Inspector Zelda at Loose Ends

Inspector Zelda prowled the halls covertly. She was restless, at loose ends, uninspired. She had thought The Case of the Pen Bandit would be her big break, and that her door would be battered down with intriguing cases and clients vying for her services. She had thought the case would bring her the proper attention. Oh, it had brought her attention, all right. But not the sort she anticipated.

Inspector Zelda had been transferred from the dark-shadowed 28th floor full of questionable characters and lurking danger. She was now on one of the bright and shiny upper executive floors. Everything was bright. Everything was shiny. Too bright. Too shiny. It was like a street sweeper had been transferred to the pristine halls of a private hospital - there was nothing here for her to clean up.

Her covert prowlings brought her to one of the large picture windows gazing north onto the island of Manhattan. Even the view up here was cleaner than she was used to. But - wait - what was that looming haze? Inspector Zelda's unfocused glare sharpened as her mind cleared. A wide heavy haze was creeping down from the north of the island. Everything about it looked suspicious. It was an odd consistency, opaque and sickly yellow-green-grey; nothing like the clean translucent blue-grey fog that flavored the horizon preceeding or following a spring rain. No, this ... this fog was insidious. And it was approaching.

Inspector Zelda flung herself to the nearest detective station and logged on to the internets. There, she learned from the Book of Faces, as well as Bird Emissions, that this creepy sickly floating presence was making itself known not just in upper Manhattan, but as far off as Queens, Long Island, Westchester.

Inspector Zelda raised her eyes in horror. If it had spread to Westchester, who knew where else it might go?

To be continued ...