Tuesday Tales: From the word Bones

In all honesty, by now I truly expected that this COVID thing would be under control and we would all be looking at some kind of normal. I guess like Beth says in the story, “there is no normal now. I doubt there ever will be.”

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales, the weekly blog where authors share their works in progress with you. Our word prompt is BONES. I chose the singular. Enjoy.

“Come on, Mitch. Throw us a bone. What has he said?” Al cajoled.

“Oh no. You need to read it yourself to fully appreciate it.”

She opened a door in the far wall, and it shut behind her.

“Great,” Beth muttered. “If it’s as bad as Mitch implies, maybe I’ll let you have a crack at him first.”

What she would like to do was throw him in a cell and toss away the key, but dungeons were hard to find these days. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

“Headache’s back?” Mitch asked, stepping into the room with her purse and a large duffel bag.

“Yeah, but maybe I just need to eat. Is that the article?”

“Yeah.”

Mitch handed her the folded newspaper.

Beth opened the paper, the headline jumping out at her. She read aloud.

“Murder, Mayhem, Madness, and Silence, by Jack Ogden. I swear he gets more melodramatic with every report,” she said. “Does he have any facts or is it all purple prose again?”

“You tell me, Special Agent Reynolds. It’s your case.”

Beth cocked her head and continued to read.

“New York City is in the grip of madness. The heat? The full moon? Killer drugs? No one knows—or do they? Do we have a modern-day Jack the Ripper preying on men and women alike? It may well be, and his methods are like nothing this city has ever seen.”

“A modern day Jack the Ripper is an interesting comparison,” Al said, stopping her. “The man was never caught, but he was believed to have surgical abilities and eviscerated his victims. Well, you may not like it, but it is closer to the truth than werewolves.”

“Too close,” she mumbled.

“Thursday night the mutilated body of a woman, a number four burned into her body, was found next to a dumpster in Brownsville, definitely not an accident.”

She stopped reading and scowled. “How the hell does he know about the brand? It was in my report to Ned, the same report I emailed to you, Al, and to Major Crimes. Chuck sent it to Amanda, and she forwarded it to Chad. Have we been hacked? How else could that information have gotten out?”

“I don’t know,” Al said, “but I suppose someone who can manipulate the dark web and use it to sell organs is capable of hacking a government website.”

That’s it. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales