At the dump.

  At first the smell(s) hit the nose like an atom bomb.  The seagulls don't seem to notice.  All the senses blown away.  Uninvited tears--stinging, burning, the only sensation left.  Eyes see piles for miles leading to the mountains of everyone's lives piling this place.

  "The challenge?"

  How to find a shoe

  "In this mess?"

  Bitch of a witch to put it in there the crumple-clothes'd detective chewed the words with the plain bagel hand jerked to mouth.  If she did.  Hands reaching for cream cheese packets but stopping short to: ask first.

  Funny story was demanded.  Blushing, of course.  "So the kids sent the middle one in to check on mum and dad; and," still laughing, "the child's update was, Dad's giving Mom a lap dance."

  "What was he really doing?"

  "Oh, that's a long story."

  "We've got time."

  A kid squirted a packet from the backseat, so she was wiping up the gooey stuff and forming the perfect short story as we waited.  "Well, you see, sometimes when we all sleep in the same bed, while we're waiting for the new furniture," the lady explained.  "Daddy sleeps so hard he wakes up late for catching the train, so I'll moisturize," the man paused the donut from second bite.  The child snagged it mid air.  "His contact lenses in my good eye, the other one," she pointed, "gets a little too dry

  "Still?"

  "Still, Sir."

  He snagged the last donut, ate it whole and licked his quick draw fingers and looked at the clipboard.  "That doesn't exactly explain the ice pick."

  "Oh.  Is that on that little list?"

  The man turned the clipboard sideways then slanted it to read it loud and clear.  "Wasn't there a scarecrow on that list?" She blew on the hot coffee.

  "Did you write on my form?"

  An officer leaned head into the car.  "Is there a problem or can we get started?"

  Now that's three.  Questions.

  "You first."

  The criminologists had stood in place for almost two hours in front of the mansion.

  Stilled trees barely talked around them.  Wouldn't say.

  Take it as a "case" maybe?

  Don't       know.

  Each seminarian entered the door with a cage on the window behind the glass.

  One at a time a uniformed cop told people leaving parked cars and making way through the overflow lot.

  "The sun kills," a man in a straw hat palm-wiped the dusty sportster to check the sheen.

  A cowboy-hatted, jean and shirt-wearing fished keys out of a tight pocket, "You checking my lustre muster?"

  Mom and Dad each with children in all hands pulled closer.  YOU're stretching my arrrrrm wiggles and squirms, standing up straights.

  "Make you grow faster," Mama Sherry said.  Hats tipped and a wink.  My father dropped, or tried to drop, shook a kid out of his hand, bore a fist with a wedding ring.  One of the men tipped his hat to Dad then and gestured.  "Obscene" was still being determined, in regards dancing of course.

  There were deeper issues going on, so, that was also a race.

  Who put them in there?  That's what I need to know, for sure.  Start with this list.

  "Hi folks.  Hello Sir."

  My father squeezed the kids hands harder so he wouldn't be forced to shake on anything.

  I rested my forehead in my good arm.  Blew out a breath so my mother would breathe in.  Still broken, a nurse reported to a clipboard.

  I went over in my head our story.

  I sort of woke up.  One eye was buried in dirt and sand, so it felt like only half of me was awake.  I tried to ask my mother why I'd fallen asleep where my Dad usually sleeps.  Some people were talking kind of far away.  "They fell for it, get it?!" "Structural problems, so condemn it, that'll work."  "That's the story they want us to go with." "Run it." "We'll run with it too." "Place is creepy.  Let's go." Everyone drove away.  But none of us could move.