Faith sat forward on the Red Line Metro departing Dupont Circle three blocks from her apartment. Situated in a window seat with Zeus in front of her, she felt the train lurch forward as it got underway inside the station tunnel. Minutes later, she heard the brakes hiss and squeal as the train came to a gradual stop along the...

Alone in his room with lavender walls, a steel plate mirror, and a dormitory mattress with tightly folded sheets, a skeleton-thin forty-four-year-old Ronald Neyman remained barefoot in a Hudson Psychiatric Hospital gown barely long enough to cover his knobby knees. Tall enough to touch a basketball net flat-footed, he towered over throngs of manic-depressives, epileptics, schizophrenics, and irrational subjects pacing...

  Dr. Faith Galloway rode the underground escalator during morning rush hour from the Blue Line Metro station to the familiar surface streets in Capitol Heights, Maryland. Shrouded in a black leather topcoat with matching boots, a cashmere scarf with tasseled ends, and tinted glasses dark enough to hide her eyes, she stepped off the moving escalator to confront the...

Rossi maintained her composure when she entered the bustling Nashville precinct after four weeks on short term disability. Greeted by a standing ovation from the officers in the room, she wished to become invisible and avoid the stilted, sympathetic conversations. “Next time I’m taking two months leave,” she spoke stiffly, reluctant to reveal her reconstructive dental surgery to the crowded...

Lisa moved her barefoot leg closer to her body, her back and shoulders aching from the stationary pose on the basement floor while she poked and prodded at the padlock securing the chain around her ankle. She inserted the whittled ends of her makeshift lock picks inside the narrow keyhole, her fingers sore from the constant repetition. She could feel...

Detective Rossi waited outside the morgue for the medical examiner to return. She replayed the recorded audio from her interview with Stewart Harvey, scrutinizing details from the conversation in an effort to identify contradictions in his story or pertinent details she might have missed in his tales of tunnels and skulls and missing rosary beads. Harvey furnished a compelling argument...

Spilled Rice With Simon at a gig downtown, Stu stood outside the tunnel entrance behind the four-car garage, clenching a slender flashlight in his mouth. Wielding a pair of bolt cutters he’d procured from a local hardware store in town, he pinched the padlock shackle between the iron jaws and squeezed the extended handles to break the hardened steel. He...

Simon selected the needle nose pliers for reasons obvious to him. The pliers were more industrial, unlike his dental tools designed for specific applications. The pliers were easier to grip with the rubber handles and fit comfortably in his hand. Crude but highly effective, needle nose pliers served his objective without regard for a certain technique or developed skill required...

Stu typed on his laptop behind a wobbly wooden desk positioned away from the window in his room to avoid the distraction from windblown trees and their bounty of autumn foliage exploding with vibrant orange, red, and yellow hues. Spurred by his aggressive first draft deadline, he reviewed the notes he’d compiled during previous conversations with Simon. A prolific author...

Stu woke up with his phone beeping loudly and stretched across the hotel mattress to feel the empty space beside him. Impeded by restless sleep, he slogged through his morning routine and snagged a caffè americano with a bagel and cream cheese from the breakfast shop downstairs. Outside the five-star accommodations a block from Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, he greeted the...