November 1, 2015

Pier 64 was closed, and Detective Fog was alone with her revolver and her broken iPhone. She walked down Twentieth Street after the Muni tram deposited her on Third Street. It had taken her almost an hour, another hour of life that Paul Aniston might not have had left. Though bruised, she hobbled quickly down the street. In multiple places, her bones ached, her muscles complained stiffly, and every part of her body promised to whine more about it tomorrow.

Speed was on her mind, but not enough to run. It was also necessary to look out for anyone else in the street, but she saw no one. Twentieth was a wasteland of parking lots and warehouses, construction sites for new condos, and strange industrial buildings that didn't belong in a city, much less between a city and its waterfront. On her way in, she had passed the occasional patch of green and brown bush behind No Trespassing signs and lengths of rickety chain link and iron sheet fencing.

Truck depots with blast doors attracted the only life she had come across; the shelter provided by the half-foot lip promised to keep the rain that may or may not be coming back off the heads of the less fortunate.

And then there was the brewpub, and suddenly the image of apocalyptic shadiness became a hipster's paradise. Inside the white light and high ceilings of an old warehouse, six different IPAs brewed in large tanks, barkeeps served a dozen craft beers at the bar, and some remix of Daft Punk's Around the World spewed into the night. The IPAs called to her, but so did Paul, dead or alive.

At the entrance to Pier 64, she found the red lettering of the old Bae Systems building. Down the road to the next warehouse, it was dark. The lights were all off on the side facing the road, as was to be expected. She slinked to the edge of the warehouse until she came to an alleyway between it and the neighboring one. Down that, she crept until she did see light coming from one window.

Now to find a door.

Around the corner of the building, Detective Fog came to an intersection of identical warehouses. She found the closed blast door entrance into the building Stink had told her about. There was no getting it open. Beyond that was a heavy metal door, also locked. She shook the handle on the door with furious passion, but nothing moved.

When she gave up on that, she stepped back several steps, hesitated for several seconds, looked ahead and behind for anyone who would come running when they heard the blast, and decided to go for it. Surreptitiously, though she didn't need to touch it, she felt for the brass ring on her right index finger with her left hand. Felt it there as always, cold and wiry, rigid and familiar. Jason Nakos must have had such a ring too.

Just as Jason Nakos had sent Detective Fog flying into the night sky, Detective Fog made the door soar. The sound of metal tearing from the metal frame was a scream in the silence, and an explosion crash made a second rip through Malyssa's eardrums when it landed.

No time to lose, and surely not enough to fret about her illegal magic use, she entered the building. No lights were on in the hallway, but the lit room she had passed outside had a window that shone light for her to see by. She drew her gun and crept closer. The noise of the door blasting off its hinges would have been easy to hear, and whoever heard it would either ambush her or charge unless Paul's kidnapper was a deaf mafioso.

Could happen.

No one came at her, and time was beginning to race by. She didn't waste much when she went to the room with the light on but peeked around the window frame immediately. The light came through, but she saw immediately that fogged glass prevented any real shapes from being made out, only blurs, and blurs that currently weren't moving. From the other side, though, her blur's movement would be visible, so she popped backward and then ducked low and walked underneath the windowsill, alert as a wild animal with perked ears.

Finally, the row of windows ended, and she came to a door. She took the handle and latch in both hands and tried it, ready to pull the door open as soon as the latch let the lock free and storm into the room to whatever trap or ambush waited for her, but of course, this door was locked too.

From feet away, the pounding of her heart was audible. A second time she backed away from a locked door, her revolver now held high, waiting for anyone on the other side of it.

The door swung open, a gentle, soundless arc, and came to a graceful stop before softly touching against the wall behind. Malyssa's finger pulled so hard on the trigger it almost fired, almost gave under the force of her trigger finger. It was a good thing she was half an ounce short on the necessary force to slam the hammer home because Paul Aniston stood in the doorway, having just opened the door.

Paul hardly looked worse for wear. It seemed likely he hadn't slept in twenty-four hours, given his baggy eyes and the stupor on his slack face despite the tense situation. He was a little pale, as if underfed, but apparently uninjured at this point.

"P— Paul!" Malyssa stammered. He didn't say anything in reply.

There was a gunshot blast, near enough to detonate in Malyssa's eardrums, but her revolver remained unfired in her two hands. In slow motion, she dropped it to the ground seconds after Paul dropped similarly to the concrete, a hole through his right eye blasted from behind. A second ago, he had still been alive; now, he slumped slack on the ground. Viscous blood drained into a pool that drowned his face.

Malyssa's fingers scrambled for her gun as she dropped low after it, her head held high, looking from Paul to the room beyond. She saw no one but heard the sound of footsteps running off at a full sprint to the right, in the direction she had come into the room, parallel to the hall she came down. Their footsteps echoed until they faded from hearing. Her hand closed around the revolver, and she got up to give chase.

As soon as she darted into the room, she had to stop, get low again, and look around for traps — tracking her gun along with her gaze as she scanned — a severe disadvantage against the fleeing murderer.

The rush of blood gushing in her head and making ocean sounds became a distraction. Every second more images ambushed her: her own body riddled with cartoonish bullet holes, a dozen of them you could see right through, and Paul's face before and after his head was opened up with a hole bored in it.

A few dangling light bulbs lit the high-ceilinged room, and not much was visible behind heavy machinery and crates piled high and the swinging shadows of machinery and containers.

Crouched low, Malyssa began to hobble backward, one foot before the other, until her back came up against the wall next to the door through which Paul sprawled. Her eyes darted from the corners to the spaces between axles to the moving shadows and back again. Without taking her eyes off the scene, she got her phone out of her pocket by touch, unlocked it, hushed her panting breath for a second, and dared herself to look down at the screen so she could dial 911.

Paul's killer was getting away while she waited for the real cops to arrive. Thoughts spun in her head. Was it just in her head, or had the murderers waited for her personally to arrive before committing the deed?

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. Please leave a star for our heroine on your way passing through. Your support means the world, the universe, and all the stars in it.