Fantasy Magazine 55 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fantasy, short story, fantasy magazine, short stories
ISBN: 9781607013266
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2011-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Tadero grabbed her radio. It was cold and so wet that it nearly slipped through her frozen fingers. She brought it to her mouth.

“Hamilton,” she said, “I think I have something for you.”

Too many locals had police scanners. The last thing she wanted to do was say that there was a body on the beach. But Denne had warned her she would find several bodies, and she was to call him in before touching them. He had also given her other instructions, telling her not to get too close, not to prod it with her toe, not to turn it over if it appeared to be facedown.

She had crossed her arms and listened, because she had learned not to argue with the locals. It only pissed them off.

But it pissed her off to be treated with something less than the respect she deserved. She had been a decorated detective from the Chicago Police Department who had been on a major career track until the Incident. And even then, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d been cleared in the shooting, exonerated in the press, and she would have received even more decorations for that afternoon if she could have stomached accepting them.

Instead, she had voluntarily gone to see the department shrink, who told her anyone would break under those circumstances. A movement in the dark, a sudden sharp report—anyone would have fired. She had. And the kid she’d shot had shot at her. He had also been strung out on a cocktail of meth and coke and valium.

He had been ten, and small for his age.

If he had fired again and hit her this time, he would have shot his second police officer in six months.

None of that mattered to her. What mattered was his angelic little scratched-up face, his tiny shoes, his narrow shoulders.

What mattered was that he was a kid, not what kind of kid he was. Or maybe it did. Maybe that made it matter more.

Because, in her mind, that kid had become a symbol of all that had gone wrong with the city she loved, the city she served, the city she had vowed to protect.

But she couldn’t protect it. Not from drug dealers who used kids as bait, not from firearms in the hands of children, not from murderers, thieves, and crack whores.

She couldn’t even protect it from herself.

So she scouted around for a job she thought would be easy, one that would let her rest, one that would soothe her aching spirit. She got offered a position here, in Nowheresville, and she took it, and they hated her, and she was working hard at not hating them, especially for their superstitions and idiotic attitude of entitlement.

The radio crackled. It was Denne. “Where are you?”

“Near the beach access on 35th and Ogden.” She had to wipe the water off her face so she didn’t sound like she was drowning.

“I’m about five minutes away. Mark it off, and back away.”

She rolled her eyes. “Anything I put up will come down in this wind.

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