Chapter 10
Of Strange Moon Rising
Previously: Forest Service Officer Ben Kipts suggests John Doe’s the victim of a fake wolf attack. Riley is warned about ‘Wolfrun’ and her reclusive neighbor, Luke.
Riley’s heart thudded against her ribs. It must’ve been a doozy of a dream. The phantom irritation of smoke itched at the back of her throat. She could almost hear the crick-crackle of burning drywall. Riley blinked and squinted, still groggy. A haze lingered over her vision and the stinging scent of smoke grew stronger. Oh. Oh shit. Not a dream. She threw herself out of bed. Smoke slipped under the door, but the handle was cool to the touch. Riley balled up her shirt to cover her mouth and nose and moved quickly down the hall to the stairs. She gave a fleeting thought to where she’d left her phone, but the sound of glass shattering propelled her forward. Tony would be at the firehouse. Her neighbors would surely call, if they hadn’t already.
The hand she could barely see in front of her looked wrong. She tried to remember why that was important as she hunched over and coughed. Rancid chili peppers burned in her throat as she approached the sliding glass doors. If the garden hose reached the kitchen window, I could— A blow to the back of her head sent her reeling. The pain that quickly followed crumpled Riley to the floor. As she gasped face-first into the carpet, she remembered she’d felt this before, seen it before. Heavy footfalls indented the carpet next to her. Riley tried to look up to get a glimpse at the attacker’s face, but she had no control over the body she inhabited. The back door opened and shut, letting in a heartbeat of fresh air and the warble of distant sirens. The brightening glow behind her turned window to mirror. Tristian Kozlovsky stared back until the world went dark.
“You need some help, there?” Andy’s amused voice startled her into dropping the heavy coffee machine. Well, dropping implied she’d managed to lift it—she’d only tilted it a couple inches trying to get a hand under the bottom.
“Please.”
Andy wrapped his arms around the machine and simply picked it up, bracing it against his chest to counter the weight. “How’d you manage to get it in here?”
Riley ran for the station door ahead of him. “Rolling filing cabinet. I slid it off the counter and into my trunk without thinking about how impossible it would be to get from the car to the station kitchen.”
“Should’ve brought the filing cabinet.”
“Yeah. Good thing you’re the Hulk.”
“I prefer Superman. Greg’s the Hulk.”
Riley shook her head. “Noted.”
Andy carried it into the kitchen and waited without complaint for Riley to clear space on the counter. She felt sorry for any asshole he might need to tackle. It would be a sure ticket to months in traction.
“Is that what I think it is?” Anne squealed from the door.
Andy plugged it in and stepped back, hands on his hips. “Our old pot is more user friendly.” Twin glares made him chuckle. “Yeah, okay.” He picked up the old machine and dumped it in the trash, half a pot of sludge and all. “Where’s that manual?”
Riley picked it up as his radio crackled out, “23-18-112.”
He detoured reaching for the booklet and grabbed his radio to respond to dispatch. “112 here. Go ahead.”
“Got a call for a welfare check over on 64 South Enlayer Drive.”
Andy nodded to Riley. “You with me on this?”
“Yep.”
“112 and 180 responding. Any details?”
Static hissed for a moment before the dispatcher replied, “Caller’s a neighbor reporting a chemical smell. No answer at the door.”
“Copy. En route now.”
“10-4.”
One-eighty. It’d taken her a beat to recognize her new designation when she’d heard it aloud. Riley repeated it in her head on the drive over to Enlayer, hoping it would stick after so many years attached to another. Should she forget, she’d irritate dispatch, and she did not want to get on the golden glue of emergency responses’ shit-list.
“Haven’t been called out to this residence before,” Andy mused, pulling up to the curb in front of a two-story home.
Enlayer ended in a cul-de-sac. Kids bikes, shining classic cars, and baby shower balloons proved they were in the heart of small-town suburbia. She could already hear the wide-eyed neighbors—‘but… nothing bad ever happens here’—as corpses were wheeled out of a cookie-cutter clapboard.
Riley trailed Andy to the front door, where he knocked with the booming authority of answer-or-we’ll-break-it-down. “Police!” He waited a couple heartbeats before rapping again. “Woodrun police! Welfare check. Please answer the door.”
He tilted his head to imply Riley should head around back while he peeked through the windows along the porch.
She skirted the side of the house, glancing in windows for movement. There were no gates or fencing to separate the backyard from the front, or the neighbors from each other, only the occasional shrubbery to mark property lines. A concrete slab patio dominated the backyard. An old silver grill and white plastic patio chairs sat in front of sliding-glass doors. They were cracked open, but she couldn’t catch any chemical scent pouring from them. No pings on her radar, either.
Andy came around the side of the house. He wrinkled his nose as he approached.
Riley frowned and tried a deep breath. “I can’t smell anything.”
“You will,” he assured. He knocked on the glass doors before shoving them open. “This is the police for a welfare check, we’re coming in!”
When they entered, Riley paused to survey the dining area and kitchen. Mail on the counter tops. Clean dishes drying in a rack. No smoke or gas. A faint scent that might be described as chemical teased the back of her throat. She moved down the hall, clearing rooms to the right while Andy cleared the left. Generic art from box stores hung on the walls leading to the stairs. Andy beelined past them.
“You got something?”
He pointed down the other hall. “Smell’s stronger back here.”
Barely. Unpleasant, sure, but nowhere near the level of disturbing a neighbor enough to phone in a welfare check.
Andy stopped before a wooden door and swung it open, revealing stairs down into a brightly-lit basement. He recoiled, coughing and hacking.
The acrid smell hit her a moment later, stinging her eyes and blurring her vision. Instead of a cozy hallway with crown molding and teak floors, she was standing on stained concrete, breathing through her mouth to avoid the stench of a moldering mattress and burnt carpet. Her hands squeezed around nothing. Where were her gun and flashlight? Had she dropped them? Dergby should be next to her. And the girl. The girl with the panicked eyes and twitching fingers.
Vices gripped her shoulders. “Red!”
She sucked in a breath. It was a mistake, clogging her throat with the familiar plastic-y aroma of burnt carpeting, threatening to send her back into the memory. She focused on Andy’s uniform buttons and pushed it down. This wasn’t downtown Cincinnati. The girl was long dead. “I’m good.”
He shook her gently, pulling her attention up to his face. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” Riley stepped out of his grip and smoothed a hand over her French braid. “Yeah, just a flashback. I’m okay.”
Andy appeared unconvinced, but he turned toward the basement. “I think I know who we’ve got down here. I can smell soy wax and cinnamon under the rest of this shit.”
Riley clenched her shaking hands into fists. “If you say so.”
He thumped his way down the stairs, calling out, “Harrison, you crafty bastard!”
She followed, hand to her nose, a headache already brewing. The basement was a full-fledged workshop. Hundreds of glass jars filled rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves. Metal folding tables were set up in a labyrinth, covered in mold making equipment, bottles, tongs, and waxy blocks. Harrison hovered over a cluster of Crockpots with his back to the landing, ladling hot wax into jars. He bobbed his head to music piping through headphones loud enough to hear from the stairs.
Andy walked over, tugged the headphones down to Harrison’s neck, and yelled, “I said, Harrison, you crafty bastard!”
The ladle hit the ceiling as Harrison screamed, splashing navy wax in an arc across the tables and floor. He gasped out a few more “ah-s” and oh-s” with his hands on his knees. When he’d caught his breath, he yelled, “Andy Logan, you asshole!” If that didn’t earn another welfare check, Riley’d be sorely disappointed.
“It’s ‘Sergeant Andy Logan, you asshole’ while I’m on duty. I got called for a welfare check. What the hell did you burn? I hope that’s not your new holiday scent, ‘cause buddy, I got some bad news. You nearly sent the new officer into convulsions.” He thumbed over his shoulder to Riley.
“My power strip caught fire this morning and burned a yard of the carpet.” Harrison waved a hand at the floor behind the Crockpot table, where he’d spread flattened boxes. “A welfare check? I can’t even smell it anymore.”
“Ho-kay, you need some fresh air. Let’s go.”
On the backyard patio, Harrison continued, “I already bought the new-fangled power strip for this year’s batches, just haven’t gotten around to switching over to it.” He held out his hand to shake Riley’s. “Hi, Harrison Lilnon, nice to meet you.” Harrison wasn’t quite as tall as Andy, but he came close. The salt and pepper hair and creases in his forehead put him at a comfortable mid-fifties.
Andy crossed his arms. “You’ve got to cut out that square of carpet and toss it.”
“Sure, I’ll get right on that. Won’t affect my time-table at all. I’ve got seventy-five left today. If I don’t meet my quota in time for the Winter Solstice Faire, people will riot, I tell you.”
“Breathing that shit will put you in the hospital before then.”
“Bah!”
“I’m serious, Harrison, that’s not good for your health. You’ll ruin your nose. Then, you’ll ruin your candles.”
Harrison scoffed. “I’ve got my recipes.”
“Won’t be able to create new ones.”
A spark of mischief lit his brown eyes. “Well, since you’re here, I’m sure you won’t mind cutting that out for me. You are here for my welfare, hm? I’m sure there’s something in the garage that’ll do the trick.” He turned to Riley. “Officer MacIntyre, would you like a cup of tea while we wait for Sergeant Logan to finish with the carpet?”
She pursed her lips to avoid laughing at Andy’s chagrined expression. “Certainly, Mr. Lilnon. Lead the way.”
It took Andy less than ten minutes to find a decent cutting tool, rip out the charred section of carpet and padding, and toss it. He dropped his mask into the kitchen trash. “Alright, you can get back to your candles.”
“Thank you for your help,” he said, ushering them out the front door. “Love to chat some more, but my schedule, you understand.”
Riley buckled herself into the passenger seat of the cruiser. “He’s serious about his candles.”
“Oh, yeah, just wait ‘till the Faire.” He nabbed his radio and called in, “23-18-112.”
“Go head,” dispatch radioed back.
“All clear on the Enlayer welfare check. Show 112 and 180 returning to service.”
“Copy.”
They were half way to the station when Andy broached, “Earlier, at the top of the stairs—“
She inhaled to speak, but his, “You don’t need to apologize,” stopped her mid-sorry.
“You don’t need to give me the story, either. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Riley squeezed her hands together. “It was my first OIS. I killed a tweaker before she could shoot my partner.”
Andy grunted once in understanding, eyes on the road.
“I’ve never gotten stuck in a flashback like that. The smell of the burnt carpet took me right back.”
“Scent has powerful ties to memory.”
“No kidding. That’s not typical for me, to freak out like that—“
“Red,” he chastised, “I don’t think you’re a shit cop because a flashback caught you off guard.”
Riley pushed her cuticles back slowly, focusing on neatening the edge rather than picking at them. “Just want to reassure you I won’t be lost in the past while I’m suppose to be watching your back.”
“I doubt we’ll come across many burnt carpets in the future. We’ll leave that for my brother.”
Her hands stilled as Tristian Kozlovsky’s blue eyes blotted out her vision. The future held her captive, now. The smell of burnt carpet had been overtaken by the killer’s signature in the second death-dreaming—a nice tee-up for today’s flashback.
Andy’s, “Any other scent minefields I should be wary of?” shook her from her thoughts.
“Not that I can think of, but I’ll let you know, considering your hyperosmia.”
He looked at her funny. “My what?”
“You’re a super-smeller—people with a hypersensitivity to smells? I thought it was rare, but the neighbor who called in the welfare check must have hyperosmia as well, because the burnt carpet and candle-making wasn’t detectable outside of the house. They must’ve walked through the yard and across the patio, maybe stuck their head through the cracked door and called out for Harrison, before calling 911.”
“Huh, never heard of that.” Andy shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nothing super about my sense of smell.”
The discordant ringing in her ears had her trying, and failing, to rationalize why Andy would lie. Sure, hyperosmia might be labeled as a disability, but it shouldn’t affect anyone’s career or social standing. If someone said, ‘I’ve got an advanced sense,’ most people would reply with ‘cool,’ right? At the Doe crime scene, Andy had only spent a short amount of time near the body. She might’ve been tasked with evidence collection not as a test, but to save Andy—and maybe Greg, too—from dealing with something overly unpleasant for them. That’d be perfectly reasonable. Why they’d hide it from her, Riley couldn’t guess.
Obligatory Legal Stuff:
This chapter is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidences are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, locals, and events are coincidental.
No generative AI used. No AI training or scraping allowed.
All rights reserved.
Chapter Title Image created in Canva. Canva Pro image used in background.