Excerpt

I'm slacking, lost and wandering as I try to find The Right ending for my WIP. And almost willing to settle for Any Ending at this stage of editing.

And in my rambles I found this tucked away in a folder for inclusion in a future noir-style murder mystery with cyborgs... yes, it is a little odd, but the conversation is still fun. It's a rough draft, unedited, and I'm not sure it will even make it into the first full rough draft of the story. But here it is, my first attempt at an exhausted cop trying to untangle a century old cold case:

“What have you got for me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, right now all I can tell you is that bodies around the city are bursting into random chunks and scattering themselves around the inhabitants domiciles and that it’s been happening, at random, for over ninety years. I have no suspect. No evidence. No connections. Just… bodies.”

“That’s not what I want to hear.”

“Well, it’s not what I want to say. But until some thug stops my in the alley with a clue-by-four there’s nothing I can do. I’ve taken to walking alone at night in the bad end of town in the desperate hope that someone with a fat lip and a lisp will grab me by the collar and tell me, ‘Mister Buttons is very unhappy about you asking questions about his personal business.’”

“Mister Buttons?” Evans looked amused.

“Yeah, Mister Buttons, who’s been hunting down an interstellar ring of zipper smugglers. He goes to their houses and makes it clear he’s very unhappy that they’re smuggling zippers onto his all-buttons turf!”

“That’s a terrible theory, Harlowe.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the best I’ve got.”

“I can’t name a planet where zippers are illegal.”

I rubbed dry, tired eyes. “This is the reason the case went cold, Evans. There were never any clues. The killer doesn’t play games, doesn’t leave messages on the wall, the bodies just appear.”

“Every serial killer has a motive. They always leave clues. There is always a connection. Keep digging."