Mustangs Part One a Shadow Unit Fanfic story
Prologue
“Unit 5 responding to the call at 12067 MacArthur Blvd.” Ed set the handset back into the cradle with a long, thin arm. His shirtsleeves were stained with sweat despite the air conditioning.
“--nit 5, acknowl. . .” crackled back over the radio.
The two paramedics looked at each other. This was their fourth call in the past three hours. So far their night had included a heart attack, an overprotective mom whose son had had a nose bleed, and two senior citizens that had refused to go to the hospital after a jarring fender-bender.
“Too bad they can’t get us a decent radio. I swear someday we'll miss something important and it'll be our asses that'll be in the sling.” The larger man shook his head as he put the ambulance in gear without moving his tanned left arm off its perch against the closed window. “Tell me something, Ed. Why is it that when the moon is full we always seem three times as busy?”
“Well, Ralph, you could always try driving . . .” He was interrupted by Ralph's soft exclamation.
“What the hell . . .?”
Ed looked out just in time to glimpse a young woman in a billowing white dress dash headlong across the street a few yards in front of their hood. He blinked and she was gone, swallowed up by an unlit alley. No sound had penetrated the soft hiss of the air conditioning. The speed, the silence, the white dress floating like wings behind her-- it seemed almost surreal. Then the picture solidified itself in his mind; his trained observer's instincts were taking over. The trailing fabric--her dress had been torn. And had that been blood on her back?
“Holy crap.” Ed grabbed the handset. “This is Unit 5; we have a white female at . . .”
Once again Ed was interrupted. Ralph swore loudly and twisted the wheel. There was an impact that felt like hitting a wall. The ambulance spun, the world rocked, tires and brakes screeched. Then, almost as suddenly as it had all began, everything was quiet. Even the engine had died.
Ed clawed the deflating airbag out of the way, trying frantically to see what they had hit, whether anybody in the other vehicle was hurt. It had to have been another vehicle, from the force of the impact. It had to be. So maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or maybe the airbag had hit him hard enough to scramble his vision, because when he looked out to see what they had struck he saw it and it was looking back at him. And that look was not human. It couldn’t be. Nothing human could get up and run off down an alley after being hit by an ambulance moving 35 mph.
***
Act I
The white was already peeling off the newly painted wall, leaving gray patches that looked like dirt. The ceiling fan turned slowly, casting shadows that reminded Detective Brady of a guillotine. It was bad enough that outside the Dallas sun was beating down on the hard concrete, but with the recent cutbacks in the city budget the temp in the detectives’ room was approaching 90. The stack of case files to his right, the open cases, was showing no signs of shrinking any time soon. They were as much an indicator of the increased crime as the thermometer was of the temperature.
The room was emptying out as lunch time approached. It was too hot to be hungry, but the thought of a cup of coffee in an air-conditioned restaurant was tempting.
“Hey, Brady, you coming to eat or are you planning on losing a few more pounds in the sauna?” It was Det. Reynolds, who was demonstrating his mastery of the art of speaking with a toothpick hanging off his lower lip.
Brady looked over at the toothpick and tapped the stack of files. “Want to try and catch up a bit.”
“Asskisser, ain't gonna help when the next round of promotions comes.” He laughed softly as he stepped out into the street.
“Fuck you, loser,” Brady replied to the closing door. He hated having unfinished work, unfiled papers, even loose paperclips, on his desk. He liked his workspace neat and clean. But even as he reached for the top of the stack, he hesitated. Instead, he pulled open a desk drawer, the bottom right-hand one whose warped wood always stuck a bit. The file inside had grown quite a bit in the last week. It wasn't an official case; it was more like a collection of supposedly unrelated events--but the more he looked for things to add to it, the more he found. He opened it up and flipped through, glancing at dates. Jan 20, Feb 19, Mar 19, Apr 18, May 18, Jun 16, Jul 16. People going missing on and around those dates. Not so unusual until you notice that they all lived on MacArthur Boulevard in Irving. Connect that to the fact that the dates are all full moons and you have some very weird shit happening.
He glanced at the desk calendar. Today was the 13th of August already. The next full moon was coming up fast. “Irving, Texas, here I come. Hmm. I wonder if there's any place around here I can buy silver bullets.” He chuckled to himself as he stepped out into the furnace of the Dallas streets.
***
One of the things Brady loved about living in the south was no road salt. Most of the cars sitting in the garage could almost have just been driven off the lot. That included his own little indulgence. Sure, it was almost 30 years old now. And just as lovely as the day she was made. ’66 Ford Mustang. V8. 5 speed, of course.
Brady backed out of the stall, pointed her nose down the ramp, and let her float down in first gear. The V-8's power vibrated gently through the leather-wrapped steering wheel, but no sound penetrated the interior of the car. He relaxed into the silence. By the time he reached the street three levels below, there was a faint but definite smile on his face that he probably would have sincerely denied.
He pulled out into the street, winced, and hastily put his forgotten sunglasses on. The A/C was already roaring. Okay, so there were some bad things about living in the south, as well as good. Sunglasses, broad-brimmed hat on the seat, filled water bottle next to it--these were the perpetual armor and weapons one carried to fight the heat. A little different than Don Quixote's sword and shield, but just as important. And, Brady liked to think, he was fighting the same good fight.
The car settled onto the highway and Brady's mind settled into business. The drive to Irving was short, not more than 20 minutes, but it gave him enough time to think the facts of the case through one more time.
1) In the last seven months, seven people with addresses on or near McArthur Boulevard had been reported missing.
2) MacArthur Blvd. started, on the north, at the Vista Ridge Mall and ran about 17 miles ending just north of Mountain Creek Lake.
3) In that 17 miles were 3 county clubs, 3 large lakes and about 4 small ones. Also there were a number parks, homes and strip malls. To top it off, the Dallas airport was just west of the road.
4) The missing people were both male and female and ranged in age from 16 to 26. Besides their relative youth, they didn't seem to have anything else in common. Unless you wanted to consider it a commonality that they were all, at this point, presumed missing, not dead. No bodies had turned up. Yet.
The cases hadn't piqued his interest until after reading the report from those two paramedics, from July 16th. They said they had hit something and the front of the ambulance confirmed it. Just what it was, no one was sure. The brown fibers pulled from the grill were short and soft. Fur, not hair. No one was going to pay for a DNA test on a dog or coyote that had the lack of brains to run across the street in front of an ambulance and the luck to survive. Even if the paramedics swore it was a person, not a dog. Even if the woman it was apparently chasing was nowhere to be found. Even if that woman matched the description of someone later reported missing.
Brady had been putting his own profile together on this. It seemed likely to him that the perpetrator was running on the latest designer drug and pumped full of adrenalin; 98-pound-mom-lifts-car-off-baby type of strength. Drugs did funny things; he'd seen skinny teenage kids have to be held down by four officers with donut-enhanced physiques. This guy was probably taking purses and wallets to keep up his habit and bringing his dog along with him to keep the victim quiet. The paramedics had hit the dog, seen the perp, and gotten the two confused. Hell, he thought, he won’t need silver bullets for this one; his standard clip would do just fine. And if not, he always carried a second clip. And a third.
**
5205 N. O'Connor Drive, Williams Square, was his destination. Brady had gotten a hold of one of the paramedics who had written that report. Could they meet and talk about the July 16th incident? Ed didn’t want any part of it at first. “Ralph and I get enough Honeymooner jokes; I don’t need nut case added to the list.” The detective had persisted and Ed had finally agreed to meet Brady alone, some place where they could talk without the rest of his crew knowing.
“I can meet you at the Mustangs,” Brady had suggested without thinking twice. "Tomorrow at one."
“Fine, but not for long, and one joke out of you and I’m out of there!” was the reply. And now here Brady was. Hopefully Ed would be, too. He glanced at his watch as he pulled into a space by the square. Five minutes early. Good. He liked to be early.
The heat blasted him again as he settled his hat on his head and left the car. As he approached the Mustangs, a light breeze carried a little spray into his face. If you squinted at the water a little, it was a damn good illusion. Nine bronze mustangs, one-and-a-half times life size, forever frozen as they galloped across an artificial stream. The horses were beautifully done, but it was the fountains playing at their feet, the water being kicked up by splashing hooves that never really moved, that created such a feeling of energy and life. Brady found himself reminded of the time he had played the role of the gentleman caller in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. He had spent long hours taking that great piece and breathing life into it--and in the end, of course, what he had done was splash through the waters of someone else's life without truly being in it.
Brady suddenly realized he had been standing and staring at the Mustangs for several minutes. He felt a little silly, letting a few tons of metal and a pool of water distract him like that. He turned his mind firmly back to the business of checking out the area. There wasn't much going on; the heat was keeping most people indoors. His watch told him it was five after one. Ed was late, or maybe not showing. It figured.
The only other person in the square was a young girl, maybe 14, sitting on the opposite side of the pond. She was pale for a Texan in summer, so pale that her yellow sundress seemed almost dark against her skin. Her reddish-blond hair was bobbing as she moved her head to some rhythm he couldn't hear. Probably she had a walkman in her lap, under that big sketchpad she was so busily drawing on. She never seemed to actually look at the paper, though; her eyes never left the Mustangs. Brady couldn't imagine the picture being very good.
He walked around the pool toward her, stepping over the stream where it narrowed. As he approached she put her pencil down and sat motionless, still staring at the sculpture. Her drawing, to Brady's surprise, was lovely. Beautifully detailed and proportioned, the mustangs on the paper seemed far more alive than the bronzes in front of her.
“Hello?” said a small soft voice that drew his attention back to the girl. “Can I help you, sir?”
One thing about most kids in Texas--they still said "sir" and "ma’am" when talking to an older person. Some kids did it with an obvious mocking tone, but Brady could tell this girl meant the respect the words were supposed to demonstrate.
“Good afternoon, young lady. Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”
“They told me I could talk to policemen. You are a policeman, aren’t you?” She had turned and was looking toward him, but not really at him. More like straight through him.
“Unit 5 responding to the call at 12067 MacArthur Blvd.” Ed set the handset back into the cradle with a long, thin arm. His shirtsleeves were stained with sweat despite the air conditioning.
“--nit 5, acknowl. . .” crackled back over the radio.
The two paramedics looked at each other. This was their fourth call in the past three hours. So far their night had included a heart attack, an overprotective mom whose son had had a nose bleed, and two senior citizens that had refused to go to the hospital after a jarring fender-bender.
“Too bad they can’t get us a decent radio. I swear someday we'll miss something important and it'll be our asses that'll be in the sling.” The larger man shook his head as he put the ambulance in gear without moving his tanned left arm off its perch against the closed window. “Tell me something, Ed. Why is it that when the moon is full we always seem three times as busy?”
“Well, Ralph, you could always try driving . . .” He was interrupted by Ralph's soft exclamation.
“What the hell . . .?”
Ed looked out just in time to glimpse a young woman in a billowing white dress dash headlong across the street a few yards in front of their hood. He blinked and she was gone, swallowed up by an unlit alley. No sound had penetrated the soft hiss of the air conditioning. The speed, the silence, the white dress floating like wings behind her-- it seemed almost surreal. Then the picture solidified itself in his mind; his trained observer's instincts were taking over. The trailing fabric--her dress had been torn. And had that been blood on her back?
“Holy crap.” Ed grabbed the handset. “This is Unit 5; we have a white female at . . .”
Once again Ed was interrupted. Ralph swore loudly and twisted the wheel. There was an impact that felt like hitting a wall. The ambulance spun, the world rocked, tires and brakes screeched. Then, almost as suddenly as it had all began, everything was quiet. Even the engine had died.
Ed clawed the deflating airbag out of the way, trying frantically to see what they had hit, whether anybody in the other vehicle was hurt. It had to have been another vehicle, from the force of the impact. It had to be. So maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or maybe the airbag had hit him hard enough to scramble his vision, because when he looked out to see what they had struck he saw it and it was looking back at him. And that look was not human. It couldn’t be. Nothing human could get up and run off down an alley after being hit by an ambulance moving 35 mph.
***
Act I
The white was already peeling off the newly painted wall, leaving gray patches that looked like dirt. The ceiling fan turned slowly, casting shadows that reminded Detective Brady of a guillotine. It was bad enough that outside the Dallas sun was beating down on the hard concrete, but with the recent cutbacks in the city budget the temp in the detectives’ room was approaching 90. The stack of case files to his right, the open cases, was showing no signs of shrinking any time soon. They were as much an indicator of the increased crime as the thermometer was of the temperature.
The room was emptying out as lunch time approached. It was too hot to be hungry, but the thought of a cup of coffee in an air-conditioned restaurant was tempting.
“Hey, Brady, you coming to eat or are you planning on losing a few more pounds in the sauna?” It was Det. Reynolds, who was demonstrating his mastery of the art of speaking with a toothpick hanging off his lower lip.
Brady looked over at the toothpick and tapped the stack of files. “Want to try and catch up a bit.”
“Asskisser, ain't gonna help when the next round of promotions comes.” He laughed softly as he stepped out into the street.
“Fuck you, loser,” Brady replied to the closing door. He hated having unfinished work, unfiled papers, even loose paperclips, on his desk. He liked his workspace neat and clean. But even as he reached for the top of the stack, he hesitated. Instead, he pulled open a desk drawer, the bottom right-hand one whose warped wood always stuck a bit. The file inside had grown quite a bit in the last week. It wasn't an official case; it was more like a collection of supposedly unrelated events--but the more he looked for things to add to it, the more he found. He opened it up and flipped through, glancing at dates. Jan 20, Feb 19, Mar 19, Apr 18, May 18, Jun 16, Jul 16. People going missing on and around those dates. Not so unusual until you notice that they all lived on MacArthur Boulevard in Irving. Connect that to the fact that the dates are all full moons and you have some very weird shit happening.
He glanced at the desk calendar. Today was the 13th of August already. The next full moon was coming up fast. “Irving, Texas, here I come. Hmm. I wonder if there's any place around here I can buy silver bullets.” He chuckled to himself as he stepped out into the furnace of the Dallas streets.
***
One of the things Brady loved about living in the south was no road salt. Most of the cars sitting in the garage could almost have just been driven off the lot. That included his own little indulgence. Sure, it was almost 30 years old now. And just as lovely as the day she was made. ’66 Ford Mustang. V8. 5 speed, of course.
Brady backed out of the stall, pointed her nose down the ramp, and let her float down in first gear. The V-8's power vibrated gently through the leather-wrapped steering wheel, but no sound penetrated the interior of the car. He relaxed into the silence. By the time he reached the street three levels below, there was a faint but definite smile on his face that he probably would have sincerely denied.
He pulled out into the street, winced, and hastily put his forgotten sunglasses on. The A/C was already roaring. Okay, so there were some bad things about living in the south, as well as good. Sunglasses, broad-brimmed hat on the seat, filled water bottle next to it--these were the perpetual armor and weapons one carried to fight the heat. A little different than Don Quixote's sword and shield, but just as important. And, Brady liked to think, he was fighting the same good fight.
The car settled onto the highway and Brady's mind settled into business. The drive to Irving was short, not more than 20 minutes, but it gave him enough time to think the facts of the case through one more time.
1) In the last seven months, seven people with addresses on or near McArthur Boulevard had been reported missing.
2) MacArthur Blvd. started, on the north, at the Vista Ridge Mall and ran about 17 miles ending just north of Mountain Creek Lake.
3) In that 17 miles were 3 county clubs, 3 large lakes and about 4 small ones. Also there were a number parks, homes and strip malls. To top it off, the Dallas airport was just west of the road.
4) The missing people were both male and female and ranged in age from 16 to 26. Besides their relative youth, they didn't seem to have anything else in common. Unless you wanted to consider it a commonality that they were all, at this point, presumed missing, not dead. No bodies had turned up. Yet.
The cases hadn't piqued his interest until after reading the report from those two paramedics, from July 16th. They said they had hit something and the front of the ambulance confirmed it. Just what it was, no one was sure. The brown fibers pulled from the grill were short and soft. Fur, not hair. No one was going to pay for a DNA test on a dog or coyote that had the lack of brains to run across the street in front of an ambulance and the luck to survive. Even if the paramedics swore it was a person, not a dog. Even if the woman it was apparently chasing was nowhere to be found. Even if that woman matched the description of someone later reported missing.
Brady had been putting his own profile together on this. It seemed likely to him that the perpetrator was running on the latest designer drug and pumped full of adrenalin; 98-pound-mom-lifts-car-off-baby type of strength. Drugs did funny things; he'd seen skinny teenage kids have to be held down by four officers with donut-enhanced physiques. This guy was probably taking purses and wallets to keep up his habit and bringing his dog along with him to keep the victim quiet. The paramedics had hit the dog, seen the perp, and gotten the two confused. Hell, he thought, he won’t need silver bullets for this one; his standard clip would do just fine. And if not, he always carried a second clip. And a third.
**
5205 N. O'Connor Drive, Williams Square, was his destination. Brady had gotten a hold of one of the paramedics who had written that report. Could they meet and talk about the July 16th incident? Ed didn’t want any part of it at first. “Ralph and I get enough Honeymooner jokes; I don’t need nut case added to the list.” The detective had persisted and Ed had finally agreed to meet Brady alone, some place where they could talk without the rest of his crew knowing.
“I can meet you at the Mustangs,” Brady had suggested without thinking twice. "Tomorrow at one."
“Fine, but not for long, and one joke out of you and I’m out of there!” was the reply. And now here Brady was. Hopefully Ed would be, too. He glanced at his watch as he pulled into a space by the square. Five minutes early. Good. He liked to be early.
The heat blasted him again as he settled his hat on his head and left the car. As he approached the Mustangs, a light breeze carried a little spray into his face. If you squinted at the water a little, it was a damn good illusion. Nine bronze mustangs, one-and-a-half times life size, forever frozen as they galloped across an artificial stream. The horses were beautifully done, but it was the fountains playing at their feet, the water being kicked up by splashing hooves that never really moved, that created such a feeling of energy and life. Brady found himself reminded of the time he had played the role of the gentleman caller in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. He had spent long hours taking that great piece and breathing life into it--and in the end, of course, what he had done was splash through the waters of someone else's life without truly being in it.
Brady suddenly realized he had been standing and staring at the Mustangs for several minutes. He felt a little silly, letting a few tons of metal and a pool of water distract him like that. He turned his mind firmly back to the business of checking out the area. There wasn't much going on; the heat was keeping most people indoors. His watch told him it was five after one. Ed was late, or maybe not showing. It figured.
The only other person in the square was a young girl, maybe 14, sitting on the opposite side of the pond. She was pale for a Texan in summer, so pale that her yellow sundress seemed almost dark against her skin. Her reddish-blond hair was bobbing as she moved her head to some rhythm he couldn't hear. Probably she had a walkman in her lap, under that big sketchpad she was so busily drawing on. She never seemed to actually look at the paper, though; her eyes never left the Mustangs. Brady couldn't imagine the picture being very good.
He walked around the pool toward her, stepping over the stream where it narrowed. As he approached she put her pencil down and sat motionless, still staring at the sculpture. Her drawing, to Brady's surprise, was lovely. Beautifully detailed and proportioned, the mustangs on the paper seemed far more alive than the bronzes in front of her.
“Hello?” said a small soft voice that drew his attention back to the girl. “Can I help you, sir?”
One thing about most kids in Texas--they still said "sir" and "ma’am" when talking to an older person. Some kids did it with an obvious mocking tone, but Brady could tell this girl meant the respect the words were supposed to demonstrate.
“Good afternoon, young lady. Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”
“They told me I could talk to policemen. You are a policeman, aren’t you?” She had turned and was looking toward him, but not really at him. More like straight through him.