CHAPTER 6

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, PART II

4-16-2001

"God it's cold out tonight, sir." The rookie said to the Detective.

"Look, I told you, call me Harry, or call me Mister Anderson, but don't be calling me sir. Makes me feel like I'm old."

"Sorry, si.... Harry."

The rookie took a sip of his coffee, affording the Detective a chance to glance at him again. Barely out of the academy, barely out of training on the street, and already riding with a detective, as per the mayor's new directive on giving the rookies more in the field training, in light of all going on lately.

"I heard that you know more about I than anyone else, sort of made it your personal vendetta to catch him..." the rookie began.

"You heard right. I want to catch him more than anyone. What he's doing to this city is sickening, turning it into his own hunting ground. And making us cops look bad, too."

"Do you have any ideas on how he did that last one? I mean, a security high rise apartment, and he gets in and kills that family of four on the upper floor, and no one sees or hears him. I heard we're dealing with a devil or something."

"No, he's as human, as you and me. In body, at least. But his mind, yeah, he is a deranged devil. They're gonna cure him with shock treatments, about ten thousand volts to the brain for an hour, that'll cure him..."

The rookie looked out the car window at some homeless people gathered near the mouth of an alley.

"It's freezing out, and there they stand. You figured they'd go in where it's warm, or stand by a sewer gutter or something, and let the steam from the pipes below warm them or something."

The detective glanced over at the homeless men, three of them, and indeed, they were standing well away from the sewer gutter. His mind tossed and turned it over... What was wrong with this? he said to itself. He continued to think this train of thought over, when he spied another homeless man pushing a grocery cart across the street. The man stopped about 5 feet from a manhole cover, and went around it, giving it wide berth, not turning his back on it, crossing the street finally.

The thought hit him so fast, he slammed on the car brakes. The rookie, about to take a sip of coffee, spilt it all down his shirt front, scalding him. But, seeing the Detective throw open his car door and leap out, he undid his seat belt and followed, oblivious to the burns from the coffee or the sudden cold. He follwed the Detective over to the homeless man, now quiviering with fear.

He spoke of an alligator in the sewers, of how other homeless people, transients, hookers, thieves of the night, druggies, and so on, have begun vanishing by walking too close to one. How he himself was walking with a friend, and turned his head for a second, and turned back when his friend screamed as the gator dragged him into the sewer.

And then, the Detective knew....

...the next day...

"...Looking over the blueprints of the high rise, we did discover an old service entrance in the subcellar basement, that leads into the sewer lines. It had all but been forgotten, it's been so long since anyone's used it. And from the layout of the building now, it would of been easy for someone to enter through that entrance, bypass security cameras all the way to the surveliance room, and from there they could probably set up a loop on one of the monitors ot taping machines to allow him to go up to any floor and not be seen."

The Detective listened to the specialist. His hunch from the night before paid off, he was certain of it. They now knew how the madman known as I had entered the high-rise and killed that family.

Just then, the door to the office opened, and an officer walked in, carrying a stack of manilla folders.

"You wanted missing persons? We got em. These are all reports from homeless people on the streets, reporting someone missing, or hookers that never showed up for court, teen runaways..."

The Dectective looked at the stack of folders. There must of been thirty there, easily.

"I think it's time we began going into the sewers....