side of the head.

“Ow!” I yelped. “What was that for?”

Finally catching up

...with all the hand-writing I've done the past few weeks. And now, without further ado, the end of chapter 5! Omg!
**************
Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 2372
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer

“Tony, that’s rude!” Claire scolded automatically. “I’m sorry,” she told us. “He’s just upset for me.”

“Hm.” I wasn’t terribly impressed by that excuse. After all, it wasn’t his mother who someone beat up and then shot. In fact, I decided, I wasn’t terribly impressed by this guy in the first place. I just wanted to talk to Claire and get out of here. I that end, I looked pointedly at the mug Claire was still clutching. “How’s your tea, Claire? Feel ready to talk?”

She thought about that for a second, then nodded. “Ask whatever you need to.”

Hashek, who has been looking bored, perked up and whipped out her notepad. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”

Claire sighed and took an unsteady sip of tea to fortify herself before answering. “Last night.”

“What time?”

“About eight-thirty.” She paused, looking indecisive, then shook her head slightly and closed her mouth.

“She sees her mother every Friday night,” Tony explained for her. “They have a ‘girls night’.”

“Girls night?” I asked blankly. Sounded arcane.

“Pizza. Chick flicks.” Tony glanced at Claire, but she remained stubbornly silent. “You know,” he told me, “girl stuff.”

“Uh, right.” I stole a glance at my partner, who looked thoroughly unsurprised by this definition. “Girl stuff,” I repeated. “So you arrived at what time, Claire?”

“About five,” she replied, and looked at Tony, who nodded almost imperceptibly in reassurance. “Tony dropped me off.”

“And you left at eight-thirty?”

Claire nodded.

“Did Tony pick you up, too?” Hashek asked.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that far away . . . I could walk if I had to, but I don’t really like going out in the dark. You . . .” She paused to lick her lips. “Anything could happen out there in a dark alley.”

Hashek and I exchanged a sideways look. In this town, the worst thing that was likely to happen to someone out after dark was a close encounter with a racoon. Still, it wasn’t unwise to play it safe, especially when one was smallish and female. And especially on the night when one’s mother was busy getting murdered. Which reminded me... “When you left, was your mother home alone then? Or were there other guests, or your father, or anything?”

She shook her head. “My dad makes himself scarce when Mom and I have one of our nights. I don’t actually know where he was, but he definitely wasn’t home, or else he’d have said hi to me.”

“And there was no one else at the house, either?” Hashek pressed.

“Just, uh . . . Tony, when he came to pick me up.”

Hashek looked at Tony, who looked mildly alarmed to have heard his name. “Did you go inside the house when you picked Claire up and dropped her off? Or did you just wait in the car?”

He studied her face for a few seconds before answering, “Are you asking whether I’ve ever beein in the Young’s house? Like for fingerprints and stuff?”

Hashek raised an eyebrow. I mentally followed suit. A little jumpy about fingerprints, wasn’t he? “Not specifically,” she said to him. “Why, do you think we’re going to find yours somewhere important?”

She’d gotten him on that one. Tony, looking shocked, could only sputter a denial.

My partner was clearly starting to enjoy herself. She raised her eyebrow again, this time higher. “No? Does that mean you’ve never been in the house, or . . .?”

“No! I mean, I’ve . . .”

Claire had watched this entire exchange with rapidly widening eyes, but now she spoke up as her boyfriend seemed to run out of steam. “Tony’s been in my parents house lots of times, so whether you find his fingerprints there or not doesn’t mean anything.”

“ ‘Lots of times’?” I echoed. “And does that include last night?” Enough fun, it was time to get back on topic.

“Yes, but only for a minute,” Claire said. “Because my mom was there, and she -”

We didn’t get to hear the end of that sentence, because as she spoke, Claire abruptly began crying again, even harder than she had been before.

All three of us sprang into action. Tony pulled his hand from the curve of her neck to snatch the teacup out of her hand before she could spill it on herself as she trembled. I whipped out the spare, clean handkerchief my mother had taught me to always carry. Hashek, not as well-prepared as I, reached for the box of tissues that sat on the coffee table.

We moved to hand her the tear-drying implements at the same time, and Claire looked confusedly from my handkerchief to Hashek’s tissues, then promptly wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“You ok?” I asked her, forcing the hankie into her hand before she could use her wrist again.

She sniffled and turned her head to look at Tony, who had set the teacup safely down on the same table the tissues had come from. He gave her a reassuring smile and resumed his position on the arm of the couch. “She’d be a lot more ok if you’d just -”

“ ‘Get out,’ we know,” Hashek finished for him. “Trust me, we’re not enjoying this any more than you guys are, but it needs to be done.”

Tony scowled, but subsided quickly. “Ask your stupid questions,” he grumbled.

“Thank you,” Hashek said with perfect poise, then turned back to Claire. “Did you get along with your mom, Claire?”

Claire took a gulping breath and nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes. My mom and I . . . I called her every day. I went over there at least once a week.” She smiled wistfully. “We’d go shopping sometimes, just for fun, even though neither of us really needed anything . . .”

“And how about your father?”

Claire blinked. “He doesn’t like to shop.”

I could tell Hashek had to fight the urge to roll her eyes in response to that one. “No, I meant, did your father get along with your mother?”

“Oh. Of course,” Claire said apologetically. “They’re married; of course they get along.” She paused. “Got.”

“Some married people don’t,” I pointed out.

Claire’s eyes narrowed on me. “Well these married people did!”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Ok, I believe you. Sorry.”

She huffed and lifted a hand to put over her boyfriend’s where it lay on her shoulder.

“Did your mother have any enemies?” I tried again in my most polite voice. “Anyone who didn’t like her, or vice versa?”

Claire looked horrified. “Enough to, you know, kill her? No. No way.”

“What about not quite enough to kill her?” Hashek suggested before Claire could add to her dismissal of my question.

That seemed to penetrate the girl’s defensiveness, and she looked thoughtful. “Well, I mean, there’s Allen Gray and Ton Wisniewski.”

I recognized the first name, but I let Claire speak for herself when Hashek finished writing down the names, looked back up, and said, “Who are they?”

“Lawyers,” sniffed Tony before Claire could speak. She gave him a quelling glance, but then agreed, albeit more politely, “Allen Gray is a partner at a rival firm of my mom’s. They used to have a friendly rivalry going, where they’d meet for lunch a few times a year to argue about who pulled off the best win.”

“Ok,” said Hashek, still writing. “And Wisniewski?”

Tony snorted again, bringing our attention back to him. “He could have killed her. Dude’s got issues, man.”

“Oh?” I asked curiously.

“Tony,” Claire admonished in a low voice. “Everyone’s got ‘issues’ of some kind, you know. Tom Wisniewski just happened to have had his ‘issues’ in front os us.” She looked at my blank look and went on, explaining, “Tom works - worked - with my mom. She beat him out for a partnership and he was seriously pissed off. He showed up at our house one night and raised a big stink until my dad had to call the police to get rid of him.”

Well that got out attention. Both Hashek and I jerked out heads up and stared at her. A jealous rival who’d acted out against her in the past? Sounded like a winner! “How long ago was that?” I asked Claire eagerly.

“Has he given your mother any trouble since that night?” Hashek asked at the same time. “And do you happen to have a case number for the police incident?” she went on when I trailed off.

Claire stared from Hashek to me, startled by the sudden intensity of our interest. “It was . . . maybe a month ago. And -”
“A month and a half,” corrected Tony.

“Ok, a month and a half,” Claire agreed without argument. “I have no idea if there was even an actual police report from that night.”

“If they came,” Hashek assured her, “they filed a report. Even if your mother didn’t press charges or anything.”

“Oh. Well, they definitely came, so . . .”

Hashek nodded and made a note on her pad. “Can you think of any other enemies your mother might have had?”

Claire shook her head. “No. People liked my mom, I swear it.”

“Yeah,” Tony interjected, “but your mom didn’t necessarily like all people in return. She -”

“Stop it!” Claire hissed at him.

Looking taken aback by her scolding, which was more vehement than all of her previous admonitions put together, Tony raised his eyebrows and shut his mouth.

“My mom got along with people,” Claire repeated, more firmly.

Hashek’s right eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t attempt to disagree. “How about the people your mom got along with best? Friends? Did she have any close girlfriends we could talk to to get more background on her?”

“That Cabrera woman,” Tony spoke up without hesitation, apparently having conquered his shock at Claire’s reprimand.

Claire nodded. “Yeah, Jackie. She’s my godmother, too,” she added. “I can give you her phone number, if it helps.”

“It would definitely help,” I assured her. Hashek, nodding her agreement, handed Claire her pen and a piece of paper torn from her notebook. “Could you write it down for us?”

“Sure.” Claire did so, then handed the pen and paper back to Hashek, who tucked them in her pocket.

“Did your mom have any other close friends?” I asked when they were done.

Claire pulled the afghan up to her shoulders and looked at Tony, who shrugged. “Maybe Sophie Drake? I don’t have her number, though. She’s a supervisor at the Met; maybe you could find her in their directory?”

“Ok, we’ll look her up. Anyone else?”

Claire shook her head. “There were lots of people she was friendly with, but not so many actual friends. I could ask my dad for more, if you want . . .”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hashek told her. “We can check with your father when we speak to him.” She paused, thinking, and seemed to come up blank. She looked over at me and said slowly, “I think we’re just about done here . . . Detective D’Argenzio, do you have anything else?”

I started to shake my head, then changed my mind and nodded. “Yeah, one more thing - Claire, what was your mother wearing when you left the house last night?”

She blinked. “Um . . . wearing? What?”

“Yeah. Was she dressed? Wearing a nightgown? DId she have on any jewelry?”

Hashek, catching on to my point, nodded her approval to me.

Claire continued to stare at us. “Um, she was wearing . . . her pajamas. Blue silk. You know, a boxy top and loose pants?”

Hashek, more the expert on female nightwear than me, nodded knowingly. “Did she have on any jewelry? And what was her hair like?”

“Just her necklace, i think,” Claire said slowly, thinking. “A gold heart locket. It was a present from my dad for their last anniversary. A lot of nights she didn’t even bother to take it off to sleep.”

I’d gotten up close and personal with Gabrielle Young’s corpse, and it had not been wearing a locket. I tensed in excitement.

Hashek, who hadn’t gotten so close, was momentarily oblivious and continued trying to pin down how much time might have passed between Claire’s departure and her mother’s death. “And her hair?”

“Um . . . down. She had it in a French twist for work, but she took it down when we were watching the movie.”

Her hair had been down when she lay dead on the living room floor. If Claire had said her mother’s hair was still up when she left, we might have been able to build a portion of a timeline off how long it took to take down and brush out her hair. The fact that it was already down, however, didn’t help us at all. Damn.

I looked at Hashek, who looked back at me and shrugged. Can’t win them all.

“I think we’re done here,” I said when Hashek hadn’t jumped in with another question after a minute. “Claire, this is my card.” I handed the rectangle of heavy paper to her. “If you or Tony think of anything else, anything you think might help us - names, times, facts - please don’t hesitate to call either me, at the number on there, or the main police department number, if you can’t get in touch with me. That’s in the phone book.”

Claire took the card and nodded. “Did anything I said . . . did it, you know, help?”

“We don’t really know yet,” I said gently. “Things like this, a lot of times you don’t see what individual facts are worth until you try to start putting everything all together.”

“Oh.” She sighed dejectedly. “I guess I knew that. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize,” I told her. “We’re working for you. You have questions, you ask them.”

“Ok. I will.” She sounded a little more confident now. “Thank you, Detective . . . s.” She added the plural marker belatedly, glancing at Hashek, who had kept quiet during my little pep talk. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”

“Ok Claire,” I moved to shake her hand, but she kept both arms under the blanket and I pulled my hand back. “Thanks for your time.”

Tony Parker, who had been so eager to precede us into the room, didn’t bother to show us out.

Yet more 5

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 572
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer
Remaining to be typed: 4 notebook sheets

At the sound of our entrance into the room, Claire, who was curled up on the couch, looked up in what appeared to be surprise. Had she forgotten so quickly that we were on our way up?

“Hi, Claire,” I said gently, walking toward her. “Do you remember me?”

She blinked, then smiled weakly. “I almost threw up on you. That’s hard to forget.”

Of all the things to be remembered for... Still, I nodded pleasantly. “Yep, that was me. My name is Tony.” Normally, anyone over the age of fifteen would get my last name, not my first, but there was something about the way this girl was huddled under an afghan, looking lost, that made it hard to see her as twenty rather than twelve.

“Tony,” she echoed. “Like -” she nodded toward her boyfriend. “Like my Tony.”

I eyed the “other” Tony and fought the urge to shake my head in vigorous denial. J. Crew-boy and I had very little in common, but it wasn’t really necessary to point that out. “Yep, just like,” I said instead. “Do you feel up to talking to us for a while, Claire?”

“I -”

“Not until she has some tea,” Parker interrupted. He patted her shoulder. “I’ll go make it now.” He turned and disappeared into the kitchen without sparing Hashek or me another glance.

“Wow,” Hashek murmured, giving Claire a teasing nudge. “You;ve got him well-trained, huh?”

Claire turned a dull red and shook her head. “No, no. He’s not . . . trained. I mean, I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t do that to him!”

“Hey, she’s just playing with you,” I said, interrupting Claire’s denials and patting her shoulder as Parker had just done in an attempt to calm her. The last thing we needed was to have Claire’s obviously still-raw emotions flare up over something as small as a bad joke. With the way her boyfriend was acting, that would get us kicked out for sure.

“I know,” Claire said in a small voice, making herself relax back into the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m just -”

“A little worked-up,” Parker finished for her as he came back into the room carrying an enormous mug with a teabag dangling over one side. He handed Claire the mug and sat down on the arm of the couch so she could rest her shoulders against his leg. “I’ll tell you guys one more time,” he added, fixing a glare on me. “I think it’s buss for you to come barging in here asking questions when Claire’s mom just died.”

“Was killed,” Hashek corrected.

“What?”

“She was killed,” she explained. “She didn’t just up and die.”

Claire made a soft sobbing sound and clutched the mug of tea closer to her. I struggled against the warring urges to bean my partner with my pen for being so insensitive, and to pull the mug away from Claire before her shaking hands spilled the hot liquid all over her.

Parker, obviously having fewer compunctions than me in both areas, gave Hashek a death glare and put his hand over Claire’s, steadying the mug. He laid his other hand on her shoulder, stroking the back of her neck soothingly with his thumb and letting the rest of his fingers curl across her collarbone in the front. “It’s ok, honey. They just insensitive, dumb -” He faltered when Hashek cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him, but managed to finish, “cops.”

More chapter 5

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 1094
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer

There's five more notebook sheets of this so far (compared to the two and a half that yesterday and today's posting makes up), and I'm always writing more when bored at work, so this pace should hold for a while.

“Only two apartments on this whole floor?” Hashek asked as we stepped into the hallway on the third floor.

I glanced at the door at the right end of the hallway, about twelve feet from us. It read “3-A.” It’s twin, the door to Claire’s 3-B apartment, was twelve feet from us in the other direction. “Penthouses?” I said thoughtfully, looking back and forth from one door to the other.

“With rich lawyer parents like hers? A definite possibility.” She paused, thinking, and smiled. “What do you want to bet the inside looks like an interior designer and not a college student lives there?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether her boyfriend is the type to care if she demands white carpet and pink silk pillows.”

Hashek snickered. “Only one way to find out.” She raised her hand to knock on the door.

Before her knuckles could touch the wood, though, I’d snatched her hand out of the air and forced it back to her side.

“What . . . ?” she managed, startled, as she looked down at where I was still holding her hand still.

I put the index finger of my other hand to my lips and nodded toward the door.

Finally getting the message, Hashek closed her mouth and cocked an ear toward the apartment.

“. . . are they?” we could hear a make voice saying behind the door. “I told him to send them right up!”

The murmur of a female voice answered him, but I couldn’t make out her words.

“What, did he give them wrong directions up the stairs or something?” the male voice continued, sounding definitely annoyed now.

Hashek smirked up at me. “Guess he’s eager to meet us.”

“Guess so. Let’s not keep him waiting any longer, huh?” I released her hand, only realizing as I did it that I must have been holding onto it for a good minute or more. “Oh, sorry.”

“Huh?” She spared me a distracted glance and a fraction of a second to answer, then shrugged and knocked on the door.

“Coming!” the male voice called immediately. Within seconds, the door was pulled open by a smiling young man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue. His khakis were carelessly frayed in a just-so way that no one ever got from taking a fall on the sidewalk. The collar of his rugby shirt was in a similar state of artful disarray, sticking up in the back to frame a handsome face dominated by a pair of steel-blue eyes that were as busy studying us as we were studying their owner.

The boy was almost as tall as I was, too, which meant that when Hashek moved to speak to him, she found herself on the losing end of what I recognized as an oh-look-a-cute-girl smile. “Hi,” he said, still smiling at her and not sparing me another glance.

Hashek, for all her abilities to deflect men’s advances, appeared unwillingly charmed. She blinked, then managed a weak answering smile. “Hi. Are you Claire’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah. Jim Parker. And you are?” He answered his own question a second later, without giving us a chance to. “The cops, obviously.”

“We were the last time we checked, yeah,” Hashek said, now growing visibly uncomfortable under his unwavering smile.

She gave me a subtle kick in the heel to get me to deflect some of his attention, and I dutifully stuck out a hand. “I’m Detective D’Argenzio, and this is Detective Hashek.”

Tony finally pulled his eyes off my partner and looked at me. His smile dimmed, and I thought with amusement that he must not like big brown-eyed Italian guys as much as he liked little green-eyed Czech girls. In spite of such a blow to my vanity, I gave him a full handshake and a smile. “Is Claire home?” I asked as he less-than enthusiastically took my hand.

“Yeah. She’s . . .” He paused, shaking his head solemnly. “She’s not doing too great. She’s hardly left the couch, let alone the apartment, since it happened.” After a second, he added, as if we needed to be told, “She’s upset.”

“You think?” Hashek muttered to herself, just loud enough for me to hear but too quietly for Parker. “We’d like to speak to Claire,” she added more loudly when the guy continued to just stand there looking sad.

Without warning, his face changed from mournful to accusing and he scowled at us. “I don’t think anyone should think they have the right to speak to her right now, including the police.”

“Well, we -” Hashekl began conciliatorily.

“But,” he interrupted, “Claire insists that she wants to talk to you. I tried to explain to her that she didn’t have to, but . . .” He shrugged. “So I’m just going to warn you right now - fine, you can talk to her, but the second you get her upset, you freak her out even a little, and your asses are out of herte, cops or not. Got it?”

I was tempted to tell him that we didn’t give a rat’s ass whether he wanted us speaking with Claire or not as long as she was ok with it, but before I could make that not-so-subtle point, Hashek spoke up: “We don’t want to upset either of you, Mr. Parker.”

'Mr. Parker?' I thought. It was a sure sign she was about to lay it on thick, and I wasn’t disappointed when she continued, “And we’re not here to force Claire to to anything she doesn’t want to do, including talking to us.”

Ok, I was impressed. That had been some prize-winning diplomacy, right there. She’d managed to make it sound like she was acquiescing to his demands, while actually pointing out that it wasn’t his decision to make who we spoke to or when we did it.

I couldn’t resist the urge to look down at her just long enough to give her an admiring grin and a wink.

Parker, however, managed to completely miss the point, which was just fine with us as long as it got him to let us through the front door. He considered her statement for a second, then nodded a grudging approval and stepped aside just long enough for us to pile through the door. Before we could actually take a step deeper into the apartment, though, he appeared in front of us, forcing us to follow him in the rest of the way at his pace, which happened to resemble a snail’s.

Sacrifice, chapter 5, redux

Content: The beginning of a re-written chapter five from the previous excerpt. I wanted to make the whole thing a lot less "omg look here's AN IMPORTANT PLOT CLUE" and a little more "Hmm..." Not that I've actually gotten far enough for each of those in what's posted here, but...
Length:412 - there's more in my notebook, longhand, but i haven't gotten around to typing it yet. Keep your eyes on this space :)
Editing: Not really

CHAPTER FIVE - Monday afternoon

It wasn’t tough to find Claire Young’s building when we went looking for it that afternoon. In a town like New Ferry, apartments are few, and mostly centered around the University. There were three apartment buildings clustered just at the outside edge of campus, and Claire, we discovered, lived in the only one classy enough to have a doorman.

The doorman, in fact, took his job quite seriously, and insisted on calling up to Claire’s apartment before even considering letting us further into the building. Hashek, tapping a foot impatiently, looked like she would have liked to barge right past him, but living in New York had trained me well and I just relaxed against a wall and listened to the guy on his house phone as he tried to subtly extract from whoever was on the other end any and all information on why the cops had come calling for her.

When it became obvious to him - and to those of us who were listening - that she wasn’t going to spill the beans, he sighed dramatically, nodded, and hung up the phone. “You can go up. He says she’s expecting you.”

Hashek, glad to get moving, nodded briskly and fairly dashed for the stairs. I followed, more slowly, on her heels, eyeing the stairwell and wondering how my still-sore leg was going to feel about three flights straight up. I finally decided that I might regret it later, but for the moment, I could handle it.

As I was busy convincing myself of that, though, Hashek apparently had second thoughts. She stopped short and reversed direction back toward the elevators, walking right into me in the process.

I was getting used to being walked over by my fast-moving partner, but she caught my toes right with the heel of her boot this time and I couldn’t stifle a yelp of pain.

“Damn, sorry.” Flushing slightly, she stepped away from me and looked down at the dusty new footprint she’d left on the toe of my shoe. “Sorry,” she said again. “It just occurred to me that you can’t do the stairs, so I -”

“I can do the stairs.”

“You sure?” she asked, not bothering to hide the dubiousness in her voice.

“I’m medically cleared for all of this, remember?”

“Well, I know, but -”

“I’m fine, Hashek.”

She looked at me for a second, obviously considering arguing with me, then just shrugged. “Mmkay.”

“Thank you. Now, can we head upstairs?”

Yet More Flashback

These are the two chapters I am considering killing and starting over. They're just so...ugh.

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapters posted: 5-6 (the last of what I have written)
Current novel length: 11901
Excerpt length: 4216
Editing: Again, substantially cleaned up, although strange continuity errors may still exist

CHAPTER FIVE - Monday afternoon
We didn’t have much trouble finding Claire Young’s apartment building that afternoon. In a town like New Ferry, there aren’t many buildings above three stories, and the few that exist are all clustered around the University campus. Claire and her boyfriend lived in the newest of them, which was also the only building in town that boasted a uniformed doorman. The doorman took his job quite seriously, and insisted on calling up to Claire’s apartment before letting us past him.

“Nice and close to campus,” I commented as we waited for the doorman’s blessing.

Hashek nodded. “Yeah, and way too expensive for a student to pay for without help from Mommy and Daddy. I bet you the inside of her place looks absolutely nothing like a dorm room.”

“Well, it isn’t a dorm,” I pointed out logically. “Why should it look like one?”

“Are you kidding? My apartments were decorated just like my dorm room pretty much until I moved back here and bought my house.”

“Miss Young said she’s been expecting you,” the doorman announced, hanging up the phone. “You can go upstairs. The elevator is inside and to the left.”

“Thanks.” I slipped him a dollar and followed Hashek into the building’s lobby. “Hashek, what’s her apartment number?”

“4-B. Do you see any mailboxes in here?”

I looked around and nodded. “Yeah, across from the elevator.” I led her across the room and squinted at the boxes. “Here we go: Young/Meadows. ‘Meadows’ must be the boyfriend.”

“Young Meadows,” Hashek commented dryly. “Well, at least their names match up well, thematically. Do we know his first name?”

“I don’t think so.” I followed her into the elevator.

She watched the numbers light up above the door, saying thoughtfully, “Do you think we should split them up to talk to them?”

“Nah,” I said. “Assuming he’s even there right now, let’s take them together unless we have to split them. She’ll probably be more comfortable with him there. She was a mess last night.”

Hashek smirked. “My big, macho partner’s going soft.”

“Well, one of us has to have social skills,” I shot back.

“Hmph.” We stepped off the elevator and found ourselves in a short hallway with a door at each end. “That one’s 4-A,” Hashek said, pointing to the number on the door to our left, “so that one must be 4-B. Only two apartments on a floor in such a big building?” she said, almost to herself. “What are these, mini-penthouses?”

“Might be,” I said, and raised my hand to knock on the door to 4-B.

It opened before my knuckles even made contact with it, making me take a surprised step back. We found ourselves facing a good-looking young man with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He looked a few years older than I had judged Claire to be, which would have put him in his mid-twenties, and as he made a show of blocking the doorway with his body, I noticed that he looked like he’d fallen out of a J. Crew catalog, complete with chinos and a white oxford shirt. “You the detectives?” he asked brusquely.

We nodded and showed our badges, and he let us step into the foyer, but before we could go any farther, we found him in our way again. “I’m Paul Meadows,” he said, not offering either of us his hand. “I realize you guys have to talk to Claire, but I’m warning you now, you upset her at all and you’re out of here.”

I raised my eyebrows in response to that, and Hashek made a noise that might have been either a cough or a snort, but neither of us attempted to disabuse the guy of the notion that we’d leave on his command.

Apparently taking our silence for acquiescence and deciding we were sufficiently cowed, he finally led us deeper into the apartment, where we found Claire, looking very small, curled up on a couch and clutching a mug. Hashek, displaying an uncharacteristic gentleness, crouched down in front of the couch and gave Claire a small smile. “Claire, right?” Claire nodded. “I’m Detective Hashek. You’ve met my partner, Detective D'Argenzio,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at me, “haven’t you?”

Claire continued to stare silently into her tea, but nodded. Paul, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her this whole time except to shoot Hashek a dirty look when she had cut off his direct route to the couch, brushed impatiently past me and bent over Claire’s shoulder to tuck a knitted afghan around her. She looked up long enough to give him a wan smile and he sat down on the arm of the couch, resting his hand in the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. His thumb was at the back of her neck and his fingers were in front, resting over her collarbone, a possessive caress that I didn’t think most women would tolerate for long, but Claire didn’t even seem to notice as she lifted a hand to touch his and then looked over at Hashek. “Yes, I met him,” she said in a voice that was rusty from crying. “You . . . need to ask me questions?”

“Yeah.” Knowing better than to attempt a crouch like the one Hashek was in, I knelt next to her with most of my weight on my good leg. “We know you’re having a hard time right now, so we’ll try not to take too much of your time, ok?”

Claire nodded slightly. “It’s ok. I . . . I’m fine. I understand how this works.” She paused and lowered her eyes back to her tea. “In theory, at least.”

“Thank you,” I replied solemnly, watching Hashek produce her notebook from a pocket. “Did you have a good relationship with your mother, Claire?”

She took a faltering breath and nodded jerkily. “My mom . . . she was my best friend. We talked every day. I don’t understand . . .”

As she broke off on a sniffle, Paul squeezed her shoulder and murmured, “You’re doing fine, sweetheart. Just tell them what you know.”

I glanced again at my partner, not surprised to see that, though her pen was moving and she was taking notes, her eyes were glued to Paul Meadows.

“And your relationship with your father?” I continued quickly, reminding myself to hold their attention so they didn’t notice Hashek studying him. “Are you close to him, also?”

Claire nodded. “Not as close as with Mom, but . . . we get along.”

There was a noticeable hesitation in her statement, and I wasn’t the only one who caught it. “Her father didn’t want her living here with me,” Paul explained, looking away from Claire for the first time since he’d sat down, but keeping his hand on her neck. “So there was . . . tension.”

“No, Paul, that’s not true,” Claire protested with a gasp. “My parents like you!”

Paul just snorted. “No, honey. They put up with me, because they have to to keep you.”

Hashek shot me an unreadable look. “When was the last time either of you saw Mrs. Young?” she asked the couple.

“Every Sunday I drop Claire off at her parents’ house at about five,” Paul replied, “and then I pick her up again at eight-thirty. That’s what we did last night.”

“So the last time you saw her,” Hashek pressed, looking from Paul to Claire, “was at eight-thirty last night?”

Claire glanced up at Paul, who nodded slightly to her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Sunday nights, my mom and I have our ‘girls’ night in.’ We were watching a movie, and then Paul picked me up around eight-forty.”

“What was she wearing when you left?” I asked her, remembering the fancy pajamas Gabrielle Young had been wearing when she was killed.

“Uh . . .” Again, as if out of habit, Claire looked to Paul, who just shrugged. “She was wearing her pajamas. They were . . . blue silk.”

So we couldn’t assume Gabrielle had had enough time after Claire left to have changed; she’d already been in her nightclothes. I stifled a sigh. Why were things never as neat in real life as they were on TV?

“Claire,” Hashek said after I hadn’t spoken for a few seconds, “do you know of any enemies your mother might have had? People who might have wanted to hurt her?”

“I . . . I can’t think of anyone who would be horrible enough to kill a person. I mean, I can tell you about the people she didn’t get along with, but . . . to hurt her?”

Hashek nodded. “We understand that, but we need to eliminate everyone who might have done it before we can narrow it down to who actually did.”

Claire sighed and wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “Isaac Lawson. He works . . . worked . . . with my mom, and she beat him out for a promotion last year. Allan Gray . . . he’s one of her big competitors for clients. Christine Miller is one of the -” She paused and looked uncomfortably away from me and Hashek. “She’s one of the ADAs in Manhattan. My mom called her her nemesis, but really, I think she was joking . . .” she trailed off uncertainly.

“Any number of Mrs. Young’s clients could have had a grudge against her for losing their case,” Paul picked up.

“And have you seen any of these people recently?” Hashek asked Claire, ignoring Paul’s comment.

Paul, not so easily passed over, answered for her: “No. Claire would have no reason to hang around with . . . people like that. Criminals.”

“Criminals,” I repeated neutrally.

Almost reflexively, Claire shook her head. “They’re not criminals unless they’re convicted in a court of law -”

“The ones that would hate your mother were,” Paul interrupted.

Claire ignored him and kept going: “- and they’ve finished with the appeals process.”

“Spoken like the child of a lawyer,” Hashek commented gamely. “So, what did you and Paul do after you got home from your ‘girls night’?”

“We came back here?” Claire said, sounding like she was asking rather than telling. “And watched some TV and went to bed?”

“What shows?” I asked at the same time Hashek said, “You both came home together, and stayed here?” We exchanged a look and then I gave her a nod, deferring to her question, which was a much more straightforward way of getting to the point we both wanted to make.

Claire nodded. “Paul drove us both home and we stayed here. I don’t like to, uh, stay alone after dark.”

Neither Hashek nor I commented on the fact that by college, most people had gotten over the whole fear-of-the-dark thing. “Did your parents get along?” I asked instead.

Claire hiccuped and nodded vigorously. “They really love each other. I never saw them fight, I swear.”

I accepted that without comment, although in truth I would be more worried about a couple that never fought than a couple that sometimes did. “Ok. And girlfriends? Did your mom have a close circle of friends?”

“Of course she did,” Paul answered before Claire could even open her mouth. “Jaqueline Cabrera, Katherine Butler, Sophie Drake - what?” he broke off at the look that had appeared on Claire’s face. “She talked about them in front of both of us.”

Claire just continued to stare at him for a second, and then seemed to shake it off and looked back at us. “He’s pretty much got them covered. I don’t know how to get in touch with anyone except Sophie, though. My dad can probably help you with that.”

Hashek, who had been jotting down the names, finished and dropped her notebook back into her pocket, an action that I interpreted as meaning, I’m done here.

I couldn’t think of any more questions off the top of my head either, so I just offered Claire a smile and a business card. “We won’t take up any more of your time today, Claire. Could you call us later with Sophie Drake’s contact information, or if you think of anything else that might be useful?”

Paul peered over her shoulder to read the card. “This is your personal line?” he asked, gesturing with his free hand to the number on the card.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by “personal,” but I nodded. “That’ll connect you to either my or my partner’s desk.”

“Ok.” He watched Claire drain the last of her tea, then looked up at us, clearly waiting for us to let ourselves out.

“We’ll, uh, get going,” I ventured obligingly, wondering why he had been so eager to walk us into the room but didn’t feel he needed to bother walking us out. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Paul replied shortly as he pulled the empty teacup out of Claire’s hands. “Bye.”

Well, that made things clear enough. Hashek and I quickly retreated. As I moved to pull the apartment door closed behind us, I heard Claire’s annoyed voice from the living room: “Paul! I can speak for mys-”

The door clicked shut and I looked at Hashek with raised eyebrows. “I guess she didn’t like him answering questions for her any more than I did.”

“Ditto.” As we started toward the elevator, she looked up at me thoughtfully. “Did you notice anything weird about that interview?”

“You mean other than the fact that he kept at least one hand on her at all times, and she didn’t seem to notice?”

She smiled approvingly. “You’re not bad at this, D’Argenzio.”

I gave her my best smug smile. “I’ve got three years on you, partner. Brilliance comes with experience.”

Hashek just rolled her eyes and hit the call button for the elevator.

CHAPTER SIX - Monday evening
We arrived back at headquarters to find our lieutenant waiting in his office and a stapled packet waiting on Hashek’s desk. A yellow post-it was stuck to the top of the pile, and Hashek pulled it off and looked at it. “It’s from Dan. He says,

‘Hi guys. Here’s the output from the cross-referencing program you asked me to do. I would have hung around to give it to you myself, but I have a date (!). Give me a call if you have any questions. -Dan.’

“Huh,” she said, sticking the note back onto her desk. “I wonder who he suddenly got a date with.”

“Wasn’t me,” I replied absently as I picked up the papers that had been under the note.

Hashek snorted. “No kidding. So, what’s in the output?”

I skimmed the top page. “Names. Lots of names.”

“Wasn’t the whole point of this cross-referencing to make it not ‘lots’?”

Thumbing through the rest of the packet, I showed her that it was only three pages. “Well, it’s less ‘lots’ than we started with.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better. How many?”

I counted. “Thirty-eight.”

She muttered something decidedly indelicate. “By the time we get through eliminating all those, whoever killed this lady will have had time to die of comfortable old age.”

“Not much we can do about that,” I said, shrugging. “We’ve got to talk to them.”

That got a short sarcastic laugh from her, and before I could say anything else, she’d turned her back on me and was marching toward Morgan’s office. “We’ll see about that.”

That sounded ominous. I hastened to catch up to her before she could barge in on our boss and get us both on his shit list. “Hashe-” I began, trying to get in front of her.

She beat me by a split second, darting around me and throwing open the office door. “We need Cimino and Hicks,” she announced loudly, startling Morgan, who had been staring at his computer screen.

He blinked and looked up at her. “What?”

I suddenly found myself relieved of the papers I had still been holding. Hashek waved them pointedly at Morgan. “We have thirty-eight potential suspects, just from the DA’s office’s lists. There’s no way we’re getting through all of them by ourselves.”

Behind her, I sighed and tried to make my posture reflect the fact that this was her idea, not mine.

Morgan, who despite his initial surprise now seemed to be taking Hashek’s offensive in stride, just shrugged at her. “You can’t have Frank and Darren.”

“Why the hell not?”

I thought I detected a hint of an eye roll as he leaned back in his chair and regarded her calmly. “Because they’re not here, first of all -”

“Well, tomorrow, then. We’re done for today anyway.”

“- and they’re not going to be available tomorrow, either,” he continued, ignoring her. “They caught a case, and until that’s cleared, they’re out of commission as far as you’re concerned.”

Hashek, who apparently hadn’t been expecting to hear that, started sputtering in a way I would have laughed at if I hadn’t known she would kill me if I did. “But - we - we can’t interview thirty-eight people all by ourselves, Lieutenant!”

Morgan considered that for a second and then sat up and checked his computer monitor, which was showing a summary of current officer assignments. “I can give you Searle and Hewitt.”

Neither name rang a bell with me, but Hashek scowled. “What about Baldwin, or -”

“Searle and Hewitt, Milena. Take them or leave them.”

“Oh, fine,” she huffed, not even bothering to look to me for my opinion. “We’ll take them.”

The lieutenant nodded and changed their assignment in his personnel program. “They should still be out there,” he told us, motioning back toward the squad room. “Go tell them what you need them to do and that I approved it.”

Hashek, still looking unhappy, nodded and headed out of the office, with me, as usual, trailing behind.

“Hey,” I said, catching up with her a few feet into the room by virtue of my longer legs, “who are Searle and Hewitt, anyway? Should I know them?”

“Probably not,” she replied, still walking, “but don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll . . . get along with them.”

“What do you mean by that?” I demanded, not liking the sarcastic note in her voice.

She just shook her head. “You’ll see.”

* * *

I didn’t know what Hashek had been so pissed about; Searle and Hewitt struck me as a very nice pair of women. Not bad looking, either. I wondered if Margie, the 911 dispatcher who had assured me that all the womanly women in the building worked as dispatchers, not cops, knew about these two.

We gave our two new partners a quick run-down of the case, which they seemed to take in stride despite the brutality of the crime.

“Sounds like you’ve got a good start,” Hewitt commented when our story ran out of gas. “What do you need us for?”

Hashek fanned out the pages of the DA’s office names. “These.”

“And . . . what are ‘these’?” Hewitt replied, looking warily at the papers and making no move to touch them.

“Names of persons of interest,” I explained.

“That whole pile?”

I nodded. “Thirty-eight names.”

“Thirty-eight?” Searle echoed, exchanging a look of alarm with her partner. “Don’t tell us you came over here to ask us to do your grunt work for you.”

“Actually,” Hashek said, smirking, “we’re here to tell you to do it. Morgan gave you to us.”

“He what?”

Stepping in before Hashek could get out any more snark, I nodded apologetically. “He did. He’s in his office if you want to -”

“They don’t need to talk to him,” Hashek interrupted loudly. “They should -”

Hewitt rolled her eyes and grabbed the list of names out of Hashek’s hands. “- do our jobs,” she finished for her. “We know.”

Surprised by the familiar, tolerant tone of Hewitt’s voice, I looked from her to Hashek with raised eyebrows. “Do you guys know each other or something?”

Hewitt smiled slightly. “We’ve worked together before.”

“And survived it,” Searle added.

I nodded sagely. “Impressive.”

“It is,” she agreed. “You should have seen them at first. I thought they were going to pull their guns on each other.”

Somehow, I had no trouble picturing that scene. I looked at Hashek, who appeared annoyed. “I see you haven’t changed, then.”

“Shut up,” she snapped, but without any real heat. “If you had a rookie up your ass asking questions every thirty seconds, you’d consider murder, too.”

I pounced on that one. “Aha! So all that trying to get me to ask you questions those first few weeks . . . you were trying to come up with a reason to get rid of me after all.”

She snorted. “And risk getting stuck with a partner even worse than you? Yeah, right.”

“Oh, that stings. And here I thought you were starting to like me.”

“Don’t push your luck, big guy.”

I smirked at her and was opening my mouth to reply when I noticed that both Searle and Hewitt were watching me and Hashek with interest. “What?” I asked defensively.

Hewitt grinned and glanced at her partner. “They’re bickering.”

“Definitely bickering,” Searle agreed, looking amused.

“What’s wrong with that?” I demanded at the same time that Hashek, speaking over me, frowned and said, “We’re not bickering!”

Hewitt kept grinning. “Yes, you are.”

“Would someone please tell me what’s wrong with ‘bickering’?” I tried again.

Searle finally took pity on me and explained, “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that it means she likes you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “It does?”

“Yeah.”

I looked at Hashek, who was shifting her weight uncomfortably next to me. “So you do like me, after all.”

She scowled and elbowed me. “No, I’ve just learned to tolerate you better than the last guy.”

“I would hope so!” I exclaimed. “At the very least, I not as much of a slob as he was.”

“The contents of your apartment aren’t exactly alphabetized, Tony,” she pointed out teasingly.

“You’ve been in his apartment?” Searle asked, looking surprised.

I ignored that, enjoying this conversation too much to pay attention to the new girl. “At least I don’t have to post a guard in my kitchen to make sure an animal doesn’t steal my dinner.”

Searle’s eyes moved to me and widened even more. “She’s had you in her kitchen?”

Hashek gave her a long-suffering look and explained, as if to a child, “We’re partners.”

“I don’t remember hearing about your last partner being invited over to your place for dinner.”

“How would you even know if I had Nievers over every night?”

Hewitt laughed. “You underestimate the gossip potential of this department, Milena.”

Groaning, Hashek just shook her head.

“It’s not that unusual to spend time at your partner’s place,” I spoke up, since she seemed to have given up on the argument. “Especially when you’re hot on a case. In fact . . .”

That distracted them, as I’d intended. All three women stopped what they were doing and waited for me to finish my sentence. “ ‘In fact,’ what?” Hashek prompted impatiently when I purposely let the silence hang there.

I took pity on her and finished my thought: “In fact, it might not be a bad idea for the four of us to go get some food while we discuss who’s going to do what on this case.”

“Just food?” Hewitt snorted. “If you expect us to chase down thirty-eight ex-cons for you, the least you could do is ply us with alcohol.”

“Fair enough.” Nightlife around here was Hashek’s area of expertise, not mine, though, and I looked down at her questioningly. She glanced at her watch and nodded. “It’s past six; we’re off the clock. Getting you drunk before we go any farther with this certainly can’t hurt,” she told Hewitt and Searle. “You in, D’Argenzio?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, and then closed it again without answering, trying to remember if I had left the cat enough food and water to last him the night.

“Tony?”

Ah, right, being the genius that I am, I’d left both bowls overflowing this morning. Experience had taught me that working a hot case with Hashek meant getting home at all hours - except the ones you’re supposed to get home at - and I’d quickly gotten into the habit of making sure my cat would be ok on his own if I didn’t manage to get home for a night or two.

Hashek cleared her throat, finally getting my attention. I nodded quickly. “Sure. Guinness is good for the night.”

“Guinness?” Searle asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve never met anyone who loved their beer so much that they personified it.”

“Guinness is his cat,” Hashek explained for me. “He claims he named him that because of the color of the cat’s fur, but somehow I’m suspicious of that explanation.”

“Suspicious?” I echoed. “Why else would you think I named him that? You think it’s the secret code name for my terrorist cat or something?”

She cracked a smile at that and shook her head. “I mean I’m ‘suspicious’ of how much of his name really just came about because you love your stout.”

I rolled my eyes and opted not to respond that, instead saying, “Well, either way, I’m good to go for the night. You ladies want to get moving, or should we stay here and discuss it some more?”

Flashback, Part II

More of the sequel...for real, guys, if anyone's out there, for the love of god give me some feedback!

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapters posted: 3-4
Current novel length: 11901
Excerpt length: 4367
Editing: Again. substantially cleaned up, although strange continuity errors may still exist

CHAPTER THREE - Monday morning
Hashek’s raccoon eyes were gone when she appeared in the morning, although she still looked tired. “Don’t tell me you didn’t get any sleep after we left the scene?” I asked as she plopped into her desk chair across from me.

“I slept. Kind of. Here.” She tossed a Dunkin Donuts bag at me.

I caught it and looked inside to find an egg bagel, my favorite. “You brought me breakfast?”

She produced another bag, set it on her desk, and pulled out a danish. “I brought us breakfast.”

“Oh, really?” I asked with raised eyebrows, but I’ve never been one to look a gift bagel in the mouth, and I had my first bite in my mouth before she could answer. “And to what do I owe this honor?” I mumbled through it.

“Consider it a peace offering.” She bit into her pastry with relish. “God, I love -”

“You’re late, Hashek.”

I hastily swallowed and looked up at the lieutenant, who had just appeared next to my partner. Hashek, on the other hand, took another leisurely bite of her danish, chewed, swallowed, and then looked up at him and said calmly, “Good morning, Lieu.”

“Late call-outs do not equal late show-ups, Detective. Your partner and I were both here on time.”

Hashek sighed and set down the danish. “Would you believe my cat turned off the alarm clock?” she attempted, co-opting an excuse that I had once truthfully used when I arrived late.

Morgan crossed his arms and scowled at her. “You don’t have a cat.”

“Oh, yeah. In that case . . .” She picked up her paper bag, which I could now see wasn’t empty, and held it out to him. “Will a blueberry muffin get you off my back?”

He gave her an incredulous look. “There’s a blueberry muffin in there?”

“Yup.”

He whisked the bag out of her hands and eyed it hungrily. “Consider me off your back. Give me ten minutes to eat this, and then the two of you meet me in my office for a brainstorming session.”

“Yes, sir,” we chorused. When the lieutenant was gone, I turned back to Hashek and raised my eyebrows. “Obviously I still have a lot to learn about working with you guys.”

She stuffed the last bite of danish into her mouth and patted my hand. “Stick with me, kid, and you’ll figure it out eventually. Now, let’s go.”

* * *

Morgan was just swallowing the last bite of his muffin when Hashek pushed open the door to his office without bothering to knock. “Come on in,” he invited dryly, brushing crumbs off the front of his suit.

“Sorry,” Hashek replied distractedly, making herself at home in one of the chairs across from the lieutenant. “So . . . brainstorming?”

“Right.” He crumpled up the muffin wrapper, tossed it into the wastebasket next to his desk, and slouched back in his chair with his hands laced across his abdomen. “We didn’t get time last night to really field any ideas, so I figured we ought to do that before I send you out to chase your tails.”

“I guess that means no one was overcome with remorse and confessed in the last six hours or so?” I asked with exaggerated disappointment.

“Sorry, no. We’re going to actually have to do some work on this one. So, ideas, either of you?”

“The daughter definitely has to be talked to, like you said last night,” I offered. “She’s got something in that head of hers that could help us. I just wish I knew what it was.”

“Like whether she’s the one who plugged her mother or not?” Hashek asked with a small smile.

“Maybe.”

“Well,” Morgan interjected, “whatever it is she knows, she’s on the top of the interview list. Have you got plans to cover that?”

Hashek and I exchanged a look and then she nodded, keeping her eyes on me for agreement as she supplied an answer we hadn’t discussed. “We’ll try her this afternoon. Someone who must have gotten even less sleep than me left the witnesses’ contact information list on my desk, including hers.”

“That would have been McNeil,” Morgan supplied. “He was on patrol when the call came in. Good kid.”

“Conscientious kid,” Hashek allowed. “Whether he’s good or not remains to be seen.”

“Whatever you say.” Morgan looked at me. “What else have you got, Tony?”

I didn’t like doing things like this on the fly in a new partnership until I knew my partner and I were on the same wavelength, and Hashek and I were still working on that. I shot a glance at her and received a slight go-ahead nod. “Well, she was a defense attorney. There’s probably hundreds of convicted criminals in jails around here that had an ax to grind with her.”

“Not to mention the occasional prosecutor,” Hashek added. “Some of them don’t take losing lightly.”

Morgan, seeming to accept that, made a note on his blotter. “What about the husband?”

Hashek shrugged. “Maybe. D’Argenzio, you got a look at him, didn’t you?”

“For all of three seconds,” I replied, “and for most of those three we were both occupied with a hysterical teenager. But for what it’s worth, he didn’t seem to be giving off obvious I’m-a-psycho-killer vibes, and he did seem truly concerned about his daughter.”

“We’ll keep him on the list until we have something more concrete than a lack of ‘vibes’,” he said. “Any other possible suspects?”

Hashek and I looked at each other again, but this time we both came up blank. It was my turn to shrug.

“Ok,” he sighed, “what about useful witnesses? Other than the daughter and the husband - they’re a given.”

“People she worked with,” suggested Hashek. “Partners and paralegals from her firm.”

“Friends,” I added, “if we can find out who they are. That’ll probably have to come from the husband.”

“Makes sense.” Morgan straightened up in his chair, re-assuming an air of authority. “Either of you got a theory you want to try out while we’re here?”

We thought about that for a few seconds. “There’s always the ‘jealous husband’ theory,” I said dubiously. “Or the ‘greedy heir wants her money’ one.”

Neither of my companions looked particularly impressed by that. “Personally, I prefer the ‘prosecutor gone bad’ theory,” Hashek spoke up.

“Yeah, because you’d love to get D.A. Hansen by proxy,” Morgan reminded her with a smirk.

“Maybe.”

Not having gotten a rise out of her, he opted to get back on track: “So if you’re going to talk to the daughter this afternoon, what are you going to do this morning, before that?”

“Can the D.A.’s office get us a list of defendants she represented in, say, the past year?” I suggested. “We could mine it for suspects.”

Hashek nodded. “And a list of prosecutor’s she’s faced?”

“I’m sure they can,” Morgan said with a nod. “They’re not going to throw up roadblocks when it comes to one of their own getting killed.”

“Damn,” Hashek said suddenly, elbowing me. “We just assigned ourselves a morning of cross-referencing databases. My favorite.”

“At least you’ll suffer together,” Morgan said, grinning. “Now go on, get out. Get back to me if you find something good. In the meantime, I’ve got to call my wife.” He motioned us absently to the door, already reaching for his phone.

Hashek looked at me and rolled her eyes as we obeyed the lieutenant’s order. “And it’s not even nine o’clock,” she whispered over her shoulder to me as I opened the office door and followed her out.

“Maybe he forgot his lunch,” I replied with a shrug.
* * *

Half an hour and one cup of coffee for each of us later, the fax machine on the other side of the room began spitting out page after page of court records involving Gabrielle Young, all alphabetized by prosecutor’s last name. For the most part, Hashek and I just observed this flurry of paper, but every few minutes it would build up past the maximum depth of the tray and one of us would have to go over and retrieve the newest pile, bring it back, and dump it on top of the pages that had already taken over our desks.

After another half hour of that, the machine paused for a few seconds, seemed to gasp in exhaustion, and resumed printing, this time a list of the current status of every defendant Young had represented in the New York area in the last eighteen months. I watched the pages build up in the tray for a few minutes while Hashek studiously ignored both it and me, lest she get stuck with having to fetch this batch. Deciding to play the accommodating partner, even though we both knew it was her turn, I sighed, took another look at our adjoining desks, which were beginning to resemble a scaled-down ski slope, and stood up. “I’m pretty sure you could suffocate under all that paper,” I mumbled to myself as I headed across the room.

“Is that all of it?” she asked as I dumped my latest armload in front of her a minute later.

“I think so.” I paused. “Maybe.” I glanced over my shoulder at the fax machine, which was still at rest. “I hope so.”

“Thank god.” She picked up a handful of paper and eyed the information printed on it. “Oh, hell. Did you realize this stuff is single-spaced?”

I picked up a page of my own and examined it. “This is going to be painful.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Well, we may as well get started while the coffee is still hot.” She picked up her coffee mug with one hand and started shuffling through the paper pile with the other, looking for something resembling the beginning of the list.

We sat opposite each other for almost an hour, legal pads and print-outs in hand and gradually slumping lower and lower in our chairs as it became harder to read the lines of tiny print and copy down relevant information without getting dizzy. Occasionally, one of us would lower a page back to our desk and mark something with a highlighter or pencil, or drop the paper into our lap and stretch or yawn.

It was during one of her stretches that Hashek happened to look up and catch me watching her. I quickly dropped my eyes back to my pile, shuffled yet another page from lap to desk, and sighed, “Ten down, one hundred ninety-nine to go.”

She looked at me blankly for a second and then burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked when she hadn’t stopped giggling after a few seconds.

“I’d practically forgotten either of us knew how to talk,” she said with a grin. “Do you think this would go faster if we started a round of ‘ninety-nine pages of names on the wall’?”

I gave that a second of semi-serious thought, then shook my head. “But I think I’d be a lot more willing to sit here and do this if we had ninety-nine bottles of beer sitting here too.”

“Tell you what.” She straightened up in her chair and set down the pile she’d been working on. “We get through this list without killing ourselves or each other, and I’ll buy you a beer after work.” She paused. “As long as you buy me one, too.”

I contemplated the still-mountainous pile of papers in front of us. “Ok. As motivations go, I can work with that one.”

“Me too.” She sighed and glanced down at the page on the top of her pile. “We’ve been working on this for an hour already. You find anything?”

I shook my head. “Nothing worth reading twice. A bunch of parolees,” I began, flipping through my recent pages, “a couple of prosecutors that appear multiple times, and a damn long list of satisfied customers. You?”

“Same.”

“Damn.”

“Agreed. I think we’re going to really earn those beers.”

* * *

Two hours later, we were making our way to the stairwell, print-outs in hand and looking forward to lunch at the diner when Hashek, who had been focusing on reading out names from the list to see if either of us recognized them, rounded the inside of a corner next to me and promptly bounced off the guy who had been coming from the other direction.

We both grabbed for her, but he got to her first and steadied her by the elbow, giving her a slight smile. “Whoa, there. You ok, Mila?”

Very few men called my partner by her first name, and the ones I’d seen do it were almost all old enough to be her father. This guy, although he had a few silver hairs peeking through at the temples, definitely wasn’t. In fact, he probably wasn’t more than ten years older than me, if that.

So who was this guy, and how did he know her well enough to use her nickname? I stopped behind and slightly to the side of her and waited to be introduced.

Nothing.

After a few seconds of watching them watching each other, I cleared my throat. Hashek jumped guiltily and quickly pulled her arm out from under the guy’s hand. “I’m fine, Chris.”

Chris, huh? I tried to remember if I’d ever heard her mention anyone named Chris.

He let her reclaim her arm, but he braced his free hand on the wall above her head and leaned over her. “You sure? I hit you pretty hard.”

She stole a glance at me and my curious expression, flushed slightly, and managed to joke weakly to the guy, “Yeah, well, you should watch where you’re going, buddy.”

He raised his eyebrows and grinned at her. “I wasn’t the one trying to walk and read at the same time. That’s like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time - it just can’t be done.”

She gave him a sheepish smile and tried to back up a step, but she had misjudged the distance between her back and my front, and she nearly tripped over my left foot. Keeping her eyes on the other guy and the smile on her face, she kicked me pointedly in the shin. I got the message, and I backed up.

“We’re on a new case,” she explained to him, as she took advantage of the extra room I’d allowed her to retreat another inch, then added inanely, “We’re trying to narrow down a list of names,” and showed him the pages she was still holding.

“Ah, so that’s why you had to run out on me last night,” he said with an understanding nod. “New case.”

Now I wished I hadn’t obeyed her silent order and backed away. This was the guy she’d been on a date with? I wanted a closer look! I cleared my throat again, more loudly, and stepped around Hashek to hold out a hand to the guy. “Tony D’Argenzio,” I told him, faking polite confusion. “I don’t remember meeting you at the scene last night, sorry.”

“He wasn’t th-” Hashek began, then stopped abruptly.

The other guy, having no such qualms, accepted my handshake with ease. “That’s because I wasn’t there.” He glanced at Hashek, whose lips were seamed tightly closed. “It was my night off, actually. Oh, uh,” he added when I continued to look expectant, “I guess Mila hasn’t mentioned me, huh? I’m Christian Matthews, the chief M.E.”

I suddenly flashed back to Morgan teasing Hashek about the coroner who had a crush on her. “You’re the - ow!” I broke off when Hashek, knowing where I was about to go with that, jabbed a knuckle into my back. “I mean, hi. Nice to meet you.”

“Same here,” he said with a nod, then leaned around me to look at Hashek, who trying and failing to disappear behind me. “You going to be free to finish up our date some time soon, Mila?”

She coughed, nodded, and then quickly looked away from him. “Yeah, of course. Look, we have to get going, we only have a little while to grab some lunch before we have to be back here. I’ll, uh . . . I’ll give you a call, ok?”

“Yeah, sure.” He looked confused by her hasty agreement, but accepted it and didn’t say anything else as Hashek quickly pulled me into the stairwell and started urging me down the stairs.

I went, but watched her over my shoulder while I did it. “That guy was where you were coming from last night?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “And I’ll thank you not to -”

“And he calls you ‘Mila’,” I added. “Must be serious. How long you been seeing this guy, anyway?”

She ground her teeth and glared at me. “Shut up.”

“Hey, it’s a thing about us cops - we get curious.”

“Yeah, well, go be curious about something that doesn’t involve me. Move it!” she ordered, giving me a shove that made me trip down the last two stairs.

“Geez.” I grabbed the handrail and pulled myself to a stop on the ground floor. “You could have just asked.”

She just rolled her eyes and marched past me.

CHAPTER FOUR - Monday afternoon
“A veggie burger?” I asked, staring at her, twenty minutes later.

She looking up from her menu in surprise. “You got a problem with that?”

“Well, no. It’s just . . . a veggie burger?”

She pulled a sheaf of papers out of her bag and started shuffling through them. “Well, it’s either that or have you up my ass about how badly I eat yet again.”

“I don’t -” I began defensively.

She interrupted with a slight smile on her face before I could get out more than that. “Yes, you do.”

“More power to you,” spoke up our waitress, the indomitable Moira, who had been watching our exchange with amusement. She patted me on the shoulder approvingly. “Someone’s got to get her eating better.”

“Your loyalty astounds me,” Hashek told her dryly. “Can I please just get my lunch without the lecture, for once in my life?”

I was tempted to point out that she had started the lecture, but Moira was already walking away from out table, and a comment like that needed an audience to keep it from just sounding petty. I settled for giving Hashek a smug look and then making a show of focusing on my share of the list of names.

Hashek took a sip of her soda, and for a few seconds, I could feel her watching me, obviously waiting for my next argument, but I managed to disappoint her and remain quiet.

* * *

“So,” Moira asked a few minutes later as she set down a platter holding Hashek’s veggie burger with one hand and the one holding my gyro with the other, “I guess you guys must be on a new case? I haven’t seen you in here together for weeks.” Then, without giving either of us time to answer, she seemed to suddenly remember the reason for my absence and turned to give me a probing look. “How’s your leg, Detective?”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes, and dutifully answered, “It’s fine.”

“Yeah, if you don’t count the limp,” Hashek teased, giving my ankle a gentle kick under the table.

“You keep doing that,” I grumbled at her, drawing up my leg and making a show of rubbing the spot where she’d kicked me, “and I can arrange for you to get a limp of your own so we’ll be a matching pair.”

She froze with her burger in one hand. “Yes! Right!”

Moira and I looked at each other, confused. “What, ‘right’?” I asked Hashek. “You actually want me to make you limp?”

“Matching up pairs. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing.”

I blinked.

“With the list,” she explained impatiently. “We’re supposed to be pairing up the lists, right? Comparing the people on each one?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“That’s what I thought.” She dropped her lunch, startling Moira, who was still standing next to the table, and reached for her phone. “I think I know a way to make this a lot less painful.”

Moira raised an eyebrow and looked to me for elucidation. “Painful?”

I could only shrug. “Beats me. Less painful how?” I asked Hashek.

She shook her head and started dialing. “Never mind. Wait.”

I had a bad feeling this was going turn into another Lunchus Interruptus, and I glanced up at Moira, who obviously had enough experience with Hashek to be having the same thought. “I’ll grab some boxes,” she whispered to me as Hashek, oblivious, continued to hold the phone to her ear and wait for whoever she was calling to answer. I nodded and gave the waitress a grateful smile, and she turned and disappeared into the bustle of the lunchtime crowd.

“Hello?” Hashek blurted abruptly, startling me. I jumped and turned to look at her, but her attention was focused on the phone. “Hi, it’s Hashek. I need you to do me a favor,” She paused, listening. “Can that wait? This is imp- come on, please? I promise, if you do this for me I will be your willing dating slave tomorrow.”

I stared at her, wondering who she was promising slavery to and what, exactly, a “dating slave” did.

“Thank you!” she sighed, sounding relieved. “Ok, see, I need some help dealing with this set of lists D’Argenzio and I are trying to cross-reference. We’ve got a couple hundred names, and we’re trying to pull out the ones who appear multiple times or who are on parole. We’ve been at it all morning, and - no, it’s not on disc. Just on paper, from the fax machine.” She paused again. “That was what I was going to ask you. If we get the lists to you, can you write some kind of program to compare them?”

I listened with growing appreciation as my partner continued to negotiate our release from paperwork hell: “They’re from the D.A.’s office. Basically, names out of a bunch of court records. Do you think you can do it?” A roll of her eyes at the phone. “I know you can do it. I mean, can you do it? . . . Well, good. What do you need from us, specifically? . . . Oh.”

This eavesdropping was getting me nowhere. My hunger got the better of my curiosity, and I went to work on my gyro, which had been getting cold while I listened to Hashek. As a result, I had a mouthful of meat and tzatziki sauce when she turned to me and demanded, “Do you know what a text file is?”

“Mmph?” I mumbled, and hastily swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“He says we need to get him ‘text files’ of the list. Do you know what that entails?” she repeated impatiently.

“Um . . . does he mean, like, a file that’s just plain text?”

She echoed my question into the phone and then nodded to me. “Yeah, he says it can’t be a Word file or anything or it will be much harder.”

“I know what it is, then.” Seeing where she was going with this, I put down my lunch and reached for my own phone. “Does this mean you want me to call the D.A.’s office and see if they can put the lists in that format? And who are you talking to, anyway?”

She ignored the second question, and told me to, “Yes, but hold on for a sec,” before returning to her conversation. “Tony’s going to call them. Can we e-mail them to you, or do you need them burned to discs? . . . Ok, I can do that. We’ll send them to you as soon as we get them. Thank you!” She hung up the phone and was just reaching for her burger when Moira reappeared and whisked the plate out from under her hands. “What the . . .?”

“I had a feeling you’d be needing these,” Moira told her, brandishing the styrofoam containers she’d brought over, and proceeded to carefully scrape each of our plates into one.

Hashek blinked. “Oh. Uh, thanks.”

Moira shrugged. “Make sure you get around to eating these some time today, you two. I have a sneaking suspicion that last time you didn’t.” She closed the boxes, smiled at us, and handed them over. “Don’t worry about the check. The boss and I know that one of these days the two of you will actually finish a meal here and pay.”


“I don’t know what we’d do without her to boss us around,” Hashek half-joked as Moira walked away from our table.

“Agreed.” I paused, formulating my next question carefully: “So . . . who were you talking to? The M.E.?” I asked, naming the only person I could think of that she might offer to date.

“Huh? No. Why would you think that?”

I coughed self-consciously. “Well, you said you’d date him . . .”

She grinned and shook her head. “No, I said I’d be his dating slave.”

“What’s the difference? Other than transfer of ownership, I mean.”
“Well for one, I don’t think Dan Lowe would be interested in dating me.” She paused. “You couldn’t infer who I was talking to from the conversation? You’re slipping.”

I scowled. “You’re more cryptic than you might think. So if you’re not dating him, what was with that comment?”

“I promised I’d try to set him up with someone I know. He wanted to get an update out of me before agreeing to do the lists.”

“Anyone I’ve met?”

“Not unless you know anyone in the Crime Lab.”

“I don’t think so,” I said after thinking for a second.

“Then, no.” Apparently done with this conversation, she stood up. “Let’s get going. I want to listen in when you call the D.A.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You could call them, you know.”
“Nah.” She picked up the box containing her lunch. “I didn’t even get to eat a fry yet. That’s what I’m focusing on when we get back to the office.”

Flashback excerpt

This is the first two chapters of the sequel to Spilled Blood. I started the sequel early this year, got ten thousand words into, and kind of drifted away from. I'm considering picking it back up again, but I think I'd have to delete the last chapter or two and try them again. Anyway, I shall post what I have of the story over the next few days - opinions are welcome.

Novel: Sacrifice
Current novel length: 11901
Excerpt length: 3313
Editing: Substantially cleaned up, although strange continuity errors may still exist

CHAPTER ONE - Sunday night

“Daddy, I don’t know how I’m ever going to find a boyfriend, let alone get married, if you keep -”

“Would someone pass the bread? The other end of the table’s been hogging it!”

“It’s not our fault Annie inhales bread like there’s no tomorrow!”

“Yeah, and there’s not going to be a tomorrow if I don’t get some bread! I’m starving!”

“Lee, honey, I’m just saying that I didn’t think that boy was very reliable. You don’t want to date somebody who won’t -”

“Food’s ready!”

A large bowl of pasta descended onto the table and eleven people all dove for it at once. Suddenly, the room was quiet except for the sound of silverware clinking against plates.

It was Sunday dinner as usual in my parents’ house.

My mother looked around at the crowd, perfectly composed. She’d raised four children, three of them boys. Chaos was a comfortable state for her. “Lee, pass your uncle the bread.”

Lee - my niece, Alicia - reluctantly put down her fork, picked up the not-yet-cut portion of the loaf, and slapped it into the outstretched hand of my younger brother Vinnie, who accepted it with equanimity that bespoke years of such table manners. “Thank you,” he said, giving Lee a gracious nod and smoothly ripping a hunk of bread off the end of the loaf. Then, with equal ease, he tossed it back toward the empty space it had been occupying on the table in front of Lee. For a second, it looked like it was going to land in my father’s dinner, but at the last second, my sister Annette batted it away.

The bread landed smack dab in its place and dinner continued.

* * *

"Tony," my mother said a few hours later as we faced each other over a Trivial Pursuit board, "tell us how your leg is."

I sighed. Dinner was finished, the dishes were washed, the kids were long in bed, and it was time for the family interrogation session I had known was coming when I accepted the dinner invitation. "It's fine, Mom," I replied as I put down the glass of chianti I'd been working on. "It wasn't a serious injury to begin with." Well, really, it had been more than serious enough for my taste - I'd taken a pocket knife in the thigh during a fight with a suspect a few weeks ago - but I wasn't going to own up to that in front of my mother.

"You're still limping."

"He's limped for six months, Mom," pointed out Vinnie with an affectionate roll of his eyes. "I don't think it has anything to do with his getting hurt this time. Hah, that question gave us a pink wedge!"

"I'll bet that, if nothing else, it aggravated his old injury," countered his wife, Judy. She looked at me for confirmation. "Right, Tony?"

"Uh..."

"Don't gloat, Vinnie," she added sweetly before I could get out anything else, reaching across the table to pat her husband on the thigh. They were heading opposing Trivial Pursuit teams, and they'd been cheerfully taking potshots at each other all night.

"Who's gloating?"

"You are, Mr. Won-my-team-a-pink-wedge-but-I-can't-answer-a-baseball-question-to-save-my-life!"

Vinnie glared at her and shoved the wedge into his game piece. "It's not my fault I -"

My phone rang.

"Oops, sorry guys." I reached for the phone on my belt and checked the caller ID. "I have to take this, it's my lieutenant."

"Too bad it’s not his partner," sing-songed my sister.

"The girl partner," contributed Vinnie.

Lee giggled at the sight of her Uncle Tony turning red.

I glared at the room in general and headed for the kitchen, where I could answer the phone without hearing catcalls in the background. Dropping into a creaky old kitchen chair that was probably older than me, I opened the phone. "What's up, Lieu?"

"Are you busy?"

"Depends on how important whatever you're calling about is."

"You've been cleared back for duty and I'm currently standing in the living room of a newly-dead lawyer."

I sat up straight. "In that case, I'm definitely not busy."

"How long will it take you to get to 602 Kendall Lane?"

I ran through the mental map of the town which I had started to build in my mind since I moved there, located the road in question, and then tacked on the travel time from my parents' house. "Maybe forty-five minutes?"

"Shit," Morgan muttered.

"I could drive faster," I offered, "but then you get to pay for any and all tickets and vehicle damage. Is it that much of an emergency?"

"You ever heard of Gabrielle Young?"

Even if I'd still been in Manhattan, I'd have recognized that name. Gabrielle Young appeared regularly on news clips and in newspaper articles. "The defense lawyer?"

"The very same. Someone shot her in the head." He sighed. "It'll really take forty-five minutes?"

"What about Hashek?" I suggested. "She can probably get there faster."

"She should be on her way already, but I need you too."

I looked around the kitchen while I thought about my options. "I might be able to manage half an hour if I take a shortcut."

Morgan sighed again. "I guess that’ll have to do. Her husband’s raising hell over here about how we’re wasting ‘precious investigation time,’ so just move it, would you?"

"Sounds like the husband is a lawyer, too."

"Unfortunately, you're right. Just hurry it up, Tony!"

CHAPTER TWO - Sunday night

I kept the accelerator floored the whole way back to town and made it in forty minutes. The clock on my dashboard read 12:05 when I pulled into the already-crowded driveway of 602 Kendall Lane, early enough that I didn’t expect to be greeted by my lieutenant or anyone else. Before I could even get all the way out of the car, though, my partner was out of the front door of the house and making tracks toward me.

I met her halfway across the lawn and took in her baggy jeans, flannel shirt, and sleepy eyes. “You look like hell, Hashek.”

She took a self-conscious swipe at her eyes with the back of her hand and some of what I had thought was sleepiness came off, smearing black on her wrist. “I dozed off with mascara on.”

“You wear mascara?” I asked as we headed for the door of the house. “I mean, you wear makeup?”

She raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Well, I mean, I didn’t think you did.”

“Just because you can’t tell it’s there doesn’t mean it’s not, Detective. In fact, that’s the hallmark of good makeup use.”

“Oh.” I wondered if my sister knew that. She’d always been kind of fond of sparkly makeup.

“But for the record, you’re right. I don’t usually wear mascara.”

“So why tonight?”

She hesitated before admitting, “I had a date.”

I stopped on the front stoop of the house and stared at her. “A date?”

She barely managed to avoid walking into me. Backpedaling a step, she glared at me and said, “Yes, a date. And I’ll thank you not to say it so loud from now on.”

“Sorry.” In a gesture of apology, I opened the door for her, saying to her back as she stalked past me, “I didn’t realize I’d said it loud to begin with.”

“You did.” She looked around at the sea of faces filling the sunken living room we were headed toward. “Now, drop it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Still focused on me, she took a step into the room, fetched up hard against someone’s unmoving back, and muttered a curse as she tried to edge around him and failed.

“Allow me,” I offered, elbowing the guy aside to make room for her.

She swept past into the space I’d created, giving the guy a disdainful look when he belatedly looked down to see what was going on. “If you’re not doing something, get out of the way,” she snapped at him.

Obviously wondering what her problem was, the guy looked questioningly at me, but I just shrugged and told him, “You heard the woman.”

More wisely than I’d have given him credit for, he hastily cleared out of her way.

Hashek turned to give me an approving smile. “A lot of big guys are just dumb, but you’re starting to come in handy. Now, can you clear me a path all the way to Morgan?”

“I think I’m insulted by that comment, Hashek.”

“Be insulted all you want, just get me to the body.”

I gave her a crisp salute and started to plow through the rest of the people. Hashek followed along in my wake.

* * *

We found Morgan squatting next to the silk-pajama-clad body of a woman. “D’Argenzio!” he exclaimed when he saw us approaching. “She found you, good.”

I blinked and looked over my shoulder at my partner. “Was I lost?”

Morgan ignored that and watched as I pulled on a pair of gloves. “Sorry about bringing you in in the middle of the night, but this lady’s husband is raising hell about not wanting ‘small-town cops’ on the case. I figured he’d approve of you.”

“I aim to please.”

Hashek and I both stopped a foot away from the bloody patch of floor Morgan was leaning over. I was looking at my lieutenant, just opening my mouth to ask him for details, when I was cut off by a gasp from Hashek. “I thought you said she was shot!” she exclaimed accusingly.

I turned my eyes to Gabrielle Young’s body to see what my partner was talking about and found myself looking into a face that was swollen and covered in blood. The woman may have been shot, but she’d also taken a fierce beating. I let out a low whistle and leaned closer. “Damn.”

“She was shot,” Morgan told Hashek without looking up. “I guess whoever killed her just wanted to have a little appetizer before getting down to business.”

“Oh, that’s a pleasant way of phrasing it,” Hashek groused. She looked around the room and spotted a cluster of people in jackets that said Medical Examiner. “I’m going to go talk to the M.E. Get all of your crudeness out before I come back, would you?”

Morgan used his ungloved hand to salute her dutifully, then looked up at me. “Get down here and take a look.”

I crouched down next to him and leaned down to get a closer look at Gabrielle Young. She had the beginnings of a black eye, as well as a knuckle-sized bruise on the opposite cheekbone. The bridge of her nose had been crushed, too, and I figured that what blood on her face hadn’t come from the gunshot had come from her nose. “God, she’s a mess.” I muttered to no one in particular. “I wonder if -” I stopped there, thinking.

“What?”

I shook my head and leaned forward to ease up the hem of the dead woman’s pajama top.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Morgan give me a strange look as he copied my forward motion and tried to see what I was doing. “I assume you’re looking for something other than a cheap thrill, D’Argenzio?”

Half my head under the pajama top, I took the opportunity to roll my eyes while my lieutenant couldn’t see me do it. “Her face looks like raw meat. I want to see if the rest of her body matches. Maybe somebody was beating up on her regularly.”

“Well, then, do you see anything?”

“Doesn’t look like her torso has been touched.” I dropped the shirt back into place and used the back of my wrist to scratch an itch on my face without contaminating my glove. “She may have old bruising that’s faded, but if it’s there, I can’t see it. As far as I can tell, she’s totally clean below the neck.”

He sighed. “Well, that tells us nothing.”

“Sorry,” I replied, smoothing the top over the body and then shifting a few inches up so I was at the level of her face. “But you never know, it might tell us something in the future.” I started to probe tentatively at the bruising on her face, taking stock of her injuries. “Look at this, Lieu,” I said after a few seconds. “She’s got a split lip, a broken nose, and two loosened teeth. Her frenulum is lac-”

“Her what?” interrupted a startled-looking young officer who was standing nearby. His partner, a woman, punched him in the arm. “Not that frenulum, you idiot! It’s that little string of skin that connects your lip to your gums. It rips when someone gets beat hard in the face.”

The young man turned a dull red. “Oh.”

I felt a pang of sympathy at the guy’s predicament. He was never going to hear the end of that one from his partner. Making a game effort to change the subject, I turned back to Morgan. “Who’s the husband, and where is he? Do we know that he didn’t do this?”

“Norman Young,” Morgan replied. “I think they moved him out into the foyer. Me, I started ignoring him after the fifteenth time he told me our department’s response was an ‘outrage’ and he had ‘powerful friends.’”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” With a grunt, I managed to get back to my feet, and turned to look toward the foyer. “I’m going to go see -”

My sentence was cut off by a bloodcurdling scream that suddenly rent the air. Heads all over the room jerked up, trying to locate the source of the noise, but before anyone could say anything, there was another wail, this one more intelligible: “Mommy!”

A commotion erupted at the door of the room as the screamer was restrained from moving any closer to the body.

“Hell,” Morgan breathed, staring at the scene.

“I’ll check it out,” I offered, and moved toward the source of the noise.

When I reached the door, I found a uniformed officer and a civilian restraining a girl of about twenty, who was still struggling to get free. The girl’s heart-shaped face was red and tear-stained, and she looked like she’d jumped out of bed to come here and forgotten to get dressed first. Her flannel pants and oversized t-shirt were wrinkled, and her hair was scraped back into a lumpy ponytail.

As I studied her, the girl seemed to just give up. She sagged back into the arms of the men holding her and watched listlessly as I moved the last few feet toward her.

She wasn’t much older than my niece Alicia, but if this girl had ever had the kind of sparkle about her that Alicia had, it was gone now. Knowing that I was going to need to at least attempt to talk to her despite her shock, I met the eyes of the officer who had hold of her left arm, and he nodded and released her. The other man didn’t move other than to direct a fiercely protective glare at me, and I decided he had to be the girl’s father. Keeping my eyes on him, and moving with deliberate slowness, I reached out to gently lay a hand on the girl’s arm. “Miss?”

The father didn’t object, but he didn’t release her to me, either. He continued to glare as the girl lifted watery eyes to mine. “Who . . .” She stopped and made a visible effort to steady her voice. “Who are you?”

“My name is Tony. I’m with the police,” I explained. “Are you Mrs.Young’s daughter?”

“Yes.” She swallowed, looked past my shoulder to the still form of her mother, and inched closer to her father. “My mom . . .”

“Don’t, honey,” her father murmured, then looked at me, “I’m Gabrielle’s husband. Does this have to be done now?”

In response, I cast my eyes meaningfully toward the girl, who was still staring past me, seemingly oblivious to our conversation. “It might be a good idea, sir. To get her out of here.”

He followed her gaze to the body, swallowed hard, and nodded to me. “Ok. Yeah.” He used his arm to urge his daughter forward. “Go with him, honey. I’ll be right here.”

She resisted the movement. “Daddy . . .”

“I promise,” he repeated, “I will be right here if you need me.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she allowed me to lead her out of the room and into the foyer. “What’s your name?” I asked her as we dodged a crime scene technician and his camera, who were parked by the front door.

“I’m Claire,” she replied almost inaudibly, then swallowed a sob.

“ ‘Claire’,” I repeated. “That’s a pretty name. Do you live here, in this house, Claire?”

She shook her head, not bothering to push back the thick lock of blonde hair that fell over her face with the movement. “I live downtown, with my boyfriend. I . . . I got here as soon as I could after my dad called me.” Fresh tears began to fall as she was reminded of why she had come. “I should have stayed . . .”

Stayed where? I started to ask her to explain that intriguing statement, but before I’d gotten out a word, she paled and started swallowing convulsively. “I think I’m going to -”

Enough said. I hustled her out of the house and onto the front lawn just in time for her to fall to her knees and vomit into a flower bed.

I wasn’t going to get anything else out of the girl tonight. She was nearly hysterical over her mother’s death; I was lucky I’d gotten her to tell me her name before she got sick. I quickly fetched her father and decided to give the two of them some privacy.

Heading back into the living room, I found Hashek and Morgan still huddled over the body. “Were you talking to the husband?” Hashek asked when I stopped beside her.

“Daughter,” I corrected. “She was the one screaming.”

“God,” Morgan said with a shake of his head, “that poor kid. Was she able to tell you anything?”

I shook my head. “I think she does have something to tell, but there’s no way we’re getting it out of her tonight.” Both of them looked skeptical, and I gestured toward the window and explained, “She’s busy puking.”

Hashek looked at me in mock-surprise. “And you let a little thing like that stop you?”

“Have a little sympathy, Hashek.”

“You think you could do better?” Morgan asked her.

She reluctantly shook her head. “No. Probably anything we got out of her tonight would be either wrong, incoherent, or both.”

I gave her a smug smile. “My point exactly.”

“Shut up.”

“Ok, ok.” Morgan held up a hand to cut off Hashek’s reply. “You two obviously need your beauty rest to keep from biting each other’s heads off.” Standing up, he gestured to the other side of the room, where the group of forensics technicians were starting to pack up their equipment. “Why don’t you take off? It looks like everyone else is closing up shop, anyway, and I’m not in the mood to referee a bickering match between two cranky detectives.”

We stared at him.

“I’m serious,” he insisted. “Go home. Oh, but guys -” he added before either of us could take more than a step toward the door.

I stopped short and looked at him. I’d known it was too good to be true. “What?”

“She won’t be throwing up tomorrow. I want her interviewed, and I mean ASAP. Got it?”

Hashek and I looked at each other and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you both in the morning.”

New story, new excerpt

So I have an idea for a new story, based on Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" (also known as "And Then There Were None"). The original book is kind of a locked-room mystery, but on steroids - the room is an entire island, and there are ten characters and ten deaths on it. My idea brings the setting down a little in scale - the island is a hospital ER - but hopefully keeps the spirit of the thing. I actually started it earlier this year while bored in class and then forgot about it, but I think it's a really fun idea, so I'm going to pursue it. So here's the beginning of it - nothing exciting happening yet, basically just scene-setting and character introductions.

Chapter: 1. New story, not related to previous excerpts
Word count: 379
Excerpt length: 379
Editing: A bit of spell-checking, but that's it

Doctor Sam Tyler set his dinner tray down on top of a table that sat at the edge of the hospital cafeteria. Sitting down in front of it, he regarded the meatloaf with mild disinterest for a moment and then switched his gaze to the snow that was falling outside the window. It had started as flurries half an hour ago, but it had quickly progressed into a heavy fall that bore all the hallmarks of an incipient blizzard.

Tyler, like most emergency workers, hated snow. He intended to savor his dinner - as much as cafeteria food could be savored - because he knew that this was going to be a long night in the ER. Spin-outs on the highway, old ladies who ventured out onto the slippery sidewalk and promptly broke a hip, and young men with god-complexes who thought they were immune to frostbite (no matter how long they played king-of-the-hill in the snow drifts) would appear at regular intervals all afternoon and into the evening.

He was suddenly glad he’d talked the nurses into brewing the coffee at their ER station double-strength tonight.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Hey, have you seen the Dickhead Doctor?”

Jennifer Bergen looked up from the computer she’d been entering a patient’s information into and found Sophia Rodriguez, a fellow nurse, standing next to her chair. “What?” she asked her friend distractedly.

“Doctor Dickhead,” Rodriguez tried again. “Tyler,” she finally clarified when Bergen continued to look blank. “The grabby doctor? Geez, where have you been for the past six months?”

“Oh, right.” Jennifer shook her head as if to clear it. “I knew that. I’m just completely zoned out tonight with this snow.” She paused. “What did you ask me?”

“Tyler,” Sophia reminded her. “Where is he?”

She thought about it for a second. “No idea. I haven’t seen him since he re-set that dislocated shoulder an hour ago. Maybe he went to get something to eat?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Sophia rolled her eyes. “All I know is he better get his ass back here before all hell starts breaking loose.”

Both women looked up at the ER’s lone window, through which little was visible except the increasingly heavy snow. Jennifer sighed. “This is going to be a long night.”

Housecleaning

I deleted a couple of posts that didn't deal with my writing today. I've decided to keep this blog writing-only, and move my personal stuff to another, here. That's chaoticfluffy at wordpress, instead of chaoticfluffy at blogger, for the record. My future rants, weirdness, and incriminating high school photos can be found there, rather than here.

Can it be foreshadowing if it's this blatant?

Chapter: 1 (ok, so the last bit wasn't quite the end)
Word count: 1879
Excerpt length: 160
Editing: Hahahaha no

She eyed the gold detective’s shield staring back at her. “He’s a cop.” She looked back down at her patient, searching his face as though it could confirm the fact. “Yeah, that could have something to do with it.” She sighed. “I really don’t like this leg. The bumper of the car nailed him right there and it’s hanging on by a thread.”

“Does it still have circulation?”

“Practically nil. There’s no blood vessels still attached to do the circulating below his knee.” She paused. “At least I’ve got the bleeding mostly stopped.”

“Think he’s going to lose it?”

She smiled slightly. “The leg, or his cool?”

“Either.”

“Both. The leg doesn’t look good, and I can’t think of anyone who would be particularly pleased to find out wake up and find out they were an amputee - let alone a cop who relies on being totally mobile.”

Tris shook his head. “Yeah. He’s not going to be a happy camper.”

Name change and a few more paragraphs

Chapter: 1. The end of chapter 1, in fact.
Word count: 1758
Excerpt length: 249. What? Stop laughing at my uselessness! 249 is better than 248!

Katje Phillips watched her patient’s head loll back on the stretcher. Smiling slightly, she looked up at the paramedic she was sharing the box space with, a twenty-year veteran named Tris. “This has got to be one of the calmest accident victims I’ve come across in a long time.”

Tris rolled his eyes. “And the one with the worst jokes.”

“I’ll take the bad jokes to get the cool-headedness. It’s almost like he’s done this before and isn’t bothering to get worked up about it.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Did we get his last name?”

“No. Did we get his first, for that matter?”

“Yeah. His first name is ‘Tommy’. That’s all I got out of him before he passed out at the scene.” Keeping the pressure on his leg with one hand, Katje reached for his pocket with the other. “Wonder if he has a wallet...ah!”

“Got it?”

“Yeah.” She pulled out a basic leather wallet and handed it to Tris, who had two free hands to her one. “Open it up and take a look for me.”

He did as requested, then stared down at its contents for a moment. “Well, this might explain it.”

“What might explain what?”

“This. Might explain his demeanor.” He turned the interior of the wallet toward her.

She eyed the gold detective’s shield staring back at her. “He’s a cop.” She looked back down at her patient, searching his face as though it could confirm the fact. “Yeah, that could have something to do with it.”

Smart little beastie...

There is a cat repeatedly knocking on my sliding glass doors. Knocking, I swear. It sounds exactly like someone asking to be let in. The little guy/gal going to have sore paws after this night is over. And for the record, s/he is not mine. Cats make me stop breathing, hooray for allergies. So of course the storyteller in me is all "omg what if the cat is lost and then it comes back and I have to let it in and then it stays with me and omg what do you do for an improvised litterbox and I wonder how long I could have a cat in my apartment without contaminating my lungs or my belongings with dander and I guess I could call my sister and ask her if the cat comes back and I have to let it in, but I'd wake her up and she has to work tomorrow and maybe there is a 24 hour vet in town and I can call them but do vets handle queries about random stray animals of course they must because maybe the random stray belongs to one of their customers and after all they would want the best for any cat whether it's a stray or not and so maybe I can call them after all and they will tell me how to take care of the cat and then I will have a pet cat for a while and maybe I won't die."

And then I realize I've been spinning this story for half an hour in my mind and the cat hasn't knocked again. Guess that plot's not going to work.

Ok, so it's two paragraphs. At least it's written.

Katje Meyerson watched her patient’s head loll back on the stretcher. Smiling slightly, she looked up at the paramedic she was sharing the box space with. “This has got to be one of the calmest accident victims I’ve come across in a long time.”

The paramedic rolled his eyes. “And the one with the worst pick-up lines.”

These books are harder to create!

Stupid mauve floss, running out on me...

Excerpt #2

Chapter: still 1, I guess
Current word count: 1509
Excerpt length: 571
Editing: Corrected one spelling error. The rest will have to wait.

Davis awoke an unknown amount of time later to feel feminine fingers climbing up his bare leg. “Not now,” he muttered, trying to brush the fingers away without looking.

The woman laughed and continued what she was doing. “Never on the first date, buddy. I’m just trying to get your leg to stop bleeding.” She reached her destination, the crease where his leg met his groin, and pushed down.

“Oww,” Davis moaned before he could stop himself. The pain woke him up, though, and he forced his eyes open. “...Ambulance?” He’d accompanied suspects in the backs of ambulances once or twice, and it certainly looked like that’s where he was. “How long was I unconscious?” His voice was rusty and his throat was dry, and he tried to clear it but failed.

“Not too long,” answered a man from his other side.

Davis turned his head and saw the man sitting on a bench seat, his eyes focused on a large portable monitor lying next to him. “Still alive?” he rasped.

“Getting there,” the man answered without moving his eyes. “Your heartbeat’s steady.”

The woman pressed her hand harder against his thigh.

“What’re you doing?” he managed to ask her.

“I’m hitting a pressure point on your femoral artery. Direct pressure on the wound itself wasn’t working out.”

“Wasn’t working out?”

“You’re bleeding heavily,” she admitted reluctantly. “No, don’t look -” She put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him on the stretcher when he would have tried to sit up. “There’s nothing you can do about it either way. Just try to relax.”

Suddenly Davis’s eyes widened and he shook his head vehemently. “No, I can’t relax. Listen...”

“I’m listening,” she said without looking at him.

“I’m serious!” he tried to yell, although it came out only slightly louder than he had been speaking up to then. “If I’m going to die, somebody has to -”

“You’re not going to die,” the woman interrupted.

“She’s right,” said the man. “We’re the best there is. If we say you’re going to make it, you’re going to make it. And we say you’re going to make it.” He paused. “Although you may be...weak...for a while.”

“Weak?” Davis demanded, alarmed.

“The Caddy won,” the woman said dryly. “Just because you’re going to live doesn’t mean you’re going to waltz out of the hospital tonight.”

Davis closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. “Wonderful.”

The man touched his shoulder lightly. “How bad do you hurt right now?”

“I’ll live.”

“So we’ve said. But that’s not what I asked.”

Davis sighed again. “It hurts. I feel like King Kong sat on me.”

“A fair description,” the woman said.

“We’re going to give you some painkiller,” the man said. “Enough to take the edge off.”

Davis was still looking at the woman, and he saw her raise her eyes to meet the man’s over his head, but she didn’t say anything. “Do you have any drug allergies?” the man continued after a second of silent conversation with his partner.

Davis shook his head, then groaned.

“Good.” The woman patted his shoulder and watched the man stand up. “Into your IV it goes, then. Enjoy your trip,” he said.

Davis felt the drug begin to course through his veins and his muscles begin to relax. “You don’t move your hand, we’re going to have to get married,” he slurred at the woman before he blacked out again.

Novel the third, excerpt the first

Chapter: 1, by default
Current word count: 921
Excerpt length: 336
Editing performed: zero, including spellcheck

By the time the ambulance reached the scene of the accident, a small-but-growing crowd had already begun to gather at the edge of the pool of blood that surrounded the the front end of the car. Jim Waters, who was driving the ambulance, reached out and gave a knob on the dashboard two quick twists, making the siren burp at the crowd as a warning. A few people glanced over their shoulders and began to shuffle out of the way, but the majority of the onlookers just continued staring at the scene unfolding in front of them.

The car had jumped the curb and come to a stop a few feet from the facade of an office building, barely avoiding crushing the man who still lay partially under it. Despite his encounter with the heavy Cadillac, Tommy Davis was awake and aware of where he was. In fact, if he had had enough breath, he would have been cursing.

“You’ll be ok,” the elderly man who was kneeling creakily next to him said. Davis didn’t know his name; introductions were low on the list of priorities at the moment. All he knew was that out of all the people who had been on the street when the car came screeching to a stop on top of him, only this man had come forward to help instead of stare. “I’ve seen worse than this in the war. It’s just your leg, son.”

The good samaritan was a veteran of the Korean War, and though he had, in fact, seen worse, he wasn’t about to tell the man on the ground that most of those guys hadn’t made it home to their wives. Instead, he pressed his folded jacket harder against the split-open skin of the man’s leg and prayed for help to get there quickly.

Davis wasn’t stupid; he knew there was something he wasn’t being told. A wave of pain rolled through his body and he gritted his teeth, trying to stay conscious.

Shiny new blog...I have a sneaking feeling I've done this before

And so I try this whole Blogger thing again. Hopefully this will be a chronicle of my efforts at writing, yes, The Great American Novel. Well no, not really. More like The Great American Cheesefest Novel. Because cheese is what I do. And it's not actually my first novel. But other than that, you know, yeah.

History:

Novel #1: NaNoWriMo 2003. "By The Book." An utterly horrible attempt at "write what you know" mystery/suspense, where the plot unraveled somewhere around word 50,000 (unsurprising, for those of you familiar with NaNo). This shit ain't never appearing where anyone else can see it.

Novel #2: NaNoWriMo 2006, sort of, but actually based on this fanfic I wrote a few years ago, and begun well before last November. "Spilled Blood." Another crime novel, although slightly less painful than the last. Available here in a very preliminary version (hey, I have to hold something back in case the publishers come a-knockin').

Novel #3: Currently being struggled with. After trying and discarding a number of possible plots, I've finally begun work on one. No idea what the title will be, but I have the plot outlined in my mind. Yet another crime novel, although this one is an attempt to move away from my "two cops prodecural" fanfic roots. Only one cop this time. Progress! Excerpts will be posted here more or less stream-of-consciousness (otherwise known as "without editing") as I write.