Detective Brant McCain was a local, which was rare in this city.
He was a local in the sense that his family was from there, and had been for generations. They weren't transplants from various other countries or states that had been flung there from one job to another.
His father had been a cop, and so had his grandfather; both serving the same communities outside the metro area. Brant had no plans to follow in their footsteps. That is until his junior year at Georgia State, when his mother and father were both gunned down a block away from his apartment on their way for a visit.
Once he buried them, he swapped majors to criminal justice and joined the downtown precinct and began to try and clean up the crowded, violent streets of downtown Atlanta.
That was fifteen years ago and as far as he could tell there were more criminals now.
The crumbling world around him had caused more people than ever to be on the wrong side of the law. People like this kid laid out on the floor in front of him. Well the pieces of him anyway.
Danny Mazeretti aka ‘Fishfingers,' had been arrested half a dozen times. Only once for aggravated assault, the rest were mostly minor offenses. All and all, he was a good kid in the world he was living in. How in the world did he wind up like this?
Brant walked over to the medical examiner. “What the hell happened here? Can you tell what did this? A dog maybe?” The detective asked, looking at the mangled body.
“Teeth marks are wrong.” the examiner said pointing at the lower part of Danny's neck, which besides his head was one of the few places that still had flesh attached to it. The rest was gnawed down to the bone.
“What do you think then? Rats?” He said, his mind not ready to go where the examiner wanted him to.
“This was people,” the examiner said matter of factly.
“Dear God.” Brant shuttered and went out of the room to spray his lunch on one of the nearby walls.
“Sweet Jesus,” he croaked in between violent convulsions.
What was this world coming to? Brant was glad he hadn't made it to dinner yet, and as he was still hunched over cleaning off the sides of his mouth, he saw a very shiny and very expensive black pair of shoes enter into his frame of vision. He looked up to see someone he didn't expect.
“Good evening officer.”
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