Sunday, February 6, 2011

Find Me - A work in Progress

Set up: Cody Allen is a homicide sergeant and Catherine Mans is a psychic consultant for the department. Thanks to Catherine they have just found the body of a young man that has been missing for three weeks. Not everyone in the department agees with the use of a psychic. This is the first draft and a work in progress.
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Cody Allen studied the Timothy Bond witness list as he listened to the sounds of general celebration around him. Finding the body was a major coup for them. Hopefully forensics would now be able to work their magic and give them some clue as to the killer's identity. Still, he couldn't help but feel they'd missed something in the early interviews. Something important.

He glanced up as Jeremy Scalf stopped in front of his desk, a dark scowl clouding his features.

"Something I can do for you, Jeremy?"

"Yeah. I'd like to have my case back. That is unless you want to let your psycho-psychic pull out a name from her mumbo jumbo bag."

The sound of laughter died, as every ear in the station honed in to hear his response. Cody knew most of them supported his work with Catherine. Skeptical at times, but their skepticism was healthy and kept them alert and on their toes.

"Catherine Mans has proven her value to this department more than once, Jeremy. If you've got a problem with that then maybe you need to look into a transfer somewhere else."

"We could have found the body without her," Scalf muttered.

"I don't doubt that," Cody stated raising his voice just slightly as he stood up. He wanted the whole department to hear what he had to say. "Ninety-nine percent of all cases are solved by good solid police work. And yes, we would have found the body eventually. Three months from now. Six months from now. Maybe even a year from now. And by the time we found it any usable evidence would have been long gone. The fact that we found it in three weeks gives us one leg up on the killer, and if we get lucky there'll still be some form of DNA to help us close this case. We can thank Catherine Mans for that. And I don't want anyone in this room to forget that."
Cody allowed his gaze to drift around the room noting those that met his eyes with a slight nod, and those that simply turned away. It was always a good thing to know just who had your back--and who didn't.

Sitting back down Cody picked up the file and handed it to Scalf. "I want every witness on that list re-interviewed. Someone knows something, so let's find out who it is."

He watched Scalf walk away, noting the stiff back, heavy feet. Scalf was harboring a deep anger. It flowed out from him with every step. Anger that strong, that deep could only be borne from hatred. The problem was hatred of what. Him? Catherine? Or psychics in general?



If you enjoyed this excerpt or if you feel it needs something more, please leave a comment below. Critiques are always welcome and help authors to improve.

11 comments:

  1. I like it, Linda. Psychics and the paranormal are really fascinating to me.

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  2. Really solid writing, Linda. Don't change a thing.

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  3. I remember reading an excerpt of this novel from last Sunday and hoped you would post more. I really like it.

    One thing I noticed - this line should read
    "We could have found the body without her."

    Instead of "with her"?

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  4. MsThriller - you're absolutely right. I'll go correct that now for future readers. Thank you.

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  5. This is really good, but I would have been surprised if it hadn't been. And what a nice first draft. Makes mine look weak. LOL

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  6. Great Linda! Can't wait to read this when it is ready!!

    Do you have a name for this mystery yet? I want to keep my eye out when to grab this! I really enjoyed Gifts!

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  7. Carole, a lot of my Kindle followers know I have a "gimme" contest occasionally where I give free copies of my books and/or gift certificates. Prior to release of this one I'll be asking my fans to help me choose the cover and one lucky fan will win a Kindle. So there will be plenty of publicity when this one comes out.

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  8. Great sample. Love the strong writing!

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  9. A great excerpt. Very strong. I completely missed the copy edit that Ms Thriller found. lol

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  10. I love this. I've been following your #samplesunday posts for a bit on Twitter. I'd love to see this print soon.

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  11. Thanks for posting this sample - I love the concept!

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