AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

left.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    “30th and Zuni,” she said. Unfortunately, Munroe was still learning his way around Denver and since he couldn’t drive, never really got to know the city like he did Seattle. “Which is where?” he asked again.
    “Highlands, overlooking downtown. It’s east of downtown. You know, 15th Street, once it crosses I-25, magically turns into 29th Avenue.”
    “Isn’t that where the bathhouse is?” he asked, referring to a gay bathhouse.
    “Yes, and there are apartments or condos at 30th and Zuni.”
    The address was only a short drive on Speer Boulevard. As they drove, they saw two other police cruisers and a fire truck ahead of them, all with lights and sirens.
    They got to the intersection of 30th and Zuni at almost the same time because the fire truck had to wait on a confused driver who had stopped in the middle of the Speer and Zuni intersection.
    Yamaguchi decided to park on Zuni, although the fire rescue trucks were clustered around the alley between Zuni and Wyandot, the next street to the east. She walked to the fenced parking lot behind the building at the corner of 30th and Zuni. The building looked like it was from the 1900s or even older. A spire and dome stood on the corner of the building and she vaguely recalled that it was an old pharmacy and was now condominiums.
    The lot had a retractable gate that kept the parking private for the tenants but was now kept open, probably by the police cruiser parked on the pressure plate. They found a sergeant she recognized and another officer talking with a woman, obviously distraught. They also saw a bunch of firefighters all looking at a gap between the building and its neighbor. One of the firefighters kept yelling “Jason!”
    “Yamaguchi, got Munroe with you?” the sergeant asked.
    “He’s here. What do you need us to do?”
    The sergeant answered. “Kids were playing here and we think one of them is trapped between the two buildings,” he said, pointing to the group of firefighters.
    “You’re kidding,” she said. She walked over to the firefighters and the sergeant followed. He told the firefighters, “Let her take a look.”
    They moved aside and Yamaguchi and Munroe could see that a crack that seemed less than a foot wide separated the two two-story buildings. This late on a winter day, very little light entered the crack and the firefighters had been trying to shine their flashlights into the crack. Suddenly a bright light appeared at the top of the crack when a firefighter on the roof of the building turned on a handheld spotlight. But even after focusing the beam as narrowly as possible, it only lit the bricks at the top and failed to throw much light at the bottom. She also realized she could see all the way through the crack when she saw cars driving on Zuni.
    “I don’t see anything in there,” she said, when she pulled back.
    “The mother said there’s a … space under the buildings. Cats go in there,” the sergeant said. “Can Munroe fit through, you think?”
    “What do you think, Alex?”
    Munroe eyed the gap suspiciously. He wasn’t claustrophobic when alive, but he shared with all disembodied the fear of being confined.
    “It’s a little tight,” he said finally. “I can probably make it. Hey, I assume they’ve tried calling the kid.”
    “They were yelling his name when we got here.”
    “His name is Jason. Who’s she talking to?” the mother asked. The sergeant, who was probably the first on the scene, pulled her aside and Yamaguchi could hear him explaining the situation to her. When the mother heard the word “disembodied,” she began crying even more loudly.
    “The mother says the kid’s name is Jason, Alex. Is it really too tight? I thought you could squeeze through narrower if you had to.” She was right, he had squeezed through narrower spaces than this, but they always opened to a larger space on the other side. She moved back to peer into the crack.
    “Never tried going through something this long before,” he said. “And I don’t see any space where the kid could be. How long has the kid been missing?” Yamaguchi relayed his question and said, “The mother says he’s been missing two hours.” Yamaguchi spoke quietly, “What’s the matter, Alex?”
    “Nothing. I’ll try to go in. Give me some room here.”
    Yamaguchi told the others to back away and he’d try to go in.
    When the group cleared, Munroe tried to push his way into the crack.