Saintkiller
The first time it happened, Memphis Stone was standing over the rapidly cooling body of a young girl.
It was just after 9:00 pm, mid-summer, the streets of Boston still reflecting the heat they had soaked up during the day under the combination of the 90 degree temperature and the even higher percentage humidity. It had been a long, grueling month with heat-frayed tempers and the corresponding hike in violent crime that always accompanied such a stretch.
Stone had been fostering a mild headache for most of the afternoon. The pain made him tense, irritable, and the fact that he was still standing there two hours after he was supposed to have gone off shift did nothing to assuage that. Just the opposite, in fact, as it sent his headache rocketing up several levels higher on the pain scale.
He stared down at the body, wondering. Who was she? Why did she have to come along right when she did? Couldn’t she have taken a different way home?
She was the fourth victim this month. All of them young, all of them seemingly innocent, at least to this world-weary detective. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so, for the press had taken to calling it the work of the Saintkiller.
He rubbed at his forehead, his hand over his eyes as he tried to ease the rapidly tightening band of tension churning there. When he took his hand away, the scene before him wavered and then changed…
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