Overture (Earth Song) Read Online Free PDF Page B

see it through.
    “ You know,” Jennifer said without looking up, “regardless of what voucher you’re willing to sign, we’re still going to both catch shit on this. This guy hasn’t even been booked yet.” Harper looked at her then at Victor. The rules were quite specific, and the repercussions for ignoring them were equally dangerous. You had eight hours to book a suspect or release them. That time was just about up.
    “ She’s right, you know,” he told Victor, who had disposed of his sandwich and was stuffing the potato chips in his mouth with a contented grin. “We’re going to have to let you go.”
    “ I want to finish this,” Victor said, gesturing at the computer display of the Portal rotating on the other computer.
    “ What can we book you on? Vagrancy in the park last night, that only gets you a misdemeanor. We don’t even write a ticket for that anymore.”
    “ What about this?” Victor asked, reaching into a pocket. A friend sewed a special pouch into the lining of his sweats and it had saved him from all kinds of trouble. Out of the hidden pocket he produced the crack rocks he’d scored last night. Victor had run straight into the North Meadow trying to save those little pieces of crystallized cocaine from other predators but now he happily dropped them on the table without another thought of wanting to use drugs ever again.
    Harper stared at the rocks in amazement, both that he would give them up and that he was providing them a means to book him. “We’ll call it minor possession,” Harper said and casually swept one of the rocks into the garbage can, then bagged the second one, “Mark you as a plea of guilty and I’ll e-mail a request that the judge suspend the sentence with time served.” He consulted his booking computer, held it up to snap Victor’s image and prints. The computer accessed the precinct’s network, uploaded the data and provided him with an arraignment date, three days from now. “Judge Hollypepper, with an arraignment three days from now. I’ll have a word with him, we should have no problem.”
    “ Three days till I’m released? That should be just about perfect.”
    “ We only need a few more hours to finish these sketches,” the artist said.
    “ I need time to think, to put all this together.” Victor glanced at the garbage can where the last remnant of his former life lay. “I need to finish getting my body as clean as the Angel of God has made my mind.”
    “ You know this could all be some big hoax,” Harper said to the man.
    “ It could be a hoax, but it isn’t.”
    “ How do you know?”
    Victor pointed to his eyes. “I was there, remember?”
    “ Right. Well, I have to report back to duty. Don’t want to have to explain how I blew my whole shift on a minor drug bust.”
    “ Lt. Harper, thanks.”
    “ What did I do?”
    “ You’ve helped guide my revelation. I’ve had an epiphany here. Until you showed up I was sitting in that police car trying to decide what had happened, and how to get out of there. Regardless, thanks.” They shook hands and Victor went back to working with the artist. The image was nearing completion, amazing Victor with the details of his own memory. “When I finish this, can I have a disk of it?”
    “ I don’t see why not,” Jennifer said as she worked with details of his description. “It’s not like this is a crime scene composite. The feds are acting strange, but they haven’t said squat to us.” Victor nodded and began to think about the design she was working on, pressing his mind to remember every intricate detail.
    “ Hey, can you help me make an image of the angel I saw?”
    She looked up with a raised eyebrow at him. “Not trying to make me your first convert are you?”
    “ I don’t think I want to make any converts, officer. But I want an image of the Lord’s agent while it’s still fresh in my mind.”
    “ Sure Victor, no problem. But let’s finish this Portal thing first.” He