“Considering I’m armed and you aren’t, it makes you quite sensible, really.” I dug my phone out of my pocket, wished I hadn’t investigated the odd noise outside of my door, and thumbed through the contacts until I found Officer Nilman’s number.
One day, the man might be able to head home, hopefully before his wife came back to town. I connected the call.
“Detective McMarin,” my new co-worker greeted. “How can I help you this fine evening?”
“As the Chief Quinns would surely panic if I contacted dispatch, I have a 10-10 N partnered with a rain of frogs, and I’m fairly sure the perp has mixed and matched his substances.” I eyed the frogs, some of which were brightly colored and screamed poisonous. “I’m not up-to-date on my amphibian identification, but some of these look like they dabbled with a box of crayons.”
“And Mr. Mortan?”
“He is currently in my room, where the potentially poisonous amphibians or their drugged and probably inebriated conjurer won’t get him. Send medical assistance for the practitioner, along with any antidotes, or whatever it is people use to prevent poisonous frogs from killing someone. I’d rather not add a tally to Mr. Mortan’s checklist. I have not engaged the probably hallucinating gentleman, who has settled into rocking and muttering to himself.”
Sometimes, my job as a cop was to stand and do nothing until someone qualified to handle the situation showed up, and outside of a rain of potentially poisonous frogs, he hadn’t harmed anyone. Yet.
Thanks to the late hour, no one else had come to investigate the amphibians, who protested their new environment in ribbits.
“What checklist?”
“Of witnessing 101 ways to die, of course. I suspect he’s up to his fifties by now, and I’d rather not he be able to add drug overdose or encounter with lethal frog to the tally.”
Behind me, Alec Mortan snorted a laugh. “That’s true isn’t it? That’s definitely one way to look at it. It’s been a unique experience. I shouldn’t be laughing about this, but my therapist would probably praise me because it beats generalized depression.”
Yes, a little laughter even in the face of something terrible generally beat generalized depression. “It’s unfortunately true. The first time I witnessed someone die while in the line of duty, I got a week with a therapist, and he suggested I add morbid humor as a stage of grief. I haven’t counted the ways yet, but it might make for one hell of an interesting autobiography. While slightly horrifying in a way, laughing at what I couldn’t change actually helped.” One of the bright colored frogs hopped in my direction, and I redirected it with my shoe, grateful I’d had the sense to put them back on before investigating the chaos outside of my door. “Nilman, just so you’re aware, there are literally hundreds or thousands of these frogs, and I don’t know if they were conjured or teleported in from somewhere else, and there are more species than I can shake a stick at.”
“I’ll make sure dispatch understands there might be endangered species in the lot,” he replied. “Please don’t lick any frogs.”
I blinked, took the phone away from my ear to confirm I’d dialed the right number, and once I had it back in its proper position, I asked, “Why would I lick a frog?”
“I just ask myself ‘What would Bailey do?’ and react accordingly. She would absolutely try to give a frog a kiss, especially when a cindercorn.”
Behind me, Alec snickered. “You don’t seem like the type to lick a frog, Detective.”
“Please just get someone here who can handle this mess, and I’ll hopefully keep the practitioner from falling over dead or adding to the chaos.”
“On it. Expect the cavalry within the next five to ten minutes with the CDC hot on their heels. Let’s just hope there aren’t any fatalities. If there aren’t any fatalities, we won’t have to notify the Quinns until later. Much later.”
“10-4. Call me back if there are any issues.” I hung up and settled in to defend my hotel room from frogs while I kept an eye on the perp, who needed more help than I could provide and a stint in an emergency room to detox him of whatever crap he’d taken before deciding to experiment with magic.
The practitioner fellover dead on me, and as I’d sworn an oath to serve and protect, I did my best to resuscitate him while waiting for emergency services to arrive.
Luck wasn’t with me—or with him.
Thanks to the frogs, numerous of which were deemed rather toxic to people in general, I got to enjoy a trip to the emergency room to make certain I wouldn’t join the practitioner in reaching a premature expiration. Alec insisted on accompanying me, even though my co-workers attempted to talk him out of it.
After the first thirty minutes, I appreciated his company.
“What do you think killed him?” Alec asked, and he eyed the monitoring equipment I was attached to with a frown.
“It’ll take a while for the toxicity reports to come back in, but judging from his behavior, a drug overdose in conjunction with poisoning from the frogs he’d summoned. Bad things happen when you mix various narcotics, and if he had alcohol on top of it, overdose and chemical reactions can happen in a hurry.”
Drug overdoses had taken the top spot for non-natural fatalities at my old precinct, with gun-based violence coming in a close second. Domestic violence tended to be the reason someone hit up the drugs or squeezed the trigger, but the underlying causes rarely made it into the reports that reached the public.
Heart disease and asthma reigned as the crowned champions of 911 calls resulting in death.
Too often, the asthma calls involved children.
“Is that why they stole a bunch of your blood?”
“Yep. They’re going to run every blood test known to man before letting me out of here. If I’m lucky, nobody will notify my boss.”
