The 2007 SJ.com Summer Novel (title suggestions welcomed)

OK, not sure if I'm encroaching on 21's territory here, but I thought I'd start. Hopefully, she'll look at this as me taking a little pressure off.

I'll throw this out there to start. I think the way we worked it last year was, if you have an installment to add, it might be helpful to make a short post to let us know it's on the way so we don't have one post predicated on another and then getting bumped out of order.

Let's see how far we can take this. Have fun ...

 

The third Wednesday in July had been, for lack of any other sufficient term, shitty.
Detective South Blandenburg, had missed out on nabbing a serial killer by inches. He’d been served with divorce papers from his wife of 13 years. He’d received a speeding ticket from his former partner on the south metro beat.
Then he’d arrived home and found that his dog – the only being in the world, he was convinced, who was still glad to see him – had been run over.
He’d pulled into his suburban Denver subdivision and found Droplet, his five-year-old mixed breed with a gray coat was marbled with enough white spots to make him look perpetually wet. Droplet was on his back, in the familiar dead animal pose, rigor setting in and paws to the sky.
There was nowhere for Droplet to be buried in Blandenburg’s yard, so South took him to the animal control office and committed him to the hereafter by way of the incinerator. Then, he went home to drink beer and cry.
South would have had the Rockies on TV anyway, but mainly he would have been talking to the dog after work. Unlike the erstwhile Mrs. Blandenburg, Droplet didn’t talk back. He only pushed his nose into South’s hand, looking for a treat, some attention, or both. There was none of this, and the house was too quiet without him, so South sat in front of the TV and stared through his teary eyes at the pixels beamed from Coors Field.
The Rocks were getting slapped around by San Fran, and in a brief moment of sarcasm through grief, South mused that the Colorado franchise might produce tears by itself with the way it was playing. Immediately following that thought, though, the lacrimal blurring went away, and to the collection of emotions he’d already had was added a healthy dose of incredulity.
There, on his screen was Bernie Raiford, the serial killer. He was sitting in the front row at Coors, cell phone to his ear, waving to his caller.
South had not known who Raiford was when the two of them bumped shoulders at 361 Arsenal St., the scene where South spent six hours going over the latest murders in the string that was now up to 12. The house on Arsenal featured two mid-30s women with bags over their heads sealed with duct tape around their necks. Uniformed cops had knocked on the door in response to a noise complaint – Raiford left Black Sabbath playing on the victim’s home theatre system at ears-bleed level – and they’d noticed the foot of one of the victims laying at an odd angle on the kitchen floor. A gaggle of squad cars and onlookers soon appeared, and by the time South arrived at 9:45 a.m. there were probably 50 gawkers, one of whom was Raiford, who was turning to leave when South walked past. They bumped, and Raiford apologized.
South couldn’t believe his luck, but then again Raiford seemed to be taunting him. Huevos, South thought. Off two women in the morning. Take in a ballgame that night. See if you can get on TV.
Afer he’d arrived at the crime scene, South had pieced together the murder, connected it to the other 10, and picked up a fingerprint that matched Raiford, who was understandably not at home when South made his first attempt at apprehending him. He’d figured the killer would go into hiding for a while. But then there Raiford was on TV.
He dialed 911.
“This is Detective Blandenburg, badge number 84317. Please connect me to the Coors Field substation.”
A few clicks, and then, “Coors substation. Sargeant Escobar.”
“Escobar, this is Detective Blandenburg. You have a person of interest in an ongoing murder investigation sitting in the front row. Could you please detain him until I can get there?”
“No problem.”
Click.
That seemed a little abrupt, South muttered, but he was already headed out the door, his plans to pull out the water hose and wash his dog’s blood off the street put on hold.

 

I'd really love to write the next part, but I'm in the middle of a shift, so I'll hold off. Good start, though.

 

bump ...

 

Suddenly, 21 looked up from her bubble bath and said, "Hey, that's MY turf! What that schmuck Novelist Wannabe doing, starting MY summer novel?"

21 stood up to get out of the bath, and gasped . . .