Atmosphere Read Free Page B

sure?"
    "Hect, the blood. Look at it."    
    Hector Rodriguez turned around and silently motioned to one of his men with a wave of an arm. A young officer, maybe thirty years of age, trotted over. His badge read 'Muldoon'.
    "Officer Kevin Muldoon, this is Detective Frank Ballaro, from the 12th." The two men exchanged handshakes and then Hector said, "Kevin, bring a light. I want to check out the alley." Muldoon jogged away and returned with a halogen flashlight.
    "Kevin, we think the kid came from back there. We also think he was trying to escape from someone when the cab got him. Let's see if we can find anything."
    Muldoon nodded and the three cops entered the alley in a single file, Muldoon in the lead, flashlight in his left hand. Frank kept a hand on his holstered .45.
    They slowly shuffled forward, Frank at once feeling closed in; the cramped buildings snuffed out much of the growing light—it was probably dark here at midday—and the ominous gloom nearly swallowed up the flashlight beam. Litter blanketed the ground, newspapers, flattened cans, broken glass, candy wrappers, everything saturated with rain water. Their footsteps squashed over everything.
    Suddenly, from within the near-distant shadows, a pained whimper pitched forth.
    Muldoon stopped dead in his tracks. Frank glanced over his shoulder. "You hear that?"
    "Keep going, slowly," Hector said, pointing with his chin. He heard it.
    All of a sudden Hector's belted radio squelched, ripping apart the silence in the alley like a whistling firecracker. He grumbled a shit , fumbling to turn it off. As soon as the silence was resurrected, a sickly moan loomed as if in answer to the radio's cry. The three cops stood in position, listening to it as it leveled for a moment then tapered down into a gurgly cough before finally evaporating. The cry clearly claimed more pain than the unobtrusive snivel that preceded it, sounding like an animal with a leg snared in a hunter's trap.
    Muldoon held the flashlight high in attempt to get a better angle, waving it around in ovals. "I can't see anything."
    Frank tried to shove his lassitude aside, force some wheels spinning in his head. Throughout his career he had unwrapped numerous crimes clue by perplexing clue. But this? So far: blood led into an alley from where a naked, castrated man emerged in an obvious state of alarm, entrenched to the point where he ended up as a piece of road under the wheels of a cab. The poor bastard never so much as flinched before he was mowed down. And now, someone else here, hidden and hurt, someone who would no doubt provide another piece to an already intriguing puzzle.
    They stepped forward, one step, and then the next, slowly and carefully, Frank considering two possibilities: one, the moan came from the perpetrator, the individual guilty of the heinous castration, the presumed murderer. Assuming this to be a likelihood, extreme caution had to be necessitated, defensive postures set in effect. He pulled his gun, finger gently touching the trigger.
    Second, the unseen person could very well be a victim himself, henceforth requiring immediate medical assistance. This scenario, however, could not be trusted until an injured person in fact lay in their sights. Expect the worst, pray for the best.
    They inched closer. From Frank's vantage he could see in the beams of Muldoon's flashlight a chain link fence separating a courtyard from the alley. From the shadows he saw a large tree growing just beyond the fence on the other side. A park bench sat a few feet to the right under the tree. The crooked branches and leaves of additional trees swayed like ghosts in the distance, their wet dying leaves sending a static-like noise through the air. To the right, four battered aluminum trash cans hugged the alley wall like barnacles on a ship's hull.
    In the silence of the moment, Frank wondered if it could have been the fatigue shrouding his mind that concocted the pained cry—just as he