It was going to be another one of those nights. Every time there was a full moon you could expect something out of the ordinary was going to take place, but this was just plain weird I thought to myself, as I stepped into the abandoned warehouse located near the east pier.
Crazies invading the precinct, cult worshipers enacting bizarre ritual sacrifices of their neighbors' cats and psycho killers starting their manifest destinies and so on, were all to be expected at this time of the lunar cycle, but this was different than the usual fare. In fact it was downright eerie, I thought as I stepped through the doorway into the space beyond. It was as if I had never left the Fifth Precinct.
Everything had been copied down to the smallest detail. They even had the captain's coffee mug sitting on the corner of his desk. As I walked by, I glanced into it. It actually had coffee in it.
The déjà vu feeling just wouldn't leave me. Who would go to such length, not to mention expense, to build such a life size replica of the Fifth Precinct? I saw detective Rafferty ahead of me. His head lifted and he smiled as he saw me.
"I know, creepy isn't it, Lisa?"
I nodded. "Have you found any reason why someone would go to such great length as this?"
"No, and even less as to finding out what any of this has to do with our victim's murder. There's evidence that the framework for the walls was done by a staging company located not far from here. Some of their trucks showed up about an hour ago. The drivers' said they'd received word to come break everything down and pack it away. They said they were tasked to build this place over two weeks ago. The outfit that hired them did so by long distance. They never met a representative of the company. Said everything was paid for up front and that a completion bonus was wired into their accounts yesterday morning with a request to dismantle and destroy what they had been asked to build."
"Did they give us a name?" I asked.
"East Coast Mid Atlantic Erectors Inc." Detective Salieazar said, stepping up beside his partner Rafferty. "I checked into them. Turns out they've been out of business for over three years and there's been no recent activity by a company of that name recently either. Whoever did this knew not only how to cover their tracks, but to eliminate them entirely!"
"Didn't the staging company express any concern when they saw the nature of what they were asked to build?"