Here it is. I want brutal honesty. Candy-coat nothing my dear reviewers!!!
It is night time, almost three in the morning. The streets of Birchwick are peaceful. Some houses are dark where people slumber inside. Others have lights peeping out the windows. A dog barks occasionally, and a stray cat pads across the street. A few moths fly lazily around a streetlight.
Suddenly there is noise. It is soft at first, hardly distinguishable from the hum of streetlights. But it soon grows louder. It is running footsteps, two, maybe three sets. They are fast approaching. Then there is something barely visible at the end of the street. It is a person, a boy of fifteen perhaps. He draws closer, but it is still difficult to see him in the dim light. He is breathing hard from either fatigue or fear of what he runs from. He is about five and a half feet tall with light, blonde hair. Behind him are two men in hot pursuit. They are huge, lumbering, panting with the stress of exertion. They stop beneath a street lamp. One is missing his left ear. The other has a huge, barely illuminated scar across his right cheek. The one missing an ear raises his arm. He is holding something that glints a bit in the faint light.
A gunshot pierces the silence. Any remaining lights abruptly flicker off. The street is quieter than a Pharaoh’s tomb.
The boy is far down the street by now but the bullet doesn’t miss.
A soft cry escapes his lips as he crumples to the pavement. The two men smile in satisfaction as they waltz down the street to examine their victim where he lies in a steadily growing pool of his own blood.
******
S.A. David Rembrandt
31st Street
Tuesday, 8:34 a.m.
I arrive at the scene of the crime later than planned and have to push my way past reporters, all shouting and fighting to be heard. I flash my badge at the simple cop who is monitoring the perimeter. He nods me through and I duck under the police tape, making my way to where my partner, Special Agent Arthur Richards, stands surveying the scene.
“What have we got?” I ask, bending down to lift the sheet at my feet and view the lifeless body beneath it. It is a boy, about fifteen. He lies in a massive puddle of blood, a gunshot wound through his chest. His eyes stare blankly off, out of focus. I lower the sheet and look away, then motion for the just-arrived C.S.I’s to come and begin processing the body and the evidence.
“What we got is a dead teenage boy and no leads,” Richards replies, sounding annoyed.
“Hmm…” I mumble, thinking. “Well, who called it in?” I stand and look around at all the houses that line this street.
“No one did.” His voice is so quiet that I almost don’t hear him.
“What?” I exclaim, whirling around to face him. “How can we just find a body? Someone has to call it in.”
“Well, yeah someone did call it in, but that someone wasn’t any of the neighbors. That someone was a cop who was on patrol in the area.”
“So –” I begin but the coroner interrupts me. He is holding a huge thermometer in his hands, used for probing the liver.
“Time of death was about five hours ago, roughly between 2 and 4 in the morning. The cause of death seems to be obvious – a gunshot wound to the chest, but I won’t know for sure until I do an autopsy.”
He begins to load the victim into a body bag, then he and his assistant hoist the bag onto a gurney and wheel it away. I watch the process, mesmerized, remembering with a pang in my heart the day when Grace Anne was in one of those bags, taken away, never to return. I remember it so clearly; the girls were so little then. Poor Benji found her, and Liza was still too little to understand what had happened. She asked every night for almost two years when her mommy would come home and I didn’t know how to tell her Mommy would never be coming home again…
“Were you about to say something, Rembrandt?” Richards speaks, bringing me back to the now. He is looking at me almost sympathetically.
When I don’t respond at first, he tries again, “David?”
“Yeah. I’m fine…” My voice trails off then I promptly snap back to reality.
“What I was about to say is, do you mean to tell me that on this street, with so many people living here, not one of them heard the shot? That on their way to work this morning they didn't notice the dead boy in the middle of the road? ”
“That’s right, boss.” He stops to think for a second. “Or maybe they just didn’t report it?”
He looks at me as if asking for feedback. I smile at him encouragingly.
“Now you’re thinking. So what we need to learn now is why," I say and head toward the closest house.
But really apart from that KEEP WRITING I REALLLLLY WANT TO READ MORE this sounds great and its a great plot line please dont just leave me hanging.