The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.25 It's Not Our Job to Care

June 6, 10:30 am

The Salt Lake City Public Safety Building, which opened its doors in 2013, was an engineering marvel.

It was designed with state-of-the-art technology to serve as a communications center and administrative hub for both the police and fire operations of the city. And more, since the city often suffered from serious pollution problems during the winter, it was designed to be a green building which would be a model for other such public facilities in the future.

But the real marvel of the building, Carla Grayson believed, was the fact that they built it like Fort Knox.

For years Salt Lake City had been expecting "the big one"—the earthquake along the Wasatch Fault that would shake the city into a ruin. Most modern construction in the city was geared toward surviving a major earthquake, but the Salt Lake City Public Safety Building took earthquake preparedness to a whole new level. They designed it to not only survive, but to continue operations in the event of even the worst disaster. The power grid in the building was modular and hardened, with multiple redundancies and power generation capabilities. The design ensured that nothing that mother nature could throw at the city would take down their command center.

And that was fine. But to Carla's eyes, the cubicles and offices in the new building were no more appealing than the ones in the old behemoth they had vacated. Her own office was tiny, a half floor below ground, and in the center of the building. She was always relieved when she could venture out and up and get some actual sunlight.

Her Sergeant's name was Brian Mears, and his thirty years on the force had rated him a slightly bigger office on the perimeter, including a street-level view out over the courtyard. Rather than have him meet her in one of the bleak conference rooms, she had called to say that she was on her way up.

She strode into his office, and without a word, dropped the sheaf of papers she was carrying onto his desk.

Mears was sitting with his back to the door, his feet up on the cabinet under the window. His gray military-style crew cut looked like it bad been freshly shorn that morning, and he ran his hand through it before turning slowly in his big leather chair. As he did, Carla noticed he was careful not to glance at the papers she'd just dumped on his desk so unceremoniously. Instead, he just leaned back and looked up at her, gnawing on his pen.

"Jesus Carla, you look like shit. Did you go home at all?"

"Nope, thanks to you and this bullshit assignment." She thumped the papers on his desk. "I've spent most the night dealing with pissed off people. Nobody enjoys getting a call in the middle of the night, especially when it's bad news, and especially when it's a cop with bad news."

"Sorry to dump this on you, Carla," Mears said, finally looking over the tops of his glasses at the files. "But you've got a way about you that works for this stuff. People tell you things they won't tell the guys."

"Yeah, well, not today. And besides, that's sexist crap. Don't play that card with me. It's just a way to keep me behind a desk, when I could be out there doing investigations."

Mears scowled, finally leaning forward, dragging the stack of papers across the blotter.

"So. You got nothing?"

"Practically nothing." She waited as the Sergeant picked up and quickly skimmed the pages of her notes. She was very thorough about these sorts of things, and her work was well organized. Each page was an interview record with someone who might shed some light on Bradley Seward, the now famous "Slasher Airman," as he had been dubbed on social media. The #SlasherAirman hashtag was already trending, at least in Salt Lake City.