Snapshot

“Guess they decided they don’t want us getting too comfortable with that sort of thing,” Chaz said. “Hell, they don’t want IRL detectives in here. That’s why they send guys like us in the first place.”


The site of the mysterious call for the authorities—a call that wouldn’t come in the Snapshot for about another hour—was an old apartment building with tags and graffiti sprayed all over it. The broken and grimy windows proclaimed it wasn’t occupied these days.

“Doesn’t look like the kind of place I’d take a prostitute,” Davis noted.

“Like you’ve ever taken a prostitute anywhere,” Chaz said, shading his eyes and looking upward. “I know this area. It was nice once—these were probably expensive apartments.”

They walked up the steps, then tried the door, which was locked tight. Davis looked to Chaz, who shrugged and kicked the door in. “Damn,” he said. “That was easier than I thought it would be.”

“Feel like a real cop?”

“Getting there,” he said, then peeked into the hallway.

A quick search didn’t turn up anything. The ground floor apartments were open, doors unlocked, but they had been gutted and were empty save for the nest some homeless person had made beneath more spray-painted tags. Even the nest seemed like it hadn’t been used in months.

Something smelled off. Musty? Davis wandered back into the main stairwell—near the entry door—sniffing at the air.

Chaz started toward the stairs to the second floor. “There are like twenty stories in this place, Davis. If we have to search them all, so help me, you’ll owe me a burrito. Extra mustard.”

“Let’s try down first,” Davis said, catching Chaz and pulling him to a door in the lobby, cracked open with only darkness beyond. He pulled it fully open, revealing a stairway leading down. The smell was stronger. Musty dampness.

Chaz tried the light switch, but the building’s power was off. Davis dug out a small flashlight and shined it down the stairs.

“Convenient,” Chaz said, trying his phone, which wasn’t as good at providing light.

“Always used to carry a flashlight,” Davis said, starting down the steps. “IRL, as a detective. You’d be surprised at how often it came in handy.”

At the bottom of the steps was another door, which Chaz opened with a well-placed kick. Dampness wafted over them as they stepped into the basement, which had walls lined with broken mirrors. Some old exercise weights lay abandoned in the corner.

“See,” Chaz said, holding up his phone for light. “This place was fancy, once upon a time.”

Davis led the way through the basement gym, darting his light right, then left, growing nervous. But there didn’t seem to be anything down here. They might have to wait until the phone call was made—and the squad cars showed up—to find out what it was.

Chaz stayed close to him, directing his phone’s frail light. Perhaps the call had come because one of the floors had caved in or something. Wouldn’t that be fitting? Two washed-up detectives, killed in a fake world because they couldn’t be bothered to sit back and take a break.

Chaz poked his side, then pointed. Davis turned his flashlight in that direction, noticing a doorway in the wall. Light reflected off a tiled floor beyond. And beyond that . . .

“Water?” he said, striding forward. The musty smell suddenly made sense. “Swimming pool? How is it still full in this place?”

“Damned if I know,” Chaz said, walking with him into the room. It was a pool, moderately sized, considering it was in an apartment building basement. Davis put his hand on his hip, shining the light around. The pool was only partially full. There was no—

His flashlight passed over a face underneath the water.

Davis froze, holding the light on the dead, glassy eyes. Chaz cursed, fumbling for his gun, but Davis just stood there staring. She was young, maybe just a teen. Beside her was another body, settled on the bottom of the pool, facedown.

Shaking, Davis turned his flashlight more slowly across the bottom of the pool. Another. And another.

Corpses. Eight of them.





Three





“What the hell, man?” Chaz said. “What the hell!”

Davis sat on the steps of the apartment across the street from the one where they’d found the bodies.

“I mean . . . what the hell.” Chaz paced back and forth, handgun out. Davis couldn’t blame him. He clutched his own gun before him, feeling as if some murderer were going to pop out from behind the building, wielding a rusty cleaver.

“How did they keep this quiet?” Chaz demanded. “There are eight bodies in that building. Eight! How is this not on every news station in the city, right? How come they don’t have every cop in the city working on this? Damn it!”

He paced back the other direction.

I deserve this, Davis thought, slumped in his place. I should have just left well enough alone. All he’d wanted to do was keep Chaz in the Snapshot until 20:17. Now . . . this.

“Okay, Chaz,” Chaz said to himself, walking back the other way. “Okay, okay. They’re not real corpses, you know? Just dupes. Dead dupes. That’s all you saw.” He looked to Davis. “Davis? You okay, buddy?”

Davis held his gun in a trembling hand.

“Davis?” Chaz said. “What do we do now, man? You’re a real cop. What do we do?”

“I’m not a real cop,” Davis said softly.

“Yeah, not anymore. But you were one for . . . ten years?”

“I was on the force for ten years,” Davis said. “But I was never a real cop.”

Chaz, on the other hand, had been on the force for less than a year before being assigned to Snapshot duty to replace Davis’s old partner, who had finally retired.

“So, what do we do?” Chaz asked.