The Present
The alley between the two brick buildings was long and dirty and looked eerily insalubrious in the grimy light that shone from the street lamps on either end.
Sirens in the distance wailed like hyenas being skinned alive by psychotic pygmies and roasted over an open flame.
The back door to one of the buildings flew open suddenly, quicker than a cricket fart, and a good-looking woman, 30ish, in lingerie came running out, Special Agent Kali Swan who’d been undercover as a topless dancer, covered in blood and carrying an ominous looking dagger in one hand. She made a fast “clip, clip, clipping” sound as she took off running in her lingerie and stiletto heels for the nearest end of the narrow passageway; but not fast enough to escape the razor-sharp eyes of Homicide Detective John Ryan who burst out the door behind her.
He was a good-looking man for a grizzled homicide investigator. His years on the job had hardened his appearance as well as his heart from the tender years of his youth back on the farm in Kansas with the cows, the chickens, and the sheep. He held his service weapon in his hand like a crack-shot gunslinger of old, or perhaps just a working actor in a modern-day Western. Special agent Kali Swan was an attractive woman, standing just less than 5 feet 3 inches tall, barely more than enough to meet the FBI’s height requirement for female agents. She weighed 135 pounds give or take a few pounds. She was muscular but not manly which accounted for a good amount of her BMI and she was chesty, more than the average female.
“Kali, stop,” he said, a mixture of determination and a pang of torment in his voice.
But Swan didn’t stop instantly, not at Ryan’s command anyway.
Instead, exactly at that same twinkling one of her heels turned and broke which caused her to stumble a bit but not to fall. She was an athletic woman who had ably participated in several sports in college and had excellent balance to start with, and being on the stripper pole undercover had not only toned her calves and thighs but refined her balance even more.
“Shit!” she said reacting to the broken heel and then stopped and turned back toward Ryan, the bloody dagger still in her hand.
Ryan raised his service weapon even more and pointed it directly at her. “Put the knife down, Kali,” he shouted. “Ryan... It’s me,” Swan said.
“You threw a human head at me... the head of my superior officer!” Ryan said. “And you’re holding the knife you used to decapitate him.”
“He’d been bitten and was turned,” Swan said desperately.
“I mean it Kali,” Ryan said, “Put the knife down!”
“You saw what was happening in there, Ryan,” she said. “I only did what I had to do!”
“I witnessed you behead a dozen people,” Ryan countered quickly attempting to hide the vexation in his mind and pain in his heart.
“Collateral damage...” Swan said, not very convincingly.
Ryan deepened his voice to sound more demanding and perhaps as a way to bolster himself. “Put the knife down now and get on the ground, Agent Swan!”
Swan started to turn her body away from Ryan as if she might run run but then hesitated and didn’t finish the turn to which Ryan became very forceful, “Do it!”
Swan however continued to act as if she might run, obviously conflicted.
“Now!” Ryan yelled.
Swan bolted, suddenly; whether she'd deliberately made up her mind or instinct just took over she ran.
“I’ll shoot!” Ryan shouted.
Swan continued to run.
Ryan yelled after her, “I don’t care what happened between us, goddammit! I will shoot!”
But Swan continued to run.
Ryan fired.
Swan fell face first onto the dirty concrete surface of the alley and the impact loosened the bloody dagger from her hand and sent it skittling across the alley, twisting and turning and clinking and whirling sort of like a metal Chinese Ninja star until it finally came to rest under a flattened cardboard box.
“Dammit!” Ryan said as he slowly walked toward her, his firearm still trained on her. “Dammit!”
