I Am Chosen

Considering the Impossible

"In all my twenty-six years on the force I've never seen anything like this," Captain Bryce said. Kacey and Hollis stood on either side of him as he sat at his desk, watching a replay of the interview room footage.

The camera angle was from above, showing Rhonda White flipping the table leg, sticking the end in her mouth, and falling onto it with all of her weight. They had watched it a few times now and it still made Kacey cringe. The coroner was only now removing the remains from the interview room.

Bryce rewound the footage. "Maybe she discovered the leg was loose when she sat down. Maybe she loosened the bolts..." Letting out a long, heavy sigh, Bryce said "alright, get a report on my desk by morning."

As they prepared to leave Bryce asked Kacey to stay. When Hollis had left the office Kacey stood to the side of the captain's desk as he said "Sheriff's office searched Faulkner's residence. They couldn't find anything to indicate that Faulkner ever interacted with Declan Crowe. Nor could they find anything that would point to a motive for him trying to kill you. But..."

Bryce leaned forward, locking his brown eyes on Kacey. "They did find evidence that someone had jimmied a lock on one of his windows. No luck getting prints. I know it's not much but I wanted to update you. That's it so far. If I learn anything new you'll be the first to know."

A half hour later Kacey shuffled into her apartment-a cramped little space on the fifth floor in one of those old seventies buildings that was like a cube-beehive-and put her jacket on the big hook by the door. She put her keys on the small hook and then made her way into the main living area, where she collapsed on the couch.

The couch and TV were surrounded by taped-up, labeled boxes. She had unpacked three... maybe four since she had moved from L.A. She had planned on unpacking; really, she had the best of intentions.

You're lazy.

Okay, so there was that.

Kacey countered, in her defense, that she had started going out with Hanson and that she had actually thought in the beginning it might lead to something. She had started spending most of her off time at his place back then. So she hadn't had time to unpack.

You're still lazy.

It was a sad state of affairs when you couldn't even win an argument against yourself. Still, at least it distracted her a little bit from thinking about Rhonda. About her suicide. About all the crazy twists and turns in this bizarre case. Sometimes it seemed as if half the world had just suddenly gone insane. Laying her head back and closing her eyes, rubbing the sore spot on her hand from where Rhonda had whacked it with the table leg, Kacey tried to clear her head but it was no use. Her thoughts wandered to Declan Crowe. Back to the night at the asylum, when a sheriff's deputy had reported seeing Declan's Range Rover outside the old building...

Soon after the shooting, Kacey had done some internet research and found that Pleasant Hills Asylum had been a really big deal back in the early nineteen hundreds. Until nineteen thirty when some lunatic who actually wasn't a patient broke into the place, tied up the staff and gunned down half the inmates before escaping. He was later caught, convicted and hanged.

He had never expressed a motive for his actions.

During the legal and media circus that followed the shootings, the asylum was shut down. By the time all the turmoil surrounding the place finally calmed, the damage had been done and Pleasant Hills Asylum's fate was sealed. It shut its doors for good and fell into disrepair. Eventually it was condemned and fenced in.