8.

It was mid-afternoon when Amphion awoke. He half expected to find himself still in the ruins of Old Seattle, but was instead greeted by the smell of ammonia.
    Pain exploded in his chest as a weight was thrust upon him. With a sense of urgency two arms grappled about his neck. A woman’s weeping, verging on hysteria, trembled and rent apart like a storm above him.
    “Amphion!” Rachel exclaimed. “I should just -- going there alone! --what were you thinking?! -- why didn’t you call for backup?”
    Amphion sat back on his elbows. He and Rachel were alone in a hospital room.
    “How’d I get here?” he asked.
    “Someone dropped you off at the front door. A nurse found you this morning.”
    Rachel settled down enough to untangle herself from her fiancé. Mindlessly, she ran her fingers over the stitches in his forehead. The usual heat of bliss and certainty was momentarily swept away by a gale of befuddlement.
    For his hand Rachel reached, but he swatted it away to reach for a cup of water by his bedside. “The station,” he grunted, remembering that his patrol car had been left at the warehouse.
    “They want to see you first thing tomorrow,” Rachel squeaked. “I told them, ‘let him have his rest,’ but they wouldn’t hear it. What happened last night, Phinny? Please…”   
    For the briefest of moments Amphion’s willpower threatened to bend to that of the woman who sat before him. He was not a man of concession -- never, not him, it was simply beyond his nature. His being was absolute and necessitated no contradiction, but there was something different about Rachel’s plea. A lifeline dangled before him, an omen which bided a ring of finality.
    “Whatever happened, I don’t remember a bit of it,” said Amphion.
    Though she sat beside him, Rachel seemed miles distant. She smiled -- and he felt there was something to mask with that smile, as if she was fighting something. It seemed as though he’d just taken a step away from her, and it was a step he could not reclaim.
***
    When he returned to  the station the next day, he was penalized for handling the situation on his own. Amphion’s punishment consisted of nothing more than a stern lecture, and it was delivered with so light a hand it might well have been raised against a schoolboy. After all, when others looked upon him they saw a man of breeding from some ancient canvas of war, swathed in a uniform which paired with his austere visage could well have been the garments of war. There was not a great deal of worry to go around for Amphion’s safety -- he was untouchable.
    Only Benjamin Cossack could not be satiated. He prowled about his office that day, a train of smoke going along wherever he went, until eventually the tiny cubicle was lost in a bleary haze. Amphion managed to avoid Cossack until noon, but at one o’clock he was called back from patrol to visit his office.
    “Someone’s trying to pull one over my eyes,” Cossack ranted. “Well, it’s not going to work. I’ve got better uses of my time than playing games with a punk.”
    Amphion was seated in Cossack’s chair -- the Commissioner himself had settled on the desk. He’d always possessed a strange obscenity when it came to conventional ways of doing things. Somehow, one of his own cigarettes had ended up in Amphion’s possession, who, in a moment of bafflement, murmured, “Sir?”
    “Don’t look at me like I’ve got a block for a head, son. What’s that thing doing between your lips? Didn’t think you smoked.”
    “I take it up when I’m stressed.”
    “It’s a very manly habit on you.”
    Under his breath Amphion muttered something about weak lungs and discarded the cigarette into an  ashtray. “Who’s trying to pull one over on you, Commissioner?” he asked.
    At last, Cossack relaxed and lit himself another cigar. Out of habit he rolled it between his lips as he glared at Amphion with mild wariness. “You’re sure you didn’t happen to see anything the other night, Oswald?”
    “Not a thing. I was out the whole time.”
    Cossack bent over and fumbled about in a drawer next to his knee. He produced a plastic bag and tossed it into Amphion‘s lap. It contained a dagger caked in rust and blood. “It’s the weapon that offed those sorry b******s. Here. Might as well take it and hang it on your mantelpiece. It’d make a nice fruit peeler, maybe -- the prints are useless.”
    On the weapon Amphion’s eyes locked, but he made no movement. “Why?”
    “They belong to a Gerard Peck. Buddy died last week. How do you think that will go over press?” A bit of tobacco juice splattered Amphion’s cheek on the word press. “Our only suspect is a pile o’ bones. The NSPD will look like a bunch  of morons -- that’s how it’ll go down.”
    “It’s a dry spell, that’s all,” said Amphion. “It’s not bound to last; whoever’s culpable will show up soon.”
    “I’m too old to be nabbing culprits -- a suspect’s all I need. Bring me a man and I’ll hang ‘im by the throat.”