Requests From The Dead by Stephen Barnard

Author:Stephen Barnard [Barnard, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD

Carol Vanderschans looked out over Little Italy from the fourth floor window of NYPD’s headquarters on Centre Street, and thought about what it meant to feel alone. She’d been lonely at times in her life – everyone’s past had those bleak spots – but she could probably count on one hand the times she felt truly alone. The day her mother died, the moment she discovered that Bill had cheated on her with that whore from the typing pool, and today.

Today: the day that should have been her greatest professional triumph, now had her staring down at the sidewalk and wondering if it would hurt, even just a little bit. What was the song from that film M*A*S*H that came out last year? Suicide is Painless?

‘Jesus, get a grip, girl,’ she muttered to herself and moved away from the closed pane. It was December 1st and bitterly cold; the window hadn’t been open, she’d only had her forehead up against the glass. ‘Just being melodramatic,’ she added. She took herself over to the desk she’d been occupying, and flopped down in the chair in front of the large stack of papers.

She knew she had to put all of it away; she couldn’t bear to see it left for a secretary or lowly officer to shuffle together and shove in a drawer. What was worse, the squad of detectives that she had just lead to closing the city’s biggest manhunt in years, also knew that she couldn’t just leave it. That’s why she was there alone.

You don’t want to head out to the bar with us, Carol, not with all that mess left.

We know how you like things done properly.

You can reflect on a job well done as you file each piece away – each new piece of NYPD history.

We couldn’t have done it without you, Carol.

We’ll leave you to have a little moment for yourself.

You Vanderschanned the shit out of it!

They couldn’t wait to ditch her. She knew they just regarded her as some aging hippie, floating through life in her kaftans, riding on the back of fanciful ideas. She didn’t fit in with the look at Charlie’s Bar.

Yet Jonas Griffin had been cornered and shot before he could reach his twelfth victim, all thanks to her work as the composite artist.

So what? Not a single one of their hollow words of praise amounted to jack shit if they weren’t willing to buy her a drink.

Because that would be admitting that she was the decisive factor, the star of the show, and those eight male officers, from the acne-faced junior detective to the weather-worn and heavy-browed Captain Austin, would have to concede that it was a woman who cracked the case.

And that just didn’t happen in 1971. Particularly when she wasn’t even real police.

Carol was the only soul on the entire fourth floor. It was nearly 11pm and only the first two floors tended to keep hours after ten o’clock, unless there was an emergency of some magnitude.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.