A Walk on the Duskside

[Bridget Dillon]

Advisory warning: This story will contain acts of violence including self harm, suicide, homicide, bullying, and other potentially triggering content.

[Bridget Dillon]

I'm more suited to biker leathers than those sweet Goth Lolita clothes I have seen on some of the residents in Duskside. They're doing their own thing, that's just not me. My day job is working in a forensics lab in the basement of one of the hospitals in the city. It was working as a private investigator that paid for that fancy medical doctor's degree. I'm pretty unknown in this area and I like it that way. It's quieter here and few will question seeing the shadow of the wolf in the moonlight just before something more human is seen. I'm at an advantage in some ways, I don't give off the signals of a werewolf to supernatural beings. That's because I'm not one. I was dying and my then partner in life convinced me that this was a good thing, allowing my genetic code to be altered. Those superior wolf senses come in handy when I'm on a case.

I have one rule, I won't dig up dirt for people on their exes or soon to be exes. Plenty of people do that kind of work, it's easy to track down cheaters. They eventually tip their hand. I miss my little backwoods place with its sleeping porch. Maybe it's time to hang up a shingle around here and begin hunting. Again.

I was approached by a woman to look into a few people. While Delilah Carrington isn’t without financial resources, she can’t do the legwork on her own. That’s where I come in. The first person that a P.I. should look into is their client. You need to know what motivates them beyond what they are asking of you. Old documents open windows into lives. The more I read, the more I shut down my emotional responses. Fifteen years ago, it was reported that Delilah’s sister, Gabriella Carrington Mosley, ended her own life. It will take a while, but I need access to the coroner’s reports. It's time to call in favors. Did she actually end her own life or was she, like others, a victim of an undetected crime? It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought they got away with it only to have something resurface, years later, that hung them out to dry.

Delilah’s concern doesn’t involve exhuming her sister’s remains; it’s all about the now twenty-something children that were left behind. She suspects they are being blackmailed in some way and doesn’t want to lose them, too.

[Bridget Dillon]

I’ve always appreciated detective stories. No one crafts a metaphor like Raymond Chandler. With Farewell, My Lovely running on a late night movie channel for background noise, I ran some more searches on NexNet. Four of those six children left behind were in the twenty-five to thirty-five year age group. The youngest pair of kids, twins, were six when their mother died. The general biographical information was courtesy of their aunt. Access to criminal and school records including counseling files, those were gained through old police contacts.

Did I mention that I used to be a cop? That was so long ago that it feels like a dream or should I say a nightmare? The end of my career was forced. After spending a year in recovery from what was called line of duty injuries, I needed a change. The man that inflicted those injuries, he’ll never do it again. I made sure of that.

One of those kids turned to drugs and booze in their early teens. She’s been in and out of rehab for years. The second twin has records listed in at least two names. I don’t know that story. I’m still digging. I empathize with losing a mother, I was the only daughter and youngest child in a large family. My own mother died at a rather young age. I was old enough to understand that her body wasn’t able to fight off the disease that took her. A pair of six year olds might have thought they were at fault somehow. Much like in a divorce, the children aren’t to blame for a parent’s decisions.