Prey In The Dark

Chapter the 2nd: What goes around…

The pictures were strewn haphazardly across the ancient metal desk. Someone in the building probably remembered what the original color of the paint had been, but no one could think of who that might be. Moonlight struggled through the dirt and grime encrusting the narrow windows set high in the wall, a pale and wan glow in the dark room. Erin pushed back the errant strand of hair that insisted on escaping her severe bun and rubbed her tired eyes. Harsh white light from the gooseneck lamp on the far corner of the desk glared back at her from the glossy surfaces of the pictures. Black and white newspaper file photos mixed with fuzzy, color Polaroids and the occasional professional-grade picture. She slowly shuffled them around on the desktop like a gypsy fortune-teller, not really looking at them, almost feeling her way to some kind of pattern amidst the scattered images. Lost in thought, she didn’t notice the long-fingered hand extend from the shadows to land heavily across her shoulder.
She managed not to scream, but the photographs flew wildly over the top of the desk, some whipping out of the circle of light and disappearing in the darkness as she reached for a gun that wasn’t there.
“Erin, go home already.”
“For the love of God, Terry Paul! Don’t DO that!” She reached up irritably and slapped his hand away.
“Partner mine, you aren’t going to find anything in the next hour you haven’t found in the previous six” her partner said, bending over to pick up some of the scattered pictures. “Not that you’re likely to get much sleep after staring at this lot. “You have a helluva taste in bedtime stories” he said, fanning several of them and grimacing slightly at the mutilated bodies mixed with wildlife photography of wolf kills and close-ups of different breeds of wolves. “You have a phobia about technology or what? The digital archives are a hell of a lot easier to search and organize.”
“I’m just old-fashioned that way” she said scooping the pictures into a small pile and sorting them by size.
“I’ll say. I don’t think I’ve ever been down here. I don’t think anyone has been down here since maybe Tommy Edison.”
“Smartass” she replied without heat. “Sometimes the old ways are best.”
“Some time after the industrial revolution would be nice.”
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