It was 1:07 pm and the man seated in the tall, leather chair was on his third cup of coffee. On the desk in front him the phone began to ring. It had been ringing off and on at irregular intervals for the better part of two hours and the man had been deliberately ignoring it. He hated phones. The idea of talking to someone without being able to see them was an utterly abhorrent concept to him. Had he his way in the matter he would have banished the accursed contraptions from his work as he had from the rest of his life. Unfortunately the rest of the world generally disagreed with his point of view on the subject, so it seemed that having his way, at least in this matter, was not meant to be.
The phone continued to ring. There was no voice mail, being that the only thing the man hated more than phones was listening to the messages people left on them, so the phone would continue to ring until he answered it or the person on the other end gave up. The case was usually the latter. Far too many of the calls placed to the man were “urgent” in nature. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time, the caller's definition of “urgent” differed wildly from his own. The first calls were always something along the lines of: “something’s happened, we’re not sure what just yet, and we don’t have all the facts straight, but we wanted you to know”. Then there would be several more calls to further elaborate on the continued lack of knowledge and understanding of the situation until, well after the initial incident, someone finally came along with something useful to say. Once the caller had something important to impart they usually became more persistent in trying to reach him. So the man behind the desk had decided long ago not to answer his phone until it became abundantly clear that the caller wasn't going to give up. It irritated the hell out of pretty much everyone; all of whom, incidentally, still continued to make their unnecessary calls despite knowing they would not be answered.
The phone continued to ring. Obviously this caller, whoever it was, was not going away. With a resigned sigh the man raised his finger and stabbed the big, blinking, orange button on the phone's face. He never, ever, used the handset.
“Hello?” said the voice on the other end. Mr. Sound also never spoke first.
“Yes.”
“Bill here sir. We have a situation.”
Mr. Sound smiled. He liked Bill. Bill was terse. He liked terse people, even though he himself was not one of them. He admired people who could resist the urge to elaborate unnecessarily and often lamented his own occasionally over-verbose nature. No one was perfect he supposed. He also liked Bill because Bill was not prone to wasting his time. He rarely called unless the call needed to be made. Mr. Sound tried his best not to play favorites with his agents but, if he had to choose, Bill would definitely be on the list.
“What sort of situation?” asked Mr. Sound.
“Three bodies, violently disemboweled, dead at least two hours. All adults, two men and one woman.” Bill sighed, “It’s a real mess, Clean Up’s going to have their hands full.”
“Do we have any suspects?”
“'Fraid not. Whatever did this is long gone. Looks to be some kind of small quadruped. Beyond that I can't say. I do know though that, whatever it was, it originated from here.”
“How do you mean?”
“It's final gestation occurred in the bathroom floor. I found a hole behind the toilet along with a trail of birthing residue.”
Mr. Sound leaned back in his chair and frowned; that was potentially problematic.
“Any idea as to how it got there?”
“Hard to say. This sort of thing is pretty unusual for this part of town. The younger of the three is the son of the other two and may have brought it in with him. He didn't live here so that makes him the most likely candidate. I didn't see anything overt on his person though, so we'll have to wait for the autopsy to see if he's had any recent contact. In the meantime I’ve got people tracing his movements prior to showing up here, but I’m not feeling very optimistic.”
“And why is that?”
“The kid was an alcoholic. Unemployed. Recently homeless. No friends. We might find someone who saw him but only if we’re lucky.”
“Witnesses?”
“A few neighbors heard some screaming and called the police. No one saw anything so that’s good. I’ve already called our man in the ICPD. He’s got things well in hand there. As for the neighbors…”
“Wipe them.”
“Are you sure? They didn’t actually see anything.”
“We can’t risk any unwanted inquiries down the road. Wipe them and put them to bed. It’s Sunday, they’ll think they just overslept.”
“You’re the boss,” said Bill, not sounding particularly pleased. “There’s one other thing.”
“And that would be?”
“As I said the thing finished gestating in the floor and the hole it made when it erupted was pretty small. When it escaped it went through a screen door on the back porch and the hole there is…” Bill paused, “It’s growing, fast.”
Mr. Sound’s frown deepened. “I want those lab results as soon as possible, Bill. We need to know what we’re dealing with. Make sure your relay what you’ve found to the police liaison too, there’s apt to be more deaths before this is over. I want us on the scene first from now on; no police presence if it can be avoided. Understood?”
“Absolutely,” said Bill and he hung up.
Mr. Sound rose and strode leisurely about his office. Something was wrong. It wasn't just the three dead bodies and their unknown killer; that in itself was not terribly unusual. There were plenty of nasty things in the world capable of eviscerating a human being with relative ease, indeed the list of possible assailants was too long for uninformed speculation, but something about Bill's description troubled him more than it should have. He ran his finger along the spines of his books, all carefully shelved and neatly arranged along the walls of his office, as he walked and pondered. There was something unnervingly familiar about the sequence of events, something similar that he'd run across before, almost as if he could feel a particular hand at work beneath the surface.
Mr. Sound walked back to his desk and thumbed the button on the intercom next to the phone.
“Elise?”
“Sir,” said the hollow but attractive voice from the box.
“Have someone track down Basil and send him to the lab right away. Bill Tin will be arriving there shortly with some samples. Have him brief Basil on the situation thus far. I’ll be on my way there shortly as well.”
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Sound paused the pressed the button again.
“And have records pull up all case files for the past five years, cross referenced with all redacted field agents since then and send the results to my personal database.”
“Will do, sir,” replied Elise.
Mr. Sound had a feeling about the direction things were heading. He very much hoped that he was wrong. It was, however, a faint hope given that he rarely was.
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