Sally's Story: The Book I Read

	A turn of the key and the pair were on their way, just the radio between them as Sally read out directions mentally. Weaving their way back inland from the shore towards the city’s administrative heart, past the mayor’s office and courthouse, they came to the humble library. The little building, more like a small church than anything else, was a relic. Built and rebuilt numerous times since before Beacon City was even a thing, it had served its role well. The glass double doors at the entrance, a far cry from its archaic original, welcomed the pair of detectives into a mute space.
	The air inside was dense but not stifling, more just stale air that the AC struggled to push around in the building. An older woman was leaning over a stack of papers in her lap, crooning silently to some bygone tune as she rifled through them, flourishing her pen before moving onto the next. Sally marched forward with purpose before Vincent held her back, approaching slowly and quietly, leaning over the wooden desk she was stationed at. The pair waited for her to look up from her humming and filing but, as she continued unperturbed, Vincent lightly knocked on the upper tier of the desk. The woman recoiled with a start, gasping lightly - the two recoiled thinking they’d fatally startled her but the woman chuckled as she looked between them.
	“Oh-ho! I love pulling that one on noisy people,” she laughed aloud. She quieted herself, embarrassed, as she continued. “How can I help you two?”
	“Afternoon ma’am, detectives la Fontaine and Sally, BCPD Ad Vice,” he started, flashing his badge. “We’d like to ask you some questions if you could help us.” She perked up, eyes wide: now was the time to be serious.
	“Anything you need detectives,” she said. “What exactly are you looking for?”
	“Sally?”
	“We have belief that a person of interest in our investigation may have checked out a book from this library, goes by the name of Daniel, surname not known. He rented ‘Childhood’s End’. Physical description is about the height of Detective la Fontaine here, narrow and tan. He has weak facial hair as well.”
	“Well my old memory can’t help you with anything like that,” she started. Swinging around and wheeling up to a row of filing cabinets behind her, though, she began tearing through them at a pace impressive even to Sally. Seizing a handful of papers she smacked her hand of cards in front of the detectives. “Here are all the current cards for every checked-out copy of that book, officers.” The two nodded, shuffling through the assorted pieces. Layers of white out and pen were thick on the papers, each new owner’s name scrawled on the cards. Sorting between them, the one lazily flicking past each one while the other mechanically sorted and separated them voraciously. Finished she watched her partner slowly slide each one past the next, sifting out the handful that were mildly helpful. With two piles finally together Vince and Sally started sorting through the minute handful of Daniels who’d happened to rent the same book in the same span of time.
	“Miss, do you happen to have registration information for these three?”
	“Registration? Renting a book ain’t like owning a car, son.”
	“I- Thank you. Anything, like an address or what have you.”
	“Yes, if they hold a library card we have that on file - if they don’t, you bet your behind they’re getting a letter from us about that overdue book!”
	“So you do have addresses, then?”
	“Yes, detective.”
	“Thank you,” he stopped, sighing. “That was what I was asking.”
	“Sir,” Sally interrupted.
	“Go- Yes?”
	“May I please have the cards?”
	“Sure, here.” As the two conversed blankly, Vincent driving towards some unknown investigative destination, Sally stepped backwards and removed the note she’d kept from the original scene. Glancing between each, scrutinizing them to her utmost. The other two were growing louder, heated now over Vincent’s perceived inefficiency in the system and the woman’s stalwart defense of it. Sally shook her head and continued, poring over each aged piece of cardstock, easily decades old. The fevered discussion, if it could be called that as the passive aggressive strayed into less-than-friendly, was interrupted by a little yelp from the robot as she kept looking between the note and the last piece of card.
	“What is it Sal?”
	“Well, Vincent, I’ve been looking over the handwriting on these and the note and I think I’ve identified a match.”
	“What are the fuggen odds,” he muttered, pacing over. “You sure about this?”
	“To a tolerance of ninety-five percent, yes. It’s what I was made for after all.”
	“I’m going to assume, safely I feel, that that luck won’t hold out.”
	“Understandable, Vincent.”
	“Are you two done yet,” the lady asked, eyeing Vincent. “I hope you’ve gotten what you need, detectives.”
	“We have, thank you. Come on Sally.” Sally nodded politely to the older woman as she returned the cards, the address she provided in turn safely stowed away on both paper and the whirring drives inside her.
	“Vincent, maybe, er- Perhaps it would be best if speaking with certain individuals was left to me?” Vincent either didn’t hear her or didn’t *want* to, twisting the key in the ignition sharply before peeling away. “Vincent?”
	“What’s the address you have Sal?” Reading it off Vincent sped away to the city’s southwest, away from the blight and sprawl of the city to the relatively calm (and safe) suburbs. It wouldn’t be the first time the Vice desk had brought him out there and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The suburbs were like so many layers of rubber, pushing harder and harder back upon any intrusion into their world until one penetrated into the heart of removal from the city, Hawthorne Grove. He’d had little experience inside the damned place but he knew by word of mouth just how ‘to themselves’ they wanted to keep. Mercifully, though, the address was nowhere near such a place and lay on the edge of the city, where most home-‘owners’ were renting.
	Pulling up the detectives had arrived, the beaten road was flanked on either side by rows of mediocre homes built during the boom after the war, and abandoned in the decades following to city dwellers unable to afford them and landowners unwilling to sell them - the flight from Beacon City was no different than anywhere else in the country and it showed. Homes were overgrown or just abandoned, windows broken and set with either cardboard or, for the wealthy, plywood. As the two approached their destination it was a surprise as to the immaculate state of the building, all things considered: unbroken windows, a groomed (if partially dead) lawn, nor any piles of conspicuous plastic furniture.
	Vincent stepped up the concrete stairs and gave a rapturous knock on the door, stepping back to wait next to Sally. A flutter of curtains in the corner of his eye failed to alert him, a pair of eyes or more now settling upon him as locks were silently undone and the front door was opened to them, the door chain allowing just a crack.
	“H-Hello,” a voice squeaked out from the inside. “How c-can I help you?”
	“Hello sir,” Vincent started. “We’re detectives la Fontaine and Sally, BCPD. We’d like to know if one Daniel Ruisenhaus resides here, he may have some information regarding an open investigation.”
	“O-Oh you meean Dan-nny? He’s uh, he’s, he’s… He’s off at wor-work right now, yep, ca-can we call you back officerrrs?”
	“Vincent, I believe this individual may be under the influence,” Sally whispered.
	“Yeah, definitely,” he returned. Shouting to the little crack in the door he continued. “Well friend if possible can we ask you some questions about your… roommate, would he be?”
	“Oh! Well, I, you see,” the voice began to stutter and spit, choking out syllables in an attempt to cover. “Excuse me for a minute.” The door slammed shut, the click of the bolts falling back into place louder and more pronounced now.
	“Fuckin-a, a runner,” Vincent spat. “Sally, pull the car around the back of the house, keep an eye on the windows.” In an instant Sally leapt for the driver’s seat and started the engine, swinging around to the next street over and watching the house vigilantly. Vincent approached the walls of the home, hand nestled in his jacket pocket as he began to pace the perimeter, keeping wary of windows and ducking beneath any calculated blind spot. He’d spent too long getting here to be careless now, he knew. Gun now at the ready he crept to the building’s rear, hopping the fence into a cloistered backyard, the screen door derelict and locked. He leaned against the home’s paneled sides, waiting for the next move, glancing over at Sally in the car between the neighbors’ homes. Like a bat out of hell a half-nude blur dived through the door screen and rolled into the backyard, picking up into a gallop as he launched himself forward with his arms.
	Rolling on the grass he vaulted the assorted lawn furniture and catapulted himself up and over the fence in the yard and into that of his neighbor. Sally took chase as he peeled up the street, the squeal of rubber on pavement ringing in Vince’s ears as he sprinted after the shirtless man, yelling at him to stop all the way. Running alongside the car Vince hopped on and slipped himself into the passenger’s seat through the window as Sally gunned the engine forward, the gap between them rapidly closing. And then, still chasing the man all the way to the canals, the man disappeared down a storm drain in one fluid motion, not even a chance to give fire or call for backup. Sally swerved the car into position right next to the drain as Vincent, ran back out, swinging his head left and right for other witnesses, accomplices, any one who was in the radius of the man’s acrobatic escape. Vincent sighed deeply.
	“Sir,” Sally began, removing the suit coat and rolling her sleeves up. “You think you can fit?”
	“I- I’m not sure.”
	“Well I know I can, call it in. I’ll give chase and apprehend the individual.” Vincent groaned, aching over whether to send brand new and fragile equipment into the sewers, or let an active escapee now have free reign over the sewers of Beacon City. Sighing again, he relented, dropping a chunky walkie talkie into Sally’s slender hands.
“Not much else we can do,” he said. “See you on the other side.”