Sir, please do not come this way

[trikotomy]

I came home from work the other night at around 11pm, on the bike, passing a whole lot of police cruisers and a line of flares blocking off a tow truck carrying an SUV. This is not unusual; mine is the route where drivers commonly do not feel the need to, say, pull out of traffic first to park and exit their cars, or in any way check for oncoming vehicles when using every lane (plus the bike lane…) to make a U-turn in their compact, so I'm quite used to passing a new disembodied headlight or no longer vertical sign each week on the notably uncomplicated road I take, and otherwise having my life threatened on a regular basis by the laziness and social networking of others. This vehicle, however, looked fine, and there seemed an unusual presence of police and other random vehicles. By the next intersection, a police roadblock closed the lane and a cop was waving traffic down the cross street. Well, I have no idea where that street goes or how to get home from it in the dark (checking google maps now, I'm vindicated to see it is indeed a curvy skein of madness) so I crossed to the other, unblocked side and used my supernatural bicycle powers to morph into a wheeled pedestrian to continue past the apparent accident area.

Well. It turns out the reason the other side wasn't blocked is because it actually was blocked in the other direction much further down, and this whole area was a Forbidden Zone. As I got further in and noticed the eerie absence of human life and more flares and police cruisers barricading each subsequent cross street, I picked up on that whole You Shouldn't Be Here feeling. This was confirmed when I noticed the FBI party van, then the canine unit, and then the loudspeaker declaring "THIS IS THE FREMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. REPEAT: STAY IN YOUR HOMES." Past the point of no return, I stealthily turned off my lights and coasted out the other side.

Turns out it was just a murder investigation.