[NOTE: Sorry for the delay with this chapter. I was posting faster than I was writing, and I wasn't critting as often as I used to. So, nearly twenty days later, here is chapter four!]
Arnold read and reread the smoldering paper that he found on the ground. His first instinct was to pocket it, go home, and write up his last will, but at the last second he decided to look for Kevin. He found him talking to a young woman trying to stop the bleeding from her boyfriend’s leg. Arnold reached out and tapped Kevin on the shoulder.
“Not now,” he said, shrugging Arnold off. “Can’t you see I’m busy here?”
Arnold tapped on his shoulder again, and Kevin turned, obviously perturbed.
“What?” he said.
Arnold handed him the slip of paper. Kevin took it and read it. He glanced up at Arnold and said, “Where did you get this?”
“I found it on the ground. It’s the same handwriting that was on the box, telling me I had two minutes before it blew.”
Kevin got up and led Arnold back into the station building. People were just being let out of the rooms where they took shelter, the adults bewildered and nervous, the children wondering when they were going to do it again. They went through corridor after corridor until they reached the office of Lieutenant Charlie T. Cook. Kevin rapped on the door twice, and then entered.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” asked Charlie.
“Lieutenant,” said Kevin. “We have a grave issue that needs to be dealt with.”
Immediately, Charlie tensed. “What is it?”
“We have reason to believe that Detective Arnold is the target of an assassination attempt.”
Arnold couldn’t believe what he was hearing: the target of an assassination attempt. He knew Kevin was only looking out for him, but to hear those words come out of his mouth—and to know the protocol that was to follow—was surreal. His world fell away from him as he caught snippets of conversation: “dismissal”, “for the time being”, “no longer a threat”. He barely even noticed that the Lieutenant was directly addressing him.
“Detective!” he said sternly. “Do you understand our reasoning behind this?”
Arnold sheepishly replied that he understood, and the Lieutenant dismissed them. Arnold and Kevin somberly walked out of the office and paused in front of the building doors.
“I want this to happen as much as you want this to happen,” said Kevin, “but we’ll keep police watch on you. I still want to have a partner after all of this is over, okay?”
Arnold nodded, but said nothing. Kevin patted him on the shoulder, and told two officers to keep watch on him as he drove home. Arnold looked at the counter on his cell phone: ten days, ten hours, and twenty minutes. He wasn’t sure if it was merely a threat, or a promise, but after thinking back to the body of Kristen Marquez, he decided to err on the side of caution.
Arnold slowly drove home, with an unmarked police car following far enough behind as to not arouse suspicion. He wanted to be sure that he was given ample time to prepare for anything that would come his way, whether it be a six-year-old on a bicycle or a semi truck barreling down the highway.
It was just about nine o’clock in the morning, and the sun shone brightly over the landscape, playfully dancing between the tree branches. If Arnold weren’t in such a dire situation, he would have appreciated the natural beauty of it; as it was, he was mentally planning his will, wondering if he could find a woman to marry within this small window of opportunity. The gravel crunched under his car as he parked, and he concluded that no woman would want to marry him: why marry someone on death row?
Arnold chose his house key, and was about to insert it into the lock, when he noticed something odd: the door stood slightly ajar, the doorknob lying on the ground. His police background told him to not touch anything, and let the officers with him work their magic, but something in the back of his mind told him to step in and investigate. Taking out a latex glove from his pocket, he cautiously pushed open the door, and was floored at what he saw.
His house had been ransacked. His bottle of Cognac lay smashed on the floor, brandy flowing everywhere; all of his books had been pulled off the shelves, some with pages ripped out of them; his couch was overturned; his television was smashed in and thrown to the floor; his refrigerator sat wide open, food spoiling on the floor, the milk curdling with each passing second.
Arnold slowly backed toward the door, only to find it closed. He looked down to find the doorknob on his side of the door attached, with the door latched shut. He grabbed the doorknob and tried to open it, but the doorknob fell as soon as he twisted it. He tried to pull the door open, but the latch was still in the door, and it wouldn’t budge. Frantically, he beat on the door, screaming for help, but was quickly silenced by a noise behind him. He turned to see that the mirror behind his couch had been smashed, and he remembered it being fine before. Another crash made him twist his body around, and he watched as plates fell out of the cupboard to the ground. A final smash jerked his head toward the far window, with glass still falling.
As Arnold’s heart raced, he heard a faint voice whisper in his ear:
“Stay on your toes, Arnold. I’ll be watching.”
Arnold jerked his head toward the voice, but found nothing. He turned on every light and found no evidence of anyone in the house. He jumped when his door was kicked in, and the two officers entered his house with guns drawn.
“Detective!” they yelled. “What happened? Who was in here?”
Arnold’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he dropped to the ground.
