Chapter 11 - THE FLICKERING BLUE LIGHTS
By the time my car turned onto the cracked asphalt of Elm Street, the entire block was illuminated in frantic, pulsing strokes of red and blue. Three squad cars sat angled across the lawn with their headlights blazing against the front porch. Yellow crime-scene tape fluttered violently in the damp midnight wind.
I killed the engine and stepped out into the chill.
The front door of my childhood home was hanging off its hinges, splintered oak dangling from the frame like raw bones. Two officers were escorting a man in handcuffs down the concrete path—a hulking figure in a leather jacket who spat on the driveway as he passed.
A few feet away, sitting on the bumper of an ambulance with a thermal foil blanket draped across her shoulders, was my mother.
She looked shrunken. The arrogant matriarch who had ruled over family dinners with casual cruelty had completely vanished. Her face was smeared with gray dust, her eyes darted erratically across the flashing cruisers, and her fingers clutched the metallic blanket as if it were the only solid thing left in the universe.
Beside her, Mike sat on the curb, head buried in his palms, his shoulders shaking with silent, rhythmic spasms.
I approached slowly. The uniformed sergeant guarding the perimeter stepped forward to block me, his hand resting on his utility belt.
"Sir, this is an active crime scene. Step back."
"I'm the owner of the property," I said quietly, pulling my driver's license and the deed documentation from my jacket pocket. "My name is Alex Vance. My mother and brother are on the curb."
The officer inspected the card, looked over my shoulder at the ruined entryway, and nodded solemnly. "You got here fast. We apprehended two suspects inside. They were armed. They claim they were collecting a collateral deposit. Your mother has refused medical transport, but she’s in shock."
I walked toward the ambulance. The sound of my shoes crushing gravel made Mike look up.
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His eyes were swollen, a dark purplish bruise spreading across his left cheekbone where someone had struck him before he made it to the garage crawl space. When he saw me standing there in the cold, not screaming, not mocking, just watching, he broke down completely.
"Alex," he croaked, wiping his nose with the back of a bloody hand. "You... you actually called them."
