firstclassnpc (firstclassnpc) wrote in firstclassrpg, @ 2011-07-09 23:44:00 |
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Her voice was drowned out by a scuffle, but before the line went dead, Kemp heard a mumbled: "Jack, we nee-". If he'd been any more awake, the tone paired with the conversation's end would have filled him with dread- but as it was, it only lazily prompted him to action.
"Esther?" Jack muttered into the receiver, wearily rubbing his squinting eyes. The sharp ring of their rotary telephone had pierced the sleeping Kemp house as surely as a firewhistle roused a city, and to boot, something in the phone's base was broken which made an irritating rattle with every dying ring. "Hello?"
The night-secretary never called him at home, not when there were other officers on duty- which there always were. No one liked the old maid working in the evenings, let alone the dead of night, but with the influx of tourists and visitors who somehow believed that murder was now a spectator sport, the police department was a non-stop den of activity. Esther stepped forward, still feeling her Rosie-Riveting-Kinship from two decades ago. "Esther!" He glanced first at the clock above their stove. 2 AM? The receiver felt thick in his hand, and impatiently he tapped on the switch hook, killing the line in hopes of resuscitating it. After three clicks, not even a dial tone resurfaced, and he hung up with an impatient tut. In the dark, he drifted to the ironing-board where his black uniform hung inside out, unpressed. He loved his wife, he really did, but in the moment he hated how she waited to do the laundry in the downtime between waking and breakfast. Not only did he look every inch as exhausted as he felt, but he was going to look as if he'd gone three hard rounds with a gator. Jack rapidly shrugged into the wool-polyester blend, not bothering to change his undershirt or shorts.
He couldn't ignore Esther's call, no matter how much he wanted to crawl back into bed. In his haste, he grabbed his holster and scrawled a quick note for Lori-Beth, tucking it under their bedroom door.
Outside it was seasonably chilled, desolate despite the perfectly maintained suburbia. Each house sat neatly between two identical homes and two identical driveways. The only things that distinguished his own house from those of his immediate neighbors was the parked police cruiser and the polished brass 105 above the doorbell. He locked the door quickly, a smooth motion established by habit. Most of his neighbors didn't lock their doors, they had no reason to- but Kemp could never justify such flagrant disregard for his own family's safety.
The confused voice of his daughter startled him, and he whipped his head around to view the source of the restrained, "Dad?" For as young as Vivian was, she was always conscientious of her neighbors even if she wasn't nearly so giving with her father. He supposed though, that at seventeen, she had every right to start breaking away from him.
"Go back to bed, baby." He said distractedly rooting around for the keys in his rumpled uniform pants. Once they were secured in his grasp, Jack looked back up at his daughter, but she was already reluctantly turning from the window. "And shut that goddamn window, any maniac could just crawl on in." Vivian swayed on her feet petulantly but did what he asked. He didn't leave until she flipped the lock and drew her curtains.
He was unlocking the door to the cruiser when he realized that he'd forgotten his jacket, and that if he didn't come home before Lori-Beth woke, she was going to skin him alive. Jack was halfway across his lawn when he heard a branch snap and saw a shadow dart away from the dull light of the streetlamp. He stood at complete attention, one hand warily moving for his sixshooter. "I'm not in the mood for hide-and-seek," He hesitated before drawing it, not wanting to level the hand-piece unnecessarily on one of his neighbors. "You show yourself now, you hear?" After a pause with no response, his fingers enclosed the butt of his gun.