The first thing I remembered was the pain in my chest. It wasn’t really bad; it was just persistent.

I seemed to be walking through a room full of mist. I began to swirl my arms, hoping to dissipate it, so I could get my bearings, or at least see where I was.

Suddenly, the mist cleared. I found myself standing in front of an older man in white robes. He had long hair, a long beard, and a long face with a pissed off expression on it.

I had no idea or at least no recollection of how I had arrived there. I tried to gather my thoughts as he began to speak.

“You ... Do not belong here!” he said. “There is no reason for you to be here ... Begone!”

His words were delivered without anger. If there was any emotion attached to them it might have been annoyance.

He looked down at some sort of list that he was reading from. I waited a few moments before speaking to him again.

“Where do I belong?” I asked in a quiet tone.

He looked up again, and the expression on his face was one of utter shock.

“Begone,” he said again, this time adding a wave of his hand. “BE ... GONE!”

The look he gave me when he noticed that I was still there was almost funny.

“Somebody screwed up badly,” he said. “When I get to the bottom of this...”

“Why don’t I belong here,” I asked.

“It’s the way things work,” he said, in a tone that made me sure he meant to add the word “stupid,” to the end of his sentence.

“You’re a suicide,” he continued. “Suicides don’t get into heaven ... I don’t make the rules. That’s above my pay grade. I just enforce them.”

“I’m not a suicide,” I said. “I was murdered.”

“Bullshi...” he said, catching himself just before he actually swore. “I saw it. I see them all.”

“Is this heaven?” I asked changing the subject. “Somehow ... I expected it to be more ... Uhm heavenly.”

“Did I not just tell you that you cannot get into heaven?” he asked as if explaining it to a four-year-old.

“But you were wrong,” I said. “Suicide is the act of taking your own life. Someone else took mine.”

“You chose him,” he bellowed. “You teased him. You couldn’t have been more obvious if you’d been wearing a, “please kill me,” T-shirt.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s a technicality at worst or a loophole at best. But it is valid. Perhaps you need to take another look.”

“Perhaps I should just send you back,” he said. “Yes ... That’s it. Your body isn’t even cold.”

“Nooooooo,” I screamed! “I can’t go back. I don’t want to live.”

He looked at me as if I was an ant that didn’t want to be stepped on. He waved his hand, and a huge screen appeared.

It had to be at least a thousand inches and the highest definition 3-D I’ve ever seen.

As I looked at the screen, I could see it all. I watched as a tired looking older black man got out of what was clearly an unmarked police car.

I recognized the house, and knew what we would see inside of it. There were certain aspects of what we would see that I was sure would be unsettling for me, but I was determined to see this through to the end. Besides, I was dead. How much could it hurt me?

The old black man lit up a cigarette and looked around the house. As I looked at his features, I saw that the cigarette was merely a distraction or a way of focusing. He seemingly took in the entire scene, cataloguing details the way an art critic sees every nuance and aspect of a painting.

He shook his head suddenly as if responding to something that only he could hear. I heard it a few seconds later, and my sour companion looked to me as if he expected a reason for the smile that had broken out on my face.

A wave of his arm and the events on the screen paused. I wondered if he had simply paused the playback, or if he had indeed stopped time itself.

“Neither,” he said as if reading my thoughts. “I simply moved the two of us outside of time. For us, each second lasts an hour and so on and so forth...”

Now what are you smiling about?”he asked.

“The sound the old black guy heard, the one that pissed him off...” I began. It was good to know that my memories were with me even in death. Some things could apparently never be taken from me.

“What about the sound,” he asked impatiently.

“Only one thing sounds like that,” I smiled. “Somebody in that neighborhood was driving a Mustang. And it’s been modified. The motor sounds like it’s cammed and that is definitely not the factory exhaust system.”

“Shut up,” he said. “We have no time for your trivial gibberish.” He waved his hand again, and the events on the screen continued.

The old black man looked angrily over his shoulder as a heavily modified Mustang drive into view. The car was amazing. The body was a custom pewter color. It had flat black racing stripes, rims, and brake calipers.

The car had Brembo brakes with cross drilled and slotted rotors. The rotors themselves were odd. They weren’t round. They were shaped almost like symmetrical four leaf clovers.

The car’s headlights were a dark gray with black offset triangular tooth-like shapes that made them look like the eyes of a huge snake. The cobra emblems on the front quarter panels let me know that this was some type of Shelby variant.

The driver’s side door opened, and a woman got out of the car. I was immediately in awe of her. She was tall. She probably stood close to six feet without any shoes on.

She was wearing tennis shoes so white that she must’ve just put them on for the first time. Her jeans, rolled up to mid calf were so fitted to her form that she couldn’t have slipped a razor blade in them.

Her T-shirt seemed a bit big on her. The front had a Mustang logo over her heart. With the words, “It’s good to be the Boss,” printed under it.

As she turned to reach into the car’s minuscule back seat, I saw the back of the shirt. There was a huge picture of an angry looking Mustang on it. Under the car was printed, “Boss 302.”

As big as the shirt appeared on her, it couldn’t disguise or hide a pair of sizable breasts. She tucked a waistband holster behind her back, just above a perfect heart shaped ass that ballooned outwards from her tiny waist.

I wondered if she knew that the old man watching her like a hawk was a cop. She threw what looked like a man’s blazer over the T-shirt and snapped a belt clip badge to the front of her jeans.

That was my turn to be surprised. I had no idea the woman was a cop. She walked up to the old man and nodded her head. He pointed to three locations around the front of the house while indicating with a finger to his lips that they should be quiet.

She looked at the three locations he had pointed to and waved to each. I noticed for the first time that there were police tactical officers in each location. They were wearing camo gear and blended into the surrounding shrubbery, pretty well.

“I see you’re driving your boyfriend’s car this morning, Maggie,” said the older detective. The woman’s smile erupted on her face like the sunrise splitting the darkness.

“And now you’re even wearing his shirts,” he threw in.

“VooDoo ... Ya pulled me out of bed on what is supposed to be a day off,” said Maggie. “So ya get what ya get. Besides ... We’re supposed to be plain clothes detectives, right? These are plain clothes. Next time I’ll wear a fucking evening gown ... What’s going on?”

“Do you remember Emmet Nastiski,” asked VooDoo.

“Fuck yeah,” hissed Maggie. “I hate that bastard. Never been able to make any charges stick on him though. I’ve been tempted several times just to fling him into some dark alley and cap him, just for the hell of it. That way, I’d get that asshole off of the streets.”

“That would be extremely bad Karma,” said VooDoo. “The universe would extract its balance.”

If anyone else had said something like that to Maggie Grayson, not only would she have laughed, she would never have taken them seriously. But coming from the man beside her, it was different. Not only did she know that Detective Robert Beauvais was serious, but he was probably right.

Beauvais was a triple threat as a detective. She had learned a lot from him over the past six months that they’d been forced to be partners. Not only was he street smart, but he had a PhD in criminal justice. He’d turned down promotions that would have gotten him off the streets several times in the last year alone.

But the thing that really made the unlikely duo a good match was the secrets they shared. Beauvais, nicknamed VooDoo for his uncanny way of solving truly bizarre crimes had a grip on the supernatural that bordered on being a sixth sense.

He’d grown up in New Orleans, the son of a renowned Voodoo priestess. He liked to work alone because his methods sometimes involved narrowing down his list of suspects by dipping into his magical bag of tricks. Once he had his man, though, he used state of the art police methods to build and drive his case.

But the way he was able seemingly to pull suspects whom no one else even considered out of thin air had earned him his nickname.

Maggie alone knew about his hidden skills. But he in turn was the only person on the force that knew about Maggie’s boyfriend, Terry. He had sensed something off about the man when he first met him. It was as if the soft-spoken man hid a huge vault of supernatural power behind his boyish face.

After being trapped by a street gang armed with automatic weapons, he and Maggie had been rescued by a supernatural figure that VooDoo sensed was Terry, he and Maggie had shared each other’s secrets.

“We got a call about an hour ago from Robert Nastiski,” said Voodoo. “Are you familiar with him?”

“Emmet’s brother,” nodded Maggie. “I feel for the guy. It’s tough trying to live a normal life with a brother who’s a suspected fuckin’ serial murderer.”

“Robert met a girl yesterday,” continued Voodoo. “She was as he described her ... troubled. She wanted to have sex with him and go home with him. It turned out that she thought Robert was Emmet. He kept her busy and strung her along while he called both the police and social services trying to get the girl some help.

We have both calls recorded. I’ll play them for you later. Anyway, it’s a fucked-up situation. The police couldn’t act because no crime had been committed. And social services can’t act unless someone has been referred by the police or a doctor.

Robert ended up having to let the girl go. He couldn’t hold her prisoner, because then HE’D have committed a crime. But guess who she ended up running into leaving Robert’s place... ?”

“No way,” gasped Maggie.

“Oh Yeah,” whispered Voodoo. “Robert called the cops yet again, but he was rejected again. Just as there’s no law to prevent HIM from talking to the girl, there’s no law against her talking to his brother, so they hung up on him. He even went down to the police station a couple of miles away and guess what happened?”

“They finally sent a squad car out,” said Maggie!

“They locked him up,” said VooDoo.

“It’s about time they got Emmet’s ass off the street,” smiled Maggie.

“No Mags, they locked Robert up. They held him over night. I guess it was some smart desk jockey’s idea of a way to keep him from calling in complaints. They let him go a little while ago. He came home and immediately called right back. This time he was fuckin’ hysterical. The 911 operator said he’d thrown up several times while he was on the phone. They wanted us to check it out. You and I seem to get all of the weird cases.

Anyway, Emmet is supposedly in there asleep. We don’t even have to break in. Robert gave us a key. The place is surrounded. Let’s go see your buddy.” Maggie nodded.

“Mags...” said Voodoo.

She turned to look at her partner. “Put your vest on,” he said.

Ten minutes later, moving as quietly as they could they entered the small house. There was a sense of foreboding in the air and the smell of rotting meat.

Maggie and Voodoo, with a uniformed cop and a tactical officer moved from room to room as quietly as the grave. The first bedroom, obviously Robert’s was empty.

They found them in a rear bedroom, a man in his late thirties or early forties, snoring heavily. His left arm cradled a woman if she could even be called that, in her early twenties.

The girl was naked as a jaybird and had a huge gaping wound in the center of her chest. There were bite marks all over her body. There were also chunks of flesh that were missing and spots and pools of dried semen on her face and vaginal area.

So much blood had soaked into the sheets that it had run down the sides of the bed and dripped onto the floor.

Voodoo took in the scene with the same professional detachment he gave to everything else. As gruesome as he found the scene, he knew that in order for him to do the best job for the victim, he needed to keep his wits about him.

He reached into a pocket and fished out his iPhone. He started taking HD photos as quickly as he could. He took nearly a hundred photos in the span of two minutes.

He knew he didn’t have much time to capture the scene in its untouched state.

Maggie used her professional decorum in a different way. She’d quickly grabbed her stomach to hold its contents inside of her. She’d run from the room and into the bathroom they’d passed earlier. There she’d thrown up the pancakes that Terry had slaved over for her and his daughter Terri.

When her stomach was empty, her body began to heat up. Her emotional state was way ahead of her body though. She felt the way Terry must have before his body was engulfed in those weird blue flames.

She charged back into the room and moved past Voodoo who was still snapping pictures at an alarmingly quick rate.

Just as she stepped up to the bed she glanced in his direction. As soon as he nodded, she screamed and drew her gun.

“Get the fuck out of that bed, Scumbag,” she screamed so loudly that even the cops waiting at the door were shocked.

The man on the bed popped his eyes open suddenly. He looked surprised. But he played it off with the skill that most psychotics and sociopaths seem to be born with.

“This is a surprise,” he exclaimed. “I’m actually having breakfast with my favorite detectives ... the B’s.”

Voodoo looked at me, and she shrugged her shoulders. She had no idea what that maniac was ranting about.

“You guys have tried to arrest me so many times that I gave you nicknames,” he said. “You...” he smirked at Maggie. “ ... are BBT...”

Maggie continued to glare at him the finger on her gun’s trigger tightened a bit.

“And you’re BBD,” he said looking at Voodoo. “That stands for Big Black ... D...” He paused and smirked. “Detective,” he finished. Then he glanced past the gun pointing at him and spoke to Maggie. “Yours stands for Big Booty Tits cuz that’s all I think about when I see you, Babe.”

He busted out laughing and turned towards the dead girl’s body next to him. “Wasn’t that funny?” he asked her as if he expected an answer.

He looked back at the two of them with a quizzical look on his face. “She doesn’t seem to be in a talking mood this morning,” he said. “That’s funny ... The little bitch talked my fucking ear off last night. She told me her whole God damned life story. I recorded it all. It’s gonna be important.”

Maggie was barely containing her temper. Two aspects of her personality fought for dominance. On one hand, her professional side warned her to be careful. Any slip up or mistake in procedure could ruin the arrest.

That was what always happened with this bastard. Someone in the chain of evidence or arrest made a minor mistake that Nastiski jumped on with both feet and ended up walking free.

“We’ll get him next time!” She’d heard or even said that phrase so many times that it made her feel sick.

The other side of Maggie, her raw emotional side, wanted to empty her clip in his head, reload, and empty another one. Then she would simply leave the gun and her badge on the bed and go home to Terry and their baby and have a ... a ... whatever kind of life the two of them could make.

It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered about that. But she tabled the thought for later.

“Hey ... Hot Pants...” smirked Nastiki. “We were having a conversation before you zoned out. I’d imagine that you were so deeply involved in some sort of fantasy or daydream about shooting me in the head hundreds of times, right?”

Maggie just smiled.

“So Detective ... If you have all of these thoughts about murdering people ... How the fuck, are we different?” asked Emmet, smugly.

Maggie’s trigger finger tightened again, and the two other cops in the room sucked in a nervous breath and took a step backwards.

Voodoo gently reached out and put the safety on his partner’s weapon.

“Any way,” cackled the fiend on the bed. “You Keystone cops have Barney Fifed another one. Show me a warrant or get the fuck out of my house. And since you have no WARRANT, nothing you’ve seen here and nothing I’ve said or done are admissible as evidence.” He laughed at them and winked. Less than half a second later, everyone heard the sound of Maggie’s gun clicking uselessly as the trigger hit the safety.

Sweat beaded on Maggie’s forehead as Voodoo stepped between her and Emmet to try to defuse the situation.

“Was it something I said?” asked Emmet, innocently. “I never imagined that someone with jugs that big would be a poor sport. Maybe it’s the sting of losing sooooooooo many times. I mean the way I see it, today is a good day. I had a wonderful night. I got to share the results of it with two of my favorite po pos. That’s slang in the hood for police officers. And now with the two of you bursting into my home unannounced and without that there WARRANT thingy, I’m gonna sue the city and even get some money out of it.

A lot of people are suing the city over the actions of rogue police officers. Shit! Why is it that we white people are always the last ones to get in on any trend?

Soul Music, Jazz, Rap, twerking ... Everything that comes out. By the time white people get in on it, it’s already out of style. Now this suing the city thing ... Oh well, at least I’ll get some money out of it.

I guess we should get started with the dance, huh? You know the one where you two clowns run down town and try to get a judge to write you a warrant on a Sunday morning, while I dispose of all of the evidence and call my LAWYER.

Me thinks we all know how that one will turn out. I mean seriously ... Have you two EVER found a single body in all of the time we’ve been together? It’s the same old story. No tickee ... No shirtee. No warrant ... No evidence.” He laughed at his own pun.

Voodoo smiled along with the man on the bed. He looked at Maggie. She grabbed a pair of handcuffs out of a pocket in her jacket.

“Emmet Nastiki ... You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder,” she said seriously. “You have the right to remain silent ... Puleeeeze fuckin’ use it,” she began.

“Wait! This is bogus,” screamed Emmet. “That’s not how this works. You don’t have a warrant.” He looked at Voodoo. “Detective Black Guy, tell this crazy bitch to back off!”

“Actually, she’s right,” said Voodoo calmly. “In this case, we don’t need a warrant. We have something better ... Maggie...”

Maggie reached a long finger into a pocket of her skin-tight jeans. She had to wiggle her body to get the finger in. Every man in the room watched as her body swayed back and forth as she tried to extract the tiny item.

On the bed, Emmet’s eyes rolled back in his head as he watched her body move. “This is better than porn,” he said. “Oooooh baby, come over here and frisk me. Let’s frisk each other while these guys watch...”

Finally, Maggie pulled a small oddly shaped piece of gleaming metal out of her pocket.

“Recognize this... ?” she smiled. “It’s called a key. It’s a key to the front door of this house. Your brother ... The owner gave it to us. He also reported that you may have done something to a girl here. We came in ... With his permission ... to INVESTIGATE. We, therefore, have PROBABLE CAUSE ... Book ‘em Danno.”

Emmet’s smile got even broader then.

“You are getting better, Baby,” he smiled at her. “I mean for a big blond monkey with large jug sickles you are probably at the top of the food chain, but you blew it again. This was not a murder. Look over there on the desk,” he pointed to a desk in the corner of the room.

The uniformed officer found a stack of papers on the desk, right next to the computer’s printer.

He brought them over and handed them to Voodoo.

Voodoo looked through the certificates and laughed. There was one that claimed Emmet was an ordained minister of an oddball church. He held it up.

“You’re a minister of the church of Technotronics?” he asked.

Emmet nodded his head. “Technotronics is the true Scientology. L Ron Hubbard got it all wrong. His ego got in the way of the real path to the stars.”

“You’re a certified FBI special agent,” asked Voodoo.

“Yep ... Female Body Inspector,” snapped Emmet. “Skip that one.”

“You have a PhD in Efluvian Medical Observation,” asked Voodoo with a confused look on his face. “What’s that?”

“It’s above your pay grade, Detective,” smirked Emmet. “But it means that I am a certified professional medical doctor.”

“But you downloaded this from the Internet,” said Voodoo.

“So what,” snapped Emmet! “People do all kinds of shit on the net. They meet their wives, take classes, commit crimes, and all other kind of shit. It’s a new world detective. I am a doctor. Remember that.”

“What the fuck does you being an Internet quack have to do with anything,” asked Maggie.

“That was hurtful, Sweetheart,” said Emmet. “No one questions your hair color detective. As I recall it, the first time we met your hair was a lot darker blond. Maybe the peroxide is damaging your brain. But since we’ve established that you’re brain damaged ... I’m gonna talk real slllllooooowwww.”

“Fuck you,” spat Maggie.

“Not right now,” said Emmet. “Your partner is watching. Anyway, the little bitch asked me to kill her. She wanted it. She told me her entire God damned life story ... We’ve already established that. So in my professional guise as an EMO doctor. I found her to be a viable case.”

“A viable case for what,” asked Voodoo. Even he was beginning to become upset. “She was a vulnerable young girl. Probably suffering from some form of depression.”

“Exactly,” exclaimed Emmet! “You detective are very smart. Perhaps you’ve been there while that one was bleaching away her brain cells, and you somehow absorbed them. I see it all now the dumber she gets, the smarter you become.”

Maggie picked her gun back up and clicked off the safety.

“So what I did wasn’t a crime,” said Emmet. “It was a case of WWJD.”

Maggie looked puzzled.

“Doesn’t that stand for, “What Would Jesus Do,” asked Voodoo.

“Not anymore and only if you’re a Christian,” smirked Emmet. “The Christians always claim all of the good shit. In my church...”

“That would be the church of Technotronics, right,” asked Voodoo.

“First Chair, Detective,” crooned Emmet. “In the church of Technotronics we have what we call later day or modern day saints...”

“They stole that shit from the Morons ... I mean the Mormons,” said Maggie.

“It’s still true,” spat Emmet. “So WWJD stands for What would Jack do!”

“Jack who,” asked Maggie. “Are you talking about climbing a fucking beanstalk or going up the hill to fetch some fucking water?”

Emmet shook his head. “So now that we’ve established Blondie’s reading level, let’s move on.” He pointed to a large poster on the far wall. “Saint Jack,” he intoned solemnly.

“Isn’t that Jack Kervorkian,” asked Voodoo.

“Who,” asked Maggie.

“Exactly,” said Emmet. “I used my skills as a certified medical professional, deemed her to be a viable case and then Kervorked the fuck out of her.”

“What is this psychopath talking about,” asked Maggie. “Can I shoot him now?”

“Please shoot him, Ma’am,” said the other two cops in the room.

“He’s claiming that this is a case of physician assisted suicide,” said Voodoo. “He’s claiming that she came to him because she wanted to die.”

“The poor thing had a rough life,” laughed Emmet. “Her emotional baggage was simply too much for her to bear. So I mercifully helped her to shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Maggie lost it then she flipped her gun over grabbing it by the barrel. She raised her arm, only to have Voodoo grab her, just before she clubbed Emmet over the head.

“Officer, take this man into custody,” said Voodoo who was still trying to restrain Maggie. “Detective Grayson started reading him his rights. Make sure you complete that process.”

“Yes sir,” said the uniformed officer, as he stepped forward.

Emmet spoke to Voodoo as the officer put him in handcuffs. “Good job detective. You saved the city from losing even more money. And you saved that bitch from losing her career.”

“The way I figure it,” said Voodoo. “All I did was turn the clock back a little while. I basically spread a turd. If Maggie had hit you, she’d have killed you. I doubt that either one of these officers would have admitted to seeing what happened. I know I wouldn’t have. But Maggie would have suffered over it. It’s not worth it to lose a good cop over a piece of shit...”

“ ... Besides...” Said Voodoo. “Serial Killers don’t do well in jail, especially the ones who kill young girls. One of those guys on the inside is going to turn you into a young girl. All I did was delay the inevitable.”

“But she asked for it,” screamed Emmet as he was dragged away. “She wanted me to do it. Listen to the fucking tape. She begged me for it. Listen to her story!”

The images on the screen froze there as the old bearded man waved his arm.

For a moment, I’d been so engrossed in watching what had happened after the end of my life that I had forgotten where I was and what I was trying to accomplish.

“There you have it,” said the bearded man. “Suicide.”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “It was murder pure and simple. I did not kill myself. It was not suicide so let me into heaven.”

“Semantics,” hissed the man. And then I found out how powerful he was. He waved his arm, and the images on the screen reversed themselves.

I knew then that he had simply reversed time for a few hours. “I’m sending you back, young lady. Make better choices this time.”

“You don’t understand,” I screamed. “If you send me back I’ll just do the same thing all over again. I don’t have a choice!”

“None of us do,” he said raising his arm.

Before he could wave his arm and do whatever he intended to do, there was a clap of thunder, and ... A yawn?

A voice that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time spoke.

The voice seemed to come from within the air and at the same time, I heard it and felt it in my mind. But looking around, I had no clue of who had spoken.

“What’s going on, Pete,” asked the voice. “I leave you in charge for five ME-damned minutes, and the place goes to...”

“It wasn’t five minutes,” said the bearded man tersely. “It’s been almost fifty years.”

“It doesn’t make a difference,” said the voice. “I gave you control of time, remember?”