Books

Albert Schultz bent down to get his paper and saw a nude corpse on the sidewalk. It was five a.m. Still dark, the body dimly lit by a street lamp some thirty feet away.

         Schultz ran back into his apartment and called 911.

         The dispatcher picked up his call.

         “Where are you?” she asked.

         He gave her his address on Cole Street. It was a good neighborhood in the Haight, away from all the craziness a few blocks away.

         “Are you safe?”

         “Yes. But there’s a naked body on the sidewalk.”

         That threw her for a few seconds.

         “In front of our apartment building,” he added.

         “Are you sure the person is dead?”

         “No,” he admitted.

         “I’m going to send an ambulance. I would advise you to stay in your house until it gets there.”

         “I intend to,” he said.

         But then he got curious. He decided to see what he could see from the front stoop. He went to his bookcase and grabbed his binoculars.  Came back and turned on a floodlight.

         It was a female. 

         He watched her closely to see if she was breathing. No. She was face down, with a big gash on her neck. His hands began to shake.  He lowered the binocs. Am I going to throw up? Deep breaths, he told himself. Summoning his courage, he peered through them again.  He focused on her back and ribs to detect any sign of breathing. Nothing. He looked at the rest of her. There was something on her hip. Initials?  He refocused until he could make them out. L and K.

         The slashed throat, the branding of initials. Both were signatures of The Death Valley Gang, he remembered.  

         He stumbled out of the kitchen and hustled into the bedroom. Time to wake Bea before an ambulance blared its siren and . . .