Monday, October 15th. 3:00 pm.

What Potts wants...

“So, what are you telling me, Kyle?”

Potts sat his considerable mass on the thickly plush chair set firmly in the middle of his rich earth toned office.

He hated Kyle. That can’t be stated any simpler or more direct. Kyle was a young upstart who was after his job. He was always the first to know and the last the go home. He was effective, efficient, honest and always good natured. He was a s**t face and needed to be removed. No one was that good, productively or personally, who didn’t have an agenda. When Potts was an assistant DA, he’d been that good. That’s why he knew there had to be something up.

If only Kyle wasn’t so damn indispensable.

“No, Kyle, I understand that they’re dead... I am just not getting how they died. You don’t know?”

And now came one of the other things he hated... Complication. He’d been on the phone for three f*****g minutes and didn’t know what was going on. 

Simple and sweet, Kyle. I don’t need any of those details you always find so important.

Kyle’s voice was calm but there was something under it. Some rhythm in the words, some totally ethereal aspect of his tone was telling Potts that this was something big. It was something really big.

The phone made him quiet. Potts didn’t bother learning the ins and outs of his new toy. It was a Blackberry, that’s all he needed to know. He didn’t concern himself with the volume buttons on the side. Everyone he spoke to was quiet. He kind of liked it that way. It gave him an out when he just didn’t want to hear what they had to say. But Potts did want to listen to Kyle. He wanted to hear what he had to say and he wanted to make damn sure that what he thought he’d heard was the absolute truth.

“Kyle... get your a*s in here pronto. I don’t care where you are or what laws you have to break. Five minutes, do you hear me?”

He didn’t wait for the answer.

Potts clicked the red button that he knew meant ‘off’. That’s the button he liked. It gave him power over the call. He could end it at any time with that little button. It summed up everything he wanted. That button was important.

He hoped what he’d heard was true. There weren’t enough crimes in the county. There were the usual muggings and rapes but those weren’t any fun. Sobbing women pointing at obviously guilty thugs in courtrooms didn’t wow the media. Hell, most of the time the media didn’t even show up. Wasn’t that their job? Don’t they exist to tell the public about all the horrible people that exist within their midst and the heroes that are going to save them?

But this... This could be big. If he heard Kyle right, they could have a real sicko on their hands. Potts loved sickos. He loved them because everyone loved to hate them. He’d been praying for a serial killer or something to that effect. He’d never have told the people, of course. But he knew that even firefighters wanted to face that towering inferno and rescue the little minority baby. Doctors always wanted to treat the untreatable diseases and save the poor kid suffering from them.

A crazy killer gave Potts his inferno and the people were his suffering kids. He could be the hero and they’d love him for it... Fast track to being Mayor or Governor... or better.

Taking down a mass murderer; a mass murderer that uses explosives; a mass murdering bomber that took out an entire street full of suburbanites!

That’s the stuff of legend.

He figured it’s the stuff that could make presidents.

Potts lit the cigar that had been hanging in his hand since Kyle had called. He leaned back and shook the invisible hands of fantasy until his secretary buzzed the assistant in.

When the lanky, ridiculously and sickeningly attractive young man rushed in, he knew it was all wonderful. The whiter Kyle was, the better it was, and he could practically see through the b*****d.

Potts gave a smile, letting the smoke waft through his teeth like a sewer grate in winter.

“Tell me everything.”

Author's Note

Reviews welcome.